Newt Gingrich once said that if there were a couple thousand Bill Gates in the ghetto then poverty could be solved. Yesterday on NPR, I heard a rightie saying how Google didn't exist 15 years ago and punishing those who work hard to succeed to pay for those who don't is well, unamerican or something. I had stopped listening. Let us all worship and praise the billionaires because this is now their country, their government, their media, their elections, their everything. Ford was a good example, in his attitude towards the Jews and how he forced his workers to adhere to strict "morality codes" of where we are headed. Benevolent despotism, the banality of evil, and fascist corporatism. As soon as the veneer is stripped away, the US will be revealed to a third world nation deep in debt, overwhelmingly poor, but with very very very rich overlords living up on the hill with Blackwater private "contractors" on patrol. Dissenters will be treated to free room and board at the many re-education camps run by Bechtel and KBR.

Posted at October 18, 2007 5:08 AM in response to Got Freedom?

amike : I take it you are a civil war scholar and as such you quote your material well. I have read the Lincoln/Douglas debates and some of Lincoln's writing. He is a sharp wit, but somewhat of an equivocator when it came to slavery before the war. He did not, for example, think blacks and whites could ever live together but instead considered relocation to an island as a possible solution.

In this last quote you gave, I see a man struggling with the enormous complexities of preserving the union in the face of so many "shades" on the issue of slavery. Just as in Iraq today, there are many suggestions as to a possible exit strategy, but none of them are very good. Perhaps the same could be said about slavery given it's essential component in southern agribusiness, who also, btw, provided food to the north.

The last part of his letter begins to devolve into the primitive regions of men's heart once the blood becomes hot, where there is not much reason left and all the eloquent words in the world do not assist. Perhaps this is a window into the civil war the US has helped instigate in Iraq.

Posted at August 11, 2007 10:38 AM in response to Ugly American Conservatism

good questions katall. It is sorta like that Monty Python sketch about mountian climbing. As the leader of the expedition explained, mountains are rather steep until you reach the very top and then they tend to slope off rather sharply. Forget that, it is irrelevant.

The main thing to remember is that the "trickle down theory" or supply side economics (voodoo as George I called them) are but a chimera, a cleverly designed argument to give the rich more money. A rising tide lifts all yachts, as they say. The original argument was that with extra wealth, the rich would CREATE JOBS and so forth, but then everyone learned about outsourcing and the transplantation of manufacturing overseas and somehow that part of the argument went away.

The metaphor is, however, quite apt in that it describes the descent of some type of liquid upon those at the bottom. As always, they are getting pissed on in good times and bad.

In good times, the tax burden is shifted downward so that the rich can "invest." In bad times, the debt burden is shifted downward so that government can bail out "essential" sectors of our financial infrastructure. All in all, gravity seems to win out.

Posted at August 11, 2007 10:15 AM in response to What Does it All Mean?

amike : eloquent indeed, but in a con man sorta way. At first it seems Abe is committing that greatest of modern day journalistic sin, wherein, in the vaunted name of the god of objectivity, both sides of any argument are given equal legitimacy and standing, even when the one side is cleary wrong.

He is supremely political in that he seems to suggest that neither side is wholly right and that we shouldn't judge, but then through clever language proceeds to judge with both an axe and a surgeon's scalpel, rendering even the extreme extraction of blood and treasure in the south for slavery as just punishment from a just God.

A bit too convoluted for today's audience, I would expect, but nonetheless he get's the point across.

I admit that I sroked with a broad brush when I spoke of mainstream protestantism's support of slavery. I grew up in the south and have observed the rank stench of racism persist to this day. There is, in particular, the widespread continued popularity of the Southern Baptists who were formed for the very cause of denying African American slaves as members.

I live in a small cluter of towns in Texas near Ft Worth. There is not one black in the entire county, at least that I have seen. I did happen to see four blacks in my town driving an upscale SUV the other day. I noticed them because, of course, they were pulled over and surrounded by several police cars with lights flashing. Who knows if they were guilty of anything or just guilty of driving a nice car while black.

One comment I made which was read to indicate that white male land owners morphed into big business eliltes was somehow taken to mean slave owning southern white male land owners. Not at all; I was refering to our cherished sainted founding fathers from the north.

What was once the aristocratic privelige of the landed gentry, at least in terms of ownership of the means of production and access to capital, still holds largely true for certain sectors whose advantages and opportunities, such as those given George Jr, result in a similar leverage within the US brand of corporate predatory fascist monopolistic capitalism.

Posted at August 11, 2007 8:23 AM in response to Ugly American Conservatism

mcboo : in your long list of peoples this nation has discriminated against, you somehow forgot to mention african american slaves and jim crow after slavery was, at least officially, abolished. This was and still is the greatest American sin. Most of the platitudes and lofty talk about this nation being the greatest needs only to look at how blacks have been treated for 400 years. Despite ricidulously false assertions in the declaration of independence that "all men are created equal," slavery was legal and blacks were only counted as 2/3rds for the census. Most mainstreat "christian" churches supported slavery. Only the Quakers were abolitionists. Purple mountains, amber waves of grain my ass. Bullshit jive talk, dog and pony chain jerking time all the time, all day, every day.

What used to be the aristocracy of white land owning men has morphed into big business elites acting in largely the same fashion. "And the rockets red flare and bombs bursting in air" - yeah, we love that shiite. Bomb Iraq to hell and then pretend to rebuild it charging the host nation several trillion while actually rebuilding nothing. O yeah, we might need to murder a few million brown people. It's how it's always been done by this great nation, the bestest most greatest nation in the whole wide world. Isn't that right Virginia?

Posted at August 10, 2007 8:45 PM in response to Ugly American Conservatism

Unless the government is going to bail me and every other schmoo out whenever we can't make our obligations, there should not be one dime given to these unscrupulous lenders, private equity and hedge funds. Oh, but the house of cards will fall and the whole fake money illusion created by 3 card monty financial instruments will reveal how the economy has been falsely propped up for the past 6 years by speculation, smoke and mirrors. We can't have that; hence massive bail out; see : Neil Bush and the savings and loan collapse.

Why is a Bush always involved in the biggest tragedies of our lifetimes. Marvin Bush was the operator of the security co that shut down the twin towers 2 weeks before 911, perhaps to install strategically placed demolitions? Jeb Bush engineered the usurpation of the real 43rd president of the US, Al Gore. Lil GW Bush, well what hasn't he done to destroy this nation?

Posted at August 10, 2007 7:56 PM in response to What Does it All Mean?

A lot of good comments here, but I am sad to say nothing will happen due to lack of democratic courage and guts. Cheney/Bush have done the most outrageous and extreme acts imaginable in the last 6 years and got away with it.

Consider that the stolen elections enabled all of it and those acts themselves were amazing in their audacity. The voter supression, the scrubbed voter rolls, the tossed absentee ballots, blacks targeted by police, hundreds of thousands denied the vote by false "felon" lists, voter caging, inadequate voting machines in urban heavily democratic precints and, of course, diebold.

Then perhaps they engineered 9/11 and even if only complicit by incompetence, squandering international good will to wage an illegal unneccesary war of agression against a nation that posed no credible national security risk and was not involved in said terrorist attack.

Then they enacting massive tax cuts aimed primarily at the wealthy in the third month of the invasion, i.e. during wartime and granted tax immunity to corporations who open a headquarters offshore. Don't forget Delay's brown shirt operations that ensured most of K street only hired republican lobbyists and banned those that contributed to democrats, ect.

It is hard to imagine acts done with more venal spite and shameless arrogance. But the corporate media and much of the public drank it all in; still stunned into blinking sheep in the overwhelming tidal force of it all. Many like myself were screaming, but no one wanted to hear.

The air was thick with a white supernatural aura, almost occult in nature. Remember when it was only Tim Robbins who would speak out? His kids were attacked by their teachers at school for killing our troops and aiding the enemy. No one dared to speak a dissenting word for fear of being branded unpatriotic.

This madness continued for years. Does no one remember? I do. By sheer act of "political will" as John Fund put it, an artificial pseudo reality was created and installed before our very eyes. Those who objected were branded as "anti-American."

Note how Bush hmself became America. You may only object to administration policy, but Bush had become America. To dissent from Bush was to be against America.

The orwellian game was so simple and BRAZEN, yet everyone played along. Yet this is EXACTLY how the democrats need to act now. They must have the balls to act with courage and confidence knowing that impeachment is the only remedy to the breakdown of seperation of powers.

Where are the democratic balls? Why do only republicans dare to act out the most lavish, absurd and violently outlandish and extreme measures and get away with them nearly every time? They are rarely if ever punished for this. I understand the corporate media gives them an advantage.

Yet if there is one thing that is needed right now it is political will, guts, courage and balls to undo this nightmare. It breaks my heart to know the democrats won't do it. We are totally f**cked.

Why is it that when the republicans had the majority in the Senate, the democratic minority almost never obstructed effectively as the repub minority now do? Why are the dems so impotent even in majority, and the repubs, even in defeat, so able to foil everything? I think it is mostly the will to do so. They do it because they can.

Democrats don't do it because they fear they can't or shouldn't or consider what people will think or how their opposition will portray them. Part of the reason for this is that the repubs don't care who they hurt if they make a mistake. The million murdered Iraqis and dead US soldiers and those maimed and damaged are also expendible. No big. The war profiteers have made their billions.

I fear though we are at a point where there is not much left to lose if the dems don't impeach.

Posted at August 10, 2007 5:10 PM in response to An Alternative to Impeachment: Transitional Justice for the Bush-ites

The shadow government of transnationals, global corporatists, et al do not move in the quaint dimensions of normative human emotions such as arrogance. They live in a rarified realm which, in normative human terms, would be considered sociopathic, but is merely, to them, expedient. There is no human cost which would dissuade them from wars, invasions, "collateral damage," or the mass enslavement of the vast majority of the globe's labor to subsistence existence.

It's only business, you see. Profit, only profit, is king. There is no ideology apart from this. That is what they pay all the right wing thinktanks millions, even billions, to spin words for them. Of course they own the broadcast and much of the print media so it is no surprise they were able to steal two elections and start a war based on lies.

Nothing impeachable there. Perjury and semen stains, yes. But mass murder, illegal wars of agression, the shredding of the constitution : well, that's just left wing hysterical BUSH HATING. Bill O Wrongly has called YearlyKos nothing but nazi KKK hate. Wow. Talk about projection.

The ingnorant and easily led public assumes the truth is somewhere in the middle. That is why the right keeps pushing everything so far right that Goldwater and Nixon would be laughed to scorn today as naive liberals and godless commies by Kristol and gang.

Is there hope? Probably not.

Posted at August 9, 2007 12:11 PM in response to Ugly American Conservatism

No bid contract crony capitalism, massive subsidies to billion dollar corporations and a trillion dollar arms industry sounds about as far from a free market as one can get.

Some have described the hundreds of billions tossed away on the "reconstruction" of Iraq (most spent on security) as neo-colonialism. That is, old school colonialism would invade and occupy a country and then proceed to rape it's resources for the benefit of invading country.

Neocolonialism does not wait for indigenous resources to be plundered but instead seeks to rape the treasury of the invading country for the benefit of connected crony corporations.

It goes without saying that neocolonialism has no regard for the welfare of the host nation, save those in the loop. It is, after all, a flat earth and we all now live in a global village. The transnational executives have residences besides the gated community mansions back in the states with it's own security force. The riff raff (formerly known as the middle class) can fend for themselves.

Big business and billionaires know all too well the deep well of the federal treasury and seek as much "government intervention" as can be achieved with the proper connections and palms greased.

Why for a measly million dollar campaign contribution and few dozen high paid lobbyists an industry can obtain billions in gov contracts. Just ask big Agribusiness who has conned congress into massive ethanol subsidies when in fact it takes more energy to produce ethanol that it provides.

A truly free market would entail ending all corporate welfare immediately, including the trillion dollar arms industry boondoggle, where 100 million dollar experimental vehicles are built and stored to collect dust, all the while seeking greater appropriations for yet more.

And there is no protest because the arms industry has spread it's plants in vital districts all throughout the 50 states. Just talk about shutting one down and it's a job and local tax revenue issue; bread and butter with the electorate. A very rigged game indeed.

Posted at July 16, 2007 6:25 AM in response to Subsidizing the Rich and a Free Market are Not the Same Thing

Thanks Emma for the bellylaugh. I actually think such a reality show would be the best indice for real world leadership. GW wouldn't know whether to put milk in his car or gas on his cereal, but leader of the "free world" he is, as Yoda would say.

There is a lot more than just economic theory involved in the issues being discussed here. I believe American children are brainwashed into believing the success myth and it's corresponding corollary, the failure myth at such an early age that nearly everything they do to achieve "success" strips them of the capacity to think in community and social terms.

It is every man for himself. You are on your own. The mind numbing fear that accompanies the imagination of poverty and homelessness lowers ethical levels, compassion and empathy. If I get mine, I am a "success" and can then pontificate about everything imaginable, having sealed my validition in social acceptance, and can also wax endlessly about those lacked the moral fibre to suceed. Yet the real world teaches the viccissitudes of time, fate and chance.

This motiff drives many Americans and the ability for the republican party to exist, which it could not in a sane world.I know that it was my driving force until I got disabled after getting a CS and engineering degree and yet ended up working as a cashier until my health would not permit it. I am a "loser" and taken off the charts.

It is not so much that Americans are afraid of socialism but rather that the media and information networks which include the brainwashing of young children in the ways of competitive "I got mine" capitalsim is a corporate enterprise wholly existent upon demonizing socialist solutions.

Many Americans are not even aware how low ranked the US health care system is, in real observable terms, yet still spout the talking point about having the "best" medical care in the world, citing examples provided by talk show hosts of malpractice in single payer nations, failing to note the high occurance in this country.

The thing I am trying to windingly point out has to do with American self concept; ego, worth and other factors of identity that has everything to do with perpetuating the status quo.

Posted at April 30, 2007 3:12 PM in response to Inflation Frustration: It’s More Than the Core