Betrayals

A couple of Obama items:

1. Does anybody remember the campaign promise Obama made about allowing us to buy prescription drugs from other countries? Well, guess what? The FDA is opposing an amendment to the so-called health reform bill that would ease the restrictions on the importation of drugs from other countries like Canada on the grounds that it would be difficult to implement and endanger the US medicine supply. One commentator, making the obvious point that the FDA is Obama's FDA, calls this massive sucking up to big pharma a "betrayal." It's hard to argue with this assessment. That's all we've gotten from this president.

2. Quotes from the Obama acceptance speech in Oslo . . . the Nobel Peace Prize, remember?

==>>"To say that force may sometimes by necessary is not a call to cynicism--it a recognition of history." Hell, as president this guy can make history by for once in the history of this country choosing to pursue a path of peace rather than war. He's done nothing of the sort. His choice is for expanded war. What a travesty this guy has turned out to be!

==>>"The instruments of war do have role to play in preserving the peace." This is the craziest excuse for logic that's ever been devised. Moreover, the experience of humankind for millennia proves nothing if not that war begets war. Peace is the absence of war, by definition. It cannot be preserved by war.

===>>"We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations--acting individually or in concert--will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified." I can think of a few former Nobel Peace Prize winners who are turning in their graves. Rightfully so.

What We Read

There's no better window to the soul than knowing what people read. Well, wait a second, that's a bit too strong. The soul is more amorphous and mysterious than a person's reading list. And a such a list would not sum up the whole person, would it? OK, let me rephrase. What a person reads provides strong clues to what a person is vitally interested in, what he spends time thinking about, what she likes and considers important. I always ask my friends that read what they are reading. Indeed, almost all my friends are avid readers; it's just the kind of people I hang around with. It still flabbergasts me that the vast majority of Americans don't even read one book in a year!  You can sport readers a mile off when they come into a place with bookshelves (most of the time a home, but sometimes other places like offices): they scan titles. They wonder, as do I in such situations, what does this person read? Do we have common interests? Is there anything here that sounds interesting to me?

I got to thinking about this subject when I came across this NY Times piece on Lewis Lapham and Lapham's Quarterly. I've been a subscriber since this publication began its second year. I have to confess that I've not read every page of the four issues I've received, but I've read a lot. And I've renewed. Not reading every word of every page is nothing new. I remember somewhat in disbelief that there was a time when I was young were I did read every word of every magazine I got. But I got fewer and definitely less meaty ones then, and that was a long time ago. Anyway, I don't get that many magazines, but it's still too many: Harper's, Atlantic, Newsweek (which I just scan), Chess Life, and the aforementioned journal. I have a bud that passes along his old New Yorker magazines. I gave up my subscription earlier this year. All those unread magazines (once a week!) made me feel way too guilty. I still have stacks of them sitting around in the doubtless vain hope that one day I'll get around to reading them. I'm not even counting the extraneous stuff that comes in and that I'll spend time scanning or actually reading.

And then there are the books. I've got a ton of books around here that I really want to read, a lot of them in the category of I'll read that when I retire. Well . . . what am I waiting for? That story is going to have to wait till later.

Public Option is Poof

Well, what a surprise. The Senate Democrats have officially ditched the so-called "public option" on the health care legislation they have been wrangling over for the past months.  Are you really surprised? Didn't you just know that in the end the accursed health insurance giants and their lackeys in Congress were going to see to it that nothing got in the way of their profits? Now, you heard it here first . . . the bill that will eventually pass the Congress will NOT lower your health insurance premium. It will further enrich the already bloated insurance companies. The administration has already bargained away any leverage on the purchase of drugs, so what's emerging from this "reform" is millions of new customers for the insurers, and all the teeth that we the citizens had in the proposed legislation have been systematically broken off.

Here's language from the Washington Post story:

[T]he government plan preferred by liberals [public option] would be replaced with a program that would create several national insurance policies administered by private companies but negotiated by the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees health policies for federal workers. If private firms were unable to deliver acceptable national policies, a government plan would be created. 

In addition, people as young as 55 would be permitted to buy into Medicare, the popular federal health program for retirees. And private insurance companies would face stringent new regulations, including a requirement that they spend at least 90 cents of every dollar they collect in premiums on medical services for their customers.

This "solution" is full of holes. The key phrase above is "administered by private companies." This, of course, means allowing insurers to make a profit, which is a whole 'nother train of thought from forcing the bastards to control costs by creating a government-run option that people could choose. And just what does "unable to to deliver acceptable national policies" mean? Medicare extension is a good thing, of course. It is a single-pay system that has leverage on prices, but I want to know how the "stringent new regulations" are going to be monitored and enforced.

Bottom line: we still are going to be controlled by the insurance companies. My contention from the beginning was and still is that health care should not be a for-profit frigging business. Health care is a human right. Making money off people's illness and suffering is immoral. But I'm a voice crying in the wilderness on this.

Update 1: One reader's comment this Truthdig piece on this matter pretty much sums it up for me: "Then they might as well just kill the whole deal. Without a public option American’s will remain the victims of health care corporate America. Instead how about a subsidy on Airline Tickets for those that want to go to India, China and Mexico for health care. It would be cheaper. Betrayl [sic] doesn’t even begin to cover it."

Let There Be Music!

Here's a great band I just discovered, Los Lonely Boys, siblings from San Angelo, Texas. Well, I didn't discover them just this minute, but a few days ago when my Louisiana bud's latest batch of swap CDs arrived. The periodic swaps we do have been an education for me. Enjoy!


 
There's no end to the wonderful music out there. One of the blessings of my life is the wide taste I have for music. I spent a couple of hours tonight watching Barenboim on Beethoven on PBS. The maestro played five of the piano sonatas, including a just astonishing performance of "Appassionata" ("Sonata No. 23 F minor," Op. 57). You can listen to his performance of Sonata No. 20 right here. I'd put the video up, but it's dinky. There's nothing wrong with the sound though. You should definitely try and catch this program on its next go 'round.

I don't know what I'd do without music . . . or books. Both take me away, which is sometimes not a bad prescription at all.

We Can All Stop Worrying

Here's the best news I've had to report here in a long while. Despite the murderous war in Afghanistan, which your president has just decided to extend by an indefinite amount of time--if he thinks we're going to begin drawing down in the 18 months has plan calls for, he is crazier than I think he is--despite the crushing economic crisis the country is suffering with no end in sight, despite the madness that prevails in the land (Palin, tea-baggers, mass murders), despite the fact we've been royally hosed by the Wall Street bankers who are not going to be punished and who indeed are prospering as never before at our expense . . . despite all this, we can all relax. Because Jesus is on the job and his special envoy, Mary Jo Coady of Methuen, Massachusetts, has assured us that he is "listening." Yes, she has seen the Savior, and not where you would expect: like sitting in your recliner when you walk in from work, or next to you on the front seat of the car not wearing a seat belt, or behind you on the elevator and also getting out on the 12th floor, or even waiting on you at the Christmas lines in Walgreens--no, you know that foxy Jesus isn't going to do anything that predictable. No, he is decided in his infinite wisdom that the best way to get his Good News to us in these dark days is to appear to Mary Jo on the bottom of her steam iron.* Of course, at first blush this seems like a totally nonsensical plan, but if you think about it long enough, and perhaps pray over it some, you of course will come to the conclusion that this is really only one of a very few ways Jesus would reveal himself to us.

*Mary Jo plans to get a new iron and keep the Jesus iron in her closet. This is absolute proof of the authenticity of this miraculous event: an American with a marketable curiosity decides not to exploit it to make money.

The Way It Is

My Baby

Well, as I was about to say yesterday . . . my first collection of poetry, self-published and called  Buried Above Ground, arrived at the house yesterday in 30, I must say, glorious copies. I'll never forget when that heavy box of ten author's copies of  Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia arrived 21 years ago, after I had labored probably about 10 years writing and researching. It was a feeling of what must be somewhat like giving birth and seeing the infant for the first time. Only this was a box of full-grown books. It was a feeling of satisfaction and pride that's hard to describe. I think I've pined for that feeling ever since.

So I got a twinge of that feeling again yesterday, and I confess I just sat with the slim, little volume in my hands and stared at it. It's glossy cover, the heft of it in my hand, the way it looks on a shelf, the way it smells. My baby. That's what it is. This collection of 76 poems. There's more of me spilled here in this little book than any ten history books I could write. And, honestly, there may not be any more history books, but I know for a fact there will be more poems, and who knows, maybe another collection.* I was struck when I was picking out poems for the book just how many of them seemed steeped in my New Orleans and south Louisiana childhood. I have no idea how or where these words, these ideas, come from. I sit at the screen and I type. I revise and rewrite and rearrange. And then I say it's done. Sometimes the words gush out like Spindletop, other times it's like chiseling marble. I've been telling myself that I'd be more authentic and maybe the damn poems would come easier if I wrote with one of my fountain pens on yellow legal pad--that's the way I did all my writing before computers. Enough. Here's one of the poems.


Things I’d Never Do

Now that kids are grown up
and gone
along with whatever brawn
allowed my extracting
the cork
from the Chianti
without my face purpling
to the same color,
the list of things I’d never do
seems to get longer,
pretty much in concert
with my expanding years
and corresponding shrinkage
in virtually
every meaningful category
of physicality
save the number
of required nocturnal urinations.
 
Just a few things
I’d never do:
take up mountain climbing ,
become an accountant
(which would suck
life’s blood from me
like a gigantic tick
even if I were twenty-six),
give up red beans and rice,
root for the Yankees,
wear anything lime green.

No, it’s come time
to mimic
my wandering dog, sniffing away
at whatever interests her
in the grass,
and rolling in whatever seems
especially savory.
================================================== 
*Oh, I'm always working on something history. Articles, sure, and a friend and I are working on a joint project, a biography of David Farragut, but that's a way off yet. But I know for a fact there will be more poems; there already are.

Update 1: In a couple of weeks or so, there will be a web site where you can find out more about the book and order a copy if you want. I'll put it up when I have it.

We Love War

 I came across this wonderful assessment of the American character a few minutes ago when I was working on the other piece. I could not have said this better myself. A great big "AMEN" from me. The writer is Robert Higgs, a prolific scholar. Unfortunately, the link to the original piece is broken, but he's quoted in this piece, and you can find whole bunch of his writings at the previously referenced site.

 

Presidents decide to go to war in the context of a favorably disposed mass culture. Painful as it is for members of the Peace Party to admit, many Americans take pleasure in "kicking ass," and they do not much care whose ass is being kicked or why. So long as Americans are dishing out death and destruction to a plausible foreign enemy, the red-white-and-blue jingos are happy. If you think I’m engaging in hyperbole, you need to get out more. Visit a barbershop, stand in line at the post office, or have a drink at your neighborhood tavern and listen to the conversations going on around you. The sheer bellicosity of many ordinary people's views is as undeniable as it is shocking. Something in their diet seems to be causing a remarkable volume of murderous, barely suppressed rage.

No one should be surprised by the cultural proclivity for violence, of course, because Americans have always been a violent people in a violent land. Once the Europeans had committed themselves to reside on this continent, they undertook to slaughter the Indians and steal their land, and to bullwhip African slaves into submission and live off their labor—endeavors they pursued with considerable success over the next two and a half centuries. Absent other convenient victims, they have battered and killed one another on the slightest pretext, or for the simple pleasure of doing so, with guns, knives, and bare hands. If you take them to be a “peace-loving people,” you haven’t been paying attention. Such violent people are easily led to war.

Public ignorance compounds the inclinations fostered by the mass culture. Study after study and poll after poll have confirmed that most Americans know next to nothing about public affairs. Of course, the intricacies of foreign policy are as alien to them as the dark side of the moon, but their ignorance runs much deeper. They can’t explain the simplest elements of the political system; they don’t know what the Constitution says or means; and they can’t identify their political representatives or what those persons ostensibly stand for. They know scarcely anything about history, and what they think they know is usually incorrect. People so densely ignorant that they have no inkling of how their forebears were bamboozled and sacrificed on the altar of Mars the last time around are easily bamboozled and readily sacrificed the next time around.

The Best of Intentions

Well, my intention for today was to blast the hell out of Obama's speech at West Point committing this country to endless war in Afghanistan, a policy I am so utterly opposed to that to my mind he has sunk as low as the vile little fraud that previously occupied the White House. I swear it must be something in that tea they give presidents to drink over at the Pentagon. Have you noticed that Obama cannot pardon the Thanksgiving turkey these days without some fawning reference to the military--their bravery, dedication, courage, sacrifice, yadda yadda? OK, maybe even all of the above, but do we have to continually be extolling their virtue? Come on. If we told the truth about it, the rank and file in the military are in the military not because they are virtuous, although that might be an incidental quality for some, but because they needed a frigging job and this was the best they could get.

But we don't tell the truth about it, do we? Our common mode now is to adore the military and cover them with posies at every opportunity. The military is never criticized. This is what we have come to. We have collectively decided to go along with further debasement of the word "hero"* and apply it to anybody in cami's without distinction. (All of the people shot by that nut case at Fort Hood a couple of weeks ago, for example, are "heroes." Nooooo, they are victims. I don't know if there were any heroes in that incident, although I'm willing to be educated.) All this just bespeaks a society in thrall to everything military, a militarized society, in other words.**

Just why was this presidential address--which commits this country to further death and maiming of who knows how many more American troops, to further hemorrhage of billions of dollars we do not have, to further killing and maiming of God knows how many Afghani people, to strengthening the hand of that godfather of fraud and corruption Karzai, to further enrichment of the blood-sucking military contractors who are feeding on these mid-East wars like vultures, to indefinite postponement of vital initiatives here in the U.S.--just why was this address given at West Point? I think I heard that Bush gave the speech there that committed us to go to Iraq, which makes this choice of venue even more censurable. But even if that's not right , this is just cheap theater, that's all. All those earnest, fresh-faced, gray-clad cadets--nobody is going to yell "you lie!" in this venue, although it would have been appropriate at several points--all those innocents, those earnest lovers of the U.S. of A.! So much more attractive and photogenic than sitting in the Oval Office.

There are a host of bloggers just like me who are outraged at this betrayal by Obama. Read Chris Floyd's scathing assessment, Arthur Sibler's aptly titled "A Deadly Liar and Manipulator,"

If you think we're leaving this part of the world any time soon, or perhaps even in your lifetime, you'll believe anything. But that's all right: lots of Americans do precisely that. 

But all of this is standard issue for rulers of Empire; the rhetoric and presentation may be of better quality than offered by Bush or that would have issued from McCain, but the points are essentially identical.

See also here, here, and here.

Whoops. It appears that I'm not going to get around to my original intent, which was to tell you that my collection of poems has indeed been published and is now a book. I'll tell you about that tomorrow. I had the best of intentions, but, damn, I cannot get past this latest atrocity from a guy I once had such hope in.  What a fool I was to believe that it was really going to be different this time.

========================================
*hero -1. any person, esp. a man, admired for courage, nobility, or exploits, esp. in war; 2. any person, esp. a man, admired for qualities or achievements and regarded as an ideal or model. (www. yourdictionary.com)

**Helpful in understanding this is Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (2005)

Be Prepared

Are you ready for this? The Goldman fat cats are stocking up on handguns so as to be better prepared when the proletariat rises in revolt. I almost wrote righteous revolt. Which would certainly be true. So the criminals of Wall Street are arming themselves against the coming revenge. Has their monstrous greed and disdain for the Great Unwashed finally begun to extract a cost? Of course not. These people still obscenely rich and getting richer. And they are just as ready to shoot somebody as they are to steal his money.