Ho Ho--Oh No

In the spirit of the season, I present a couple of snippets from the latest post from James Kuntsler. Ho Ho, if you will.  I will not need to be glum myself during this holiday season; I'll just let him be glum. But maybe I'll allow myself a comment or two.


I sat in a bar Friday evening with a financial reporter from a national newspaper, trying to explain the peak oil situation and what it implied for our economy.  He had never heard it before. The relationship between energy resources and massive debt was new to him. (It also came up in conversation that he could not tell me what the Monroe Doctrine was about, despite a history degree from Yale.) There you have a nice snapshot of the mainstream media in this land.

It's difficult for me to imagine any competent financial reporter not having ever heard of "peak oil." You have to wonder where in the world such a person has been for the past ten years or more. And good Lord in highest heaven, you don't need to tell me about the ignorance of college students, er, make that college graduates. It doesn't matter where the degree is from. Harvard or Yale, in this particular case, is equivalent to Slippery Rock or the University of Eastern Topeka. So-called college graduates coming out of schools today are, I'm sorry, as dumb as dodos. Can you imagine having a history degree from anywhere, much less a celebrated and ridiculously expensive Ivy League mainstay such as Yale, and not knowing about the Monroe Doctrine? I wonder what else (s)he doesn't know? Gives me the shivers. And this, mind you, is the PRESS, the supposed watchdogs of our democracy. 

The other current embodiment of national character failure, Tiger Woods, golfer, has also dazzled the American public. Personally I find it much more interesting to learn that he was a really lousy tipper than that he got a lot of action on the side with opportunistic bar girls, porn stars, and other denizens of the sports-entertainment netherworld. Is it not also amusing that golf is even taken seriously as an athletic pursuit? I mean, why not pancake-flipping?  Or dice? Or shooting rats at the landfill? This is the kind of knucklehead culture we have become after six decades of the softest life imaginable.


I have studiously avoided comment on this situation, not even wanting to appear in the least degree similar to the the salivating crowd from all points of the compass who have been rolling in this story like a dog on a rotting carcass for weeks. But like Kuntsler, I find it interesting that this mega-billionaire stiffs working class stiffs on tips. Sorry. This marks the guy as a perpetual asshole in my book, even if he was as faithful to his wife as a eunuch. 

Knucklehead culture? Come now. That's too kind. And think about that phrase, "the softest life imaginable." Doesn't conjure up images of hearty Americans girding up for truly hard times, which, I fear, are coming. 

Told You So

I cannot contemplate the mid-term elections with any degree of equanimity. It seems to be a dead certainty that the Democrats will be routed, and we'll be back to gridlock government. And why? Because the Democrats are going to stay home. Their president has given them no reason to turn out. You don't have to go far to find out what the progressives in this country are thinking. None of it bodes well for the Democrats. 


Take this for example, from The Smirking Chimp. He's talking about Obama and his choice to disregard the populist agenda that elected him:

Indeed, choosing the collaborationist route would mean replaying much of the Clinton playbook: reject calls for accountability on the outgoing Republicans; treat anyone who wants to know the full story of the GOP crimes as extreme; join in covering up Republican wrongdoing in hopes of some reciprocity; continue most of the foreign policy initiatives to avoid charges of “softness”; behave “responsibly” on domestic matters even in the face of GOP attacks and obstructionism; devise a health-reform plan that protects the interests of private insurers.

Drew Westen, a political scientist, writing in The Huffington Post complains of three Obama traits that are marking his failure: his laissez-faire leadership style makes him seem distant to ordinary people, his utter failure to articulate and defend "a coherent ideological position on virtually anything," and finally, the widespread perception that he cares more about the powerful special interests such as banks, big pharma, Pentagon, the insurance industry, and Wall Street "than the people they are shafting."


On healthcare "Scarecrow" in Firedoglake is scathing: 

But instead of doing the obvious, the reforms that actually work, the corporate Democrats and their corporate-shielding President have done the opposite. Every travesty in the Senate bill springs from an effort to preserve and shield the private industries that are financially and literally killing us. Instead of providing strong public alternatives, the bill will bail out the private system, and not merely by giving them hundreds of billions to subsidize their unregulated premiums and fees. No, we will force 30 million Americans who can least afford it to buy their overpriced, poorly regulated products, and pay only lip service to the economic hardship this imposes.

Now isn't this the exact same thing I've been saying--the same thing as all these guys--for some time now? I'm so utterly disgusted with Obama myself that I really can't say I care much what happens to the Democrats. I can't help but observe that I began souring on him earlier than many of my progressive friends. And I'm certainly not going to take any pleasure in telling the latecomers to the truth "I told you so."

Universal Paradox

I wrote this one today.

Universal Paradox

A poem about nothing,

is nothing but trouble.

It would,

one assumes,

have to be in blank verse,

(naturally)

tidy and terse

so as not to burden

readers with any thoughts

more weighty

than meringue,

a metaphor which,

upon reflection,

doesn’t serve at all,

being something,

no matter how light and fluffy.

Consider nothing . . .

and the problem

stands stark before us.

Even dark matter,

nothingness itself for eons,

now suffuses space

between the stars

with something,

(we know not what)

a concept considerably

more weighty

than meringue on a pie

the size of Jupiter,

or Alpha Centari,

for that matter.

And that’s the trouble

with a poem about nothing.

Awww, phoo!

The New Orleans Saints lost their first game of the season tonight to the hated (at least for me) Dallas Cowboys. The good guys were never really in the game; they didn't deserve to win and were outplayed on both sides of the ball. So there goes the perfect season. It's the first taste of defeat for ecstatic New Orleans Saints fans this year. Moreover, we've got to fret about the playoffs now, when you're not allowed the luxury of losing.

Two Gnarly Nuggets

Two signs-of-the-times blog entries for you to get frosted about:

1. Bob Cesca's piece in the Huffington Post about how as a progressive Democrat he's pissed off at the turn healthcare reform has taken. There's a whole wonderful list of things that he's pissed off at: healthcare reform, the Senate, the House, Joe Lieberman, the media, Tom Colburn and his hair, Rahm Emmanuel, and more. But he concludes his entertaining diatribe by making the case for passing the bill anyway, despite its odiousness, despite the fact that Lieberman and the conservadems get what they want while the progressives get the shaft. His argument is not original in that you have heard it before. Basically it goes like this: if health care doesn't pass now, it's not going to pass anytime soon: pass this bill or give up getting healthcare reform for a long, long time. And all the damage that would do: millions remaining uninsured, ridiculously high rates, more deaths, more healthcare bankruptcies. Actually, it's a reasonable position, but really it's like drinking vinegar laced with habanero. Truth be told, I think he's right. I think healthcare reform of any description is dead for who knows how long if we don't get some semblance of it passed now. But I can't tell you how much I hate being played like the White House has played me on this issue. I cannot help but believe that the Administration played footsie with the damn Democrats who have scuttled real reform. If they had broken a few heads and played rough, we might not be in this situation.
2. Matt Taibbi has got a reminder of the "ordinary" stuff that's going on in Congress while all the dust is being raised over the healthcare bill. That would be the end-of-the-year passage of the defense appropriations bill. Groaning with the bipartisan pork, it's "the worst and most morally reprehensible" thing that Congress does. 

This is because Congressmen shift money--over $6 billion--from spending categories directly connected with troops to whatever boondoggle expense the congressperson wants: " Congress sticks in a few extra airplanes or ships as a handout to this or that member, usually in exchange for his vote somewhere else on some other issue. To pay for those earmarks, the favored targets for cutting are usually two parts of the defense bill: Personnel (i.e. military pay) and Operations and Maintenance (which includes such things as body armor, equipment, food, training, and fuel).

         Nice, huh? And of course this goes on year in, year out, and it doesn't make any difference the        party or persuasion. I'm continually amazed at the vise-grip the defense department has on us. I'm not talking about this issue here. This is garden variety hypocrisy. I'm talking about all the moaning and weeping that goes on about "where's the money going to come from" for programs that actually help people, like healthcare, for example, when the military continues to drain our life's blood. There are hundreds of billions we could put to those uses if we stopped shoveling a king's ransom to the Pentagon every year. That is never even considered even in day dreams.

Healthcare Reform Making Us Sick

By us I mean us progressives, us liberals, us whatever you want to call us. I mean people like Howard Dean, the former chairman of the National Democratic Party. What he contends is that what's left of healthcare reform after the White House bartered away the essentials that will prevent us from being raped by the insurance industry is not worth voting for. Here's part of what he had to say on MSNBC's "Countdown":

You can't vote for a bill like this in good conscience. It costs too much money. It isn't health care reform. It's not even insurance reform. Take, for example, this—there's a lot of talk about people who have pre-existing conditions can get health insurance. Well, not exactly. The fine print in the Senate says about health care industry—the health care industry gets to charge you three times as much if you're older than if you're younger. And they get to write the rules. That's in the Senate bill.

This bill is no longer reform...If it were me—I don't think this will happen, if it were me, I'd kill the bill all entirely and have the House start reconciliation, which is what they should have done in the first place. To be held up by four senators—a minority of 40 who are totally uncooperative, which are the Republicans and then four senators beholden to insurance industry I think is wrong. But that's what's happened.

Sounds like perfectly good sense to me. The White House is, as you would expect, telling us that it's too late to do anything about it now. "No rational person" would think about killing the bill now, they say. Well, I've got news. There are a lot of people who consider themselves rational who hate the hell out of what's happened to healthcare reform, and who don't want any part of it. But what has public opinion to do with this whole process anyway? This whole struggle is between various lackeys of corporations.  How can ordinary people win in this situation? Mark me well: Obama is going to get a bill. It's going to be a POS, but the liberals in the Senate will fold.

One of the most sickening aspects of this whole deal (no pun intended) is having to endure the likes of Joe Lieberman, that despicable little troll, who after drawing and quartering the bill—and the Democratic caucus, not to mention majority leader Harry Reid—is now preening before the TV cameras and calling the bleeding remnant of a once-plausible reform bill "progressive." The chutzpah of this guy! And in the next breath he's saying he won't foreclose the possibility of running as a Republican next time. Somebody needs to take this guy by the lapels of his smug suit and shake him till his dental plates fall out of his head. And then slap his jowls several times—very hard. 

The Guttersnipe Tune

It appears that that little troll from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman, is making the Democratic Senate caucus dance to his tune--again. Why does Harry Reid allow this odious guttersnipe to retain his committee chairmanship? The Democratic party should wash its hands of this fraud of a senator and kick his ass out of the caucus. What a system we've got when one--ONE disgusting little pawn of the health care insurance industry can pretty much single-handedly dictate terms that an entire majority of the Senate must accept. Such a system really sucks.

The health care reform bill is being burned to the ground just so Obama can say he passed something. Some observers are making a good case for doing nothing at all about health care  if all we get is what Lieberman and the other so-called moderate Democrats can stand. I don't see that happening. The Democrats and the White House are desperate to get any bill they can call health care reform passed. And they're willing to mangle the legislation into a monster if that's what it takes.

My sentiments aren't too far from this comment to the post:

If the Democratic Party wants to govern like the GOP, which is clearly what Rahm and Leadership want, they can do it without my support.  I'd just as soon get fucked by the enemies I know than by those I support.

And a sampling of more progressive sentiment in the wake of the systematic dismemberment of what was hardly a radical bill to begin with pretty much agrees. People are furious.

Well, Has He . . . ?

Here are a set of questions Glenn Greenwald addressed to defenders of Obama who are highly upset that disgruntled people on the left (people like me) dare to criticize their hero.

 Has he appointed financial officials who have largely served the agenda of the Wall Street and industry interests that funded his campaign?  Has he embraced many of the Bush/Cheney executive power and secrecy abuses which Democrats once railed against -- from state secrets to indefinite detention to renditions and military commissions?  Has he actively sought to protect from accountability and disclosure a whole slew of Bush crimes?  Did he secretly a negotiate a deal with the pharmaceutical industry after promising repeatedly that all negotiations over health care would take place out in the open, even on C-SPAN?  Are the criticisms of his escalation of the war in Afghanistan valid, and are his arguments in its favor redolent of the ones George Bush made to "surge" in Iraq or Lyndon Johnson made to escalate in Vietnam?   Is Bob Herbert right when he condemned Obama's detention policies as un-American and tyrannical, and warned:  "Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House"?

 Greenwald makes the point that the only question that really matters is: are these criticisms of Obama valid? (Not whether he's a good guy with high intelligence and good intentions.)

Sadly, they are. The answer to every one of the questions posed above is "yes."

Good Word -- Bad News

anomie or anomy

PRONUNCIATION:

(AN-uh-mee)

MEANING:

noun: Social instability and alienation caused by the erosion of norms and values.

ETYMOLOGY:

From French anomie, from Greek anomia (lawlessness), from anomos (lawless), from a- (without) + nomos (law). Ultimately from the Indo-European root nem- (to assign or take) that's also the source for words such as number, numb, nomad, metronome, astronomy, and nemesis.

===================

My Word a Day email had this wonderful word for today. I have to confess that though I had seen the word before, I really couldn't recall what it meant. Anomie (that's the way I remember seeing it spelled). Upon reflection, it's a great word to explain my state of mind. I'm not socially unstable, but I am alienated by the erosion of norms and values. Everywhere I look some norm or some value is under assault, ignored, or dismissed. Just off the top of my head: garden variety honesty in people, civility, good manners, basic literacy, freedom from everyday fear. All sadly eroded from the days of my earlier experience. And much missed.

Moreover, it seems a perfect word to describe the overall state of the Left when it contemplates what President Obama is doing and has done in his nearly a year in office. In an interview tonight on "60 Minutes" he sounded more unapproachable than ever in defending his disastrous decision to expand the war in Afghanistan. He's cloaking himself more and more in the "commander-in-chief" regalia, as he did when reminded that many in his party disagree with him about this decision. I wonder what happens to these guys that become president. Does the Pentagon feed them some sort of magic mushroom whereby they take leave of common sense and become lackeys to the generals and admirals and defense contractors upon taking office? If there's anything as plain as day to me and apparently a majority of the American people, it's that this Afghanistan debacle, now in its ninth year, will end badly after a horrendous cost in blood and treasure. Why is it impossible for Obama to see this? How has he been endowed with superior wisdom in this matter?

I told my wife while we watched that presidents have been given far too much power in the whole arena of war-making (peace-making is a far less frequent activity for them, and only for other countries, not the US). This country has not been in a declared war since 1941-45. The wars fought since then have been waged virtually without ceasing under no auspices other than this president or that one thought they were necessary.

Washington, Jefferson, Franklin: they're spinning in their graves.

Peace Prize (cont'd)

Here's Glenn Greenwald from an excellent piece on Obama's peace prize:

 One of the most recurring features of the Bush-follower mindset was the claim that the President's supreme duty -- one which the Constitution requires him to swear to -- is to "protect the country," a rhetorical sleight-of-hand suggesting that the Constitution somehow venerates national security above other values.  As 23skiddo points out, Obama featured this exact claim in an even more misleading form yesterday when -- in explaining why King and Gandhi were too restrictive for him -- he described himself "as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation."
But as this Constitutional scholar surely knows, that is not what he swore to protect and defend when he took his oath of office.  Article II of the Constitution actually requires that he swear or affirm that he "will to the best of [his] Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.''  That's a critical difference, now almost always overlooked/ignored/distorted, as it was yesterday.

You should really read this whole piece. Greenwald discusses why people from both ends of the political spectrum have embraced the war justification words Obama spoke in Oslo. Basically it's this: the neo-cons and the right like it because it justifies everything their hero Bush did; the left likes it because it's rhetorically pleasing.