Nowhere to Go

Is there nowhere to run on this globe from the baleful, sinister, and destructive power corporations hold over all our lives? No wonder there's a worldwide outbreak of visible protests against what they are doing to us. Listen, the "Occupy" movements that are happening everywhere are an encouraging sign. An indication that people are aware of what's happening to them. The pain that's being inflicted, the utter unfairness of what's being done to people all over the globe just so these monstrously rich companies can get even richer, can squeeze even more out of people who for over thirty years have been steadily bled by corporate and personal greed. I could probably blog every day on corporate malfeasance. It's a subject that never ends.

A case in point: I read that President Obama has ordered the FDA to "take actions to help reduce prescription drug shortages." Say what? Yes, that's correct. This year, in fact, shortages of over 200 of them have been reported--and this is near a record for this type of thing--involving cancer drugs, anesthetics for surgery patients, emergency medicines, electrolytes that patients need for IVs, and more. So what happens is treatment is delayed, surgeries postponed, or "make do with costlier and less-effective substitutes." Emphasis on costlier.

The FDA says many drugs in short supply are injectable, harder to manufacture, store, and ship. There are also supposedly manufacturing issues and raw materials shortages. Don't know about you, but this sounds like Big Pharma smoke. Why? Get this: "Companies may stop manufacturing older drugs in favor of newer, more profitable drugs, and the FDA can't require a firm to keep making a drug it wants to discontinue." What does that tell you? Tells me that generics are being discontinued along with the others that don't make as much profit.

The new executive order is not going to get at the root of the problem, which is unbridled greed. It's just going to require the FDA to urge drug manufacturers to voluntarily tell FDA about looming potential shortages so there will be earlier warnings. Oh, and the FDA is also going to monitor for price gouging. Monitor! Are you kidding me? Here's what the FDA spokesperson said about the current situation: "In recent months, we've heard reports of enormous markups such a blood pressure medicine usually priced at $26 being sold for $1,200." Do you think this is going to change with the FDA "monitoring"? This executive order is window dressing. Big Pharma is murdering us again. Bastards!

Related articles

• New effort to reduce drug shortages a small step (seattlepi.com)
• Rich are Getting Richer (patspapers.com)
• Kathleen Adams: Why I Am Supporting Occupy Wall Street (huffingtonpost.com)

Anything They Choose

The other day before I was so rudely and awfully interrupted by the Texas Ranger meltdown in the World Series, I was discussing the imminent shutdown of WikiLeaks, which is being brought on by the big credit card companies (banks) and online payment companies refusal to process donations to WikiLeaks. This has essentially cut off the website from it's life blood. Indeed, WikiLeaks has shut down publishing anything for the rest of the year to concentrate on fund-raising. I wish them well. They need $3.5 million to continue through next year.

Let me observe something else that's sinister about what these big money people are doing. I have already mentioned the debatable nature of the great bulk of what gets slapped with a security classification. I saw stuff classified in the Air Force and at Special Ops that you could read in any decent newspaper. This is what happens when you give the power to classify stuff to 100,000 paranoid idiots.

But is isn't what I wanted to point out. What I did want to underscore was the obvious. The immense, murderous power being wielded by these financial institutions. Here we have a case of their snuffing out the life of an organization they don't approve of under the guise of helping protect the "national interest" of the United States. Are you serious? Believe it: there's no "patriotism"--what an abused word!--no concern for the security of the country in what these companies do. It's an exercise of raw power. They have reasons of their own for stifling the hell out of websites that expose the shams and shames of government and corporations. WikiLeaks is the deathly enemy of deeds done in the dark. It can escape no one's notice that if Big Finance can snuff the life out of WikiLeaks, they can snuff the life out of anything they choose.

It's Over

The dream is over.

My beloved Texas Rangers lost the seventh game of the World Series tonight by a score of 6-2. What more is there to say?

Related articles

• How The St. Louis Cardinals Won A World Series Classic (time.com)
• You: Cardinals 6, Rangers 2: Cardinals Win World Series (nytimes.com)

There Are Not Words . . .

. . . to express the horror, the rage, the crushing disappointment of watching the baseball team that you have given your heart to for over a quarter century get within one strike of winning the World Series twice and then go on to lose the game in the bottom of the 11th inning to a weaker team, a team that but for a series of miracles would not even be in the World Series. I cannot find the words for the feeling that gives you. The best commentary on the game from the Texas Ranger point of view is at BBTIA with the accompanying comments from shattered Ranger fans.

Here is an email exchange I had with one of my very best friends. We jumped through all the doctorate hoops at LSU together. He's a true baseball fan, and a true friend. He understands.

Bro,

Have been out of pocket several days—just back from the Southern [Historical Association convention].  Of course, your name came up on several occasions, especially after the painful loss in the World Series.   If there has ever been a more painful loss in the World Series, I don’t know when it was.  Marius and I were going to turn in at decent hour (we were in Baltimore on Eastern Time) but got hooked about the middle of Game 6.   We ran into a number of stunned Texans at the conference.  I felt for you, bro

George, you are one of the truest of friends to understand the unbelievable hurt. There are not words to describe the crushing disappointment, the devastation. Baseball is the cruelest of sports. Bart Giamatti said the game was designed to break your heart. How utterly right he was. Of course, there are myriad explanations, all in retrospect, as to what might have been done in game 6 to avert disaster, but the ballplayers say they just "didn't get it done." That's as good a place to leave it as any.

Save this one observation: Ranger pitching, except for a few shining exceptions, just went south for most of this Series. As for the loss of the whole thing, I don't think there's a baseball team out there that could have recovered from game 6. Like I told my similarly saddened sons: this is like a wake service that never gets over. I don't think I can recover till next April, and maybe not even then.

Box score and play-by-play are here.

Slow Strangulation

I recently found out (here) that WikiLeaks, that notorious or glorious site depending on your political proclivities, is probably going out of business by the end of the year. Reason: American financial companies have refused to process donation payments to Wikileaks. After the site published a quarter million state department cables, U.S. credit card and online payment companies decided they were not going to sully themselves with assisting this activity. Their action of course is slow but sure strangulation of the web site. According to its founder, Julian Assange, "If WikiLeaks does not find a way to remove this blockade, we will simply not be able to continue by the turn of the new year." In order to devote the organization's full time to raising money, Assange said that "publication operations" would cease for the nonce.

I'm sorry, but I see this whole affair as quite sinister, and far more threatening than the public service WikiLeaks is performing by outing the State Department and the Defense Department* secrecy.The reason for secrecy is these agencies, which exist on our tax dollars, don't want us to know, obviously, what sort of activities we're paying for. I worked in DoD for over 30 years, and I saw lots of classified material. And I'm here to tell you there was no rational reason for the vast majority of it to be classified. That said, I think the American people generally would be appalled by the kind of things that are being done in their name by our country. That's why Assange is doing a public service shining a light on this stuff.

More on this later.

*Before publishing the diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks had published nearly a half million military documents, some of which were classified, from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Related articles

• WikiLeaks Goes Into Emergency Triage Mode (truthdig.com)
• WikiLeaks, Whistleblowing and the Global Revolution Panel - Listen Now (dissenter.firedoglake.com)

Papist Proclivities

I read recently (here) that the religious beliefs of the one out of four Americans who call themselves Catholic are all over the lot. Fully 86 percent of them are not bothered that people holding beliefs contrary to official Church teaching consider themselves good members of the church. Even more amazing, four in ten Catholics say that you can be a good Catholic without believing in the "real presence" of Christ in the Eucharistic bread and wine. Other interesting findings, in line with these ideas: less than a third (31 percent) of Catholics attend weekly mass, and nearly half (47 percent) don't go to mass as often as once a month.

It's their own moral views, not those of the Church, that matter say over half of Catholics, even those who attend mass every week. The sexual scandal has had a devastating effect on people's view of the Church leadership. Eighty-three percent think the scandal has sapped leadership's political credibility; 77 percent thinks it's damaged pastors' abilities to minister. And only 29 percent (doubtless the troglodyte element) think the bishops have done a good or excellent job in dealing with the issue. I'm frankly amazed that any percentage at all could believe this.

The reason I even take time to notice all this, and find some of it amazing, is that I well remember the Church that was adamant about the necessity of believing everything taught by the Church lest your immortal soul be endangered. (It wasn't that long ago, if you're a geezer like me. It was million years ago if the only Catholic Church you know is the post-Vatican II one.) That has changed completely. I note with some dismay, however, that opposition to the death penalty is still relatively rare among Catholics. None of the numbers to the left there particularly surprise or bother me. Indeed, this chart more or less mirror my own feelings, except I oppose the death penalty a good deal more vehemently.

An Excellent Idea

I first heard of this idea from Jame Kuntsler's column today. That is, a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would preclude corporations from claiming protections under the bill of rights. That is, an amendment that specifically undoes the 19th century Supreme Court decision by which corporations were defined as "persons" and thereby entitled to the rights that you or I have as a citizen of this country and, be it noted, as a real, genuine person with a pulse and all that. Section 1 of this proposed amendment says it all: "The U.S. Constitution protects only the rights of living human beings." What an excellent idea.

Who would have ever thought it could be otherwise? But in the madness that seems to infect our national government from Supreme Court to the Congress to the Defense Department and beyond, we confront a situation where the rights of corporations and unions to free speech (first amendment) entitles them to give unlimited amounts of money, and in most cases, unaccountable money, to influence elections. This as a result of the egregious Citizens United v FEC decision of last year. In plain English, what this decision did was turn over control of elections in this country to concentrated wealth. It is no longer a figure of speech--it it ever was--to describe a senator or member of Congress as bought and paid for.

We are about to embark on our first presidential election under these newly established "rights" for corporations and unions. (I mention the latter solely for accuracy . . . there is no comparison in terms of dollars available to buy elections.) Already, the sums of money being amassed by the president and his prospective challengers is obscene. And it's just going to get worse.

Related articles

• Editorial: Even Worse Than Citizens United (nytimes.com)

Cannot Resist

I cannot resist quoting James Kuntsler at some length today. As I've mentioned before, he reminds me a lot of Hunter S. Thompson in the skillful and entertaining way he dispenses bile and venom onto the heads of the so richly deserving. He's talking here about the proposed constitutional amendment that would remove the notion of personhood from corporations. Check it out:

One idea floating around the Internet is very good: a constitutional amendment aimed at redefining downward the alleged "person-hood" of corporations, so as to drive vast amounts of money out of our politics. Notice that the President of the US shows no interest in this idea. If the President were an honorable fellow, he would announce his intention to decline running for a second term. A free-for-all in the Democratic Party may be the only thing that can save it from extinction. Not since the Whigs under Millard Fillmore has a US political party been so feeble and purposeless. It can crawl off and die now. Something else will take its place, I'm sure. I wish Occupy Wall Street would show up at the next Republican candidates' debate and hurl bushels of rotten tomatoes at the fakers and imbeciles arrayed on the stage. They need to be publicly humiliated beyond their own self-induced humiliations when they open their pie-holes to yap about "faith in God" and "liberty" and "family values" and all the other mendacious platitudes from their scanty trick-bag of so-called ideas. They make me ashamed to be an American - as if there wasn't already enough.

This is the first intimation, nay, outright charge, that Obama lacks honor. I don't think Kuntsler is overstating his case, which as you may have noticed, he does frequently. If you think about it, how honorable was this president when he led all his millions of supporters in 2008 to believe that he was someone we could count on to move the country in a different direction? someone who would make difference? He talked progressive-ism and delivered the opposite. As you see, Kuntsler has no use for either one of the parties. He's exactly where I am, or vice versa.

God Awful!

Yes, I am a grown man. An educated man. A man of some culture. A man who entertains serious thoughts on a fairly regular basis. A man who published commercially: books, poems, other writings of all kinds. A man who prides himself on being rational and having the ability to separate wheat from chaff.

All of the above, but I have to tell you, against all reason and despite all these protestations, I am completely and utterly distraught over what happened tonight to the Texas Rangers in their own ballpark in the third game of the World Series. The were crushed by the St Louis Cardinals 16-7 (when it's that bad, it's humiliation, not just defeat). Ranger pitching sucked, their defense sucked (3 errors, all costly). The bats were acceptable, but they could have been golden in this game and it would not have mattered. The team played a really lousy game. They were God awful. It got so bad I turned the game off before it was over. Almost an unimaginable act.

I'm just sick. And really berating myself inwardly for being so attached to a damn baseball team. There are some pretty famous essays about this game that speak to this aspect of it, how it causes you to die a little, how it breaks your heart. I could write such a thing myself right now.

Play-by-play and box score are here. See also here for NY Times account.

Incredible!

That's exactly what it is. Incredible. This post is #1000 in the continuing series that constitute this blog. The very first post I made to the brand new "What Powderfinger Said" (still a very clever title, I think) blog was about guns, one of my "crazed obsessions" that put in an appearance here fairly frequently. The date was April 25, 2008, before the election of that year, back when I had all kinds of faith in Obama, when I actually thought the political process could make a real difference. Back when George W. Bush, who I habitually refer to throughout as "the vile little pretender in the White House," was still disgracing the White House by his presence there. Back before the great real estate crash, the Great Recession (is that what we're calling it?), and of course the great bailout, which saved the banks so they could continue to rape us all daily, and so they could continue to award their top executives obscene amounts of money and grow even bigger than they were when they were too big to fail. Back before the oil spill. Back before the unbelievable fact of the Texas Rangers playing in the World Series for two straight years.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since April 2008. It occurs to me that we had only been back in Oklahoma for a year at that point. I could have never foreseen that here, three-and-a-half years later, I'd still be keeping up with this blog. Particularly in view of the fact that nobody reads it--or practically nobody-- that it's sometime tedious, often tendentious, or otherwise unworthy of either my time or anybody else's time. But for all that, the blog has survived, and it's undergone some few cosmetic changes until it pretty well hardened into what you see here now.

Recently my daughter changed the theme of her blog and in addition to sprucing up its looks. But the biggest change she instituted was restricting her entries to three a week. A necessary move, probably, because she spends God only knows how many hours on Facebook every week, and she does have a job and my two grandchildren to raise. Cannot understand that Facebook attraction, but do see the wisdom of limiting number of posts. I may seriously consider that idea myself. I'm so compulsive, this blog takes me away from stuff I should be doing: reading more books, writing more poems, walking the dog, chilling myself out with fewer blog entries about stuff that pisses me off but I cannot do anything about.

So here's to another 1000 posts . . . if I last that long.