In a Nation Starved for Good News . . .

. . . you will be delighted to learn that a San Francisco Democrat has introduced a bill to legalize marijuana. To put it on the same legal par with beer. Plan is to tax it $50 an ounce. They estimate it would bring a cool billion into the state's sorely empty coffers. This ongoing depression is going to spawn creative solutions for money shortages, folks. Hear! Hear! on this one.

Trifecta

Sometimes it does the body good to not think about the state of the world. I'm not going to think about the state of the world again today. Not to worry. I'll be worrying about it again soon enough, and I'm sure it will give me reason enough to. If I were in south Louisiana, for example, I'd be thinking about Mardi Gras tomorrow, and Obama and the miserable Republicans would be far from my mind.

With these thoughts as backdrop, I have three diversionary topics.

• Consider the astounding speculations about the images of the ocean floor off the west coast of Africa that have shown up with the use of the last version of Google Earth (5.0). The image is pictured here, and the questions concern the fabled city of Atlantis, which according to legend more ancient than the Mariner, was swallowed up beneath the waves. What's the meaning of the undeniably geometric pattern down there? I'll vote for Atlantis on the theory that all myth and legend, even of the ancient variety, is based on some reality. So take a look at this piece and this one--it's got a map showing where in the ocean this phenomenon is--and take a gander at the accompanying image. I want some divers or deep sea submersible to get down there and check this out.

Update 1: It ain't so. Google reports "what users are seeing is an artifact of the data collection process," Google said. "Bathymetric (or seafloor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the seafloor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data." Shucks!

• And then there's this story about a concerted move by lawmakers in Oklahoma, of all places, to--get ready for this--pass legislation banning the tatooing of eyeballs in the state. I'm not making this up.
• Some nut case of a teacher asked his class of ten-year-olds in England to write down a list of hurtful, unkind words as an exercise exploring bullying. The kids did not disappoint. "The litany of words ranged from variations on the F-word, crude slang for sex acts, female and male genitalia, and racist and derogatory name-calling." The parents of the kids, however, were disappointed, to say the least. Oh, and did I mention it was a Church of England school?

Be Prepared to Be Motivated

Perhaps it's because I've spent too much time thinking about the nation's woes, or the number of papers I've yet to grade before this batch is done, or the folly of our foreign policy, or some other equally distressing subject . . . perhaps. But this video had me laughing, all by myself, till I cried. I fear I may have finally revealed what a twisted cranium you're dealing with here. Nonetheless! With heartfelt apologies to anyone who may be in the least offended, I simply must share it with you.

The Enemies List

The only way I'm going to get less gloomy is to spend more time with my Boston Terrier Prozac. She's got a great attitude. She lives right in the moment. No past, and the future is just great. She lives simply, plays regularly, eats a healthy diet, all in the company of people she loves more than life itself and can snuggle with. It really can't be bad to live a life like this.

Alas, the no past and no future part doesn't work for me, even if most of the rest does. No, I'm driven to scope out what's going on, what's really going on behind all the chaff, fluff, and falsehood our right-wing media is heaping on our heads daily. I purposely expose myself to articles like this that don't improve my attitude. The thrust of this piece, which would repay your reading if you've got time, is that Obama, in whom we reposed so much hope just a few weeks (seems like years, doesn't it?) is likely to be only a one-term president. He is surrounded by implacable enemies who are going to do everything they can to thwart his agenda. You probably know who these enemies are. You've seen some of them hard at work.

Obama faces near-unanimous Republican opposition to his strategy for salvaging the U.S. economy (and a GOP readiness to use the Senate filibuster at every turn); right-wing talk radio and cable-TV personalities are stoking a populist anger against him; Wall Street executives are miffed at limits on their compensation; and key military commanders are resisting his promised drawdown in Iraq.
In addition, former Bush administration officials are making clear that they will fight any effort to hold them accountable for torture and other war crimes, denouncing it as a “witch-hunt” that will be met with an aggressive counterattack accusing Obama of endangering American security.

Republicans
The most visible. They've become en masse an engine of "no" to everything. Their shamelessness knows no bounds. The idea is to hobble the administration right out of the gate, cripple his agenda by refusing to support anything, even if it means making the country's myriad woes worse. Then, having assisted the country in getting further screwed up, the GOP will be in position to regain power in 2010 and 2012. What a hateful bunch of people!

Media

"[M]ost of the U.S. news media continues to tilt to the Right – from the Washington Post’s neoconservative editorialists and CNBC’s millionaire commentators to the right-wing ideologues of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the Wall Street Journal." Case in point: the imbecilic performance of CNBC's Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago commodities exchange, frothing about Obama's mortgage relief plan. The Right lapped it up, cheered themselve blue in the face. And let's not forget the slime balls of right-wing talk radio. If anything, they've ratcheted up the spew of bile and venom against Obama and all his works.

The Military

To me, this is the scariest of all. Obama is dissed as a softie who can be manipulated into doing what the Pentagon wants. Can anyone guess what that is? Correct! More war. No withdrawal from Iraq and an escalation of the war in Afghanistan, which has the potential to become a quagmire every bit as destructive and fruitless as Vietnam.
Thomas Ricks, a Pentagon expert who has just written a follow-up to Fiasco, his celebrated expose of our military ineptitude in Iraq reports this disturbing news:

“The widespread expectation inside the U.S. military is that we will have tens of thousands of troops [in Iraq] for years to come. Indeed, in his last interview with me last November, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told me that he would like to see about 30,000 troops still there in 2014 or 2015.”
“I worry now that we are once again failing to imagine what we have gotten ourselves into and how much more we will have to pay in blood, treasure, prestige and credibility. I don't think the Iraq war is over, and I worry that there is more to come than any of us suspect.”

Of course. The Pentagon beast must be fed. It will be fed. It doesn't matter who is president. And its keepers don't care what the diet is, just so long there's enough of it to keep shoveling in there.

Big Money

. . . is going to scream bloody murder if Obama goes ahead with plans to cut Pentagon spending or if he decides to nationalize some banks or otherwise further constrain the malefactors of great wealth. They've shown themselves to be without conscience, compassion, or common sense, but that doesn't stop them even at the juncture where the taxpayers are shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars at them from thumbing their noses at the common good, which by definition is always inimical to their own.
Religious Right
These nut cases haven't gone away. They're already in a lather about Obama's reversals of Bush policies on abortion and stem cell research. They consider our unblinking support of Israel to be something ordained by God. Given their antipathy to the poor in general, people whom God has obviously spurned for their sins, you can bet your Bible these people are going to oppose any safety net programs or social reforms that benefit anyone besides themselves.
It's this array of immovable and ruthless enemies that Obama, the Democratic party, and the people who believe in them confront. I don't mind telling you it makes me crazy. For a couple of reasons. First, because I don't think the chances of Obama's success are very promising in the face of such opposition. Combined, especially with the media continuing its migration to the right, they're practically invincible. Second, because the failure of progressive government will doom this country, eventually the globe, and my children and grandchildren to miseries we have not even imagined.
A dog's life at that point might even be preferable.

Quo Vadis?

Sign posts in the land of the free, the kingdom of deepening depression, the last best hope of mankind. You decide where they're pointing.

• This cartoon in the New York Post. The paper has apologized, but come on! Why would it be monkey at all instead of depiction of a human? The whole idea of the cartoon is stupid anyway.

[Update: Why the New York Post's Crazed Cartoon Chimp Matters]

• Food banks across the country saw a 30-percent increase in "business" in 2008, and they are now serving many more of "the next layer of people" up from the chronically poor. People who had a job this time last year.
• The vast majority of states in the US dispense unemployment benefits via agreements with banks who issue plastic cards to the people needing them. And guess what? Banks all over the country are getting fat on fees they're collecting for use of the cards! Doubtless many of these bastards are recipients of the billions we taxpayers gave them to stay afloat.
• Well over 600,000 people went unemployed in January; the stock market dropped to its lowest point in six years.
• Chase Bank CEO Jamie Dimon, whose bank received $25 billion in bailout money, won't say how his establishment did last quarter. But he does have something to say about those damn deadbeats whose mortgages are higher than their homes are worth. And I quote: "I don't think just because someone's underwater they say I don't have to stay there. But they're supposed to pay the mortgage, and we should teach the American people, you're supposed to meet your obligations, not run from them." Can you believe these people?

Choo Choo Go Go

Have a look at this map. I cannot include it here because I cannot get it large enough to be clearly legible. What you're looking at is a map of the proposed high-speed rail corridors that are supposedly going to be financed with stimulus package money. Can anyone say "hurrah!" How about: "It's about frigging time."

I'm actually getting a little ahead of myself. The fact is none of this is a done deal. The White House is giving high-speed rail considerable thought. But Obama is a smart guy, and the time could not be more right. High-speed rail, a reality in most developed countries, is described as "an initiative long on planning but unrealized nationally because of financial and logistical hurdles and insufficient political backing." A familiar litany, no?

Restoration of nationwide US passenger rail service, once the envy of the entire world, is something that's been overdue for twenty years, or longer. (Tell me about your last pleasant airline experience.) It appears that only a monumental catastrophe like the one we're in now could make it possible. And even the chance that Oklahoma will be on the Houston-San Antonio-Tulsa corridor just tickles me plumb to death.

Beneath Contempt

I'm a nice guy. I try to be nice to people. I pride myself on being tolerant of a wide range of thought and opinion. But there are some people that, I'm sorry, I simply cannot abide. One of them is the despicable little gutter snipe George Will. Unlike the late William F. Buckley, his superior in intellect and personality, Will is one of these highly educated conservatives who, it always struck me, basically looks down his long Pulitzer Prize nose and sniffs at all us underlings. Here's a guy who still thinks Ronnie Reagan was correct, for Pete's sake! If the Republican party likes it, Will likes it, with few exceptions. Sarah Palin was one.

But I digress. I simply wanted to pass on this tale I got from Tom Tomorrow.

It must be unpleasant for Will to get used to blogs, because he’s spent his entire career with total impunity. Here’s a funny story of Noam Chomsky’s from the book Understanding Power about a column Will wrote in 1982:

CHOMSKY: [A] few years ago George Will wrote a column in Newsweek called “Mideast Truth and Falsehood,” about how peace activists are lying about the Middle East, everything they say is a lie. And in the article, there was one statement that had a vague relation to fact: he said that Sadat had refused to deal with Israel until 1977. So I wrote them a letter, the kind of letter you write to Newsweek—you know, four lines—in which I said, “Will has one statement of fact, it’s false; Sadat made a peace offer in 1971, and Israel and the United States turned it down.” Well, a couple days later I got a call from a research editor who checks facts for the Newsweek “Letters” column. She said: “We’re kind of interested in your letter, where did you get those facts?” So I told her, “Well, they’re published in Newsweek, on February 8, 1971″—which is true, because it was a big proposal, it just happened to go down the memory hole in the United States because it was the wrong story. So she looked it up and called me back, and said, “Yeah, you’re right, we found it there; okay, we’ll run your letter.” An hour later she called again and said, “Gee, I’m sorry, but we can’t run the letter.” I said, “What’s the problem?” She said, “Well the editor mentioned it to Will and he’s having a tantrum; they decided they can’t run it.” Well, okay.

This little story tells you more about George Will than anything else you're going to read about him.

And then there trolls like radio talk show jockey Bill Cunningham. I'll just quote this creep for you.

"[P]oor people were not and are not poor because they lack money. They're poor because they lack values, ethics, and morals."

That's enough for me right there. This is a contemptible idiot, and yet he's out there spewing his poison over the air waves, maybe even as we speak. You can find more of his b.s. here and This is a truly evil person, in my opinion. Our air waves are just full of this kind of hate talk. All the time. Gives you a nice warm fuzzy, doesn't it?

California Dreamin'--A Nightmare

I'm afraid I might begin to sound like a broken record--does that expression even make sense to people anymore?--but signs of really serious trouble are cropping up everywhere. Last night I read a piece in the Washington Monthly that I wanted to note about California. The New York Times headline says it all: "California, Almost Broke, Nears Brink."

Here's the gist of it: California has a $142 billion state budget. Legislation pending provides $42 million in additional taxes to plug gaping holes in the budget. It is one vote shy of passage in the legislature. (The state requires a two-thirds majority of the legislature to pass a budget. Three--that's one, two, three--Republicans in each house are required to get this majority. At the moment, the Republicans have refused to budge.) After days of negotiation, the whole process is stalemated. Republicans have refused to approve several tax increases necessary to keep the state afloat. In the meantime, the state is going off the cliff. The governor is preparing to layoff 20,000 state workers; dozens of public works projects have stopped; the state is no longer paying its counties, income tax refunds have halted; the state's bond rating is the lowest in the country.

Washington Monthly again:

They need three (3) Republican votes in each house. They can't get them. And this despite the fact that the Republicans who have been negotiating have gotten a lot, including, according to the LATimes, "tax breaks for corporations". Really. I am not making this up. With the state budget $41 billion in deficit, Republicans held out for corporate tax cuts, and then aren't even supporting the resulting bill.

You think that's insane? No, actually that's sound policy compared to this: A bunch of infrastructure projects, some crucial like removal of arsenic, are being canceled because there's no money for them, not a very good idea in a recession anyway. It will cost the state $191 million to do this. It will cost $192 million to start them up again. That's $400 million for absolutely nothing. But the "no taxes" pledge will be maintained, by God.

All this in the name of fiscal responsibility! People are really losing their minds. Is the Republican party willing to see the entire country go down the crapper so they can maintain a discredited, bankrupt (literally), tried-and-failed ideology? Apparently, it doesn't bother them. What's going to happen when the people find out what's really going on? One shudders to think.

Hail to the Chief

If you're a government worker or somebody who works for a bank, today's a big deal. It's President's Day. When I was a kid, there was no such thing. I recall celebrating--or at least being cognizant of--Lincoln's birthday on February 12. President's Day is a modern contraption. But if it's a holiday from work, as it is for the people already mentioned, who cares?

It's not coincidental that C-Span released today the historians' latest presidential ranking poll. I've been fairly consistent, nay, totally consistent in adjudging the 43d president, the vile little pretender who occupied the White House for eight long, disastrous years, as the worst president ever. My fellow historians don't agree, ranking Bush as only the 36th worst president out of 43. Well, this is not the first time I've been in the minority. These rankings are fluid, and one thing interesting to notice about the guys who are at the bottom of the list. Of the six below Bush, four are connected with the Civil War era--the assumption being that they made matters worse during their terms at the most critical time in the nation's history. The other two below Bush both died in office. William Henry Harrison is way down in everybody's opinion, but the poor guy was only in office for a month before he died. Warren G. Harding, president in the early 1920s, was a hack Ohio politician whose administration was corrupt. But he has always had a special place in my affections. Of all the guys who served as president, he's the only one who admitted that the job was too big for him. This was true of a number of others, but they would have never said so.

I have every confidence that as the scope of the economic catastrophe Bush has bequeathed to us, not to mention the similarly catastrophic shape our foreign policy is in, becomes clear, the vile little pretender will sink further. What we're about to undergo as a country is as yet unknown. But all the signs are dire. We've got a lot of suffering ahead of us.

Inevitable

The old saw says death and taxes are inevitable. It's just a saying . . . death may be inevitable, but taxes? You can easily avoid those if you have enough money to fence your riches against taxation with offshore and numbered bank accounts and a legion of high-priced accountants whose sole job is to keep you from paying taxes. There's not much I consider inevitable. Not much at all.

But there is one thing that is as predictable as the sun rising the east. During wars, soldiers will commit war crimes. Any military force of whatever nation you want to name, present or past. And that includes the United States. Put lethal weapons into the hands of young men, train them to dehumanize the enemy, put them in danger of their lives on battlefields, and expect that they will follow the Marquis of Queensbury rules? Get serious. Has there been a war, ever, anywhere, without war crimes? Where innocent civilians, women and children, the old and sick, have not been wantonly slaughtered? Where women and girls have not been raped? I know of none. What does the photograph above tell you? Those are America's finest on that deck.

There have been numerous instances of war crimes committed by US soldiers in Iraq. Why would it not be so? Just lately I came across this chilling article in The Nation whose title will tell you the story: "A Mai Lai a Month." Apparently, wholesale slaughter of innocent Vietnamese was routine during that war. I once knew an ex-Marine who could do nothing whenever Vietnam was discussed except weep uncontrollably for the crimes he and his buddies had committed there. Do you think it's all that much different in Iraq? I wish I could say I didn't.

Just as inevitable and murder as the rapine done in our name by the hierlings we send off to die for us in foreign wars are the denials from all sides: the country at large, the military establishment, and the guilty themselves, except for the few whose consciences will not let them rest.