Individual Liberty—Progress—Humanity—Ethics—Rule of Law
"...if by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties—if that is what they mean by a "liberal," then I am proud to be a liberal."
"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882-1945)
32nd President of the United States
There are millions of people in the United States and other industrialized countries who think that the American TeaParty "movement" is real, that it has legs, that it will move mountains this November. Some of those three things are true or true-ish. It is very likely that TeaParty people will vote, vote "conservatively," and the net result will be a slide back into the anarcho-capitalist (aka Libertarian) era that began in the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War, took a "break" and a sizable profit during two world wars and several prolonged and expensive conflicts since, went out to the woodshed during the Great Depression but returned as if nothing had sullied their banners when Ronald Wilson Reagan, having converted from orthodox guild/union Democratic ideals to flogging 20 mule team Boraxo on television and remembering how nice it was in the good old days when his mom wore an apron 24/7 and his dad had the illusion of a "dignity of labor" to bring home.
Yes, TeaParty people will vote, vote for anti-government people to populate government, but the TeaParty is not real. What is real is the anxiety of millions of Americans resulting from the loss of income at the hand of Wall Street, loss of security from the attenuation of our armed forces past their effectiveness all around the world, and a deluge of partisan lies and fabrications about anything that the GOP sees as vulnerable to oft-repeated falsehoods. The TeaParty is the artifact of electronic media echo-chamber in an era where super-rich are able to buy off the regulators until they can be removed wholesale or killed off with vicious lies and libel. The TeaParty and modern Libertarianism (which is nothing more nor less than anarcho-kleptocracy masquerading as an political ideology) is an artifact of a willful conspiracy to destroy the American government under the deceptive banner of reducing the size and expense of the American government, based on the wholly fabricated, medacious, and libelous claim that it is, (laughably), a Socialist government. It probably seems that way to the plutocrats who have no love for democracy in any case.
Jane Mayer has an article in The New Yorker magazine August 30 issue about the "legs" the TeaParty and its allies have. Significantly, the muscles of the "movement" are millions and millions of dollars spent by two guys, the Koch brothers, inheritors of Koch Industries, a conglomerate centered on plutocracy, petroleum, and propaganda against anyone suggesting that there is such a thing as global warming and impending climate change or any function of government worth the public enterprise of concerned citizens acting FOR the commonwealth.
The Koch's
operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch-who, years ago, bought out two other brothers-among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
(Looking for something to boycott, save this quotation.)
Jane Mayer is the first (with the able assistance of The New Yorker) to shine a little light down in the psychologically tortured and fetid burrows and warrens of the world the Koch's inhabit. For reasons that are not—but should be—obvious the Koch's not only disdain publicity for their work in the world, they all-but-vociferously avoid it at all costs. Why? The Koch's want the appearance of "a movement," of the "grass roots," of "ground swell," of the "democracy" they so loathe and fear behind their plot to castrate Washington. They want a eunuch government so they can continue with their profiteering off the abuse of the "externalities" of enterprise, that clever expression which treats the environment, the government, the ideals, hopes, and allegiance of the common man as if they were free to the biggest, greediest fist, something to use mercilessly and then take absolutely no responsibility for after the profits have been taken.
In a word the Koch's are serious enemies of the Republic, looking out for themselves as if being the 3rd and 4th most wealthy men in this country were not enough for them. They are as conniving and ruthless as they are rich and powerful. They have subverted public institutions of higher learning and most of the media.
By the time you finish the Mayer article ... and recalling Frank Rich's allusion to it recently (discussed here this week) ... you should be quite angry and feeling quite helpless, which is all the more angering. The truth is that ultimately the Koch's cannot buy truth and only temporary advantage in the media. You will be able to argue far more effectively knowing that Koch's are bank-rolling, simulating, stimulating, and taking personal advantage of the contemporary political transition and its accompanying anxiety about Congress and the White House, calling it an anti-government "movement." But beyond that, if you read the article carefully, you will see that the Koch's are aiming at a full destruction of the Progressive Movement in the United States. They are after your scalps, ladies and gentlemen! It's time to act, time to reverse the Supreme Court's decision (boldly purchased) that gives corporations unlimited rights to fund propaganda. We have now met the enemy, and besides our own lethargy and cowardice, its name is Koch.
I care ought for Sarah Palin. Her down home folksy charm shows me absolutely nothing. Aunt Bea on the The Andy Griffith Show is about as close to downhomeyness as I ever want to get. It makes me think that one can cover up a multitude of sins by playing the 'aw shucks', cutesy role but it does nothing, as far as I can see, to promote one's intelligence. In Sarah's case that was suspect to begin with. Thank you Katie Couric! I know I am not alone in those sentiments, hyowever, there are many, many others who feel differenly and who think she is just the greatest thing since sliced bread. Right.
How close did we come to never knowing who Sarah Palin was? Pretty close except that John McCain,the erstwhile Republican presidential candidate, in a moment of rogueness, went...well...rogue and tapped the relatively unknown governor of Alaska. The giant gobsmack of the campaign.
In Salon.com Steve Kornacki writes about how close we came to never hearing of Sarah Palin. But, alas, we have and still are.
Too bad she did not go away with Joe the Plumber, who is proof positive of Andy Warhol's statement that everyone has their 15 minutes of fame. You betcha!
Anne Wilson Schaef, Ph.D.
Author of Women's Reality and Co-Dependence, is a lecturer, organizational consultant, former psychotherapist, and workshop leader who trains health care professionals throughout the world in Living Process Facilitation
Nothing but nothing could turn me off more than the thoughts of standing out under the hot sun on a brilliant August Saturday to hear Glenn Beck pontificte about...well, whatever it is he generally pontificates about. Birth certificates, religion, Tea parties?
On Keith Olbermann's COUNTDOWN, Lawrence O'Donnell sitting in for Keith, has these observations on Glenn's gathering at the Lincoln Memorial (Martin is rolling I am sure!)and some commentary by Bill Press to whom should go props for actually physically attending.
The above figure represents the amount of money the United States spent on the military in just ONE year! And I was told to keep my liberal fingers out of other people's pockets? I do not know about you but I would prefer that my tax dollars be spent on more constructive enterprises.
Let's break that figure down. What percentage of the US budget goes to what?
59% is spent on the Military which encompasses the DoD, War, Veterans Affairs and Nuclear Weapons programs.
6% goes to Health & Human Services.
6% goes to Transportation
4% goes to the States
4% goes to education.
4% goes to other programs.
3% goes to the Department of Homeland Security
3% goes to Housing & Urban Development.
2% goes to Justice
2% goes to Agriculture
1% goes to NASA
1% goes to Energy (excludes nuclear weapons programs)
1% goes to Labor
1% goes to the Treasury
1% goes to the Interior
1% goes to the Environmental Protection Agency
1% goes to Commerce
Of all the worrisome processes underway this year, the current initiative to cool down the struggle between the Palestinians and the Israeli has got to be the most important. Upon the outcome hang several significant possibilities, including a nuclear exchange (or one-way attack) between Iran and Israel. Almost as important is the mid- and long-term stance that the rest of the Muslims take in the Levant and on the Arabian peninsula and in Iran and Egypt. In other words, a lot depends on success, defined as a settlement between the contesting parties.
It goes without saying that the United States has had a special relationship with Israel from the very day of its declaration of nationhood to this very moment. There are three main reasons the U.S. has taken the position it has: one, the post-WWII post-Holocaust situation seemed to demand a Jewish state and homeland. I believe Harry Truman recognized Israel so quickly because he understood this reason. Two, America is home to very large, free, equal, and vocal Jewish communities, each representing a facet of Judaism not necessarily in concord, but always in fundamental agreement about the necessity of the U.S. supporting Israel. Three, ever since the rise of vocal, apocalyptic, fundamentalist Christianity in the post-WWII era Christians of this stripe have sought the fulfillment of "prophecy" (one line in a Psalm) that a reborn Israel, a congregation of the diaspora, a "power" in the region would herald the beginning of the End Times, the Apocalypse, the time when good Christians are raptured up into heaven. Jews understand that these fundamentalist Christians are actually hoping for the elimination of Jews that do not convert during the Last Days and the destruction of the world, Israel included, but they see an ally, so they get along ....
Meanwhile, history does not stand still and the medley of forces that militated for a Jewish state under the post-WWI British Mandate over the former Ottoman territories has been utterly changed by the influx of Jews with other ideas, natural population growth among the Jews themselves and the Palestinians who were so careless as to be on the losing side in the Six Day War. The population and the local "zeitgeist" have changed and struggled through the sixty years of harried nationhood.
Today in the New York Times Gadi Taub, in Tel Aviv, writes about the new imbalances of forces within Israel. For me his article was another wake-up call, a revelation, and a foreboding sensation settled across my understanding of The Israel Problem. I have written recently about Zionism and its ideology of and for Israel. Now I think I see that Zionism is many ideas, some very irrational and very strongly held, nevertheless. I am hoping by drawing attention to this OpEd column today that my Jewish friends will also notice that the "united front" of Zionism is anything but united and that the religious forces (as opposed to the so-called secular ones of Ben Gurian and others) do not augur well for peaceful solutions.
Nothing could be more important to the contemporary world than a peaceful settlement. Nothing. But, Taub's view is that the ground underneath the debate is shifting the wrong way. Let us hope that those with a commitment to a fair and defensible peace are able to turn this tide.
Years ago there was this movie begun in the Namibian desert with a man, a native, nearly struck by a CocaCola bottle discarded and dropped from an airplane. I don't remember the details, except that what I took as the point of the whole funny thing was the jarring impact wildly differing cultures have upon one another. The semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer society of the Kalihari v. modern Euro-American culture where something as globally produced and marketed can fall into another culture and produce unforeseen results. Funny results may be the exception, by the way.
Last week in a column about the mad anger of Americans about everything Muslim, Maureen Dowd wrote the following observation
The country is having some weird mass nervous breakdown, with the right spreading fear and disinformation that is amplified by the poisonous echo chamber that is the modern media environment.
This statement has echoed in my brain all week, making me wonder what possible solution there is too Maureen's indictment of the modern mass media ... and wondering if there is an analogy that will help explicate this situation.
If you remember the movie the tribe of bushmen tried with all their collective intelligence to put the Coke bottle to some use. It created supply and demand problems, envy problems, efficacy problems (after all it was just a Coke bottle), and so they decided to throw the bottle back, entailing a long, long hike to the "edge of the world" where the offensive bottle could be thrown into the sea.
Clearly many Americans are choking on a Coke bottle of their own: the sudden, violent, very frightening confrontation with a very angry and violent subculture within Islam. Americans are choking on the confrontation, but have not yet really seen or accepted "the bottle," the thing that has so upset the less modern culture of Arabs and brought them to the point of flinging that thing into the sea, to be rid of it ... in their terms, to kill it once and for all!
The media, that Maureen suicidally libels is, yes, part of the message of the those in America who have not seen the bottle of poison that their own foreign policy and petroleum envy has produced. They, like Mr. Beck in Washington yesterday speaking to some 300,000 stalwarts are calling for a "restoration" of an America that existed before the angry Arab underclass of Saudi Arabia had the temerity to assault us with our bottle of Coke. Listen to that statement. They want to go backward and find a place before consequences. They are in the worst form of cultural denial.
In a sense, the bushmen of the Kalihari are the most primitive of peoples, and their solution to rid themselves of the confounded artifact of modernism was fundamentally non-violent, but we cannot expect every people we trample in our righteousness to respond so "passively." After all, the bushmen were, in their own minds, throwing something from the heavens back, a risky insult to the gods, who certainly because of what these bushmen made of the bottle must be crazy.
Maureen needs to see the lies and vehemence of the TeaParty right for what they are. Among the audience is, we hope, a desperate attempt to find time to sort out the problem, but meanwhile the world does not go backwards, ever. It is a crazy hope that things can be turned back to something we think we understood ... and controlled. History always moves with Time's line into ever more fearsome futures where American values are less and less highly valued. It is very frightening and the audience adrenalin flows.
The media, on the other hand, reflect what is said when it profits the media to reflect it. In general, the legitimate press takes into account that over a reasonably long period—a career length period, for instance—what is sold as news will work out to be fairly treated and balanced. The sin of the media moguls today is that they have tried to convince the audience that measuring fairness about what is said with a schoolboy's six inch ruler is honest, when actually a yardstick would put things in better perspective.
As Frank Rich points out so very well today, the motive behind moguls, both in the media and their friends, is very ugly and dangerous. These people are cheating truth and balance in the short run to achieve very, very long run goals. They would, in fact, destroy our democracy to further their economic positions, because they care nothing for fairness and balance. They care only for themselves.
A video reunion of the photograper who first encountered these young victims of Katrina and their families. Brenda Ann Kenneally reconnects with two families she first met post Katrina. Per usual, the children are the ones who usually bear the brunt of these tragedies.
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.
James Madison (1751-1836)
American politician and political philosopher who served as the fourth President of the United States'
Father of The US Constitution
Tim Padgett writes about how restoring the wetlands is keyt to preventing the sort of devastation that Katrina brought to the Crescent City. BP please take note.
And from his new book "One Block", Dave Anderson has focused on documenting the rebuilding of one block in New Orleans lower Ninth.
Two OP-Ed pieces this morning from the Charleston W.VA. GAZETTE, both dealing with the Mislim faith and it's adherents. One a very small group that is a fringe element, those of the suicide bombings and the other the true representatives of Islam and it's peaceful teachings and those who pound their chests, wrap themselves in the Constitution, and would have us believe differently.
So BP keeps on giving...errr, taking...out of our pockets! This short piece from Jim Hightower, in The TEXAS OBSERVER explains.
South of Boston lies one of the great vacation meccas of the planet...at least one would think so from the traffic clogging the one major highway leading to "The Cape & Islands" (Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket). Cape Cod, is noticeable for it's scrub pine, sand and this summer it's great white sharks. Sharks? Especially great whites? JAWS notwithstanding, it has always been thought a tad chilly in these waters (average summer water temp. 60oF.) for those denizens of the deep that prefer the warmer climes of Australia or the coast of South Africa. This summer however, the waters of the Cape have apparently seemed especially inviting to the great white, prompting the closing of many beaches. Perhaps another sign of global warming?
