Walkin' On Sunshine

I'm Not Gonna Take It

I sent the following letter today to my Food Stamps case worker, my state representative and my Congresswoman:

To Whom It May Concern:

When I first applied for food stamps and learned of the "work experience" program, I was under the impression that this program would benefit me in my search for work so that I would not have to rely on food stamps. But after a few days it became apparent to me that there was little work or experience to be had. "Work experience" for me means that I have to sit in a large room with fifteen to twenty other people for eight hours a day, seven days every month, doing absolutely nothing. This does nothing to benefit me and in fact takes away from my ability to find gainful employment.

For the record, I am required to spend fifty-three hours a month at the Department of Family and Children's Services (DFCS) in order to get two hundred and seventy-four dollars in food stamps for myself and my wife. Under normal circumstances, my wife and I would share this load, however my wife is unable, for medical reasons beyond her control, to participate, and therefore I am forced to "work" her hours as well as mine.

On occasion I have had the chance to do some filing in the downstairs vaults, however I discovered that the entire system was completely disorganized: many files were misplaced and the supervisors had no time to re-file and re-organize them. This work should be done by regular, full-time employees and should definitely not be left to people who are either unskilled or who have little incentive to do the job correctly. There are many people on welfare and food stamps and if their file is lost or misplaced they could lose their benefits through no fault of their own.

I don't want to give the impression that the DFCS doesn't offer any help at all: the job resources room at least allows access to a computer and help from the Department of Labor, and lists jobs that are available at the DFCS. However, there is only so much time you can spend doing so (computer use, for example, is limited to one hour a day), the great bulk of the time is spent being idle, and if I need to use a computer, I could use the computer at home or at the library.

So, after careful consideration, I have decided that I will no longer suffer myself to be humiliated and degraded in this fashion. As it currently stands, the "work experience" program is little more than a part-time prison sentence. The people who are forced to sit in this room are treated like children, and it is my considered opinion that the entire program is meant to humiliate people into finding work. I am fully aware that by writing this letter I will in all likelihood lose my food stamps, but frankly I think I would rather starve than to submit myself to this any further. Even what little dignity I have left is not worth losing over two hundred and seventy-four dollars a month in groceries.

I want to make it clear that I am not looking for "something for nothing", especially since my taxes, when I was working, paid for the food stamp program to begin with. If the DFCS can find a better way to move people from food stamps to the workplace, I will be very happy to participate. I cannot speak for others, but for myself I will say that my time would be better spent in the pursuit of work and not in the enforced idleness of the "work experience" program.

I should add that the program as it stands is a burden on the DFCS as well, putting them in the position of babysitting people and taking them away from other work that undoubtedly needs to be done. I also do not understand why DeKalb County is the only county that forces its food stamp recipients do participate in this charade, and I am sending copies of this letter to my state Representative and to Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney so that they can be aware of what is happening in their districts. I think the entire program as it currently stands is a disgrace and the people who came up with it ought to be ashamed of themselves.

I do not expect DeKalb County to change it's stance on this issue. In this cold-hearted world, punishing the poor is simply accepted behavior, and I don't see this attitude changing any time soon. I hope that I find work soon, and I hope that I never again have to rely on food stamps. I wish this not only for myself but for everyone else. It's humiliating enough having to apply for food stamps to begin with, it's worse being treated as if I were somehow breaking the law.

Sincerely,
Joseph Vecchio

A lot of people are going to criticize me for doing this, I know. Without those food stamps my wife and I will really struggle. I still have no income and the donations I am getting from the White Rose Society have pretty much dried up: after a good first week, I have only gotten one donation in the last four days. But I am standing by what I do. I think it's disgraceful to treat people like this, it's a poor, and cruel reaction to a few who undoubtedly take advantage of the system.

The real solution is of course for me to find work, but I'm still getting nothing but excuses from potential employers, when I get any response at all. But I'll keep plugging away. I know eventually things will turn themselves around, it's just a question of how long. I really don't mind going down to the DFCS once a month or so to prove I'm looking for work and that my wife is still not capable of working. But to me what they're doing in DeKalb County, of all counties in Georgia, is a damned disgrace and I won't have any part of it as it is right now.

Dear Soldier:

From:
Albert R. Renteria
Young Republican
Founder, Chairman, CEO, and President of Operation Interdependence®:

I cannot tell you how proud we are that you are over there in Iraq fighting for us. Please accept this chapstick and pack of chewing gum as a symbol of my appreciation for your sacrifice. I hope you like it, it cost me all of two dollars. And I got it at Wal-Mart, too: the most patriotic company in America! Maybe when you return, you will work for me when I manage a Wal-Mart shop of my own. Don't expect to get more than minimum wage, though...ha ha!

As you know I strongly support our President and his bold stance against international terrorism. I would join you out there myself but for right now I feel I am doing my part by combating the liberals in this country, who as you know are busy supporting Al-Qaeda. Did you know that they are spreading propaganda about how the military is falling short in its recruitment goals? And that Durbin guy called you all Nazis, too! Don't worry, you take care of the terrorists there, and we'll take care of the terrorists here!

Sincerely
Albert Renteria

Update: After a few email exchanges and some research it seems that Mr. Renteria has indeed served in the military, he is in fact a 26-year veteran of the Marine Corps. I regret the error. But while Operation Interdependence ® has every appearance of being an honorable and decent organization, its association with the Republican Party and its policies, in my eyes, diminishes its value. The GOP has betrayed the trust of the soldiers with their lies about Iraq, their incompetent handling of the war, and their failure to properly supply the troops. In my opinion Mr. Renteria should reconsider affiliating himself with them.

Young Patriots At War

Campus Progress has two undercover people reporting from the College Republican National Convention in Arlington, VA. Here's some excerpts, and a picture they snapped:

There was one pretty awesome speech by a dude up front next to the chairman, basically along the lines of "Are you guys crazy?! We're all friends - stop all this mud-slinging!" It almost sounded like some crazy liberal-talk, to be quite honest. Then he got more right-wing-style, with something like "We are ALL Republicans here, and by God that is more important than anything that will happen with the outcome of this election. What we are doing as a movement trumps the petty partisanship you've been displaying! Come awn, now!" Yes, that was a Southern accent...

...There's really nothing like parliamentary procedure to make a meeting feel like it's going in circles. But man these students are into it. What's up at CRNC business meeting? Disenfranchisement, obstruction and bias (sounds like the title of an Ann Coulter book). Basically, the state chair in VA changed up the delegate list under some pretext. The tricky part is that the delegates are the ones voting for the National Chairman, and when they were changed, so were the number of votes for each candidate. As the comments went back it forth the pendulum swung from disenfranchisement of the original delegates to defending the power of the state chair. Then, they would vote to either continue debate or stop it, and the stoppers just couldn't get the 2/3 they needed (sounds familiar?) So then, those who wanted to end it started yelling "Obstructionists! Filibusters! Reid!" One delegate even turned around to some others to say, "What, are you obsessed with liberals?"...

"Conventioneer" also interviewed a few of them, asking them What makes you conservative?:

Well my family is a big influence on it, but also all the different stuff I've seen and stuff. You know what, you probably gotta excuse my language when I talk about liberals. I grew up in Shanghai, right, and China's a Communist country, right? When I got over here I saw there’s a two party system, liberals and conservatives, democrats and republicans, right? But all the liberals really stand for is social welfare, support all the laziness, socialists, free this and free that – tax all the hardworking people, give it away for nothing, you know? People just sit around, just sit on their butt all day and don't do nothing. They drive a brand new Cadillac and stuff! What about the hard-working-class people? And we get taxed 50% out of our pocket, you know? I mean that’s socialist, right? So, that’s the reason I just think that you know what liberals just don't make sense. Also probably the religious belief. I won't vote for a single person that is pro-choice.
- JiaMei Chen, American River College

I honestly think I just kind of came out that way. My family’s that way, I was raised that way, it’s what I believe. It’s the kind of life I live, the beliefs I have, the way I want my future to be.
-Shandra Cipriano, University of Nevada-Reno

Really it’s because I believe in freedom …the freedom to live your life, really. …I believe in free market, free enterprise…I think we should have a right to do what we want. Gov’t. should play as little a role as possible.
-Scott Gehring, from Cincinnati

Well I guess it was because I was born a conservative, raised a conservative – really I believe in freedom and opportunity. People being able to go out and do what they wanna do. If you're smart enough to go out and make a million dollars you should be if you're not then you shouldn't be.
-George Higgins, State Chair of the NV College Republicans

Etc., etc., etc. In theory what they say always sounds nice, but in practice the end result is always the same, and is usually based on greed and self-centeredness. For the record, I'm a liberal because I believe in the necessary and inter-dependant balance between a free government, free enterprise, and a free press. I believe in equality of opportunity and a minimum standard of living for all. I believe that a community is more than just a group of individuals, that it's important to be a part of something that is greater than yourself, and that society as a whole should respect the right of self-determination of all individuals. I believe that everyone should be free to worship God (or not) in their own way, and not just free to worship the religion that's the most popular. I believe that there are more important things in life than money, and that human rights and needs should come before corporate rights and needs. I believe in the ideals of the American Revolution, that the ultimate authority of any government derives from the consent of those governed and not the financial power of the wealthiest few or corporate entities. And finally, I'm a liberal because I believe that we should learn from the past, live in the present and look towards the future.

Anyway, via Atrios, here's some excerpts from other patriotic, war-loving Republicans on why they aren't planning on enlisting:

In more than a dozen interviews, Republicans in their teens and 20s offered a range of answers. Some have friends in the military in Iraq and are considering enlisting; others said they can better support the war by working politically in the United States; and still others said they think the military doesn't need them because the U.S. presence in Iraq is sufficient.

"Frankly, I want to be a politician. I'd like to survive to see that," said Vivian Lee, 17, a war supporter visiting the convention from Los Angeles,

Lee said she supports the war but would volunteer only if the United States faced a dire troop shortage or "if there's another Sept. 11."

"As long as there's a steady stream of volunteers, I don't see why I necessarily should volunteer," said Lee, who has a cousin deployed in the Middle East.

"If there was a need presented, I would go," said Chris Cusmano, a 21-year-old member of the College Republicans organization from Rocky Point, N. Y. But he said he hasn't really considered volunteering.

But that's just like Republicans, nothing like letting others do the fighting for you. There would have been military recruiters there, but they were all busy scouring high schools in poor neighborhoods. That is, the ones who weren't kidnapping kids. I wonder what circumstance it would take for them to actually put their money where their mouths are? Obviously the fact that the military hasn't been meeting its recruitment goals isn't going to do it. If there was a draft, how hard would they try to get out of it?

It's one thing to say you believe in something strong enough to risk your life for it, it's another thing to actually go out and do it. Many of the soldiers who fought in WWII and Korea and VietNam didn't like going to war, but they felt a deep sense of commitment to it, a commitment, I am sad to say, that these youngsters do not understand, being self-centered and self-involved. There is nothing in the world bigger than their own needs, there is no future beyond their lifetimes. If they really believed in what they said they believed, they wouldn't hesitate to join the military and do their part. the fact that they do not, and make excuses for why they don't, only shows the contempt they have for America, contempt disguised as patriotism.

Once More, With FEELING

(Click For Larger Image)

Kos talks about how wonderful it is that the polls show the GOP has pretty much lost the "independent" vote. And I'm all happy for him and all that, but if I can put the broken record back on the turntable:

IF THE ELECTIONS ARE RIGGED, WHAT DO THE POLLS MATTER?

We're all happy happy joy joy about how bad ol' Bush and the GOP are doing in the polls then we turn around on election day to see them pull out yet another "squeaker", and the cycle starts all over again. Sure it's great that people think they suck but if that doesn't result in actual political change, there's not a lot of point in gloating, is there?

What are you all going to do when 2006 rolls along and the House and Senate remain about the same? Or if another GOP tool gets "selected" in 2008?

In case you all hadn't noticed, Bush has stolen not one but TWO elections, and there's a lot of fraud out there. There are plenty of election reform groups who could use help, if you're not involved with one of them then I think you don't have much reason to gloat about these damn useless polls.

So if you haven't done so already, find an election reform group in your area and join them. I support Count Paper Ballots, but there are plenty of other election reform groups out there. So please help. We all want to get rid of BushCo, but unless we make sure that the elections match the poll results, then we might as well turn out the lights, cuz the party's over.

Torture © 2005 The Republican Party

Crapped Out Again

I finally got an email from Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo concerning the editor's position at his new group blog, TPM Cafe. I'm sorry to say that the job went to someone else: according to the email there were over two hundred applicants, most of whom I am certain were better at HTML than I, though in my not-so-humble opinion I think they need someone like me to keep them aware that politics isn't just about Democrats vs. Republicans, it's about what happens in the lives of people every day whether you work for your money or your money works for you. I want to thank everyone who wrote letters of recommendation for me, it's nice to know that I have that kind of support from my readers and listeners.

Next Plane To Gitmo

(Via The Funny Farm)
(Sung to the tune of "Last Train To Clarksville" by Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart)

Take the next plane to Gitmo,
It's the shame of a great nation.
You can stay there 'till your dirty,
You've no other destination.
You were slow, you've got to go!
You've got to go!

'Cause there's torture in the morning
And until you're born again
We'll have one more night of beatings
'Til the questions come again.
And you must know, where terr'rists go!
Oh you must know!
And we don't know if you're ever going home.

Take the next plane to Gitmo.
We'll be lying to the nation.
We'll have time for pissing on your Koran
And some interrogation.
Oh... Oh, no, no, no!
Oh, no, no, no!

Take the next plane to Gitmo,
Where we hang you by your bones.
We can't hear you in that noisy
Torture chamber all alone.
You're going to go. You're going to go!
You're going to go!
And we're pretty sure you're never going home.

Take the next plane to Gitmo,
Take the next plane to Gitmo,
[repeat and fade]

What's The Point?

You know, this reminds me of a conversation I had with my brother the other day. What's the point of all the hard work if you can't support yourself and can't afford to retire? And what about our kids? What do they have to look forward to?

Hmm...maybe they could become Republicans: that way they won't feel inclined to fight...

Drinking Liberally

Atrios has been plugging the Drinking Liberally organization for quite some time, and I finally get around to looking up the site and seeing what it was all about, and I found out that there was a chapter here in Atlanta. So Phyllis Huster of Count Paper Ballots and I went down there to check it out and it was a great meeting. It was wonderful just getting together and talking without worrying about having a meeting agenda or whatever. I highly recommend anyone reading this to see if they have a chapter in their area and attend.

I'll have more on this later, right now I'm tired and want to get some shuteye...

Operation Yellow Elephant

I have nothing but contempt for people who love to bang the war drums but refuse to go and fight. During World War Two, able-bodied men who appeared in public in civilian clothes were often ridiculed. The war was important and you were expected to sacrifice for it. Even the children of the very rich signed up to go to war. Nobody liked it, nobody wanted it, but it was a necessary thing. Now we have the "Great War On Terror" (TM) which the neocons have touted as the latest war to end all wars, etc. etc., and you would think that the assorted dittoheads, minutemen and fighting keyboarders would be the first to step up and fulfil their duties as Americans. But instead of signing up, they're staying away in droves.

Meanwhile, military recruiters, having missed recruiting goals for the last few months, are desperate to sign up any warm body they can. And where are they concentrating their efforts? Not among the children of the wealthy, of course not. They know there's not a snowball's chance in hell that these spoiled, rich kids will risk their trust funds fighting sand people in Iraq. As the saying goes, it's always a rich man's war and a poor man's burden. And it only goes to show how screwed up this country is that there isn't a social stigma attached to these people. You'd think that Bush's hardcore supporters at least would shame their kids into signing up. But you and I know that's never going to happen. As always it's the poor who sacrifice and the rich that profit.

Jesus' General points out that the College and Young Republicans are going to hold their conventions soon, and he's calling upon them to stand up and fight. "Operation Yellow Elephant" is the code name for his project, and I urge all my readers to visit the site and see how you can help. If we can't get these people to go out and do the right thing we ought to call them out for the cowards they are.

Nothing To See Here

Open Thread - Show 102

Special Commentary! Click Here To Listen!

Listen here. Comment below. I'll get you for that!

Send me your Stupid Boss Tricks!

Censorship And Humanity

Avedon Carol speaks:

Was Robert Byrd out of line when he compared the Republicans' tendency to behave as if the law was not the law to Hitler's similar mushing up of German law? No, of course not. While it is not accurate to say that Hitler never broke the law and that everything his government did was legal, it is similarly not accurate to say that Bush never breaks the law and that everything his administration does is legal.

For example, Germany passed a law in 1875 that is still on the books today banning hate speech against any identifiable group. You'd think that would have protected the Jews, wouldn't you? But the Nazis merely decided Jews and gays and a few others were exceptions, and then all bets were off.

The parallels, of course, are obvious - and in some respects even more unsettling. Our founders made clear that they believed the rights they outlined in both their writings and the Constitution and Bill of Rights they fashioned were inherent for all humans - inalienable - regardless of their origins and nationality, and thus the United States is always obliged to give the protections of the law to everyone we deal with. We are required to offer alien nationals in our country the same rights to due process that citizens have. And yes, the glaring exceptions are obvious, but they have also been a matter of shame for us - and one that we have tried to put right.

Go read.

Failure Fries

I have been hearing, and more often than usual or I wouldn't even bother to bring it up, about how the polls are looking our way and about how my crazy right wing relative is finally coming around, etc. etc. This is of course a good thing, and we should keep fighting. But this is my semi regular reminder that, while things are improving, we still have a long way to go. I don't have any doubt that the current powers that be will collapse under the weight of their own lies, but as always, I ask what then? When the time comes we need to be ready to step in. It's not enough to cast ourselves as the "not Republicans", we have to give people a reason to vote for us. People who still support this Administration and its ludicrous policies are addicted to "Failure Fries".

Now, I still feel that election rigging will continue, but there are some occasions when even rigging the election won't work: the only way they have succeeded thus far is because the results have been too close; if the poll margins are 20%-30% instead of 4%-5%, and the "results" still lead to a GOP victory, more people would certainly wake up. During the 2004 campaign I stated quite clearly that Kerry was going to have to get 60-70% of the vote in order to overcome the election fraud the Republicans were going to do, and I knew that just wasn't going to happen. But those poll numbers are attainable and we should continue to point them out (and make the case for election reform too, this is probably the biggest issue out there. You can't win legislative battles if we don't have legislators).

So what stances should we take on issues? Here's what I think we should do:

Domestically, I think we should make the obvious point that if we don't clamp down on the political power of corporations, they will be running our lives and doing a far worse job of it than the government ever did. How many people do you know whose lives have been improved economically over the last few years? Not many, I betcha. Things are worse for all working people, red-stater or blue-stater, than they were when the Bushies took office. Corporations are run, for the most part, by greedy bastards who would steal your kids candy just because they can. This case is easy to make because it's well, true. We can even talk about the jobs moving to Mexico, but instead of the race card we should play the class card: it's corporate execs who are moving the plants, not the Mexicans. You can bet their pay isn't going to suffer.

As to issues outside of the US, I think we should point out that the whole "we can kick your ass" foreign policy approach has been a huge disaster. The fact that no one wants to fight this crummy war is proof of that. We can fight terrorism the right way or we can keep sucking down those failure fries. Bush made us lose to Iraq, for Chrissake! If we want to fight terrorism we have to do it smarter: you don't go after a fly with a sledgehammer.

Note that these approaches aren't an appeal to reason. This is because I have finally learned that appeals to reason just don't work. Most people think with their gut. The GOP knows how to do this, and we can do the same thing, but without invoking the same kind of class and race hatred that they do. And one thing they have said over the years is true, the Washington establishment is clearly out of touch with the reality of the American workplace.

I think Gov. Dean is taking a great approach to this. He understands that politics is local and that's how he's rebuilding the party. It will still take time of course, these things don't happen overnight. But we're on the right path and unless something really crazy happens we might still pull off a political victory. And this would be a big win. Remember, the neocons, their financial backers, and their hardcore supporters are fanatics. The idea of losing may drive them to try something really, really stupid, like attempt a military coup. I think they recognize that this may be their last chance to get the things they want. It took them seventy years to overcome the defeat the New Dealers handed them, if they lose now it could take over a century before they get another chance, maybe longer. I say we keep fighting them and plan a better world. Make them eat the failure fries.

Good And Evil In America

A paragraph in an article in the Boston Globe (via Atrios) caught my attention:

[Leslie Gelb, President of the Council on Foreign Relations] was scathing about America efforts to train an Iraqi army. ''If you ask any Iraqi leader, they will tell you these people can't fight. They just aren't trained. And yet we're cranking them out like rabbits." As for plans to train a 10 division Iraqi army by next year, Gelb was scathing. ''It became very apparent to me that these 10 divisions were to fight some future war against Iran. It had nothing to do, nothing to do," with taking Iraq over from the Americans and fighting the insurgents. (emphasis mine)

Now I know, as do many others, that the people who created the Project for a New American Century (PNAC; this group is also known as the neo-conservatives, or neocons, but most of you already knew that) had envisioned an invasion of Iraq long before 9/11, and before George W. Bush took office. Iraq was supposed to be the stepping stone for American control of the Middle East: take over Iraq and build permanent military bases there. Use those bases to take out Iran and Syria. Etc., etc.

Mr. Gelb's comments caught me off-guard because I hadn't thought about the idea of Americans training Iraqis to fight Iran. Yes, they had fought a bloody war throughout the eighties, but that was when Saddam was our man and we were giving him military and tactical support. The majority of Iraqis are Shiites, as are most Iranians, and if you look at the political makeup of our new puppet regime in Iraq you will see a government that is more closely aligned with Iran than it was before we invaded them and removed the Sunni-led Baath party from power.

Now I'm just a dumb working (well, unemployed) guy who has never been to college and who only recently began to look into the history of the Middle East and the peoples of Iraq and Iran, but it seems to me, from what little I have learned in a few short years, that if you wanted to train an Iraqi army to invade Iran (which incidentally has something like four times the population of Iraq), the last people you would want to train to go to war with them would be the people who have a lot in common with Iranians. But you'll have to excuse me, not being a college boy I don't have a lot of understanding about the thought processes of those who deem themselves to be my intellectual superiors.

Looking back on what I know and what I have learned about our history there, let me backtrack somewhat. In the fifties the people of Iran elected a Communist government which was planning on nationalizing the oil wells, so we used the CIA to overthrow them and install the Shah. In the sixties, we help the Baath party in Iraq for similar reasons. Eventually the Shah was himself ousted by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Naturally this was a big embarrassment for Americans, so when our boy in Baghdad decided to attack Iran (did we egg him on? I don't know), we helped him as much as we could with arms and money, we even sold him the poison gas to use on Iranian soldiers and looked the other way when he used the gas on his own people.

The Iraq-Iran war ended in a truce with millions dead on both sides, and left Iraq in particular very poor. Hussein wanted Kuwait's oil fields, and even asked permission from Bush The Elder to go into Kuwait to "annex" them. Bush gave him the go-ahead to do so but for some reason Hussein didn't stop with the oil fields, he took over the whole country. This made our pals in Saudi Arabia nervous. So Bush got the UN to back a coalition to attack the Iraqi forces in Kuwait and drive them out. On a side note, this is what pissed off Osama bin Laden: who was another CIA operative we had trained to launch guerilla warfare against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Anyway, we left Hussein in power for whatever reasons. The neocons were not very happy about this. They wanted Saddam out, and it's possible (though doubtful) that if Bush had not been defeated in '92 they would have attempted a coup or an invasion, but since he didn't win re-election we'll never know. It certainly wasn't going to happen under Clinton, though he was convinced enough of the threat of weapons of mass destruction that he ordered Iraq bombed in 1998, effectively destroying any hopes for Hussein to re-emerge as a major military player in the region.

Now there's a lot I don't know about what went on in priming George W. Bush for a political career. Did W know or care about the plans of the neocons? Is he a "playa", or did he allow himself to be used by others as long as he got some personal glory out of it? Not being privy to their private conversations and not knowing what's really going on in their heads, I can't even make an educated guess. But I do know, from things that have been written by people who attended strategy meetings, that almost as soon as Bush took office his Administration was looking for a reason to go after Iraq. This was provided by bin Laden (remember him?) on 9/11. We all know what happened after that.

Mr. Gelb's comments lead me to believe that the general idea was to invade Iraq and then train Iraqi soldiers and launch an attack on Iran. But obviously things haven't worked out as they planned. The Downing Street memos showed clearly that not only were we intent on going to war with Iraq, we also had no real idea of what we would do when we got there. Did the neocons really believe that US troops would be greeted as liberators? Did we really believe that the Iraqis would go along with another bloody war against their neighbors? Again, I wish I could say for sure. But what's important is what we know now: we are occupying Iraq, a country growing more hostile to us every day. The plans of the neocons inasmuch as invading Iran and Syria are becoming more and more unreachable. And should the United States suffer another terrorist attack they may not be able to protect themselves from the political fallout. You can only have one Reichstag, you can only have one 9/11, and the public will only put up with so much Pravda. People are tuning out the news, and even the dimmest bulbs are starting to see it for the propaganda that it is.

Which brings me to my point.

In America, we tend to take a very simplistic view of things. Good and evil are supposed to be as clear as black and white. Good is defined as selflessness: doing something for others and treating others the way you would want them to treat you. Evil is the opposite, selfishness and a lack of concern for how your actions affect others. Good is the strong protecting the weak and the happiness of giving. Evil is the strong doing what they want just because they can and enjoying the misery of others. That, at least, is how I was led to understand the difference between the two.

The Bush administration, in their propaganda, certainly tries to make that case as simple as possible: we are the good guys who want to protect freedom. They are the evildoers who hate us and would destroy us if given the chance. What could be clearer? How could we even argue with that? We're fighting for our own survival, if we lose the evildoers win!

But I don't see how anyone can look at what the Bush administration and the GOP leadership have done over the last few years and categorize it as anything but evil. Illegal invasion. Torture. Destruction of entire cities. And now, training Iraqis to use as cannon fodder for a future war against their neighbors, well, I don't even have words for that. And behind all of it is the desire for money and power, what the Bible describes as the very root of all evil. Ironic, considering how religion has also been used in part to justify what we're doing, just as it's been used for millennia to justify any amount of evil, all in God's name of course. Ironic, but hardly surprising. And anyone who attempts to deviate from their simple message, anyone who tries to show that we're being taken advantage of by people , are treated at best as naive, at worst as traitors.

You know, the people of Iraq and Iran aren't really that much different from any of us. They want the same things out of life that we do: support themselves and their families, and to make a better life for their children. The people who push us into going to war, regardless of who they are or what country they're from, don't want us to see it in those terms: they want to make others out to be evil and dangerous so that we can kill each other while they profit. To Osama bin Laden, the people who died at the WTC weren't human enough to matter to him. That is evil. To the Bush administration, the GOP leadership and their financial backers, the people of Iraq and Iran, even the American soldiers whose loyalty they depend on, aren't human enough to matter; that also is evil.

It has to stop. But I don't know how. The neocons are hardly the only people in the world capable of doing evil things, they're just the most powerful. Both good and evil exist in America and in the rest of the world, and one thing I am pretty sure of is that you don't get rid of it through military conquest. The battle isn't just against the Bush administration, or Osama bin Laden, the battle is against evil itself: the evil of fundamentalism, the evil of greed, the evil of ignorance, the evil that comes from fear. That's what we're fighting. Maybe one day we'll realize that.

Old News

Congressman Conyers writes the Washington Post:

I write to express my profound disappointment with Dana Milbank's June 17 report, Democrats Play House to Rally Against the War, which purports to describe a Democratic hearing I chaired in the Capitol yesterday. In sum, the piece cherry-picks some facts, manufactures others out of whole cloth, and does a disservice to some 30 members of Congress who persevered under difficult circumstances, not of our own making, to examine a very serious subject: whether the American people were deliberately misled in the lead up to war. The fact that this was the Post's only coverage of this event makes the journalistic shortcomings in this piece even more egregious.

You can read the entire letter here and here. Rep. Conyers is being extremely polite in his response, fortunately I don't have to be. Milbank's article is a damn disgrace, and the Washington Post ought to be ashamed to print it. His condescending tone is a slap in the face to the 1700-plus US soldiers who have given their lives for the policies of the Bush administration, the Republican leadership, and their financial allies; policies that are based on lies and abuse of power that the Post is abetting with its treatment of this issue. It's also a slap in the face to the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who have been killed and the millions whose lives have been destroyed because of this war. Lives that would be very different if Milbank, the Post and all the other members of the so-called "professional" media had done their jobs in the first place and helped us to end this war before it began.

Do Mr. Milbank and the Post editors even care about that, I wonder? Maybe they don't consider the lives of working-class soldiers or poor Iraqis to be more important than their worthless reputations. Maybe Milbank thinks that by ridiculing Rep. Conyers' attempts to shed some light on what's been going on, he and his editors can cover their own negligence or complicity. You can laugh off the evidence of war crimes as "old news" if you like, Milbank, but you're the only old news here. Maybe you haven't noticed it yet, but people are tuning you out, and there are plenty of us out here to call you on your bullshit.

Might Makes Right

Billmon writes:

...if you can't see the evil in locking prisoners of war -- some of them held by mistake, others only foot soldiers in the Taliban's army -- in 100 plus degree rooms for 24 hours without food or water, until they shit or piss all over themselves -- then you're truly beyond redemption. Once you've reached that point, you can probably justify anything, up to and including murder.

I've been known to call people murderers for vociferously supporting the illegal war in Iraq, and while that may be a little harsh, the truth is that by not looking any further into what's going on, by taking Mr. Bush and his administration at their word that they are "protecting" us, they are, by their negligence, partially responsible for what's going on. And the ones who really do know what's going on but don't care are more directly responsible. There's no shortage of racists in this country, that's for sure.

The sad thing is that all Americans are going to be painted with the same brush, regardless of how we feel, and to a certain extent, those images are correct. We have the ultimate authority in this country, and we share the blame when we foolishly give power to people who don't know how to use it. It may not be fair, but it's the truth.

On a related front, The following passage comes from a Washngton Post Editorial by Fred Hiatt (via Busy Busy Busy):

The United States and this administration in particular continually assert the moral right to behave differently than other nations. We will not be bound by the International Criminal Court. We insist that other nations give up their nuclear weapons while we keep our own. We wage war without U.N. Security Council approval. We publish annual report cards on everyone else's human rights records.

The premise of this highhandedness is that the United States is, on balance, a force for good in the world -- a superpower that uses its might not to subjugate others but to allow them to live freely. This is a premise that The Post's editorial page on the whole accepts -- to the dismay of many readers.

It reminds me to once more bring up this excerpt from the Melian dialogues 2500 years ago:

Athenians: There’s no point bothering you with the same old story about how we have a right to our empire because of our military, or tell you that we're attacking you because of something you did to us. We won't bore you with a long speech which you wouldn't believe anyway. So since we both know exactly what’s going on, we hope you'll just make it easy for both of us, accept it for what it is, and make the best of it. You know as well as we do that this is how the world is. Rights only come into play between equals in power. The strong do whatever they want, and everyone else does whatever they can.

Melians: Regardless, it’s important – and we're speaking because we must, since you're telling us to forget about our own rights when it comes to what’s best for your interests – for us to remind you that the rights you're denying us protect you also. You in particular ought to know this, because your fall would not only destroy you but set a horrible example for anyone else who struggles to be free.

Athenians: It’s a law of nature that men rule wherever they can. It’s not like we're the first to do this. Men were doing this before us, men will do this long after we're gone. But since we've got the power, we're using it while we can. You, and everyone else, would do the same thing if you were us.

Melos was an island that had been tributary to Sparta, the Athenians enemy during the Peloponnesian War. the Athenians had "freed" Melos from Sparta's control, but were treating them so badly that the Melians started fighting against them. The Athenians set out to take over the island, but the Melians tried to reason with them first. The Athenians couldn't let the Melians remain neutral because they were worried about appearing "weak", and they eventually conquered Melos. But eventually the mighty Athenians fell while trying to build their own empire.

Human nature hasn't changed much since then. There are still people who believe that might makes right, and the trash heap of history is full of fallen empires. The United States is just the latest, and we too will eventually fall if this continues. It may already be too late to save us, I don't know. Billmon is right; There is no justification for torture, and anyone who supports it for any reason has gone off the deep end. If the United States does fall, it won't be because of us "weak" liberals, it will be because too many of us decided that other people simply weren't human enough to count.

I Stand With Dean

Steve Weissman writes:

The Old Guard fear that the party will get out of their control and are naturally fighting back. The conflict has grown so severe that three major fund-raisers quit the Democratic National Committee, one of them citing "strategic differences."

At least for now, most of the differences are over style and political dynamics. The bluestocking Dean might at times sound like a populist, but he remains a centrist Democrat and fiscal conservative. And, like most leading Democrats, he argues that the United States must stay in Iraq no matter how much our presence there fuels greater conflict.

"Now that we're there, we're there and we can't get out," he told the Minnesota ACLU on April 20 of this year. "The president has created an enormous security problem for the United States where none existed before. But I hope the president is incredibly successful with his policy now that he's there."

Many of us who want to bring the troops home believe that Dean is dead wrong, and we will continue to tell him so. But that's just the point. By revitalizing the party's base and reducing the power of big money, he is giving us an increased chance to make our arguments and move the party in our direction.

I happen to believe that Dr. Dean is absolutely right, and I also believe you can be anti-war but still be honest about the reality of the situation. Pro-war Republicans blinded themselves to reality in pushing for this war, we on the left cannot abandon reality for different reasons. But I understand Mr. Weissman's concerns. The war in Iraq is a crime against humanity, and we need to put an end to it. But it's not as easy as it seems.

I have been a follower of Dr. Dean precisely because he looks to practical, not ideological, solutions to real problems. I am not interested in the greater good and glory of the Democratic Party or Dr. Dean, I am interested in the greater good of the United States of America and all the people of Earth. I want us to stop using greed as a rationale for war, and as a basis for public policy. the politics of greed is a destructive force for everyone, including the ones who, in the short term, benefit from it. I want us to start acting like grownups and stop acting like spoiled children. It's a lot to ask, I know.

Pulling out of Iraq completely is an option we should look at seriously, but we shouldn't just do it in a knee-jerk fashion, we have to go out of our way to prove to the rest of the world that what's happening with the Bush administration is just an aberration, not representing what the true spirit of Americans are. Most of our neighbors in the world understand this: they love Americans but despise what our government is doing.

Because of the criminal actions of the current administration, America has lost every bit of "political capital" it has earned for more than half a century. And in my opinion, the best way to regain our reputation is to start acting as if we were one great nation among many, and not just the biggest bad ass on the block. I believe Dr. Dean understands this as our current Democratic leadership, satisfied as they are with being number two, does not.

(via The Smirking Chimp and The Scoop)

Ha Ha

Who Said This?

The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself.

Answer here.

(Via Avedon Carol)

Old School

Looks like Wal-Mart employees are getting a lesson in Applied Peonage:

Wal-Mart officials in Cross Lanes told employees on Tuesday they have to start working practically any shift, any day they're asked, even if they've built up years of seniority and can't arrange child care.

Store management said the policy change is needed to keep enough staff at the busiest hours, but some employees said it appears to be an attempt to force out longer-term, higher-paid workers.

Wal-Mart has a huge amount of employee turnover, and they like it that way: newer employees work cheaper and are more easily intimidated. We see this at other places, too, but with Wal-Mart it's much more blatant. They see employees as mindless, expendable drones. They'd buy slaves if it were legal and/or they could get away with it. It's a symptom of how bad the business atmosphere is in America today, and how little power working people have.

As regular readers and listeners know, I urge everyone to boycott Wal-Mart. I don't want to drive them out of business, but I want them to stop treating their workers like that. They are not property, they are human beings and deserve to be treated as such. Until they get that I am not giving them one single penny. I also urge Wal-Mart employees to walk out en masse, every single one of them, and block the scabs from going in. Go Old School on them. Yes it's tough to do that in these economic times, and we thought the days when we had to do this were over, but it's obvious that every time you give these guys an inch, they take a mile. And the only way to get them to change is to hit them where it hurts, in the pocketbook.

Sue Sue Sue Ya

You know, it seems to me that people in this country would be less willing to sue celebrities and other mega-rich people if they could somehow earn enough money to live a comfortable life themselves. As Bill Clinton always says, if you work hard and play by the rules you should succeed, but I think most working people understand that working hard and playing by the rules usually means you get screwed. Some people just don't have it in them to learn how to rig the system to their own advantage for moral reasons, others are just no good at it. Or both, as in my case. Sometimes when I'm driving down the road and I see a nice house I wonder what the owner of the house did to be able to afford it. That kind of money seems impossible to me even though others tell me I have a lot of skills that I could make money on.

A lot of people wanted to see Michael Jackson in jail not because he was actually guilty but because he's weird and he's got more money than they'll ever see. The impression I got from the jury was that the people prosecuting the case seemed more interested in what they could get out of him than in protecting their children. Would they have allowed them to stay with Michael if he wasn't a wealthy celebrity? I highly doubt it.

I'm not old enough to know what life was really like in the workplace when my father was my age; My parents and older relatives, like so many in NYC then and now, did a little gambling: playing the numbers or betting in football pools, that sort of thing. But the payoffs were always pretty small, and they seem to do it more because they enjoyed it than for how much money they got out of it. They never gambled so much that it affected their ability to pay the rent or the bills, and they never expected a payoff big enough to retire by. I can't imagine them doing what the parents of those kids did, or looking for a lawsuit to give them financial security. They already had financial security. And if more of us also had that, there'd be less spectacular trials like this one.

Work 'Til You Die

So says John Tierney:

If the elderly were willing to work longer, there would be lower taxes on everyone and fewer struggling young families. There would be more national wealth and tax revenue available to help the needy, including people no longer able to work as well as the many elderly below the poverty line because they get so little Social Security.

This is his main point, which is crouched between whiney diatribes that 70 year-olds have bike races and retirees live comfortable lives. And of course he uses Chile once more as a perfect example of How The World Ought To Be while refusing to acknowledge How The World Really Is, which is that Chile's system ain't all it's cracked up to be (a few who know how to work the system do well while millions get far less than they would have gotten under a government plan), and that here in this country as soon as you allow greedy corporate execs to get their hands on retirement accounts they'll grab every penny they can. Don't believe me? Just ask United Airlines or Polaroid retirees.

Some people like to work long after retirement age, and I'm just fine with that. But there has to come a time when people can stop doing something they have to do and enjoy what they've worked so hard to earn. It doesn't seem like this is too much to ask, but apparently it is for the Tierneys of the world.

This Is Why We Lose

The summer interns of the Heritage Foundation have arrived, forming an elite corps inside the capital's premier conservative research group. The 64 interns are each paid a 10-week stipend of $2,500, and about half are housed in a subsidized dorm at the group's headquarters, complete with a fitness room...

...The Brookings Institution, a centrist group more than 50 years older than Heritage, has no paid interns. Neither does the Progressive Policy Institute, which promotes a centrist version of liberalism. The Center on Budget and Policy Priority, a premier antipoverty group, has 10 paid interns. People for the American Way, a bulwark of Beltway liberalism, has 40 - but no dorm.

And here we sit, begging for scraps.

Not Guilty

Maybe now they can start concentrating on the next important runaway bride story.

A Thought

You know, I get the feeling that if it ever comes down to an actual trial with Bush and Blair in the dock, Blair might actually realize the enormity of what has happened and break down on the stand. I watch him on C-Span every now and again and I can't help but admire the way he handles himself. I don't rightly understand why it is he's backed up Bush so much, but my gut tells me that he's doing so in the hopes of getting something positive out of Bush and just doesn't understand the nature of the beast. Again, nothing to base it on, just my personal reaction.

Bush, on the other hand, I just can't see him admitting that he did anything wrong. Again I'm not sure that it's because he honestly feels that the death and destruction in Iraq is worth it in order to achieve some higher goal he may really believe in, or if he just figures he and his pals really are just better than everyone else and we should all just shut up and do as we're told. But I suspect he'll just sit there and refuse to answer.

I just get that feeling, is all...

Open Thread: Show 101

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Why I Care About Politics

Paul Krugman lays down the smack:

Since 1980 in particular, U.S. government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families - and under the current administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless. From tax cuts that favor the rich to bankruptcy "reform" that punishes the unlucky, almost every domestic policy seems intended to accelerate our march back to the robber baron era.

It's not a pretty picture - which is why right-wing partisans try so hard to discredit anyone who tries to explain to the public what's going on.

These partisans rely in part on obfuscation: shaping, slicing and selectively presenting data in an attempt to mislead.

I've been following politics now for going on fifteen years, and during that time it's been my experience that most political junkies see politics as a big pissing contest: a way to make themselves look important by putting other people down. The right wing, as in all things relating to rude and obnoxious behavior, are far and away the biggest practitioners, but we have more than a few on the left as well. I first experienced this way back in the days of the old BBS's: I was attempting, in vain, to have a reasonable discussion with someone about gun control, when out of the blue he called me a "gun moron". It was obvious then that he wasn't interested in anything more than puffing himself up at my own expense. I still experience this from time to time with commentators on other sites or persnickety in-fighting among political fan-boys, or "blogger groupies" as I call some of them.

Once in a while I lose my temper and find myself more involved in these little shitstorms than I really care to be. I am not into being confrontational; I want to learn and I want to share my experiences with others, but sometimes I get so pissed off that I just react first and think later. Now these things go on all the time: fans of politics are not much different than, say, Trekkies. Same psychology, different subject. I used to be a Trekkie myself, and I'm still a fan of other "geeky" things like comics and Japanese animation, but I don't involve myself with organized fandom anymore because of the self-important blowhards that inhabit it. But I still follow politics.

Why?

Because politics affects our lives. These aren't meaningless, trivial issues we're talking about here, like whether Kirk or Picard is a better captain. These are issues that affect whether we can earn enough money to support ourselves, whether we can get married to who we want to, whether our children will have a better life than us, or even if we're allowed to have children.

Politics matters. It matters to the people of Iraq, it matters to the soldiers and the families of the soldiers who risk their lives there. It matters to the millions of working poor who are struggling just to get by. It matters to the unemployed like myself trying to find work.

Politics matters because some people want to use the power of government to legalize the thievery they couldn't get away with otherwise. Politics matters because there are people who think they're just better than anybody else and that want to use the power of government to enforce those distinctions.

Politics matters when a bunch of corporate bean-counters want to use the power of government to force people into indentured servitude or even slavery because it makes life easier and more profitable for them. Politics matters when some people decide they have to kill other people just because they're in the way.

The best psychiatrists and sociologists could write volumes trying to explain why the neocons believe the things they do, or why people who have millions don't feel fulfilled until they have billions, or why so many people continue to support politicians and ideas that clearly hurt them. But that's secondary. First and foremost we have to stop them, because if we don't, the why won't matter to us, being dead.

Politics matters. That's why I do this.

GOP: A Party Of One (Color, That Is)

(Click For Larger Image)

(for the record, those images represent Republicans ONLY: other parties aren't included)

Guess What, Andy?

I'm going to torpedo a Commie press conference!

(kudos to anyone who gets that reference)

Supporting The Troops

There was a debate (for want of a better term) last night in the Bartcop chat room between Bartcop and a "challenger" named "Karash". I'd like to say there was a premise, but there was nothing specific: just some vagueness concerning the idea of "supporting the troops", which Bart does (as do I). Karash spent most of his time trying to pin Bartcop down on why Bart did this, especially considering events at Abu Ghraib and other places. Bart's argument was that he supported the troops because they are willing to risk their lives in defense of their country, something he has never done himself. Karash then argued that by the same logic you should support the hijackers (I assume he meant the 911 hijackers) because they were also willing to risk their lives for their cause.

Acting as a moderator of sorts, I tried to steer the conversation into something resembling a coherent argument, to no avail. The two circled around the issue for a bit, until Bart had enough and put an end to it. I and others tried to carry on, but Karash did nothing more but demand a simple answer to his question ("Why do you support the troops?"), and was unwilling to accept any given to him. There was a considerable amount of rudeness and sniping from all sides.

Nobody "wins" in these situations. Karash wasn't debating, he was interrogating, , and with no specific premise, it was hard to get down to brass tacks over what, exactly, the whole thing was about. Much of it seemed to depend on what was meant by "support": Karash was equating supporting the troops with honoring them, also implying that support for the troops meant support for the policies, which it most definitely does not. As I told him, most people, myself included, join the service for financial reasons. I'm not denying that there are some real scumbags in the military (I've known a few and been accused of being one myself many times), but anyone who has sworn the oath faces the possibility of carrying out orders that go against their privately-held beliefs. It's a conflict each of us has to handle in our own way, balancing our duty to our country to our duty to our morals. And I support those who choose to lay down their arms rather than, say, torture a helpless prisoner just as I support those who choose to carry on as best they can under extraordinary circumstances.

And there is a huge difference between supporting soldiers and supporting suicide bombers. A soldier may be willing to risk his or her life, but that's a far cry from wanting to end it by killing others. A soldier, as I see it, loves the things his weapon defends, kills only in the direst of needs, and asks God for protection. A fanatic, believing his enemies to be less than human, has no remorse about killing them, and asks God for his blessing while doing so. How God feels about that, well, only God knows.

Back to the debate itself, next time, I hope Bartcop and whoever will lay down some more specifics on what they're arguing about.

A Promise

To those of you who continue to chastise me for being "negative", to all of you who were in rapture at the idea of a Kerry victory in 2004, to all of you who are looking forward to the "elections" in 2006 and 2008, to those who leap upon every new "scandal" about the Bush administration as if it is the one bit of news that will finally allow us to "turn the corner" and take our country back, please: do grow up.

There was no way Kerry was going to get into the White House. I said it quite publicly before the election, and I was proven correct. The reason I said that was not because I thought Kerry was a bad candidate, in fact I believe that if it had been a free and fair election, he would have won easily. Actually if we had a free and fair election in 2000, Kerry wouldn't have felt the need to run in the first place, as President Gore would have been running for a re-election he probably would have won. By all rights, with all that's happening in the country and the world, you would think that the Republicans would lose a huge amount of seats in the House and a few Senators in 2006, but it just ain't gonna happen. My prediction is that things in the House and Senate will remain roughly the same as it is right now, and the reason I think so is the same reason I knew Bush was going to get another four years: namely, that the elections are rigged, there's too much public apathy to do anything about it, and the Democrats are a long way from being a serious opposition.

I hope to God I am wrong on this, I so want to be wrong on this. But I don't think so. Even if the Dems miraculously manage to re-take the House and the Senate, I don't see them having the balls to do what really needs to be done. Mr. Bush and his administration ought to be tossed out of office, arrested, and turned over to an international court on charges of war crimes. There's plenty of evidence to convict them. If that's what happens, I will apologize publicly and profusely to everyone who has called me "a quitter" or "negative", and then I will shut down this blog, or change it into something more personal and less political. I'll be glad to do it. Until then, I am going to continue to remind all of you that we still have a long, hard slog ahead of us and all the bloviating in the world isn't going to change that.

Fail-Safe

I saw some of this movie, which I had not seen for many years, on TV in the last week or so. For those of you who haven't seen this film, it's one of the best, if not the best serious Cold War film ever made (behind Kubrick's brilliant black comedy, Dr. Strangelove). In the film, a computer glitch caused by a new Soviet jamming device causes several American bombers to believe that a nuclear war is at hand and they fly to Moscow to drop its nuclear weapons. Once they reach a certain point (the "fail-safe" point), the pilots are instructed to disregard any orders they receive because it might be a Soviet deception. The President (Henry Fonda) tries to talk the pilot down, and even goes so far as to give the Soviets top-secret information that allows the Russians to track the bomber. But it's all in vain. The President stays on the phone with the Soviet Premier so as to avoid an all-out nuclear war, and in the end when the bomber gets through and drops its nukes on Moscow, the President, as a show of good faith, has bombers drop nukes on New York City. It's a powerful, powerful film, the kind they couldn't make today, not without a lot of fancy, meaningless special effects.

In my last post, I talked about how bad things are getting for a lot of people, and sooner or later, if things continue, we'll reach our own fail-safe point, a point where the normal rules of engagement are no longer in effect: where politics as usual is simply not going to work, and things are going to start breaking down in serious ways. I mentioned before how this sort of thing has a historical context: as the Roman Republic expanded and grew wealthier more powerful militarily, its politics became more divisive and violent, and in the end became an Empire. The same thing happened to the Athenians before that, only they were thwarted in their attempt to create their own empire.

Look back a century ago, and you see an America that is economically very similar to what we have today. Because of the excesses of those times, within three decades, the greed of a few men nearly destroyed this country. The only thing that prevented an all-out revolution was the moderate solutions proposed by Roosevelt and the New Deal Democrats. The system worked, the nation was saved. But while many try to compare what happened then to what is happening now, there are many major differences, and the biggest one is that in the thirties America was still a minor player in global affairs, today the stakes are much higher: lunatics who don't give a damn about silly things like international law or even simple human decency have their fingers on weapons that could conceivably destroy all human life if things get bad enough. This wasn't true in the thirties for any country, it's true for us now.

The other big difference is that back then there was an opposition that not only had ideas, that had practical ways of putting them into operation. The New Deal was not created overnight, it was the result of decades of work by dedicated individuals. When FDR came into office in 1932, he was just the top of an enormous, well-run political machine that knew what it wanted to do and had practical experience in doing it. Nowadays, we have the equivalent of the '62 Mets as an opposition, and a Washington power structure that is hopelessly corrupt and out of touch with the real lives of working Americans (whether they support Mr. Bush or not). Eventually, all the propaganda in the world isn't going to work and the whole thing is going to come crashing down. I don't know when that will be, but I can't imagine things continuing as they are.

One of the points I neglected to make in the previous column is that all too often, when the revolution comes, the results are often worse than what went on before. Russians weren't any better off under Communism than they were under the Czars, and the Reign Of Terror far exceeded the excesses of the French nobility that preceded it, or the Napoleonic era that came after. the big exception to that, up until now, has been the American Revolution. Lincoln said that if you wanted to test the character of a man, give him power. The character of our nation, which has survived great adversity and hardship, is now facing it's greatest test: how to deal with power. And what happens in the next decade or so is going to determine whether or not we can still pull back from the brink, or if we have already reached the fail-safe point.

Kill Them And Take Their Money

I was struck by the number of articles over the weekend from different sources about the gap between the rich and the poor in this country and how it's getting wider. I don't think it's necessary to link all the articles, and I don't want to get into a discussion about who deserves what, because I've always found those arguments to be pointless: the answer to who deserves what always depends on who's doing the arguing.

The reality is this: sooner or later, people get tired of being ripped off (and again I'm not going to get into the argument about whether or not they really are getting ripped off: that they believe it and believe it strongly is enough). The weapons come out, and people start to get hurt. We're heading down that path right now. It may be a while before we get to the pitchforks and torches, but if things keep going the way they are we'll get there eventually.

I hope that a political solution will come along, but if it doesn't, and it gets to the point where we take to the streets, I know what side I'll be on.

Mental Gymnastics

Kleptocracy

In 1965, my father, an unskilled construction worker for the City of New York, earned app. $6.50 an hour. On that single salary alone, he was able to support a family of five. We did not live in great luxury, but we never went hungry, and we never worried about whether we could pay our rent or bills. Eventually my father was able to buy a house on money he had saved.

Forty years later, there are many people who still earn $6.50 an hour (or less) and they cannot support themselves. Why? Because while wages have remained more or less stagnant over that time, the cost of living has multiplied many times. We pay close to ten times more for rent now than my father did, ten times more for food also. I remember watching a scene from a movie with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda about a family of seventeen where they went shopping, and seven grocery carts full of food cost less than $200. My wife and I live on $274 on food stamps in one month, we barely get by on that, just the two of us.

Thanks to stagnant wages and a rising cost of living, the American Dream has now become an Impossible Dream for millions of working Americans. Both parents are required to work in order to just get by. Even during the Clinton years families still struggled because the bulk of the economic growth went to those who were already making huge sums of money. And it is far worse now, as tax revenues have fallen and states are struggling to cope with the loss of those funds. Stricter requirements for welfare, food stamps, or unemployment make it difficult for people to go to school or otherwise find a way to break out of the cycle of poverty. The jobs that used to provide a stable income for low-skill workers are leaving the country: I lost my job because the company I worked for found it cheaper to move the shop to Mexico and pay workers $5 a week than it was to pay someone $11 an hour.

And the current federal government is an active proponent of these policies, intentionally making life more difficult for those at the bottom while filling the pockets of their rich friends. They claim to want a meritocracy but they have built instead a Kleptocracy, where money is literally stolen from the very poor and given to the very rich. Not satisfied with robbing workers of the salaries they have earned, the kleptocrats now turn their attention to pensions: United Airlines "wins" a court case that allows it to rid itself of its responsibility to its workers and slough off the expense to a federal agency ill-equipped to handle it: retirees will get less than half of what they were expecting, some of them must now rejoin the work force at a time in their lives when they should be enjoying what they have worked so hard for. Polaroid's executives, primarily responsible for bankrupting their company, get millions while workers, some of whom worked for Polaroid for decades, get a single check for $47.

This cannot continue. We cannot enjoy the blessings of liberty if all the wealth rests in the hands of a very few. We can have neither life, nor liberty, nor can we pursue happiness when we are crushed by overwhelming poverty. This is how revolutions begin. We need to do more than raise the minimum wage, we need to recognize that there must be a minimum standard of living that gives every working person the true worth of their hard-earned dollars. We need to destroy the power of privilege and re-take the government so that it represents all of us, and not just the wealthy, connected few. Unless we do that, then government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall surely perish from the face of the Earth.

Institutionalized Offensensitivity

Digby discusses an article in the NY Times talking about how the Times needs to be more "sensitive" towards offending the "real people" of the Red States:

[The editors] "re-framed" the issue of religious discrimination and gay rights. They are simply being "sensitive" and "conveying how disturbing the issue us in many corners of American social, cultural and religious life" when they uncritically report on a White House endorsed publicly funded group that enables Christian bigots to discriminate even though it's clearly against the law.

In an interview with Dick Cavett not long after the release of the film Monty Python's Life Of Brian, the great writer and comedian John Cleese discussed the idea of offense. Cleese talked about "institutional offense", that is, leaders of organizations who express offense publicly because that's what their constituents expected of them. He also said that when you have really offended someone they tend to come up to you very quietly and let you know what it was that offended them and often you feel bad that you really did hurt someone. According to Cleese, the BBC has something called "The Department Of Offense" or something or other whose job it was to determine whether a particular program was really offensive or not. The leader of this organization at the time, whose name escapes me, had a wonderful attitude concerning his job: "There are some people one would wish to offend!", he used to say.

This I truly believe. This isn't to say that I don't think that people have the right to speak out, or that they don't have the right to believe what they believe. They certainly do. But we also have the right to call them idiots or simply to ignore them if we so desire. It's certainly our right to keep these people from positions of power and authority, or at the least prevent them from using that authority to act on their racist, homophobic beliefs. Certainly no one in the so-called "professional" media should give credence to these views for no other reason than they are "disturbed" by the idea that others deserve to be treated equally. A lot of racists and homophobes are offended by the very existence of anyone who is different than they are, and my answer to them is tough shit.

But it's clear now that the so-called "pros" are sensitive to institutionalized offensiveness, and are planning on bending even further backwards so as not to appear to be "out of touch" with the assorted racists and homophobes who constitute the overwhelming majority of the Republican leadership. When the time comes, maybe we can all have a good chuckle over it together while we're hanging out in the death camps. just don't offend the guards.

On Fear

Robert Parry of Consortium News writes about how fear is a primary motivating force behind the Bush administration's propaganda machine:

What the American conservative movement has done so effectively over the last three decades is to perfect a dynamic of fear and inject it into the key institutions for generating or disseminating information.

This strategy took shape in the latter half of the 1970s amid the ashes of the Watergate scandal and the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. Conservatives were determined that those twin disasters – getting caught in a major political scandal and seeing the U.S. population turn against a war effort – should never happen again.

Fear is a dangerous and powerful emotion. It's the driving force behind our survival instinct, the most basic and primal emotion every living creature has. Overcoming it takes extraordinary effort, more than most people are capable of. Fear of the unknown gives rise to religion and religious warfare. Fear of losing what material possessions you have gives us class warfare. Fear of something different drives racism and sexism. Fear of that which we cannot control gives us tyranny. Fear that you have not lived up to certain standards gives us guilt. Fear of failure drives people to great accomplishments and sometimes great destruction. Fear is the chosen, time-proven method of manipulating people. It has been with us since the dawn of human civilization, and it will be with us for generations to come.

The neocons of the Bush administration are driven by fear. Their bluster is just a mask for the fears they cannot face: the fear that if they do not control others, others will control them. The fear that they are not quite so special as they believe. The fear that money and power represent the only tangible meaning life has: to have less than others, or to be satisfied with what one has, represents failure. They will sacrifice millions in the name of that fear, and the more money and power they have, the more afraid they are of losing it. It's like a runaway train whose owners are pouring fuel into the fire even as they dismantle the brakes. No speed is fast enough, and only a crash can stop it.

On the other end of the economic scale, working people also live their lives in fear. The upper-middle classes are afraid of falling behind, the middle classes are afraid of falling into the lower classes, the lower classes fear going into poverty or being unable to support themselves: relying on charity to survive. Corporations use this fear to manipulate workers into doing more for less money, or else lose what little they have. Only when conditions are so bad that it no longer makes any difference will people stand up and fight: for those who have no hope have no fear.

This is not to say, of course that all our fears are ungrounded. Even the paranoid fear of the neocons has a basis in reality: they know that they're not alone in the world and that if they stop fighting others will take their place. Working people, closer to poverty, are keenly aware of what happens when they lose their income. Those who are oppressed live in fear they may be killed outright. They have good reason to be afraid: millennia of human history stands against them.

In the television series Babylon 5, the conflict that represented the primary plot to the show was highlighted by two philosophies summed up by the questions its two proponents asked: one question was introspective in nature: Who Are You?, which was designed to make their adherents think beyond such things as names and titles and come to grips with what made them sentient beings. The other philosophy, a Darwinian approach to life that advocated conflict as a means to achieve perfection, was geared towards baser emotions: What Do You Want?.

I have my own question: What Are You Afraid Of? I am an advocate of facing one's fears, and I think that's what we all need to do. In previous columns I have (rightly) chastised the limousine liberals for not using their wealth to help further the cause of liberalism/progressivism. I don't know exactly what drives their fear: that they will lose their money or that they will give it away to an unworthy cause or person, but I believe that their fears are ungrounded. If one of the neocons or their hardcore supporters could ever stop long enough from their struggle to consider that question, I wonder if it might make them re-think their strategies or their politics. In both cases, I doubt that will ever happen. Ask Mr. Bush at a press conference what he fears and I think it's reasonable to assume that he will give an answer to the effect that he fears that terrorists will kill millions if given the chance. He may even believe such a thing to be so, though it's so hard to tell with people who are so driven by their fears they are blinded to reality.

Franklin Roosevelt reminds us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and our struggle with Bush and the neocons begins with facing our fears. We have to determine which of our fears is realistic and which is not (and we have to be honest with ourselves along those lines). We have to act, not out of a need to simply recover lost power, but from a need to drive fear from human society, so that whatever problems we face in the future, they will be new ones. The enemy is not the Bush administration, the enemy is fear. To paraphrase Frank Herbert: We must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. We will face our fear [and] where the fear is gone there will be nothing. Only we will remain.

Ad Nauseum

Robert Parry of Consortium News adds his voice to Ben Burch, John Aravosis, and myself:

For too many years, hand-to-mouth progressive media outlets have survived largely on subsidies from freelance journalists who contributed their work for a fraction of its value.

While some progressives may consider this self-sacrifice noble, it’s really self-destructive. Eventually, the best of these journalists gravitate to better-paying (though often boring) jobs in the mainstream media or they abandon journalism altogether simply to pay the bills and support their families.

For the journalists who try to stick it out, the lack of money limits how much time they can devote to stories. Plus, the poorly paid editorial staff at most left-of-center outlets provides a weak support system. The result is often a journalistic product that is shallow and confusing, further turning off the public.

As sick as I get about having to say this, they're all correct. The left treats money like it's a fucking disease; dare to bring it up and you'll be shunned like a leper in Biblical times, especially by people who have it. They seem to think that it's more noble and important for us to suffer in poverty fighting their battles while they lounge in luxury.

I'm sure that when the time comes and the GOP thugs break down their doors, murder them, set fire to their houses and steal from them, they can take comfort in the fact that they spared us the ignobility of earning a living while fighting for the cause. Matthew Shepard wasn't an aberration: what was done to him represents what they would like to do to each and every one of us if they're given the chance. And by letting us, the footsoldiers of this war, die for lack of resources, that's exactly what they are inviting.

You all may be sick of hearing it but I am going to keep saying it until someone starts ponying up, or I'm forced to stop the blog and the show because I'm homeless, or the thugs come for me.

Touched

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The vote in France and the probable outcome in the Netherlands have shocked the ruling class, exposing a gulf between national leaders and people in the street, and an estrangement between common Europeans and the EU bureaucracy in Brussels.

This from the newspaper whose circulation has dropped like a rock even as the population of the Atlanta has risen over the last few years. This from a newspaper solidly behind Mr. Bush, who isn't just out of touch with the American people, he's out of touch with reality.

But maybe they're right, maybe they're not so much out of touch as they are touched.

Loopy, that is.