Sen Joe Lieberman is, like President Obama, a man who shed his progressive and liberal pretenses while holding office as a Democrat. But Lieberman is a little more interesting. He had presidential aspirations one time, and as a cloaked right winger was taken on as Al Gore’s running mate in 2000. In 2004 he set out to become the first Jewish* president of the United States. But his campaign never gained traction. He seemed hurt by the rebuff, and stopped pretending to hold any progressive views other than being pro-legal abortion. In 2006 he was beaten in the Connecticut primary, and so ran as an independent, garnering enough Republican votes to hold on to his seat.

Lieberman was useful during the health care debate, announcing at various times that he would oppose any bill that contained a public option. He appeared to be a renegade, but was not at all that. He was merely playing the antagonist in a scripted stage play. But ever since he lost his presidential bid, he’s been openly right wing. He’s come out. I appreciate that about him, and wish others, like Jon Tester and Max Baucus, Michael Bennet, Diane Feinstein, Ben Nelson, Harry Reid, Mary Landrieu … it’s quite a long list, actually … would abandon the closet and simply announce that they are right wingers. That’s no way to live.

Lieberman came out today in favor of cutting Social Security benefits in favor of additional war spending. Coming from a liberal Democrat, that would be a huge surprise. But from a formerly closeted right winger, it’s expected.

So no news here. Move along folks. Move along.
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*There are twelve Jewish senators. Two, Lieberman and Bernie Sanders, are Independents. The rest are all Democrats. It’s an interesting story, the result of discrimination by the old establishment ruling class, which was Protestant and Republican. It forced many Catholics and Jews who would otherwise be instinctively Republican into the Democratic Party. That tradition continues to this day.

I just listened to Congresswoman Diana DeGette of Colorado on the radio. She voted against the debt ceiling agreement, to her credit. (It must be noted, however, that once a bill is assured of passage, representatives are free to vote either way on it.)

DeGette was asked how Democrats were going to approach the electorate next year in the wake of the sellout on the manufactured crisis. Ninety-five of them vote with the president and against our interests. Amazingly, she blamed the voters for electing Tea Party people to congress. If Democrats had fulfilled their 2008 mandate, voters might not have abandoned them in 2010. To blame the voters now for the making the only other choice they were offered – weak Democrat or Foxy Tea Party – is disingenuous in the extreme.

But it is so typical. In the ongoing game of good-cop bad-cop, the “good” ones are orchestrating stealth attacks against us. Democrats rally around their stealthies out of fear of the bad cop, the mean old Republicans. When called to task for their own failures, they blame the bad cop.

Will it ever change? No. It’s two-party lesser-evil politics, and for as long as our campaigns are financed by the oligarchy, it will not change.
Continue reading “Foxy Democrats” →

It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to Infidelity. (Abraham Lincoln, Manford’s Magazine, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents

Acharya S writes in “The Christ Conspiracy” about the origins of the Christian religion. It is not a scholarly work by any means. It’s merely derivative, a mishmash of the works of others, with no original research. But it helps this non-scholarly layman to read her summary of that research, as I will never read that stuff myself. Religion is not part of my life, and there are too many other fun things to be doing. Her sources may be cranks and quacks, but all of religion is quackery anyway. So who better to read – S, or learned theologians?

I do see Gore Vidal’s wisdom in placing polytheism above monotheism:

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god’s purpose. (Lowell Lecture, Harvard University, 1992)

Continue reading “Issa-ra-el” →

People are talking about poor little Norway, so innocent, now losing its virginity. As Glenn Greenwald reminds us, Norway got slutty when it participated in the NATO attack on Libya where where they bombed the house of Gaddafi’s son, thinking the old man was there. Instead they killed his son and three of his grandchildren.* In those circumstances, is it not logical to suggest that Norway’s own rulers and their families are also culpable, and targeting them is as legitimate as targeting Libyan innocents? Even if they don’t actually get the Prime Minister, isn’t all the other carnage just collateral damage?

Anyway, even as it was assumed and reported without evidence that the bombings and shootings of all those kids was the work of Muslim terrorists, it turns out to be right wing nationalists.

Yes, it’s awful, just awful, to see innocents killed like that. And the killings in Norway are just as barbaric.
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*Typically when that happens the US claims that the victims were being used as human shields.

George Orwell is often cited here in the land of the free, but only in reference to others, and not the self. His ideas on totalitarian society were only allowed to air in reference to the old Soviet Union. In his introduction to Animal Farm he talked about literary censorship not in Russia, but in England. Those words were removed prior to the publishing of the book, in other words, censored in England.

Indeed Orwell was disenchanted of Communists during the Spanish Civil War, as he saw they they were in league with Franco (perhaps it was a primitive form of what we now call “triangulation”). But Orwell was a lifelong socialist, and his other writings are as dismissive of elements of British society as the old USSR.

He invented “Newspeak” as a metaphor for they way people learn to think in totalitarian societies. By removing the ability to express revolutionary thoughts, people are gripped in emotions that they cannot put to words, and so descend into utter hopelessness. They learn to take joy in small and pointless affairs as the “Two Minutes’ Hate.” It is very important for us to get the hatred out, but also to be sure that it is not pointed at people truly deserving of hatred. Continue reading “lower case* thinking” →

From the Financial Times:

Warren ponders race for senate
Academic electrifies liberal Democrats

Elizabeth Warren may have been passed over by the Obama administration for the top job at the new financial sector consumer watchdog, but the Harvard academic is now electrifying liberal Democrats over a possible new position : senator for Massachusetts.

It’s hard to know what Obama will do here – she is already a tenured professor, so he cannot entice her with a Pat Williams-like cushy teaching job. Some other administration job is out of the question. She’s too smart to accept a pointless position with no power. So perhaps he’ll do what he did when appointed Senator Michael Bennet was in trouble here in Colorado, challenged by a popular progressive: intervene in the campaign. Would he go to Massachusetts and campaign openly for Scott Brown?

Hard to know. He’s clever. Something will derail her candidacy.

We had lunch with our former landlord last October. She is insecure and in search of gurus, and flattered me by asking me the future. She was worried about housing prices, but she also had a boyfriend suffering from Howard-Ruffianism, telling her to buy gold because the sky was falling. I was able to calm her with ease. I told her that, regarding the future, “I haven’t a clue.” I further said that no one knows the future, so not to listen to the boyfriend or buy Krugerrands or some oddball mutual fund that has had recent success. Just endure, as we all do, and hope you can be happy no matter the worst of circumstances. Continue reading “Pocket aces” →