Two predictions

So easy to set off a bomb here ...
I am not big on predictions, but I am going to make a couple anyway, because they illustrate larger points.

1) There will not be another event like 9/11. We were safe before that event, and are just as safe after. The event itself was so off-the-wall that it succeeded.

It is not new security measures that prevents re-occurrence of such an event. The reason I feel comfortable saying this is that mass killing of innocent people is very easy to do. People in other countries are very angry at us, so that it should have happened by now. But no matter how mad people may get at our government and our bombs and bombers and sociopaths, it is very rare for them to vent their anger by killing innocent people. There’s no satisfaction in that. That’s our shtick.

Here’s how easy it would be to do some real mayhem: All our elaborate airport security cannot prevent someone from carrying a bomb into an airport and detonating in the security screening area. Bombers don’t need people gathered on an airplane – they only need for people to be gathered at a single place. All of our elaborate security has merely shifted the gathering point.

As I have long known, and George Carlin reminded us, the whole point of airport security is to keep us in a state of fear. If someone wants to set off a bomb and kill innocent people, it is impossible to prevent.

So no more 9/11’s. Please relax, folks. You’re safe.

The Great Capitulator
2): The Bush tax cuts will be preserved. The only reason that they are set to expire is that they were passed via reconciliation, something that Democrats told us was so too obtuse and complicated to be useful. Bills that increase the deficit that are passed via reconciliation are automatically sunsetted after ten years. Otherwise, the tax cuts would have been permanent and hard-wired. It is now up to Obama to perform that task.

Obama is employing the same strategy with tax cuts as he did with the public option in health care. He is candidate Obama again, our progressive friend. It’s triangulation. At an appropriate time after the election we are going to learn that Obama will ‘accede’ to ‘pressure’ from the Republicans to preserve the cuts.

For right now, due to public opinion, the Democratic leadership had to forestall any action on the tax cuts until after the election. That part is done.

The worst part will be that Obama will apply a little Vaseline, offering up a little morsel here and there, as he did with health care, to convince Democrats that they got something meaningful in return for capitulation.

And they will eat it up. The politics I understand, but this constant capitulation I do not. Where is the validation in losing, losing, losing? How can Democrats live like that?

Molly Tooly Moody on health care reform

Molly Moody (file photo)
“Molly Moody” (middle name “Tooly?”) wrote over at Left in the West on the supposed wonderful reforms of health care “reform.

The primary job of Democrats, as commenter “Ladybug” once reminded me, is to lower our expectations and keep them low. With health care, we are being told that a little bit of change is a really big deal. We are also to assume that this little bit of change would not have happened had not Democrats been elected. But it is public discontent, and not the party in power, that is the driving force behind reform. In the current environment, where money rules all, it is Democrats who are best at suppressing the reform impulse by rubbing a little bit of salve on a gaping wound, and then telling us it is major surgery.

Here are Molly’s six, the wonderful reforms the Democrats have given us. The Wellpoint-written health care reform bill …

1. Bans Insurance Companies from Dropping our Coverage When We Get Sick: The practice of rescission is indeed abominable, but only came about because insurance companies are able to construct artificial barriers around health care to prevent entry by potentially unprofitable clients. When someone lied on an application, the insurance company did not care, as they could simply fix the error by retroactively canceling the policy. Now that they cannot go back, they will simply be more cautious at the outset.

One a scale of 1-10, the amount of positive change here: 1.

2. Prohibits Excluding Coverage for Children With Pre-existing Conditions: There are many families where the parents buy insurance for the kids but not themselves, a third-world kind of fallback for people shut out of the system. Insurance companies here in Colorado, and no doubt elsewhere, have simply stopped writing policies in that area. (0)

3. Empowers Consumers to Appeal Insurance Company Denials: This already existed at the state level. Good grief. (0)

4. Extends Coverage for Young Adults: Young adults can stay on a parent’s plan until they turn 26. Here we might have something of value … if we pay the Piper. These insurance companies are willing to change any procedure if their bottom line is not threatened. Now that they all must insure kids until age 26, they will merely adjust their rates to compensate for the additional exposure. (Kids in their early 20’s are not a high-risk group anyway.) (0)

5. Provides Free Preventive Care: Nothing is “free.” of course, and surely not under these supposed reforms. The requirement that insurers now cover preventive care without deductibles and co-pays will be reflected in premiums. (Remember, there were no cost controls in this legislation.) However, the fact that people who previously avoided preventive care will now more likely seek it out is a good thing. (2)

6. Eliminates Lifetime Limits on Insurance Coverage: As with #5 above, this too will be reflected in premium structure, and insurance company profits are not threatened. Nonetheless, the very idea that our life lines could be cut off was barbaric. (3)

So, six changes heralded as a great accomplishment by these mealy-mouthed quislings we call Democrats … potential positive change: 60. Actual change, in the writer’s view: 6.

6/60 = 10% of mission accomplished. I’ll be damned. As Democrats go, this is overachieving!

Democrats are going to take a drubbing at the polls in November, and will whine that we are better off with them than the alternative. They always whine about that. If that were true, if it were anything more than good-cop-bad-cop, they might have a legitimate case.

As I am so fond of saying, better a real enemy than a false friend.

War threatens all that is good

All of my adult life I have been a company man, only dimly aware of the extent to which institutional loyalties induce myopia. Asserting independence required first recognizing the extent to which I had been socialized to accept certain things as unimpeachable. Here then were the preliminary steps essential to making education accessible. Over a period of years, a considerable store of debris had piled up. Now, it all had to go. Belatedly, I learned that more often than not what passes for conventional wisdom is simply wrong. Adopting fashionable attitudes to demonstrate one’s trustworthiness – the world of politics is flush with such people hoping thereby to qualify for inclusion in some inner circle – is akin to engaging in prostitution in exchange for promissory notes. It is not only demeaning but downright foolhardy. (Andrew J. Bacevich, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War)

Bacevich: A man on the move (to the margins)
As I read the above words with a sad realization: Bacevich, widely cited, has appeared in many respectable venues, in addition to less desirable places like The Nation and Democracy Now. Soon only the latter will be available to him. His words are a cry of angst that will move him to the margins of acceptable thought.

The book had a familiar feel and color to it, and so I dug out an old Noam Chomsky book that had the same texture, and sure enough, the same publisher: Metropolitan Books. How far you have fallen, Mr. Bacevich. How many turned you down?

You are toast, Mr. Bacevich. You might as well move to France.

Bacevich is writing above about his Eureka! decade – not a sudden realization, but a painful slow epiphany during which he realized that the Cold War was fought without a viable enemy. The Russians were never a threat to us. This led him to other realizations … that our permanent state of war has as much to do with military Keynesianism as any capitalist ideology; that our current aggressive wars are criminal endeavors, and that there was never a call or need for us to “lead” the rest of the world. But here is the worst: Military Keynesianism doesn’t work anymore, doesn’t give us the needed high. And cold turkey might kill us.

1948: Truman signs the National Security Act, meaning permanent warAfter World War II, and passage of the National Security Act of 1948, the Department of War became the Department of Defense. We’ve been at war ever since. The science/art of propaganda had been abandoned, but was resurrected to scare the population into supporting a permanent war machine. The Soviet Union (with China sideboard), was set up as an evil empire and used to justify every military endeavor we undertook. When they collapsed, we used the Microsoft Word “find/replace” command to insert the word “terrorism” everywhere that “Communism” appeared, and carried on as if nothing had changed.

Americans are scared now, so much so that there isn’t much left of our intellectual culture, which is why Bacevich will never be invited to another party in Georgetown. He doesn’t fit. His realization is counter-cultural. His books will not be reviewed in the Times and NY Review of Books. He will cease to exist.

Hard to fathom, but this kind of nonsense really works
Republicans recently came up with a new version of their 1994 “Contract with America,” called the “Pledge to America.” In it, they promise to cut spending and taxes and balance the budget … but not to touch military spending. They are sure the formula will work, as the idea that unnecessary military spending is necessary is sacrosanct. There is only one possible outcome: Cutbacks in social spending.

And that is the objective. The guns have won the propaganda battle, and butter is losing. All of our social programs, including Medicare and Social Security, are threatened now (as always), but with right wing Democrats in office, more so than ever before.

Here’s some wisdom from the margins: We are not at war with anyone, except by choice. We are safe. We are threatened by runaway population and environmental degradation. We can make our lives better by investing in health care, alternative energy, infrastructure, science and education.

Our war machine, our Pentagon, our military-industrial complex, threatens all of that.

Free the Iranian two! (And tens of thousands of others)

Sarah Shroud
The following are the comments of Sarah Shroud upon release from an Iranian prison after being detained over a year on charges of espionage:

It is so good to be free again, to taste new food and smell ocean air. I wake up with a heavy heart and then realize that I am free to go anywhere, do anything I please. The sense of freedom overwhelms me. It is so good be alive.

If it were only me. But there are others behind bars, people held without charges by an unaccountable regime. These people have been held for years on trumped-up charges, some not having seen their homeland or families for almost ten years.

I am referring, of course, to the prison at Guantanamo, and the secret prisons that the United States runs in Iraq, Afghanistan, and CIA torture prisons in undisclosed locations. I am referring to the hundreds, if not thousands of Palestinians who have disappeared into the Israeli prison system, and for whom Israel refuses to offer details.

Oh yeah, also, my fiance’ Shane Bauer, and our friend, Josh Fattal. Them too. Almost forgot.

OK, yeah, I made it up. Just wanted to point out the American state of mind that can see small injustice and be blind to monstrous ones.

Organic gouging

I have read in various places from people who should know that there is no nutritional difference between “organic” and regular food. I do not doubt this, but we eat mostly organic food. It costs more, but we believe it is an ethical choice. I realize that most people cannot justify the extra expense. There is no way we could have afforded Whole Foods when our kids were young.

However, I would not care how food was labeled if we had transparency – if we could know that animals are treated ethically, soil preserved. We would be far better off to let our chickens roam free and put Monsanto in a cage. And if advertising ever told us anything that was true, we might make better choices.

But that’s the way we live. So even though it’s a bit annoying, we pay more for the “organic” label. Part of the high cost of organic food is the “ideology cost” – that is, Whole Foods jacks up its prices knowing that people will pay more if they believe they are participating in an ethical movement.

Whole Foods gouges the eyes out of its patrons. Every single item in that store ends with two digits: $.99. Pricing is merely a matter of picking the numbers that precede .99, and that often seems to be a random process. But they also treat their people well – their employees and suppliers. That matters too.

Here are our justifications for organic food:

An American kid's food cornucopia
1. Organic food practices are easier on the land. Most food that we eat is petroleum-dependent, and the soil is merely the medium by which we convert oil to food. Organic food uses natural fertilizers and no pesticides, so that nutrients are constantly recycled to preserve long-term soil viability. I wonder what would happen to the Midwest if we ran out of oil. Would it be a desert?

2. Most organic food tastes better. Organic strawberries are smaller, but sweeter and juicier than their non-organic counterparts. Organic deli meat does not have that oily texture that we find in Subway sandwiches. (God only knows what they inject in that stuff to make it appear edible. Two things about it are certain: They add color, to make it look wholesome, and artificial flavors, to make it taste real.)

Some non-organic food is as wholesome as its organic counterpart. I notice no difference in organic potatoes, peppers, beans, chips, beer. Some is worse – organic bananas are hit-and-miss. Organic peanut butter … well, if I can’t spread it with a knife, I don’t eat it. I’m a Skippy man.

Can it be far behind?
3. Animals raised for organic food have better lives. People laugh at the idea of “free range” chickens, but I like the idea that a chicken gets to enjoy chickenhood, eating bugs and pecking at manure, before she dies. Cows like eating grass – it makes them happy. Pigs like rooting. And none of them anticipate death. They are the last to know what is coming. But for their brief stay on the planet, why not treat them ethically?

I realize that this is America, and there is probably a lot of hype behind claims of “free range” and “grass fed.” For instance, if they merely put a door and fifty square feet of lawn on a barn housing several thousand chickens, they can say that the eggs are “cage-free.” And probably much of it is just plain lying, either outright, or using words and phrases, like “lightly sweetened” or “natural” that have no legal meaning. Most likely much of what is labeled organic is just re-branded. This is America, after all, and advertising is nothing more than professional lying.

Free-range potheads
It’s a compromise. We know that Whole Foods is gouging us, and that some growers are probably lying their asses off. But there’s another movement that makes even more sense – to buy locally. Our local farmers’ market is talking now about five days a week. We can buy local fruit and vegetables, beef, chicken and pork, wine and beer (OK – hops are from far away places), all without that 1,500 miles of transportation regular food takes to get to our table.

As always, it is buyer beware. But the closer to home our food sources, the more accountability there is.

The Sarah

Image from Vanity Fair article
I finally got around to reading Michael Joseph Gross’s Vanity Fair piece, Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury, this morning. Imagine this poor schmuck, given the assignment of digging into Sarah’s life, and finding a stone wall so heavily patrolled that the only person willing to speak openly and on the record is an already-rich “matriarch of one of Wasilla’s oldest families”, Colleen Cottle.

[Palin] “had no attention span—with Sarah it was always ‘What’s the flavor of the day?’ ”; [she] was unable to take part meaningfully in conversations about budgets because she “does not understand math or accounting—she only knows buzzwords, like ‘balanced budget’ ”; and who clocked out after four hours on most days, delegating her duties to an aide—“but he’ll never talk to you, because he has a state job and doesn’t want to lose it.”

Even Cottle says she and her husband Rodney will “pay a price” for her words.

Gross claims at the beginning that he started out agnostic about The Sarah, but became hardened in his opinions about her as he dug deeper. I’ll take him at his word, but doubt his intelligent and skeptical nature if that is true. Signs are all over the place for the average outsider observer, much less the trained journalist.

The article leave us with no more information that we could have gleaned by ourselves just observing the abundant clues around her. How hard is it to figure that she doesn’t write her own speeches, Facebook entries, or even Tweets, or that she has no conception of politics, domestic or international affairs? Of course she doesn’t read and cannot think properly. Duh! She is merely a reflection of the wishes of those who project their starry-eyed hopes on her.

I’d take it even a step deeper – she has no deep and abiding faith, but rather carries with her that shrill version of Christianity that judges and proscribes without enlightening. She’s likely never thought deeply about faith or read the bible, new or old testament. She is of this life, this moment, never thinking much beyond.

Mark Moe, a teacher of thirty years, wrote about her personality type in a piece in the Denver Post last December:

It recently dawned on me that one of the most predominant types — especially among female students — has as its avatar a political celebrity who has made a raucous re-entry onto the national stage. Therefore, I’m calling it The Sarah.

The Sarah has three basic characteristics: a lack of self-evaluative skills; a tendency to parrot whatever she thinks her immediate audience wants or needs to hear to gain validation, and the mistaken belief that popularity implies importance.

Gross’s piece hit the recycle bin shortly after I finished. Nothing new there, no reason to want to know more. It’s all right in front of us. She is as she appears, shallow, phony, and mean as Michael Vick’s pit bull. She will never be president – even the slickest professional manager in the business would not be able to both manage her mercurial personality and keep her little dim bulb under a bushel basket for a full campaign.

The disconcerting thought is that so many people think she has the qualifications to sit at the helm. What the hell is wrong with us?

Give this woman a pole …

For a good time, call Christine ...
The following observation by Christopher Hitchens gives us a good lens through which to observe our culture:

Nothing optional–from homosexuality to adultery–is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate” — “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” p. 40

Anti-masturbation candidate Christine O’Donnell won her primary, which is of no concern to me. Then I saw the clip from Bill Maher’s old show talking about the subject. The woman was in misery, so anxious to knock one off that it would be a quick one-two from bar (or church basement) to bed with her. It is an odd Victorian era notion that we must fight our primal urges. Christianity denies what is natural for the sake of the supernatural. Not a good bet.

Repressed urges come out in some form – repressed sexuality often comes out in urges to ban sexuality in others, as Hitchens notes. Homosexuality is present in mild to heavy doses in many of us, and those who repress it are often dangerous, self-loathing prisoners of their own consciences.

More fun is in store. This country’s right wing never ceases to amuse. The best times are when they take control of the political system. Since there is very little real power in that system, we really can’t be hurt by it. So sit back, grab some popcorn, relax, and enjoy the show. Oh, yeah, and if you are alone and feeling randy, while you’re watching, have a diddle. This O’Donnell gal has a Palin-kind of hotness about her. Her sexuality is seeping through her pores, bypassing her inhibitions. All that’s missing is the pole.
___________________
From the Borowitz Report:

WILMINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – Galvanized by Republican senatorial nominee Christine O’Donnell’s anti-masturbation stance, masturbators from across the state converged on Wilmington today in what some are calling the largest pro-wanking protest in American history.

Carrying signs reading, “O’Donnell: Hands Off Our Masturbation,” the angry masturbators clogged downtown Wilmington, stopping traffic for blocks.

Harley Farger, a leading Delaware masturbator and planner of the Million Masturbators March, said it was difficult to organize masturbators “because they’re used to acting alone.”

Mr. Farger, the executive director of the pro-monkey-spanking group MasturNation, said that the “wank and file” of his organization believe that masturbation is an inalienable right guaranteed by the Constitution.

“Our country was founded by rugged individualists,” he said. “And you know what individualists like to do.”

He said that Ms. O’Donnell’s anti-whacking position was “ill-timed,” adding, “In this economy, masturbation is one of the few simple pleasures people still can afford.”

Tracy Klugian, a homemaker and masturbator from Dover, Delaware, said she is “puzzled” by what she sees as the contradictory nature of candidate O’Donnell’s position: “If you’re against masturbation, why would you want to serve in Congress?”

A spokesman for the Wilmington Police Department, Crandall Darlington, said that the Million Masturbators March could cost the city tens of thousands of dollars, “especially when you include the cost of cleaning up afterwards.”

Team of cronies

There was quite a bit of talk when Barack Obama took office about Doris Kearn’s book, Team of Rivals. It’s about Abraham Lincoln and the fact that he brought is avowed enemies into his cabinet when he was elected president.

Lincoln was a strong man who did not suffer cognitive dissonance or from group think, two terms that had not been invented at that time. He wanted to hear it all, knowing that the truth can pop up anywhere, and might best be fleshed out by heated exchange among rivals.

John F. Kennedy had a different strategy after the Bay of Pigs. He deliberately left meetings where he thought his mere presence was influencing the discussion.

But with Obama, it’s quite different. That was a nice little touch when he took office, to make it look like he was bringing ideological rivals on board. He wasn’t. He was bringing in people that shared his philosophy, which looks suspiciously like that of his predecessor.

The joke’s on us!

Off we go a-rapturin’

Radio host Thom Hartmann
My exposure to talk radio of any variety these days is limited to about fifteen minutes a day – that period of time that it takes to shower. I take the laptop with me, turn on Thom Hartmann. For those who have never experienced non-right wing talk radio, lefty hosts are more willing to entertain opposing points of view. Hartmann especially takes trouble to bring on people with whom he disagrees. I like the concept, but sadly Thom is hyper, unable to make a short statement. His sentences are like a herd of cats climbing a tree, each going a different direction at once. Listening to him can be painful.

Yesterday he had on Bryan Fischer, a Christian theologian and Director of Issue Analysis for the American Family Association. Bryan believes that (A) Islam is a curse upon humanity, but doesn’t say that they must be wiped out (B). He merely intimates. Islam is, after all, a violent religion, while Christianity is a religion of peace.

Such lunacy is ripe ground for exposure of hypocrisy, and Hartmann was quick to remind him of Deuteronomy and Jeremiah. Fischer did duck and cover, an odd twist to religious fanaticism wherein the faithful abandon the Old Testament as necessary, and claim only ownership of the new. He dared Hartmann to come up with one passage in the New Testament that encouraged violence, and when he mentioned Jesus saying “I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword,” Fisher said that he was merely speaking in metaphor. Hartmann then asked him if possibly tracts of the Koran are metaphor too, but no, said Fischer, those passages are stone cold.

Fisher then went on to count 109 places in the Koran where violence is wished upon the infidels. Christianity is validated! (Like George Carlin, I wonder why this Christian God is always short of cash, but that’s another issue.)

And then I was done shaving, and off went the radio show. And this morning I remembered something else in the New Testament … Revelations. I don’t hear much about that book these days – that’s the one where 75% of the earth’s population are killed and a triumphant Christ returns on a white horse with a sword. All but 144,000 Jews are murdered. People either convert or suffer the consequences of this peaceful religion.

The final massacre of infidels, shorter version
Peaceful people don’t know what to make of that crazy book. Christian lunatics use it as a means personal validation. Thomas Jefferson omitted it from his bible, calling it “the ravings of a maniac.” I’ve never done any drugs beyond pot, and that only a couple of times, and I’ve never been to a Barry Manilow concert, so I cannot commiserate with the author of that horrible tract. It’s just plain nutty.

But so much for peaceful Christians and the dehumanizing rhetoric about Muslims. Deep inside each of these bible-validating cretins is a wish that 75% of us, and all but a bushel basket of Jews, die a horrible death.