activistpost | The incentive to speak the truth and the reward for doing so are very
weak. And not just for a writer, but also for academics and experts who
can make far more money by lying than by telling the truth. How else
would we have got GMOs, jobs offshoring, the “unitary executive,” and a
deregulated financial system? It is a very lucrative career to testify
as an expert in civil lawsuits. It is part of America’s romance with the
lie that experts purchased by the opposing sides in a lawsuit battle it
out as gladiators seeking the jury’s thumbs-up.
And look at Congress. The two members of the House who stood up for the
Constitution and truth in government will soon be gone. Ron Paul is
stepping down, and Dennis Kucinich was redistricted out of his seat. As
for the Senate, these thoughtful personages recently voted 90-1 to
declare war on Iran, as the sole dissenter, Rand Paul, pointed out. The
Senate is very much aware, although only a few will publicly admit it,
that the US has been totally frustrated and held to a standoff, if not a
defeat, in Afghanistan and is unable to subdue the Taliban. Despite
this, the Senate wants a war with Iran, a war which could easily turn
out to be even less successful. Obviously, the Senate not only lies to
the public but also to itself.
Last week the Pentagon chief, Panetta, told China that the new US naval,
air, and troop bases surrounding China are not directed at China. What
else could be the purpose of the new bases? Washington is so accustomed
to lying and to being believed that Panetta actually thinks China will
believe his completely transparent lie. Panetta has confused China with
the American people: tell them what they want to hear, and they will
believe it.
Americans
live in a matrix of lies. They seldom encounter a truthful
statement.There is no evidence that Americans can any longer tell the
difference between the truth and a lie. Americans fell for all of these
lies and more: Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and al
Qaeda connections. Saddam Hussein’s troops seized Kuwaiti babies from
incubators and threw them on the floor. Gaddafi fed his troops Viagra to
help them rape Libyan women. Iran has a nuclear weapons program.
Change–yes we can! The US is “the indispensable country.” America is
broke because of food stamps and Social Security, not because of wars,
bankster bailouts, and a failing economy. Russia is America’s number one
enemy. China is America’s number one enemy. Iran is a terrorist state.
Jobs offshoring is free trade and good for the US economy. Israel is
America’s most loyal ally. The US missile shield surrounding Russia is
not directed at Russia. The South China sea is an area of US national
interest. Financial markets are self-regulating.
The list is endless. Lies dominate every policy discussion, every
political decision. The most successful people in America are liars.
The endless lies have created a culture of delusion. And this is why
America is lost. The beliefs of many Americans, perhaps a majority, are
comprised of lies. These beliefs have become emotional crutches, and
Americans will fight to defend the lies that they believe. The inability
of Americans to accept facts that are contrary to their beliefs is the
reason the country is leaderless and will remain so. Unless scales fall
from Americans’ eyes, Americans are doomed.
The outspoken Iranian leader raised hackles in Israel
on Monday when he said Israelis had been occupying their territory for
no more than 70 years. "They have no roots there in history," he added
during a visit to New York.
Meeting a group of children in Jerusalem, 89-year-old Peres said Ahmadinejad should have known better.
"It was an embarrassing speech which showed a deep historical
ignorance with regard to the deep historical connection between the
Jewish people and the land of Israel," he said, adding that Ahmadinejad
did not even know the history of his Persian ancestors.
The name
Israel first appeared at the end of the late Bronze Age and Israelite
tribes were living in the area more than 3,000 years ago, archaeologists
say.
Shortly after 600 B.C., Babylonian forces swept through the
lands and forced Jews into exile and captivity. But in 538 B.C. the
Persians in turn conquered Babylon and King Cyrus let the Jews return to
their old homeland.
"Around 2,500 years ago King Cyrus, the King
of Persia, granted the Jewish people led by Ezra and Nechamia the right
to return to Israel and to rebuild their home. The Jews lived on the
land of Israel for thousands of years and there is no lie or leader that
can remove chapters of history," Peres said.
The Jewish rulers of Jerusalem were crushed by the Roman empire and modern-day Israel was founded in 1948 as imperial Britain withdrew from Palestine.
Israel is at loggerheads with Iran over its disputed nuclear programme, saying that if Tehran
develops an atomic bomb it might use it to try to destroy the Jewish
state. Tehran says its nuclear industry is for purely civilian purposes.
hypertiger | Since the Universe is absolute capitalistic...as long as it exists...belief
can exist.
All the ants and the rivers and such...Appear to be ignorant and doomed and
don't seem to care much.
The only path they follow is the path of least resistance.
To the logical conclusion of the take more than you give equation that Truth
is the supply of power to.
And the rivers are driven by the sun.
Take more than you give to the rivers and you run out of water.
How about line signers...What if you take more than you give to the net
producers of debt which is technically all of you.
There is shrinkage...but because Bretton woods is global...as it
collapses...absolute capitalist states that make up the system...collapse.
Because they are cut off from the system.
Greece because they are dumb tax evaders and Iran because they are evil.
But this can be traced back to the period following the liquidation climax...and
the new system to replace the old system which is the current system the is
collapsing.
Basically as slow as is possible.
That is what is currently going on but there will be accelerations that will
just led to more long periods as people figure out how to adapt and survive.
Now how long until we accelerate is where the just think positive ignore
negative religion of hope begins that you all embrace.
The majority.
Unless you can show a devout worshiper of the just think positive ignore
negative religion...that which they don't want to see...they are blind to it.
veteransnewsnow | Iranian President Ahmadinejad alluded to what he sees as Israel’s illegitimate nuclear arsenal, and criticized members who haven’t stopped Israel from acquiring it:
“Some members of the Security Council with veto rights have chosen
silence with regard to the nuclear warheads of a fake regime, while at
the same time impeding…the scientific progress of other nations.”
He also bore down on those who have revolted at Holocaust
revisionism. He did this by calling attention to those who “infringe
upon other’s freedom and allow sacrilege to people’s beliefs and
sanctities, while they criticize posing questions or investigating into
historical issues.”
Throughout all of this, the U.S. envoy remained seated.
Outside the hall where Ahmadinejad was speaking, the Israeli envoy referred
to Ahmadinejad as, “the leader of an outlaw country that is a serial
violator of the fundamental principles of the rule of law.” He added,
“It is a shame and a disgrace to give someone like him the opportunity
to speak on such an important topic.”
The fact that nobody walked out on Ahmadinejad has sent a
clear message to Netanyahu that the days when Israel could demand other
nations send their children to war with Israel’s enemies are numbered.
Netanyahu has played gambit after gambit after gambit and
finds himself checkmated. Nuclear threat didn’t play after the Iraq
debacle. Red lines did not work. Tinkering with the US election did not
work. AIPAC did not work.
Netanyahu must be feeling checkmated right about now, leaving his
only remaining play as “knee to corner of board”, i.e. a false-flag
attack. Except of course, that is what everyone is expecting Netanyahu
to be considering right now, which means it is a risky gambit not likely
to reverse Israel’s situation.
Netanyahu must be throwing a tantrum right about now, He grew up
politically in a climate where whatever Israel wanted, Israel got;
money, American kids to throw onto the bayonets of Israel’s enemies,
etc. Netanyahu is not a man used to dealing with failure. In many ways
he is a spoiled child, spoiled by decades of US acquiescence to Israel’s
will and because of the US, other nations also bowed to Tel Aviv.
The US envoys have sent a very clear diplomatic message to the rest
of the UN that they no longer back Israel’s demands for more war.
A rational man would topple his King and admit defeat, but Netanyahu
may not be rational. He may stage a false-flag. He may just go ahead and
attack Iran’s power station. He may, out of pure spite, blow the
whistle on who really did 9-11, confident that the revelations will harm
the US Government more than it will harm Israel. Such deceptions are,
after all, what Israel is famous for. It’s expected!
But one thing is certain, Bibi will probably in one form or another
hit the panic button to get his war with Iran before Israel’s October
elections.
arctic-news | Although the sudden high rate Arctic methane increase at Svalbard in
late 2010 data set applies to only a short time interval, similar sudden
methane concentration peaks also occur at Barrow point and the effects
of a major methane build-up has been observed using all the major
scientific observation systems. Giant fountains/torches/plumes of
methane entering the atmosphere up to 1 km across have been seen on the
East Siberian Shelf. This methane eruption data is so consistent and
aerially extensive that when combined with methane gas warming
potentials, Permian extinction event temperatures and methane lifetime
data it paints a frightening picture of the beginning of the now
uncontrollable global warming induced destabilization of the subsea
Arctic methane hydrates on the shelf and slope which started in late
2010. This process of methane release will accelerate exponentially,
release huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere and lead to the
demise of all life on earth before the middle of this century.
Since the protests, attacks and flag burnings erupted two weeks ago over
an anti-Islam video made in California, administration officials have
condemned its crude depiction of the Prophet Muhammad and explained that
the government had nothing to do with it. Mr. Obama made a similar
point at the United Nations.
But he also gave a full-throated defense of the First Amendment right
that, in this country, protects even hateful writings, films and speech.
“We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can
quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities,” Mr.
Obama said. He added that “the strongest weapon against hateful speech
is not repression; it is more speech — the voices of tolerance that
rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of
understanding and mutual respect.”
Mr. Obama was right to deliver that message, however foreign it is in
much of the Muslim world. The assembled leaders applauded when Mr. Obama
said he accepts that, as president, people will call him “awful things
every day” and that he will defend their right to do it. But a number of
Islamic leaders have recently revived a push for an international ban
on blasphemy, which would move in exactly the wrong direction.
Mr. Obama’s more pragmatic challenges to Arab Spring countries trying to
build new democratic societies may have more impact. He said all
leaders must speak against violence and extremism out of obligation to
United Nations norms as well as self-interest. “Burning an American flag
does nothing to provide a child an education,” he said, and popular
outrage can be turned as easily against Muslim leaders, ethnic groups
and tribes as America.
lewrockwell | Try to imagine more deluded reporting than this by America’s Presstitute "free press." For 11 years Washington in pursuit of its rightful hegemony has been sending troops, bombers, jet fighters, helicopter gunships, drones, and assassination teams into seven Muslim countries. Two of the Muslim countries, Iraq and Libya, and perhaps more depending on how you see it, have been overthrown by Washington and left in chaos.
Washington’s assaults on seven countries have blown up weddings, funerals, kids’ soccer games, farm houses, hospitals, aid workers, schools, people walking along the streets, village elders, but the Muslims don’t mind! They understand that the well-meaning Americans who love them and are committed to their human rights, are bringing them democracy and women’s rights. The million or more dead, maimed, and displaced Muslims are a low price to be paid for liberation by Washington.Try to imagine more deluded reporting than this by America’s Presstitute "free press." For 11 years Washington in pursuit of its rightful hegemony has been sending troops, bombers, jet fighters, helicopter gunships, drones, and assassination teams into seven Muslim countries. Two of the Muslim countries, Iraq and Libya, and perhaps more depending on how you see it, have been overthrown by Washington and left in chaos.Try to imagine more deluded reporting than this by America’s Presstitute "free press." For 11 years Washington in pursuit of its rightful hegemony has been sending troops, bombers, jet fighters, helicopter gunships, drones, and assassination teams into seven Muslim countries. Two of the Muslim countries, Iraq and Libya, and perhaps more depending on how you see it, have been overthrown by Washington and left in chaos.
Washington’s assaults on seven countries have blown up weddings, funerals, kids’ soccer games, farm houses, hospitals, aid workers, schools, people walking along the streets, village elders, but the Muslims don’t mind! They understand that the well-meaning Americans who love them and are committed to their human rights, are bringing them democracy and women’s rights. The million or more dead, maimed, and displaced Muslims are a low price to be paid for liberation by Washington.
The Muslims understand that liberation has costs and were content with Washington’s liberating violence until some idiot in California produced an anti-Islamic film. This film, and not Washington’s predations, set the Muslim world alive with "hate America."
On the symbolic date of September 11, the US ambassador to Libya and some other Washington representatives were assassinated in Libya. According to the Presstitute media, the assassins did not kill the Americans because Washington destroyed their country and left them in chaos. The assassins killed the Americans because of an anti-Islamic film for which the murdered American representatives were not responsible.
This is the way Washington works and thinks. It is not Washington’s slaughter of Muslims and control over their societies and political life that produces blowback. It is independent film-makers in California!
Deluded politicians in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats and, of course, the bought-and-paid-for "experts," brought these forceful rejections of America upon us all. Washington has not only attacked Muslim countries on the basis of concocted lies – weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, brutal dictators – but also destroyed the secular governments who held the Islamists in check, and prevented their attacks on US representatives and institutions.
In Egypt, long an American puppet states, the US Embassy was stormed and the US flag was torn apart. If only this was all. Washington could again purchase the Egyptian government, as it has since Anwar Sadat’s assassination. But the ongoing news is that Anti-American protests are not only spreading across the Middle East but erupting throughout the world: Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Gaza, Bangladesh, Lebanon, London, and even into Israel.
The Obama administration is blaming al Qaeda, an Islamist group that the administration is currently supporting in its efforts to overthrow the secular Assad government in Syria and the group that the Obama administration used to overthrow the Libyan government, thus leaving a power vacuum in its place. Having destroyed the protection from Islamist attacks that secular Arab rulers provided Washington, Obama, in a show of force, has sent drones, aircraft carriers, Marines, and Tomahawk missile ships to Libya, raising the prospect that more schools and children's soccer games will be mistaken for jihadi encampments and blown up.
Washington’s assaults on seven countries have blown up weddings, funerals, kids’ soccer games, farm houses, hospitals, aid workers, schools, people walking along the streets, village elders, but the Muslims don’t mind! They understand that the well-meaning Americans who love them and are committed to their human rights, are bringing them democracy and women’s rights. The million or more dead, maimed, and displaced Muslims are a low price to be paid for liberation by Washington.
The Muslims understand that liberation has costs and were content with Washington’s liberating violence until some idiot in California produced an anti-Islamic film. This film, and not Washington’s predations, set the Muslim world alive with "hate America."
On the symbolic date of September 11, the US ambassador to Libya and some other Washington representatives were assassinated in Libya. According to the Presstitute media, the assassins did not kill the Americans because Washington destroyed their country and left them in chaos. The assassins killed the Americans because of an anti-Islamic film for which the murdered American representatives were not responsible.
This is the way Washington works and thinks. It is not Washington’s slaughter of Muslims and control over their societies and political life that produces blowback. It is independent film-makers in California!
Deluded politicians in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats and, of course, the bought-and-paid-for "experts," brought these forceful rejections of America upon us all. Washington has not only attacked Muslim countries on the basis of concocted lies – weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, brutal dictators – but also destroyed the secular governments who held the Islamists in check, and prevented their attacks on US representatives and institutions.
In Egypt, long an American puppet states, the US Embassy was stormed and the US flag was torn apart. If only this was all. Washington could again purchase the Egyptian government, as it has since Anwar Sadat’s assassination. But the ongoing news is that Anti-American protests are not only spreading across the Middle East but erupting throughout the world: Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Gaza, Bangladesh, Lebanon, London, and even into Israel.
The Obama administration is blaming al Qaeda, an Islamist group that the administration is currently supporting in its efforts to overthrow the secular Assad government in Syria and the group that the Obama administration used to overthrow the Libyan government, thus leaving a power vacuum in its place. Having destroyed the protection from Islamist attacks that secular Arab rulers provided Washington, Obama, in a show of force, has sent drones, aircraft carriers, Marines, and Tomahawk missile ships to Libya, raising the prospect that more schools and children's soccer games will be mistaken for jihadi encampments and blown up.
The Muslims understand that liberation has costs and were content with Washington’s liberating violence until some idiot in California produced an anti-Islamic film. This film, and not Washington’s predations, set the Muslim world alive with "hate America."
On the symbolic date of September 11, the US ambassador to Libya and some other Washington representatives were assassinated in Libya. According to the Presstitute media, the assassins did not kill the Americans because Washington destroyed their country and left them in chaos. The assassins killed the Americans because of an anti-Islamic film for which the murdered American representatives were not responsible.
This is the way Washington works and thinks. It is not Washington’s slaughter of Muslims and control over their societies and political life that produces blowback. It is independent film-makers in California!
Deluded politicians in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats and, of course, the bought-and-paid-for "experts," brought these forceful rejections of America upon us all. Washington has not only attacked Muslim countries on the basis of concocted lies – weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, brutal dictators – but also destroyed the secular governments who held the Islamists in check, and prevented their attacks on US representatives and institutions.
In Egypt, long an American puppet states, the US Embassy was stormed and the US flag was torn apart. If only this was all. Washington could again purchase the Egyptian government, as it has since Anwar Sadat’s assassination. But the ongoing news is that Anti-American protests are not only spreading across the Middle East but erupting throughout the world: Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Gaza, Bangladesh, Lebanon, London, and even into Israel.
The Obama administration is blaming al Qaeda, an Islamist group that the administration is currently supporting in its efforts to overthrow the secular Assad government in Syria and the group that the Obama administration used to overthrow the Libyan government, thus leaving a power vacuum in its place. Having destroyed the protection from Islamist attacks that secular Arab rulers provided Washington, Obama, in a show of force, has sent drones, aircraft carriers, Marines, and Tomahawk missile ships to Libya, raising the prospect that more schools and children's soccer games will be mistaken for jihadi encampments and blown up. Fist tap Dale.
medialens | On September 11, four Americans, including the US ambassador, were
killed in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The
following day, the BBC's Lunchtime News reported that the killings were
part of 'disturbances' which were 'linked to an anti-Islamic video' (BBC
News, September 12, 2012). The BBC's News at Six explained that the US
ambassador was killed 'in a protest'. This was mild language indeed
given that the consulate had been attacked with assault rifles, hand
grenades, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. (According to the New York Times, two US security guards were killed by mortar fire).
We can easily imagine the BBC reaction if the killings had happened
under Gaddafi, Chavez or some other official enemy. The favoured
adjective, 'terrorist', would surely have made an early appearance.
How to explain the BBC's response? The key, of course, is that the
current Libyan government owes its existence to Western military
intervention. It achieved power because the West exploited UN resolution
1973, which authorised a 'no-fly zone', as an excuse to bomb Gaddafi's
forces to defeat. The 'no-fly zone' in fact became a 'no-drive zone' for
one side of the conflict. As so often, the BBC was taking its cue from
Washington and Downing Street. Obama expressed
'appreciation for the cooperation we have received from the Libyan
government and people in responding to this outrageous attack... This
attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya'.
Like most other media, the BBC instantly concluded that the 'protest'
and killings were expressions of religious rather than political anger.
As late as September 22, the BBC reported: 'The attack on the US consulate was triggered by an amateur video made in the US which mocks Islam.'
In similar vein, Julian Borger wrote an
article in the Guardian under the title: 'How anti-Islamic movie
sparked lethal assault on US consulate in Libya.' Kim Sengupta commented in the Independent:
'The US ambassador to Libya and three
members of his staff were killed in an attack by an armed mob which
stormed the country's consulate in Benghazi in a furious protest over an
American film mocking the Prophet Mohammed.'
How, the world asked, could any sane human being kill over a
second-rate film, over the idea that a religion had been insulted?
Reasonable questions. On the other hand, one might ask how anyone could
kill or die for a flag, or an idea like 'the
Homeland/Fatherland/Motherland', or for non-existent weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.
Subsequent reporting suggested that the initial media consensus blaming a provocative film was false. The Telegraph noted:
'A security guard wounded in the
attack... has insisted it was a planned assault by Islamist fighters,
and not a protest that got out of hand.
'The guard, who works for a British firm,
said there was no demonstration over a controversial anti-Islamic film
before extremists stormed the compound in the eastern city of Benghazi.'
Matthew Olsen, director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, told the
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs: 'I
would say [the four Americans] were killed in the course of a terrorist
attack.'
Olsen added:
'A number of different elements appear to
have been involved in the attack, including individuals connected to
militant groups that are prevalent in eastern Libya, particularly in the
Benghazi area. We are looking as well at indications that individuals
involved in the attack may have had connections to al Qaida or al
Qaida's affiliates, including al Qaida in the Maghreb.'
US Senator Joe Lieberman also questioned the US regime's assertion that the attack was spontaneous:
'I will tell you based on the briefings I
have had, I have come to the opposite conclusion and agree with the
president of Libya that this was a premeditated, planned attack that was
associated with the... anniversary of 9/11. I just don't think people
come to protest equipped with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and other
heavy weapons.'
Between June and August in Benghazi, there had been bomb, grenade and
RPG attacks on the US consulate, the UK ambassador's motorcade, the
Tunisian consulate, and the local headquarters of the International
Committee of the Red Cross, with leafleted warnings of more to come. CNN
reported that
Chris Stevens was 'worried about what he called the never-ending
security threats' and 'mentioned his name was on an al Qaeda hit list'.
The attack also gave an insight into the US role in the country it helped 'liberate'. The New York Times observed:
'Among the more than two dozen American
personnel evacuated from the city after the assault on the American
mission and a nearby annex were about a dozen C.I.A. operatives and
contractors, who played a crucial role in conducting surveillance and
collecting information on an array of armed militant groups in and
around the city.'
Their role in a Libya that we are told is 'free' and 'independent':
'American intelligence operatives also
assisted State Department contractors and Libyan officials in tracking
shoulder-fired missiles taken from the former arsenals of Colonel
Qaddafi's forces; they aided in efforts to secure Libya's chemical
weapons stockpiles; and they helped train Libya's new intelligence
service, officials said.'
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out,
evidence that the attack was a carefully planned, politically-motivated
attack, rather than a spontaneous eruption of religious ire, is the
wrong kind of news for the many supporters of Nato's intervention in
Libya:
'Critics of the war in Libya warned that
the US was siding with (and arming and empowering) violent extremists,
including al-Qaida elements, that would eventually cause the US to claim
it had to return to Libya to fight against them – just as its funding
and arming of Saddam in Iraq and the mujahideen in Afghanistan
subsequently justified new wars against those one-time allies.'
The truth of the attack 'underscores how unstable, lawless and dangerous Libya has become'. Indeed, as we noted in July, the media did an excellent job of burying an Amnesty International report
which described 'the mounting toll of victims of an increasingly
lawless Libya, where the transitional authorities have been unable or
unwilling to rein in the hundreds of militias formed during and after
the 2011 conflict'.
This post-intervention mayhem is something supporters of Western
intervention are naturally keen to hide – focus on a 'mocking' film has
served the purpose.
RollingStone | The great mystery story in American politics these days is why, over
the course of two presidential administrations (one from each party),
there’s been no serious federal criminal investigation of Wall Street
during a period of what appears to be epic corruption. People on the
outside have speculated and come up with dozens of possible reasons,
some plausible, some tending toward the conspiratorial – but there have
been very few who've come at the issue from the inside.
We get one of those rare inside accounts inThe Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins, a
new book by Jeff Connaughton, the former aide to Senators Ted Kaufman
and Joe Biden. Jeff is well known to reporters like me; during a period
when most government officials double-talked or downplayed the Wall
Street corruption problem, Jeff was one of the few voices on the Hill
who always talked about the subject with appropriate alarm. He shared
this quality with his boss Kaufman, the Delaware Senator who took over
Biden's seat and instantly became an irritating (to Wall Street)
political force by announcing he wasn’t going to run for re-election. "I
later learned from reporters that Wall Street was frustrated that they
couldn’t find a way to harness Ted or pull in his reins," Jeff writes.
"There was no obvious way to pressure Ted because he wasn’t running for
re-election."
Kaufman for some time was a go-to guy in the Senate for reform
activists and reporters who wanted to find out what was really going on
with corruption issues. He was a leader in a number of areas, attempting
to push through (often simple) fixes to issues like high-frequency
trading (his advocacy here looked prescient after the "flash crash" of
2010), naked short-selling, and, perhaps most importantly, the
Too-Big-To-Fail issue. What’s fascinating about Connaughton’s book is
that we now get to hear a behind-the-scenes account of who exactly was
knocking down simple reform ideas, how they were knocked down, and in
some cases we even find out why good ideas were rejected, although some
element of mystery certainly remains here.
There are some damning revelations in this book, and overall it’s not
a flattering portrait of key Obama administration officials like SEC
enforcement chief Robert Khuzami, Department of Justice honchos Eric
Holder (who once worked at the same law firm, Covington and Burling, as
Connaughton) and Lanny Breuer, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
Most damningly, Connaughton writes about something he calls "The
Blob," a kind of catchall term describing an oozy pile of Hill insiders
who are all incestuously interconnected, sometimes by financial or
political ties, sometimes by marriage, sometimes by all three. And what
Connaughton and Kaufman found is that taking on Wall Street even with
the aim of imposing simple, logical fixes often inspired immediate
hostile responses from The Blob; you’d never know where it was coming
from.
NYTimes | On a recent evening, a hip-looking young woman
was sorting through a stack of crates outside a fruit and vegetable
store here in the working-class neighborhood of Vallecas as it shut down
for the night.
At first glance, she looked as if she might be a store employee. But no.
The young woman was looking through the day’s trash for her next meal.
Already, she had found a dozen aging potatoes she deemed edible and
loaded them onto a luggage cart parked nearby.
“When you don’t have enough money,” she said, declining to give her name, “this is what there is.”
The woman, 33, said that she had once worked at the post office but that
her unemployment benefits had run out and she was living now on 400
euros a month, about $520. She was squatting with some friends in a
building that still had water and electricity, while collecting “a
little of everything” from the garbage after stores closed and the
streets were dark and quiet.
Such survival tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace here, with
an unemployment rate over 50 percent among young people and more and
more households having adults without jobs. So pervasive is the problem
of scavenging that one Spanish city has resorted to installing locks on
supermarket trash bins as a public health precaution.
A report
this year by a Catholic charity, Caritas, said that it had fed nearly
one million hungry Spaniards in 2010, more than twice as many as in
2007. That number rose again in 2011 by 65,000.
As Spain tries desperately to meet its budget targets, it has been forced to embark on the same path as Greece, introducing one austerity measure after another, cutting jobs, salaries, pensions and benefits, even as the economy continues to shrink.
Most recently, the government raised the value-added tax
three percentage points, to 21 percent, on most goods, and two
percentage points on many food items, making life just that much harder
for those on the edge. Little relief is in sight as the country’s
regional governments, facing their own budget crisis, are chipping away
at a range of previously free services, including school lunches for
low-income families.
For a growing number, the food in garbage bins helps make ends meet.
NYTimes | As Greece
enters a pivotal week in its economic crisis, tensions between the
Greek government and the country’s international lenders have reached a
boiling point. The government is resisting a push by the International Monetary Fund to impose additional austerity measures that Greek leaders fear could destabilize the shaky coalition government.
Although those talks are expected to resume later this week, they have
been suspended since an angry exchange last week between the Greek
finance minister and the I.M.F.’s top negotiator for Greece.
The impasse has elevated tensions here as Greece braces for a nationwide
general strike planned on Wednesday that threatens to bring public
services to a halt. The Greek people are increasingly angry over the
prospect that public salaries and pensions will be cut again in a
last-ditch bid to secure a new loan installment of 31.5 billion euros,
or $40.7 billion, from Greece’s creditors.
The Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras,
plans to address the nation this week to bolster support for the
austerity package. He has already publicly warned his center-right
party, New Democracy, that he will oust lawmakers of the party failing
to back the package once it comes up for a vote, probably in early
October.
Various European leaders have gone out of their way in recent weeks to
voice support for the Greek government, which came to power in June. And
they have praised the Samaras government’s renewed commitment to taking
difficult steps to revamp the economy despite concern that Greece could
be a ward of its euro zone partners for years to come. Chancellor Angela Merkel
of Germany has joined France in declaring that Greece must stay in the
euro union to avoid even the perception that the union would be
vulnerable to a wider breakup.
In this political calculus, Ms. Merkel and others see Mr. Samaras as the
last best hope for Greece. They worry that if the government teeters,
new elections might be called in which his party could lose power to the
increasingly popular leftist party Syriza, led by the political
maverick Alexis Tsipras. Mr. Tsipras advocates tearing up the loan
agreement with Greece’s international creditors. That would raise the
risk of default and an eventual exit from the euro.
The situation is also being monitored by Chinese officials, who would be
reluctant to see a Greek exit from the euro destabilize the European
Union, China’s largest trading partner.
“We want the euro zone to stay intact,” Du Quiwen, the Chinese
ambassador to Greece, said in an interview on Monday. “If something in
Europe goes seriously wrong, if there’s a major mishap in the euro zone,
it would put pressure on the world economy and it would not be in the
interest of the world community or China.”
NYTimes | COMPANIES are usually accountable to no one but their shareholders.
Internet companies are a different breed. Because they traffic in speech
— rather than, say, corn syrup or warplanes — they make decisions every
day about what kind of expression is allowed where. And occasionally
they come under pressure to explain how they decide, on whose laws and
values they rely, and how they distinguish between toxic speech that
must be taken down and that which can remain.
The storm over an incendiary anti-Islamic video posted on YouTube has stirred fresh debate on these issues. Google,
which owns YouTube, restricted access to the video in Egypt and Libya,
after the killing of a United States ambassador and three other
Americans. Then, it pulled the plug on the video in five other
countries, where the content violated local laws.
Some countries blocked YouTube altogether, though that didn’t stop the
bloodshed: in Pakistan, where elections are to be scheduled soon, riots
on Friday left a death toll of 19.
The company pointed to its internal edicts to explain why it rebuffed
calls to take down the video altogether. It did not meet its definition
of hate speech, YouTube said, and so it allowed the video to stay up on the Web. It didn’t say very much more.
That explanation revealed not only the challenges that confront
companies like Google but also how opaque they can be in explaining
their verdicts on what can be said on their platforms. Google, Facebook
and Twitter receive hundreds of thousands of complaints about content every week.
“We are just awakening to the need for some scrutiny or oversight or
public attention to the decisions of the most powerful private speech
controllers,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor who
briefly advised the Obama administration on consumer protection
regulations online.
orageanvision | That which exists independently of both the carrier and the shaped charge within itself. This is a metaphor relating to a specialized language referring to instruments and processes which are employed in the fracking and perforating of deep wells, the profession of wireline operations, in which Chivo (one of Swarts' 'I's) plays a role.
The carrier is the "gun", oftentimes a simple pipe of various diameters and lengths. If law enforcement were to run across one of these devices lying loose in the street, media would report that a "pipe bomb was found" at such and such a place, and a specialized team was deployed, a robot was sent in, and the device was later "harmlessly destroyed" at an unspecified location. Amongst those who work in this field of wireline including Chivo, there is a common lingua of the hands, but these same hands are taught never to refer to these devices as "guns" when dealing with the uninitiated, because when they (the uninitiated) hear the word "guns" they tend to get a little froggy. So the hands are taught to speak only about "perforating devices" - mystify them with a few extra syllables, works like a charm btw.
A "shaped charge" is the same explosive device used to kill our American soldiers in Afghanistan and elsewhere, where it is referred to as a "roadside bomb" or IED (improvised explosive device). The higher knowledge in wireline is the same higher knowledge necessary to arm one of these IED's in Afghanistan. The only difference is that one is placed near to the surface of the earth and is intended to perforate the human body, releasing the flow of the body fluids in our soldiers; and the other is sent deep within the Earth, is intended to perforate the casing of the wells and release the aged and fermented body fluids of dinosaurs. They even call some of the shaped charges by their trade name - "dinosaur hunters".
Now we have to talk about the role of the engineers. High above the ground, perhaps in some ivory tower someplace, these engineers envisioned all that might occur, might need to occur and, and what could go both right and wrong deep within the earth. It was these engineers that constructed the plans for the every single detail of the rigging, drilling, perforating, steam injection, wireline, and all the other operations of the 'fields. As it was created in minds before constructed in matter, there were many false steps and blind alleys to go down, because everything is a blind alley deep within the earth, isn't it?
Then another group of engineers constructed a whole seperate class of instruments and devices that allowed them to "see" at least partially, deep within the Earth, where no human eye has gone before or since, but the instruments made by these engineers utilizing science was so advanced as to make the sound of the doppler effect like hands passing rapidly over the heads of the common man.
It always astounds Chivo when hillbillies and barmaids want to argue with Pi or Einstein or these engineers of science. Chivo says, 'God bless Pi and Einstein and Science and these engineers'. Raise a glass and let the dinosaur blood flow like rain. Drink up, you bloody children of Chivo's loins, for tomorrow you die!
market-ticker | I've received a few lovely pieces of "hate email" over my missives of late related to Muslim extremists and our foreign policy.
Perhaps
we should take this morning and reflect a bit on where we are, where
we're headed in this regard, and why the policies and positions taken by
our current administration, along with the ham-handed garbage coming
from the Romney campaign, are so dangerous both to us and on a global
scale.
I presume that we all know that we were "sponsors" of the
"Arab Spring", right? After years of funding and protecting the
murderous bastard Hosni Mubarak we suddenly "decided" that we'd go along
with a civilian uprising protesting (and reasonably so!) his behavior.
Ordinarily this would be an easy sale; after all, freedom is a good thing, right?
There's
only one problem -- we had been funding and arming this thug for
decades. When the crowd got a bit rowdy, as a consequence, the tear gas
cannisters that started flying had Made In The USA emblazoned on their sides. This didn't do anything for our international standing among these people, as you might imagine.
Mubarak,
for his part, didn't exactly go quietly. And who would blame him?
Up-armed and up-armored with American funds he used them -- on his own
people. It was illegal for civilians to own a rifle in Egypt, but
pistols were lawful. Soon rifle shots could be heard into the crowd;
they were coming from the police shooting from the roofs, not the citizens.
Eventually Mubarak left, but not before the people basically shut down the country.
What wasn't paid attention to was where the tinder came from to get the fire burning nice and hot -- our
own Fed and monetary policy were largely responsible by nearly doubling
the cost of food commodities in a land linked to our dollar.
Hungry people are pretty easy to gin up into a riotous mob.
You
might have thought these pressures had decreased and improved over the
last year and change. You'd be wrong. Over the last week or so an
emboldened Taliban and Al-Qaeda decided to "commemorate" the terrorist
acts of 9/11 with a bit of trouble over in the Middle East and
Afghanistan, what has been come to be known as "The Suck." You've
probably all heard of the sackings of our diplomatic missions in various
countries around the Middle East, including the forcible sodomy and
murder of one of our ambassadors. But you may have not heard much about
an audacious raid on a NATO base in Southern Afghanistan.
We
killed the attackers in the latter case, but not before they damaged or
destroyed eight Harriers, causing $200 million in damage to material and
killing two marines. This was a sophisticated assault, not the act of a
"riotous mob." Likewise, the attacks in Libya and elsewhere showed
evidence of significant planning, command and control. None
of these assaults were simple acts of an angry mob of people*****ed off
about some video; these were military operations taken against United
States soil, men and material and they were coordinated by the parties
undertaking them.
examiner | A possible breach of a butane-filled well 1500 feet from Bayou Corne's sinkhole, the size of three football fields, is so "very serious," it has Assumption Parish sheriff and local residents ordered to evacuate worried about a catastrophic explosion, one according to scientists in an Examiner
investigation, would be in the range of one and a half B83
thermonuclear (hydrogen) bombs, the most powerful United States weapons
in active service.
“The disaster is made all the more worrisome because the hole is
believed to be close to a well containing 1.5 million barrels of liquid
butane, a highly volatile liquid that turns into a highly flammable
vapor upon release,” CNN reported Friday about Louisiana's declared State of Emergency.
Earlier it was reported the butane-filled well is only 1500 feet from the sinkhole and it will not be emptied.
A breach of that well, Assumption Parish Sheriff Mike Waguespack said, could be "catastrophic,” CNN reports.
Friday, officials went door-to-door in the Bayou Corn area to
complete questionnaires, including next of kin contact details of locals
at home after the mandatory evacuation orders, as Fox News
reported, while ABC reported, “If any of the dangers seem to become more
imminent,” the present mandatory order will be “escalated to a forced
evacuation.”
Some residents of Louisiana's cultural gumbo of Assumption Parish
think dangers are more imminent now, despite state Department of Health
& Hospitals Office of Public Health officials' letter to parish
officials about air and water testing data.
“Based on their testing, it doesn’t appear that chemical exposure of
site-related contaminants pose a public health risk in the immediate
area of Bayou Corne,” parish officials said.
Since Saturday, disaster workers are required to wear respirators, although the public within the disaster area is not.
Government cover up continues angering residents and elected leaders
usatoday | Ecuador said Friday it would consider asking
Britain to authorize the transfer of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to
its embassy in Sweden so that he can respond to sex crimes allegations
there.
Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino told
reporters that there are several possibilities to resolve the standoff
with Britain over Assange, including "that his statement be taken in our
embassy in London or that Ecuador get authorization to transfer him, if
necessary, to our embassy in Sweden so that the case can proceed there
with the protection of Ecuador and meeting the needs of Swedish
justice."
There was no immediate reaction from British officials.
Assange
has been holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London since June 19, seeking
to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over sex crimes
allegations.
Assange claims the Swedish sex
case is part of plot to make him stand trial in the United States over
his work with WikiLeaks, which has published large troves of secret U.S.
documents. Sweden and Washington reject the claim.
Ecuador
granted the Wikileaks founder political asylum on Aug. 15, but British
authorities will arrest him if he steps foot outside the diplomatic
mission.
Nature | People can be tricked into reversing their opinions on moral issues,
even to the point of constructing good arguments to support the opposite
of their original positions, researchers report today in PLoS ONE1.
The researchers, led by Lars Hall, a cognitive scientist at Lund University in Sweden, recruited 160 volunteers to fill out a 2-page survey on the extent to which they agreed with 12 statements — either about moral principles relating to society in general or about the morality of current issues in the news, from prostitution to the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
But the surveys also contained a ‘magic trick’. Each contained two sets of statements, one lightly glued on top of the other. Each survey was given on a clipboard, on the back of which the researchers had added a patch of glue. When participants turned the
first page over to complete the second, the top set of statements would stick to the glue, exposing the hidden set but leaving the responses unchanged.
Two statements in every hidden set had been reworded to mean the
opposite of the original statements. For example, if the top statement
read, “Large-scale governmental surveillance of e-mail and Internet
traffic ought to be forbidden as a means to combat international crime
and terrorism,” the word ‘forbidden’ was replaced with ‘permitted’ in
the hidden statement.
Participants were then asked to read aloud three of the
statements, including the two that had been altered, and discuss their
responses.
About half of the participants did not detect the changes, and 69% accepted at least one of the altered statements.
People were even willing to argue in favour of the
reversed statements: A full 53% of participants argued unequivocally for
the opposite of their original attitude in at least one of the
manipulated statements, the authors write. Hall and his colleagues have
previously reported this effect, called 'choice blindness', in other
areas, including taste and smell2 and aesthetic choice3.
“I don't feel we have exposed people or fooled them,” says
Hall. “Rather this shows something otherwise very difficult to show,
[which is] how open and flexible people can actually be.” Fist tap Dale and Arnach.
NYTimes | For generations of Americans, it was a given that children would live longer than their parents. But there is now mounting evidence that this enduring trend has reversed itself for the country’s least-educated whites, an increasingly troubled group whose life expectancy has fallen by four years since 1990.
Researchers have long documented that the most educated Americans were making the biggest gains in life expectancy, but now they say mortality data show that life spans for some of the least educated Americans are actually contracting. Four studies in recent years identified modest declines, but a new one that looks separately at Americans lacking a high school diploma found disturbingly sharp drops in life expectancy for whites in this group. Experts not involved in the new research said its findings were persuasive.
The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance.
The steepest declines were for white women without a high school diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008, said S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the lead investigator on the study, published last month in Health Affairs. By 2008, life expectancy for black women without a high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same education level, the study found.
White men lacking a high school diploma lost three years of life. Life expectancy for both blacks and Hispanics of the same education level rose, the data showed. But blacks over all do not live as long as whites, while Hispanics live longer than both whites and blacks.
“We’re used to looking at groups and complaining that their mortality rates haven’t improved fast enough, but to actually go backward is deeply troubling,” said John G. Haaga, head of the Population and Social Processes Branch of the National Institute on Aging, who was not involved in the new study.
The five-year decline for white women rivals the catastrophic seven-year drop for Russian men in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, said Michael Marmot, director of the Institute of Health Equity in London. Fist tap Dale.
FAO | » The FAO Food Price Index
averaged 213 points in August 2012, unchanged from the previous month.
Although still high, the Index value is 25 points below the peak (238
points) reached in February 2011 and 18 points less than in August last
year. International prices of cereals and oils/fats changed little but
sugar prices fell sharply, compensating for rising meat and dairy
prices.
» The FAO Cereal Price Index
averaged 260 points in August, the same as in July, with some increases
in wheat and rice offsetting a slight weakening in maize.
Deteriorating crop prospects for maize in the United States and wheat
in the Russian Federation initially underpinned export quotations, but
prices eased towards the end of the month, following heavy rains in
areas hardest hit by drought in the United States and the announcement
that the Russian Federation would not impose export restrictions.
Renewed import demand sustained international rice quotations.
» The FAO Oils/Fats Price Index
averaged 226 points in August, unchanged from July, thus staying above
the ten year trend, although still below 2008 and 2011 highs. Similar
to last month, additional gains in soybean oil prices and strengthening
quotations for sunflower and rapeseed oils have been offset by
persistent weakness in palm oil values.
» The FAO Meat Price Index
averaged 170 points in August, up 4 points (2.2 percent) from July.
All meat prices rose but most of the momentum came from the
grain-intensive pig and poultry sectors, which saw their quotations
firming by 4 and 6 percent respectively. The August price increase
follows three consecutive months of declines.
» The FAO Dairy Price Index
averaged 176 points in August, up 3 points (1.6 percent) from July,
sustained by increases in the prices of skim milk powder, casein,
butter and whole milk powder, while cheese prices remained stable. Much
of the recent strength stems from a firming demand combined with
production constraints in those areas affected by drought and rising
feed costs.
» The FAO Sugar Price Index
averaged 297 points in August, down 27.7 points (8.5 percent) from
July, and 97 points (25 percent ) from August last year. This month’s
sharp fall in sugar prices reflects improved production outlook amid
more favourable weather conditions in Brazil, the world’s largest sugar
exporter, which was supportive to sugarcane harvesting, and recovering
monsoon rains in India.
lewrockwell | It looks like war is is coming upon us once again. Aside from the recent
eruptions in the Far East and Middle East, I say this because of
three basic observations:
The financial
problems of the major governments are not going away; rather,
they are getting worse. That leaves the operators of these systems
with a choice: They can either find a foreign devil to blame,
or they can take the blame themselves.
The people
of the modern world have no real purpose in their lives. They
live according to scripts promulgated by others and get all their
thrills vicariously. War will fill a huge gap in their lives by
giving them a 'noble' cause.
Big media
in the West is the obedient hand-maiden of the state. This has
been true for a long time (look up Operation
Mockingbird), but never so much as now. Real news is
available on the Internet, but the large mass of people still
get their news from controlled sources.
These
last two points suggest that the rulers can go to war with majority
support, provided that the events are scripted well. And since big
media is under their control, they can create and insert whatever
narratives they like.
And
perhaps I should add a fourth point: Lots of people make big money
on war... people who are in the habit of employing politicians to
secure and increase their profits.
It
certainly looks like motive, means and opportunity are all coming
together.
businessinsider | Over the past decade, lots of big newspaper companies have gone bust.
But when you take a look at what's happened to newspaper advertising over that period, it's a wonder they all haven't.
Below, via Mark J. Perry and Bill Gross, is a chart we've run before. It shows inflation-adjusted newspaper advertising revenue over the past 60 years.
Thanks to the precipitous decline in the last ~7 years, the industry
is now back to where we it was in 1950. And it's only slightly better
off when you factor in online revenue.
Journalism professor Jay Rosen of NYU observes that the peak year was the one in which blogging software first appeared.
lesterspence | We place too much stock in our leaders. We place too much emphasis on the civil rights movement. We believe too much in the concept of unity. We've increasingly swallowed the koolaid in believing our biggest problem is black culture. We increasingly think that business development, that business logic should be the backbone of any solution we have.
These ideas are politically destructive.
They reduce our capacity for political action. More to the point, these tendencies reduce our ability to take moral responsibility for the practice of democracy. Taking personal responsibility for democracy means making the time and the effort to be aware of current political events. However it also means doing the hard work to figure out contemporary, novel, humane solutions to contemporary problems.
We need to embrace a different set of political ideas in order to devise a new set of political institutions.
The first idea we need to embrace I’ve used as the title of this book—nobody’s coming. We’ve only got ourselves to turn to. Both MLK and Malcolm X are dead and are not coming back to life. There will be no twitter version of the Civil Rights or Black Power Movements.7
The second idea we’ve got to embrace is that while having a black President is something many of us waited our entire lives for, the reality is that whatever responsibility the President has a right to expect from us should be returned. I don’t support the President as much as I support the populations he purports to support. Perhaps we should take responsibility for defending the President against racist attacks, if for no other reason than establishing the legitimacy of non-white citizens to run the country. But as Obama may very well be the closest thing to “our” President that we’ve ever had, his responsibility is to us…not the other way around. Cornel West, Tavis Smiley and a number of other black critics have caught a lot of flack from black elites—Tom Joyner disassociated himself from both West and Smiley after he felt they criticized the President too much—for their critiques. Critique is an important part of democratic practice. Particularly given our love of the dozens we should be much more attentive to the positive power of political critique.
The third idea we’ve got to embrace is the idea that in calling for solutions we need to do more than simply call for “more jobs”. In fact, our entire approach to black labor needs to be rethought given the economy. Similarly we need to rethink the way we talk about, analyze, and prescribe solutions for black families. And we've got to be innovative and creative.
And fourth we’ve got to understand that our attempts to take responsibility have to begin where we are, in our neighborhoods, in our cities and towns, in our states.
In the following pages I dig into various aspects of black politics, as an attempt to begin an honest conversation about what a 21st Century black politics should look like. How should we deal with the fact that an increasing number of black families are headed by single mothers? How can we use tragic events like the Trayvon Martin case to spur our political imagination? Given our high rates of unemployment, is there a way to rethink the role labor should play in our communities? What are we to do with the nigga? And because I not only approach this condition from the standpoint of a social scientist, but also from the standpoint of a victim (I’ve been foreclosed on, I’ve had my car repossessed, I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety), I combine my skills as a social scientist with my experience living in the world. In these pages you will most definitely not read me blame our circumstances on our lack of culture, on the fact that we’re not like [INSERT ETHNIC GROUP HERE], and on the fact that we don’t have enough black businesses. What instead you’ll find is a love of black people, and a deep appreciation for politics, for political action, and for the political imagination.
ourfiniteworld | Since 1982, the number of people employed in the United States has tended to move in a similar pattern to the amount of energy consumed. When one increases (or decreases), the other tends to increase (or decrease). In numerical terms, R2 = .98.
I have written recently about the close long-term relationship between energy consumption and economic growth. We know that economic growth is tied to job creation, so it stands to reason that energy consumption would be tied to job growth1. But I will have to admit that I was surprised by the closeness of the relationship for the period shown.
This close relationship is concerning, because if it holds in the future, it suggests that it will be very difficult to reduce energy consumption without a lot of unemployment. It also would seem to suggest that a shortage of energy supplies (as reflected by high prices) can lead to unemployment.
I tried to consolidate a number of employment-related issues into one post, so in this post I also show that employment is shifting to Asia and other less developed countries, as energy costs (and total costs) are lower there. I also show that the US appears to have reached “peak employment” as a percentage of population in 2000, likely as a result of this shift in employment to Asia. The Kyoto Protocol may indirectly have helped enable a shift in production to Asia, through its emphasis on local production of carbon dioxide, without considering the indirect impact on world markets2.
NYTimes | How different would the nation’s politics be if either party, or at least the Democrats, added the concept of economic exploitation to its repertoire?
Not only would doing so risk inflaming the issue of race, but it would put at risk existing sources of campaign finance on which both parties are dependent. The finance-insurance-real estate sector is the single largest source of cash for the Democratic Party, $46.3 million in the current election cycle, and for the Republican Party too, at $67.7 million.
This dependence on moneyed interests effectively precludes exploitation as a theme for either major party to develop. These sources of campaign cash would dry up if they became the target of policies or positions they found threatening.
Even as polarization poses more sharply defined choices to the voter, pressing issues remain off limits. Poverty and hunger have been dropped from the agenda. The range of policy and electoral choices remains confined to what fits comfortably into a world of muted ethical concern, a world in which moral relativism has permeated society not so much from the bottom up, as from the top down.
The unshackling of moneyed interests — in the name of first amendment rights — from restraints on campaign contributions has, in fact, constrained the free speech of the disadvantaged. It empowers those whose goal is to hinder consumer-protection legislation, to forestall more progressive tax rates and to quash populist insurgencies.
This skewing of the odds in favor of the rich comes at a time when the Democratic Party is already inhibited by accusations that it likes to foment “class warfare” and to play “the race card.” The result has been a relentless shift of the political center from left to right. The two most recent Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have pursued agendas well within this limited terrain. There is little reason to believe that Obama, if he wins in November, will feel empowered to push out much further into territory the Democrats have virtually abandoned. Fist tap Chauncy de Vega.
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...