I was "introduced", you might say, to the Kennedys when I was thirteen, in 1960.
My father, who had supported Eisenhower in 1952 and Stevenson in 1956, was supporting Kennedy in the 1960 election. JFK and my dad both graduated in the Class of 1940 from Harvard. Although I was born in California, to where my father had escaped his Bostonian parents after World War II, there was a little Kennedy in both of us. I inherited mine from my dad, of course. As for him, it was impossible to grow up a middle-class Catholic in Boston without being touched by the politics - Honey Fitz, the Saltonstalls, the McCormacks, James Curley, the Cabot Lodges, the O'Neils.
My dad died in November of 1960, just days before Kennedy became president. Three years and 11 days later, Kennedy was dead. By then, Teddy Kennedy had been elected to John's Senate seat and I had been taken to Boston with my grandparents - the same people from whom my dad had fled after the war.
My father, Paul, and the Kennedys had something deep and abiding in both their souls and hearts: a sense that one's purpose was to be of service to others. Paul did that in the only way available to him, as a high school teacher (and just before he died, a college professor) dedicated to the highest level of education for all his students. He was always on the edge of trouble with his employers, because he saw and fought the evils of educational institutions' morphing into corporate training camps and statistically tracking children into segments destined to be marched into predestined careers. My dad, you see, was not a "go along, get along" sort of guy. He died, I think, of a broken heart ...
I listened in on the Obama conference call last Thursday for health care reform strategy. There was nothing in what I heard then which would lead me to believe that Obama has backed off the public option. During the conference call, he called the public option controversy "kind of manufactured" and generally blamed the cable news set for misleading the electorate as to what is in the bill. This whole thing about him saying "whether or not there is a public option"...people have to remember that the administration isn't writing the legislation. Congress is.
It seems to me that a lot of the talk about the division on the left is trumped up by the media--"left," "right" or "center"--which in no way wants America to have anything remotely like a national health care plan. So while at first I was taken in by the talk that Obama had thrown in the towel, I don't believe it anymore. Things like this from the Washington Post, cite too few concrete examples of dissent on the left to make a trend, relying on unnamed sources to balloon the argument.
As Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi is released from jail for his part in the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie I wonder whether his impending death from prostate cancer will be the final part of the tragedy?
The justice system tells us that Al Megrahi was responsible for the deaths of 243 passengers and 16 crew on the ill-fated flight.
You know I voted for Obama but I did not come away that impressed with what I saw this Saturday morning from longtime aide, friend and confidante Valerie Jarrett. Ms. Jarrett spoke for about an hour and a half during the last day of Netroots Nation, the annual get together of Kossacks and fellow travelers who schoomze and network and can afford to pay about several hundred dollars to do so. Hey, if I wasn't reporting this I couldn't afford to go. I got a press pass worth 200 bucks.
The format was that Baratunde Thurston was to lob her questions, mostly softballs apparently, and she was to hit away but I felt that I didn't really learn very much other than "give us time" and "I trust Obama". Those are beginning to not be very satisfying answers when you're continuing a lot of shockingly bad Bush policies.
Here's a sample of what Valerie gave us. So, Baratunde reads a question that asks what blogs, specifically the president reads, and whether he reads them on a Mac or a PC. She answers back that the president reads lots of blogs but couldn't or didn't know (more likely) which ones he read and that she can't tell you whether he uses a Mac or a PC. Do you feel more informed, about anything?
Or here's another one: Baratunde reads another question off his computer and this time it's about Tom Daschle. And she goes on about what a cool and swell and great guy Tom is. I'm trying to get what world she's coming from. Actually, its clear now that Daschle would have been a horrible addition. First, he rejoined some awful insurance lobbying firm that pays more money than God to promote evil policies. Second, even though he says he likes the public option, he came out against it in his role as insurance company hack. Here's the thing: would he have ever left the insurance industry even if he had joined the administration? And does Kent Conrad want a cushy job as an insurance hack lobbyist as well? Must be.
Or, and here's another one, she actually had the nerve to talk about how the Obama administration has limited the influence of lobbyists in his White House. She must not have read all those stories about how he cut backroom deals with Big Pharma that would have undercut House and Senate efforts to regulate these industries. I think this story was broken by the Huffington Post by the way, thus forcing an Obama ally into some real journalism.
Did I mention that there was slight hissing and even some boos? Well, its not Valerie. Its the record of the administration. Valerie is a professional and has to back the boss. But if you really wanted a concise picture of the administration so far, I really think this Ian Walsh post hits it on the head.
Miscellania: Healthcare, Unemployment, Resistance and Obama by: Ian Welsh Sat Aug 08, 2009 at 22:00 After visiting Victoria for a week, let's do a quick roundup post
Healthcare: I remain convinced that nothing that will come out of this Congress won't be pretty awful. My current belief is that what will be passed will mandate everyone buy insurance but because of inadequate cost controls and subsidies will leave ordinary people forced to buy insurance which will increase in price faster than wages. The optimistic view would be that once everyone is in the system, pressure will build to make the system actually work. We'll see, even if true, there'll be a lot of pain in between.
Unemployment: According to the BLS, the economy lost 274,000 jobs, but the unemployment rate dropped from 9.5% to 9.4%. Welcome to the world of statistics that don't mean what you think they do. People who want jobs, but who are convinced they can't get one and so aren't looking actively don't count as unemployed. So the number of employed people can go down and the unemployment rate can go down. In other words, we're a long way from things getting better, they're just getting worse more slowly.
Resistance: The American right has decided on a policy of resistance to Obama which can be summed up as "thuggery". People are being trained and financed to go out and shout down Democrats or intimidate them. There has already been some violence, there will be more. The Obama administration thought they could avoid the rise of the refusnik right by refusing to act on most social issues, which is why they abandoned their promises to gays and have generally been unwilling to move on other social issues. They took the lesson of the Clinton administration to be "don't inflame the fanatics on the right-avoid social issues, and don't slash the military". They were, of course, wrong: the radical right (and there is hardly a non-radical right left) will oppose Obama no matter what he does and if Obama is unwilling to use to the full might of the administrative apparatus against them, they will simply take advantage of his weakness to escalate. Tactics which are seen to work, will not be abandoned, to the contrary, they will be used more and more.
Obama: Obama's active period is about over. Health care "reform", if he gets it through, will probably be the last major policy. While there are rises and falls, his overall popularity is trending down and that will probably continue. The "honeymoon" is over, and it was used primarily to shove through a lousy stimulus that won't lead to enough of a recovery, and with luck (for him) a bad global warming bill and health reform that isn't. Fortunately, banks and financial firms have been bailed out and are making lots of money, and should be in a position to reward Obama with significant funding in future elections.
Unless they decide that the Republicans will give them everything they want, too.
Add to that Republican weakness, and Obama's inner circle may think they're still cruising for reelection. I'm not so sure. Counting on your enemy's weakness is a dangerous tactic, especially when you are doing little to ensure that they remain weak or that you remain strong.
I really think that's the truth of the last six months of the Obama administration. I will forgive him for everything if he manages to pass a strong public option and I'm in a positiion to buy affordable healthcare. If not, that smattering of hisses and boos will turn into a chorus, and hit a depressingly high note right around the 2010 and 2012 election cycles
(Netroots Nation was held in Pittsburgh this year. I couldn't really afford to go but then I remembered that I am the Pittsburgh Progressive Examiner and I got in that way. I even spoke to Markos for a couple of minutes...I don't think he remembered me which is probably why I got a press pass...You know, when he announced this would be in Pittsburgh some months back I got the impression that he did that just to make sure I couldn't attend. Thank goodness for lowly stature in the blogosphere...)
Netroots Nation, the annual gathering of Kossacks (derived from the Daily Kos, a political must read by the way) and fellow travelers, ends today In Pittsburgh and I hope to do some reporting on Saturday's events..
I did attend Thursday evening's events at this year's Netroots nation and I ran into people who, and I'm probably incorrect about this, I felt that I had known fairly well because I had read so much of their work and seen so many of their youtube vids.
One of those persons that I met in the flesh was Jack Cole, one of the elder retired spokesman for a really sane group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Every police officer involved in LEAP has done their share of drug arrests which, according to Jack at least, they feel a certain amount of shame about. I think Jack described the work he was doing with LEAP as a kind of penance.
This is a person and a group that I discovered entirely through Youtube and I believe they held a session on decriminalization on Friday which unfortunately I couldn't attend. But here are some of the Youtube vids I first discovered and I immediately put them on rotation at the Acid Jazz Channel. (One note: Jack Cole appears second in this vid and is not Norm Stamper. Repeat: Jack Cole is not Norm Stamper.)
And here's Norm Stamper's interview with Reason magazine:
I did ask Jack one question that I was kind of curious about: I had noticed that most of the cops in LEAP were retired and I asked him if there were any active duty policemen who were members of the organization and was that dangerous? He told me there were 5 to 7 active duty police officers who were members of LEAP, although one of them had been fired but he won a big lawsuit against him worth over 800000 dollars. Apparently, he can't actually do any police work anymore but they can't fire him either. So, there might be a bit of a risk there for active duty police officers to get involved in LEAP. Or a big payday.
John Towery is a professional informant who works for the US Army. He works on Fort Lewis, WA in ‘force protection’. Between September 2007 and July 2009, using the alias “John Jacob (agent_orange@riseup.net)”, he illegally infiltrated various anti-war and “anarchist” groups around the Olympia and Tacoma (WA) area including Port Militarization Resistance and Students for a Democratic Society. He also worked closely with the Smash ICE Campaign and Iraq Veterans Against the War. Much of his time was spent befriending anarchists or those whose views had anarchist characteristics. People who knew John Jacob described him as kind, generous, and friendly. He came to meetings and quickly became a trusted individual, leading to him becoming the administrator of the PMR mailing list which gave him access to the name and email address of almost every person in the organization. The information he collected was given to and used by various government bodies including The US Army, The Olympia Police Department, the Tacoma Police Department, The Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Washington State Patrol, and the Washington Joint Analytical Center. After his outing, he admitted to spying on these groups and passing on information to these agencies. This information collection on US citizens and groups engaged in 1st Amendment protected activities was clearly illegal under a number of statues and violated the rights and civil liberties of those involved.
The coup d'état that rocked Honduras in late June and removed democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya from office, sending him into exile in Costa Rica, was preceded by a multi-million dollar build-up of foreign aid from a U.S. agency that includes on its board of directors the president of the International Republican Institute as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
That taxpayer-funded agency, called the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), oversees a multi-billion dollar foreign-aid fund called the Millennium Challenge Account. It was established in 2004 under the Bush administration as means of combating terrorism by funding development in poor nations under a strict neo-conservative free-trade model.
When asked to speak to Hondurans regarding what they can do to oppose the coup regime, Ivan Marovich, a veteran of the popular movement to oust Milosevic from office in Serbia, gave this amusing anecdote:
The fi[r]st thing that we did, when we were still ten people, is we took a big barrel and a baseball bat. We wrote on the barrel: “Money for Milosevic.” It said we’re collecting money for Milosevic’s retirement. If you have money, put in the barrel. If you don’t have money, beat on the barrel. And Milosevic’s photo was on the barrel. So we put it on the street and walked away.
People walking by read the sign and began banging the barrel. Because of that noise, four more people came. And when they read it everyone started banging the barrel. This made a very loud noise. Finally somebody called the police. The police came and asked, “Who’s barrel is this?” Nobody knew. The police didn’t know what to do.
If the police had left the barrel there, people would keep banging the barrel. If they took the barrel, well, that is not their job. Finally somebody ordered them to take the barrel. We took photos of them and gave them to the media which reported, “POLICE ARREST BARREL.” So whatever they would do, they were going to regret it. And they regretted it because the very next day every town in the country had a barrel in its town square.
In recent weeks, Washington has accused Venezuela of aiding the FARC and moving drugs out of the continent. They cite evidence found on confiscated laptops, a meme that's been used in recent years in Iraq, Bolivia and Iran.
The Obama administration has backed away from its call to restore ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to power and instead put the onus on him for taking "provocative actions" that polarized his country and led to his overthrow on June 28.
In my previous post (Oblahma: Time for a Moratorium on Talk), I asked, "If there is no really discernible difference between the real agendas of the Democratic and Republican parties, what do we do about the prospect of elections in 2010 and 2012?" Let me suggest a partial response to the question ...
There is strong evidence at present that, in spite of the anger in the electorate, our choices are more limited than ever before and it will take an enormous amount of work on the part of the disenfranchised to create the necessary movement that will create cohesion around specific principles, goals, and strategies, that will result in breaking the status quo stranglehold. Such a movement is as critical as it is nearly impossible.
As one who has several times over the past decade directly agitated for a coalition of the various "parties of the Left" under a negotiated consensus platform, I find that that same Left and its parties have been further marginalized. In some cases that marginalization even takes the form of vilification, as the tide of the radical liberalism called "libertarianism" has gained momentum in reaction to the increased unveiling of the one world government and economic system agenda. The core of the traditional American Left - democratic socialism - has been all but crushed by the call for small government and the insistence of the supremacy of individual rights.
Please do not assume that I advocate the further suppression of the right to choose how to live or what to study or what to believe or whom to love. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just happen to believe that there is such a thing as truly democratic socialism and that, under such an umbrella, freedom, rights, and community can co-exist - thus generating a societal equanimity that is vibrant and inclusive.
When George W. Bush and his lackeys tried to sell the nation on launching a preemptive war against Iraq they knew that they must sell us a convincing reason. After the shock of 9-11, we were all a little scared, stunned in disbelief and looking for leadership. Since we had no leadership we grabbed onto G.W. and his ilk because they had important titles. Their job was to whip us into a frightened frenzy of blood-lust. Which they did by telling us Saddam Hussein was partnered with Al Queada, and that he also possessed W.M.D.'s (weapons of mass destruction). They even sold us a bill of goods that somehow these W.M.D.'s were magical disappearing ones, hidden from view by special invisible trucks that could move then to unknown destinations. We were still stricken by the unbelievable attack on American soil, which we had all taken for granted would never happen. So, in a way it is understandable that we sort of believed him.
What they neglected to tell us (among other things) was the fact that Bush & Cheney also had W.M.D.'s (weak minded delusions). Once we began to see that Saddam had no magical weapons of mass destruction, Bush & team scrambled quickly to provide us a reason to still support the illegal occupation of Iraq. So they came up with the war cry of " we're there to free the citizens, to liberate them and help set up and spread Democracy.Changing the name of the action to "Operation Iraqi Freedom "" Another lie.
The truth is that our single reason to invade Iraq was to establish a state of Corporatism, privatization of Iraq's natural resources, and slavery of the Iraqi people. All designed to set up a self perpetuating, never ending cycle of Disaster Capitalism, which is what we now have in Iraq. Though this important fact has been totally neglected by mainstream media, never telling us these facts about the war in Iraq.
The fighting
The aid
The health care
The reconstruction
are all being carried out primarily by contractors, mercenaries if you will. Now these mercenaries know that the term "mercenary" leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of American citizens- so they have spent a lot of money on lobbyists. That's right the hired guns have engaged hired guns to change their image and erase the word mercenary from the American vocabulary. They tried re-branding on a massive scale so that companies like KBR, Blackwater, Triple Canopy, would become palatable to us. Nevertheless that mission failed because we all know what these contractors and corporations are, pure and simple, mercenaries without conscience.
We never really listened to President Eisenhower's warning on the military industrial complex, or his prediction of a New World Order. Under Bush & Cheney, Eisenhower's feared military industrial complex has warped into the perfect self-sustaining economy of disaster capitalism. A few examples: Lockheed Martin (who at one time had Lynn Cheney on it's board) earns money from the F-22 which drops bombs indiscriminately. Two other players on the team, IAP Worldwide Services Inc., and Health Net earn a profit by taking care of the wounded, both Iraqi & American Contractors. Then a lot of team players swoop in for the reconstruction dollars, to name a few we have Halliburton , CH2M Hill, ExxonMobil, Bechtel, CICA and many others.
As a matter of fact when the Cold War "ended" Lockheed began taking over IT divisions of the United States Government under the public radar. A report in the New York Times in 2004 said..."Lockheed Martin doesn't run the U.S.. But it does help run a breathtakingly big part of it... It sorts your mail and totals your taxes. It cuts Social Security checks & counts the census. It runs space flights & monitors air traffic. To make all that happen Lockheed writes more computer code than Microsoft."
Even more alarming to me is that eighteen months into our illegal occupation of Iraq the State Dept opened a new office that most of us have never heard of "The Office of Reconstruction & Stabilization". Which at any given time pays contractors to draw up detailed plans to reconstruct as many as 25 different countries that "may" at some point in time find themselves "the target of U.S. sponsored destruction." Which makes a lot of sense since the delusional George W. Bush has made statements to the effect that we have the undeniable right to cause unlimited (unwarranted) preemptive destruction anywhere we choose. What he failed to mention was that by year 3 of our illegal occupation there were over 48,000 private soldiers (mercenaries) from around the globe deployed in Iraq. These hired guns were the largest contingent of troops in country except for our American troops. In fact the mercenary population in the fighting totaled more than the combined forces deployed by "the coalition of the willing", combined.
Every wonder why Iraqi citizens get "free" health care while we have the biggest shit hole of a health care in the world? Because we pay for it! We pay taxes which pay Health Net & IAP huge sums of money. While most of the American public is just barely above water, the chosen people, the members of The Family, those who visit C Street often, reap huge profits. Why weren't the victims of Katrina offered at least the same level of reconstruction & medical care that the Iraqi's received? Well, one reason is that we can bomb the crap out of Iran again, setting the whole damn dumb show in action again. We can't very well openly bomb New Orleans. But there was huge disparity in the reconstruction of New Orleans between the haves and the have-nots. "Katrina was not unforeseeable. It was the result of a political structure that subcontracts its responsibilities to private contractors. And abdicates its responsibility altogether." Harry Belafonte. FEMA controlled gated trailer communities for the have nots, and Crystal Palace Gated Communities for the haves, protected by paid security. In fact another new industry popped up from the rubble of Katrina. Check out, Sandy Springs, Georgia (This city is a bold experiment in public/private partnership. Most services are being handled by the engineering and operations firm CH2M HIll OMI.)
This is a future that we are facing. It won't be long before Municipal Government in the U.S. will be touched by disaster capitalism, outsourcing police, fire, EMT's, utilities. An executive for Lockheed Martin has boasted on numerous occasions that what they've done on the streets of Baghdad & Falluja they can do for the police in downtown America. Another player in this game to privatize America is John Robb of Fast Company, who stated in a widely distributed manifesto ; "The end result of the War on Terror will be a new, more resilient approach to National Security. Built not around the State, but around private companies and citizens. Security will become based on where you live, who you work for..." he describes a system based not unlike our present health care system.
While huge sectors of our economy are failing, one is not, one is growing exponentially - the business of Security for Hire On a Global Scale- Companies will have private traveling security provided by companies like Triple Canopy, Blackwater, etc. There are many companies in existence today poised to battle out which one can provide the best globe trotting hired guns for companies and multinationals.
Eisenhower's military industrial complex began shrinking drastically once the Cold War was declared over. I always thought of it more as a frozen dinner to be brought out to thaw when we needed a boost in the economy. Either way, the old-school Military Industrial Complex has suffered quite a few blows and was down for the count when a newer, stronger, more organized compatriot jumped into the ring to help support the aging ideology. That new contender is disaster capitalism.
Disaster capitalism has beauty in it's evil simplicity. Not only does it provide profit for munition and war machine manufacturers, buying and selling weapons, actually fighting the wars (which because of their staus are not recognized as American Troops & don't have to abide by the military rules of engagement), they treat the wounded, recover the dead and then rebuild what it destroyed. It can be done over and over again. Just like your dad's Buick is a thing of the past never to be seen again, so to is his military industrial complex. Both outdated, not competitive in today's marketplace and quite frankly just not as damn glamours and sexy.
I worry that the W.M.D.'s (weak minded delusions) of Bush and Cheney have so jaded our eyes, that we can no longer see truth. And while I had great hopes for Obama- I'm sick to death of hearing him talk- I want to see some action. Sure, we're bringing troops home-they say (they fail to mention that many more are coming home in body bags). Another fact that is not divulged is that we are just replacing U.S. forces with more mercenaries.
I live in the hills on a private wooded acre of land. I am a devout pacifist. But we and our neighbors moved to this remote location in order to avoid interaction with city folk, city restrictions, etc. I know that if the time ever came our neighbors would form a damn fine militia and I cannot conceive of a scenario where I would engage in fighting but I damn sure would would feed my neighbors, provide first aid and water. If that makes me a hypocrite so be it. It's mine to bear.
Perhaps the worst weapon of mass destruction is whatever they have used against us, the citizens, what has lulled us into such complacency? What has caused us to believe we'll never hear truth again? What has turned us into a nation of sheeple, addicted to consumerism, and believing ourselves not smart enough to understand the economy, the government, and democracy?
As Always- Peace
"The truth must not only be the truth, it must be told." - Fidel Castro
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Did I read somewhere that the Obama administration just passed the 200 day mark? Hmph. I'm more interested in knowing whether someone has been keeping track of how many words he's thrown at us and the rest of the universe since he took office. A million? Two?
But it's not just him. A few minutes ago, I ran screaming from Twitter, stuffing in earplugs and tying a bandanna over my eyes. To do what? Write words about words. Blah blah blah ...
I want a moratorium. I want some verbal silence, replaced with careful, non-reactive thought and then, effective action. We really need to stop and really need to think. In Twitter parlance, I'd be very happy if Oblahma, his handlers, Congress, and the media (including the "alternative", "social" media) would just STFU for at least a week, better, for a month. What if we all just went for a walk in the woods - some place where the dozers and backhoes aren't parked because the developers lost their funding?
Yeah, yeah: it's really kinda refreshing that we now have a president with a working knowledge of the English language. I do, however, have to say that it grates on my nerves every time he says "tuh" instead of "to". Nobody's perfect, though, even the anointed world spokesman for "hope" and "change". But "refreshing" is not what we need. We don't need to be refreshing the same web page, because the content hasn't changed since Obama's picture replaced Bush's.
The Bush administration's job was clear and they did it well: destroying the United States of America as a national entity. Mainly, it succeeded in nullifying the Constitution, implementing the framework of a security state, and bankrupting the country fiscally, mentally, and emotionally.
There really weren't many words spoken by the President during his administrations. He kept embarrassing himself and everybody else. As Dick Cheney knew, the trick was to act, to just keep moving, and keep giving everyone the finger when they caught on and complained. Lie. Avoid. Obfuscate. Ignore. It worked. All those words from us, claiming that The Dubbleduh-Chainey Gang was "stupid" or "crazy" were just plain wrong. Most of us just couldn't fathom the fact that they had the strategy, tactics, and balls to pull it off.
Those polled were white non-Hispanic Catholics, white Evangelicals, and white mainline Protestants. A majority (54 percent) of those who attend church regularly said torture could be “justified,” while a majority of those not attending church regularly responded that torture was rarely or never justified.
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
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Did I read somewhere that the Obama administration just passed the 200 day mark? Hmph. I'm more interested in knowing whether someone has been keeping track of how many words he's thrown at us and the rest of the universe since he took office. A million? Two?
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