They're Trying to Steal His Hotel

We were getting some supplies for the Old Vet. These days he really likes Chex cereal, and will eat a couple of bowls with milk in the evening after disliking his dinner. There was also a need for some bathroom supplies. We were at one of the so-called dollar stores, which tend to offer the best deals on such stuff. At the check-out politics came up. The woman at the register complained about her feet hurting all the time. She'd had to leave her manufacturing job, which involved standing on a concrete floor all day. The company hadn't come through on compensation she believed was owed her for creating a long-term disability. She was standing on a concrete floor at the cash register. All commercial and industrial buildings built in the last 60 years have concrete floors. They last way longer than wood floors. Mostly commercial and industrial buildings are constructed of various kinds of masonry materials and steel, top to bottom. The stuff lasts, and won't burn or get et up by the bugs.

“I voted for Trump,” the cashier said. She apparently had hopes that he would improve labor conditions. “You know,” we said, “his labor secretary is totally against unions and a minimum wage, and hates government regulations. If you look at his ads, he's also kinda squirrelly about women.” (The labor secretary designate runs Hardees, which features a lot of gigantic oozing burgers being scarfed by model type women who would never in a million years eat such a thing. The ads appear a lot on NASCAR race coverage.)

“He's against all abortion,” she said. I figured that was the true wedge issue. Around here “pro life” people probably comprise about 40% of the electorate, and 80% of the churches are hard-core pro-life outfits where the preachers talk stuff like the alleged baby genocide the liberals have inflicted on the country since the '70s and Roe V. Wade. This is why the totally bizarro rumors of a baby sex ring headed up by Mrs. Clinton got enough traction to send some lost 20-something from NC up to Washington last month to shoot up a local pizza joint. Why not a baby sex ring? They're already murdering babies every day. The folks who hop on that train don't have to think any further. Trump says “agin,” Clinton says “choice.” Nuff said.

“They're trying to make him lose his hotel,” the cashier continued. “That isn't fair.” I hadn't heard that argument before. At Trump's news conference the other day he had a lawyer bring out a huge pile of alleged legal documents which were, she said, merely half of the work it took to put the Trump business empire into the hands of his blind boys, who he would never talk business with again. Reporters were not allowed to inspect the pile of documents, a fact that was not reported until much later in the day, and not on any teevee I happened to watch. I could imagine the picture she'd formed. One of those warm cozy hotels like you see on Matt Dillon, a few rooms up some stairs, a couple of friendly poker games, a table or two with diners (monster steaks, shots of whiskey to wash it down), Miss Kitty at the bar, head to head with Matt, low talk about some rustlers rumored to be coming Dodge's way in the next day or two. Some Philadelphia lawyers trying to steal it all from the man who had come to clean things up, “drain the swamp” as he says. Reminded me of the Gram Parsons song:

On the 31st floor, a gold-plated door, can't keep out the Lord's burning rain.

The cashier hadn't been to New Yawk, or to Singapore. Maybe she'd seen some quick shots of big planes on approach over big cities, but the Trump branded buildings below were not featured in such shots.

My wife said “you know, I think it's probably better that each of us has the chance to decide about such personal things as a pregnancy, not some government official. There can be an awful lot of situations...” She didn't push it. The items were bagged. A lady over in the next aisle, she happened to be black, caught my wife's eye and gave a tiny nod of agreement. We headed on over to the rest home.

Course he knew he couldn't get rid of his businesses before he decided to run, I told Libby. He's only sitting on the horns of his own dilemma.

On Never Using Email

Quite a bit of derision has been aimed at Lindsey Graham of South Carolina concerning his assertion that he's never used email. (Of course the moving finger has even now moved on, since Graham has since his email confession asserted that he would hold Congress in session by military force to reinstate the cuts to the defense budget that he voted for--the public is fickle.) Yesterday I saw a long series of captures of Graham's incessant tweets. As though that proved that he did use email. Ha.

What Graham was doing by saying he never used email was invoking the famed "no privacy" rule which he himself helped to craft during the Bill Clinton Impeachment Circus. What the Impeachment of Bill Clinton established was that, in some circumstances, there is no such thing as privacy when it comes to a public figure. Once invoked, the rule tends to apply with some universality. Prior to its being invoked, a public figure may well assume that there is such a thing as privacy, such as in the President's Cloakroom, with the door shut and a willing and comely intern with a few minutes available. We may recall, however, that as the Impeachment ground its way through a once successful, capable, Presidential Administration making every effort to work for all of the American people, the privacy rule not only got Mr. Clinton impeached, it swept Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Livingstone from their august offices as well.

As Livingstone was leaving the building, Mr. Graham wrote a note to himself in invisible ink: Note to self, never email.

Mrs. Clinton has make a perfectly reasonable distinction, between the emails she sent as Secretary of State, and those she sent as Hillary Rodham Clinton, mom, daughter, regular human. She didn't want a bunch of Republicans reading all those personal notes about this and that and including preparations for her mother's funeral and her daughter's wedding, so she quite reasonably deleted them. One can hope that she ran a powerful magnet over the private server's hard drives before tossing the whole damn machine into the compactor down at the car crushing place in White Plains. One hopes she gets to say to Lindsey Graham sometime, up close and personal, in the Senate Cloakroom, "Fuck You, you raging asshole."

But Mr. Graham hints, in his nuanced South Carolina way, that there is no "private" when it comes to a public figure. He nips it in the bud and forgoes email entirely. Too bad Mrs. Clinton didn't do likewise. What's an inquisitive Republican to do? This is the current lay of the political land. And the media, generally, is climbing on board.

There has been far more coverage, this week, of Mrs. Clinton's email, than of a treasonous letter that nearly all the sitting Republican Senators sent to Iran with the aim of destroying critical negotiations, and, ultimately, of laying the groundwork for a war with Iran. Jennifer Rubin, who represents the far right on middle eastern affairs, said this week that what Republicans want is regime change in Iran. "Regime change" is another term for "war." Chris Matthews talked last night of Mrs. Clinton's being unprepared for the Presidency, and of the Democratic Party's fresh new problem: there's no one to replace her as a candidate. In the wings, the red carpet is being unrolled by all the media, right and right center. Jeb Bush, get ready. This would be the Jeb Bush who manipulated a Presidential election in Florida so's his brother could win without the votes, and a Jeb Bush who himself used private email systems and has self-sorted what he wanted the public to see. No problem. He's not married to Bill Clinton.

If Mrs Clinton is sold as un-ready, what's America to do? This is how Al Gore was unsold. And Howard Dean, for that matter. Jim Rome used the manufactured "Dean Scream" as a audio joke on his sports show for years after the non-event. Dean became an occasional pundit on MSNBC.

No one that I've heard has yet pointed out that there is actually no logical difference between what Mrs. Clinton did, in sorting after the fact the personal from the public emails, from what she might have done--kept two different email accounts, one for public, and one for private. That would in effect be sorting as you go. Is there any problem with that?

Only if you play, like Mr. Graham always does, with the no privacy rule. This is, of course, the rule that all successful gangsters use constantly. The phones may be bugged, count on it.

_______________________________

Saturday update: Mark Shields, on PBS last night, said more or less that while all the GOP candidates have almost exactly the same "issue" with email as Mrs. Clinton, that wasn't the point. As I suggested yesterday, the point is that the no-privacy card has been invoked for Mrs. Clinton, and she is to be flogged with this until she screams "what difference does it make!" Shields' GOP counterpart, David Gershon, was talking "destroyed evidence." Mrs. Clinton should just say, with a wry smile, thank you for throwing me in the brer patch, and have a nice private life as she enters her 70s. She's got the damn money to have a decent retirement. She, Bill, and the Obamas might consider all retiring to France and trying some of the excellent bread, cheeze, and wine the French have available in unlimited quantities. None of them need this shit.

I'm serious about the idea of retiring to France: http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=65790

Dissonance

As I noted a couple of weeks ago, all of North Carolina's Republican senatorial candidates (now sifted down to one actual candidate, Tom Tillis, running to unseat our current Democratic senator, Kay Hagan), stated unequivocally and with derisive chortles that global climate change is a hoax. I believe that among Mr. Tillis's legislative achievements was a successful effort to thwart long-term planning concerning the possibility that sea level rise could have enormous effects on life as we know it and live it today here in the Old North State.

As this vast portion of Antarctica melts over the next few decades, causing a rise in sea level of up to ten feet, many of our major coastal cities will lose large amounts of very expensive real estate, displacing thousands of citizens in the process. It doesn't take much imagination to realize that sea level rise will not only be a matter of gradual inches, such as we watch when we fill the bath tub, but will be expressed as well in catastrophic storm surges coming with relatively unpredictable super storms, such as we saw a couple of years ago in Hurricane Sandy.

The complexity that is our atmosphere and climate contains many interlocking systems. Big fires in, for example, Australia and our American west, deposit tons of soot on distant glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. This layer of soot in turn holds more solar energy than a formerly whiter ice face, thus causing more melting. As temperatures rise in central Australia, hot winds blow more rapidly across Antarctic barrens, and are particularly focused by canyons and mountains to work on the particular glacier now melting to eventual extinction. So it goes.

There is no doubt that any effort to change the world's energy economy in a direction away from continued use of fossil fuels will ultimately affect the total wealth of corporations and people who are engaged in that economy. There is thus no doubt at all, and greatly ironic, that the most fervent believers in the process of global climate change now underway are people like the Koch brothers, who possess a wealth based on the continued use of fossil fuels.

This is why they continue to spend millions of dollars of their own wealth to defeat any effort to affect the course of the current world energy economy. The Kochs would spend absolutely nothing on a mere academic exercise. They didn't get rich by being altruistic. Their own fortunes, and perhaps even more important to them, their almost unlimited power of action, is what they are spending their money to protect. And what they get for their money is one of the major American political parties now maintaining, as a matter of party doctrine, that global climate change is a falsehood. And the result of this doctrine is Congressional inaction, which protects fossil fuel economic interests.

This was Coney Island the night Hurricane Sandy came by to visit. Even a committed Republican like Chris Christie had a brief change of heart on the issue of climate change while he slogged through the water and surveyed the damage, and begged a President his party despised for a little immediate help. All that has of course dissipated now, and Christie toes to doctrine just as much as the rest.

It would be nice to see Republican dreams of a complete take-over of Congress unrealized. Nothing is going to change the rise in sea level already set in motion, but it's always better to know what's going on.

Whilst the Vandals Occupied Themselves

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1014414250/coastal-voices-an-oral-history-of-the-outer-banks

Click the link. Nice little project. It was slated to get funding from the National Park Service. This is one of the problems sensible people face. So many holes in the dike of sanity, with the id-driven zombie hoard on the other side of the barrier armed with drills and steel spikes, three shifts of 'em, poking and drilling and punching, driven by something so deep they have no idea of what drives them forward.

Down here in NC I think the people who for some reason started out as Republicans think it's not fair that the Democratic Party got all the loot for so long. Maybe that's how it looks, from the outside, just rampant looting. Get in, get connected, make the deals, retire with a highway named after you. When the vandals broke through here in NC they simply brushed aside all the rules and laws that stood in their way. Fracking is money, so hell with those annoying ecological tests, get 'er done. Over in Raleigh at the State Fair, which was the small dominion of the North Carolina Secretary of Agriculture for ever and ever, the Democrats had a deal with the James Strates Shows for ever and ever. I'd see the train parked on a siding when I'd go to the Fair as a kid. "James E Strates" written on every car. They hauled the rides and stuff from Fair to Fair. Now they got a new company doing the gig, hired by the Republicans. This year a ride fell down. The owner is in jail in Raleigh, dressed in stripes and cuffed for his initial appearance. Three people fell some 30 feet, condition unknown at this time. Paper said the ride owner had a cocaine conviction in Ohio in 1997. Sleuth reporters, on the case. Course every story on the WRAL website comes with "left-leaning Democrat claims...." in the lead. If only they could discover a left-leaning feature to the Vortex Thrill Ride. "Yep, it war shore leaning left jes afore it fell down, yep, I sez to the little missus, that looks kindly left-leaning."

The Legislature banned the words "sea-level rise" as their small step towards stemming the tide and the warming trend we've initiated with our fancy-dancy industrial revolution. There will be no further studies in North Carolina. As for such projects as an oral history of the outer banks, well, it's hard to see such details from the roof of Mr. Romney's house, and anybody who has to go out in a little boat and haul crab pots for a living is prima facie one of the Forty Seven Percent. Anyways, it'll all be underwater in 50 years, but don't tell anybody I told you so. That'd be illegal.

If you want to consider more sanity, go find Rachel Maddow's show for October 29 and watch the opening segment, about Hurricane Sandy and how they just barely kept the Harlem River from flooding all the East Side subway lines. The scientists predicted the flood within three inches; that is, there was just three inches to spare on the eight foot plywood dam when the storm rolled in. That's pretty good science if you ask me. It won't make some legislator any money though.

Grover Who?

Who's paying attention? For most folks it's hard enough just driving back and forth, home to work, work to home. Hell, in my house it takes about half an hour each morning to deal with the Houdahenians. First the boys get fed, the two big black panthers follow me and the food into the living room, and dive in, after watching in rapt attention while I mix up the grub at the kitchen counter. Little Mokey follows behind, squeeking, as interested as the others. After they're head down in the plates I scoop him up and take him and his platter into be back room so he can eat at his own modest pace. That way the big boys don't finish theirs and then his. Meanwhile, I'm back in the kitchens, doors all shut, fixing momma's plate. Open the French door and she comes in and eats, with a furtive glance backwards at me while I'm, at last, making the java. All this goes on before I get to you. Sometimes there's one cup left from yesterday, and it gets nuked. It's a help. But now it's nearly 6:30 AM.

So like I say, who's going to notice that some national prune named Grover came to town this week to cheerlead our galloping Legislature as they make drastic "reforms" in the way taxes are determined and collected in the Old Nawth State. Much less consider what the hell it might mean that Grover has noticed. I refer you, therefore, to Sauron's searchlight. Because that's what it means, dear Hobbits. Someone, that is to say, a real journalist, should even as we speak be writing a book on the coup that is happening in North Carolina today. Whatever else you might say, this stuff was planned. There were meetings, discussion groups, theories and campaigns. There was, when the North Carolina Republicans found themselves with a full house, executive and both legislative houses to be precise, an agenda already cocked and ready. And it wasn't an agenda that anyone voted on.

We're Wisconsin now. Apparently the state Democratic Party has collapsed, at least for the moment. Or perhaps the sale of the Raleigh News and Observer back in the '80s to "outsiders" ended any progressive response loud enough to counter the ever conservative TV station run by the Fletcher family in Raleigh. That's the one that gave Jesse Helms his tv show, which eventually vaulted him into the US Senate.

Here's the WRAL coverage of Grover's appearance:

http://www.wral.com/norquist-offers-endorsement-to-tax-reform-efforts/12452996/

The question is, why should anyone at all care what Mr. Norquist thinks of our coming tax reforms? Who is Grover Norquist anyways? Here's his Wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist He's the guy who thought up this ridiculous "no new taxes" pledge that has hamstrung all efforts to sensibly deal with the United States budget. He's a mischievous rich boy who took his mischief to law school and figured out how to flummux the relatively stupid people who tend to get elected to legislative offices in this great land of ours, state and national. He's the guy who realized that since no one likes taxes, it's a successful political gambit to always run against taxes, and to never ever admit that we in fact ought to all like taxes, because that's what pays for all the things we all really really like here in the US of A. Instead, Grover's successful decades long mischief has widened the gap between a realistic understanding of what taxes mean, and our emotional dislike for paying for anything we don't specifically want, right then and there.

What does Grover care. He's the son of Polaroid, and jumped off that elevator in the nick of time apparently. His "job" is to pontificate. He probably doesn't even need to drive, much less actually work at a job that somebody else pays for, unless it's in the grand sense that like a lot of these mischief makes, he's actually working for the Koch Brothers and their ilk.

Whatever. Take note. Grover came to North Carolina this week, and gave a speech praising the work of our runaway Legislature. It's a sad day, but it might be a wake up call. Meanwhile, that's Puzzle, up at the top. Yesterday Libby told me he found a black snake in the grass. The snake was coiled up tightly, and protecting it's head. Libby picked up Puzzle and took him inside, and when she went back out the snake had departed, hopefully none the worse for wear, as black snakes are definitely good guys and win the battle for grub when in competition with Copperheads, which we also have in abundance in the NC Piedmont. I'm hopefully none of the boys will find a Copperhead. They're not so concerned with what cats happen to think, particularly young naive happy ones like ours, cats that haven't really learned what dangers lurk. That was the trade off. Momma, she knows very well, and that's why she looks behind her all the time.

We can learn a lot from these critters who decided long ago to hang around with us.

Hagel, Chuck That Is

They look like they're related. I also thought, in the bit of "hearing reparte" which I actually bothered to listen to a couple of weeks back, that Chuck was more philosophical in his answers than his inquisitors might have wished. I was further disappointed with the media "take" on that--they saw Mr. Hagel as being weak, when he was in fact being thoughtful and nuanced. But if we don't want our statesmen to be thoughtful and nuanced, we're basically insane. We undertook a whole war on the grounds that "he shot at my Dad."

Anyways, driving home yesterday, NPR announced that "Obama's controversial appointee to head the Defense Department, Chuck Hagel, was confirmed." This is why I have my doubts about sending more money to public radio. It's not that I want NPR to be liberal. I just want them to resist being played. Mr. Hagel was never "controversial." He was a somewhat moderate Republican Senator from Nebraska. And he was unwilling to simply lie when the party line demanded. (In this he parted company with General Powell.) This fact about Mr. Hagel was obvious, it was on the record, it was never in doubt.

Nevertheless, NPR allowed the Republican kabuki dance around Mr. Hagel to actually cause them to mischaracterize the former Senator from Nebraska. Why not just call him a decorated Vietnam veteran, or the former Republican Senator? Now, because of a bit of transparent political theatre, Mr. Hagel is "controversial." And this reframing of the new Secretary was perhaps the only purpose of the kabuki, and in this it succeeded. McCain and Graham said, "let us play NPR, and verily it came to pass."

This is of course what Fox News and frequently all the other network news programs participate in daily. They build frames and shape the public's limited understanding of what's going on. It is disgraceful that NPR, as well, joins in this activity. How hard is it to gain enough perspective to see through ploys as obvious as the Hagel hearings. This art is what it means to be a professional journalist. You'd think even Cokie Roberts would have sent out a memo to the news room on this one.

__________________________

Meanwhile, on the tattered home front, our fresh new hard right Governor, Frack You McCrory, was appearing on Fox and announcing that Mr. Obama had merely given him a "political speech" when he audienced with the President to discuss off-shore drilling off our Outer Banks. There's no doubt that our Mr. McCrory has big plans, looking out to 2016. The GOP has a shiny moderate candidate already: Mr. Christie. Who do they have on the hard right? All the obvious choices are tarnished and, frankly, ridiculous as serious challengers to Mrs. Clinton. McCrory's a fresh face. He was mayor of a sorta big city. He worked for Duke Power, which means he's an Energy insider, just like George W. Bush. He's protestant and Southern and white. And my guess is, North Carolina is going to be mighty tired of him in four years, after he's sold out our wonderful coastal fishery to big oil, and endangered our Piedmont ground water sources with a fracking boom. There's also no doubt that the GOP is flat out owned by the Energy Sector. I mean, if ever one doubted this after the Cheerleader chanted "Drill, Baby, Drill" across our teevees throughout the fall of '08.

Just sayin', of course.

Thursday Update: Here's a link to our current legislative doings on the subject of fracking:

http://www.wral.com/drilling-fast-track-gets-senate-approval/12154466/

Here's the salient quote, oddly buried some grafs down by the news organization that brought first North Carolina and then the world the Right Honorable Jesse Helms:

Other changes in the bill include removing the state geologist and water and air experts from the state Mining and Energy Commission, allowing drillers to inject production waste fluids back into the ground, repealing the law requiring "land men" to register with the state and streamlining the permitting process to a single permit, removing checkpoints at which DENR could look for problems.

Reminds me of Lee's description of the Confederate Congress in 1864. Somebody should send our GOPers a rail car of boiled peanuts.

Broken Chimney Pots

It might have in the long run been a bad thing when John F. Kennedy debated Richard Nixon. Oh, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I was a senior in high school. The Presidents I'd had any experience of were first Truman, a man in a hat making speeches now and then on the news reels at the movies, who had something to do with the war going on in Korea. And then Ike,an elderly gent who made speeches on the news reels at the movies, played golf, seemed more and more unengaged in a vague way. Everyone in my family revered FDR, and in the personal vein, as in he saved us during the Depression. Not that I was particularly engaged in anything much during the 1950s beyond the world of home and school. The days and years flowed past. I'd read the box scores, following Mickey Mantle's remarkable homer totals, and the terrific string of World Series Championships. There was the 32-0 season the Heels put up in '57, defeating Wilt Chamberlain's great Kansas team to cap it off. I remember Larsen's perfect game. Delivering papers on my bicycle and getting pretty good at tossing 'em on porches on the fly. The headlines? Whatever.

There was one fall a "paper drive." The Raleigh Times had all its delivery boys get into a contest to see who could get the most new subscriptions. I wasn't really interested in selling, but I was paired for some reason with a serious salesman kid. He knew how to press and close. Wandering around my route with him in the early evening, we rang doorbells on all the houses that didn't subscribe. Damn if he didn't score about twenty or so new subscriptions. He got the credit, and maybe even won the prize. I delivered his new subscriptions. After about two months, almost all of them had dropped off. His method was to get people to give up. Anything to get him out of the living room.

When I was a senior, Kennedy debated Nixon. When Kennedy won, a lot of people breathed a sign of relief. Then it turned out it was pretty neat to have a President who was engaged with America, who had a vision, who wanted to do things. In a vague sort of way, Kennedy's energy and optimism merged with the spirit of the Civil Rights struggle and seemed to give the dream of finally equal rights and treatment some possibility. And after Nixon finally did win, and after the promise of the Civil Rights victories was swirled into the ghastly horror of Vietnam, all to the soundtrack of the Stones and the Beatles and Bob Dylan, it looked even more like the Presidential Debates of 1960 were some how a grand solution to the grand problem America has every four years, of finding someone capable of doing this absurd job of being President, of getting behind the wheel and driving this gigantic engine that's been running away down the tracks. Looking at Nixon as President, you had to say that the Debates had saved us from him once at least.

But these debates are in fact a singularity. They seem, today, like many other familiar things, like sports contests, like a chess game, like Jerry Springer. They are some sort of special Olympic reality show. The media which carries them treats them as a singularity. Every channel brings with it a panel of oracles trying to explain what happened to the people who just watched. And, as in the Kennedy/Nixon template, it becomes mostly about performance and affect. Romney was animated, engaged. His eyes were wide. There was sweat on his lip. Obama came walking in with a bounce, but tended more and more to look down, to look away. Obama seemed to have no real closing statement, just a crumpled piece of paper that looked too much like an apology. Romney, therefore, "won."

The viewers know what "won" and "lost" mean. For the past week now, leading up to tomorrow's debate of the stand-ins, every oracle has told the viewers that Romney won. Polls are now showing him leading Obama, or about to lead the President. The polls reflect the reaction to what the media told the viewers about the debate, who won and lost, and of course the polls also reflect whatever else aggregates in the viewers minds and emotions. NC State won, Florida State lost.

As we elevate the debates to the level of myth, all the obvious facts already available concerning each candidate tend more and more to be eclipsed. Romney has a long record as a businessman, as a governor, as a master prevaricator who has taken vivid and vehement positions on every side of every issue. Obama has been President for nearly four years. Does historical record, factual decision-making, matter in the least? Core beliefs, including religious convictions? Apparently the Debate has spoken, at least for today, and a trend is developing, possibly a tide. We might be seeing a moment when a man who is better at whatever this thing, this "debate," really is, wins over a man who is better at actually doing the job this "debate" is supposed to help us decide. How strange is that?

In a month one of these guys will get back behind the wheel of the biggest locomotive humans have ever constructed. It's already going faster than anybody who turned a wrench on it had any idea was possible.

[photo by John Carr, http://www.carrtracks.com/about.htm ]

The Cross Hairs

This could be added as an "update" to my last post, but anyways... The following link is worth a read:

http://www.emptywheel.net/2011/12/28/oddly-passive-in-the-world-of-drone-killing/

On the one hand, we can surely all agree that the rough justice of Mussolini's end, hanging upside down under a bridge, is indeed entirely what he "deserved." So, for that matter, is the sordid end of Hitler and his intimate cohort. The photographs of various German higherups, heads on desks, dark blood pooled beside, and the Luger still in a cold, dead hand--that is justice, in some understandable larger sense. And given this--call it a moral fact if you like--it is surely understandable that a President finds himself with a moral duty to deal with people like bin Laden using the rough justice available.

But there is also a slippery slope, as the emptywheel article rightly attests. There is the "young wife." There are the faceless civilians who almost always are noted as collateral damage when these various actions are taken. And there is the problem, too, of just how easy it all becomes--the bright kid from Yale or the Air Force Academy, assigned to some virtual cockpit in some comfortable American city, putting in his shift watching a screen, pressing a red button, having a nice fresh-brewed cup of coffee and a danish. And a President who didn't actually "decide" anything beyond not rejecting a plan which might have been written entirely in the bloodless language of operatives and objectives, and who gains a political advantage of sorts by contradicting some Republican's cheap shot "appeaser" rhetoric. "Appease this, fucker!"

So. Just sayin'. Here's a place that demands some serious thinking. And of course who's doing that in this hilarious campaign season, where the best news is probably that Mr. Gingrich is at last confronting his own petard, and squirms like a fishing worm as Mr. Romney slowly skewers him with silence and unlimited advertising money used for not one syllable of serious conversation or consideration.

One might hope, and probably vainly, that at least Mr. Newt realizes that he contributed directly to this electoral context, where the battle is to the death. "But I have ideas," Gingrich mewls. No doubt to many on the right, Romney's strongest qualification has become his willingness to press the sword deeper, looking into Mr. Gingrich's eyes, enjoying the vanishing light in them. No doubt later at supper he can remark to his advisers that sunsets in Iowa in January are the best to be found anywhere. The clink of glasses and bitter laughter. Fade to black.

You May Find Yourself

As usual, Doghouse nails the problem:


Kneel and pray all you want (hypocrites!). You think a lack of public sanctimony is what ailed Penn State? Jerry Sandusky was all about good works. Maybe one more minute of silence, on top of a decade or more of silence, wasn't exactly the best approach.

On the Right, apparently the "answer" to the problem posed by a ten year cover-up of an extremely nasty sex scandal involving multiple child molestations and one of the top BCS football programs in the country, plus the winningest coach of all time and a major university, is to just blame the "liberals" and the nanny state. Citations to this absurdity abound--you can just surf and find them. Even straight forward sports writers are cringing at the idea of possibly imposing major immediate sanctions on Penn State. Over at CNN the sports guy and the news guy got into an argument over whether the Penn State problem was even NCAA sanctionable, in principle.

There's just too much money at stake. Public prayer will have to suffice.

And same, apparently, goes for the suppression of First Amendment rights which New York City just imposed, in the early morning. There was no official media coverage either. Air space above the park was closed! No cams allowed. Coverage no doubt exists on YouTube. For the moment. Until Congress gets around to dealing with the money problem.

Hopefully New York's greatest band will throw a reunion concert, featuring their most remarkable song. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was.

He Thanks I'm Stoopid

(from http://www.wendyswizardofoz.com/frank.htm)

It's not too hard to remember back when I thought each election was a kind of clean slate, with the various candidates for each office all being at least genuine, earnest citizens who, at least in their own minds and perspectives, really believed that whatever they were offering as a way forward was indeed the best way for all of us. There was, that is to say, a bond of shared citizenship. And the differences were a matter of reflection--because the world was big and complex and of course one guy or gal could see things different from another. And sometime or other way back then I ran into a cynic at a party (I think it was back when people drank martinis--I have a vivid picture of this guy with a martini in his hand, the olive bouncing around down at the bottom as he gestured, the clear liquid sliding around the edge of the glass like oil--I probably had a beer in my hand). This guy was older than me by about a generation, and had been in Korea, and had come back to the States to start a little newspaper. He rode an old BMW, and had a '55 Porsche in his yard that hadn't run in six years. This was just before Vietnam really got going, but after Kennedy had been shot.

So, he says to me, you have to understand that the Republicans do not care about anybody but the very rich. That's who they are working tirelessly for, 24/7. That's the only way to understand who they are, what they say and do. And... He took a drink and put his empty glass on a glass table that stood nearby... They very well know that they cannot operate on such a program openly and honestly, because no one would vote for them.

Well, I was kinda shocked at this Yankee attitude. (This guy was from New York, and I'd played poker with him once, and he'd won all the money simply by raising the ante until no one else had any courage left to play their hands.) I'd grown up a nice Methodist in Raleigh, NC. We believed in giving everyone an even-steven chance.

But then along comes the rest of my life. And now, day before yesterday, the one Republican candidate who is allegedly living in the actual real world says on the Hannity radio show (I heard this myself), "I'm troubled by the fact that this President has run our economy into the ground." That's simply a lie. That Mr. Romney says it in the reasonable tones of a guy at the Club doesn't make it less a lie. It's been only three years since Mr. Obama inherited an economy that was cratering, and we can all go look at the stats, month by month, from say mid-'08 to now, and see that everything was falling when Mr. Obama can in, and that mostly things are significantly better today.

Then Mr. Perry, the other supposedly serious candidate, comes out with this "flat tax" plan yesterday. His big selling point is that it's "easy." You can keep your lawyers and accountants and keep using the old system, or you can just send in your taxes with a post card. Take your pick. And that's an even bigger lie. It takes only seconds to figure out that the flat tax is simply a big tax break for the very rich, and a big tax increase for the rest of us. And perhaps it takes a whole minute to realize that there ain't no way a government is going to keep parallel tax systems in place for long, because it would be a huge waste of money. And it might take three whole minutes to get the picture that with such a huge revenue drop as this new flat tax plan would initiate, the Republican congress would be sure to make up the deficit by huge cuts to so-called "entitlement" programs such as social security and medicare.

In other words, Mr. Perry is simply and obviously flimflamming the people he's asking to vote for him. He's simply lying to them, offering to trade them a post card of convenience for their social security checks, and not even bothering to mention that people who are out of work, because for example they've simply aged out of the work force, ain't gonna need to be worrying about paying taxes anyways, whether it's on a post card or a regular sized piece of paper.

How can they think we're so stupid? I really don't know. I asked Libby last night, because this just boggles the mind. She said, well, they've been acting like this--brazen you might say--ever since the Tea Party showed them that they'll respond to anything. Then she mentioned a couple of things: "death panels," "Kenyan Marxist," "Sharia Law."

Yesterday listening to NPR report on Mr. Perry's Amazing Post Card, I was close to wrecking the pickup when the closing paragraph of their story asserted that, "actually," there's little difference in the Perry Post Card and our current tax system for "most" people.

Oh really. If NPR is saying it, and Perry is saying it, what are even reasonably intelligent people to think. I mean if they don't want to be bothered to just. Errrrrrrrr. THINK. I don't know. I know NPR has gotten my last nickle. That's a start. And as for Perry and Romney--I sure don't think I'll be voting for any bold-faced liar anytime soon.

In the Streets

(from dealbreaker.com)

I'm watching the "Occupy..." Movement grow from NYC to many cities around the US. As a witness to both the Civil Rights struggles and the efforts to stop Vietnam, there are somewhat predictable arcs. The Right has begun it's public counterattack via Limbaugh. Surely in one city or another there will be efforts to smear the movement with acts which are actually carried out by persons aiming to defend the status quo at any cost. (See, e.g., the first ten minutes of Battle of Algiers.) One thing that concerns me, just watching the media coverage of Wall Street, is the fact that signage expresses outrage at just about everything under the sun. There is a muddled, 'whadaya got' quality to that impression which will disturb the already fearful. Massaged by the Limbaughs they get all their "facts" from, the fearful will provide a base for all sorts of draconian counter actions, should there be any sort of provocation. It won't take much either.

Given those obvious concerns, then, here's a good link to beginning to understand what's happening:

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/10/recommended-reading-on-occupywallstreet.html

Be sure to read the post as well--the author is thoughtful, and he's been to the protests and talked to a number protesters. I have heard over the past two years quite a few people wondering why there isn't more street action viz our terrible economy, and in particular about the loss of jobs in the United States. Well... this is the street action, and the center of the issue. As long as the Right Wing Pundits aren't allowed to reframe this (and they'll try mightily), there are very large majorities in the US who are surely on board. Who knows--we might actually witness something positive coming out of this. For starters, it's a fact (supported by many polls) that a majority of Americans of all political affiliations support higher taxes on the very rich. That's very heartening, because it only makes sense. Governance which makes no sense--what we're witnessing in Congress, and particularly the House--cannot stand forever. The question is, what comes after the country realizes where the radical House is trying to take us.

Paul Ryan, Genius

(nostalgic-radio.com)


We went down to Georgia last weekend to play fiddle for a dance. Did not see the devil anywheres, but only some very nice folks who love to shake a leg. I-85 was pretty much as it is, except less construction these days. Surely that'll change once the jobs bill is quickly voted in in a wave of bipartisan cooperation this fall.

Coming back I heard several times Paul Ryan's big new sound bite--that the idea that very wealthy people should have a higher tax rate than at present--was "class warfare." I know he's supposed to be the big Republican genius, but really. "Class warfare" is a cliche. It's tired, stale, and meaningless. It's a phrase that Limbaugh has been dragging out since 1991, when he accused Clinton of class warfare. You'd think Ryan, who is supposed to really understand our economic situation at a level mere mortals can only postulate, would come up with something better. How about "generational warfare"? He definitely gets that one.

It's also strangely ironic, given that Mr. Ryan's on proposed budget is an attack on American citizens who aren't bazillionaires, and who thought that simply doing their best would at least get them to a retirement that wasn't going to be accomplished in a cardboard box, under a bridge, with no teeth. Apparently it turns out that beyond being without any empathy, Mr. Ryan is also simply a dim bulb, a posture, much like his Confederate twin, Mr. Cantor. Surely these people have heard of "projection?" I realize that some day soon all Republicans are going to be graduates of the shadow education system that has been constructed by the far right, but somehow I doubt either Cantor or Ryan matriculated from Regency Law, or Oral Roberts U. Perhaps one can hope that as Ms. Bachmann circles ever downward in flames, the genius twins will follow?

The problem with the Rand position is that it is contradictory in application. Consider that on the one hand the goal is to support and encourage the entrepreneur, the brave citizen who has an idea and just wants the economic space to bring it to fruition, to the benefit of all of us dimmer worker drones. Now and then such an entrepreneur succeeds of course, even when taxes are still above zero. But of course we all know that most entrepreneurs do not succeed, and that their failure (to use a harsh and unfair word) is not due to tax policy, but to the luck of the Irish, the whims of the consumer, the various other entrepreneurs battling in the marketplace, the whims of the Chinese and Indian governments' industrial investment policies, and surely many other factors too numerous to mention.

Now, given that any sensible person in the Randian universe is going to try to invest for their retirement, and given that in the Randian universe there is no public safety net, because there is no such thing in the Randian universe as a "public" or "common" good. Why then should any sensible citizen in the Randian universe dare risk their future on what is by definition a low-percentage investment. In the Randian world, with no safety net, the sensible play is just exactly what parents of the Great Depression told their children--get a job, hold on to it even if your boss is an asshole and plays head games with you every day of the week, keep your head down, survive.

That is to say--in the Randian world it's actually only the small number of successful entrepreneurs who are lauded as examples to follow. The failed entrepreneur is a ruined man desperately in need of a safety net, at least if he's over 65. Talk to the gigantic failed entrepreneur class currently populating the US--that would be the guys who were doing just great building houses until 2008. They were not "wage slaves." In fact, almost all of them, every last nail banger, rock hanger, shingle slapper, pipe fitter, wire runner--the whole kit and kaboodle that made up the housing industry--all of 'em were sole proprietors, hard working entrepreneurs living the Randian dream in a world where housing prices always went up, because that way gravity points.

The reason why Americans built a government that could provide a safety net for its citizens was because Americans who did the building lived through the Great Depression and the Second World War. What has happened since then is that subsequent generations have forgotten that we all shared the load in those very dark days, and that as a result (and of course with some luck) we came out of the tunnel into the light. If you want sensible people to have the courage to try for their dreams, you need to cushion the possibility that they are risking losing everything in the process. Otherwise, sensible people won't take that risk.

The Randian dream is in fact an illusion conjured up by people who are already so rich that they have no risks. What they really dream of is a labor base so battered that they will take whatever jobs there are at any wage offered. This is how manufacturing will return to the US, if the Randians have their way--if Paul Ryan has his way. No safety net--no social security, no medicare, no anything--that creates desperation, not visionaries. The visionaries in that world are people with schemes--people who think they can saw through the gates of the gated at night and come away with their catalytic converters and central air conditioning units. People who figure out how to sell drugs to the children of the gated. Or get elected to sell mind candy to the muddled parents. That's Mr. Ryan's gig.

Weed Eating

http://www.bagnewsnotes.com

Here's a terrific post from the always terrific Marcy Wheeler:

http://www.emptywheel.net/2011/09/01/a-convicted-liar-defends-convicted-liars-boss-by-lying/

What this analysis of Elliot Abrams' defense of Dick Cheney shows is that Republicans have been consistently dismissive of the law when it suits their "higher" purposes, for decades.  That is, Abrams is surely correct in his assertion that Dick Cheney never changed, from back when he was defending Iran-Contra, right on up to his willingness to forgo bothersome facts when they got in the way of a war he wanted to instigate with Iraq, and on, to his oversight in the outing of Valerie Plame, and even now, to writing this "memoir" which simply asserts his personal vision of reality at every turn, and damn (once again) whatever facts there might be in the other direction.

Perhaps it's a weird blessing that at least Cheney isn't in a position to run for President.  One wonders why he hasn't had a convenient heart transplant, however.  All he needed to do, back when he was Veep, was hang out near the battlefields he created, and a good healthy, brave heart would surely have come along in due time.

Speaking of the lying Mr. Perry, by the way:  for all his talk of making government invisible, here's my prediction.  When and if he's elected President (there probably should be some scare-quotes around "elected", since we know the whole process is suspect and has been so since 2000), Mr. Perry is going to turn into the ole Kingfish, p.d.q.  There will be big job programs for the unemployed, great new public works efforts, and of course a big military expansion (more jobs), including a new Legion stationed along the border with Mexico, and perhaps a wall to rival the Great Wall of China.  Mr. Perry is going to put the country back to work.  Just like Mussolini.  That's what he is.  He has zero principles, and a will-to-power the size of the dearly departed World Trade Centers.  Deficits you say?  The Democrats will be gone, and they are the party of deficit spending.  QED. 

Teevee News

Billy Wilder at work

Not the news "on" the teevee.  Last night I happened to watch some of Thom Hartmann's show, waaaaay over on the Dish dial at 9415.  (Bet you didn't even know there were four digit channels!)  Thom, who blogs and has a radio show I believe, and is generally a thoughtful kinda guy, was trying to talk to two Gen X rightwingers about our collective future--which was immediately difficult since those two didn't recognize even the concept of "collective" or "community," or the idea that they were part of a conversation.  Instead, it was the usual stuff--riding the talking points of the moment.  Somehow, for example, corporations and the wealthy needed to be taxed less.  I was embarassed for them, for a moment.  There aren't any economists asserting the voodoo any more, and it's simply proven that you cannot fill up a vessel with a hole in the bottom.  Factually speaking, if cutting taxes led to low unemployment and that shining city on the hill, we'd be there.  Because all we've done is cut taxes. No one really believes the gigantic economic catastrophe that concluded the Bush II years was all the doing of one chubby gay Congressman.

(On the other hand, and reverting to a quick blog reference in a piece about the teevee, if you doubt the utter fantasy world American conservatives live in 24/7, read this short piece at Gin and Tacos:

http://www.ginandtacos.com/2011/06/23/thanks-for-the-oasis/

And now back to our commentary.)


I simply couldn't stand listening to this conversation for more than fifteen minutes or so.  It's too depressing.  Over on the Turner Classic channel I ran the schedule ahead a bit to see what was coming up.  I'd already had the good fortune to catch the wonderful conversation with Billy Wilder which they ran earlier.  If you can find that somehow, it's as good as it gets.  Who else worked with the best talent of the '40s, '50s, and '60s, and made the best films of that era--or at least some of the best.  Well, John Huston of course, and John Ford.  Too bad they weren't there too.  Anyways, running the Turner Classic schedule, I found that this weekend they're showing "Out of the Past," one of the best movies ever made, as well as an assortment of other Jane Greer vehicles.  Hope you have time to at least watch "Out of the Past."

Oh, one of the interesting things in the Wilder interview was the reminder that Otto Preminger was the original Col. Klink.  Wilder said many of the smaller players had been directed by Preminger in other films, and that apparently he was as dictatorial on set as in his role.  When he wasn't looking they aped him constantly.  The other interesting thing apropos "Stalag 17" was that Paramount suggested to Wilder that he make the spy (played by Peter Graves) Polish so as not to offend Germany, where Paramount expected the film to do very well.  Wilder resigned over this issue, leaving the studio he'd made countless hit films for over some 18 years of work.  It was refreshing to listen to a true realist. 

http://thefedorachronicles.com/hollywood/Directors/BillyWilder.html

The Library & Other Points of Note

1. Something to think about--particularly if you're one of those folks who believes that there's no such thing as the "common good." 

http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=36725

Next time you hear Rand Paul or Scott Walker talking about getting the government out of everything but providing subsidies to private security forces, and about how the "founders" wanted nothing to do with social projects, remember the Library of Congress.  Interesting, isn't it, that the Brits burned it down when they sacked Washington in the War of 1812.

2.  This is so absolutely spot on you just have to read it a few times:

http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2011/04/25/misogyny-in-the-news-thats-entertainment/

For further readings on this matter, see Hazel Dickens' wonderful song, "Don't Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There."  

3.  Finally, cudos to Lawrence O'Donnell for sticking Jesus right back into Rush Limbaugh's face, after Limbaugh had utterly reversed the teachings of Jesus in yesterday's show.  For Limbaugh, Jesus turns out to be a predecessor of Gordon Gekko.  Mr. O'Donnell easily found the appropriate scripture.  He had earlier attempted to raise the same points with Billy Graham's fraud of a boy, Frank.  Being a skilled preacher, Frank was able to filibuster until time ran out.  

And to just close the circle here--Jerry Falwell once asserted that one of his goals was to destroy the public school system in the United States.  Challenged on that assertion, he denied it.  It is nontheless in print--in a book he wrote. 

Our National Credit Rating

Arabic Bible from the 1850s, from www.congregational-library.typepad.com

No, I don't have a clue whether S&P is playing politics or not.  I think having Ms Harris-Perry on O'Donnell last night as an economics expert was a bit of a mistake, as much as I like her general intelligence.  While she can make good conversation on any subject, the fundamental credit-worthiness of the United States is an arcane affair.  The United States, that is to say, is not your "family" budget, no matter how much Republicans want to use that metaphor whenever it suits their deeper purposes. 

The more interesting fact gracing the past twenty-four hours is that Tea Party rallies all across the nation were extremely weak affairs even when big Tea Party Stars turned out, as Ms. Bachmann did in South Carolina--a whole Tea Party State fer Christ's sake.  She drew hundreds, who no doubt watched with rapt attention her usual bizarro hand movements.  I'm convinced she's sending coded signals.  Check it out the next time she's on the teevee.  So, could it be that even Tea Party Faithful are actually realizing that maybe we'd better raise taxes?  That's certainly the obvious implication of all the debt crisis talk, after all--and why the Congressional TPers didn't realize that from the get-go I certainly don't know.  It's a Rube Goldberg machine to try to fix the budgetary situation the way Ryan proposes.  Just drop the Bush Tax Cuts, which is what they should have done back in December.  (And it's an interesting fact to me that they are still the "Bush Tax Cuts."  There was a lot of predicting about how now they were the Obama Tax Cuts--it doesn't seem to have "taken.")

The thing to remember, always, is that Republicans are always lying.  Here's a brief piece from Sadly No to illustrate the point.  If the general public would just learn to suspect a trick when they see the next shiny object, we'd all be a lot better off going down the road.

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/34927.html

It may turn out that the S&P credit rating announcement of yesterday is about as solid as the assertion that the United States is burning Bibles.  Wanna bet?  A better tack for the right wing lying machine might have been the shocking headline that Bibles are being translated into Pastun--a sure sign of shariafication to follow.  Meanwhile, the Right to Lifers are the primary imposers of Sharia Law in the United States.  They even kill doctors now and again.  

Hey Mister, Where's That Train Headed?

The Buckeye Express Diner

There is nothing at all new in the observation that money is power.  This is the nature of things.  There was once, however, at least the romantic idea that there were also other sources of power, by which I don't mean Mao's dictum, although that dictum represents the clarity of the extreme, and you can observe it in action in my favorite documentary, "Harlan County, USA," when the pistols come out on both sides of that wet spur track of rails.

Still and all, Ms Maddow had one for the books last night when she reported that university professors in good standing (not Gingriches I mean) are being asked to give up all their emails in response to their resistance to these draconian legal measures being enacted by various states under the sway of Tea Party rule, and that one search word in the email analysis is "Maddow".  This all flows out of some conservative think tank called the Mackinac Foundation*, which according to Maddow is funded by the Koch Brothers, the Walmart family, and the parents of Eric Prince amongst others.  She couldn't get any sort of response out of either the Foundation or the various funding parties, beyond "no comment."

I don't want to try to get into the details of Ms Maddow's investigation--but it's worth watching and understanding.  It would seem that money these days is in the process of consolidating its already extensive power, which may well be a kind of "natural" consequence of money, just as business begins as a multitude of small shops offering a variety of products to the public, but seems to trend to a monopoly, a monolith making all the various products and simply stamping different names on them to keep it more colorful and interesting.  E.g., I used to have a yellow DeWalt 4" Angle Grinder, and before that a black Black & Decker 4" Angle Grinder, and after that the one I have now, a green Makita 4" Angle Grinder (which has lasted longer than the other two, but cost a bit more).  But whether these three products were made by different manufacturers I couldn't really say, and actually kinda doubt.  Or to ask another question, what happened to the Packard and the DeSoto and the Plymouth?

It is possibly a matter of little consequence that we can no longer find us a good Packard.  But if it's not possible to find a viable political candidate who isn't funded by corporate money (and thus who's politics are approved by the corporate view), that's a different matter, isn't it?  The Michigan Tea Party Governor has actually passed a law which allows him to remove from elected office officials of a town which in his judgment is in economic straits.  State employees who question this can have their emails studied by the powers that be for thought crimes, signs of conspiracy, mentions of Marx or Maddow.  This is the developing story in the United States right now.  There's a paternalistic feeling in the air.  Governor Walker of Wisconsin isn't going to put up with "it", and if the smart-aleck kids down at the end of the table don't shut up and eat their English peas, they will not get any cobbler.

There was a nice historical ring to it, last night, when Maddow interviewed the Wisconsin Secretary of State, a Democrat named LaFollette.  But she might have been talking to a relic, an appendix, a vestigal tail.  Savor her shows.  If she makes it on the air to the end of this year, things are better than they look right now.   As it is, I would not make book on Ms Maddow investigating GE with regard to their interesting tax-paying record.

*Update: Mackinac Foundation can of course be googled with good results.  Check out the following URL:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mackinac_Center_for_Public_Policy

Note the people and corporations who fund the foundation.  Note the spiffy little essay contests they sponsor.  Note the spiffy salaries of their top people.  Do just a little reading between the lines! Where oh where is Donald Segretti today, I have to wonder.  Was he ever ahead of his time or what?

Hollowed Out

I happened to watch Rachel Maddow last night. She did a great report on the nexus of stories circling around the oil leak in the Gulf--how the corporations are all located out of the US, how the leak is ten times worse than it's being reported, how the Federal agency responsible for oversight is under investigation for corruption (drunken sex and drug parties with lobbyists and other oil industry people--sheesh!) and how even as our current Secretary of the Interior announces that there is a flat out moratorium on new wells, this same agency continues to issue new permits and even denies it in the face of the evidence. A watchdog person says this agency has been more or less like this for at least two decades, which gets us back beyond Clinton. But then I always figured Clinton to be what back in the day was called a Rockefeller Republican.

If this were 1972, and if Sam Ervin was still alive and sitting in a powerful Senate chair, maybe something would happen, some serious effort to get at this corruption, which has finally let to something so monstrous that before it's over, the whole Gulf of Mexico is likely going to be so damaged that we will remember this summer as a turning point. I don't know what Mr. Obama can do--can he legally fire a whole department or do the protections that keep political pay-back at bay also protect these corrupt government employees from swift management accountability.

I do know this. The idea that there is something called a "public good" has been hollowed out systematically until there's almost nothing left but a few specially designated national parks, and they're starved for funds. The Gulf of Mexico? It's just a place that nobody owns, and there's oil, i.e., money, on the bottom, for the taking. The GOP actually ran a Presidential campaign on the slogan "Drill, Baby, Drill," in 2008, with a dottering geezer as its standard bearer, and a cutesie bimbo with a mean streak as its main spokesman. If the American Voter doesn't remember this in the coming mid-term, and votes in lots of right-wingers who think off-shore drilling is the top priority, we really are living in fantasy land.

Democracy depends on informed decision-making. Since the late '70s the people who see all out capitalism as the meaning of life have worked to undermine all sources of objective information, down to the very bottom. In their view--a self-serving epistemology which they mostly don't operate on themselves--there is no truth, everything is just a matter of "balance," competing interests in a "marketplace of ideas." Mr. Limbaugh can point to his listenership as proof that he's telling the truth in such a world, and he does--frequently. And about this spill he can theorize that perhaps the Obama Administration somehow sabotaged the well to create a climate of distrust for all off-shore drilling, and then point to all concerns about further off-shore drilling as proof of his theory. And then he'll have a constituency ready and willing to argue this with their neighbors in every little hamlet in the US. It might not go over down in Mobile or Gulfport. Or even there, perhaps people will simply blame the Democrats for the oil that keeps washing up on the beaches, and the empty beach cottages.

One of the best ad campaigns I've seen in a good while has been those BP ads, with the very nice folks talking about a wide mix of energy sources, about working together, about American can-do. They've been running those ads for a good number of years, and I've tended to stop at BP stations versus Exxon stations because of the seemingly environment-friendly BP attitude. Meanwhile, according to the investigations underway, the government agency responsible for permitting off-shore drilling and also for collecting royalties from oil companies has been snorting crystal meth off of toaster ovens at big parties, and sleeping over at industry-owned resorts because they were too drunk to drive home. And somebody is sure to say, "See, we've told you over and over that gubment can't do anything. Now don't you believe us."

We've had corporation fuck buddies in charge of this country since Reagan, who earned his stripes as a spokesman for GE before he ever got into politics as an elected official. The Supreme Court just decided, last winter, that a corporation is a citizen with the same rights to fund elections as any one else. And as Rachel Maddow noted last night--who do you put in jail when a corporation destroys a fishery? With the Exxon Valdez, the allegedly drunk captain got the knife. In this case, the guys on the rig, who might have been doing their jobs correctly in any event, are dead. The company that was running the rig, Transocean--they are headquartered in Zug, Switzerland. Haliburton is now in Dubai. BP is in London.

We may have let it go on too long. We may be living in a building so eaten away that the next hurricane could just blow it right down. Toaster ovens! Why do they keep coming up in these stories.