Profiles in Discourage

I am disappointed this morning, not yet discouraged. Once again the party faithful have been misled by the wise and powerful mandarins of the DLC rump to nominate GOP Lite so come November when can get our ass handed to us by the real article.

We must abandon our proud, if brief, heritage as the tribune of common worker and the dispossessed. No, we must cater to the ever diminishing segment of Free Market Conservatives who aren't bat shit insane. So if you don't think all grade school students should be armed, if you don't believe Jesus rode a dinosaur and advocated punishing the poor, if you don't believe the Emancipation Proclamation was a mistake, if you don't believe that Gays should be stoned to death, if you don't think that rape victims should be forced to carry the fruits of that happy union to term then you obviously support the Trans Pacific Partnership & abhor Glass Steagall.

The Democrats have become reflexively craven. We pass over inspiring if imperfect choices like Jesse Jackson, John Edwards and Howard Dean to pick the most anodyne mediocrities and loathsome cynical machers who appeal to exactly no one. Why? Because Supreme Court vacancies. Then we lose and the Republicans pick the Justices anyway.

The elitist twats running the party chastise us for wanting real change: "No True Democrat wants Single Payer Healthcare... No true Democrat wants to expand Social Security...."  and on and on with what I really want because clearly I could not figure that out for myself. In fact the people are saying quite clearly what they want but those Solons of Democratic rectitude won't hear it. The elitist twats ridicule us for not wanting the runny wedge of Brie they are serving up so come November the whole world will be aghast to see us all crushed beneath a giant slab of fascist orange American cheese.

Maybe  HRC's myrmidons will successfully trash Bernie for his heresies against the DLC. Maybe she can suppress enthusiasm sufficient to guarantee Republican control of all three branches of government for the rest of my life. I hope not.

The Rabbit Hole of Conspiracy

I would not be surprised if Obama is behind Gen Petraeus' downfall...  I think Obama is a cagey enough in-fighter to do it. He wisely placed Petraeus @ CIA to remove him from the 2012 sweepstakes. He also had good reason to distrust Petraeus for trying to dictate Afghan policy to the White House. So dazzle your enemy with a largely ceremonial position that he would look petulant or downright unpatriotic to refuse. Keep him close enough to prevent him doing any real damage. Then dispose of him more permanently at your leisure after the election. An added benefit is that it creates enough commotion at the Agency to hobble any campaign to derail Obama's re-election bid. One can not blame him for not wanting to get sucker-punched by the Agency like Carter did.

But there is an even more likely scenario in my mind. Petraeus was accustomed to a cadre of sycophantic staff in the Army. When he arrived at the Agency he had no friends or loyal retainers. There are many there still loyal to Poppy Bush. The whole thing seems like a honeypot, although there must be more to it because marital infidelity alone would not force his resignation. Whatever leverage they used, Petraeus is now disgraced & effectively barred from seeking political office. Whatever tempest in a teabag launches into the primaries, Petraeus would have been the only credible competition for Jeb in 2016. It probably will work. So the family that God (at least of the Protestants) intended to be stewards of this great nation will once again be at the helm.

Lest we shed too many bitter tears about this rough treatment of the good General... he will probably have a seat on the board at Carlyle Group by year's end.

Seems to me...

Romney doesn't really want to win. I suppose it was gratifying to grind down his primary opponents one by one. Last Man Standing... Hooray! Wasn't really a surprise, though. Hasn't he been the presumptive nominee since January 09?

What perplexes me is while the man is incapable of telling the truth... why can't he be bothered to tell people what they want to hear?

Conspiracy!

The Talking Points Memo is reporting that Loughner Was Influenced By Conspiracy Theory Movie. This is an unfortunate editorial bias that reinforces the nostrums dispensed by the corporate media and precludes rigorous thinking about a complex and treacherous world.

A conspiracy is simply more than one person jointly working towards a goal and hiding their involvement. Human beings are frequently greedy, stupid and cruel. They have very good reason to hide malfeasance or incompetence. One can recognize the necessity and mechanics of conspiracies without imputing the existence of the Illuminati, the Smoking Man or Transdimensional lizards only visible with special sunglasses. Every Christmas, parents conspire to shower their children with gifts unknown before December 25th. One can readily appreciate the why & how without imputing the existence of Santa Claus or Immaculate Conception.

FDR suppressed actionable intelligence about Japanese intent to attack Pearl Harbor, Enron conspired to artificially inflate energy prices in California, PHS doctors conducted syphilis experiments on African Americans without their informed consent at Tuskegee, The TARP program refuses to disclose recipients, the investigations of the JFK assassination and 9/11 attacks were compromised, Naval Intelligence colluded with organized crime to protect the American waterfront in WWII, Pat Tilman was shot by his comrades, the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran and Noah Cross fathered his own granddaughter.

These are all documented "conspiracies." It is not always possible to name the full cast of conspirators, the extent of their involvement or their motivations. But they were conspiracies nonetheless.

After the Pentagon Papers appeared on the front of the NYT, the Abu Ghraib photos in the New Yorker, the WikiLeaks video of the helicopter gunship murders online, they were no longer successful conspiracies but crimes exposed.

I watched a sizable chunk of an early edit of the first Zeitgeist movie. I abandoned it due to its insufferable poor production values and tediously repetitive script. But not everything in it was wrong. And some of it's critiques of dodgy institutions like the Fed were in essence right, but poorly supported.

The danger of tarring reasonable arguments as "conspiracy theories" is that it encourages prior restraint of thoughtful investigation. Orly Taitz is a clown, and the birthers are flogging a theory without a shred of factual basis. But that does not alter the fact that lots of well meaning moderates, progressives and liberals voted for a man who is substantially different than what he presented on the campaign trail. If I question his or his mother's possible involvement with the CIA, or the source of his campaign funding being predominantly from Wall Street banks and not on-line contributions of less than $100, then I am another crackpot deluded with Muslim Kenyan cant. I am not saying Obama is a Manchurian Candidate but he is certainly other than what we were told from 2006 to 2008.

The even greater danger is that liberals & progressives are ceding justifiable rage to the extremist fringe. Many of the horrible machinations Glenn Beck is shrieking about are true. The causes he attributes them to, and his recommended solutions are wrong and dangerous. If a plurality of the population is feeling victimized by forces greater than themselves, then a mountebank like Beck is free to blame ACORN or George Soros and suggest that we must return to the Gold standard and assassinate members of congress that we dislike. Liberals stuffing their fingers in their ears and humming loudly, "it's not real… it never happened," have surrendered a large swath of the population that could have been a valuable ally in the fight for meaningful change. People don't know what is wrong but they no something is wrong, and if DFA won't validate there feelings of unease, someone at Storm Front surely will.

All of this is absolutely meaningless with respect to Jared Loughner. He was just bugfuck insane. Anyone who goes to a supermarket and unloads a clip into 20 people is, by definition, plain nuts. Whether this was caused by video games, Twinkies, sinsimillia or Prozac is a separate & distinct question. But he was crazy.

More inappropriate thoughts

Amidst all the keening & rending of garments about Wikileaks, I think we are missing the true motivations of the U.S. Government apparatchiks who are wailing the loudest. These cables will be the political equivalent of Gravity's Rainbow, frequently cited but never read. As embarrassing as the 250,000 State Dept cables might be, it is hardly shocking. American diplomats have a condescending & chauvinistic attitude towards their host countries? Gasp!... Many of the thuggish satraps we've installed as custodial dictators around the Middle East parrot our views about Iran which are total contravention of the sentiments of the people they govern... that is surprising. Hillary Clinton might violate the intent & the letter of the law to further her own agenda? Say it isn't so... As humiliating as these revelations are, or should be for a democracy with some notion of honor or decency, that cow already left the barn & that toothpaste is not getting back in the tube.

Joe Lieberman's machinations to strangle Wikileaks' Paypal Account & access to the Amazon distribution cloud... the Department of Defense Denial of Service attacks against their host servers... the thoughtful cries from the traditional media to take out Julian Assange with a predator drone strike are not intended to undo or ameliorate the damage of those documents already leaked. This is a pre-mptive strike to bottle up distribution channels in anticipation of the document dump that will compromise Bank of America. Lieberman, The Pentagon, The Post & Times don't forget for 1 second for whom they are working.

Kudos to our corporate overlords on installing Barry Obama. Contrary to the heartwarming tales of schoolchildren sending their dimes to Obama for America, one of the most creative PR gambits since Hill & Knowlton had Iraqi soldiers tossing babies out of incubators, it was no secret that far & away his largest financial sugartit was Goldman Sachs. GS has been predictably rewarded by the placement of their well-fed stooges at the helm of the Treasury & Council of Economic Advisors. Business as usual. Whatevs...

I will shamefacedly admit that I was timidly hopeful that, in spite of his provenance, given an overwhelming mandate & two houses of Congress to back him up, Obama might deliver some modicum of the change we were promised. We now see that, regardless of being nominally graced with more intellectual heft, Obama is the most do nothing President since Warren G. Harding. Unfortunately, the necrotic moral compass of the American electorate is incapable of outrage, so no modern day Teapot Dome will bring this government down... although it might get on the next season of Skating with the Stars. But only recently has it occurred to me how masterfully the plutocrats have tweaked us. This four year interregnum will reinforce all their stereotypes of Barrack as the Shiftless Negro. Absurd because Barrack Obama could not be more divorced from the African American experience if he'd shared a bedroom with Wally & The Beave inside a black & white Philco TV set. The risibility of Barry's blackness notwithstanding, The American People will be primed to elect the reanimated corpse of Theodore Bilbo in a landslide come 2012. Well played, gentlemen.

Asylum for the Criminally Inane

The term Fascism is bandied about carelessly in our thoughtless American political discourse, but it is indeed what we have in this country now. The plutocracy has effectively gamed both parties to prevent any Liberal/ Progressive/Leftist policies from succeeding. Clinton & Obama were both stalking horses for the Corporatist agenda. There are a very few honorable men who still serve the interests of their constituents in both parties... but sincere progressives must recognize that the Democratic Party no longer represents them. Democrats collude with Republicans to advance Corporate interests. Democrats will continue to screw their base in the same way that Republicans screwed their base. We will never get DADT repealed... hey will never get an Anti-Abortion amendment. What we will get, regardless of who controls the White House & Congress is more regressive taxes and fewer regulations which might impede the flow of wealth from bottom to top.

Sincere progressives would do well to make common cause with the Teahadists. Glenn Beck is a cat's paw for Rupert Murdoch, the quintessential Corporate thug. Beck is Howard Beal, ranting & spouting nonsense that sells overpriced gold & adult diapers while driving ratings for his boss. His prescriptions to fix what is wrong with this country are categorically wrong & ridiculous. But he is channeling the fear, frustration & anger of people who rightly recognize something is, in fact, wrong. Most Liberal/Progressives are too busy laughing at these people for wearing tri-corn hats & carrying Gadsden flags to realize that their sincere agita is a resource that could fuel meaningful change.

Liberals justifiably decry their antipodes for being racists... and they are... this is a racist nation... we've been soaking in it for five centuries. If Liberals were a little more honest they would they would acknowledge the bigoted timbers in their own eyes. Then recognize that all previous movements that accomplished anything worthwhile were racist at the outset. Amongst the Abolitionists Methodists didn't like the Baptists & everybody hated the Quakers. The Suffragists, which mutated into the Temperance movement, were classist & nativist. The Labor movements of the early 20th Century were frequently segregated. Colored folks were not welcome at the Chautauquas. The Black Panthers were sexist. Progress doesn't happen all at once. Once everyone is jointly engaged toward some greater purpose, tribal differences will pale. This is the lesson we all should have learned on the decorating committee for Junior Prom.

God shed his grace on thee

Every American should be able to live in a million dollar home regardless of income or credit history