Chavez was flawed, but he had Bush’s number

Posted on March 7, 2013 by oddmanout215

Right-wingers celebrated the death this week of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him a dictator and much worse, but only because he wouldn’t play ball with American oil companies or refrain from criticizing hypocrites who put a noble spin on American power grabs in Iraq and other countries. Efforts by Chavez to improve life for the poor in Venezuela were sloppy and wasteful, but at least he wasn’t a front man for the sort of corporate thugs who run the show in our country.

And he had a flair for using humor to cut through the bullshit of those who are front men for corporate thugs. One of his finest moments was his speech at the United Nations in 2006, a day after George W. Bush spoke there:

The Devil is right at home. The Devil, the Devil himself, is right in the house. And the Devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the Devil came here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today. Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the Devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.

Even so-called liberals — Nancy Pelosi and her gang — didn’t like that speech. But Chavez was right. Watching videos of Bush lying to sell the war in Iraq, which started almost 10 years ago, is enough to turn the stomach of anyone with an ounce of decency, or a sense of humor. Bush was a front man for smarter villains, but stupidity is no excuse. He was the elected chief, and in that role willingly caused as much death and destruction as Saddam Hussein.

Chavez fought for the poor. Bush fought for Halliburton and ExxonMobil. The irony is that Bush — who had everything handed to him, even the presidency — probably will live into very old age, cocooned in wealth, still smelling of sulfur but far from the real world he and his homies did so much to harm.

Footnote: The mainstream media played a big part in helping the mediocre Bush become the monster who started two wars and wrecked our economy, but that’s another story.

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Thank Obama, the anti-FDR, for the sequester

Posted on March 4, 2013 by oddmanout215

America is waiting for a message of some sort or another.
– David Byrne and Brian Eno

It ain’t pretty, the damage Barack Obama has done to working people by trying to cozy up to Republicans over the last four-plus years. Glen Ford of the Black Report Agenda put it this way:

…It was Obama who swallowed whole the corporate argument, previously championed by Republicans, that the national debt was Crisis Number One and that entitlement programs were the root cause. From the moment in January of 2009 when Obama served notice that Social Security and all other entitlements would be put on the chopping block, he became the chief mover and shaker for so-called entitlement reform. He created the model for austerity, through his Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction commission. It was Simpson-Bowles that provided the basis for the massive cuts offered by President Obama in 2011. When the Republicans balked at even a modest tax increase for the rich, it was the White House National Economic Council Director, the corporate deal-maker Gene Sperling, who came up with the sequestration scheme, which was timed to explode right after the 2012 elections. The idea was to make every popular constituency in the country scream – and accept the inevitability of massive entitlement cuts…

After the election, many Obama voters waited for a sign that he would focus this time on helping the working poor rather than corporations and banksters. But even the most devoted Obama groupies must know by now that he doesn’t measure prosperity by the number of Americans making a living wage, but rather in terms of corporate profits.

Franklin Roosevelt’s legacy was the New Deal. Obama wants his to be the Grand Bargain, which would open the door to the total dismantling of New Deal legislation. That’s how far the Democratic Party has fallen.

Posted in economic collapse, Great Depression, history, mainstream media, Obama, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Scalia’s mission: resurrect Jim Crow

Posted on March 1, 2013 by oddmanout215

The idea that progress is an inexorable force is naive. Civilization’s big steps forward are often followed by big steps back. The civil rights movement triggered a backlash that continues to this day. Progressive laws are still on the books, but reactionaries are counterattacking, none more fiercely than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who recently argued out loud that retention of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act amounts to “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

Think about it. One of our highest-ranking judges is saying that laws protecting black Americans from discrimination at the polls are no longer needed because discriminatory practices against black people have been eliminated from coast to coast. As if several state governments hadn’t made blatant, large-scale attempts to keep black people from voting in the 2012 elections — attempts that were blocked because of the Voting Rights Act.

Amazingly, Scalia was voicing the same argument being made by the lawyer for Shelby County, AL, which is challenging sections of the Voting Rights Act in a case currently being heard by Scalia and the rest of the Supremes.

Bill Blum got it right in Truthdig:

We can thank Scalia for his candor, not just because his comment telegraphed his expected vote on the matter, but because the remark demonstrated how closely he and the four other Republican appointees to the high court have aligned themselves with the right-wing and libertarian interest groups behind the Shelby litigation.

Scalia’s larger goal is to wipe out progressive laws enacted since the New Deal, by whatever means necessary. He and his bitter homies are pining for the plantation era, for the return of a confederacy of dunces led by Jim Crow. They love the Gilded Age, too. Everything old is new again.

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Throwing truth to the lions

Posted on February 26, 2013 by oddmanout215

Moon Rising over Colosiem

There’s no such thing as the simple truth. The goodness of the good guys is always exaggerated by the media. History is written by the victors. From Laura’s Miller’s review of The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, by Candida Moss:

In the 300 years between the death of Jesus and the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, there were maybe 10 or 12 scattered years during which Christians were singled out for supression by Rome’s imperial authorities, and even then the enforcement of such initiatives was haphazard — lackadaisical in many regions, although harsh in others. “Christians were never,” Moss writes, “the victims of sustained, targeted persecution.”

[Snip]

Christians wound up in Roman courts for any number of reasons, but when they got there, they were prone to announcing, as a believer named Liberian once did, “that he cannot be respectful to the emperor, that he can be respectful only to Christ.” Moss compares this to “modern defendants who say that they will not recognize the authority of the court or of the government, but recognize only the authority of God. For modern Americans, as for ancient Romans, this sounds either sinister or vaguely insane.” It didn’t help that early Christians developed a passion for martyrdom. Suffering demonstrated both the piety of the martyr and the authenticity of the religion itself, and besides, it earned you an immediate, first-class seat in heaven. (Ordinary Christians had to wait for Judgment Day.) There were reports of fanatics deliberately seeking out the opportunity to die for their faith, including a mob that turned up at the door of a Roman official in Asia Minor, demanding to be martyred, only to be turned away when he couldn’t be bothered to oblige them.

History isn’t a documentary. It’s a Monty Python movie.

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Bits and pieces, Oscar night

Posted on February 25, 2013 by oddmanout215

We all know the Academy Awards are more about commerce than art, that the best picture award rarely goes to the film that deserves it. But how is it that a film can win for best picture but not best director? Why did Argo take top honors when its director, Ben Affleck, wasn’t even nominated?

This is like naming a work by Junot Diaz the best novel of the year right after you’ve named Zadie Smith best novelist of the year.

Snarky host Seth MacFarlane, panned by critics for being politically incorrect, scored with a joke about the silliness of the awards process: “[Argo] is so top secret that the film’s director is unknown to the Academy. They know they screwed up.”

But who cares about making sense? This was a night for the stars to come out and distract us from impending economic doom. Salma Hayek won for special effects, in a gown with a glittering neckline that appeared to be choking her to death. Best actress Jennifer Lawrence (she’s great in Winter’s Bone, 2010), wearing the world’s largest quilt, made the best pratfall. Christopher Plummer won for most charmingly embalmed, and Affleck, snubbed for his directorial effort, was named most earnestly handsome.

Footnote: So what does the Dave Clark Five have to do with movies — the Oscars, in particular? No more or less than Michelle Obama who, for reasons known only to the Academy, announced the best picture award via satellite from the White House while surrounded by unidentified young people wearing tuxes and gold braid.

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On the links (Obama and Big Oil)

Posted on February 22, 2013 by oddmanout215

It will be interesting to see how Rachel Maddow and her liberal-lite colleagues at MSNBC spin the story if Barach Obama ends up backing the Keystone XL Pipeline. They speak no evil of the chief, ever. From Common Dreams:

So while President Obama was relaxing with one of the nation’s elite who makes millions from destroying the planet, activists – most of whom voted for Obama – were circling the empty White House with their pleas to stand up to the fossil fuel industry.

Nice companion piece from AlterNet: “If Barack Obama Tortured, Would Some Liberals Support Him? Probably.”

Footnote: The music, by the great Wayne Shorter, reminds me of Obama — a masterpiece of cerebral cool, inherently shifty. Piano player Herbie Hancock is a genius.

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Sun flurries and sportswear in South Philly

Posted on February 21, 2013 by oddmanout215

Sportswear before logos

Sportswear before logos

On Sunday there were sun flurries. Very pretty, swirling on the parking lot under a semi-clear sky, but only for a few minutes.

I was working outside a big-box store that sells sportswear. Ball caps bearing team logos, shiny clown sneakers. Loud, baggy jerseys with sports heroes’ names on the back in boldface caps.

I browsed the store to escape the cold and wondered whose domain I was in. A sound system with bad speakers pumped out ancient sludge. Chicago colored my world. David Lee Roth urged me to go ahead and jump. Most of the customers — male and female, black and white — looked like they’d jumped and fallen on their asses. Like they lived on Twinkies and slept in their clothes, in Dumpsters.

They were in “the fan zone,” pulling cheap-looking sportswear off the racks. Zip-up sweatshirts with no elastic, paper-thin T-shirts. They were buying this stuff, and it looked just like the stuff they were wearing. But it was expensive stuff, especially the items marked “official licensed product.”

Something was wrong with this picture. The unemployment rate is high, wages are stagnant or falling. Retail sales are down, even at Walmart. How could hobos afford $100 Eagles jerseys?

It occurred to me they might not be hobos. People in all income brackets dress like slobs these days. More important, my perspective is skewed. Poor and ugly can seem like the same thing when you’re going broke. These people were unfortunate looking but not necessarily poor. They could still pay with plastic.

I resolved to lighten up. Life was good. There was beauty in the world, I was just too beat to see it. Except for the sun flurries — those I could appreciate.

Footnote from James Kunstler:

…The Walmart shoppers are exactly the demographic that is getting squashed in the contraction of this phony-baloney corporate buccaneer parasite revolving credit crony capital economy. Unlike the Federal Reserve, Walmart shoppers can’t print their own money, and they can’t bundle their MasterCard and Visa debts into CDOs to be fobbed off on Scandinavian pension funds for quick profits. They have only one real choice: buy less stuff, especially the stuff of leisure, comfort, and convenience…

Yes, but only after their credit is maxed out. There’s still a lot of plastic out there.

Posted in humor, life in the big city, pop music, sports, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

There will be blood (or more apathy)

Posted on February 19, 2013 by oddmanout215

Wild in the streets

Wild in the streets

There’s nothing new about eras in which the rich grow richer as the majority slips into the ditch. Or about gilded ages being followed by periods in which worker incomes rise. In between are those interesting chapters in which the disgruntled proles throttle the filthy rich, or at least scare the shit out of them.

Peter Turchin, a scientist who studies the dynamics of historical change, examined cycles of inequality in a recent article that zoomed from ancient Rome to the French Revolution to modern America. Read it for yourself, especially the parts that describe what happened after Russia went Communist and income inequality in America sparked full-scale battles between workers and cops, and workers and soldiers.

And I liked this, about the collapse of Communism:

…The fall of the Soviet Union was interpreted as a vindication of free markets, period. The triumphalist, heady atmosphere of the 1990s was highly conducive to the spread of Ayn Randism and other individualist ideologies. The unwritten social contract that had emerged during the New Deal and braved the challenges of the Second World War had faded from memory…

Right. The New Deal is ancient history to the one percent and most people in the other 99 percent, and the corporate-owned media isn’t interested in bringing the public up to speed on the subject.

Turchin’s point is that class war — real class war — could happen all over again. But this time there might not be enough smart, gutsy statesmen (FDR, for one) around to muzzle the pigs and make inequality in America less glaring for a while. And are there really enough people left in this country who would rather fight for their rights than, say, use their electronic gadgets to watch other people do the fighting?

Don’t bet your foreclosed-upon house on it.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, Great Depression, history, mainstream media, Occupy Wall Street, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Obama’s jobs plan… Is that all there is?

Posted on February 13, 2013 by oddmanout215

OK, here it is, the one substantive suggestion regarding job creation in Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, dutifully reported by The Hill:

“Tonight, I propose a ‘Fix-It-First’ program to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs, like the nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges across the country,” Obama said in his address Tuesday night.

“Fix It First” sounds snappy, like something Mad Men‘s Peggy Olson would come up with on deadline if Don Draper was breathing down her neck. But $50 billion is a small percentage of the amount needed to fix the country’s infrastructure and put back to work the millions who’ve lost jobs since the so-called Great Recession began. And most of Obama’s other proposed initiatives — better schools and job training, a minimum wage hike, a renewed focus on manufacturing, an end to tax subsidies that encourage outsourcing of jobs – made good sound bites but aren’t likely to happen, as Obama well knows.

So is that all there is? Is Obama’s call for investment in job creation consistent with his commitment to $1.5 trillion in budget cuts over the next decade? Is he a good guy, or does he merely seem like one compared to the bizarre coalition of crackers and corporate sharks at the base of the Republican Party?

One thing’s for sure — Obama can’t possibly think significant job creation can happen in the wake of big budget cuts. Robert Kuttner got to the heart of the matter in a recent column:

The White House shares with the Republican right and the corporate center-right the assumption that we achieve a full economic recovery by targeting a lower debt ratio by 2023, and that we reduce the debt ratio by cutting the deficit.

As recent events have shown (in case there was any doubt) this sequence is backwards. The debt ratio comes down when the economy recovers. Fiscal contraction slows the recovery, and the loss of public investment denies the government the very tools it needs to use education and infrastructure to help rebuild the middle class.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, Great Recession, mainstream media, Obama, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Will Obama get real about jobs?

Posted on February 12, 2013 by oddmanout215

[Hard to tell why the woman in the video is working herself up to jump off a bridge. Maybe it’s Jolson’s voice.]

I’m posting this right before the State of the Union address, in the hope that my remarks will seem old and unfair after Barack Obama speaks — i.e., after he makes a stirring, substantive, FDR-style speech that reveals he hasn’t connived from the start with the corporate cutthroats whose notion of a healthy economy entails drastic, permanent downsizing of the American workforce.

Even Arianna Huffington, who wouldn’t even pay the freelancers who helped her make a fortune at Huffington Post, couldn’t help noting a few days ago that Obama has been the anti-FDR when it comes to job creation:

“The great thing right now is that he has the public on his side,” Arianna said, in a response to a question about Obama’s newfound confidence.

But she went on to say that “jobs and growth are not on his agenda,” which is “absolutely stunning” considering that his campaign rhetoric depended heavily on “the American dream — saving it for the middle class.” Since being elected, she concluded, his drive on the issue is “nowhere to be found.”

Stunning is the word, especially in light of the expectations of most of the people who helped elect Obama twice. But wait — it’s almost time for Obama to prove us cynics have been wrong all along, he’s not really in office to preside over the transformation of America into a land where low wages and no benefits are the norm. He’s not really a Dem In Name Only.

Whatever he says, I’m sure it will sound very pretty.

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