What if the Doomsday Clock is slow?

Posted on January 12, 2012 by oddmanout215

Sing along with Vera Lynn: We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when...

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker thinks the world is becoming less violent, but scientists believe we’ve taken a step back in our efforts to avert nuclear catastrophe:

It is five minutes to midnight. Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed. For that reason, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the clock hand one minute closer to midnight, back to its time in 2007.

Despite the promise of a new spirit of international cooperation, and reductions in tensions between the United States and Russia, the Science and Security Board believes that the path toward a world free of nuclear weapons is not at all clear, and leadership is failing. The ratification in December 2010 of the New START treaty between Russia and the United States reversed the previous drift in US-Russia nuclear relations. However, failure to act on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by leaders in the United States, China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, and North Korea and on a treaty to cut off production of nuclear weapons material continues to leave the world at risk from continued development of nuclear weapons. The world still has approximately 19,500 nuclear weapons, enough power to destroy the Earth’s inhabitants several times over. The Nuclear Security Summit of 2010 shone a spotlight on securing all nuclear fissile material, but few actions have been taken. The result is that it is still possible for radical groups to acquire and use highly enriched uranium and plutonium to wreak havoc in nuclear attacks…

Posted in apocalypse | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Join effort to deep-six Citizens United

Posted on January 11, 2012 by oddmanout215

Earlier today, I posted about Stephen Colbert’s satiric campaign to wise people up to the corrupt campaign financing laws that help elect corrupt, often incompetent candidates. But I didn’t mention what we can do to help make reform possible.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, as usual, is one of the only elected official in D.C. who’s on the case. This is from a piece he wrote about working to deep-six Citizens United:

…The goal of the top 1 percent is simple. They will spend as much as it takes to elect candidates who support a right-wing corporate agenda. They will spend as much as it takes to defeat those candidates who are fighting for working families. And that’s about it!

Our strategy must be equally simple. Short-term, we must do everything we can to support those progressive candidates in 2012 who are fighting for the middle class and the values we believe in. Long-term, we must overturn Citizens United and fight for real campaign finance reform which limits the power of big money.

Last month, I introduced a constitutional amendment, the Saving American Democracy bill, to overturn Citizens United. This amendment states that:

—Corporations do not have the same constitutional rights as human beings.
—The people have the right to regulate corporations.
—Corporations are prohibited from making campaign contributions.
—Congress and states shall have the power to set reasonable limits on election spending.

As we approach the second anniversary of the Citizens United decision, please join me, Daily Kos and Democracy for America in pledging to fight to overturn Citizens United and to counter the unlimited resources of the right-wing in 2012.

Click on the link in Bernie’s message to send a message.

Posted in campaign finance reform, Congress | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Will Colbert take the money and run?

Posted on January 11, 2012 by oddmanout215

Who would have thought a TV talk show host/satirist would prove himself to be smarter and more ethical than most of the people on the U.S. Supreme Court? Well, probably most of us.

See this week’s NYT Magazine for a piece about Stephen Colbert’s ongoing adventures in the slimy world of campaign financing. Phawker excerpted some of the piece on Sunday. Writer Charles McGrath recounts how Colbert helped set up a super PAC called Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, an entity that is…

…entitled to raise and spend unlimited amounts of soft money in support of candidates as long as it doesn’t ‘coordinate’ with them, whatever that means. Of such super-PAC efforts, Colbert said, “This is 100 percent legal and at least 10 percent ethical…”

Watching Colbert on TV last summer was an education for voters who didn’t realize the law is a daunting obstacle to the nomination of candidates who aren’t crooked and/or incompetent. He used his PAC to jab at the fundraising practices of presidential candidate Rick Perry and, in general, at the process of campaign financing, which hit a new low after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010.

McGrath notes that ads sponsored by Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow were “made possible” by the Colbert Super PAC SHH Institute:

…Super PAC SHH (as in “hush”) is Colbert’s 501(c)(4). He has one of those too — an organization that can accept unlimited amounts of money from corporations without disclosing their names and can then give that money to a regular PAC, which would otherwise be required to report corporate donations. “What’s the difference between that and money laundering?” Colbert said…

…Referring to the [Citizens United] ruling that money is speech, and therefore corporations can contribute large sums to political campaigns, Colbert said, “Citizens United said that transparency would be the disinfectant, but (c)(4)’s are warm, wet, moist incubators. There is no disinfectant.”

Footnote: Colbert continued to fight the good fight, in his perverse way, by trying to purchase the right to make the “corporations are people” concept a referendum issue… When McGrath asked him if he’d run for president again, as he did in 2008, Colbert was quick to mimic your typical unctuous politician: “I don’t think you ever say ‘never,'” he said. “That’s a discussion I’ll have to have with my family. I’ll have to pray on it.”

Posted in campaign finance reform, humor, mainstream media, Politics | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Republicrats follow the money

Posted on January 10, 2012 by oddmanout215

Image by MATHEAU MOORE

Mike Lofgren of CounterPunch recently wrote that the super-rich have seceded from the United States. OK, we knew that, but read to the end of his article to see how deeply he appreciates the implications of their secession:

…Steven Schwarzman, the hedge fund billionaire CEO of the Blackstone Group who hired Rod Stewart for his $5-million birthday party, believes it is the rabble who are socially irresponsible. Speaking about low-income citizens who pay no income tax, he says: “You have to have skin in the game. I’m not saying how much people should do. But we should all be part of the system.” But millions of Americans who do not pay federal income taxes pay federal payroll taxes. These taxes are regressive, and the dirty little secret is that over the last several decades they have made up a greater and greater share of federal revenues…

…This lack of skin in the game may explain why Willard Mitt Romney is so coy about releasing his income tax returns. It would also make sense for someone with $264 million in net worth to joke that he is “unemployed,” as if he were some jobless sheet metal worker in Youngstown, when he is really saying in code that his income stream is not a salary subject to payroll deduction. The chances are good that his effective rate for both federal income and payroll taxes is lower than that of many a wage slave.

The real joke is on the rest of us. After the biggest financial meltdown in 80 years – a meltdown caused by the type of rogue financial manipulation that Romney embodies – and a consequent long, steep drop in the American standard of living, who is the putative front-runner for one of the only two parties allowed to be competitive in American politics? None other than Mitt Romney, the man who says corporations are people. Opposing him, or someone like him, will be the incumbent president, Barack Obama, who will raise up to a billion dollars to compete in the campaign. Much of that loot will come from the same corporations, hedge fund managers, merger and acquisition specialists, and leveraged buyout artists the president will denounce in pro forma fashion during the campaign.

The super-rich have seceded from America even as their grip on its control mechanisms has tightened.

Footnote: Rod Stewart was a soulful singer with the Jeff Beck Group and with the Faces. He also recorded some terrific solo stuff, but he hasn’t cut a good album in about 35 years. He became someone who would record anything and perform anywhere if you threw enough money at him. He and Steve Schwarzman were perfect together.

Posted in Great Recession, Mitt Romney, Obama, Politics, pop music, The New Depression | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Terrence Malick’s dream of life

Posted on January 10, 2012 by oddmanout215

I’ve been writing too often about politicians — dull creatures, in most cases, with bad ideas and base motives. So here’s a belated review of my favorite movie of 2011, director/writer Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. I only saw six new movies last year, three of them on DVD, so it was an easy choice.

Malick starts with a quotation from the Book of Job and tells his story in carefully wrought images, with occasional bits of voice-over and dialogue. We meet an attractive couple, played by Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt, and their three children, living in an idyllic looking American town in the 1950s. We see them at home, happy together. There is an apparent jump in time. A letter is delivered — one of the kids is dead. Mom and Dad are shown grappling with their grief.

Cut to Sean Penn looking forlorn, roaming under a vaulted glass-and-steel ceiling, through the halls of a glacial looking skyscraper. It becomes clear we’ve been flash-forwarded to the present, that Penn is one of the sons, working as an architect. He’s having a middle-age crisis and is thinking of his parents and long-dead brother. In voice-over, he says things like “How did I lose you?” He’s addressing his brother, his mother, or maybe his idea of God.

And then… WTF? Malick cuts to the history of the world — the Big Bang, celestial vistas, erupting volcanoes, roiling seas, primordial ooze, primitive sea creatures, even a kindly dinosaur. What was the point of all this commotion, he seems to ask, if everything ends in death?

In case you haven’t guessed, this movie is not for Zach Galifianakis fans. The only other director who would have attempted anything so grand — or grandiose, if you prefer — is Stanley Kubrick. The difference is that Kubrick was totally cerebral, indifferent to his characters, whereas Malick is trying to make sense of life and death from a humanist perspective.

After the Genesis interlude, the story — I use the term loosely — resumes in the 1950s. This time the family’s little world is not so idyllic, although it’s just as sunlit and beautiful. We see father-mother, father-son and brother-brother conflicts. The angry father vents feelings of failure. The stately music swells. Everything happens as if in a flood of memories.

I won’t try to tell you how the movie ends, and I’ve only touched on a few of its themes. You might find it a nostalgic-seeming bore, or a purposeful and daring attempt to convince us that love is transcendent, stronger than death. I’m in the latter camp. Malick’s movie makes life feel like a dream, but the dream seems more real than most conventional realistic dramas or, God help us, reality TV.

Footnote: I don’t know how well The Tree of Life went over in the theaters. Some people I know would run for the exits after the first ten minutes. Others would be stunned, if only by its visual beauty. I watched it at home by myself and felt overwhelmed. See it with someone close to you if you can, someone who enjoys arguing.

Posted in arts, movies | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Banality of a bad guy (Mitt)

Posted on January 8, 2012 by oddmanout215

I like to think each of us is in some way unique, not because we have different fingerprints and DNA, but rather because of our souls, whatever those are.

A case can be made for Mitt Romney’s uniqueness, even though he appears to be an assembly-line android built for the sole purpose of being a politician — i.e., he’s enormously wealthy and Ken-doll handsome, with no history of infidelity, and no spontaneity or wit. He’s a relentless self-promoter, a tireless campaigner, and a compulsive, unapologetic liar.

But one must add to those qualities Mitt’s proud history of job-destroying business ventures. He’s unique because he brags of his wealth while trying to sell himself to voters, even though his wealth was largely built on leveraged buyouts that put many thousands of voters out of work. In fact, as ThinkProgress reported today, Mitt thinks it’s his wealth that makes him worthy of holding office:

During Sunday morning’s Meet the Press debate, GOP front-runner Mitt Romney suggested that people who need a job to pay their mortgage shouldn’t run for office. Recalling something his father, who served as governor of Michigan, told him, Romney said, “He had good advice to me. He said, ‘Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have to win an election to pay a mortgage. If you find yourself in a position when you can serve, why you ought to have a responsibility to do so if you think you can make a difference, you oughta have a responsibility to do so.’”

A few moments later, Romney bragged about making former Senator Ted Kennedy take out a mortgage on his house when Romney ran against him. “I was happy that he had to take a mortgage out on his house to ultimately defeat me,” Romney said…

Mittens used to seem like nothing more than the ultimate Plastic Man, with zero capacity for empathy or self-examination. But now that there’s a chance he might be president, he looks like something more sinister.

Put another way:

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
― Hannah Arendt

Posted in Great Recession, history, liar, Mitt Romney, Politics, The New Depression | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Michelle Obama, we know how you felt

Posted on January 7, 2012 by oddmanout215

You felt disappointed, puzzled, flabbergasted, alarmed and, finally, betrayed. Isn’t that right, Michelle Obama?

If your husband had taken up with a bimbo – that sort of betrayal you could have done something about. But this was much worse. He was being bullied and bamboozled by the likes of Rahm Emmanuel and maybe Lawrence Summers, formidable sleazeballs, much too strong for you. Your husband ended up betraying himself, his own best qualities, or the qualities you’d thought he possessed. The qualities that presumably inspired all his noble rhetoric.

From The Raw Story:

A new book detailing life in the White House describes high tension under the tenure of Barack Obama as First Lady Michelle Obama struggled with his top aides over the direction of his presidency.

She “cherished the idea of her husband as a transformational figure” but battled with White House advisors on compromise deals he had cut with Republicans, growing frustrated that he was being viewed as an “ordinary politician,” according to the book out Tuesday by journalist Jodi Kantor…

…Crisis erupted, according to Kantor, from extracts of the book, in early 2010 when Michelle Obama felt the administration had cut too many deals compromising her husband’s signature health care reform legislation…

…Key to the first lady’s frustration was anxiety “about the gap between her vision of her husband’s presidency and the reality of what he could deliver,” Kantor wrote in the book, titled “The Obamas…”

Posted in history, humor, Obama, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Phrase of the month: stealth recall

Posted on January 6, 2012 by oddmanout215

Orson Welles as Harry Lime in "The Third Man," based on Graham Greene's novella

From Huffington Post:

A Washington state couple is suing Johnson & Johnson, alleging their toddler son was killed after taking defective Children’s Tylenol from a batch that had been recalled – part of the company’s continuing string of recalls of drugs and medical devices.

Daniel and Katy Moore of Ellensburg, Wash., claim 2-year-old River Moore was given Very Berry Strawberry flavored Children’s Tylenol for a slight fever late on July 22, 2010 and began spitting up blood 30 minutes later.

He was rushed to a hospital and died the next day of liver failure. The family’s lawyer, Joseph Messa of Philadelphia, said Thursday that the liquid medicine contained excessive acetaminophen that damaged the child’s liver, causing his death…

… Johnson & Johnson said in a statement that its 2010 recalls of children’s products were not related to the “serious adverse events or cases of overdose” alleged in the lawsuit. It said the New Brunswick, N.J.-based company promptly notified consumers, doctors, retailers and regulators about the recall…

Reading the story, I wondered about government oversight of pharmaceutical giants — I wondered when it ended, that is. And how could any government that actually works for the public good fail to bring charges against the big chiefs at corporations involved in the production and distribution of tainted drugs? I’ll bet there are heroin dealers who have more scruples.

…The recall was one of more than two dozen that J&J has issued since September 2009, for products ranging from adult and children’s nonprescription Tylenol, Motrin, Benadryl and other medicines to prescription drugs for HIV and seizures, defective hip implants that caused severe pain and contact lenses that irritated the eyes…

…The number of recalls and the company’s handling of them – including a 2008 “stealth recall” in which J&J paid another company to secretly buy up defective Motrin packets from stores – have generated investigations by Congress and the Food and Drug Administration…

Investigations? Anyone who would authorize an ultra-risky “stealth recall” is worse than Harry Lime, who sold watered-down penicillin on the black market in The Third Man. At least Lime didn’t pretend to be an upstanding citizen. If I were religious, I’d wonder how the people responsible for the kid’s death can live with themselves.

For you classicists out there: To which circle of hell would Dante’s god have consigned corporate chiefs who repeatedly produce — and sometimes don’t manage to recall — potentially lethal “medicine?”

Posted in health care, Philadelphia, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

‘Nausea’

Posted on January 5, 2012 by oddmanout215

This could be about overexposure to presidential primaries, or about the playlist of your typical “alt-rock” station:

First verse:

Now I’m a seasick sailor
On a ship of noise
I got my maps all backwards
And my instincts poisoned
In a truth blown gutter
Full of wasted years
Like blown-out speakers
Ringin’ in my ears

Oh it’s nausea, oh nausea
And we’re gone

Posted in arts, humor, Politics, pop music, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Orwell as antidote to Obama

Posted on January 4, 2012 by oddmanout215

Last week I posted this in regard to Barack Obama’s profoundly ineffectual performance as president. Next time I feel exasperated, I’ll re-read Russ Baker’s words:

…But why should people be surprised by Obama? The system only lets “system types” thrive and get to the top. The only system types who shake things up are those who derive the confidence to do so from their own privileged background, like FDR and JFK. Obama himself was merely the representative of the fact that certain “acceptable” people of mixed race with proper demeanor and “credentials” would now be welcomed to the feast if they behaved properly. He never really established a track record of leadership or boldness prior to running for president. People just fell in love with their projection of what “Yes we can” meant…

To see the truth spelled out in common-sense terms is a reminder that Obama was a disaster we should have seen coming, if only because the promises he made in his speeches always proceeded from the facile notion that “democracy” would magically solve the country’s daunting problems. This is from an Obama press conference in 2009:

The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose.

Pretty words, but I prefer what Baker wrote, and George Orwell’s clarity in “Politics and the English Language”:

…In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way…

Posted in Congress, history, mainstream media, Obama, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment