Has America begun to ‘get’ Bernie Sanders?

Posted on October 22, 2011 by oddmanout215

To understand how right-wing the major political parties in America are, it helps to read the foreign press. This from The Guardian:

… [Bernie Sanders’] beliefs… would fit comfortably in the middle left of Britain’s Labour party or Germany’s SPD. But it is impossible to over-state just how much of a political death sentence being called a “socialist” – never mind actually proudly proclaiming it – usually is in America…

After all, many elected Democrats shy away from the “liberal” label out of a fear of being demonised as left-wing extremists. Yet, even though political opponents have accurately called Sanders a “red,” and the New York Times once derided him as “a strange bird out of Vermont,” Sanders has flourished.

Indeed, he says his beliefs chime far more with Americans than people think. “All I can tell you is that in every poll I have seen if you ask people: do you think the wealthiest people in this country should pay their fair share of taxes? Then the answer is: yes, they should,” he said.

He rattled off a long list of other issues in the same way, posing a question on an issue and then answering it for the voters in the affirmative: cutting excessive military spending, not cutting social security, creating well-paying jobs in America, closing corporate tax loopholes.

This list sounds familiar to anyone who’s following the Occupy movement. No wonder The New York Times isn’t calling Bernie a “strange bird” anymore.

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, Great Recession, mainstream media, New York Times, Occupy Wall Street, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

A word about our former torturer-in-chief

Posted on October 22, 2011 by oddmanout215

After posting about bringing Dick Cheney’s former ally and fellow war criminal to justice, I saw this item:

A raucous group of protesters gathered outside a Surrey, [British Columbia], hotel Thursday, hoisting colourful cardboard placards, shouting into megaphones and looking and sounding much like the masses who have converged for Occupy rallies in cities across Canada. But unlike their counterparts, this group had a single, united objective – to secure the arrest of George W. Bush.

… Amnesty International, along with several other peace and human rights organizations, contend Bush should be tried under Canadian and international law for war crimes, including torture. They point to what they call the illegal invasion of Iraq and his administration’s admitted use of techniques like waterboarding as evidence of crimes

Meanwhile, Toronto Star was bringing hopes of arresting Bush in Canada back down to earth:

No doubt many Canadians would be happy to see Bush hauled before a court. But it is up to the U.S. and its credible legal system, not the wider world, to deal with this matter. That’s codified in the Rome Statute that set up the International Criminal Court, and in the Convention against Torture.

If the U.S. is unwilling or unable, complainants have recourse to the ICC itself, even though the U.S. is not a party to the statute. The ICC can look, for example, into the dubious practice of “extraordinary rendition” if crimes were committed in countries that are party to the statute. Uninvolved parties such as Canada have no cause to get involved until every other avenue has been exhausted.

The Star has some of its facts straight, but I take issue with its use of the word “credible,” and its opinion that Canada “has no cause” to become involved. Bush canceled a trip to Switzerland last winter because he feared possible arrest. There is nothing credible about Barack Obama’s justice department or his decision to ignore his predecessor’s war crimes.

Bottom line: Lucky Libyan rebels — lucky because NATO fought their war for them — cornered Moammar Gaddafi in a drainpipe. American soldiers found Saddam Hussein in a spider hole. The ICC will never arrest Bush as he’s “clearing brush” in Crawford, TX, but maybe it can nab him as he steps off an airplane outside the United States. That goes for Bush’s shadow boss Cheney, too.

However, as John Wayne and Buddy Holly would say, “That’ll be the day.”

Posted in Iraq war, mainstream media, Obama, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Gaddafi nailed because he had no nukes

Posted on October 21, 2011 by oddmanout215

What is this thing called... realpolitik?

You may have read my bogus exclusive in August — a letter from Moammar Gaddafi to Dick Cheney, appealing for rescue from Libyan rebels who brought down Gaddafi’s government after British, French and American air forces, in classic colonialist fashion, crippled his army.

As you know, Gaddafi is now officially kaput. Apparently, his plea fell on deaf ears, even though he reminded Cheney in his letter that the two of them were former allies, as well as fellow war criminals and torture advocates, and should look out for one another when the chips were down.

Near the bitter end, when Gaddafi and his bodyguards was preparing to break out of Sirte, he sent one more dispatch to Cheney that my sources managed to intercept:

Dear Dick,

It looks as if the sand fleas will feast on me after all, and I suppose this is a good thing, under the circumstances. My Amazons have deserted me. I’m down to my last pinch of pharmaceutical meth, and sub-Saharan crank does not cut it, any more than this third-rate kif from Timbuktu.

I suppose you weighed all your options, to use the insipid American phrase, and decided to leave me twisting in the desert wind rather than come to my aid and answer all those awkward questions concerning our relationship, conducted mostly through your — how do you say it? — your point man, Richard Perle, who worked to help “burnish Libya’s image” back in 2006.

It is clear now that my big mistake was letting you and your British friends trick me into dismantling my nuclear weapons program in return for your false promise to supply me with “conventional and non-conventional military equipment.”

What the Prophet said is true: Do not trust fellow war criminals, even those who are your friends. The moral of this story, as you Americans like to say, is that only countries with nuclear stockpiles are truly safe from the crusaders. Our friend Kim Jong Il has starved millions but your infidel fighter-jet pilots steer clear of North Korea lest he incinerate your allies to the south. I guess I never quite got the gist of what you call realpolitik.

If you see Condi, say hello for me. I miss my Nubian queen even more than my Michael Jacksonian palace and wardrobe.

See you in hell.

Moammar

Posted in humor, Iraq war, mainstream media, New York Times, Politics | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

NYT’s Keller wrong about Iraq, wrong about OWS

Posted on October 21, 2011 by oddmanout215

Many of us waited years for Bill Keller to own up to his key role in helping legitimize the disastrous Iraq War, but it never happened. So it’s no surprise that, instead of admitting he wrongly supported deregulation of the financial services industry, he chooses to ridicule the long-overdue public backlash against Wall Street crooks:

Funny, he doesn’t look like Marie Antoinette. But when former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller asks his readers if they are “bored by the soggy sleep-ins and warmed-over anarchism of Occupy Wall Street,” it displays the arrogance of disoriented royal privilege.

Perhaps his contempt for anti-corporate protesters was honed by the example of his father, once the chairman of Chevron. In any case, it is revealing, given the cheerleading support that the Times gave to the radical deregulation of Wall Street that occurred when Keller was the managing editor of the newspaper.

As the Times reported on its news pages in 1998, heralding the merger that created Citigroup as the world’s largest financial conglomerate: “In a single day, with a bold merger, pending legislation in Congress to sweep away Depression-era restrictions on the financial services industry has been given a sudden, and unexpected, new chance of passage…”

… One would think that the failure of The New York Times to cover this sorry tale as it was unfolding would leave Keller with some humble understanding of why protesters, undeterred by rain, should be celebrated rather than scorned. But such accountability has hardly been a hallmark of those in the media or in business and political circles, who with few exceptions got it so wrong.

It’s a law of nature: The most arrogant and rigid-minded fools are also the fools who are least likely to apologize for major errors, or even acknowledge them.

Posted in economic collapse, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, Iraq war, mainstream media, New York Times, Occupy Wall Street, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Fox balks, NPR fires somebody

Posted on October 20, 2011 by oddmanout215

It’s easy to joke about the level of self-censorship at NPR, as I did recently, but hard to exaggerate the uselessness of a news operation whose managers constantly bend to kiss the asses of the right-wingers aiming to kill government funding for public media:

Freelance broadcaster Lisa Simeone was fired from public radio program Soundprint yesterday after NPR took issue with her role as a spokesperson for the Occupy DC protests, despite the fact that she is not officially employed by the organization.

Simeone’s conflict with NPR was first reported by Roll Call and eventually ended up on Fox News before she was officially fired, evoking another infamous NPR termination. “The whole thing, right down to the firing-by-phone-after-pickup-from-Fox, has echoes of the Juan Williams debacle,” wrote Politico’s Keach Hagey, “and is likely to worsen public radio’s political woes, even if Simeone was not an NPR employee.”

Soundprint isn’t actually produced by NPR and airs on affiliate WAMU in Washington, D.C., but WAMU news director Jim Asendio said that the station shares NPR’s code of ethics, which states that “NPR journalists may not engage in public relations work, paid or unpaid,” excepting “certain volunteer nonprofit, nonpartisan activities, such as participating in the work of a church, synagogue, or other institution of worship, or a charitable organization.”

As James Poniewozik pointed out last winter, one of the many ironies of the right’s war on public broadcasting is that eliminating government funding won’t kill “liberal programming” on “well-funded public outlets” in big population centers, but it might destroy public TV and radio outlets in sparsely populated areas.

Poniewozik noted that government-funded public broadcasting has already been neutered by the wing-nuts:

I actually do believe that public broadcasting — all of it — would be better, braver and more interesting if it had the independence that came from being entirely separated from the government and thus politics. But I can afford to believe that: I live in New York.

One of the problems is how to find a way to fund local public media in all parts of the country, not just areas densely populated enough to survive on donations from listeners and viewers.

Posted in Congress, mainstream media, Politics, taxes | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

You’d get jail. NYC cop gets slap on wrist.

Posted on October 19, 2011 by oddmanout215

I know, it’s part of the code. Cops have each other’s backs, just like the Three Musketeers or members of a motorcycle gang. You mess with one, you mess with them all, and risk being shot or used for a punching bag. You don’t even have to mess with them. All you have to do is be there.

But still, isn’t it brazen, even for the NYPD, to do nothing more than take away a few days’ pay from Anthony Bologna, aka Tony Baloney, the high-ranking cop who was spotted assaulting helpless women? Apparenty not:

NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna was disciplined Tuesday for pepper-spraying two female protesters in the notorious YouTube video seen around the world… The NYPD found that Bologna violated departmental guidelines and docked him 10 vacation days, or the equivalent amount of pay, police sources said.

The 29-year veteran makes $154,300 a year.

Protesters had demanded Bologna be arrested for spraying two penned-in women in the face and then quickly striding away during a Sept. 24 protest near Union Square… Bologna’s actions appeared unprovoked, and other cops at the scene were recorded expressing amazement at what he did. Video of that moment – which was viewed more than 3 million times on YouTube and played over and over on TV – helped turn Occupy Wall Street into a global phenomenon.

In other words, maybe we should thank this white-shirted sadist. If not for him and like-minded cops on the force — let’s hope they’re in the minority — the corporate media would have continued to ignore Occupy Wall Street, just as Wall Street wanted them to do.

Tony Baloney’s not hurting for money, but maybe he could make up the lost pay by working for the NYPD’s Paid Detail Unit — essentially, a service through which the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations rent cops to act as their personal protectors/enforcers. A modern-day version of the Praetorian Guard.

Footnote: Many historians have noted that the Praetorian Guard was an ultra-badass outfit, but not exactly trustworthy. Caligula got whacked by the Guard for nor showing them enough respect. I’m picturing Lloyd Blankfein as Caligula. He’s a bit old for the part, but just as vile.

Posted in Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, Occupy Wall Street, The New Depression, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

On lies and the lying liars quoted in the NYT

Posted on October 18, 2011 by oddmanout215

I was going to post some comments on a New York Times story in which Wall Street types were asked to comment on the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thankfully, NYT columnist Paul Krugman beat me to it:

On Saturday The Times reported what people in the financial industry are saying privately about the protests. My favorite quote came from an unnamed money manager who declared, “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it.”

This is deeply unfair to American workers, who are good at lots of things, and could be even better if we made adequate investments in education and infrastructure. But to the extent that America has lagged in everything except financial services, shouldn’t the question be why, and whether it’s a trend we want to continue?

For the financialization of America wasn’t dictated by the invisible hand of the market. What caused the financial industry to grow much faster than the rest of the economy starting around 1980 was a series of deliberate policy choices, in particular a process of deregulation that continued right up to the eve of the 2008 crisis.

Not coincidentally, the era of an ever-growing financial industry was also an era of ever-growing inequality of income and wealth. Wall Street made a large direct contribution to economic polarization, because soaring incomes in finance accounted for a significant fraction of the rising share of the top 1 percent (and the top 0.1 percent, which accounts for most of the top 1 percent’s gains) in the nation’s income. More broadly, the same political forces that promoted financial deregulation fostered overall inequality in a variety of ways, undermining organized labor, doing away with the “outrage constraint” that used to limit executive paychecks, and more.

More and more, Krugman seems an omsbudsman for the newspaper, I guess because no one else is honestly doing the job.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, New York Times, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Elected Dems to protesters — we’re with you, sort of

Posted on October 17, 2011 by oddmanout215

Chris Hedges, plainly stating why “liberal” has become a dirty word not only to right-wingers but to many thinkers and activists on the left:

Tinkering with the corporate state will not work. We will either be plunged into neo-feudalism and environmental catastrophe or we will wrest power from corporate hands. This radical message, one that demands a reversal of the corporate coup, is one the power elite, including the liberal class, is desperately trying to thwart. But the liberal class has no credibility left. It collaborated with corporate lobbyists to neglect the rights of tens of millions of Americans, as well as the innocents in our imperial wars. The best that liberals can do is sheepishly pretend this is what they wanted all along. Groups such as MoveOn and organized labor will find themselves without a constituency unless they at least pay lip service to the protests…

… The Occupy Wall Street movement, like all radical movements, has obliterated the narrow political parameters. It proposes something new. It will not make concessions with corrupt systems of corporate power. It holds fast to moral imperatives regardless of the cost. It confronts authority out of a sense of responsibility. It is not interested in formal positions of power. It is not seeking office. It is not trying to get people to vote. It has no resources. It can’t carry suitcases of money to congressional offices or run millions of dollars of advertisements. All it can do is ask us to use our bodies and voices, often at personal risk, to fight back…

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Freedom of assembly? Not in MY public space

Posted on October 16, 2011 by oddmanout215

From Michael Kimmelman’s thoughtful piece about… well, about America’s rediscovery that movements to effect social change are often sparked by large, sustained public gatherings of protesters:

THE ever expanding Occupy Wall Street movement, with encampments now not only in Lower Manhattan but also in Washington, London and other cities, proves among other things that no matter how instrumental new media have become in spreading protest these days, nothing replaces people taking to the streets.

Maybe I’m wrong, but the movement also seems to point to a conflict between our First Amendment rights of assembly and petition, and contemporary laws and notions regarding public space. As Kimmelman notes, public spaces in American cities — usually, small parks — often amount to “token gestures by developers in return for erecting bigger, taller buildings.” Most public parks in New York are closed to the public at night.

Zuccotti Park is “quasi-public.” Its owner, Brookfield Office Properties, must abide by a zoning variance that allows it to remain open the the public 24 hours a day, and that’s the only reason protesters were able to establish a camp there. Without the variance, no Occupy Wall Street and, probably, no similar movements in cities around the world.

However, the quasi-public Zuccotti Park is fundamentally no different from most so-called public spaces in cities, in that most of them ultimately are “controlled by landlords.” Zuccotti Park is still occupied, thanks to the zoning variance, but the occupiers are violating Brookfield’s prohibition of tarps and other personal effects and therefore are subject to legal eviction if and when the Brookfield decides to have them kicked out. Kimmelman writes:

The whole situation illustrates just how far we have allowed the ancient civic ideal of public space to drift from an arena of public expression and public assembly (Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, say) to a commercial sop (the foyer of the Time Warner Center).

It also illustrates how precarious the rights to assemble peaceably and petition for redress of grievances are in a country where police can chase people from public spaces because the sun is going down, or because users of the park are carrying bedrolls or other belongings. (BTW, this describes what happened to Occupy Denver this week when cops simply moved in and removed the protesters. So much for their right to assemble.)

I hope Kimmelman or someone else in the corporate media directly addresses this apparent danger to the OWS movement, and to our First Amendment rights. Where’s Nat Hentoff when you need him?

Posted in economic collapse, Great Recession, livable cities, mainstream media, New York Times, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Don’t judge me by my shoes…

Posted on October 16, 2011 by oddmanout215

The Band was peaking as a creative force when “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)” appeared on their second album. The song’s subject is a rural victim of the Great Depression who joins a labor union to avoid starvation. His plight seemed awfully remote to most young listeners in 1969, but the economy has changed in a big way since then. What goes around, comes around…

Richard Manuel sings like an impassioned modern-day Job — My horse Jethro, well he went mad/And I can’t remember things bein’ so bad — and Robbie Robertson is at his tasteful and funky best as a guitarist and a writer of songs that, as Greil Marcus noted in Mystery Train, “were made to bring to life the fragments of experience, legend and artifact every American has inherited as the memory of a mythical past.”

Posted in arts, economic collapse, Great Depression, pop music, The New Depression, unemployment, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment