Category: Politix

I gave up trying to do political commentary on this blog some time ago.

I don’t have the resources that real reporters and pundits have. I don’t have the time. I don’t have fact checkers.

I’m a partisan and I can’t help showing it, but who really cares what I think? There are a lot of people who think like me — maybe not enough of them vote in national elections, but certainly my views are well-represented in the press and on the internet. No one is ever really convinced by argument, and my viewpoint isn’t needed to help you clarify your thoughts.

But keeping my mouth shut hasn’t reversed America’s decline into fascism, and now I’m scared, ashamed and depressed. Take a look at this video on Blue Girl’s blog, and read Vikki’s recent diatribe on her blog. These are among the reasons for my current malaise.

Beginning with the theft of the 2000 presidential election and continuing with the relentless right-wing political chicanery that has been going on ever since, the fear-mongering, and the corporatization of our government, and the bigotry and racism, and the spying and torturing and invading and occupying and the ransacking of the Treasury and the outsourcing and the union-busting and the profiteering and the subversion of Justice (both the department and the concept), my spirit has been beaten down.

I just want to play my music, hang with my friends, visit a little bit of this beautiful planet and be left alone. I grew up in what now seems like a more sane time. The political pendulum was swinging left. We the People ended the war in Vietnam, established civil rights as law, threw out a corrupt Republican president, created environmentalism. (We did some stupid stuff, too, but it was harmless, I hope.)

I don’t want to take to the streets and protest. It doesn’t do any good, since this administration doesn’t care what The People think. The opposition, whom we elected to make some changes, is not acting fast enough. They’re protecting their interests when they were sent to clean up the mess. I’m not the boss, and I no longer believe that enough of us can band together to force the authorities to change their immoral and self-serving ways. Too many of us are hypnotized in front of too many HD Plasma screens to even get a quorum on the streets.

But it’s not just about me and my shame and my discontent. A lot of astute observers are now certain that the U.S. will attack Iran, and soon. You couldn’t believe it when the Republicans stole that election in 2000? You withheld judgment for four years because you thought it just couldn’t happen here, right? Along the way you were shocked over and over again with the wiretapping, the torturing, the imprisonment without charges, the failure to respond to Katrina, the use of the Justice Department to further rig the electoral process, blah, blah, blah. Then the ’04 election was stolen, too, and it was too late.
Is it possible that this administration, which has so far exceeded the bounds of morality, which has destroyed America’s reputation and its economy, stretched our military to the breaking point and killed over a million Iraqis in its pursuit of ever more oil (and booty) — is it possible that they haven’t yet finished fucking things up? An attack on Iran might be the only thing this administration could do that would be stupider and more devastating to the security of the world than the crimes they have already committed.

A few years ago I’d have said you were crazy to suggest something like that. Now I think you’re crazy if you are not afraid that it could happen.

I’m glad President Bush commuted the prison sentence of Scooter Libby.

Because now Mr. Libby has no legal reason not to answer questions in a Congressional investigation into just who was behind the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame-Wilson, or in impeachment proceedings against Dick Cheney. He can’t take the fifth, because he’s already been convicted and sentenced. Put him under oath. He won’t have the balls to commit perjury again.

(This is all I have time for right now. I hope Blue Girl doesn’t catch me.)

Here’s a question for all you lovers of freedom and democracy out there…

…who didn’t bother to vote in the last two presidential elections, or who think there is “no difference between the two parties,” or who voted for George W. Bush: How do you like the new Supreme Court? You know, the one with the two right-wing judges appointed by George W. Bush. We’ll all have to get used to it, because they’ll be with us until they die, which should be at least until your young children are middle-aged.

Let’s hope the kids don’t step out of line and try to use any of that crazy Free Speech stuff, because the Roberts Court doesn’t care much for that. That kid in Alaska with the “Bong Hits For Jesus” banner just found out that he doesn’t have the right to say what he wants, even if it’s just a meaningless slogan that harms no one. Remenber when speech was protected? Those days are over, folks, thanks to the current Rove/Cheney/Bush Administration.

No doubt the kids will also be pleased to pay their taxes to support other peoples’ churches, too. The Roberts Court thinks this is a good idea, so they’ve decided to allow it, and take away your standing even to argue about it in court.

To make sure that no one gets the wrong idea about “the facts” at election time, the Supremes have also struck down that portion of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that says rich corporations and powerful unions can’t buy phony “issue ads” just before an election. These ads are thinly-disguised campaign attack ads, designed to circumvent legal restrictions on campaign spending by entities who have more money than God and an agenda not necessarily in the public interest. Look for a lot of ’em in 2008 and beyond.

These decisions were all handed down on the same day this week, leaving behind a somewhat scarred constitutional landscape. I know you thought you were voting against homosexual marriage, and for the right of every embryo to 40 acres and a mule, and against those crazy tree-hugging flip-floppers Gore and Kerry. And that’s what you got, along with a little abridgment of your rights, and a little more appropriation of your money. I know only zonked-out left-wing moonbats talk about “rights” as if it is some kind of sacrosanct concept, so maybe only the moonbats will agree with me. That’ll just be my cross to bear.

I’m sure the rest of you won’t mind living with these types of decisions for the next 30 or forty years. After all, both parties are about the same, right?

(Suggested reading for those who wonder what set me off: This short NY Times editorial.)

I’m aware that my previous post represents a dark vision.

Sorry. That’s how I feel. I don’t support the troops, or the generals, or the politicians who hold onto power by scaring the daylights out of us and pandering to our bigotry and fear.

I don’t wish any harm to the troops. I wish them the best. I want them to be at home, or on the road, wherever they want to be, surfing, going to school, making babies, playing music, painting pictures, working or just hangin’ out. But I don’t care if I ever get another chance to “honor our fallen heroes,” and if the United States has decided that it’s necessary or even heroic to blow the fuck out of other countries and snuff hundreds of thousands of their citizens, well, you can just keep that. I want no part of it.

I know people with sons, brothers and friends in the U.S. military, and they — you — are afraid, and proud, and brave. Those of you who wait and hope, my thoughts and my love are with you. It tears my heart to see your worry and pain, and it makes me angry that you have to be “brave” over this bullshit. Where does it get us? Has anyone noticed that it never ends? That every time we “win” a war we set the stage for the next one? That the assholes who promote these conflicts are never the ones who suffer the amputations, the blindness, the bleeding, the total goddamned devastation?

I’m ashamed of this country, which I grew up loving, for the depravity it now carries out in the name of — what? Safety? Democracy? Jesus? Give me a break.

I’m ashamed of my party, the Democrats, for not having the courage to stop the killing now. We gave them majorities in Congress, and they are playing politics.

I’m ashamed of myself, for letting things go this far, and doing so little to help.

Two years ago on this day of remembrance I posted Another Memorial.

I want to say something on Memorial Day that means something, but I don’t understand the event. I’ve lost friends and relatives to war, and I don’t think it was noble. I just want to forget it. I wish I could. I have no new words today, so here’s that post again, this time read aloud.

Turn your speakers down a little (off if you’re at work) and click the blue arrow to hear the audio post.

I’m sorry about the sound quality. I had a hardware failure in the studio while I was experimenting. I won’t be able to fix the equipment until next weekend, so I am forced to use this unfinished mix.

The mission was “accomplished” four years ago.

Since then several hundred thousand people have died in Iraq, our military has been stretched to the breaking point, a half-trillion dollars has been wasted, worldwide terrorist incidents have more than doubled and the American voters have sent a clear message to this president that they want out, NOW.

Yet the President continues to insist that we stay there, even escalate our presence there, despite all the evidence that the fun is over, and we have lost all our marbles.

Bush could have signed the current funding bill. Politically, it would have made a lot of sense. He could have acted as if he hated the idea of surrender, but the Democrats were forcing it on him, and if he wanted the money to keep our troops safe and well-equipped he had no choice but to sign the odious funding bill with the timetable for getting out. Then when it actually came time to get out, it would be right before the next election and he could claim credit for ending the war. Nixon called it “peace with honor,” but I’m sure the current crop of Orwellian spin doctors would have come up with a better slogan. There’s no way the Republicans will win the White House in 2008, but this strategy would have cut their loses in the Congressional elections, and Bush would come out of it looking like a statesman. Completely aside from the rightness or wrongness of it from a moral standpoint (like, what does he care about that?), it would allow him to write a fitting end to the fairy tale of his life that he’s been spinning for the past six years.

So why didn’t he do it?

Is it because the war is an excellent diversion from what the neocons are really up to? Is it because they’d rather have us all angry and frustrated and incredulous and demonstrating against the war, when what’s really going on is something else altogether, something more important to them than human life and the honor and reputation of their country?

Is it because they don’t want us to notice that they are looting the United States Treasury, destroying labor and the middle class, redistributing all the money into their own pockets? Are they using this insane war to distract us from the sight of their curly little tales wiggling and the sound of their rapacious snorting as they belly up to the public trough and take their fill of your tax dollars? Are they hoping the war will keep us from noticing that we are being turned into worker drones, working more and more hours for less and less real compensation, and always with the threat that our jobs could be done for even less by someone overseas if we don’t like it?

Heck, I don’t know, Maybe they’ve got an even stinkier plan. I’m just wondering.

I was not aware that Vice President Cheney has recently been slandering former Senator George McGovern,

…but today in the Los Angeles Times I saw a rebuttal of sorts from McGovern. Actually, it’s more like an ass-kicking, something that I think the old Senator might still be capable of in person if Cheney ever dares show his face when George is around.

I’m not going to analyze the story. You can read it here, and you’d better hop to it before it disappears behind the news-for-money firewall at The Times.

But for younger readers. let me just say that George McGovern was the Democratic presidential candidate who lost the 1972 election in a landslide to the corrupt, unbalanced Republican incumbent Richard Nixon. It was an era of civil unrest, anger and alienation. Then as now, our government was involved in a war overseas with a small sovereign nation (Vietnam) which had not threatened the U.S. Like our current Iraq adventure, we were there on false pretenses fabricated by powerful corporate interests who are always the ones to profit from the slaughter. It seemed that the war would never end, and anyone who said it should was labeled a traitor or a defeatist. Sound familiar?

McGovern was not the first national figure to speak out against the war, but he was the one who mounted a real challenge to the snake-pit in the Pentagon and the White House, and he captured the imagination and the loyalty of a generation of disaffected youth, not to mention all the leftover pacifists from the fifties and the sixties.

Of course he had to be crushed, and the Nixon stink machine raised dirty campaigning to a new and slimy art form. McGovern’s defeat that year was a heartbreak that I still haven’t gotten over, and to think that the certifiably evil Dick Cheney (I certify it myself!) has now reached back into history to vilify this honorable man…

just

makes

me

SPIT!!

Go read the article. If you’re already in the choir, you’ll enjoy singing along. If you’re not, how do you sleep?

Somebody poke a hole in this.

It’s my new* theory about how businesses should pay workers. I just thought of it in the shower this morning, so it’s probably a little flaky.

First, we stipulate that the best way to hire workers is that you find the smartest, most competent and trustworthy candidates. All other things being equal, this should give you an edge against your competition in the marketplace. (If you happen also to have a great idea, or the best technology, or a huge head start, all the better.)

Once you’ve got your smart, competent staff that you trust, how do you determine salary structure? I suggest that you pay your people the most you can afford. You should run the numbers, find out what your revenue is and what part of that is profit, and allocate as much as possible of it to your labor force. The process should be as transparent as possible, so that the workers can be assured that they are, indeed, participating to the fullest extent in the wealth that they are, after all, helping to create.

As the owner, you should resist the temptation to pay yourself or your executives a hugely disproportionate piece of the available cash. You deserve something extra for taking a chance with your money, and the managers do, too, responsible as they are for making groups work together efficiently. But you must not go overboard, or you’ll lose the trust and respect of your employees. (For example, I would have to work almost 200 years with no vacations in order to make what the CEO of “my” company made last year. And I wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire, much less contribute more than the bare minimum of my abilities to his bottom line You see how that works?)

In this way, you’ll find yourself with a happy, highly motivated staff who will do their best to make things better at your company. And qualified candidates from around the country will flock to your recruiting office to join your organization. Because let’s face it, when it comes to work, we’re in it for the money.

Supply-siders and free marketeers and “invisible handers” will argue that No, you should cut costs as much as possible to maximize profit, and you should try to “win” in your negotiations with labor by getting them to settle for less than they’re worth. Salaries are costs, after all, and should be pushed as low as possible. This is the perennial mistake that Capital makes. In fact, it seems to me that survival in the marketplace is much more likely when you’ve got the best people on your team. The focus should be not on reducing compensation, but on paying well and getting the most for your money: The most talent, the most loyalty, the most productivity and stability.

But then I’m working class, so I’m probably wrong.

________________________________

* I confess I have not read the classic works of communism and socialism, but I’m guessing this is more or less what they say. If you’re a baby boomer, as I am, think about it: The most horrible monster in the universe, the thing to be feared, fought and avoided at all costs throughout most of your lives, was communism, a way for people to get what they deserve in exchange for honest work. To save ourselves from this scourge, we have built 10,000 hydrogen bombs and lived in fear and isolation for generations.

So I guess Bush is insane.

After a month-long buildup during which he gave us to believe that he was figuring out a “way forward,” and against a backdrop of clear voter disgust at his performance in office, particularly his “management” of the war he started in Iraq, he goes on TV and gives us, in the words of one PBS commentator, “…stay the course plus 20,000.”

His speech indicates that he is not going to let reality or the will of the people interfere with his vision, and I mean that in the sense of “hallucination.”

For good measure, he threw in a threat to Iran and Syria. If he attacks one or both of them, or provokes them to attack us, he could be inciting a regional holocaust in the Middle East which would dwarf the mess he has created in Iraq. If anyone survives, it may be called World War III.

I am now afraid for the planet.

Congress must clamp down hard on the Commander-in-Chief. Oversight of the Executive is their Constitutional duty. Impeachment won’t work. It would take too long, and anyway, Vice President Cheney would likely continue the administration’s failed policies. Congress needs to babysit Bush until his term runs out. They must make him ask for money whenever he needs more, and explain publicly exactly what he intends to do with it.

Democrats and Republicans: Do you need any more evidence? It’s time to get together and save the world.

Clearly I have waited too long to post again.

If you doubt this, go back and read the last comment on the previous post, posted by someone called “Enlightenment.” I published my post way back on the 15th of this month, so Enlightenment sure took his/her sweet time to get here. Go ahead and read it. I’ll wait. I think I’ll get some coffee. It will take you that long. Because it’s really long, maybe the longest comment ever on revision99.

Back already? Did you read the whole thing? OK, you don’t really have to read the whole thing. You can get the idea after four or five sentences. For you non-readers, let me summarize: The attacks of September 11, 2001 on New York City and Washington, D.C. were not the work of Islamist terrorists, but rather some combination of United States government, military and (possibly) commercial interests, and the evidence for this is so blatantly obvious that we must all be stupid or blind not to see it.

Frankly, I don’t know how to respond to this. I wouldn’t want to brush the whole tirade off as nonsense. I haven’t trusted the government or politicians in general for decades, so it’s not like these ideas don’t have a bit of traction with me. But what the hell? My instinct is simple: The suggested conspiracy is too complicated, and would have to involve too many people. Certainly “they” could pull off a bombing or a few hijackings, but nobody could keep it secret for five minutes, let alone five years. With hundreds of people involved in the plot, it’s inevitable that somebody would go for his fifteen minutes of fame and spill the inside scoop to Bob Novak, or Bob Woodward, or Bob Scheer, or maybe Bob Seger, and then there it would be, plastered all over the Washington Post, or maybe featured in a song.

In any case, whether the Bush administration was involved in the attacks a lot or a little, or even if they were completely taken by surprise. it’s for sure that there will be no serious look into Enlightenment’s claims until they are out of office, at which point it will have been seven and a half years since the events, and the trail will be pretty cold. Maybe some facts can be uncovered at that time, maybe not. But since I am trying to turn over a new leaf on revision99, and get away from grumbling about politics for a while (not that there’s anything wrong with that), I am biting my virtual tongue and choking back an angry rant, and I’m proud of myself. I hope you are proud of me, too.

I will leave this discussion to you Precious Few, and to you Enlightenment. What happened to us on September 11, who did it, and what – if anything -Â is being covered up?

____________________________________

PS: Food for thought along these lines is available aplenty at Loose Change.