Category: Politix

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.

It’s November 8, 2006.

I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for six months. I was up late last night watching the amazing election results. The voters returned the U.S. House of Representatives to the Democrats, and even the Senate might go Democratic. It is widely seen as a repudiation of Bush (and, I’ll add, the whole neocon agenda).

• 8:30 AM — Tom Delay says the Republicans will take it all back in the next election. He sneers at the electorate and predicts the first thing they will notice is a $2,000 higher tax bill.
• 9:06 AM — Rush Limbaugh opens his show quoting Nancy Pelosi: “Now we can return to civility in Washington.” Rush asks “Is this an admission that the Democrats went over the top in this campaign?”
• 9:49 AM — From KFI-AM640 (Fox radio in Los Angeles): Administration officials are saying that Donald Rumsfeld will be stepping down. Limbaugh is exasperated and sputters “Why didn’t they get rid of him last week!?”
• 10:19 AM — George Allen still won’t concede in Virginia. It’s close there, but he hasn’t had the lead for 12 hours, and 99.9% of the precincts have reported. The state will pay for a recount if the margin is less than a half of one percent, which it might be. If Tester wins in Montana (looking likely) it all comes down to Virginia, just like Florida in 2000. I expect Jim Baker and a thousand Republican lawyers will show up down there with about a billion dollars to spend, trying to save the Senate. The recount, by the way, can’t even start until the Commonwealth certifies the results on November 27, so we may be in for three or four more weeks of suspense, unless Allen gets his head out of his ass.
• 10:30 AM — Woops, I’ve been missing The Decider’s press conference. Just turned it on and he was saying he doesn’t think there’s a civil war in Iraq, and that, unlike during Vietnam, these U.S. troops are volunteers, and therefore knew what they were getting into.
• 10:39 AM — Continuing the Republican blame-the-stupid-voters theme, Bush says “I thought the people would understand the importance of security, but I was wrong.” His way of saying “I wasn’t wrong, it was the voters.”
• 11:19 AM — Tester has won in Montana. Democrats need one more state to control both house of Congress. I didn’t even allow myself to hope for this much.
• 11:20 AM — Is it just me, or does the sky seem bluer this morning, and the air fresher?

UPDATE: If you don’t think you’ll be able to make it to your voting place today, read this.

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I’m sure by now the Republicans must be sick of hearing us liberals warning each other about tomorrow’s midterm election:

• Take nothing for granted.
• Don’t let them steal this election, too.
• Vote early and often (just kidding).
• Get paper receipts.
• Videotape the goings-on at the polls.
• These Republicans don’t care about the Republic. They’ll do anything to win – voter fraud, machine hacking, vote suppression, intimidation, lying, SO BE ON GUARD!

We seem to take for granted that chicanery and deception is the only way the morally bankrupt GOP can trick the voters into keeping them in office, and we state as if it is undeniable fact that all they really want is to stay in office, not so they can make the country and the world a better place, but so they can remain bellied up to the public trough for as long as possible, the better to steal all the money and violate all the tender young pages. What a snotty, elitist attitude. It’s gotta piss ‘em off.

To you moderate conservatives who don’t think you fit into this description, or who know you are not guilty of these offenses, where the hell have you been for the past ten years or so? You stood back and let this happen. The neocons looked like they were winners, and you didn’t have the balls to stand up and yell “You don’t speak for me!” You let the extremists set the tone, you rode into (and stayed in) office on their energy, on their dirty tricks, on their nutcase agenda. You let them have the keys to the engine, and now you are riding on a runaway train, desperately holding onto what’s left of your honor and your jobs.

Because the radicals in your party don’t have a plan other than to take the money and run, because they have been hiding this behind their false messages of piety and compassion, the wheels are starting to come off. You have let the wingnuts, with their street-fighting style of political thuggery, create an atmosphere of distrust in the land — distrust going toward flat-out hatred — and now you think you can avoid blame by running away from your president and his brutal henchmen at this, the last possible moment.

It won’t work, because the hatred you have spawned is turning back on you, even though in your hearts you know you don’t deserve it. Maybe you don’t, but you’re going to have to spend a long time earning back the trust you have squandered, and that’s only if the voters in your districts aren’t so disgusted with you that they throw you out with the rest of the hypocrites, liars, cheaters and bums.

To The Precious Few who read this blog, and to all good people who stumble on this: Let’s make today the last day of the neocon darkness that has fallen on the United States and the world. Get out and vote. Vote your hopes, not your fears.
Things are gonna get better, but first let’s stop the bleeding.

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[Thanks to Michael Bains for the link to the Image Chef campaign button fabricator.]