A reply, with hat tips to Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald

Over at Best of the Blogs, a respondent to my cross-posted entry about Martin Wolf's piece in the Financial Times, timr, took issue with the "prematurity" of my criticism of the new President, so I thought I would elaborate. Please don't misunderstand me. I do hope that the president sees the urgency. Martin Wolf's piece jolted me, as I said, because he honed in on a problem that all leaders face in critical times.I'm not criticizing Obama as president. I am criticizing the weaknesses of an intellectual/political/plutocratic/privileged class to which he belongs.

This political class is incapable--with a few notable exceptions, like Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders and Russ Feingold, all of whom without fail are marginalized by the other members of their class--of understanding the dilemma of people in the "underclasses." I use the word carefully, I think, because at this point it is the only appropriate word to use. It includes people, for example, in the professional and technical classes and business classes whose combined incomes exceed even a quarter of a million dollars, because even they have seen a transfer of wealth to the tiny minority of the rich and super-rich who control--I might even say enforce their beliefs--in the vast majority of major decisions in the United States.

Most of these 90% of Americans in this underclass are indeed hard-working, pay their bills, grumble about but pay their taxes, lead honest and caring lives, and value the future of their children above all. I would also include in this group those aspiring residents of America who have been branded as "illegal aliens," yet who still contribute energy and vitality to our economy and society and who may even pay social security taxes for benefits which they will never receive.

It was no coincidence that I mentioned Iceland at the end of my piece--the citizens of that country have been well-satisfied and well off for many a year, dozing in their shared prosperity, but after the bottom fell out of the tub, they took to the streets day after day with pots and pans for almost 100% peaceful demonstrations that literally drove their government out of office, installed a caretaker left-leaning government, and forced new elections.

Max is right about how most Americans are unaware of what has taken place, and for many years now I have been saying to people that Mark Twain had the best analysis of their silence and ignorance. I can't remember his exact words, but he thought that Americans never wanted to resist the power of the rich because they so firmly believed that anyone could become rich through hard work. Even the poorest of the poor could never consider themselves as poor, only "temporarily embarrassed." But I think now, as with the Icelanders, the delusion is dissipating. There will always be those extraordinary few who become exceedingly rich, but for the most of us, a comfortable and secure and happy life will be the best aspiration we can resign ourselves to. This is such an American theme. It's F. Scott Fitzgerald: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me." The very rich, not the rich.

However, now, it seems, most members of that 90% can see what has taken place over the past thirty years. They see the history of expropriation by the Very Rich and the massive transfer of wealth--that is still continuing in the TARP programs, I might add--in a number of things. They all have their own examples. These are mine:

First, notice the failure of ANY politician to refer to anything but "the middle class" as being hurt by the economic adversity; almost every politician is unable to talk about the "indigent,"" the working poor," the "working class."

Second, notice the sudden and recent silence about "class warfare." That has always traditionally been used to silence any claims for social justice or economic equality. The reason, I think, is that the plutocracy now understands that the stealthy class warfare going on for three decades under another name, has been won. However, one thing has changed. The underclass is finally beginning to see and understand that they are the Gazans in this class warfare, victims of high-tech swindling (repeal of Glass-Steagall, revision of the bankruptcy laws, high commissions and bonuses for shilling the derivatives) and collateral damage (job shopping in foreign countries, tax breaks and off shoring profits for corporations, the debt economy, the decline of manufacturing and its creation of real wealth, the necessity for two income families to work in order to make the ends meet, etc. )

The list goes on, and my anger rises the more I add to it. Some of them have even been burned by the economic versions of white phosphorus, the new DIME (dense inert metal explosive) weapons, or the economic cluster bombs that are still in wait out there disguised as Pepsi cans or Kentucky Fried chicken wings, or the water tables below Hanford, Washington, or diesel pollution near the Port of Long Beach. You know, the "externalities" that the good people of Eastern Connecticut don't have to put up with as they pack their bags for the corporate jet trip to Telluride.

You remember how the Republicans always framed their exploitative legislation in benign terms--Clear Skies Initiative, No Child Left Behind, Healthy Forests Initiative? In the same way they always framed any moves for social and economic justice as "class warfare."

Third, notice the continuing emphasis by the Republicans (and the acquiescence of most Democrats) on tax breaks. Do you really think that a tax break of $400 is going to stimulate the economy? Notice as well the Republicans' continuing insistence on eliminating the inheritance tax, which will benefit only the top 1/30th of the top 1%. That is to say, the Very Very Rich, the moneyed class that has been driving this transfer of wealth. In their insistence on tax cuts Republicans may think they have solid economic principles at work, but it really is the attempt even in this crisis of capitalism feeding on itself, to squeeze every last drop from the great udder of the financial debt and derivative structure.

They have driven this expropriation by lobbying, influence peddling, political contributions, class collusion, "knowing who to talk to" when they were doing something shady or "aggressive," and by the continuing and dominating use of the legal profession and the big accounting firms far more effectively than any "trial lawyers" or "regulators" did in return.

But to get back to President Obama. If I might, I'd like to make an analogy here, and one that the President is very fond of using these days, when he implicitly or explicitly compares himself to Abraham Lincoln.

President Obama's strong belief in the capitalist tenets and his ability not to rethink them and let go of them, is quite similar to the belief that Lincoln held for most of his life, that Negroes were in fact inferior to whites, so much so, that for the years leading up to emancipation, he still held to the idea of massive transfers of slaves to Liberia or South America or the Caribbean. It was a vision one can only call benign ethnic cleansing. Yet this was in parallel to his insistence that "all men are created equal" and that liberty should be extended to all. Lincoln eventually gave up that idea of transfer, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and enabled black men to fight in organized units for the Union, even though he feared that there would be a massive desertion of racist troops from the Union forces.

So I think that the President has a similar dilemma of belief--he understands the inequities in this economic system, what I have called "Americanism" in my post, but he still can't give it up. (The belief in American exceptionalism that drives his foreign policy is related to this as well, so well discussed by Andrew Bacevich in his last book, The Limits of Power: the End of American Exceptionalism.) President Obama may be forced to give it up, eventually, and the sooner he does, the better for all of us--the overwhelming majority of Americans--with the understanding, of course, that it will also be to the detriment of the moneyed class that is still in charge, conceptually, politically and economically.

I just think that by drumming this dilemma home to him, by beating our pots and pans, we may just make him understand that we really have entered a crisis, as Tom Paine would call it, a "time that tries mens' [and women's] souls."

[originally posted at Best of the Blogs]

YIPPEEEEEE!!!

My good friend in Sacramento writes very late on election night: YIPPEEEEEE!!! What a wonderful night for this country, heh?

You know it! (I almost said You betcha!) I was at a party up in Republican territory in La Canada/Flintridge and the 10 of us went out on the lawn at 8:03 and yelled our heads off! I had been there since about 4:30 watching the returns with the host and another fellow, and as the momentum kept building and the other party goers arrived it was incredible. Then the polls closed at 8 PM and in 30 seconds the announcement came across.

McCain had a very commendable speech, I thought--like the old McCain from the 90's--and Obama's was superb. I will never forget for the rest of my life seeing Jessie Jackson in the audience crying with the knowledge of what had taken place. Now all we have to do is wait for the other 25% of the hard core bastards to shrivel up and melt away. I rarely indulge in schadenfreude, but the thought of George W Bush having to live in denial about his crimes and misdemeanors for the rest of his life is almost delicious in irony. He's a dry drunk. He'll show the same behavior towards his presidency and be as unrepentant as Nixon. I visited a couple of conservative websites today and already they are gearing up for the attack. See below #2 which I received from a political acquaintance today:

#1. Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, "My Campaign Memories"

What makes the Obama story so powerful isn't just the fact that as a half-white, half-black man, his public journey to the top visibly tied together some of the more painful frayed ends of our past. It's that he ran his race with dignity and honor against people who didn't return the favor, facing a succession of opponents who feared losing more than shame and gave in to pretty much every possible temptation to go low and appeal to the worst in us.

I didn't always see it at the time. But thinking back on it now, I realize what an extraordinary accomplishment his getting this far has been. A man who wasn't great would have blown this a hundred times along the way. So would a person who wasn't extremely lucky. The historical seas literally parted for this Obama guy, with inconceivable idiocy and villainy littering the political shores on either side of him as he ascended to the pantheon of all-time American heroes simply by walking straight ahead and not being a dick. [snip]

Year after year, even the president of our country has been consistently too small and too cheap to stand up and face his problems like a grown-up, forever passing the buck to this or that group of Americans. If it wasn't Reagan crying about "freeloaders" or George H.W. Bush blasting the "apologize for America" crowd, it was the Clintons whining about the "vast right-wing conspiracy." [snip]

Let's hope that it says as much about us as it does about the presidency.

The full article has a great illustration of Obama as a Zen master with his eyes closed and forefinger and thumb touching.

2. Email from Bob Meltzer

Last night we won a major battle. The fight, however, continues. The right wing still has far too much power in this country.

Most of us are old enough to remember 1994. That is the year when, after being the minority party in Congress for forty years, the Republicans swept into power. Not only did they sweep into power, they came in with the most ideologically right wing group this country has ever seen. They stayed in power for a dozen years, successfully imposing much of their right wing agenda on the rest of us.

Why did this happen? The year 1994 was a year of peace and prosperity.
There was no catastrophe anywhere in the world to warrant such a legislative change.

What happened was the election of centrist Democratic Bill Clinton in 1992. The right wing responded by using their control of the media to bash Clinton day and night. Dittoheads with fire in their eyes took over the water coolers in all offices around the country and ceaselessly expounded their hate of Bill Clinton.

Yet the progressives were complacent. There was no major grassroots movement behind President Clinton, while the Democrats in Congress were
weak and fearful (sound familiar?) Could something like this happen to Barack Obama? It WILL happen if we let it.

So today we party and celebrate. Tomorrow we take a reality check and prepare for the next battle. We must keep up the momentum. In the coming
years, President Obama will need us more than ever.

Re: explanation for current economic mess

Friend DP sends me an article he got from a friend blaming the crisis for the financial meltdown primarily on the Democrats. My friend DP knows this is one-sided as it comes from a McCain supporter who works with him. DP needs a rebuttal, so I will give it a shot.

The article is "How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis" by Kevin Hassett. According to the article Democrats are all at fault because they supported Fannie and Freddie and the Republicans tried to "regulate" them. In fact, this guy says, John McCain supported the regulatory attempt.

Hassett's thesis:

Take away Fannie and Freddie, or regulate them more wisely, and it's hard to imagine how these highly liquid markets would ever have emerged. This whole mess would never have happened.

And he puts the turning point at 2005. Remember that. 2005.

Now this is hardly my area of expertise, and this fellow Hassett is a director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Bloomberg News columnist. Who am I to even take him on? But he has an axe to grind, since he is an adviser to Senator John McCain in this election.

Definitely not my area of expertise, but pretty quickly I find a bit of a primer and send it back to DP to give the other side of the equation:

An excellent review of Fannie Mae, short-selling and government economic regulation in "Shorts and Fannies: A brief History" by Robert Kuttner, July 22, 2008, American Prospect (web only).

And this also from the American Prospect (web only) to counter the charge and spread the blame around a bit: "The Conservative Origins of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis," by John Atlas and Peter Dreier.

Third, an article in which a famous Dem calls for regulation at a time well before the pivotal point in Hassett's article: "Getting Tough with Fannie" by Robert Reich, September 29 2004 (web only). Note the date on this one--before the crucial date of 2005.


I'm pressed for time with another project, but refer him to indexes in American Prospect, the Center for American Progress, The Nation, the Progressive Magazine, and I'm sure that Paul Krugman at the NYT would have something on this. I mean not my area of expertise, but I know immediately from reading the Hassett article that he's being disingenuous and therefore not giving the full truth.As I read, I get more and more annoyed. Even I know the guy is hyperbolating.

First, though Hassett talks about the bill to regulate Fannie and Freddie getting hung up in committee, but he doesn't give a breakdown of who was on the committee that voted the legislation down. He lists no names at all, no votes. Disingenuousness Number One is obvious: in 2005 the Republicans were still in control of congress, which means THEY ran the committee. Greenspan testified in 2005 to Congress, so why didn't the Republican-dominated Congress take some action? Further, if Greenspan thought they were out of line, where in the hell were the Republican-apointed regulators to get in there and kick ass? Nowhere, of course. The regulators were deregulating or not enforcing just as Bush/Cheney et al wanted them to do.

Now Disingenuousness Number Two from Hassett when he refers to the bill to regulate Fannie and Freddie:

But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

Republicans, "tied in knots" by the minority Democrats? Yeah, right, the Republicans were in charge but they really weren't in charge! They had the majority. Note the slippery comment in Hassett's next Paragraph: "The Democrats and the few Republicans who oppose portfolio limitations . . " So who were these few Republicans? Again, the Republicans were in sharge, so why couldn't the Republicans-in-charge of Congress even bring it to the floor? Hassett sounds factual, but deep down he's not fessing up to the real truth. I hate to suggest that this same kind of omission operates all the time in Republican circles, but then on the other hand, it usually does.

The only conclusion to draw is that the Republicans didn't want to reform it. Here's a quote from an article reguarding regulation of GSEs (Government Sponsored Enterprises--to which Fannie and Freddie belong) in March of 2006, which, notice, is SEVEN months BEFORE the 2006 election, so the Republicans are STILL in charge:

The House passed a GSE reform bill, the Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005 (H.R. 1461), in November. However, the Senate's reform bill--the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 (S. 190)--has been bogged down since it moved out of committee along a strict party-line vote over the issue of GSE mortgage portfolios (see Mortgage Banking, September 2005, p. 8; and December 2005, p. 10). Among other things, H.R. 1461 would give the new regulator the authority to set a clear definition of the secondary mortgage market and of mortgage loan origination, effectively establishing a "bright line" between the primary and secondary mortgage markets, which the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) supports. Despite the committee's fulsome intended agenda, the work accomplished last year by the committee gives GSE reform a "leg up," making the chances of moving a bill good, according to Banking Committee Communications Director Andrew Gray. Senator Shelby thinks the environment is right for moving a bill," Gray told Mortgage Banking. [My bold]

IT MOVED OUT OF COMMITTTEE. So in other words the Republicans got their way. So why couldn't the Republicans move it onto the floor of the Senate or through a conference committee and onto the President's desk for signature? I notice in the link in Hassett's article that

1) The bill had only two co-sponsors when introduced right at the beginning of the congresssional session in 2005 and that

2) it took McCain a full 16 months to sign on to the bill--just about the time that it was going down the crapper, and two months after the news clip info above.

So here's a questions for Mr. Hassett: where was Senator McCain all those months? And where were the other Republicans who were so hot to trot for keeping the Democrats from resisting the reform? Where was their co-sponsorship? Remember, this is Hassett's own link to the bill's sponsors:

COSPONSORS (3), ALPHABETICAL [followed by Cosponsors withdrawn]: (Sort: by date)Sen Dole, Elizabeth [NC] - 1/26/2005 Sen McCain, John [AZ] - 5/25/2006 Sen Sununu, John E. [NH] - 1/26/2005.

As for GREENSPAN, whose profligate interest rate lowering was being done year after year after year because he knew that the only thing to keep the economy going was to make money easier to borrow in order to continue inflating the housing bubble and have all that bubble refinance money and second mortgage to keep the economy going, well, Greenspan was just covering his ass in this congressional testimony.

Never forget, mes amis progressives: Greenspan under Reagan successfully proposed and engineered increasing the FICA tax on Social Security and stepping it up into the nineties, at which point if it had continued commensurate with inflation and cost of living and wasn't capped at $96,000 per year to give the rich guys a tax break, some surplus would have continued; however, after Clinton left office--recall Al Gore talking about lock boxing the social security funds in 1999?--the social security surplus was raided and spent by Reagan and Bush One, and Clinton, and Bush Two.

And of course, historically, in the late eighties and nineties, the big push to make Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into stock companies for the second mortgage market was on. Fannie became a GSE in order to lower the debt on the books under "Guns and Butter" Lyndon Johnson, Freddie later on. Rather than staying non-profit, they became a big profit "free market" in the best of all worlds: buying up all that securitized mortgage flop doodle and selling it to investors worldwide and the execs taking their big salaries; and everyone knew that if the two entities went down, the government would rescue them.

Privatization of profit and socialization of risk indeed. What do you think Bush et al were telling the Chinese and the Saudis and Kuwaitis to buy when they got annoyed that the ROI (return on investment) was so low on US Treasury bonds and they were trying to invest the dollars they had accumulated? Why, let's have you buy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. From an article titled "Us Taxpayer Bailout of China Over Fannie Mae" July 11, 2008:

The top five foreign holders of Freddie and Fannie long-term debt are China, Japan, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and Belgium. In total foreign investors hold over $1.3 trillion in these agency bonds, according to the U.S. Treasury's most recent "Report on Foreign Portfolio Holdings of U.S. Securities."

That is to say, the Chinese actually loan us most of the money we use to then buy our war material or other cash expenditures. The recent tax rebate incentive package meant to stimulate the U.S. economy (by getting us all to run out and buy $600 worth of Chinese crap at Walmart), was financed by, guess who? The Chinese!

China does not loan the U.S. money the way a bank loans money to an individual person. Instead, what China does is buy up U.S. debt in the form of mortgage-backed securities. China does this, not because China loves us so very much, but because, until recently, U.S. mortgage-backed securities were a great investment. The entire world widely assumed (until very recently) that U.S. homes only ever appreciate in value. Mortgage backed securities were a safe bet, and China made money buying them.

The fact that Chinese investment also allowed the U.S. financial system to function so that banks could extend credit to U.S. citizens and factories who then could buy up Chinese products by the ton, thus making a perfect economic circle, was frosting on the Chinese cake.

Found in "What does China Have to Do with the Fannie Freddie Bailout?"

And then this: "China's investment in the ailing U.S.: Will Washington's big creditor turn away?" by Edward M. Gomez, a former U.S. diplomat and staff reporter at TIME in the San Francisco Chronicle, September 09 2008:

First:

China is deeply invested in U.S. government debt; as of just over a year ago, "China owned $376 billion of debt issued by U.S. government agencies, principally Fannie and Freddie...." Late last month, China's central bank, the People's Bank of China, announced that "it had slashed its exposure to Fannie and Freddie to $12.67 billion...from $17.3 billion at the end of June."

and Second:

As the New York Times put it in a news report published late last week that made news in its own right, with other financial-news pages picking up the story, "China's central bank is in a bind. It has been on a buying binge in the United States over the last seven years, snapping up roughly $1 trillion worth of [U.S.] Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Those investments have been declining sharply in value when converted from dollars into the strong yuan, casting a spotlight on the central bank's tiny capital base. The bank's capital, just $3.2 billion, has not grown during the buying spree...." As a result, now the People's Bank of China needs "an infusion of capital." It cannot just print more money, because that move would provoke inflation. "Instead, the People's Bank of China has begun discussions with [China's] finance ministry on ways to shore up its capital....The central bank's predicament has several repercussions. For one, it makes it less likely that China will allow the yuan to continue rising against the dollar....This could heighten trade tensions with the United States."

Is it any wonder that the stock in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have tumbled with that much pulled out? This is the big secret of the Bushies and the McCainiacs. We won't even talk about how Christopher Cox at the SEC has let all the illegal naked short selling go on for years and years because the regulator doesn't believe in regulation. (Wink wink nod nod as Monty Python would say.) And how naked short selling contributed to the plunges in stock of the investment banks that went under. Perhaps McCain can yell at the Chinese and fire them?

The fact of the matter is, for seven and a half years there has been no regulation of the sub prime mortgage-backed securities swindle despite calls from people on the left for reigning it in. So I read Hassett's article through and think about it and it looks reputable, but it's just partisan spin and slander with a veneer of supposed objectivity.

And finally where's this guy Hassett from? the American Enterprise Institute? give me a break. These guys are free market hypocrites of the worst sort. That Hassett is also John McCain's adviser tells you what axe he has to grind. His weaselly references obscures that it was the Republicans in 2005 who were were unable to get the bill onto the floor. Further, catch this bit of slyness: he has a link in his article to the membership of the Senate Banking Committee, but it's to the 2008 Democrats-led committee, not the Republican-dominated committee in 2005. That gives the impression that Chris Dodd (the current Chair) is in charge, when in 2005 it was Richard Shelby (who right now, to give him credit, is one of the few Republicans to think that Paulson is pulling a fast one).

Why didn't Hassett list all the committee members in 2005? If he did, he'd have to fess up to the fact that it was the Republicans who didn't want to reform the GSEs. He'd have to spread the blame on both parties (see quotes above) and therefore his thesis would have leaked like a cheesecloth diaper. This guy is willing to shade the truth for the sake of his argument, and while it appears to be "fact based" it just isn't.

Guys like Hassett are mental, ethical, and economic con men. And he writes for Bloomberg, for chrissake. So who is going to contradict him as his headlines reinforce the preconceptions of all the Capitalist kool-aid drinkers who read headlines only because they took an Evelyn Wood speed-reading course back in the 70s?

Yet, I believe this one article will get a lot of play over the next few days as the McCainiacs push it everywhere and no big media folks will bother to criticize it. Watch--he is the kind of guy NPR will have on in the next two days or so. And since Franklin Raines is black and did his shenanigans, they will try to show that he is Barack Obama's best buddy and thereby smear Obama with guilt by association a la the Reverend Wright template (I think Obama knows Raines, but don't know for sure.

I left that last one for my friend DP to check out. That was about the best I could do. I procrastinated on my pressing project, and by then I was pissed at Republican advisers to John McCain as well. So I went to bed.

Welcome to the greasy chute

The Georgian crisis provided Senator Obama--"our candidate"--with the perfect opportunity to be a statesman, tell everyone to calm down, and call for some foreign policy initiatives for peace and mediation and global discussion rather than absolute limpness and passivity.


Even after a vacation week to think about it, he was unable to provide a call for "change." This tells me that his foreign policy advisers--and they are legion, close to 300 by an estimate I saw-- are going to caution the same old baloney Democratic strategy--which by default is cowardly
acceptance of Neo-conservative crony capitalism, plutocracy, American Exceptionalism, Empire, and as we now are learning, the first benign stages of fascism. Have you heard about how the City of Denver is preparing to handle "protest"? And you thought NYC was bad 4 years ago.


When I was in Denver recently, at the end of July, I heard rumors that the Denver Police were going to park the protesters in "protest pens." Now we have discovered through the Denver underground and above ground press that the Colorado National Guard has commandeered some motels on the outskirts of downtown to use for barracks, and that a detention center has been prepared (thanks to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! for reporting this) in an old warehouse owned by the city of Denver. In the warehouse are pens made of cyclone fencing topped with razor wire and posted signs that tazers are used in the facility. The warehouse has no air conditioning.


In fact, the warehouse was empty because the city, which stored voting machines in it, had to move the voting machines because they would get overheated. I'm telling you, these are the first sign of benign fascism. We will have an American twist to it. Welcome to the the greasy chute, Citoyens!

Jonathan Turley: The Fix is in for a "Pirate Victory"

Well, as the really patriotic defenders of the Fourth Amendment feared, the criminals in our government--and I include the Senators who failed to uphold their oath of office--have won.

I excerpt here Glenn Greenwald's comments and refer you to a You Tube clip, an interview with Prof. Jonathan Turley, who points out that a Federal judge just a few days ago in his opinion indicated clearly that President (yeah, I know, my maw churns with bile at the word) George W. Bush is an admitted multiple felon.

First Glenn Greenwald:

With their vote today, the Democratic-led Congress has covered-up years of deliberate surveillance crimes by the Bush administration and the telecom industry, and has dramatically advanced a full-scale attack on the rule of law in this country. As I noted earlier today, Law Professor and Fourth Amendment expert Jonathan Turley was on MSNBC's Countdown with Rachel Maddow last night and gave as succinct an explanation for what Democrats -- not the Bush administration, but Democrats -- have done today. Anyone with any lingering doubts about what is taking place today in our country should watch this:

Go to YouTube for the video of Rachel Maddow on Countdown last night and her interview with Professor Jonathan Turley.


And Greenwald continues:

What is most striking is that when the Congress was controlled by the GOP -- when the Senate was run by Bill Frist and the House by Denny Hastert -- the Bush administration attempted to have a bill passed very similar to the one that just passed today. But they were unable to do so. The administration had to wait until Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over Congress before being able to put a corrupt end to the scandal that began when, in December of 2005, the New York Times revealed that the President had been breaking the law for years by spying on Americans without the warrants required by law.

Yet again, the Democratic Congress ignored the views of their own supporters in order to comply with the orders and wishes of the Bush administration.

And later: "Somehow, at some point, someone somewhere convinced [Democrats] that the best way to avoid appearing weak is to be as weak as possible."

Read Greenwald's complete article HERE.

Some observations:


1. The weak Democrats can go to hell.


2. Most citizens of the United States, including some good friends of mine, could give a rat's ass about the fact that their President is a self-admitted lawbreaker, or that the government now has the means to spy on them, their credit transactions, their emails, their telephone conversations, their text messages. They don't have anything to hide. They won't understand until a double entendre, or an incautious joke, or a monetary transaction gets looked at by a Homeland Security bureaucrat and they get called on the carpet, or fall under suspicion of being "up to something."


3. Few Americans understood that the first FISA bill in 1977 was the start of the erosion of the Fourth Amendment. In other words, we are at the bottom of the slippery slope.


4. The telecoms have spent millions to grease the palms of Democrats and Republicans alike. Change your phone to Qwest if you have their service. They refused to break the law when Bush told them to, and they refused almost nine months BEFORE 9/11/2001. So much for the national security arguments.


5. No, I revise my invective: screw the Democrats. Only 28 of them understood the meaning of their oath of office.


6. Clearly, we need to watch out for Obama. Despite his explanations and rationale for why he supports the bill, he's no fool. It gives him power to break the law if or when he is elected president. Don't rely on his good faith or integrity. He voted for it. Worse, he know it was going to fail. What would he have lost by voting against it or trying to make the arguments he gave at the end of 2007 when he didn't have the nomination? Obviously the telecoms' high regard. Just another politician. Screw him too.

6.1: Senators voting against and upholding their oath of office: Akaka - Biden - Bingaman - Boxer - Brown - Byrd - Cantwell - Cardin - Clinton - Dodd - Dorgan - Durbin - Feingold - Harkin - Kerry - Klobachur - Lautenberg - Leahy - Levin - Menendez - Murray - Reed - Reid - Sanders - Schumer - Stabenow - Tester - Wyden. Hillary Clinton voted against it!


7. Upon further reflection, fuck the Democrats. Especially the ones in the House who brought the legislation under the cynical leadership of Steney Hoyer, and violated their oath of office.


8. It will be a long haul until we purge the Congress of all of these slimy bastards.


9. Think of one good reason why Nancy Pelosi took "impeachment off the table," and why the nuclear option is still "on the table."


10. Reread Tom Paine over the summer. Or read him.

A Sad Day for Democrats and Obama Supporters

Remember this day. On this day, the Democrats proved for the umpteenth time what a party of collusion rather than opposition thay have become when they passed the FISA bill containing what amounts to an amnesty provision for telecom companies.

Worst of all, Senator Obama, whose word is rapidly becoming more assured as the voice of the party, came out and said he accepted the compromise bill. He said he would fight the amnesty provision in the Senate, but I don't think this is anything but cover. Read his words:

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives -– and the liberty –- of the American people.

This is a politician's bullshit. Notice that he doesn't say that amnesty is wrong any more. He sees that the bill gives the Presidency another little fillip of tyranny and he will not look that gift horse in the mouth. It's a sad day.

In my own Congressional District, I was very fearful that Adam Schiff would end up capitulating with the spineless. He did indeed vote for the bill, and I publish here the letter I sent to him quoting from his own letter to me back in the spring when I had written to him concerned about giving amnesty to the telephone companies who went along with George Bush's violations of the law. (Remember, Bush himself admitted he broke the law in a press conference and said that he would continue to do so. ) This amnesty provision will--unless there is a brave FISA judge out there--almost automatically dismiss any lawsuits permanently. It's a very sad day. My letter will sum up the reason for my sadness.

326 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Representative Adam Schiff

Re: Your Vote on the FISA and Telecom Amnesty Bill

Dear Congressman Schiff:

I have just reviewed the record of the vote. Your name was in the Yeas. Disturbing.
Let me quote from your letter to me of April 9, 2008:

On March 14^th, the House voted to pass a bill—the FISA Amendment Act of 2008—that did not include immunity for the telecom companies. The final vote in the House was 213-197 and I voted in favor of this legislation.

However, the suggestion of the Administration that we can only [be aggressive in combating terrorism]by subverting the law and giving up our constitutional right is seriously misguided.

Yet despite this, the bill you voted for today—against your apparent position of understanding that the Administration was wrong—is not in the interests of the citizens of this country. I can anticipate receiving rhetoric from you to justify your vote, and further obfuscation that will essentially repeat the rationalizations of your ''seriously misguided” colleagues Hoyer, Emmanuel, and Speaker Pelosi. Some Democratic opposition you have become. Save the rhetoric, please.

It is clear that you now would let this administration escape liability for its unconstitutional acts. You now would let the predictable assurances of Attorney General Mukasy that a telecom company had “acted in good faith after assurances from the Justice Department” completely preclude any possible discovery proving that the Administration had broken the law. In short, you now have become a party to the collusion. All your talk now about wanting to preserve FISA as the exclusive remedy will not hold water. The fact is that telecom immunity could still have been excluded if you and other overly compliant congressmen had truly wanted to protect the Fourth Amendment. In other words, as Senator Bond said today, "When the Government tells you to do something, I think you all recognize, uh, that that is something that you need to do." A nation of sheep.

In all of our history,with its few instances of impeachment and threatened impeachment, this President alone has been more culpable than any other and liable for impeachment. Yet Congress has not had the courage to hold him accountable as the Constitution provides. In this one instance when we clearly know by his own admission that the President broke the law and would continue to break it, your action today has let him pass unscathed. The proof? Other telecom companies refused to comply!

I am deeply disturbed by your lack of courage and leadership on this matter. You have not only betrayed my trust in you but have betrayed your own principles. You have not done your duty.

Sincerely,

To be sure, it's a sad day for the Fourth Amendment and a sad day for all of us who understand that this President has moved us further and faster in seven and a half years from a democratic republic than any one would have thought. Damn the Democrats who have gone along with this terrible capitulation to the politics of fear, paranoia, and vengeance.

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Grossman mallets

Sent from BlueOrganizer

It really is a shame, isn't it?


To quote the great Calvin Trillin from the same issue of The Nation,

Republicans seemed sunk before--
A grim economy, the war.
But now the Democrats make news:
They've figured out a way to lose.

Recall the old joke about the two piranhas: there's the two of them circling in the tank, and the next morning the tank is empty: My god, they've eaten each other!

Isn't it amazing how a fight to the death--or to the finish, or what's the difference?--begins before you know it? The vortex starts where? It starts with grief, doesn't it? It starts with not being in touch with one's pain. We don't have to worry about their persistence, do we? But was that ever in question? Whichever side loses this battle will find that the real test of political courage is just beginning: how to put aside the grief at the loss and find the understanding to unite rather than maintain the pain in bitterness.

The point has to be to make sure the Republican Party does not win the election.

Time to give the exit orders

I am in a moment of reflection after reading that the House of Representatives just passed a bill calling for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq within the next 120 days. I just got a bulletin on this from the Sacramento Bee, whose editorial pages can be perceptive at times. I am sure that more will be written on this in the next few days. Interestingly enough, it appears that Dennis Kucinich and some "blue dog" democrats voted against it.

I think now that the pressure on the president is growing. The violence in Iraq, no matter what our decider-in-chief says, is continuing at a fierce level; we are relying more and more on air strikes to bring some semblance of control; our casualty rate is increasing; and even the supposedly safe Green Zone is being attacked--though you never hear about it--almost daily. The rape of the oil resources--honestly, the only good metaphor to use for the bald-faced acquisition of power over the only future source of wealth of Iraq--in the form of the Petroleum Bill is being stalled in the Iraqi Parliament, and funny business is beginning to go on to manipulate the votes.

The petroleum bill was drafted by the US in consultation with the big oil companies, and was one of the only recommendations from the Iraq Study Group that was picked up wholeheartedly by the guys in black. and that is why the following excerpt is most appropriate. My thanks to Information Clearing House for providing tonight this excerpt from John Locke's The Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690):

"That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man's right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think that robbers and pirates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master, or that men are bound by promises which unlawful force extorts from them.

Should a robber break into my house, and, with a dagger at my throat, make me seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give him any title? Just such a title by his sword has an unjust conqueror who forces me into submission. The injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown or some petty villain.

The title of the offender and the number of his followers make no difference in the offence, unless it be to aggravate it. The only difference is, great robbers punish little ones to keep them in their obedience; but the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs, because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own possession which should punish offenders." John Locke - 1632-1704

Read those paragraphs carefully, because they make the point as strongly as can be made about our attempts to secure control of the second largest known oil reserve. No matter what our motives for invading and occupying Iraq--even if you rely only upon the last desperate moral contortions of the defenders of the war, that Saddam was a tyrant and had to be "taken out"--even if you use only that argument and nothing else, the invasion still falls under the category of a war of aggression, and therefore is illegal under the laws of the United States as well as International Law

We are too big for the "weak hands of justice in this world," at this point, but perhaps over the next few years, we will attempt to repair the damage to basic principles of justice, give up our efforts to aggrandize what is not ours, stop our major contribution of the destruction of Iraq, and finally come to accept our place as a good citizen of the world. I am not very optimistic, but I certainly can contemplate the idea of hope.

A few more turnings

What is that faint aroma in the wind? Ah yes, Karl Rove just passed by. Tom Delay, disgraced and out of office, tries to regain his reputation as the Exterminator again and suggests that the Democratic leadership is close to treasonous. Dick Cheney, Eminence grise of the administration, accuses Harry Reid of flip-flopping on the funding of Iraq. Candidate Giuliani is trying to scare the electorate into believing that a Democratic Presidency in 2008 will lead to another terrorist attack, as if the debacle and terrorist-encouraging actions and inactions of this current administration really kept terrorists from planning. That's right, it's the Democrats that are giving terrorists reasons to attack us. And George Bush, President of the United States, shows innocently and with no awareness of the irony on late night TV that he is acting as the puppet master to the Prime Minister of Iraq, giving al-Maliki what? a B minus? He also thinks that Alberto Gonzales is doing . . .. well, a heckuva job. (http://www.charlierose.com/home).

The historian Robert Dallek just published a book on Nixon and Kissinger, and he recalls similar talk from those two about impending victory and South Vietnam needing to provide security for its people, all the while knowing that the war was lost. Yet they slogged on , much to the pain of thousands of American and Vietnamese families. The president should be talking about how we will pay reparations to the Iraqis, or perhaps how we should be taking care of the largest number of refugees in the Middle East since the nakbar, according to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR). Or perhaps he should be asking Nouri al-Maliki in his daily tlephone conversations why the Iraqi government is failing to give the UN accurate figures on the number of deaths in the country. That government is slowly dissolving, by some accounts; wait until they start debating or start trying to jam through the Parliament the privatization bill for oil.)

So for a remedy, read Senator George McGovern's op-ed riposte, in the Los Angeles Times, to Richard Cheney's ignorant statements about McGovern's platform during the 1972 political campaign. Print it out, keep it in your purse or wallet and read it every once in a while. And don't forget that April 28 is Impeachment Day. (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-mcgovern24apr24,0,4084076.story.)

Word is that Monica Goodling, White House liaison to the Justice Department, who intends to take advantage of the Fifth Amendment, is now going to be subpoenaed to testify under oath, but with immunity. Apparently only the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against extending immunity. Keep this one in your daily radar.

Perhaps the ship of state is slowing down. Now to turn it around.