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Obama’s A Genius! He Shows Why Unending Madness is Inevitable!

by George Thomas

Let the politics scream on.  The Bush Cartel may earn some comeuppance, or may not. A careful reading and listening to all the political talk either demanding accountability under law, or soft-pedaling the whole thing while urging that we “turn the page,” reveals little but shouting.  Finally, Obama appeared to invoke “the rule of law” in his May 21st security speech in one sentence, while in another describe the continued program of preventive long-term incarceration of ‘terrorists’.

What gives?

Dick Cheney did not disappoint. Within minutes he provided his usual mix of self-promotion in de-facto response to Obama. His speech was content-free, and we can ignore it as some more standard Bush administration dogma. Someone, somewhere, pule-e-ease find a way to shut Dick Cheney up before he convinces millions of our unread, unsophisticated citizens to swing US politics back to sheer madness.  It could happen.  I was alive way back during the second Dubya selection, and I know.  But the depressing thought occurs to me: What would it matter? Read more

General Dave’s Map Shows Human Terrain Really Continues East into Afghanistan and Pakistan!

by George Thomas

Bi-products of unwise foreign policy have afflicted us before, and they will probably afflict us again.  Such is the stability of cultural values and, generally speaking, today’s Neoconservatives have never accepted that fact.  So many believe we can construct Disneyland in far-off lands for our entertainment.

Sometimes we make blanket condemnation of everyone involved, one way or other, in the Iraq-Afghanistan-BushWar mess.  This is not particularly helpful.  It’s even wrong, so wrong.  Take for example the normal-guy and gal ignoramuses caught up and eventually charged in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.  They reaped the most damaging negative sanctions, even though they held relatively little responsibility.  Policy makers, as we speak, remain on the lam so far.

I can’t say enough about the callow, naive folks in charge of much leadership and responsibility within many military organizations.  Sometimes training and education include the mistakes made early in a career.  But when these mistakes become really, really public and visible, and become the main point of contention in international brouhaha, it can scar a young, naive – let’s face it, stupid, callow mind well into adulthood, regardless of whether that mind ran like a well-oiled engine of genius proportions. Read more

Good Torture - Some torturers are born; the best are made

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

Now that Obama has gone all namby-pamby on torture accountability, and it’s beginning to look like some leading Congressional Democrats knew and even approved of torture, I’m covering my bets and coming out in favor of torture. Bring it on, I say! The more, the merrier! Torture all around!

Damn, I feel manly when I talk that way.

I mean, look, it’s not as if I’M the one getting tortured. The government promises to only torture people they don’t like, and darn it, I’m a likeable guy. They won’t come after me.

But you know, if we’re going to have torture, we have to make it as efficient as possible, and one of the main problems good freedom-loving Christian nations have when they decide to make torture a function of state policy is that of getting the right people for the job of torturing. Read more

Beyond unemployment insurance in the face of structural job loss: Who ever said it would be easy?

by Robert A. Letcher, PhD*

“The long memory is the most radical idea in America.”
Utah Phillips, as recalled by Amy Goodman

I was reminded of Utah Phillips’ observation as I sat down to write this essay on how we approach public policy for dealing with unemployment during a time of mass unemployment. I intended to start off the essay by recalling the title of a book I read in around 1990. But, when I went to Amazon.com to look for the book, I found it wasn’t listed. I figured that it had gone out of print.

Fortunately, my memory – or at least a radical part of it, as I can barely remember my own name when I wake up in the morning – had something of a radical idea: the book I had in mind was And the Wolf Finally Came, by Thomas P. Hoerr (circa 1990). It’s a book about several decades of ups and downs of steel making in Pittsburgh. The author recounts how Pittsburghers had grown accustomed to those ups and downs, and how as one source told the author, “the wolf finally came”; that is, those troublesome ups and downs got replaced by much more troublesome down, period. Read more

Republican Opposition to the Stimulus: Wrong, But Not Treason

by Jeff Alson

One of my best friends and favorite writers, Robert Letcher, has accused those Republicans who oppose President Obama’s stimulus program of “treason by a thousand cuts” (Republicans Giving Civic Lessons?!!!??, We! Magazine, February 14, 2009).  I strongly disagree.

Even more important than the formal definition that Bob cites,  I believe treason has a clear and powerful “public meaning” of disloyalty to one’s country.  Accordingly, unlike words that lack such a universal public meaning, I believe words like treason should only be used when we really (really!) mean it.  Otherwise, they lose their powerful public meaning.  I personally believe that the stimulus program was a very good idea, to try to jump-start our economy and help millions of families survive.  But, I don’t think opposition to the stimulus program in general, or to the process that was used by the Administration and Congress to pass it quickly, comes even close to justifying the use of the word treason, whether by one or a thousand or a million cuts.

I think treason should be reserved for those issues with immediate consequences related to fundamental constitutional principles and which do not involve a “thousand degrees of grayness.”   And nothing involves so many degrees of grayness than a giant stimulus bill put together in a few weeks.  Would a stimulus bill 10 percent smaller or a debate a week or two longer so more members (and the public) could read and digest it, really be the difference between treason and non-treason?  Or, was Obama’s willingness to compromise to get three Republican Senate votes equal to one-thousandth of treason?  Or, was his unwillingness to support a bill 10 percent larger (or much larger as economists like Paul Krugman and Dean Baker have advocated?) treason-like?  I think these questions point out the folly of bringing treason into the debate over an economic stimulus program. Read more

Neo-Absurdists - They love America and hate the United States

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

Research 2000 had a poll the other day that claimed that 32% of Republicans in Georgia would support leaving the United States. This compared to 5% among Democrats, and 14% among independents. As Daily Kos correspondent Arjun Jaikumar remarked, “Apparently, the most conservative of Republicans only love their country when they’re in power. Charming.”

It’s scary only until you realize that there’s not much left of the GOP these days, and the extremist nuts make up a disproportionate number of that GOP “base.” In Georgia, for instance, 25% of voters identify themselves as Republicans (which is higher than the country at large, which is now only 22% Republican. Incredibly, there were more Republicans in Georgia in the 1960s, when the party was seen as northern, anti-Jim-Crow, and liberal). Thirty-two percent of a quarter of the population is 8% of the total population. The eighth percentile will put you right out near the lip of any bell-shaped curve. Welcome to Wingnut World. The land of guns, gawd, and meth. Or “The Knights,” which is the new, done-over PR group fronting for the KKK. And while most mainstream Christians have deserted the GOP in droves, the not-inconsiderable apocalyptic snake-handlers who believe “The Omega Factor” is a gonna-be-true story, are still a fundamental part of that base. The four jackasses of the apocalypse and all that. Read more

The Meaning of the Spector Switch

by Mary Lyon

Arlen Spector?!?!?! The first time I blurted that out was during an industry screening of Oliver Stone’s “JFK”, in which his name came up in connection with the rogue “magic bullet” issue. I just had another Arlen Spector blurt a few minutes ago (as of this writing, anyway).

He’s switching? Defecting? “Coming home,” as some people on the other side of the aisle (oops, I mean, his side of the aisle now, don’t I?) have noted with the added word “welcome”? The newest Senate Democrat, the Man of the Hour, has even moved the Swine Flu and his former GOP sister Susan “we don’t need no stinking epidemic funding!” Collins off the top of the breaking news watch.

Well, okay, I’m celebrating. I guess. Read more

• Letter to the Editor: Good Cars need Good Teams - by R. A. Letcher, PhD

  Good cars need good teams -- designers, engineers, line workers… and learning-oriented managers by Robert A. Letcher, PhD [Author’s note: I submitted the following as a letter to the editor of The New York Times, after that paper carried an article under the headline, "To Fix Detroit, Obama Is Said to Drop Plan for ‘Car Czar’", 02/15/2009.] It is widely accepted that you can't win a horse race without a good horse. Of course, it helps to have a lot of money and a good plan for spending it. But, you still need a good horse. The authors reminded me of this when they wrote: “The companies’ plans are required to show progress in cutting long-term costs as a condition for keeping their loans.” I doubt GM and Chrysler can win this most important "automobile race" merely by having better accountants and more muscular negotiators: they still need a good "horse". That means the companies will have to show that their teams can still design and build cars that people are drawn to buy and willing to pay for: winners. I doubt they can. The problem isn't that they didn't know how to; it's that they don't know how to break out of the group-think that ensnarled them, their managers, their whole organizations, decades ago. I would be more optimistic, had the government also required the companies to include plans for transforming themselves into learning organizations. Aye, there’s the rub: learning entails risk-taking, not “yes people”.

• Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm

  

• Fiscal Therapy - Getting the economy back on its feet, giving taxpayers a break, saving your retirement fund and your kid's college tuition? Done. And it won't cost you a penny.

  For years now, whenever I've been invited to lecture students on how our tax system works, I have asked a simple question: What is the purpose of the United States of America? The most common answer, be it at prestigious universities, elite prep schools, rural community colleges, or crowded urban high schools, is this: To make people rich. This should come as no great surprise. For anyone born after, say, 1970, the world has been shaped by Ronald Reagan's remaking of government's relationship with private interests—a vision of lower taxes, less regulation, and maximum economic leeway for those at the top. In this view, the pursuit of wealth is the warp and weft of America; everything else will follow. By contrast, the preamble to the Constitution tells us the nation's reason for being in 52 words that can be reduced to six principles: society, justice, peace, security, commonwealth, and freedom. Individual riches don't make the list. They are a product of American society, not its guiding purpose. Progress, then, must begin with a return to the best of the values that created this Second American Republic—one born, it's worth remembering, from the failure of the Articles of Confederation, whose principles (weak government, unfettered capitalism) found their resurrection in the economic policies of the past three decades.

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  read more at Mother Jones

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• How Do You Like Deregulation Now? graphic politics by Dicky Neely

  

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• Recent Posts

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  • Challenges that confront and confound efforts to bring about institutional change
  • Obama’s A Genius! He Shows Why Unending Madness is Inevitable!
  • General Dave’s Map Shows Human Terrain Really Continues East into Afghanistan and Pakistan!
  • Good Torture - Some torturers are born; the best are made
  • Beyond unemployment insurance in the face of structural job loss: Who ever said it would be easy?
  • Republican Opposition to the Stimulus: Wrong, But Not Treason
  • Neo-Absurdists - They love America and hate the United States
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