Blowing in the Wind

I never learned to love the smell of tear gas in the morning, but a new generation is finding out how they feel about it.  Copious clouds of tear gas enveloped Occupy protesters in Oakland, CA on Tuesday night, and judging from the footage I saw on TV, things are a little different than during the Vietnam War protests.  I don't recall tear gas hitting with such explosive force, and police now have other "non-lethal" weapons like flash grenades and rubber bullets.  But one protester was critically injured during the police assault--a Marine vet, who survived two tours in Iraq but was felled on the streets of his own country.

This example only sharpens the analogy that Frank Rich makes to the Bonus Army encampments and their destruction at the beginning of the Great Depression, when Hoover was President, and such later military luminaries as MacArthur, Patton and Eisenhower got some practice routing unarmed and jobless Great War veterans, some of whom immediately joined the one million men riding the rails.

Rich says that just as military violence against the Bonus Army (in Washington to protest that they were not receiving their promised war bonuses) inflamed public sentiment to the Bonus Army side when these scenes were shown in movie theatre newsreels, so YouTubed police violence against The 99% demonstrators has galvanized public support for them.  Rich pointedly does not make an analogy to Vietnam protests, when the opposite happened, so I'm not as sure as he is that public opinion won't turn against Occupy.  But he seems pretty certain:

    "These efforts to domesticate and contain the protests are unlikely to succeed. It is not frustration that’s roiling America but anger, the anger of a full-fledged class war. Try as polite company keeps trying to ignore it, that war has been building in this country and abroad for much of this decade and has been waged in earnest in America since the fall of 2008."

A Congressional Budget Office study adds more informational fuel to this by calculating just how thoroughly this secret class war has been waged and so far won--by the 1%.  According to the Washington Post summary: "For the 1 percent of the population with the highest incomes, average income grew 275 percent between 1979 and 2007, the report said. Middle-income Americans saw just less than a 40 percent rise during the same period, while the 20 percent of the population on the bottom saw an 18 percent increase."

On Wednesday, congressional GOPers led by Paul Ryan tried to turn up the heat on protesters and make President Obama sound like an outside agitator.  While I am less certain than Rich that public opinion won't turn, there is certainly a lot more public support for the Occupy positions than there ever was during the antiwar era.  Huge majorities favoring taxing the 1% more, say that incomes are too unequal, and that Wall Street is too politically powerful.

Politically all this does seem to be hung around the necks of GOPers.  A hefty majority sees the GOP as primarily looking out for the rich.  And Congress (which in image as well as substance, is GOPer) is polling at an approval rating of 9%.  Not three 9s, just one.  Meanwhile, the Tuesday theme--from an ultraconservative in the New York Post to Morning Joe and the ever-reasonable Pat Robertson--was the disgust of  conservative GOPers for the GOPer presidential field and their Barnum & Bailey politics.  It was orgasmic.

So even though Frank Rich doesn't think that 2012 elections will settle anything--and there's reason to see that in the congressional districts and Senate seats that seem to be in play--there's really no predicting that far into the future at this point.  It's hard to see what happens next with Occupy.  It can't sustain this level of attention for much longer without changing something--either politically or at least in form.

One tipoff for me will be just how many people get to know the name of Scott Olsen, the vet whose skull was fractured in Oakland.  It was just such an event in Tunisia that jumpstarted the entire Arab Spring.

Emerson for the Day

"Sow an action, and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and reap a destiny."

William James

It Did Happen Here

The reading of It Can't Happen Here at Dell'Arte last night went very well, and my intro was well-received.  It was a great experience being part of the reading with such good actors.  I was most impressed however by the attentiveness of the audience.  There was no scenery, no costumes, no music, not even a microphone, and nothing much was happening on the stage--just fifteen people sitting at tables across the stage, reading the play and interacting as much as they could, but sometimes conducting dialogues with people between them.  And people were listening to every word, for 2 and a half hours total, including one 15 minute intermission.  Awesome.

I'm sure my own reading about this Great Depression period will inform future posts, as it has altered my perspective on what's happening now.

Several people involved in the reading remarked on how little they knew about the Federal Theatre Project.  Here again is the link to what I wrote about it on Stage Matters.

It Will Happen Here (Tonight)

Tonight some 23 readings of the play It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis will be held across the United States.  These readings celebrate the 75th anniversary of the play's premiere--with 23 productions in 18 cities--a singular event in American history and American theatre.  These 1936 productions were by the Federal Theatre Project, part of the New Deal efforts to break the cycle of the Great Depression.

One of these readings will be held here on the North Coast, at Dell'Arte in Blue Lake.  I will be one of the readers, and I am introducing the event with a few choice words about Federal Theatre, and the play, which is about how a fascist dictatorship takes over the U.S.

Like a lot of Federal Theatre productions, this one is free.  Though I'm told ours at Dell'Arte is pretty much "sold out" with advance reservations.  For information on these productions, on the play and especially the Federal Theatre Project, please check my postings at Stage Matters.  (These posts are always accessible by clicking on the "Federal Theatre Project" or "Great Depression" labels.)

So I've got to go study my script now, and practice my Vermont farmer accent--sorry, that's fahmah, isn't it?

Our Long National Nightmare is Ending

President Obama on Friday, announcing that the last American troops in Iraq will be home by the December holidays:

"So to sum up, the United States is moving forward from a position of strength. The long war in Iraq will come to an end by the end of this year. The transition in Afghanistan is moving forward, and our troops are finally coming home. As they do, fewer deployments and more time training will help keep our military the very best in the world. And as we welcome home our newest veterans, we’ll never stop working to give them and their families the care, the benefits and the opportunities that they have earned.

This includes enlisting our veterans in the greatest challenge that we now face as a nation -- creating opportunity and jobs in this country. Because after a decade of war, the nation that we need to build -- and the nation that we will build -- is our own; an America that sees its economic strength restored just as we’ve restored our leadership around the globe."

What's the Matter with Iowa?

Expanding a bit on points in my "Evidence" post, and indulging in petty politics for a moment:

Iowa is a diverse state, more so than it's given credit for.  But the Iowa GOP is not, most reporters say, and especially not the core GOPers who vote in their caucuses.  It is heavily Rabid Christian Right, or Teavangelical.  And therein lies a tale, or two.

It will be the first test for the GOPer prez sweepstakes.  If Newt Romney wins it, conventional wisdom sez that the nomination is his, because it's where he's weakest.  So far he's not even campaigning there.  Recently there have been hints that his campaign sees an opening, because he's doing surprisingly well in polls and nobody else is running away with the field. 

So the Iowa caucus will test this presumption: that the Iowa GOPer participants are all about Teavangelical dogma and prejudices (otherwise known as "social issues" or "culture wars") and don't much care about electability or the economy or anything else.  That would be just about be deep-sixed by a Romney win.  Except...

Everybody else is running as a Rabid Right Xtian.  But nobody is emerging as the favorite--maybe nobody is pure enough, or has thrilled enough people, or spread enough money around--who knows? ( Most of them don't have much money to spread around, 'cept Cowboy Rick.)  So they could divide the Teavangelical vote and Romney could win, except...

He's Mormon.  That makes him dangerous as far as Tvans are concerned.  He may not get enough votes to prevail even in a divided Tvan field.  Or, at the last minute, in a panic at giving the Mormon the win, people unite around one Tvan.  Michele.  Herman KochCain.  Rick Sanctimonious. Mitt Gingrich.   Or Cowboy Rick. 

This is where you gotta like Cowboy Rick, on paper at least.  He's got the money and organization.  And Tvans might be convinced by that, because a Tvan who wins here, will need to win in South Carolina, Florida, etc.  Cause Newt Romney will likely win New Hampshire.  Only Cowboy Rick can make the case that he has the resources to move on.  But he's doing poorly in Iowa so far, so this would be a last minute, hot-breathing, now let me drive you to the caucus argument.

But this is only if  Iowa Tvans show a new capability of being reasoned with.  If they can be, maybe Tvans elsewhere can be.  If not...then we may be looking at a Tvan independent/third party candidate, because these folks won't settle for a non-Tvan, like that Mormon.

The wild card in all this is Ron Paul.  He's not Tvan but he's not Romney, and he's got a core of very particular true believers.  If he wins Iowa, it upsets the media narratives, and the conventional wisdom is that he won't win anywhere else.  But this is not a conventional year.

Whoever the non-Romney winner in Iowa is, that person's one hope is that the Kochheads show up at the victory party with a big, big, big check.  Which oh yeah could happen.  Then what's the matter with Iowa matters.  

Robin Hood in the 21st Century

I don't know much (yet) about the Robin Hood tax proposal in the UK, which my old stomping grounds of Adbusters is promoting for general use, with a global march on Oct. 29.  But Bill Nighy is an actor I admire greatly, and this ironic "commercial" for this idea is worth watching for him alone.  (He's in some of the Johnny Depp Pirates movies, but among his best screen roles is another and much less known pirate movie, called Pirate Radio.  A great movie about 1960s rock in the UK. )  Still, the idea has obvious appeal, and may well become a 99% Movement proposal.  

The Evidence is In

The evidence is in: it is that the evidence doesn't matter.

In connection with an upcoming event I'll get into later, I've been reading about the Great Depression period, and politically, there's an awful lot that's familiar: namely the same amnesia just a few years after near catastrophe, the same irrational politics, including hysterical media figures and ignoramus right wingers.  There are big differences--for instance, that the economic collapse was so much worse that FDR was given much greater power by an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress to act fast and on his own.  But the political culture was not all that different.  Which means--and I don't know if this should be comforting or not--that today's apparent insanity is not all that unusual, given the roiling changes and fear out there.

But it does help explain why this craziness, and especially this inability to confront real evidence and realistically address problems, is so ascendant.  It's probably in that Bob Dylan quote up there: "It's not dark yet.  But it's getting there."  It isn't dark enough.  Not yet.

But everybody knows it's getting there.  People just fixate on different causes, and ignore evidence to the contrary.  Really, really ignore it.

Not everybody, of course.  The Occupy Wall Street/99% Movement is basically trying to bring back a sense of reality, as well as urgency.  But when it comes to GOPers especially, to that "coalition" of the self-serving and determinedly deluded, they insist on really, really ignoring the evidence.

How else to explain the discourse at the GOPer presidential debates.  Apart from what's become a generalized explanation--that many if not most of the candidates aren't serious candidates, they are just enhancing their brands for the lucrative Rabid Right (Corporate plus Teavangelical) markets.  There is a pandering to the particular fantasies, feelings and primarily hatreds of the "base," that doesn't really care about any evidence to the contrary of their believed realities.  Or as Jonathan Bernstein perfectly puts it: "It's not Rick Perry and Mitt Romney who aren't serious; it's the party they're trying to lead."

Clearly congressional GOPers aren't serious about addressing the economic suffering.  They defy political realities as well as economic ones, and make clear, stark choices that feeds perfectly into the 99% narrative and the Democratic analysis.  When the Senate filibustered and therefore killed the part of the jobs bill that provides funding to rehire and keep on the job teachers, police, firefighters and first responders, refusing the minuscule millionaires' tax that over two-thirds of the electorate favors--where is the political sanity, let alone the governance sanity, in that?  They made it possible for Harry Reid to say with very obvious accuracy that they killed "a bill that would have kept 400,000 teachers in the classroom and first responders on the job because they refuse to ask millionaires to pay their fair share."


Also on Thursday, most GOPers refused to give President Obama any credit for a successful outcome in Libya.  The GOPers have such hypnotic (and probably other) power over America media that they are able to suppress evidence from public consciousness of a record that would make any other President a lock for reelection.  To the point where people apparently have to feel apologetic for noticing it.

And of course, the truly momentous example of ignoring all evidence is denying the realities of the Climate Crisis.  Yet another study released Thursday concluded that scientific issues raised by skeptics had no meaningful effect on the conclusion that global warming is real, and very, very evident.   But it won't matter.  Climate Crisis denial is faith-based, including faith in whatever you have to say to make a lot of money from people paying you to believe what they tell you.   It's also fear-based, which accounts for that percentage of people who swing back and forth on the question.  Most of the deniers are irredeemable, but this group will swing back to accepting the reality right in front of them, when it's so dark for so long that the darkness can't be denied.

I confess that I can't figure out what's going to happen with the GOPers in their presidential selection process.  I'm a bit confounded by Cowboy Rick's weakness in the polls, and without winning Iowa (he's way back in the pack now), no one seems likely to derail Newt Romney, despite GOPer disdain for him.  And that's the true test of this unreality: the "base" is requiring such purity of simplistic stands and grievances that are so patently unrealistic for anyone who has thought for even two seconds about them in the real world, that no one is going to satisfy them.   "It's not Rick Perry and Mitt Romney who aren't serious; it's the party they're trying to lead."  (Well, actually I don't think they're serious either, in the sense of having serious approaches and solutions to serious problems.)

But this is such a powerful trajectory right now that its very insanity seems to say that it has to play itself out, and nobody knows where this is going.  There's enough in the polling data to permit the hope that the country won't be crazy enough to replace President Obama with one of these virulent crazies--and I include Newt Romney in that assessment, judging him by his campaigning words.  But it is really hard to see how any of these growing problems--and especially the combination of a collapsing economy with a collapsing climate--are going to be realistically addressed,  if Congress stays as crazy as it is.

Romney Revealed

In honor of the Vegas debate Tuesday, of which TPM said, "The gloves were well and truly off, and the crowd moved on from booing only hypotethical sick people, or real gay soldiers, to booing basically everyone on stage."

Unfortunately, we can't read Newt Romney's lips when he dissed those thousands of American homeowners who face forclosure thanks to shady practices and bank greed, when he told (for real) a Nevada newspaper: “Don't try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom."

You might also enjoy this confession in pictures of Cowboy Rick's reaction to his rise and fall.

And after all this hilarity, you might want to check back into the real world, via the latest Occupy Wall Street news. Don't miss the Robin Hood Tax video with the incomparable Bill Nighy.

The 9% That Counts (With An Illustrative Update)

9% has entered the news in a very important way, and this time it's not the 9% that Herman KochCain is proposing for a national sales tax.  In fact, it is the 9% of news stories that's the scandal.

It is the percentage of stories that cover President Obama favorably in the American media, according to a new Pew study.  That's not 90% or 19%--it's 9%. That's right--the liberal lamestream media included.  9% of the coverage of President Obama was favorable. It is the lowest percentage of favorable coverage of any current candidate for the office that President Obama currently holds.  By a lot.

In contrast, Cowboy Rick got 32% favorable coverage, Herman KochCain 28% and Newt Romney 26%.

President Obama also got the highest percentage of negative coverage, with the exception of Mitt Gingrich who beat him by a point, 35% to 34%.  For Romney, the unfavorable was 27%. 

The only good news in this study might be that a bare majority of the coverage was deemed "neutral."  But Pew wasn't seeing the significance of it in that way:

"One man running for president has suffered the most unrelentingly negative treatment of all: Barack Obama. Though covered largely as president rather than a candidate, negative assessments of Obama have outweighed positive by a ratio of almost 4-to-1. The assessments of the president in the media were substantially more negative than positive in every one of the 23 weeks studied. In no week during these five months was more than 10% of the coverage about the President positive in tone."

And this kind of coverage continues.  Here's the first sentences of a Christian Science Monitor report on President Obama's speech on his Jobs Bill in North Carolina: "When the going gets rough, blame the other guys. That appeared to be President Obama's game plan Monday..."   Beginning with a questionable and negative premise, it takes the GOPer point of view.  It's a GOPer talking point press release. (Here's another story that reports what President Obama said and how it was greeted.)

Add this to the non-coverage of what the President of the United States says and does (and then pundits complain about what he's not saying or doing, mostly because they don't know what that is) and it is a significant wonder that once again, President Obama is trusted by Americans to fix the economy over the GOPers by some 15 points.

But this is still a scandal.  That the media will not cover, of course.

Update: I missed this contemptible (and awfully familiar-sounding) lead to a report on this study in NBC's First Read: "When times get tough for politicians, they're usually not shy about blaming the media for their sagging fortunes."  Once again, a questionable judgment as a premise, and even worse, a false report.  This is a report about the Pew study.  Nowhere does it say that any politician (notably one would assume, President Obama) blamed the media for anything.  The study blames the media, and this story is itself evidence of the study's accuracy.  It is a defensive "news story" that is gratuitously negative about President Obama. 

KochCain

Pundits note the quick rise and fast fall of a series of Rabid Right GOPer presidential candidates, and are having a hard time taking the latest seriously: Herman Cain, formerly the head of a pizza company with an ethnically insulting name, and now the leader of the anybody-but-Romney pack.  But there is another kind of pack reason to take him very seriously.  In fact, two hundred million reasons.

It also explains the mystery of Cain's rise.  He is the wholly owned product of the Koch Brothers, as reported in detail by the Washington Post.  The Kochheads are said to have committed two hundred million dollars to the coming election, through pacs and whatever else Citizens United allows them to do.  That money can be further leveraged in the states that GOPers installed by the Kochheads control. 

Despite his complete lack of any knowledge of foreign policy or much of anything else, and with the extreme TEvangelist dogma he is not shy about spouting as guiding his actions, he is a candidate high in the polls thanks largely to his Koch connections.  His chances at the nomination are dependent on the Kochs.  The extent of catastrophe for the country even if he is nominated, let alone elected (and don't forget the changes in voting laws instituted by Koch-directed ideologues in a number of states), cannot be overestimated.

In response to the Post article, he said he was proud of his connection to the Koch Brothers. His credibility in terms of being a serious candidate is 999% due to the Kochheads.  And so I now dub thee Herman KochCain.  

A Faith in Hope

President Obama spoke at the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.  These are some of his words:

"We forget now, but during his life, Dr. King wasn’t always considered a unifying figure. Even after rising to prominence, even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King was vilified by many, denounced as a rabble rouser and an agitator, a communist and a radical. He was even attacked by his own people, by those who felt he was going too fast or those who felt he was going too slow; by those who felt he shouldn’t meddle in issues like the Vietnam War or the rights of union workers. We know from his own testimony the doubts and the pain this caused him, and that the controversy that would swirl around his actions would last until the fateful day he died.

I raise all this because nearly 50 years after the March on Washington, our work, Dr. King’s work, is not yet complete. We gather here at a moment of great challenge and great change. In the first decade of this new century, we have been tested by war and by tragedy; by an economic crisis and its aftermath that has left millions out of work, and poverty on the rise, and millions more just struggling to get by. Indeed, even before this crisis struck, we had endured a decade of rising inequality and stagnant wages. In too many troubled neighborhoods across the country, the conditions of our poorest citizens appear little changed from what existed 50 years ago -– neighborhoods with underfunded schools and broken-down slums, inadequate health care, constant violence, neighborhoods in which too many young people grow up with little hope and few prospects for the future.

Our work is not done. And so on this day, in which we celebrate a man and a movement that did so much for this country, let us draw strength from those earlier struggles. First and foremost, let us remember that change has never been quick. Change has never been simple, or without controversy. Change depends on persistence. Change requires determination." 

" Dr. King refused to accept what he called the “isness” of today. He kept pushing towards the “oughtness” of tomorrow."

And so, as we think about all the work that we must do –- rebuilding an economy that can compete on a global stage, and fixing our schools so that every child -- not just some, but every child -- gets a world-class education, and making sure that our health care system is affordable and accessible to all, and that our economic system is one in which everybody gets a fair shake and everybody does their fair share, let us not be trapped by what is. (Applause.) We can’t be discouraged by what is. We’ve got to keep pushing for what ought to be, the America we ought to leave to our children, mindful that the hardships we face are nothing compared to those Dr. King and his fellow marchers faced 50 years ago, and that if we maintain our faith, in ourselves and in the possibilities of this nation, there is no challenge we cannot surmount.

And just as we draw strength from Dr. King’s struggles, so must we draw inspiration from his constant insistence on the oneness of man; the belief in his words that “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” It was that insistence, rooted in his Christian faith, that led him to tell a group of angry young protesters, “I love you as I love my own children,” even as one threw a rock that glanced off his neck."

"And so at this moment, when our politics appear so sharply polarized, and faith in our institutions so greatly diminished, we need more than ever to take heed of Dr. King’s teachings. He calls on us to stand in the other person’s shoes; to see through their eyes; to understand their pain. He tells us that we have a duty to fight against poverty, even if we are well off; to care about the child in the decrepit school even if our own children are doing fine; to show compassion toward the immigrant family, with the knowledge that most of us are only a few generations removed from similar hardships.

To say that we are bound together as one people, and must constantly strive to see ourselves in one another, is not to argue for a false unity that papers over our differences and ratifies an unjust status quo. As was true 50 years ago, as has been true throughout human history, those with power and privilege will often decry any call for change as “divisive.” They’ll say any challenge to the existing arrangements are unwise and destabilizing. Dr. King understood that peace without justice was no peace at all; that aligning our reality with our ideals often requires the speaking of uncomfortable truths and the creative tension of non-violent protest.

But he also understood that to bring about true and lasting change, there must be the possibility of reconciliation; that any social movement has to channel this tension through the spirit of love and mutuality.

If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there; that the businessman can enter tough negotiations with his company’s union without vilifying the right to collectively bargain. He would want us to know we can argue fiercely about the proper size and role of government without questioning each other’s love for this country -- (applause) -- with the knowledge that in this democracy, government is no distant object but is rather an expression of our common commitments to one another. He would call on us to assume the best in each other rather than the worst, and challenge one another in ways that ultimately heal rather than wound."

"It is precisely because Dr. King was a man of flesh and blood and not a figure of stone that he inspires us so. His life, his story, tells us that change can come if you don’t give up. He would not give up, no matter how long it took, because in the smallest hamlets and the darkest slums, he had witnessed the highest reaches of the human spirit; because in those moments when the struggle seemed most hopeless, he had seen men and women and children conquer their fear; because he had seen hills and mountains made low and rough places made plain, and the crooked places made straight and God make a way out of no way.

And that is why we honor this man –- because he had faith in us. And that is why he belongs on this Mall -– because he saw what we might become. That is why Dr. King was so quintessentially American -- because for all the hardships we’ve endured, for all our sometimes tragic history, ours is a story of optimism and achievement and constant striving that is unique upon this Earth. And that is why the rest of the world still looks to us to lead. This is a country where ordinary people find in their hearts the courage to do extraordinary things; the courage to stand up in the face of the fiercest resistance and despair and say this is wrong, and this is right; we will not settle for what the cynics tell us we have to accept and we will reach again and again, no matter the odds, for what we know is possible."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“Of all skepticism, the saddest is the refusal to believe in the possible.”

William Salter

Is God a Democrat?

An irresistible item from T.G.'s Political Wire:

Anita Perry said yesterday her husband Rick Perry was called by God to run for president and noted some of his rivals for the Republican nomination "may feel like God called them too."

Apparently, according to Bloomberg, that's very true.

Karen Santorum, wife of Rick Santorum, said her husband was also called, noting "we believe with all our hearts that this is what God wants."

Michele Bachmann said she regularly receives "assurance" from God about her direction, including running for office.

Herman Cain has also said that God wanted him to run. "I just know at this point I am following God's plan."

All of which might cause one to wonder, is God confused?  Or...

Going Global

On Saturday the 99% Movement demos went global--to the tune of 951 cities in 82 countries.  Here's a streaming link, and a link to the special Think Progress site on the protests.

The New York demonstration was the largest so far--it filled Times Square.

Who are the 1%?

Also on Saturday the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice happened in DC.  President Obama will speak at the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on Sunday.

Meanwhile, an economist from Moody's Analytics--the usually GOPer friendly outfit that calculated that President Obama's American Jobs Act would add  nearly 2 million jobs and boost the economy--said that the GOPer congressional plan announced last week would likely hurt the economy and push the U.S. back into recession. 

But Cowboy Rick's Mrs. told a man who lost his job she could sympathize, because her son had to quit his position at a bank because Obama's government regulations wouldn't let him stay at his bank and work on his father's presidential campaign.  Nonetheless, the Bad Lip Reader people were not involved in her statement, and the Onion was not the source of the report.

Repeat as Unnecessary

I suppose you could divide people into two groups: those who believe that those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it, and those who believe we're condemned to repeat it anyway.  Anyway, when it comes to Occupy Wall Street, some are repeating it: namely, the police.

Friday will tell whether the threatened showdown in New York happens, and if so, what it looks like.  But there as in other cities, police are reverting to their role and therefore their image from other protest eras: taking orders from big money, via the political establishment.  It becomes clear exactly who they serve and protect.

Conservatives have a much bigger and more instantaneous megaphone this time in squawk radio and FOX, which is relentlessly attacking protesters as dirty, flea-infested drug addicts (drugs being the latest obsession.)  What is different is that they aren't so effective, as these protests poll with a higher approval rating than the Teasters--a majority approval in the Time poll, doubling that of the Tpers.   

Hope Lives

So different from the GOPer madness, President Obama offers passion along with sanity, moral leadership along with intelligence and knowledge, real leadership with inspiration.  And despite all the noise, people are responding.

I've just received the Obama campaign fundraising numbers for the last quarter: 606,027 people donated to the Obama campaign -- even more than gave in the record-breaking previous quarter.  The combined total of the Obama campaign and the DNC is more than $70 million.

98% of these donations were $250 or less, with an average of $56.  The number of donations was 766,000--more than twice the number as 2008 at this point in the campaign.  The total number of people who have donated to this campaign is nearly 1 million.

Couple this with the yesterday's NBC poll that showed that President Obama has a higher level of support for reelection among Democrats than Bill Clinton did in his best month before his reelection.  And that he's leading each of his possible GOPer opponents.

Bachman in Overdrive: More of the Same?

Michelle Bachman as interpreted by Bad Lip Readers, asking the musical question: is this any more surreal than what she said during the debate Tuesday night?  Funnier, yes.  But more surreal?

At the Circus

In this circus, it's all elephants.  Or put it this way: with the elephants, it's all circus.

Who is leading the GOPer polls? 2 out of 3 GOPers agree, it's Herman Cain, whose qualification for the presidency is that he successfully sells pizzas  This is what America needs--to run government and the free world like a pizza business.  But a fundamentalist Christian one--"I'll have a large cheese and sausage to go, no Mormons, Medicare or Social Security, and hold the immigrants.  Deliver it to heaven because until the Rapture, I'm homeless."

Newt Romney is the odds on favorite, but as Chris Matthews suggested, he's like the movie you go to see when the movie you want to see is sold out.  Cowboy Rick is a debate disaster, but he has a lot of campaign cash and better candidates than him have survived being called lackluster in early debates.  But he so plumb ignorant (the American Revolution was fought in the 1500s, according to him last night) that not even Texas white Tevangelicals may be able to save him.  The so-called debate meanwhile was a parade of trunk-to-tail pandering (Repeal Everything!) and lying, with not a single realistic proposal for anything.      

And how about Mitt Gingrich? "He came off as a petulent, pompous, pseudo-intellectual prick. He is simply not that bright, and as out of his depth as his insecure pronouncements of self-described world-historical profundity suggest. He belongs on Dancing With The Stars, not a Republican debate."

And in other circus news:

"President Obama called investment banker Ron Milner to the podium and then, without provocation or warning, delivered what witnesses describe as a "haymaker" punch to Mr. Milner's jaw. "That's for ruining the economy, asshole," Mr. Obama remarked, then spit at Mr. Milner's feet and walked away.

Early polls indicate the President's punch is receiving widespread voter approval, with 44% of respondents telling survey-takers "It's about damn time one of those rich pricks got their teeth knocked in" and another 32% saying they wished Obama had kicked Mr. Milner in addition to punching him."

Texas restaurants complain they could be driven out of business by the ban on last meals for condemned prisoners.  Governor Cowboy Rick was asleep at the presidential candidates debate and unavailable for comment.

Possibly Not the Real One

Elizabeth Warren announces--a fantasy recreation.

GOP Filibusters American Jobs

On Tuesday evening the United States Senate voted to begin debate on the American Jobs Act.  But every GOP Senator voted against it, and invoked cloture.  Translation: they filibustered it.  It can't be brought to the floor or debated, so it can't be passed by the majority that voted to consider it.

When it comes to the American Jobs Act and the method of financing it that involves millionaires and billionaires paying a tax rate closer to what they paid in the 90s, majorities don't matter.  According to recent polls, a majority of Americans favor the American Jobs Act.  Large majorities (from 68% to 80% or more, depending on the poll and what questions are asked) support paying for it from fairer taxation on the very wealthy, and on closing favoritism to particular corporations.

The American Jobs Act includes tax cuts for the middle class and small business, and extended benefits for the unemployed.  It includes funds to rehire teachers, police and fire personnel.  It includes funding for repairing America's dangerous and inadequate infrastructure: roads, bridges, airports, railways, water and sewer systems, electricity grids, broadband-- as well as schools in dire need of repair, all of which are supported by a majority of economists and corporations.  Here's what Joe Nocera wrote about the findings of a report commissioned by the New American Foundation:

"How can we break this cycle? Like most mainstream economists, Alpert, Hockett and Roubini roll their eyes at the calls for immediate government deficit reduction, which led to the creation of the supercommittee. Reducing government spending in the short term will only make things worse.

Instead, they believe that this is perhaps the best time in recent history for the government to take on a sustained infrastructure program, lasting from five to seven years, to create jobs and demand. “Labor costs will never be lower,” says Hockett. “Equipment costs will never be lower. The cost of capital will never be lower. Why wait?” Their plan calls for $1.2 trillion in spending — not all by the government, but all overseen by government — that would add 5.2 million jobs each year of the program. Alpert says that current ideas, like tax cuts, meant to stimulate the economy indirectly, just won’t work for a problem as big the one we are facing. Indeed, so far, they haven’t."

The report itself adds this: "Beyond this, it is important to note that infrastructure investment has a healthy multiplier effect throughout the economy. The CBO estimates that every dollar of infrastructure spending generates on average a$1.6 increase in GDP. Some critical transportation and energy projects have even larger multiplier effects."

They note the cost to the U.S. economy of inadequate infrastructure: "The Department of Transportation, for example,reports that freight bottlenecks cost the American economy $200 billion a year—the equivalent of more than 1 percent of GDP. And the Federal Aviation Administration estimates that air traffic delays cost the economy $32.9 billion a year. Perhaps even more worrying, there is growing evidence that uncertainties about the future reliability of our energy, water and transportation systems are creating obstacles to investment in some parts of the country and thus impeding new business investment."

They note that time is money: "Deteriorating infrastructure is subject to “costacceleration” where repair or replacement costs grow with time. A project that costs $5 or 6 million to repair now may cost upwards of $30 million to repair merely two years from now. Since most of these projects will need to be undertaken at some point, the question is literally not whether but when."

These arguments on the basis of need and of opportunity (unemployed workers, underutilized machinery etc.) are compelling.  But so is the broader economic argument.  Right now U.S. corporations are sitting on trillions in cash which they won't invest in America, because of low demand, which is due to unemployment, low wages, economic uncertainties, and fallout from mortgage and other debts.  Only more demand for products and services in the U.S. will pry that cash from their cold hands--demand that has to match the growing demand in other countries, where labor and other costs are cheaper.  A big infrastructure program not only makes the U.S. more competitive in the future, but it puts money in the pocket of millions of workers and large and small business. When they spend that money, it breaks the cycle of low demand, low investment.

There are no fact-based counterarguments except in details.  The only reason to oppose programs like this, and like the American Jobs Act programs, is a desire for failure.  This includes politicians and their corporate backers who want the U.S. economy to fail to hurt their political opponents, most of all President Barack Obama.  It includes banks and very big companies and the rich people who run them, who don't really care if the U.S. economy does fail, because they'll be okay, they'll just do business elsewhere (they think.)   And it includes Tevangelists who don't care if the economy fails because why should they, their righteousness is much more important, and besides the sooner the apocalypse the sooner their Rapture.

Given a political system which is unresponsive to reason and to the majority, the current activities of The 99% are entirely reasonable.  There are those who believe this economic crisis is not temporary but the harbinger of a permanent decline, affected as it is by changes wrought by the Climate Crisis (higher food prices for example) and other global trends.  In the long run the world economy is in for wrenching change, but those changes will be easier to deal with if the solutions proposed by President Obama and/or these economists would go into effect.  A more efficient and longer lasting infrastructure alone is an investment in any future. 

It Did Happen Here

Today I heard several people on TV--reporters and officials--refer to the alleged plot to explode a bomb in Washington that would kill the Saudi ambassador as "unprecedented."

Well, not exactly.  It may be unprecedented because this is an ambassador, but a bomb did kill a prominent foreign statesman in Washington, as well as an American as collateral damage.  The current plot involves an American citizen.  This earlier plot may well have involved the American CIA.

It was a car bomb in 1976 that killed Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffit. Orlando Letelier had been an official in the Salvador Allende government in Chile, an elected government with broad public support but an openly socialist democratic agenda. Entrenched political and corporate interests didn't like it much, and the Cold War heat was on such suspiciously non-capitalistic regimes. Allende was assassinated during a military coup in 1973, that brought the now notorious dictator and ruthless murderer, General Augusto Pinochet to power.Over the next decade Pinochet and his secret police turned “disappeared” into a verb. Thousands of Chileans over the next several decades were disappeared by his secret police.

One of the first was Orlando Letelier, who in 1976 was traveling the world for the Institute for Policy Studies, and organizing boycotts and other opposition to the Chilean dictatorship. On an autumn evening in 1976, a bomb planted in his car exploded on a Washington street, not far from the White House. He was dead before he reached the hospital. A young American woman, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, his assistant, was also killed. Her husband, Michael Moffitt, was injured.

It later became clear that the Chilean coup and the murder of Allende were at least facilitated by the U.S. government, specifically the CIA. The role of Henry Kissinger was allegedly large.

It wasn’t until 2000 or so that the CIA’s involvement in Letelier’s assassination was partially acknowledged. The CIA, directed by George H.W. Bush in 1976, at the very least covered up their knowledge that the Chilean secret police did the hit. They may have been much more involved than that. Eventually a senior member of Pinochet's secret police was convicted of the assassination in a U.S. federal court.  According to Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine, "The assassins had been admitted to the country on false passports with the knowledge of the CIA."



Ronni

  At the time I was the editor of a weekly alternative newspaper called Washington Newsworks, and I’m proud to say that our coverage of the Letelier assassination was more extensive that week, and holds up better now, than anyone else’s in town, including the Washington Post.

The real credit goes to Jeff Stein, who did the reporting and wrote the stories.  (This is the same Jeff Stein who until earlier this year wrote "Spy Talk" for the Washington Post.)   Just about all I did was recognize the importance of it, and I made the decision to put it on the cover and give it full play inside. In particular, Jeff’s reporting and our coverage did not buy the official line in the immediate aftermath, that the bomb was planted by leftists. It was G.H.W. Bush himself who convinced the establishment media that Chile’s Secret Police wasn’t involved. That’s why not many people know about this bit of infamous history. Letelier and Moffitt both deserved better then, and they deserve better now.

They'd Like to Give Iran a Koch

Iran features prominently in two news stories today.  The first--the one that is getting the headlines and big play--is the plot that the U.S. foiled to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, which was financed and apparently directed from inside the government (or at least the military) of Iran.

The second is the Bloomberg report that says that among the foreign countries that the Koch Brothers bribed to get business was Iran.  This is yet another hair-raising profile of the Kochheads and their international as well as national criminal conspiracy, out to not only buy the U.S. but to buy the world, a Koch at a time.
   

Occupy America

The Occupy Wall Street etc. demonstrations continue to get a lot of attention, notably from the police.  There's an overnight story about police violence in Boston.  Police in Seattle gave costly tickets to motorists who were beeping their horns in support of demonstrators there.  So far all the violence has come from the police, perhaps aided by admitted Rabid Right infiltrators.

There are also the familiar right wing charges--GOPer leaders, Rove, Gland Beck who warns demonstrators are out to kill him--and one of my old favorites, charges that the demonstrators are puppets of the Communist Party, made on Fox News.  But demonstrators have been giving as well as they get from Fox, including greeting Heraldo with chants of Fox Lies!  

Nobody really knows where this is all going yet, except the demonstrations themselves will get bigger for awhile--probably at least until a massive one in Washington.  Andrew Sullivan is monitoring the deep thoughts on the subject, of which I frankly have none.  But you combine this with the GOPer refusal to deal with the American Jobs Act in Congress and its bizarre roster of presidential candidates, and what's happening in the states (as in the post below)--there's unknowable potential.

This movement so far seems stuck with the name "Occupy..." which is an action or a tactic, not an organizational name. But it's got interesting resonances.  Historically of course, to the occupying of buildings etc. in various 60s protests (which came out of earlier sit-ins and strikes) but also to the word itself--an occupation being another name for a job, for what you do, which gives people so much of their identity in this time and place.  So a lot of people don't have occupations, and fear they won't have one in the near future.  This is what occupies them now, and that's always the plutocratic fear, that unemployment leaves people unoccupied, with the time, energy and motivation to occupy themselves by making trouble for the plutocracy. 

There's the 99%, which is a more potent label.  More than enough, you'd think, to occupy America.     

Vote Anyway

The GOPer crusade against the "wrong people" voting (i.e. minorities, anybody who might be a Democrat) in the states is getting more media attention, thanks to specific stories like this one about a 96 year old woman denied the right to vote because she didn't have her marriage license, required for a voter ID somehow.

But it turns out that the U.S. Justice Department is pretty limited in what it can do, at least before the 2012 elections.  What state courts can do depends on state constitutions.  But that doesn't mean the situation is hopeless.  Some of these preposterous laws can be overturned by voter referendum, and that's in the works in some states.  But the real work is going to be for groups and individuals to defeat the intent of these laws by organizing to fight through their onerous provisions and register people anyway, and eventually to do what has to be done to register and to vote anyway.

That might be a good slogan for buttons etc.: VOTE ANYWAY!  If they're going back to Jim Crow kinds of anti-voting laws, then people are going to have to do what people did in those days--insist on their rights, follow the damn law but make sure you vote.  That's the only way they don't win.  If heroic measures are necessary, then be heroic.

Early awareness is important and fortunately it's beginning, not only in the national political media but in the affected states.  The League of Women Voters in Florida should reconsider its decision to give up trying to register voters because of that state's elaborate new requirements.  And if they are stopped, then it's time to take it to court.  REGISTER ANYWAY! 

There's no point in wasting time and energy arguing with these cynical power grabbers (except in court)--they are so transparent.  These are the people who justify these laws because of voter fraud that does not exist, with the same pious face that they use to deny the facts of the Climate Crisis.  There's no reasoning with them.  There's just defeating them, and their attempts to discourage and intimidate. 

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torments"

Goethe

Not Always A Science

I know nothing about, and want to say nothing about, the Swedish poet who stole the Nobel for Lit from Margaret Atwood.  Okay, he didn't steal it. I note the physicists who won for realizing that the universe is expanding faster.  This 1998 discovery has been joined by others in a fascinating new picture of the vastness of space--an even stranger universe.

But what I want to highlight from Nobel week is the chemistry prize, for Dan Shechtman, an Israeli scientist who discovered new crystalline structure that other scientists thought was impossible.  He was laughed at, fired from the U.S. Bureau of Standards, ostracized.  The evidence mounted, so now quasicrystals not only exist but are manufactured, and as the Nobel committee said, it "eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter."

I highlight this because those of us who are trying to fight off the horrifying resurgence of Dark Ages ignorance are tempted to go to the other extreme and deify science. Sure, we're facing the contempt for science by a frighteningly powerful minority, the refusal to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence for the Climate Crisis that may doom civilization completely.  But when battle lines are drawn, us or them, either/or rigidity can lead to equal and opposite errors, like turning science into a religion.

Science and scientists are demonstrably fallible. Even eminent scientists can be prideful and political, just like other academics and politicians.  For instance, this little drama of a new discovery or theory being ridiculed before being lauded is not just a familiar storyline.  It is evidence of human flaws that get repeated in patterns, and can result in great suffering, in wasted years and ruined lives for individuals, and all kinds of bad consequences for others.  Among other things, it discourages new discoveries and creativity in general.

Some scientists know this. Renowned physicist Max Planck admitted that new ideas seldom win over adherents of old ones -- usually a generation must pass while the new idea's "opponents gradually die out ..." English geneticist J.B.S. Haldane pointedly offered "four stages of acceptance" of a scientific idea: 1) this is worthless nonsense, 2) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view, 3) this is true, but quite unimportant, 4) I always said so.

Science should be approached with human humility.  A lesson in that for some religions I could mention.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."
-- Steve Jobs, Commencement address at Stanford University, June 12, 2005.

Instant Koalition

In some ways it's coming together very fast into an Instant Koalition.  In other ways, it's been a long time coming.  Just as these protests are being organized in very new ways with new technologies, while they also seem in some ways very familiar.

The Occupy Wall Street protests are spreading incredibly fast across the country.  In New York, they are getting larger, and not only because of the instant participation of labor unions--which is remarkable in itself.  It took awhile for Labor to align itself with the Civil Rights movement, although it was there in force in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  It never did join the antiwar movement--it was more often on the other side with the "hardhats."  But Labor has changed a great deal since the 1970s.  There are a lot of members employed by government at some level.  Industrial unions have become advocates for green technologies and green jobs, as well as smarter workplaces--along with greater worker participation in decision-making.  But the antipathy to today's equivalents of the industrial barons is deep in their DNA.

Now quickly joining this Instant Koalition along with the Van Jones group are the heirs to the Civil Rights movement, about to March on Washington for Jobs and Justice on October 15.  Through his TV show, the Rev. Al Sharpton is making common cause with Occupy Wall Street.

And now through Bill McKibben and a coalition of groups, the environmental activists have joined up--they were marching with Occupy Wall Street on Wednesday: For too long, Wall Street has been occupying the offices of our government, and the cloakrooms of our legislatures,” wrote Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, in an email urging supporters to join the march, “They’ve been a constant presence, rewarded not with pepper spray in the face but with yet more loopholes and tax breaks and subsidies and contracts. You could even say Wall Street’s been occupying our atmosphere, since any attempt to do anything about climate change always run afoul of the biggest corporations on the planet. So it’s a damned good thing the tables have turned.”

This is a particularly natural move for McKibben after his blistering New York Times oped claiming corporate influence and cronyism between an oil lobbyist and the State Department to get the tar sands oil pipeline approved. 

The Instant Koalition includes such natural allies and also some strange bedfellows, as well as the just strange, but that's all part of the energy at this stage.  This is still building. Like previous movements, it can claim roots and common cause to very American ideals and American history, as in this brilliant piece in Think Progress which shows these protests are much more in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party than the TPers ever were.

But unlike previous movements, it can claim to be representing the direct and obvious interests and (in the main) the views of the majority--of the 99%.  There's plenty of time for it to fracture and falter and make fatal blunders, or to be infiltrated and subverted--all the kinds of things that have happened to movements in the past.  But a movement for the 99% has potential that can't be measured or predicted.

And so far it is getting some of the same reaction against it, that keeps it in the news and probably helps to build it: the ongoing police violence in New York, for example, which continued Wednesday.  That news is still coming through so there's no point in linking to anything now, it will likely change hour by hour. (But the Fox station news crew that reportedly got pepper sprayed by police is again a predictable development, just not so soon.)

 There's also the scorn from established (or Corporate) media, like CNN and (of course) the Wall Street Journal.  That alternately discourages but mostly energizes participants.  But only energy comes from predictable scorn from the likes of Herman Cain.  With descriptions that will remind demo vets of back in the day,  Ezra Klein wonders what it will become.  So do we all.

Money Doesn't Talk, Part 2: The Pope of North Carolina

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." --Justice Louis Brandeis

"While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."--Justice John Paul Stevens in his dissenting opinion to Citizens United

"Money doesn't talk, it swears."--Bob Dylan

 Kudos to Rachel and her gang for talking about this New Yorker article by Jane Mayer that documents in chilling detail how one Rabid Right Richy took over the state government of North Carolina in 2010, and is busy making it very difficult for people to vote who are in categories that normally vote Democratic, and therefore trying to make it impossible for President Obama to win the state again in 2012.  It's happening elsewhere as well, but here we have a compelling narrative of exactly how.

The specific story is about how Art Pope spent a lot of money, sometimes openly as contributions to candidates but more often secretly through various dummy groups, to buy the state legislature.   He succeeded. 

Art Pope is the Koch Brothers writ small, including those deadly ironies.  Like the Kochheads who make their money by destroying the climate conditions for human civilization and life as we know it on planet Earth,  Art Pope makes his bucks with discount stores that in various ways exploit the lower middle class he is out to further betray.

The contextual story is the instant exploitation of a Supreme Court decision to subvert democracy in multiple ways, and to institute corruption that leads only to virtual totalitarian rule.   Mayer quotes Bob Phillips, head of North Carolina Common Cause:

Phillips argues that the Court’s decision, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, has been a “game changer,” especially in the realm of state politics. In swing states like North Carolina—which the Democrats consider so important that they have scheduled their 2012 National Convention there—an individual donor, particularly one with access to corporate funds, can play a significant, and sometimes decisive, role. “We didn’t have that before 2010,” Phillips says. “Citizens United opened up the door. Now a candidate can literally be outspent by independent groups. We saw it in North Carolina, and a lot of the money was traced back to Art Pope.”

The article describes how much of the money was spent--on  tabloid TV lurid lies and other sensationalistic misrepresentations of candidates Pope opposed.  He and his minions didn't just oppose them, they assassinated them politically and in personal character.  Here's more of the supposed Christian approach to politics.  In this, the Pope of North Carolina is also not unique.  This unholy alliance of major money and the dominationist Rabid Right and their cynical strategies and self-righteous unethical tactics is becoming characteristic.  It is being used not just in high profile national or state or congressional races, but in every possible state legislature election, at least in particular states for the moment.  Millions of dollars spent for state legislatures.  Nobody should be blindsided by this in 2012.  It's here now.