Response to op-ed "Barack Obama, I Want a Divorce"

Response to op-ed "Barack Obama, I Want a Divorce", by Clancy Sigal posted March 20, 2010 at Alternet.org.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, haw...We are truly fucked.

Dumbass leftists, progressives, liberals, Greens or what have you who stand in opposition to the corporatist evil personified in today's Republican Party, like the Judean rebels squabbling among themselves when Titus was at the gates of Jerusalem, are prepared to commit elective hari-kari in the fall and hand control of the federal legislative branch back to a cadre of anti-government used car salesmen.

Boy, that'll teach'em.

Look at the polls, dumbasses. In California the corrupt Republican eBay ex-CEO Meg Whitman has pulled even or ahead of Jerry Brown, née Governor Moonbeam, in the race for the governorship. Generic polls show Republicans in many competitive races leading or tied with incumbent Democrats http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dcnow/2010/03/polls-show-gop-gaining-in-election-year.html.

And yet the ideologically pure left is ready, willing and able, in the name of ideological purity, to hand Congress to these Reagan-worshiping, corporate ass-kissers. I do not understand the left's suicidal tendencies.

I mean, sure I'm as fed up with Democratic sell outs as much as the next guy. But I fear the Republican used car salesmen even more. The used car salesmen of the GOP are a threat to our democracy. The Republican used car salesmen are a danger to the republic! And yet the small-d democrats of the ideologically pure left are ready to hand the keys to the US Capitol over to Mitch McConnell and John Boehner.

That's really fucking smart.

That'll solve everything! Look, leftist dumbasses, if you intend on running insurgent third-party candidates in why not do so in "safe" Republican US Congressional districts? Quite running spoiler candidates in close Congressional and Senate races. What the fuck does that prove? Your leftist shit don't stink?

I'll take the lesser of two evils any day. Sorry.

To me it only makes sense to kill, to destroy, to annihilate the great evil first then pick off the lesser evil at one's leisure. Evidently that logic doesn't register with America's ideologically pure left.

In spite of the polls now there is a real opportunity to irrevocably hurt the Republican Party in the fall elections. What Greens or Socialist Workers or whatever must do is support and vote for progressive Democrats in primary challenges in "safe" Democratic district and take on reactionary Republicans head-on in "safe" Republican US Congressional districts where the establishment Democratic Party usually offers only token resistance.

But the usually knee-jerk leftist reaction is: "Holy shit! Dennis Kucinich voted for the pro-corporate HCB! Let's get a real progressive in there." So the Greens or some other leftist outfit runs a spoiler candidate and when a used car salesman of a Republican ousts Kucinich we're all wondering how that could happen.

Unfortunately since the ideologically pure left refuses to pull its head out its ass the only thing I can do is hold my nose and vote Democratic.

Like I always say, paraphrasing Jimmy Carter, America deserves government as good as its people. And from my perspective we're one sorry lot.

Posted this at Alternet.org

While money is the primary influence on the conduct of both major parties I have come up with a shorthand definition to distinguish between them: Democrats are systems managers, Republican used car salesmen.

The Coakley-Brown match up in Massachusetts, even though both candidates are attorneys, illustrates this nicely.

Scott Brown is running, as nearly every Republican has since 1980, as a Washington, D.C. outsider and champion of smaller government, i.e. cut welfare for the poor and cut taxes for the rich. Never mind that as a lieutenant-colonel in the Massachusetts Nation Guard Brown's sucked off Uncle Sam's tit for thirty years, knowing, in this day and age of the All Volunteer Force our soldiers and Marines and National Guardsmen are sacrosanct heroes whose asses the rest of us must kiss with great regularity, I'll get some flack for even entertaining this thought.

And even though Brown maintains a law practice focusing on divorce and adoptions, for most of his adult life, when he wasn't collecting a US Treasury check for one-weekend a month and three weeks a year with the Guard, he has been since 1992 a professional politician. Yet he sells himself as some one untainted by big money politics. Absolute bullshit which the teabaggers are eating up with gusto as they have since 1980. Some people never get it.

Coakley, on the other hand, is a long time law-and-order Democrat, a prosecutor since 1982. She's the kind of competent systems manager, i.e. coordinator, the establishment Democratic Party elders love so much these days. Intelligent, bland and a good administrator, Coakley is the kind of politician who would be good at running a state or federal agency, as she does in her capacity as Massachusetts Attorney General.

So what this election boils down to is, colorless though competent jurist versus a huckster, a lawyer-huckster at that.

So when some one tells you there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two major political parties, you can say there is: Democrats are systems managers, Republicans used car salesmen. One party, the Democrats, is content to competently manage the status quo. The other, the Republicans, sees the status quo as a means to an end for self-aggrandizement and enrichment at their teabagger partisans' expense for the benefit of their major political campaign donors.
Alternet.org

Hedges truly diagnoses our national problem

Posted originally at Alternet.org:

From the above article:Hedges...asserts in Chapter 3, "The Illusion of Wisdom," that Harvard, Yale, Princeton and most elite schools "do only a mediocre job of teaching students to question and think." Elite universities are in the business of producing "hordes of competent systems managers" not critical thinkers(emphasis added by me).

This, my friends, is as accurate, succinct definition of the coordinator class I have ever read. Economic class is at the base of America's political and economic problems yet we, the vast majority of the American people, fail to discuss it. So brainwashed are we as a people with the notion of "upward mobility" we do not see that for the vast majority the game is rigged against us.

Again from the article:Hedges not only blames the elite universities for our mortgage-fueled financial crisis but is sure their alumni on Wall Street and in Washington have no capacity to really fix the economic system..."They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of how to replace a failed system with a new one." (He includes George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Obama's "degree-laden" cabinet members in this group.)

Elsewhere on this Web site Naomi Klein excoriates President Obama for squandering ...once-in-a-generation opportunities... to clean up the global environment and repair our broken economy at the same time. From my perspective President Obama fails to see the opportunities Klein describes for the very reasons Hedges outlines above. The president is a product of two of the most prestigious Ivy League universities, Columbia for his degree in journalism, then Harvard Law, and as such is, in Hedges' words, he is first and foremost a competent systems manager, a coordinator.

And why, I think, our center-left and center-right coordinator class politicians and economists try to work within and not alter the fundamental elements of what for the greater majority of Americans is an increasingly flawed and inequitable socio-economic system, is because it works for them. My coordinator class, real estate developer, Democratic state senator is known as a "champion" of the poor in my state, because his district includes some of my hometown's poorest neighborhoods. Yet at the same time he profits from tax incentives, rebates and credits laws for developers, many of which he has hand a hand in fashioning.

Discussion of socio-economic class in the United States is taboo unless it is coupled with race, i.e. blacks and Hispanics are poorer that whites. Yet there is real class resentment which the reactionary-right coordinator class recognizes and exploits to their own benefit, think of the tea party movement.

Sadly unless we can get the big money out of politics and end the myth of corporate personhood I can think of no solution to this dilemma other than the trumbles and guillotines. And this is a step that even the farthest left of the coordinator class will never take.

What if the Republicans had acted like an opposition party?

The health care "reform" bill slithering its way through the US Senate, Massachusetts-style Romney-care writ large, is what Congressional Republicans, had they been responsible and adult, should have offered to counter the allegedly more "liberal" bills from the Democrats. This would have forced Senate Democratic leadership, especially the round-heeled Harry Reid, to hold to a more "socialist" health care reform package that included a "public option" or Medicare expansion.

Unfortunately Republican leadership decided to bite the hands that fed it for so very long, Big Pharma and the health insurance lobbies, and do nothing. This left the door open for Republicans-in-donkey suits, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln and long time GOP-deep plant mole Joe Lieberman to take up the cudgels of opposition which US House and Senate Republicans had dropped.

Through intransigence that came close to blackmail at times, Landrieu brought home $300 million in Medicaid bacon for Louisianans and Nelson got Nebraskans off the hook for Medicaid expansion forever.

Writes USNews & World Report columnist Doug Heye,"For Nebraska, the federal government (that means you) will pay the cost for all new enrollees in perpetuity. Think your governor likes that?" Well, Mr. Heye, my governor may not like it but what is he to do? Invade Omaha and hold Nebraska Furniture Mart hostage until the State of Nebraska forks over some dough for Iowa's Medicaid?

Even the darling of the left Vermont's Bernie Sanders got a little Medicaid sweetener.

Unwittingly the Republicans may have signed their own death warrant by taking the obstructionist road to health care deform. As witnessed by Wall Street's "US Investors Flock to Big Health Insurers", MarketWatch.com, after Democrats successfully closed debate on its health care deform bill. Why would the insurance/pharmaceutical industrial complex continue to back a bunch of losers who did nothing for them? So watch for contributions from Big Pharma and Big Insurance dry up for Republicans in 2010. For instance, why would Big Pharma want to contribute to Chuck Grassley, up for re-election, as heavily as in the past? He did nothing to increase their share profitability, nothing for their bottom line. It was all the Democrats.

So while establishment Republicans and teabaggers on the one hand, and progressives and the ideologically pure left on the other rant and rave about back room deals and pork put yourself in the shoes of a Nebraska or Louisiana voter. Why would you want to get rid of a Senator who has brought home the bacon. It is only pork if it goes to the other guy, if it comes to you it is needed federal funding.

And remember, kiddies, people power never trumps money, at least in my life time. Even that hero of the ideologically pure anti-war left Eugene McCarthy's 1968 quixotic presidential campaign was totally funded by four wealthy donors whose identities, and motives, remain secret to this day.

Brainsdead

Well here he is, folks, the Iowa Republican Party's great white hope for recapturing Terrace Hill, Terry Branstad.

Here's what the Web site Iowa Knows Better.com has on Terry's record as governor:

■Branstad raised the sales tax – twice! In his first year in office, Branstad raised the sales tax by 25%.[1] It would not be the last time. He went back to the tax well over and over, increasing the sales tax 67%[2] as Governor.

■Branstad raised the gas tax on Iowa drivers. Branstad wasn't afraid to add to the pain at the pump for Iowans. During his tenure, he raised the gasoline tax by a total of five cents per gallon.[3]

■Terry Branstad even proposed a state income tax on Social Security recipients.[4]

■Branstad kept two sets of books. Branstad was hammered in the press and public for keeping two sets of books for the state[5] and running up a deficit of more than $400 million.[6] These days, voters will not tolerate this type of "creative accounting."

■Branstad's employees had to sue him to get what they had earned. When, during his tenure, Iowa’s budget was in deficit, Branstad decided to balance the budget on the backs of hardworking state employees. They were denied pay they had earned, sued Governor Branstad - and won.[7] Getting Branstad to do right by employees was never an easy task.

■Branstad used to think bonding was fine. Branstad now criticizes the Culver/Judge Administration for stimulating Iowa's economy through the I-JOBS bonding package. Branstad fails to tell Iowans he used the bonding practice for state projects.[8] Throughout his tenure, Branstad embraced bonding, a practice he now conveniently condemns.

Of course Terry's the Iowa Republican establishment's boy. And like all Republicans he's an accomplished liar, see above, but this year Terry will definitely have primary challengers in the form of weaselly-little-asshole Chris Rants, Bible-thumping businessman Bob Vander Plaats, both of Sioux City, and three non-entities. The Sarah Palin-skirt sniffers' money is on two-time gubernatorial primary loser and Mike Huckabee-fluffer Vander Plaats.

Current Democratic Governor Chet Cluver ain't the most popular guy but compared with the pack of lunatics wanting his job...Well, from where I sit he just may win re-election.

On Political Independents

My longtime working definition of an American political "independent" is a Republican who is too lazy to volunteer to campaign for their favorite GOP candidate and too cheap to donate to their favorite GOP candidate.

Over the years I've added the addendum that, by and large, these same so-called "independents" are suburban, white and professional, or coordinator, middle class, i.e. mid-level corporate managers, doctors, lawyers, small business owners, insurance agents and so on. In short the base of the Glenn Beck "teabagger" movement.

They are motivated by greed. Even though the majority are comfortable economically and have incomes which puts them in the alternative minimum tax, AMT, bracket, they always want more. These are the folks who are always whining at the "tea parties," that "we know how to spend our money better than the government."

And they are motivated by envy. Curiously they envy and begrudge the poorest segments of society. Envious in that "independents" envision the poor living the life of Reilly on food stamps and welfare and begrudging ever one of their tax dollars they imagine going to support that imagined lifestyle.

What American "independents" secretly and really want is to live on The Big Rock Candy Mountain, paying no tax yet still receiving all the services and benefits only government can provide.

To that I add that the reason why establishment Democratic politicians and liberal commentators are blind to the economic class element of Glenn Beck-Ayn Rand acolytes is because they are of the same socio-economic class: white, suburban, professional or coordinator class with a commensurate income and social status. And while not as odious as their fellow Beck-Randites, having a social conscience, they do everything to preserve their social status and income, i.e. tax incentives, deductions, credits etc. Establishment Democrats/liberals too want to continue living on The Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Where are the "moderate" Republicans?

Today the burning question on the lips of all the talking heads--he wrote as he listened to David Byrne--is, "Where are the moderate Republicans?"

Indeed where are the "moderate," I guess meaning those expressing a willingness to compromise, Republicans?

Simple answer, the Democratic Party.

It should come as no surprise to pundits, commentators and the other various and assorted wise guys and gals of the mainstream media that from about 1980 until now the Reagan-Norquist-Limbaugh wing of the Republican Party has, with the exception of say an Olympia Snow, driven any semblance of moderation from the party of Lincoln. And actually this migration began long before the ascendancy of the great deity, Ronald Reagan.

In a word the migration of the moderate wing of the Republican Party began, truly began, the night of December 1, 1969 when the first Nixonian draft lottery was drawn. I was 1-A at the time and living in the Hillcrest dorm on the campus of the University of Iowa. And oh, the moaning and groaning I heard in the TV room. Of course the college campuses blew up afterward when it was disclosed US forces had widened the war by invading Cambodian, then the shooting of four demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio. But I digress.

The effect of Vietnam was that many young men and women from Republican voting households switched allegiance to the Democratic Party, at least the peace wing. Our current Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is a good example of that kind of individual.

So to answer the musical question, where are the moderate Republicans? There ain't any.

To rat fuck the Iowa GOP or not?

Look, incumbent Governor Chet Culver hasn't been all that good of Democrat. In fact I more or less predicted as much, a Culver governorship wouldn't be much different than that of his conservative '06 Republican rival Jim Nussel. Christ I hate being right.

But the thing is Iowans seem to like bland, go-along-to-get-along politicians in Terrace Hill and Chet kind of fits the amiable bumbler mold. But Chet stabbed one of his natural constituencies, organized labor, in the back with his veto of the "Fair Share" bill.

So with Chet's future looking cloudy goes this bit of sunshine for Iowa's Republicans.

Former Gov. Terry Branstad's formation Wednesday of a committee to explore running for governor exposed tension among Iowa Republicans over who would be the best candidate to take on Democrat incumbent Chet Culver as a steward of the budget.

By forming a campaign organization with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board, Branstad took a step toward launching a comeback campaign, a move expected to whittle the field, although none of the six contenders already campaigning for the nomination quit the race Wednesday.

In 1992, Branstad admitted making mistakes in handling the state's budget, and later that year signed his administration's second sales tax increase to help close a $400 million gap.
The Des Moines Register.com, Thomas Beaumont, October 8, 2009

In today's political climate, however, to red meat Republicans, i.e. wing nuts, Branstad is little more than a Democrat under false pretenses.

So the question is: Should Democrats re-register as Republicans during the primary and vote for squirrel-bait bastard Chris Rants or let the Republicans bloody themselves?

I know, I know a lot of folks on the ideologically pure left don't buy the less-of-two-evils theory but, dope though he is, Chet is preferable to Terry and the GOP pirates.

Et tu, Tom?

As you can tell from the post below I am not a fan of "cap-and-trade." Yet however weak it may be for cleaning up carbon pollution, and strong for lining the pockets of the Wall Streets assholes who fuck up this "free market economy" on a regular basis and get away with it, it may be better than doing nothing.

Well don't tell that to our good U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, liberal hypocrite when it comes to environmental issues. Here's what the late-Paul Wellstone's bestest buddy said of the "cap-and-trade" bill crawling out of the U.S. House:"The fact is the House bill, I think, does disproportionately hurt some of our Midwestern states, and we're going to have to get that rectified in the Senate[.]"

In other words my "liberal" Democratic U.S. Senator is standing in the schoolhouse door to protect one of the major air polluters in the country, MidAmerican Holdings, parent company of my utility company MidAmerican Energy,q.v. Des Moines Register, June 14, 2009.

In a news story by Thomas Beaumont in this morning's edition of The Des Moines Register:

Sens. Tom Harkin and Charles Grassley both have senior roles on committees related to energy policy, and they both say the House-passed bill unfairly penalizes Midwestern utilities and faces long odds in the Senate.

That hasn't stopped MidAmerican Energy Co. from conducting an ad campaign criticizing Iowa Democrats' support for the bill in the House. The utility says the bill would require it to raise rates in order to comply with provisions aimed at lowering carbon emissions.

U.S. Reps. Leonard Boswell, Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack say they backed the bill despite reservations because they were happy with changes that helped farmers and rural electric co-operatives. Boswell and Braley described MidAmerican's ads, in print and on the air, as misleading and intended to justify a rate increase.

Well, jesus christ, Blue Dog Boswell and Braley just may be on to something. And why would this "investor owned"--Omaha-based billionaire Warren Buffett being the most major investor--utility company and polluter of Iowa skies seek a rate increase? Back to Beaumont's news story:

The bill would require utilities to obtain government allowances for the amount of heat-trapping carbon they emit. The number of allowances granted would be reduced over time, to compel power companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Half of these carbon credits would be awarded based on a company's emissions, and the other half would be awarded based on its annual sales.

Some large companies such as Seattle City Light, which provide emissions-free electricity to millions of customers, would be allowed more credits than they need, according to the formula.

MidAmerican, which operates mainly coal-fired power plants, would need to buy credits on a regulated market. The utility, the state's largest electricity provider, had fewer than 550,000 residential customers in Iowa last year.

In other words, MidAmerican will be a big loser in the "cap-and-trade" shell game. Warren's good investment doesn't look so good now. I mean he's in the business of making money from making money and if MidAmerican has to actually use some of its capital to invest in clean(er) electricity generation the value of its stock may take a temporary nose dive. We can't have that, can we? That must be why the "obsessively, relentlessly at your service" MidAmerican has been asking its customers to kick in a buck or ten for renewable energy for the past five years or so.

Well, fuck Warren Buffett and the Dairy Queen he rode in on.

And the usually reliable Beaumont either sallowed MidAmerican's, "we're just a li'l, ol' ma and pa Iowa utility company" bullshit or he was too lazy to "Google" MidAmerican Energy Holdings. Hell, the figure Beaumont quotes "...the state's largest electricity provider, had fewer than 550,000 residential customers in Iowa last year[,]" seems suspiciously low.

Oddly enough, while the Des Moines-based company keeps mum about the real number of its Iowa, Nebraska and Illinois customers, it has no problem telling anyone with enough dough to buy a big block of its holding company stock that subsidiaries PacifiCorp has 1.7 million customers in Oregon, California, Washington, Utah and Idaho, or that CE Electric UK is ...responsible for delivering electricity to over 3.8 million properties across the North East of England, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire[.]

Yet according to "liberal" Democrat Tom Harkin, poor li'l MidAmerican Energy is just a struggling li'l ol' Iowa utility that can't meet its obligations under the terribly flawed and too-little-too-late Waxman-Markey Climate and Energy Bill.

Like government managment never lies

This in from Radio Iowa

Boswell defends Pelosi in water boarding flap
Monday, June 8, 2009, 10:26 AM
By O.Kay Henderson

Congressman Leonard Boswell, a former member of the House Intelligence Committee, is defending House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who has come under fire for saying she was "misled" by the Bush Administration about the interrogation techniques used on terror suspects.

Boswell, a Democrat from Des Moines, was on the House Intelligence Committee in September 2002.

That's when Pelosi says she was never told the technique of water boarding was used. Boswell suggests at that time he and other Democrats on the committee were upset about water boarding and a letter of complaint was sent to the Bush Administration.

Iowa Republican Party chairman Matt Strawn issued a written statement in response to Boswell's comments. "It is disappointing that Congressman Boswell is falling in partisan line behind the Speaker and rejecting calls for the briefings in question to be declassified," Strawn said.

Obviously Mr. Strawn has never worked for any federal agency. I recall numerous occasions when Postal Service management lied to carriers.

That CIA officials under direct orders of the White House lied their asses off at a "classified" meeting with the House Intelligence Committee should come as no surprise. That Republicans, however, are defending a shadowy federal agency for its veracity is.

By the way, Strawn must have missed U.S. House minority leader John Boehner's performance on the Wolf Blitzer show a couple of weeks ago.

Et tu, Brute?

So you think the Democratic Party is the party of the little guy? You think the Democrats stand shoulder to should with union leaders? You think Democrats even give a shit about the union members whose campaign donations they plead for every election cycle?

How Corporate America Has Outmanueverd Organized Labor
Is Card Check Dead?

By ADAM TURL
The fight for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) appears to be stumbling, with Corporate America increasingly confident that it will defeat the most "controversial" parts of the pro-union legislation.

If passed in its current form, EFCA would make it easier to form unions by giving workers the option of gaining representation when a simple majority of employees signs union cards, a method often called "card check." EFCA would also increase fines on employers for violating workers' right to organize and make it harder for companies to weasel out of initial union contracts by imposing binding arbitration if negotiations stall.

In May, the president argued for compromise on EFCA, saying "I'm supportive of it, but there aren't enough votes right now."

But because of the timidity of Democratic politicians and their backers in the union movement, big business has been able to project its case against EFCA. The result is that an upside-down "bizarro" version of what workers actually face predominates in the mainstream discussion of the legislation.
CounterPunch.com

Should have seen this coming. Well, I sort of did because on all fronts, on nearly every campaign promise to he made to the working American man and woman, President Oreo is in full retreat into the cozy confines of his corporate overlords arms.

Face it. We are fucked. I'm sorry I voted for the guy. I thought he would listen but, instead, he's just the make-up artist putting new lip stick on the same old sow.

A fighter for the non-bitter, "common" man

I guess Hillary's ready to go out and slop some hogs, chew some chaw, noodle some catfish and maybe, just maybe, talk Chelsea into enlisting in the All Volunteer Force because it's such a great job opportunity.

I had the TV on during breakfast this morning and caught the tail-end of some ridiculousness about Hillary Clinton and John McCain's campaign saying that Barack Obama insulted small-town, under- and unemployed Pennsylvanians for pointing out that these people are in fact bitter and cynical after twenty-five years of political pandering, outsourcing, layoffs, tax breaks for the rich and a no-win war where their kids go to die.


It seems the elitist, effete, intellectual Obama had the temerity to say:

Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Mayhill Fowlers, Huffington Post.com April 11, 2008

But these good Pennsylvanians aren't bitter, responds Ms. Clinton. They're just happy-go-lucky "folks" who think that stocking shelves and chasing down shopping carts in the parking lot is the best job in the world, now that the steel mill moved it's operations to Bongo-Congo in order to remain competative in a worldwide "free market" economy. Said Ms. Clinton of these happy-go-lucky "folks":

"It's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who've faced hard times are bitter. Well, that's not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive who are rolling up their sleeves. They're working hard every day for a better future for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them."

Certainly these non-bitter, resilient optimists know how Ms Clinton fought for workers' rights during her six-year tenure as board member and general counsel for Wal Mart. And they must also know she fought her husband, Bill, tooth and nail over the ratification of NAFTA.

That was yesterday. Today this tireless fighter for the little guy, Ms. Clinton said:

"[I'm]taken aback by the demeaning remarks Sen. Obama made about people in small town America."

"Sen. Obama's remarks are elitist and out of touch, they are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans, certainly not the Americans I know, not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I lived with in Arkansas or represent in New York."
CNN Political Ticker.com

Now if that kind of crap isn't enough to make one bitter and cynical you're just not paying attention.

News item: Obama aide calls Clinton "monster"

Samantha Power, the able foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama who referred to Hillary Clinton as a "monster," has quit her role with the Obama campaign.

Power's comment about Clinton was a rough one: "She is a monster, too -- that is off the record -- she is stooping to anything... You just look at her and think, 'Ergh.' But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."

But let's be a little serious here: What Power said is no different from what campaigners say about their opponents on a daily basis -- except perhaps for the use of the rather sophisticated word "monster" as opposed to the usual explicatives. It's just that Power said it in a setting where her attempt to take the word back with a "that is off the record" grasp was not going to work.

No good comes from sidelining frank and outspoken "rookies." Obama and Clinton both need more aides like her. And we all need to accept that campaigns and campaigners can make honest mistakes -- indeed, the mistakes are what tell us these are human endeavors, as opposed to mere spin machines.
John Nichols, The Nation

O.K., Samatha Powers has now apologized, something I do not think she need have done. And she has quit the Obama campaign as unpaid foreign policy consultant.

Well done, Mainstream Media! Bravo! You've done Hillary's bidding and you've done it well. You've kneecapped Obama's campaign. And you've looked to other way as Clinton staffer Howard Wolfson likened Barack Obama to Bill Clinton's nemesis Kenneth Starr, chief semen-sniffer of the Lewinsky affair.

And of course no one in the upper echelons of the Clinton campaign have apologized, publicly at least, for this:

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A Kenyan elder who presented Barack Obama with a traditional outfit that fueled false rumors he was Muslim says the garb was cultural, not religious — and that had President Bush visited he could have "dressed him the same."

Pictures of the Democratic presidential candidate wearing the robe and turban over his Western-style clothing spread on the Internet.

The gossip and news Web site The Drudge Report said the photo was circulated by the campaign of Obama rival Hillary Rodham Clinton. But Clinton aides said the campaign had never sanctioned its distribution.
AP, march 8, 2008

No word if the "volunteers," who slipped the offending photograph the way of Internet sleazemeister Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report, have resigned. The Clinton campaign does acknowledge that unnamed "volunteers" who sent e-mails alleging Obama's adherence to Islam have quit though.

What unsubstantiated smear on Obama will slide from the Clinton campaign? Will be the above mentioned Samantha Powers--author, lawyer, human-rights activist and "professor of practice and founding executive director of the Carr Center at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG)"Harvard Crimson, July 29, 2005--, often described as one of Obama's closest advisors and friend, be rumored as the "other-woman" in Obama's life? She is, after all, 38, tall, pretty and, most importantly, white.

And a cheating husband is something Hillary Clinton has experience with.

From Bill's Private Stash

Hillary lookin' better than she has a right to be

Digging her own grave

CLINTON WON'T COMMIT TO RENEW CONSTITUTION...Illinois Senator Barack Obama has finally signed the American Freedom Pledge, joining his fellow Democratic presidential candidates in encouraging the restoration of basic Constitutional principles after the battering they have taken during the Bush-Cheney era.

All the Democrats, that is, except New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

The effort to get presidential contenders to sign on the American Freedom Pledge has been promoted by organizations ranging from the Center for Constitutional Rights to Human Rights Watch, MoveOn.org , Amnesty International USA, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and True Majority.

The pledge is anything but radical. It simply asks candidates to affirm a statement that reads: "We are Americans, and in our America we do not torture, we do not imprison people without charge or legal remedy, we do not tap people's phones and emails without a court order, and above all we do not give any President unchecked power. I pledge to fight to protect and defend the Constitution from attack by any President."

The often embarrassingly cautious Obama campaign had been slow to sign on to the pledge. Earlier this week the American Freedom Campaign, which is promoting the pledge, revealed that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Alaska Senator Mike Gravel had signed the pledge, while former North Carolina Senator John Edwards and Delaware Senator Joe Biden had responded with supportive statements. After a release from the freedom campaign noted that Obama and Clinton had not committed to the Constitution, Obama's aides moved quickly.
The Nation.com/blogs

Who Needs The GOP?

"I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

"Her list of favorite presidents - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, George H.W. Bush and Reagan - demonstrates how she thinks." From the Hillary Clinton for President Web site, December 12, 2007.

Why "they" hate us...

...And why big oil, big pharma, big retail and Rupert Murdoch are all supporting Hillary Clinton!

LTE: November 6, 2007

The Des Moines Register editorial, Confirm Mukasey as U.S. attorney general, November 6, 2007, illustrates why the many voters are losing confidence in the Democratic Party, and why the United States is losing respect in the world.

Judge Michael Mukasey may be a fine jurist and personal acquaintance of New York Senator Charles Shumer, and have the credentials required to bring a smidgen of dignity back to the office of U.S. attorney general. Yet his unwillingness to denounce "waterboarding" as torture should out weigh all other considerations when the Senate votes to confirm or deny his appointment.

In 2004, in an effort to form a coherent Justice Department policy on torture, then acting assistant attorney general Daniel Levin subject himself to waterboarding. Following that experience Levin issued a memo declaring "Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms." For his efforts Levin was shown the door by, then, in-coming attorney general Alberto Gonzales.

It is alleged President Franklin Roosevelt said of a Central American dictator, "He may be a son of a b____, but he's our son of a b____ ." If this is the kind of reasoning certain leading centrist Democrats, most prominently Shumer and California's Senator Diane Feinstein, have for confirming Mukasey, it is not good enough.

Nor is any pledge of judicial independence made by Mukasey good enough. If we have learned anything
from the history of this administration it is pledges are not worth the paper on which they are written; nor will a Democratically controlled Congress do its Constitutional duty and check the power of the presidency.

Expect "Harry and Louise" to rise from the grave

Oh, Jesus Christ, here we go again!

WASHINGTON - President Bush ratcheted up his confrontation with Democratic leaders Wednesday, laying out what he said is a stark ideological divide between a fiscally prudent, free market-loving GOP president and a Congress that aims to raise taxes and nationalize health care.

In seeking to prove that Democrats really are working toward federalized care as a replacement for the current private medical system, he criticized the comprehensive and famously unsuccessful effort led by then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in the early 1990s to reshape U.S. health care and dramatically expand access.

According to Bush, Democratic baby steps toward nationalized health care include allowing younger people into programs designed for senior citizens, allowing adults into programs aimed at children and allowing the middle class into programs for the poor.
JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer

If the American electorate falls for this bullshit again we deserve to die in the gutter when we can't pay for catastrophic illnesses! Isn't that how the "free market" works? If you can afford it you live, if not you die. Anyway, Hillary's bullshit "universal" healthcare is mandatory insurance, not a Canadian-style, single-payer branch of the federal government.

The terrible arithmetic of the Iraq war

In March 1864 [Ulysses S.] Grant was appointed General-in-Chief commanding all armies of the U.S. Throughout the War, President Lincoln had bemoaned the fact that although the North outnumbered the South in population, resources and finances, he could find no Union general to take advantage of this disparity. Lincoln had found his general who "knew how to do the arithmetic."
Mason-Dixon Chat Forum

We don't have to go back to the Civil War to find another U.S. general who knew how to do the arithmetic of war, only to February 2003.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee then Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki coyly stated, "...something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required." The figures Shinseki would not openly state are estimated to be on the order of 300,000 to 500,000 "boots on the ground" to pacify a country of 25 million people in a territory as large a California. And since the United States military, at that time had, and continues to have, significant force commitments in Afghanistan, Bosnia, South Korea and Germany, as well as the U.S. Marine Corps la la-land of Okinawa and smaller numbers of U.S. troops scattered in the Central Asian "Stans" and Central and South American, there just was not enough volunteers in the All Volunteer Force to go around.

But as we know older but not much wiser heads in the Pentagon poo-pooed Shinseki's alarmist rhetoric and bit him a fond farewell into a well deserved retirement. Heck, "Big Daddy" Don Rumseld and Paul "Wolfie" Wolfowitz figured, America will only need 100,000 troops to secure Iraq, 150,000 tops!

Well, were did Rummy and Wolfie come up with their figures? Did they just pull them out of their asses? Could be? But I don't think so. They had to arrive at that number somewhere, somehow. According to a Global Security.org essay titled "Where are the Legions? [SPQR] Global Deployments of U.S. Forces"

As of January 2005, there are some 250,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen deployed in support of combat, peacekeeping, and deterrence operations. This figure does not include those forces normally present in Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom or Japan unless bases at those locations are actively supporting a combat operation. Furthermore, tours of duty in these locations are routine and not considered hardship tours. If one were to include these forces the number of deployed troops worldwide would be around 350,000.

O.K. ask yourself, why do we need forces stationed in Germany? Japan? World War II has been over for 62 years now. Neither Germany or Japan has made any moves threatening world peace. Yet the United States still maintains troops in those two nations, as it does in the Axis Powers' little partner Italy. The rationale, I guess, is that troops in these nations serve as a first line of defense in case the Soviets get any ideas. Well, the Soviet Union went the way of the dodo fifteen years ago, so there you go. But I forget Bosnia. Again, why does the U.S. need military bases in Germany, Italy and Japan, since the U.S. military's established bases in Bosnia? I have read the absurd argument that if the United States shuts its bases in Germany and Japan, those two robust economies will greatly suffer!

So what I figure, and I am no expert, is, if the United States administration of George W. Bush, the Republican-dominated Congress and the Rumsfeld-led Pentagon were ever serious about a long-range occupation of Iraq why did they not do any pre-invasion groundwork, close some bases NATO bases in Europe, bases in Japan and cancel some of the Army's smaller worldwide "training" missions? I mean if Bush, the Republican Congress and the Rumsfeld Defense Department had not intended on a long term occupation why did it fire, first post-invasion administrator, Jay Garner? Why not follow George H.W. "Poppy" Bush's model of "regime change" ? Why did they let L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer carry out the de-Ba'athification of Iraq, thereby demobilizing both the Iraqi army and national and local police forces, the only native agencies of stability until a new civilian government could be constituted? And did Bremer act on his own or on orders from high up?

Stupidity? Hubris? There are two popular explanations for the Bush administration's post-invasion actions in Iraq. However, let us backtrack to the beginning for a second shall we.

In the run-up to invasion was it merely a speech writer's hyperbole that transformed two minor irritants to U.S. global hegemony into an axis-of-evil with Saddam's Iraq in the 2002 State of the Union Address? After all, Iran's leaders at that time wanted to be rid of Saddam as much as our boy king. And North Korea needed only one more famine before the skeletal masses toppled Kim Jong-Il off his elevator shoes.

Yet in that one speech Bush transformed "dear leader's" pompadour into a deadly nuclear mushroom cloud and the Iranian ayatollahs into Saddam's drinking buddies.

With threats such as these the United States could not redeploy out of Korea, Germany or Japan. The long suffering citizens of Okinawa would have to put up with 20,000 swaggering, arrogant U.S. Marines for a little longer. One never knew when the spectral, starving hoards of the diminutive North Korean dictator would stream down to engulf the well-fed, Brobdingnagian forces of our enfeebled, ally South Korea. And the Iranian ayatollahs, in support of their bosom friend Saddam, might try a flanking movement, sweep through the "Stans," gobble up Turkey and slide into Greece!

The architects of the Iraq invasion and occupation, with the exception of the president, had all been in and out of the higher echelons of federal governmental service for the better parts of thirty years, either in a White House staff, the Department of Defense and the CIA. So before the Iraq invasion they had to know the exact location, strength and readiness disposition of every American military unit on land and sea.

It was while watching the testimony of General David Betray-usPetraeus, overall commander of the MultiNational Force-Iraq (MNF-I), before the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services joint committees, that this political general was laying the groundwork for a protracted U.S. stay in Iraq. After all, he only promised troop "re deployments" "...until we reach the pre-surge level of 15 brigade combat teams by mid-July 2008." Beyond that, "I do not believe it is reasonable to have an adequate appreciation for the pace of further reductions and mission adjustments beyond the summer of 2008 until about mid-March of next year." In other words from a "surge" high of 172,000 soldiers and marines in Iraq to around 140,000 to 150,000 combat troops. A great withdrawal indeed.

That's when I turned to my friend, with whom I was watching this televised dog-and-pony show, and said, "You know how Lincoln said Grant knew the terrible arithmetic of war? I think these guys know that they can keep this thing going without pissing off a significant portion of the American public. I think they know that the America public will put up with 100,000 to 150,000 troops in Iraq for a long time without massive protest."

"Aw, c'mon, Ernie, you don't think they'd be that cynical, do you?"

I arched an eyebrow, "Look that this administration's record."

My buddy turned reflexive, "Remember, I said at the beginning of this thing that the America people would turn against it once America deaths hit twenty a day. This last week 19 killed in Iraq, one of the worst weeks, but still not to a level that'll piss a lot of people off."

"Yeah, just enough boys coming home in boxes, " I said, "so certain segments of society can "honor" our fallen "heroes" on the local news but not enough that it really ramps up an anti-war movement."

"That makes sense, why else do we have all these bourgie funeral processions and sends offs and stuff." He added, "Ya can't go wrong playing on the American public's appetite for sentimentality!"

The terrible arithmetic the Bush administration has calculated is that anything greater than present troop levels in Iraq may tip the majority of the American people into the anti-war column. As it is combat deaths are low enough that the small segment who yet support the war are featured, at least once a month, on local television newscasts performing the rite of "welcoming the fallen hero home." These overtly sentimental funeral services always have a requisite avenue of American flags and, thanks in large part to Westboro Baptist Church leader Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps, for the fallen hero, motorcycle riding "honor guard" to drive away protesters. I'm sure this includes those who truly want an end to America's occupation of Iraq.

Yet, on the other hand, there are not enough young men and women serving in Iraq to activate those, who while opposed, have no personal investment in seeing the occupation end. All those who serve in Iraq are volunteers and they are there because they want to be there. Perhaps Richard Nixon's biggest mistake in his conduct of the Vietnam War was acquiescing to the anti-war movement's criticism of the Selective Service System, being too selective, and instituting a military draft lottery. When white, suburban college students were pulled out of class to train for combat in Vietnam that's when the shit really hit the fan.

The Bush administration knows this. As do the cowardly anti-warriors who resist any and all calls for a national service draft.

And so do the top three Democratic candidates for president. As witnessed in the recent debate of September 25, John Edwards, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton,"...refused on Wednesday night to promise that they would withdraw all American troops from Iraq by the end of their first term, saying in a televised debate here that they could not predict the future challenges in Iraq."(New York Times.com)

As long as there is an All Volunteer Force. And as long as troop levels remain constantly around a 100,000 to 150,000 the American public will put up with the continued occupation of Iraq and subjugation of its people. This is the cynical and terrible arithmetic of Iraq.