Virtual Priorities

Why will any real progressive movement sputter and fade periodically? Randy Newman said it best in pure poetry:

Of all of the people that I used to know
Most never adjusted to the great big world
I see them lurking in book stores
Working for the Public Radio
Carrying their babies around in a sack on their back
Moving careful and slow

All of these people are much brighter than I
In any fair system they would flourish and thrive
But they barely survive
They eke out a living and they barely survive

When I was a young boy, maybe thirteen
I took a hard look around me and asked what does it mean?
So I talked to my father, and he didn’t know
And I talked to my friend and he didn’t know
And I talked to my brother and he didn’t know
And I talked to everybody that I knew

Then I talked to a man lived up on the county line
I was washing his car with a friend of mine
He was a little fat guy in a red jumpsuit
I said “You look kind of funny”
He said “I know that I do”
“But I got a great big house on the hill here
And a great big blonde wife inside it
And a great big pool in my backyard and another great big pool
beside it
Sonny it’s money that matters, hear what I say
It’s money that matters in the USA
It’s money that matters
Now you know that it’s true
It’s money that matters whatever you do”


Me? I say that money is a fiction. But most of us worship old gods of the night.


Double posted in reply to the existential angst at Ian's place, with thanks to Lady Avedon.

they let it happen on purpose

Every person in Congress who votes for and profits from a default should face criminal prosecution. The RICO Act should be invoked, and this should extend to the people who bankroll the Tea Party, if they profit from the default they precipitate. This isn't just political conspiracy, it's racketeering in the guise of ideology.

it rhymes

"Obama is a nice guy. David Cameron is a nice social Democrat. About three hours from London in Greece there are some very nasty political parties. What there is is the infrastructure for total surveillance. In history, all the precedents are unhappy,"  says the master of the obvious.

Meanwhile, in Greece, the elements of the police state are being investigated. By the police, of course, who will doubtless arrest anyone who is not following orders.

just like a civil war

You have to remember it's supposed to be like this here.


Sergio Leone would understand perfectly.

meanwhile back on the plantation

Not surprising, it has never really been in the interest of the strongest supporters of the Confederacy to support it. It is a sad measure of the degree of mind control the wealthiest have on everyone else.

a new business at the mall

But I am sure this has absolutely nothing with all the money and munitions the CIA has been pouring into Al-Qaeda in Syria the last few years.

"Upscale" shopping centers would fit right into the local economy, wouldn't they?

short circuiting the technology police

This sounds like something the Pentagon would really rather have seen kept secret.

A directed EMP weapon that could stop a car in its tracks could also knock an airplane out of the sky or trash a computer communications hub from a distance.

jumping the Syrian shark

Contrary to the opinion of many, there is no such thing as a "progressive" war. Kerry and Obama seriously jumped the shark on this one. The MoveOn crew is not very happy with the attempt of the military industrial complex to stage a hostile takeover of the progressive movement.

because...

"i's a moral imperative"

the wrath of the righteous

The thing about Obama is that he actually believes what he's saying. LBJ thought he had all the facts about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, too.

they don't make Sith Lords like they used to anymore

It's so hard to get a fearless Dear Leader these days.

Someone should arrest that man for war crimes against humanity, but one guesses they only arrest human beings. Perhaps a tranquilizer dart and a nice zoo display with soundproofing, bars, and a very deep moat will protect the viewing public from the poison. One doubts it, though.

moral relativity

The faster you go, the shorter you get in the direction you're traveling.


Or something like that.

implausible deniability

If the United States has responsibility, it is because the CIA used Al Qaeda operatives to take advantage of the Arab spring movement. 

The covert branches of the US and Saudi governemtn are doing everything to stoke up a war with Syria that can conflagrate into a war with Iraq. In fact, Donald Rumsfeld himself initiated rebel action against Assad during the Iraq war. See http://www.theguardian.com/news/blog/2008/nov/10/usa-terrorism 

Obama, like LBJ, has done great things for civil rights, but like LBJ, he is totally owned by the military industrial complex.

that was then, this is now

Known knowns in 1987:




Known knowns now:

Magical Thinking

Exactly who is going to be able to bell the cat, much less even design a collar for it?

The internet was designed by DARPA. The national security apparatus has a vested interest in maintaining control of it. Even if the industry could find independent scientists that could design code the NSA couldn't crack, don't you think the spooks would buy, blacmail, or backdoor their way into it?

The Republican's aren't the only ones with a problem in reality-based thinking.

Bipartisan Adventure!

It's odd how both John McCain and Barack Obama don't see any possible way fighting a war with these would present a problem.

 

 

the Professionals

One of the remarkable things about the Obama administration that those of us on the alledged fringe left have noticed is its continuity with the policies of the Cheney administration in matters of foreign policy and national security.

There've even been moments when big time Dick himself has shown his bitter crooked smile on things the Obama camp has done.

It should probably come as no surprise then, that from mass-murdering drone warfare, to the Justice department covertly wiretapping newspapers, to secret squirrel spywork in Russia, to the IRS targeting mom and pop Tea party operations rather than the Rove-Bush machine or the Goldman-Sachs Obama bankroll connections,  madness is emergent in Washington this spring right along with the cherry blossoms.

There's a difference this year. and it will get more hysterical every year right on up to 2016. Just like the Carter administration, or the last two years of the Clinton administration, there's a professional class in Washington that sees one of its own awaiting the next Presidential coronation- Jebbie Bush.

The difference between the Clintons and Obama is that the Clintons had Carter's lesson at heart: they expected duplicity in their government and expecting it were prepared to deal with it.

plausible deniability

It is difficult to imagine from current events that a President really runs anything more serious than a 24 hour reality show.

He's seemingly not writing the scripts, either.

It is coming so fast and so thick this week that the Editors of the stolid New York Pravda feel the need to point out to their readers that the results of one of the colossal botch-ups benefits the usual suspects:

...Inevitably, the stumble by the I.R.S. will now be used by the Republicans as a point of attack. They are gleefully promising months of hearings, and the National Republican Congressional Committee is already trying to tarnish Democratic lawmakers with what it calls “the Obama administration’s use of the I.R.S. as a political tool.”

This will serve as the perfect distraction from issues, like the budget, gun control or immigration reform. And it will probably prevent any real progress on campaign finance reform, which, in turn, will make it vastly more difficult for the I.R.S. to prevent abuse of the tax code.

The greatest benefactor of this? Crossroads and the re-emergent Bush juggernaut, of course, poised to take official control of a Washington whose attitudes they've seemed to keep covert control of anyway, regardless of two overwhelming Presidential electoral losses and a nation hoping for progressive change.

a matter of timing

So why is it I get the feeling that with this Court, if they'd had Romney and a completely Republican Congress (i.e. if they managed to steal the votes the way they did when Dubya was Prez and Cheney ruled), now would not only be the time to end same-sex marriage, it would be time to end voting rights, scrap Roe vs. Wade, and most other civil rights.

We'd be nuking Iran, the Norks, and probably Iraq just for not being grateful.

Not only would Keystone be built, the Appalachians would be leveled for coal and fracked for gas, and the Great Lakes sold to Monsanto.

Because, we'd be told, Now would be the Right Time for Corpocracy.

Instead, we have totally feckless Democratic leadership that can't accomplish anything even with the support of most of the voters, because their Corpocratic campaign donors don't see a percentage in it.

calling in the enforcers

Let's get this straight.

Global bankers treat the savings of people as capital for their global casino, and want to use everyone's savings to cover their speculative losses in the great game. And we should pity them?

Better to follow Iceland's path, use your own currency, and throw the criminals in jail instead of letting them make policy.

 But somehow government giving trillions to bankers is Capitalism, but sustaining average citizens is Socialism.

You can guess which alternative the bankers want.