Stupid lefty me

Hey, I'm a stupid lefty. I must be, since so many obviously intelligent people tell me so. After all, I don't think the health insurance reform bill is any worse than what's already been done by prominent Republican presidential candidates and neither does Mitt Romney so he must be a stupid lefty too.

The Cato Institute, obviously a bunch of lefties as well, has pointed out that Mitsky (let's give him his due as a Trotskyite) enacted a health care plan identical to Obama's while he was Governor of Massachusetts in 2006. Of course that Maoist/Islamofascist radical Romney won't admit to it and he was only trying to hide his Marxist/Maoist sympathies when he called the identical Democratic plan all those nasty names. Hell, he's probably right to do so since 2006 was so long ago we didn't even have Twitter and nobody remembers.

The Cato Institute remembers, stupid lefties that they are.

"As President Obama himself has pointed out, Romney is the guy who created the prototype for ObamaCare. How can he lead the charge against a health care plan that is modeled on his own?" said Cato's executive vice president David Boaz.

Well hell, he's a lefty and lefties do that and the Cato "cel"l is probably a front for North Korea. But the concept of "its only wrong when they do it" really requires more intelligence than I have so I'll just never cut it as a right wing "patriot." I really am not smart enough to get angry at the President for raising taxes when he lowered them or furious at his forcing his predecessor to put us into crushing debt, so the Tea Bag patriots won't accept me either. Who can blame them for suspecting a wealthy investor and fund manager of loving Stalin and longing for the worker's paradise?

So Mea Culpa -- I'm a stupid lefty and I'll go say ten Hail Reagans and pray for understanding.

Take the C train

Climb aboard the Republican crazy train, boys and girls -- we're going to Loonie Land! We're going to the Fox Fun House Hall of Mirrors where everything gets distorted to look Muslim, or Communist, or Fascist. Yes indeed the logo of the Nuclear Security Summit, can, if you squint your eyes and take another deep one from the paper bag of glue, looks like a crescent -- or if you're one of those sane elitist liberals, like an orbiting electron in the classical model of an atom.

But we're not sane are we? We're ConSERvatives and it's fun to be CRAZY! It's fun to sabotage any attempt to make the world a safer, saner place, it's fun to sabotage everything the voters (corrupted by socialism no doubt) do to restore sanity.


Yes, the latest attempt in the Logo Wars, to find crescents in everything Obama does and says started in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post "Now he's a crescent loon" and migrated to Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, which showed an array of Islamic national flags on Wednesday with the 2010 Nuclear Summit logo -- not that they're suggesting anything. They're just suggesting that since Obama is suspiciously "reaching out" to Muslims and thus is suspected of being a Muslim and since some Muslims are black -- well you decide for yourselves. We're not going to tell you what's true and what isn't. You decide.

I mean you'll note that Obama has pulled the plug on another mission to the moon and the moon you know, sometimes. . . well you get the picture -- not that we're suggesting anything, but looking at Space Shuttle mission patches you'll notice crescents all over the place and of course the shuttle orbits over Muslim countries constantly. Could be that Obama converted the Space Agency to Islam back in 1990! How sinister is that?
Of course since nuclear arms reduction was a particular dream of Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush, Murdoch may have wanted to pull back on the theme that arms control only weakens the nation when Democrats do it, or he may have been embarrassed by Insanity Hannity's being caught in a lie about what Obama's nuclear position actually is -- or perhaps he knows in his wrinkled Australian heart that it's just easier to get away with a totally insane innuendo than to play with dangerous facts. Nobody ever went broke after all, by underestimating the stupidity, gullibility and indeed the raw insanity of the American public.

How Glenn Beck Makes Sh*t Up

A deconstruction: Beck turns two black panthers, a Farrakhan speech, and a step-dance video into "proof" that OBAMA HAS A SECRET NEGRO GOON ARMY!!!

A Word on Statistics

by Wislawa Szymborska

Out of every hundred people

those who always know better:
fifty-two.

Unsure of every step:
nearly all the rest.

Ready to help,
as long as it doesn't take long:
forty-nine.

Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four--well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.

Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with:
forty and four.

Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.

Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it's better not to know
not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life but things:
thirty
(although I would like to be wrong).

Doubled over in pain,
without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three,
sooner or later.

Those who are just:
quite a few at thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand:
three.

Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.

Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred--
a figure that has never varied yet.

trans. from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak

Art: Golconda by Rene Magritte

Time To Wake Up

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. -- James Joyce

There are some laws which everyone, no matter how powerful, no matter their nationality, must obey. I’m thinking of the laws of physics: gravity, the laws of thermodynamics and the like. No one gets a pass, at least not for long, not without exacting a price. Yes, we can fly to the moon, but it takes an enormous amount of energy to slip these surly bonds of earth, and we always come back.

There are similar laws which operate on the metaphysical plane--I call them spiritual laws but for the non-religious, how about “Eternal Laws.” Just as no one escapes the laws of gravity and thermodynamics, no one escapes Eternal Laws, either.

Religious texts of all faiths are full of them, and they serve as both a warning and guide to those of us here on earth. They know no nationality or creed but instead are truly universal. Just as the laws of gravity apply equally to a child on a playground or a multibillion-dollar rocket aimed at the moon, so do these Eternal Laws apply to great nations and individuals alike.

One of these is the Law of Karma. In the Judeo-Christian tradition this law is expressed as “the sins of the father.” There are dozens of verses in the Old and New Testament expressing the idea that what goes around, comes around. For example, from Numbers 14:18:

‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’

I repeat: No one gets a pass, at least not for long, not without exacting a price.

A related law is the Law of Truth. Nothing remains secret forever. Eventually the truth is revealed, if not today or tomorrow, then in a year, 10 years, 50 years. In the New Testament we see this expressed in Luke 8:17:

For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.

There are similar ideas in the Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and other religious texts. In short: Repent ye sinners or pay the price. The longer you wait, the worse it will be.

America has been dodging Eternal Laws. We are wont to do this every now and then, for example our failure to atone for our genocide of native peoples. Little surprise that these chickens came home to roost in 1973. We have a lot of karmic debt which has gone unpaid, and the interest is adding up.

The latest is our reluctance to address the biggest moral failing this nation has faced since the days of slavery. We have swept our rush to war under the rug, ignored our imprisonment and torture of hundreds of innocent people. We have refused to acknowledge the use of ginned up confessions to justify our slaughter in a foreign land. We have chosen to believe that the shredding of civil liberties here at home is necessary in the interest of “national security” because we are emotionally lazy and perhaps still a little shell-shocked.

This week a new revelation popped up and, surprise surprise, we slapped it away. It came in the form of this story:

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

These people were tortured. They were labeled “the worst of the worst.” They were in legal limbo, denied contact with their families, lawyers, etc. And did I mention they were tortured?

So far a Google News search of “Wilkerson, Guantanamo, Bush, Cheney” has revealed nothing from our mainstream national media on this story. Lefty blogs, Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic, foreign media like Arab News and Asian Tribune have covered it. CNN, the Associated Press, New York Times? Not so much.

So it appears our media is reluctant to look under that rock. Our government, of course, has refused to look into the sins of the past administration. And our church leaders? The Catholic Church is too busy dealing with the consequences of its own failure to adhere to the Law of Truth. Lefty evangelical Jim Wallis is doing battle with clown Glenn Beck right now; he has chosen a media circus sideshow over addressing a true moral dilemma.

So here we are.

We need a national accountability moment, a “time of repentance” if you will, where all is revealed once and for all. Will we get it? Yes, of course we will: it’s an Eternal Law that this moment will come. The question is, will that time be of our choosing or the universe’s? The universe is a harsh task mistress. It would be better for us to address this issue ourselves. But if we don’t have the courage, well, there are universal laws at play here. The debt will be paid -- with interest.

Eventually.

Another new black

My local Tea Party is gearing up for another froth and drool session on tax day although at least half of them know by now they won't be paying Federal Income Taxes this time or at least less than they paid the year before. You can be damned sure there won't be any of the local Billionaires (there are quite a few) amongst the cracker crumbs.

The Dow is over 11,000 as I write this, investor optimism boosted by earnings reports and economic data. Inflation remains contained at one tenth of one percent, despite the solemn assurances of Weimar style runaway. Retail sales continue to climb more than expected as the economic expansion continues.

"The amount of diesel fuel bought using credit cards at U.S. truck stops increased in March to the highest level in more than a year, indicating the recovery is broadening beyond manufacturing "

says Bloomberg and truck tonnage, which accounts for 68 percent of freight transported in the U.S., increased on a year-over-year basis in February for a third straight month, as truckers benefit from inventory rebuilding, increased exports and stronger sales.

It's getting harder not to call this a recovery, but it would certainly be hard to associate the news with the kind of implosion into economic chaos a Marxist economy and tyrannical Pol Pot killing fields some of the more extreme viewpoints have been forecasting.

"Bleak is the New Black"

writes Newsweek, but it's in the context of the increasing disparity between the sound and fury and the tale told by economic data.

"America is coming back stronger, better, and faster than nearly anyone expected—and faster than most of its international rivals."

and at present, the Dow is up over 70% in the last year. As to whether we would have turned around earlier if there had been no bailout, no stimulus package and a program of austerity, tax cuts for billionaires and continued deregulation as the Republicans demanded after 1929 -- it seems harder still to believe that we would be talking about recovery as anything but a cruel joke just now. Even so, despair, panic, and even hysteria are the stock in trade of the Fox News doomers and gloomers - the same folks who blamed pessimistic Liberals for "talking down" the solid economy of the Bush years. No, certainly a continued, uninterrupted recovery is hardly a sure thing, but more balanced Republican observers may be beginning to wish the fear mongering Murdoch would reign in his dogs a bit tighter before American voters realize that the last thing the Republicans seem to want is what they want: a recovery.

WHEN LIFE IMITATES ART: THE ABYSS

“Scientists using a remote-controlled submarine have discovered the deepest known volcanic vent and say the superheated waters inside could contain undiscovered marine species and perhaps even clues to the origin of life on earth.” So begins THIS ARTICLE that describes an exciting new chapter in oceanographic exploration.

Amid the daily strife and negative aspects of life, I love when an amazing, intriguing discovery takes place that makes us wonder at the incredible vastness of our world.

Even the most jaded characters will have to admit this one is pretty amazing and provides yet more opportunities to discover the intricacies of how our earth was formed and how it functions and perhaps a few new species.

"The deep sea is full of surprises," a statement posted to the expedition's Web site said. "We may find species unlike any seen before. The Cayman Trough may be like (Arthur) Conan Doyle's 'Lost World,'" a novel that imagines an area populated by prehistoric monsters hidden deep in the Amazon.”

I loved the movie, The Abyss and the idea of lifeforms we never imagined sharing our planet.

"We know more about the surface of the Moon and Mars than we do about our own planet because two-thirds of our planet is covered by ocean making it very hard to explore."

Copley said it has been theorized that life may have originated in similar environments early in the Earth's history — in part because the microorganisms found in deep-sea vents appear close to some of the Earth's most ancient organisms.

There is so much more we need to learn about our planet and the creatures that inhabit it. For as much as we think we already know, I'm glad there are still mysteries to solve. Wouldn’t it be boring if we knew everything?

"We've only seen a tiny fraction of the deep sea floor so there are undoubtedly many more vents and other amazing things to discover."

I can’t wait to see what they find next!

Simple-Dino Observations on Human Personality and Learning for Make Benefit Glorious Epoch of Tertiary Time

When I was a wee but precocious dino, I recall observing my fellow students closely. I noticed a few things, which I here put in terms drawn from an adult sensibility and intellect, that have stuck with me all these years:

1. People’s character takes a set very early in life: the kids to whose speech, actions, and attitudes I attended seemed like little adults already. Some were cynical and jaded even at eight, ten or twelve years old, some were mostly innocent and cheerful, some were dishonest, some curious, some shy, some assertive, etc. It wasn’t too hard to imagine what sorts of adults they might become. Whatever innate factors and external influences make us who we are had already endowed them with recognizable personality traits. As Wordsworth and then Freud said, “The child is father of the man.” It’s certainly true of me: by the time I was around eight, I was pretty much who I am now. – bookish, eccentric, moody, a bit shy but also honest and charitable towards others; unambitious; interested in philosophy, literature and languages; always on the outside of things and events looking in, and preferring it that way. (And, of course, a khaki-hued predatory dinosaur.)

2. For the average bloke and blokette, “Truth” seems to be what Nietzsche says it is in his 1873 essay “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” (Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn): a species of error – or perhaps today we would prefer the Foucauldian term “discourse” – that has become useful in terms of comfort and power relations. When a teacher puts kids in small groups and gives them some question to work on or a problem to solve, the cleverest one can blurt out the answer right away and it probably won’t make a significant impression on the others: to them, what matters isn’t the answer but rather the social process of arriving at the answer. In Nietzsche’s terms, they aren’t interested in Truth; they are instead trying to make friends, to belong, to demonstrate their power to the group, and so forth. Truth is only the means to such ends, not their goal.

You are welcome to make of these observations what you will, or nothing at all, with regard to the wider political concerns that we so often take up at the ZONE.

I should mention that by the first point, I don’t mean to negate the observation made by Baudelaire and others that most of what humanity has accomplished has been done not because of our nature but rather in spite of it. We have the capacity to change our ways and our thinking (we are not, to use the modern metaphor, hard-wired), to go against nature – it’s just that it’s usually difficult to do that, and much easier not to bother trying. By the second point, I infer only the difficulty of changing people’s minds, of disabusing them of error, and so forth -- not the absolute impossibility of the task. We want to return to the safety of the cave, as in the Platonic parable that in part underwrites Nietzsche’s Über Wahrheit und Lüge – to return to our perceptual, intellectual, and moral comfort zones along with our fellows instead of really thinking things through and doing what honors our own potential and does right by others.

But what do I know? I have a brain about the size of a walnut in a three-foot-long noggin (including the toothsome snout), so perhaps others will have much smarter things to say….

Inglorious bastards

I never thought the Confederacy would take health insurance reform lying down; accept it any more than they willingly endured integration, voting rights for women or their former slaves, equal rights and opportunities for "cullids" and Jee-Yews and anything else that interfered with good, old fashioned, plantation feudalism. They're against anything those Yankees do even if in the long run insurance companies will profit from it and undoubtedly show their gratitude to the Gucci shod rebels in Tallahassee and other red state Capitals.

Even though the ten thousand or so of my county's uninsured residents that now overwhelm the capacity of community outpatient clinics and emergency rooms are a liability and expense to me similar to uninsured motorists, the former are victims of Northern aggression while the latter do need to be forced to have liability insurance. Why? Well because a Yankee Democrat proposed it and Democrats did some of what the public elected them to do.

OK, it's not quite a volley of cannon fire at Fort Sumter yet, but that was then and today's attacks on the concept that the government has any function beyond shocking and awing third world countries and keeping the slaves in line are more insidious. What else would you call slipping a rider into an innocuous and popular Life Insurance bill that declares the new Federal Health Insurance legislation unconstitutional. I know, I know, that's hardly the job of the Florida Legislature, the same distinguished body of statesmen who last year balked at adding an exclusion to a bill outlawing the observation of and participation in animal sex if it was for purposes of animal husbandry, because -- wait for this -- some Representatives thought animal husbandry referred to women marrying animals. But the spirit of Southern freedom isn't about the government standing up for freedom, it's about leaving us alone in our fantasy of primitive self sufficiency where we can do as we please and damn everyone else.

Likewise the protection against being discriminated against by health insurers and protection against the public's indirect funding of health care for the uninsured must be about

"defending the rights of individuals"

as Rep. Ryan Nelson, R-Apopka told those assembled representatives of Florida Crackers, Swamp rats and toothless road-kill eaters called the Florida House of Representatives.

"every person within this state is and shall be free from governmental intrusion" in selecting health insurance coverage,

says the amendment. What nasty things might escape from that Pandora's box should this thing be passed into law! After all, keeping companies from dropping you when sick or weaseling out of legitimate claims by stalling until you die or your daughter dies is "intrusion." isn't it? Making you take responsibility for staying off the welfare rolls and clogging up the hospitals or walking around spreading TB is just egregious "intrusion." Let's give absolute immunity from the law to insurers and all in the name of individual freedom. Massa knows what's best and what's best is that you only shop at the company store.

What's more, the Florida Attorney General shall have the power to sue the Federal Government on behalf of any neo-Confederate who thinks I have to pay when his diseased ilk inflate the local hospital operating costs because he doesn't believe in health insurance - sue at the Taxpayer's expense, of course.

I don't like slippery slope arguments and I'm not saying that this will lead to revolts against mandatory car insurance or boat insurance or any kind of required liability insurance, but the principle is indeed the same: "Damn Gummint cain't tell us what to do" even if that government is elected to do what it's doing by a majority of voters who presumably still have the right to decide such things: a right not inferior to the right of corporations to do as they please. The principle is the same: government is about what we the people want, not what we the voters want. Upside down elitism and corporate feudalism at it's purest.

Yes, I'm surrounded by people who tell me that the 1861 revolt, or "the War of Northern Aggression," was about "freedom" without any sense of irony and they feel likewise about almost anything that requires any funding, except of course farm subsidies and special tax breaks for Exxon Mobil. Their revolt is about the same kind of "freedom" I guess. Sometimes that's my freedom, not theirs, since they're concerned about my heirs' inheritance taxes while theirs won't pay any, and a couple of percent more on my income taxes while more than half of them won't pay any this year or ever have incomes anywhere near the top 10%. Of course their freedom to go about uninsured Makes my outrageous health insurance premiums more outrageous, but it's the thought that counts, isn't it?

Socialism in America, or Much Ado about Nothing

Being called a socialist is the gravest, most wounding insult in America. Everyone and Glenn Beck knows that socialism is pure evil.

Or so Americans are led to believe, just in case they would get into their heads some dangerous ideas about social justice, equality and other such silliness. As it happens -- and not surprisingly so -- socialism, as defined by Tea Partiers and right-wingers, is none of those things they believe it is.

Bill Quigley, Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans, looks at the 9 most pervasive American myths about socialism and debunks them, one by one, below (via ICH).

Myth #1. The US government is involved in class warfare attacking the rich to lift up the poor.

There is a class war going on all right. But it is the rich against the rest of us and the rich are winning. The gap between the rich and everyone else is wider in the US than any of the 30 other countries surveyed. In fact, the top 10% in the US have a higher annual income than any other country. And the poorest 10% in the US are below the average of the other OECD countries. The rich in the U.S. have been rapidly leaving the middle class and poor behind since the 1980s.

Myth #2. The US already has the greatest health care system in the world.

Infant mortality in the US is 4th worst among OECD countries – better only than Mexico, Turkey and the Slovak Republic.

Myth #3. There is less poverty in the US than anywhere.

Child poverty in the US, at over 20% or one out of every five kids, is double the average of the 30 OECD countries.

Myth #4. The US is generous in its treatment of families with children.

The US ranks in the bottom half of countries in terms of financial benefits for families with children. Over half of the 30 OECD countries pay families with children cash benefits regardless of the income of the family. Some among those countries (e.g. Austria, France and Germany) pay additional benefits if the family is low-income, or one of the parents is unemployed.

Myth #5. The US is very supportive of its workers.

The US gives no paid leave for working mothers having children. Every single one of the other 30 OECD countries has some form of paid leave. The US ranks dead last in this. Over two thirds of the countries give some form of paid paternity leave. The US also gives no paid leave for fathers.

In fact, it is only workers in the US who have no guaranteed days of paid leave at all. Korea is the next lowest to the US and it has a minimum of 8 paid annual days of leave. Most of the other 30 countries require a minimum of 20 days of annual paid leave for their workers.

Myth #6. Poor people have more chance of becoming rich in the US than anywhere else.

Social mobility (how children move up or down the economic ladder in comparison with their parents) in earnings, wages and education tends to be easier in Australia, Canada and Nordic countries like Denmark, Norway, and Finland, than in the US. That means more of the rich stay rich and more of the poor stay poor here in the US.

Myth #7. The US spends generously on public education.

In terms of spending for public education, the US is just about average among the 30 countries of the OECD. Educational achievement of US children, however, is 7th worst in the OECD. On public spending for childcare and early education, the US is in the bottom third.

Myth #8. The US government is redistributing income from the rich to the poor.

There is little redistribution of income by government in the U.S. in part because spending on social benefits like unemployment and family benefits is so low. Of the 30 countries in the OECD, only in Korea is the impact of governmental spending lower.

Myth #9. The US generously gives foreign aid to countries across the world.

The US gives the smallest percentage of aid of any of the developed countries in the OECD. In 2007 the US was tied for last with Greece. In 2008, we were tied for last with Japan.

Despite the opinions of right wing folks, the facts say the US is not on the path towards socialism.

But if socialism means the US would go down the path of being more generous with our babies, our children, our working families, our pregnant mothers, and our sisters and brothers across the world, I think we could all appreciate it.

There is a version of this article with footnotes for those interested. Quigley77@gmail.com

For dessert, a reminder from Noam Chomsky about what socialism is and isn't (mostly the latter):


And to round up our already rich meal, a quiz from inquiring minds at Ironic Times who want to know what is so socialist about Obama, exactly:

Which of the following has prompted Republicans to call Barack Obama the “most liberal President in our nation's history?”

A ) Calling for an end to the moratorium on construction of new nuclear plants.

B ) Calling for an end to the moratorium on new offshore drilling.

C ) Reforming healthcare along insurance industry guidelines.

D ) Escalating the war in Afghanistan.

E ) Ignoring abuses of power by his Republican predecessor.

Hint: Please tell us, we'd like to know.