Fear and Trembling in the Court

OK, so now I'm worried. I was willing to make some excuses for Obama's new support of offshore drilling; blaming it on previous administrations' infiltration of oil men into the department of energy and the drowning of environmental regulations, but if what I'm hearing about Elena Kagan is even partly true, I'm worried that we're going to have a more dangerous court, more friendly toward unfettered Presidential powers and willing to cut a wider swath through the law to root out nebulous, ever shifting devils and their agents -- making any accusation, any suspicion a de facto conviction without representation, without trial, without appeal: in some cases without anyone even knowing about it.

"Battlefield Law", said she to Lindsay Graham last year, should be applied to anyone we have a feeling is financing Al Qaeda and one's rights should not be read to anyone that might be construed to be a "terrorist" despite the lack of any real definition of what a terrorist might be. Vague definitions and accusations of shadowy connections leading to indefinite detentions without due process? Why have a court at all if we're no longer a civilized nation but a band of warriors on a worldwide battlefield?

Attorney General Eric Holder said on ABC's This Week Sunday, that even US citizens don't need to be read their rights if they're suspected of being involved in terrorism. Suspected is the key word here and in a time when everyone seems to be suspected every time they board an airplane, it's a scary word.

“I think we have to give serious consideration to at least modifying that public safety exception." Chopping a piece out of the Bill of Rights is “one of the things that I think we’re going to be reaching out to Congress to do – to come up with a proposal that is both Constitutional, but that is also relevant to our time and the threat that we now face.”

I think it's worth mentioning that the most recent attempts at terrorist acts were hardly impeded by the reading of rights as the terrified terrorists , one of whose gonads had just been blow off, spilled their guts as fast as they could get the words out and when we're happy to torture people so thoroughly their testimony becomes invalid, what's going to change if we tell them they have any rights at all -- which, practically speaking, they don't. I'm afraid we don't either. It's certainly harder not to cry when reading about our forefathers' noble ideals about all mankind being endowed with inalienable rights when we're told that's just too risky these days.
It's always been risky and taking that risk has been one of our valid claims to greatness.

The last thing I expected or wanted from the President in the way of restocking the Court was another battlefield lawyer, supporting the degradation of our most basic American traditions and laws from gutless cowardice. We have more to fear from fear of terrorism, it seems, than from terrorism itself. At a time when the very concept of a government is so frightening to so many, I would have expected a selection with a more obvious commitment to taking the risk of Liberty and willing to face saboteurs without sabotaging our own freedom.

Poisoning Pigeons In The Park

By Nance

Monday scares me.  I'm one of the little people who doesn't understand the Stock Market, who has no business involved with it, but who finds her financial future, and thus the quality of her old age, bound up with and terrorized by that fickle, convoluted, unnatural, hair-trigger, Frankenstein creation of our infatuation with the promise that money makes money.

Monday might be a second chance to make a wise move with what I now pitifully still refer to as my portfolio; I was too paralyzed by fear in the summer of 2008 to know whether to hold 'em or fold 'em.  The pressure is on to be a little smarter this time around, following the past week's sharp declines and Thursday's petrifying plunge...except that being smarter seems even less possible, even more past hope now.  The only economic constants I've detected in recent years are that some folks will make money in wild market fluctuations and that I will probably be among their dupes.  I don't feel one bit smarter or better able to decide whether to stay in or get out.

I've assumed that somebody knows what happened last Thursday and what is likely to happen on Wall Street next week, but reading up on it today has just made an ass out of u and me.  Theories abound:  it's Greece and the bail-out implications for the EU; it was sabotage by _______ (fill in the blank with your favorite conspirator, party, lobby, or disgruntled fan of Blankfein); it was the bad news about unemployment rates hidden under the good news about job creation; or, most detached and cruel of all, a fat finger.  In the online money journals and news sources, I've encountered psychotic word salads that only leave me more confounded.  Take this example from The LATimes:

"We were in the midst of a pullback, we needed one, we got one," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at New York-based brokerage house Avalon Partners Inc. Cardillo said the choppy trading after such a drastic decline likely signals the market trying to find a bottom.

Stocks have been on a nearly uninterrupted upward path since March of last year, when indexes hit 12-year lows. Analysts have been predicting a correction for months, only to see the market bounce back after brief periods of decline.

Long-term market watchers actually welcome occasional pullbacks in stocks, saying that gives investors opportunities to pick up shares at bargain prices.

"We had the earthquake, we're now in the midst of getting the aftershocks," said Steven Goldman, chief market strategist for Weeden & Co. in Greenwich, Conn. "When the market's so close to new highs, it's difficult to have rallies. But when you're down 10 or 12 percent from recent highs, we can deal with uncertainty better."

Did Cardillo and Goldman say here that they welcomed this week's dizzying descent because it lets those in the know feel in control? I am too far down the Rabbit Hole, now; I'm having the same kind of vertigo I get when I try to read a prospectus. I'd just begun to think that the prognosticators who pointed to the DOW line graph as proof that the bad times were behind us might be right. That'll learn me. Again.

In a conversation I had sometime in July or August of '08 with an acquaintance who professed financial smarts, I declared that I was so disheartened by the market's unrelenting drop, I didn't think I could bear to stay invested.  His response was, "Well, what do you think you're going to do with it, put it in a jar under the bed?"  That was ridicule, in case you missed it.  Another wag told me, "Oh, yes, cash is king now!"  And, still another, "This is the time to put every penny you can put your hands on into stocks!"  And, "It's all gambling. You should never invest what you can't afford to lose."

Here's a sure bet: there will be abundant and worthless advice available on Monday. My worthless advice: stock up on Mason Jars.  The smart money will be on the insiders at the expense of an entire class made up of vulnerable retirees and retiree hopefuls like you and me who were only hoping for peanuts on the dollar. They toy with us and our measly, hard-earned savings.  It'll be as easy for them to take what's left of our nest eggs as...um, trying to avoid cliches, as easy as...I draw a blank.  Jeez, why does this Tom Lehrer song come to mind?

Bossa Nova Bomb?

I struggle to understand why Brazil needs nuclear submarines. It's a country where the interior is extremely difficult to penetrate or control and where the coastal cities have horrifying slums controlled by gangs and where poverty is rampant. How real is the threat of invasion? How real is the desire to be the alpha dog of South America?

Of course one benefit of having nuclear powered subs is that the military can impose secrecy on the fissionable materials it stockpiles as fuel and in that secrecy can use it to make nuclear weapons. There are indications that this is just what they're doing or are about to do, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressing irritation at the US monopoly on nuclear weapons in South America and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

So why the hell does Brazil, it's recovering economy notwithstanding, need the Bomb? I suppose it's because it simply feels it can -- and with the US busy chasing its own tail, hell bent on self-destruction and anarchy, who is to say it can't?

Audacity

We're all aware that one of the rhetorical games people use to portray political opponents negatively is to call them name callers. A skillful user can frame any kind of protest as a hatefest and in our time, when the most vociferous denunciation of the sin of homosexuality seems to come from people who hire male prostitutes, it's not surprising that the angriest political protesters spend more time accusing others of the sin of anger. So the people out in the streets flaunting weapons and sometimes vicious signs make it a point to take offense at those "hate-filled" liberals who like to point out not only the misspellings, the sometimes amusing disparity between facts and their beliefs and often vicious rhetoric. "Look at the way they call us 'Teabaggers'" say the offended parties, foam on their lips still fresh from calling the President a Communist, Kenyan, Maoist disciple of Adolph Hitler. "Liberals are having a field day of hate."

What will they call me for pointing out that they were the first to use that silly term themselves? Jay Nordinger writing for the National Review Online has to admit it, but can't do it without repeating the calumny -- those liberal extremists like Rachel Maddow are nasty, childish name callers -- never mind that we "patriots" started calling them Nazis and Communists years ago for valid criticism of the Republican Administration: baby killers! Grandmother killers! America haters! Terrorist supporters! They should be more respectful or at least neutral.

Sure, there's name calling and there's name calling. Massive tax cuts intended to boost the economy were just that a few years ago, but now they're irresponsible and massive debt increases according to "Tea party patriots" ( to use the term that Nordinger insists we should use if we really were fair minded) and aren't I just a nasty name caller for pointing out the stunning hypocrisy? Isn't this just a hate site for publishing that? No, the Liberal Media like the National Review, controls the discourse and that is why it's become so nasty. By Liberal Media of course, I mean those terrorist sympathizers and Trotzkyites who want to grab your guns and turn your children Gay.

I'd hate to play poker with such people. It's more than just Botox that enables the propagandists and media manipulators and their candidates to say such things with straight faces. So when the Republican candidate for the Governorship of Florida comes on the air last night and with the flippant demeanor of someone explaining to preschoolers that fish swim and birds fly, tells us that "Obama thinks that more government is the solution to all problems."

I have to be in awe of his training, self control -- the sheer dishonesty of his audacity. As he was speaking, of course, one of our time's greatest ecological disasters was and is poisoning vast areas of the Gulf of Mexico and soon to poison a good part of the Atlantic ocean and all the sea life -- and all the result of taking government mandated safeguards out of the equation: the sum total of the Bush energy policy as written by BP and Exxon and Halliburton. When BP drills elsewhere in that oh so socialist world, they have to use a device that would have prevented this spill, but thanks to core Republican policy they got to save $500,000 and cost us untold billions. God only knows what the final cost of this disaster will be or how many decades it will take for the Gulf to begin to recover.

But there you are, I'm indulging in "hate" again when I should listen to Rush and accept that man made disaster is "natural" and after all, oil is part of nature and it's a liquid just like water and nature itself wants the oil cartel to make billions and billions and billions -- far more than it wants us to be healthy and prosper. I do try, but as they tell me I'm a liberalcommiefascist, it can't be easy to rid myself of that ugly old hate and go along with the flow.

"Hey Fun Boys, Get a Room!"

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Adios for a week (Don't worry, things can always get worse)

By Arthurstone

I’m as fervent a capitalist as anyone. That said I am not afraid of government (though I’m mindful of its endless inefficiencies) nor am I in thrall to the idea of self-correcting, efficient markets. When they ‘correct,’ it costs me a lot of money. Their ‘efficiencies’ add to the number of crackheads in my neighborhood. The co-mingling of ‘laissez-faire’ capitalists and government is a hideous mutation well described by Naomi Klein in ‘The Shock Doctrine’ and now playing out in Greece and soon to come to a theatre near you in Spain, Portugal and other EU countries who have chosen to put the interests of their citizens ahead of predatory bankers, investors and global enterprises as encouraged by the good old US of A.

Pre-natal care and maternity leave? Labor unions? Workplace safety rules? Pensions? Universal medical care? Comprehensive and accessible educational opportunities? Support for the arts? Investment in infrastructure? Environmental concern? Affirmative action? All expensive and all hindrances to unfettered capitalism and the enormous benefit to the most predatory, greedy and selfish members of our society which accrues through unethical (if not illegal) investor practices, credit swaps, short selling, TARP and other bail-outs we fund in lieu of spending on the common good.

And while we’re at it let’s not neglect that grand daddy of all American obsessions. The great American pastime itself. The thing we never seem to tire of nor ever seem not to be able to afford:

War!

There’s always time and treasure to devote to ‘defending’ out interests. That defending our interests currently takes place several thousand miles from our borders and involves ‘enemies’ who have not attacked us is beside the point and not without historical precedence. While it’s the Afghans and Iraqis turn in the barrel this go round don’t forget that in last century it was Filipinos, Hawaiians, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Iranians and a host of others who paid the price for having the audacity to question our ‘national interests’. Interestingly enough, our ‘national interests’ so often seem to require satisfaction within the borders of other sovereign states. Such is the burden we must bear. Empire never did come cheap.

My business has suffered the past couple of years. I own and operate an art gallery dealing in contemporary painting and sculpture. No one knows better than I how ‘unnecessary’ what I do actually is. Compared to bankers bundling toxic mortgages, computer whizzes counting keystrokes and inventing new pop-up ads and methods of tracking me in real time and marketers turning every lifted toilet lid I encounter into an advertisement, I’m keenly aware of the insignificance of my contribution. The impulse to tell a story, paint a picture, write a song, carve a block of wood or throw a pot is interesting in a puny way but pales in comparison to the far more important impulse to ‘earn’ vast sums of money.

And I’m okay with that.

So Sunday morning my lovely wife Marianne and I are off to Akumal on the Yucatan peninsula for a week of reading, cycling, snorkeling, sunning and eating. It’s my gift to Marianne on her birthday. Measured strictly in financial terms, probably, I can’t really afford to go right now. Business is at the same level as it was in 1994, the third year of operation. And it’s a real struggle right now. But I figure I can’t afford not to go. My Father died last year, Mother the year before. We all ended on good terms and one wise thing (among a great many) Mother told me was to enjoy this while I can. And I still can. I’m 58, healthy and have a little saved up. In the great scheme of things, I’m essentially a lottery winner compared to so many far less fortunate.

And I choose not to let the bastards whining, kvetching, complaining and mewling about our current state in the US get me down. Most of us (and certainly many of those making the most noise) have far more than our share and are, through the accident of our birth, among the luckiest people on the planet.

It’s a big world out there and we as Americans too often forget that simple fact.

FOUR DEAD IN O- HIO

I wanted to get this posted yesterday. Unfortunately, I had to contend with another episode of a slipped lumbar disc which causes much pain and requires chemical intervention that leaves me a bit fuzzy – not a good time to post to a public forum. So, here I am, a day late, but better late than never.

May 4, 2010 marked the 40th anniversary of this tragic event that would change the course of history of this nation and of my generation. While most of us continued to support peaceful protest and organized civil disobedience, the violence perpetrated against unarmed college students by fellow Americans would spawn a more violent subculture that would include the formation of Black Panthers and Weather Underground.

For anyone too young to remember this event, there was a protest organized at Kent State University; not unlike similar protests taking place at college campuses across the country. The protest was in response to then President Nixon’s announcement of the invasion of Cambodia, thus escalating the war in Asia. In the days leading up to the May 4th protest, there had been an incident in town which involved breaking of windows and starting a fire. It was determined that only a few participants were Kent students; mostly the crowd had been townies and bikers. On May 4th the students gathered on school grounds in a central location. The governor declared a state of emergency and called out the National Guard. Soon, four college students would lay dead, all unarmed, all shot with deadly precision. Not just an attempt to simply stop them; they were all kill shots.

Watching the news that day as the black and white images were repeatedly broadcast, there was a sense of horror and disbelief – “They’re killing us for speaking out!” It was the point where a generation collectively concluded that “our” government wasn’t ours at all. They became the enemy.

I find it interesting that those today who would call Bill Ayers a terrorist are some of the same people encouraging police and military to refuse any order to shoot at other Americans and have vowed to take up arms if such a thing were to occur. I wonder how they cannot see the ironic contradiction of their own words. I imagine they would spin the scene in Ohio in 1970 as different because those kids were loud, angry hippies as opposed to loud, angry, “moral, Christian, patriots”.

As Americans, we have the right to peacefully assemble and protest. As human beings, we have a duty to peacefully assemble and protest unfair laws and practices which would probably be referred to as civil disobedience. (Think Martin Luther King and the civil rights struggle).

What Americans do NOT have a right to do is murder or incarcerate or oppress any person or group that does not agree with them. Change comes slowly, sometimes painfully, but usually, in hindsight, the changes are good. To those who believe they have a right to violent actions to enforce their beliefs – you are wrong. You are as wrong now as those fringe groups from the 70s were wrong then.

And this is why:

THE DEAD

Jeffrey Glenn Miller; shot through the mouth - killed instantly
Allison B. Krause; fatal left chest wound - died later that day
William Knox Schroeder; fatal chest wound - died almost an hour later in hospital while waiting for surgery
Sandra Lee Scheuer; fatal neck wound - died a few minutes later from loss of blood

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,

We're finally on our own.

This summer I hear the drumming,

Four dead in Ohio.

(lyrics by Neil Young)

Soldiers aren't the only people who have paid the ultimate price for freedom.

Joe the Dumber

Senator Joe Lieberman is a cheap, pandering whore without a principle in his head and without much concern for history. Instead of being able to come up with some means to combat and prevent acts of terrorism, he's still looking for ways to make a criminal organization into a superpower complete with Army, Navy, Air Force and probably nuclear missiles. Any one working for a foreign terrorist organization should be stripped of his rights as a citizen. He doesn't bother to clarify whether that's before or after a fair trial, but I suspect the whole idea of a fair trial is anathema to his sort of Neanderthal conservatism. What an idiotic response to a failed truck bomb: attack the cornerstone of American liberty.

I wonder if he stops to contemplate how the Jews of Europe were suddenly deemed by the German government as being agents of a hostile foreign power and stripped of citizenship -- allowing the confiscation of their property and their exile to death camps.

No, someone willing to kill hundreds of people at random in Times Square is going to be deterred by a subsequent withdrawal of his citizenship? The shade of Mohammad Atta is laughing in Hell. What about domestic terrorist/murderer Tim McVeigh? Oh, that's OK, he wasn't working for foreigners.

What does Lieberman hope to accomplish other than to give hope to the barbarian Right that we can do as we like to anyone who isn't a citizen? God only gave rights to Americans, you see.

Whether he doesn't bother to or doesn't have the brain power to dismiss that worthless gesture of idiot rage is something not worth speculating on, but it's obvious that Joe Lieberman is all about Joe Lieberman trying to get attention by once again trying to rattle the cage of the ignorati instead of adding anything worthwhile to an important effort.

Menace from the Right: The John Birch Society (Tea Party Comparison) - Part 4

By tnlib

The most glaring similarity between the Birch Society and the Tea Party is the former’s obsession with a Communist threat and the latter’s with Socialism. The JBS, as has been noted, truly believed Communists were planting seeds of conspiracy in government agencies, including the Office of the President, the Supreme Court, the legislature, and the schools and churches.

The Tea Party believes President Obama is a Socialist, a Communist and a Fascist all wrapped up in one neat but imaginary package. All government programs are socialistic.

Interestingly, while eagerly accepting Medicare and other government benefits, they loudly denounce the new health insurance reform bill as being socialistic.

The JBS waged war against teachers and school systems through character assassination and false charges of being Communist sympathizers. They used their muscle to rid school libraries of books historically considered to be American standards but which in their minds were un-American.

Today the right-wing fringe is rewriting history by restricting what famous figures and events, and how they are interpreted, is covered in text books. The old battle of Creation vs. Evolution is still being fought along with whether or not to allow Bible instruction as it allegedly pertains to literature and history. School boards and legislatures in states such as Texas, Kansas and Kentucky are passing new guidelines which, in fact, will stunt the education of students for decades to come.

Both organizations are made up of religious fundamentalists who have a very narrow interpretation of the Bible. There is no tolerance for other belief systems whether Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism or whatever. These religions, in the minds of fundamentalists, are rejected out of hand because they are not Christian and do not view the Bible as the final authority. Those who attend churches which champion a social gospel are considered un-Christian and socialistic and most likely their souls are doomed to burn in hell.

The JBS and the Tea Party are well funded by some of America’s wealthiest industrialists and corporate lobbyists. Wealthy founders and backers of the Birchers have included William J. Gredes of Gredes Foundries; H. L. Hunt, Hunt Oil, and his son Nelson Bunker Hunt, who tried to corner the silver market; Westbrook Pegler, ultra-conservative columnist; and Robert Mathews, a white supremacist who died in a shootout with the FBI in 1984.

The list of Tea Party funders is extensive, almost mind boggling. A few include American Freedom Works, headed up by former Texas Representative Dick Armey; the Walton Family Foundation; the Scaife Foundations; Edwin Ed Meese; and Richard H. Fink.

Two families who backed the JBS and now the TP are beer baron Joseph Coors, founding member of the JBS, and his son Jeff Coors and the Coors Foundation. The most influential has been the Koch Family Foundation. Fred C. Koch was a founding member of the JBS and his sons carry on the ultra-conservative tradition by generously supporting the Tea Party.

The fact that both organizations are against big government and labor is well known. Both believe in the conspiracy theory – that the sinister Communists or Socialists are intent on destroying the country. Both groups are paranoid by any standards. Both are suspicious of the media and anything or anyone who might be intellectual or cosmopolitan. Both are masters of the big lie - whether as a propaganda tool or as a mechanism of denial.

There are several schools of thought as to whether or not and to what degree racism and anti-Semitism exist.

The Birchers actively opposed integration and became apoplectic over the Brown vs. Board of Education (Kansas) Supreme Court’s ruling that “separate but equal” schools were unconstitutional.

Conversely, Welch strongly advised members not to fall prey to racism or anti-Semiticism. He warned that Communists would divert members into a misguided campaign in order to neutralize the Society’s fight against the Communist conspiracy.

Several members were expelled because of their racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Most recently, the Society’s own web site takes on the movie Invictus:

For in truth, Mandela is nothing more than a communist terrorist thug, placed in prison because he was about to launch a terrorist campaign against South Africans, aimed more against the black population than the white.

Claims that postcards and billboards with the picture of Martin Luther King at the Highlander Folk School were racist have been staunchly denied by the JBS. Yet, no such pictures of Earl Warren were used in their attacks against him – just the printed word.

Denials of racism by leaders of the Tea Party aside, signs at rallies and on billboards, letters and emails by elected officials, postings and photographs on the Internet and on social networks fly in the face of any reality. The racial slurs directed at President Obama and his family cannot be interpreted as anything but hate and racism.

Recent Tea Party claims that only a few extremists at rallies and on the Internet are racist, that the majority of members are not, is disingenuous at best. After nearly two years of racist rhetoric, the TP’s belated call to “be nicer” and their measured criticism of the so-called fringe element doesn’t ring with resounding sincerity.

The similarities stop here. The differences are more revealing and, in at least a couple of cases, may indicate where the Tea Party might be unable to become that powerful third party they have hoped to be. Never mind that minor parties (here and here) have never lasted in the history of the United States. Their biggest achievement has been to take votes away from their home parties.

While misrepresentation of facts is a characteristic of the JBS and the TP, the latter has refined the art of massauging the truth to a degree not seen since Adolf Hitler and Joe McCarthy. Republican representatives in Congress echo their mythology and the main stream media has gone soft on truth.

The JBS had its fair share of media outlets which were sympathetic to its cause but none were as dedicated and influential as Fox News is to the TP.

Fox News has been carrying on a torrid love affair with the Tea Party ever since they were introduced. A match made in heaven and the honeymoon doesn’t seem to be ending any time soon. This entertainment channel makes no pretence of being objective or factual; it actively supports TP rallies and caravans across America. They hire a clown, as opposed to an entertainer, to plant fear and whip up hysteria amongst their fans. There are many people who consider this propaganda, not entertainment.

Finally, the biggest difference between the JBS and the TP is the structure or lack of. The JBS was founded by one man, Robert Welch, was tightly organized, and had one goal: to rid the country of Communism.

In contrast, the Tea Party seems to have no distinctive leader at the helm, no cohesive force directing traffic. It is made up of more ingredients, groups, than a tossed salad, and like vinegar and oil, not all of them complement each other. Most importantly, there is no one single goal. Different groups have diverse agendas and different complaints.

Like fissures in the earth’s crust, the cracks will grow until they break apart. The stresses of an unhinged group, coupled with the human decency of the majority of American citizens, most likely will suck all the tea out of the cup.

PIGS “R” US

By Octopus

Early this morning, I walked my fabled beach to partake of what little time may be left before the sludge arrives. My beach is one of the most beautiful on the Atlantic coast ... a wide expanse of fine white sand that crunches beneath your feet, and an infinite emerald green vista beyond the breakers. Here, you can walk for miles before encountering another person.

On any given day, beachcombers will see herons, egrets, sandpipers, and plovers teasing the surf, or black skimmers and pelicans strafing the waves.

The Gulf oil leak disaster comes on the heals of an unseasonably cold winter that left hundreds of manatees and endangered marine turtles cold stunned, dead, or dying. For decades, marine biologists have warned: Our coral reefs are vanishing; our fish stocks are depleted; storm runoff is destroying our wetlands; and floating garbage will bring our ocean ecosystem to the verge of collapse.

Public opinion is a pendulum that swings between fads and confabulations, a rhythm and discord orchestrated by sociopaths. When gas hit $4 at the pump, everyone chanted: Drill, baby, drill. When corporations threatened to close factories and move operations overseas unless the government eased environmental regulations, everyone chanted: Down with tree huggers - they kill jobs.

Nobody listened. How soon we forget past transgressions. How soon we forgot about the tragedy of Love Canal where a housing community was built upon a waste dump containing 21,000 tons of toxic chemicals. In short order, residents reported acrid liquids leaching into their basements, and higher than normal prevalence rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer. Children who played outdoors came home with burns on their skin. Eventually, the government evacuated 800 families and reimbursed them for their homes; however it took another 18 years before the successor corporation agreed to pay restitution.

How soon we forgot about the succession of fires along the Cuyahoga River: The first in 1912 that killed five, a fire in 1936 that burned five days, another in 1952 that burned three days and caused millions of dollars in damage, and the last in 1969 when accumulated trash and debris trapped in heavy black ooze was ignited by a sparks from a passing train.

How soon we forget the epidemic known as Minamata Disease, a severe neurological disorder resembling cerebral palsy caused by the release of methyl mercury in industrial wastewater. This highly toxic chemical accumulated in the seafood harvested from Minamata Bay, which when eaten by the populace resulted in mercury poisoning. By 2001, over 2,265 victims had been officially recognized, of whom 1,784 had died. At least 10,000 others still await compensation.

Major Industrial Polluters

(Click on image to enlarge)

Each year, the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) publishes information and analyses on major polluters in America. This study relies on EPA Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI), which assesses the toxicity of chemicals released, impacts on human health, the risk to exposed populations, and the burden borne by local municipalities. How toxic is toxic?

The EPA tracks 600 toxic chemicals released into the environment as measured in millions of pounds per year. It should be noted that toxicity is not merely a measure of the quantity of pollutants released each year but the toxicity of each compound in relative terms. Toxicity varies by seven orders of magnitude meaning, pound-for-pound, some chemicals are ten million times more toxic than others. The EPA database includes known carcinogens such as asbestos (toxicity index = 1 million), benzidine (TI= 480,000), and bis chloromethyl ether (TI= 440,000), highly toxic industrial solvents, and millions of pounds of heavy metals such as cadmium (TI = 90,000), chromium (TI = 86,000), arsenic (TI = 60,000), lead (TI = 8,000), and mercury (TI = 6,000).

One would think the term Environmental Justice would place Mother Nature and the right of all citizens to clean air and water on an equal footing along with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In fact, Environmental Justice is a ploy used by polluters to spread the impact of pollution without regard to race, religion, ethnicity, or station in life.

Pollution is good for business. It saves owners and shareholders the cost and inconvenience of cleanup and puts more money in their pockets. “Lets allow more arsenic in public drinking water,” says the coal lobby, “and who gives a damn if your worthless kid gets leukemia.” The perks and privileges of the few outweigh the health concerns of the many because public welfare, as Glenn Beck has told you, is tantamount to socialism.

“Have another Double Whopper with bacon and cheese,” says McDonalds, “Who who gives a damn if you die of diabetes. Shareholder value, baby!, that’s what’s its all about.”

“Go ahead. Beat your children and traumatize the crap out of them,” spouts Herr Doctor Freud, “Es ist goot fur beezniss.”

Corporate responsibility is an oxymoron. The titans of industry don’t want environmental regulations, banking reform, consumer product monitoring, food inspections, or workplace safety standards, because regulations are bad, big government is bad, and what’s good for business is good for America!  The 19th Century mindset of social Darwinists, libertarians, and the discontents of civilization are anachronisms living in the post-modern world.  And who the hell needs healthcare when you have no heart and no brain, and your head and your ass are interchangeable.

Inevitably, the cost of cleanup and compensation will be borne by the consumer as energy costs rise. Eventually taxpayers will get stuck with the bills when push comes to pay, because BP’s lawyers will delay and delay. When gas hits $4 at the pump, the pendulum will swing once again with chants of “drill, baby, drill,” because nothing in the human Universe ever changes, while Mother Nature suffers one more incremental death blow.

The longer the Louisiana oil leak persists, the more inevitable this becomes:  Oil will enter the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current that will transport it to the east coast of Florida … thus impacting our beaches and coastal ecosystems. The oil slick arribada may be weeks or months away. Heartbroken, livid, outraged, there are no words to describe what I feel.

Heckuva Twist, Brownie

By Captain Fogg

When you want to get the best advice on how to treat a disaster, who're you gonna call? Well certainly not the "enviros" who might know something about nature and how it works. Certainly you don't ask advice from people who have been telling you it was going to happen any day now after the day actually arrived. That would be to close to admitting you were wrong. No, you want to hear from someone whose personal record of handling catastrophic situations has become a metaphor for bungling and incompetence: you ask Brownie.

Of course the hottest new dance, the Tea Party Twist, has the baggers in knots trying to blame Obama for the latest Gulf oil disaster, the kind of disaster we've all been warned about and have been laughed at for worrying about. We dare not mention George and Dick who actually were partying it up while New Orleans drowned and doing Lord knows what for days afterward since it might diminish the outrageous new claim that Obama stalled doing anything about this oil spill so as to maximize the tragedy and give him an excuse to "pander to the environmentalists." You remember them, they're the guys who were to blame for the high prices that made the oil industry so happy?

Come on baby, let's do the twist:

"This is exactly what they want, because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, 'I'm gonna shut it down because it's too dangerous,' " No, this would never have happened but for President Hussein.

"This president has never supported Big Oil, he's never supported offshore drilling, and now he has an excuse to shut it back down."

whined Brownie through the microphones at Fox without regard to the fact that "back down" would indicate that it had ever been shut down and that Obama hadn't been saying all along that he was in favor of drilling when needed if it could be done safely. No he hasn't yet joined Rush in claiming that environmentalist hippies in diving gear sunk the platform and he hasn't mentioned the failure of the safety equipment from Halliburton -- who would dare? Why mention that the free market is supposed to take care of this, not that durned Gummint. Who would be so unpatriotic and nonpartisan as to mention the truth? Lady Sarah after all says we need people to trust the oil industry. That means we need people to distrust the (Democratic) government if not Democracy itself.

So let's go, the band is playing and it's the Blame it on Obama Cha-Cha. Who can resist? Play it loud and you won't hear me blaming this on official drill baby drill Republican policy.

Blame it on ObamUH
Blame it on ObamUH!

Come on everybody!

Who cares?

By Captain Fogg

Can we call public reaction to the Gulf oil spill predictable? I'm not surprised that a CNN poll yesterday shows 47% don't approve of the way the President has handled it, but I would be surprised if many of that group really have no idea of what Obama has or hasn't done -- perhaps the majority of them, perhaps more. Of course the poll isn't scientific and it didn't ask how many people approve of BP's safety record or of the Halliburton safety equipment that failed. It's just another chance for people to show that they really disapprove of the man being in office. Another CNN poll today shows that 61% favor the continuation of drilling. I wonder how many of them live far inland.

Has anyone else noticed the lack of notice that 11 people are missing and presumed dead; either burned alive or drowned in the oil rig explosion and sinking? Shouldn't we be lionizing them for having died for cheaper oil which after all is the only thing that keeps us free and in God's good graces? No, that's predictable too. No talk of sacrifice when it comes to oil please, since it may lead some to consider what sacrifices are worth it and who should be making them. It may prompt people to ask whether the loss of jobs and industries makes the penny or two's difference in the cost of crude worth more and more destruction of the oceans we depend on for food and oxygen.

It's all too easy for us to keep the blinders on. We're too occupied with this week's groceries and next week's mortgage payment and American Idol and Obama bashing and besides we're so damned ignorant of how nature works we can't make the connection between the fish sticks and the fish they come from - if there is any.

Yes, the free market will take of everything and a bull will eventually find his way out of a china shop and besides I don't have time to care about it. I've got to pick up the kids from school and take them to soccer practice and yoga and put gas in the SUV . . . .

Ignorance & Arrogance: The American Legend

By Sheria

With all of the things in the news from oil spills to bombs in Times Square, I really thought that I was done writing about those tea party folks. However, it's like when you're a kid and can't help but pick at that scab on your knee. A friend posted this March video from a tea party protest of the health care reform bill, which prompted another friend to comment, "I'm so over America." This in turn prompted me to think about my own feelings about this country.

I've never been one for love of country. I know that this upsets a lot of people, heaven knows Michelle Obama got all kinds of flack for suggesting that she hadn't always been proud of this country. I just find it somewhat absurd to love things. I love my friends and my family, but I don't love my car or my table lamps. Besides, love of country leads to patriotism which segues into nationalism, which I think of as akin to patriotism on PCP.

I don't think that we are the worst country in the world but neither do I think that we are as great as we have deluded ourselves into believing. This is a country founded in blood, built on taking over the land and forcing the native population off of their land. We made laws to justify this usurpation of property (the Discovery Doctrine), declaring that the Indians had never owned the land but merely occupied it until it was discovered by Europeans. It was the Europeans,who cultivated the land and fenced it in, that created ownership. The Supreme Court case, Johnson v. M'Intosh, 21 U.S. 543, L. Ed 681, 8 Wheat. 543 (1823), espousing this view is standard reading in every first year property law class. Then there's the whole slavery thing, building a country on the backs of a kidnapped and enslaved people. Emancipation of those slaves was followed by 100 years of Jim Crow--legalized, government sanctioned discrimination based on skin color that denied basic rights of citizenship to Americans having or perceived as having "one drop of black blood."  There's the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, robbing people of their property and their dignity. Reparations finally were paid for the property but how do you provide reparations for stripping people of their dignity? Another question to ponder is why there was no such internment for German Americans, also our enemy in WWII? Then there is the new Arizona state law, that legalizes racial profiling. Arizona is a single state but at least seven other states have already announced that they are considering following Arizona's lead.

The tea partiers are the culmination of generations of Americans reinforcing a belief in the superiority of America simply by virtue of its existence. There is really nothing surprising about the birth and growth of the tea party; it is the expected progeny of a country that feeds ignorance to its youth and revises history to fit our notions of who we think we are with no regard for the truth of the past.

I think that the biggest problem with the tea partiers is that they reflect the pervasive ignorance and arrogance that characterizes this country. As a whole, we can be a pretty narrow minded and provincial lot. We have no sense of history, we view ourselves as morally superior to all other nations. Because we choose not to remember the past, we don't understand our present. In our minds we have always been great, always on the side of right, always behaved in a noble fashion. Every other nation pales in comparison. America is a legend in its own mind.  Like most legends, there is some truth in ours but our delusions of grandeur are mostly the result of smoke and mirrors. Nonetheless, we cling to the legend and meet any attempt to disavow us of that legend with anger and self-righteous indignation.

Paint it black.

By Captain Fogg

It amazes me how my fellow Floridians, so many of whose lives revolve around the rivers. lakes and coastline of the Sunshine State, so many of whom are actively concerned with keeping the natural environment natural, can still side with the polluters and despoilers when it comes to voting for Republicans who work for and ofter are developers, sugar producers and cattlemen with no vision that goes beyond this month's P&L. Will that change when the Gulf becomes a smelly dead sea, when the white sand turns to black and the drinking water runs out or will Florublicans continue the self-destructive doublethink?

It may be a week or more before the gushing well head in the Gulf is capped. The optimists say it may be months before the Gulf recovers, others say any return to life may take far longer since the oil cloud runs very deep and the dispersants used to break up the oil are toxic to the entire food chain and what settles to the bottom may leave it as hostile to life as a newly tarred section of the Interstate. Certainly the business food chains that begin with fishing and tourism will be devastated, but if you expect the Party of Business and Free Enterprise to give an oily damn, think again.

Palin and Kristol are flapping their jaws like sock puppets covering the hands of Exxon and BP trying to keep up the enthusiasm for more drilling and closer to the shore. It's about "energy security" says the big hair Runaway Governor without addressing the cost of this cleanup and the cost to all those who buy food that may now have to come from Asia and the Southern hemisphere and the cost to those who depend on non-toxic oceans.

“We believe that God shed his grace on thee. We still believe that America is exceptional.” she said while non sequitur alarms were set off around the world.

Indeed it is: exceptional in it's ability to justify being raped, cheated, pillaged and looted by the people for whom she speaks. Our security and the price of oil have little to do with the matter, it's about increased profits for companies whose profits have more than doubled in the last year, who get tax subsidies despite paying little or no US taxes. By the grace of God and Palin they'll do even better next year and it's not because the price of oil will go down or that there's enough offshore oil to make a difference or that the oil that's brought up will not be sold abroad. Far from making us more independent, it will makes us more dependent on multinational corporations with no motivation not to sell to the highest bidder; with no motivation but their own welfare.

The accident was the result of too much regulation said the more erudite but less credible Bill Kristol and we ought to do more of it and much closer to shore.

"Look, it was a bad accident but the fact is I think we get one-third of our domestic oil from the Gulf, from offshore drilling in the Gulf. We need it. We can't cut back on it,"

said Kristol as though the solution to a bad habit was increased indulgence, as though the best way to treat a dwindling resource was to use it faster. In fact saving it until later when the demand is higher may be the policy behind the fact that there is as little drilling going on as there is on leases they already have. No, we need ever riskier drilling in ever more sensitive areas because nothing is as important as using oil faster and faster. Not even honesty. Not even conservative handling of a precious asset. Just suck up more, suck it up faster and get it out there where we can burn it ever more extravagantly before the market forces of supply and demand can make us come to our senses and sell the Hummer.

Yes we can cut back on it and it has little to do with how wonderful we are or how much God loves us and Sarah Palin waves the flag, but no, it's the environmentalists who made us drill so far away from shore where it's harder to fix the blowout, says Bill. But don't look for logic in the words of either or from even oilier Rush who thinks environmentalist hippies poisoned the Gulf. Look for buck passing, shape shifting, gratuitous Obama bashing and justification for ever bigger control over our lives by the global oil cartel and the politicians and governments who work for them.

Times square terrorism

By Captain Fogg

The big question today is: how long will it take the media to patch together a reason to blame the car bomb that didn't go off in Times Square today on President Obama? I've already had e-mails to the effect that, because the Coast Guard chose, as a cost cutting method, to turn off the obsolete LORAN-C coastal navigation system last February, our "enemies" are now sure to attack us.

The rural right is going to blame it on Obama, who as they know favors the use of the police and FBI to capture terrorists instead of the Armed forces using lots of 9 billion dollar bombers -- just like the unmanly socialist wimp he is. Never mind that it works.

Of course the Pakistani Taliban has already claimed responsibility, but it's already been proved that Obama's college education was financed by Pakistani agents who knew he'd be president someday. He might just as well admit the whole thing.

Another question that's been on my mind is whether or not the two latest attempts to blow stuff up were intentionally defective. After all the real objective is to bleed us dry and turn us against each other and that's just what is happening. Give the Nigerian kid just enough powder to blow his Nigerian gonads off, park the SUV with propane tanks and a smoke bomb on a New York street and you have us all running around screaming for blood, begging to give our civil rights away and destabilizing the country without the risk of major retaliation and without spending much money. It's just conjecture, of course. I'm just sayin' as the foxy folk say.

If We Could Talk to the Animals – They Would Tell Us We’re Idiots

By Bloggingdino

Woke up this morning to headlines such as “Oil Could Gush for Months.” Now, I may be simple, but even I knew that when oil company executives and politicians were telling people that today’s oil-drilling technology is so sophisticated, we’ll never have to worry about major spills like the ones we had years ago, their words carried about as much weight as a used car salesman’s assurance about some clunker, “this baby’s sound under the hood and will get ya 25 miles to the gallon even in the city.” Do they make “Sounds Like BS to Me” hats big enough to fit a large dinosaur?  ....

Consider the Source

By Captain Fogg

So how long did you think it would take? Actually I'm surprised that Chairman Rush took so long to blame the oil rig disaster on "hardcore environmentalist wackos." He couldn't have been waiting for some evidence before making accusations of murder and terrorism since there hasn't been any and he's never let that bother him before. Besides he isn't actually making any accusations in the first place:

"I'm just, I'm just noting the timing here."

It happened on Earth Day of course. It's always so easy to say "case closed" when there isn't any case so I won't even hint that Halliburton, the recipient of unholy amounts of government subsidies, grants and contracts and with strong ties to Dick Cheney is handling the capping of the well. I'll just note who's getting rich from it.

It didn't take long either, for the "government can't be trusted" set to pledge their trust to the Arizona police never to define their "reasonable suspicion" in a way that lets them stop and harass American citizens of Hispanic origin or Hispanics with legal work papers. They don't have to worry at all, though they should be sure to have witnesses standing by, to never go out of the house without proof of citizenship and to be very, very polite to Sheriff Arpaio when he demands they stand and deliver.

There's simply no reason to worry about abuse except that the recently signed bill seems to have been drafted by Kris Kobach who is a lawyer from the Federation for American Immigration Reform , which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as an anti-immigrant hate group since 2007 and who was former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s top immigration adviser. Hey, I'm not suggesting anything, but Ashcroft isn't known for respecting the niceties of Constitutional law in matters concerning the Bill of Rights. So maybe it's constitutional, maybe it's not, maybe it's going to be hell for Hispanics in Arizona, maybe not, but I'll simply consider the source.

"Read More" (i.e. "After the Jump") Links Now Available for Long Posts

Fellow Zoners,

Octo and I have updated the blog's editing panel a bit, so now, for longer posts, you have the option of using the editing panel icon that looks like a page ripped in half (it's the sixth icon from the right) to insert a "Read More >>" link wherever you place the cursor, which makes it possible to post a substantive entry without taking up a lot of space initially.  Here's an example below:

Short descriptive text or just your first paragraph goes here.  Short descriptive text or just your first paragraph goes here. Short descriptive text or just your first paragraph goes here. Short descriptive text or just your first paragraph goes here. Short descriptive text or just your first paragraph goes here. 

Then you insert the "Read More >>" link and below it you can place the rest of your post's text.

Alice Miller 1923-2010

By Elizabeth

Alice Miller, a psychoanalyst who repositioned the family as a locus of dysfunction with her theory that parental power and punishment lay at the root of nearly all human problems, died at her home in Provence on April 14. She was 87. Her death was announced Friday by her German publisher, Suhrkamp Verlag.

Dr. Miller caused a sensation with the English publication in 1981 of her first book, “The Drama of the Gifted Child.” Originally titled “Prisoners of Childhood,” it set forth, in three essays, a simple but harrowing proposition. All children, she wrote, suffer trauma and permanent psychic scarring at the hands of parents, who enforce codes of conduct through psychological pressure or corporal punishment: slaps, spankings or, in extreme cases, sustained physical abuse and even torture.

Unable to admit the rage they feel toward their tormenters, Dr. Miller contended, these damaged children limp along through life, weighed down by depression and insecurity, and pass the abuse along to the next generation, in an unending cycle. Some, in a pathetic effort to please their parents and serve their needs, distinguish themselves in the arts or professions. The Stalins and the Hitlers, Dr. Miller later wrote, inflict their childhood traumas on millions.

“The Drama of the Gifted Child” struck a chord with mental health professionals. “Clinically, she is almost as influential as R.D. Laing,” the British psychologist Oliver James told The Observer of London in 2005. “Alice Miller changed the way people thought.”

More (via NYT).

====

I would say that Alice Miller was the most influential living psychologist, at least in my estimation. Her insights into childhood, with its joys and miseries (mostly the latter), are unparalleled.

Unfortunately, her work is not as well known as it deserves to be. If you want to read only one book on psychology, consider Miller's For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence. And if you don't want to read any psychology books, still read this one. It should be required reading for all prospective parents, teachers, and anyone who spends time with children in any capacity, as well as anyone who ever was a child him/herself.

Our own Octopus referenced Miller's work in his fine post THE SOUL MURDER OF MICHAEL JACKSON AND THE CULTURE OF VICTIM BLAME

Cross-posted from The Middle of Nowhere.

Desert Cross

"the Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgment of religion's role in society"

said Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The Cross may be an affirmation of Christian beliefs but it's also used to "honor and respect heroism." The cross he refers to of course is the one erected 75 years ago in the Mojave Desert to "honor" the dead of the First World War, including those without Christian beliefs; those whose own beliefs were inimitable to and lives diminished by those with Christian beliefs. Yes, Tony, there are and were atheists in foxholes: Jews, Muslims, animists, Unitarians and others -- and no Tony, that cross doesn't salute them be they heroes or clerk-typists: it salutes you and your religion at their expense and mine. It doesn't acknowledge that there are religious people in America, it tells you they're the ones who count most.

"Here, one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten"

continued Kennedy hoping apparently that in the passionate flaunting of murky emotional tropes we will forget that the most moving of war memorials contains nothing but names: hoping apparently that you've never been to one of those cemeteries in Europe and seen the graves marked by the Star of David and memorializing bones than didn't fight for or die to uphold Christianity or an allegedly Christian nation. The Desert Cross isn't designed to help us remember anyone but to remember Jesus of the Gospels. Waving a cross in their dead faces isn't designed to be a memento of them, but a proud rebuke toward others and another bit of puffed-up braggadocio in the same fashion as our traditional bully-boy patriotism. We're number one -- and that's because we're Christian.

What Judge Tony is saying here is that they don't matter, they don't deserve to matter; don't deserve the dignity of being buried without alien iconography. What America is hearing is that we can't spare a dime for Public TV but putting up and maintaining Christian symbols on public property is public duty because the United States of America would really be the Christian States of America God wants it to be if we hadn't allowed those people in.

"The cross is not a universal symbol of sacrifice. It is the symbol of one particular sacrifice, and that sacrifice carries deeply significant meaning for those who adhere to the Christian faith"

states Justice Steven's dissenting, and historically correct opinion, an opinion soon to retire from the bench. The symbol does not represent the United States, it does not represent all of us or describe what we're about. It does not remind us of the unnecessary and pointless slaughter of the Great War conducted by the Christian kings of Christian nations asserting Christian values. It does not remind us that we have a secular government and we designed it and maintain it to protect our individual beliefs and our right to practice our creeds and sects and religions without government interference and coercion, be it subtle or overt.

Once again we have been made aware of how precarious is our freedom of conscience, our freedom from interference in our private beliefs and our right to be included as Americans in a state that is under relentless religious pressure to be exclusive. We have a Court willing, it seems, to reevaluate and revisit many things we thought were decided and that would be a great many things indeed if next year's Court leaned more heavily toward giving our government a more religious stance when it comes to matters of morality. We can expect some serious fervor surrounding the next appointment. If you value religious freedom and indeed if you value religion itself, maybe now's the time to pray.