Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Comments were again inexplicably disabled on Owen's Trumka post. Fixed now.

Posted by Michael J. Smith on Monday March 8 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Behold the agony of Blanche Lincoln:

"Caught in a surge of antigovernment sentiment, [Arkansas senator] Lincoln has been blasted by conservatives for allowing health care legislation to proceed, and has already attracted a slate of potential Republican challengers. At the same time, in a state with a more centrist tradition than most others in the South, she has become a target of the left for opposing a government-run public health care option, easier organizing rules for unions and regulation to fight global warming.

Not only do polls show her behind several of the Republicans, she now also faces a challenger in the May 18 Democratic primary, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter... The Sierra Club is running radio advertisements against Mrs. Lincoln and even Emily’s List, which raises money for the election of Democratic women who support abortion rights, joined the pile-on last week, reminding followers that it stopped supporting Mrs. Lincoln, who is generally a supporter of abortion rights, after she voted to ban a form of late-term abortion in 1999."

"Mrs. Lincoln retains the support of... former President Bill Clinton and Wesley K. Clark, the retired Army general."

His endorsers:

"Calling Mr. Halter “a true progressive,” MoveOn.org and other liberal groups quickly raised $1.1 million for him... four unions pledged to spend $1 million each to help him win.The Sierra Club is running radio advertisements against Mrs. Lincoln and even Emily’s List, which raises money for the election of Democratic women who support abortion rights, joined the pile-on."

Can we at least hope the seat goes red-meat Republican come fall? Not that that would be any improvement; but it would provide a salutary blend of justice and entertainment, something we don't see much of any more, now that public hangings have fallen into disfavor.

Posted by Owen Paine on Monday March 8 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)

And no, I don't mean the football team:

Icelanders reject full repayment to British, Dutch caught in bank collapse

LONDON -- Icelanders this weekend resoundingly rejected a plan to reimburse overseas depositors after the failure of an online Icelandic bank, a rare public referendum on the repayment of a foreign liability that could fuel further concerns over debt problems in Europe.

A whopping 93 percent of Icelanders rebuffed a government push to reimburse Britain and the Netherlands $5.3 billion....

Voters reveled in a carnival atmosphere following the vote, shooting fireworks into the air and raising placards saying "Sorry Darling, No Deal" -- a reference to Britain's Alistair Darling, the finance minister....

Darling conceded on Sunday that it could now take "many, many years" before London would see any reimbursement. But he also seemed to strike a conciliatory note, saying both Britain and the Netherlands are willing to be flexible.

It's always been head-for-the-hills time in northwest Europe when the Vikings find themselves seized by a "carnival atmosphere".

I happened to be living in Ireland during one of the intermittent "cod wars" between the Icelanders and the Brits. It would have done your heart good to hear the Irish cheering on the Icelanders -- all those unfortunate misunderstandings with Thorgest et al. quite forgotten.

According to a story I heard several times there -- though I've never been able to confirm it -- there was at least one occasion when an Icelandic gunboat loaded up its guns with potatoes and broadsided an English vessel. Talk about bangers and mash! The characteristic Irish narrative genius brought vividly to the mind's eye an image of the Brit warship and its spiffy officers slathered inches-thick with potato puree, flavored with a soupcon of cordite.

Posted by Michael J. Smith on Monday March 8 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Okay, it's time I put together a links page on this site. I'm soliciting nominations. Leave suggestions in a comment or send email -- stopmebeforeivoteagain {at} yahoo.com. I'd be especially interested in hearing about sites that link to us.

Posted by Michael J. Smith on Sunday March 7 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

The executive council of the AFL-CIA, backing its charging fearless leader Ferdinand Trumka, has issued a 5-point jobs plan -- and as far as Knothole Paine here is concerned, at least one of the points sucks hot rivets.

Here's all 5. Can you pick out the banjo? Hint: it's not even number 5:

1. Extending current federal supplemental unemployment benefits programs to prevent a downward spiral as families fall into bankruptcy and lose their health care and their homes to foreclosure.
2. Investing the money to meet the $2.2 trillion in unmet infrastructure needs, while including prevailing wage protections and strong Buy America provisions.
3. Helping state and local governments meet pressing needs to overcome an estimated $180 billion shortfall in the fiscal year 2011 and $588 billion over the next four years.
4. Putting people back to work doing work that needs to be done by preserving good public jobs that provide vital services and capacity for building strong communities. In addition, expansion of vital services in targeted areas can reduce unemployment and provide infrastructure for economic growth.
5. Easing the credit crunch for small-and medium-sized businesses by establishing a fund to lend TARP money to small-and medium-sized businesses at commercial rates, managed by the community banks left out of the Wall Street bailout, with the banks taking first-dollar risk

For that matter, point 3 looks like special consideration horseshit, too. God, I hate public-sector unions as currently constituted, almost as much as the construction trades crowd, the perennial establishment butt boys of the "movement".

Ahh, but I say too much, don't I. Where's my party muzzle when I need it? Oh yeah, we're in 'post-party' times here in America, and how awful that is, especially for big-mouth egg drops like me, here at the SMBIVA bugle.

Father Smiff allows too wide a range of flourishes to this reckless irresolute copperhead.

------------------

(*) I never shall forget the indulgence with which [Johnson] treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature....

This reminds me of the ludicrous account which he gave Mr. Langton, of the despicable state of a young Gentleman of good family. 'Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats.' And then in a sort of kindly reverie, he bethought himself of his own favourite cat, and said, 'But Hodge shan't be shot; no, no, Hodge shall not be shot.'

-- Boswell

Posted by Owen Paine on Sunday March 7 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

“It’s the Americans,” said Gen. Mohamed Gelle Kahiye, the new chief of Somalia’s military, who said he recently shared plans about coming military operations with American advisers. “They’re helping us.”

That American assistance could be crucial to the effort by Somalia’s government to finally reassert its control over the capital and bring a semblance of order to a country that has been steeped in anarchy for two decades. For the Americans, it is part of a counterterrorism strategy to deny a haven to Al Qaeda, which has found sanctuary for years in Somalia’s chaos and has helped turn this country into a magnet for jihadists from around the world.

More, so much more.

Something I recall from early exposure to radical, not "free alterations", feminism is the effect of a patriarchal culture on the males. There's inevitably a proliferation of socially retarded, deeply angry, power-hungry dorks who will never get anywhere near real power. They have to content themselves with proximity to it. The more cruelly stunted waste their days on witless, technocratic exegesis and apologetics for their bosses' idiot hegemony schemes. They're as completely infantilized as their superiors, whose distinguishing characteristics are ambition and a greater indifference to other people's suffering.

Capitalism produces an endless supply of this intellectual cannon fodder and the Democrats are second to none in their mastery of the mindset. It's probably best to consider the Republicans the acting-out version of the ideal product.

Posted by Al Schumann on Saturday March 6 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Just like old times. The highly touted return of the rule of law must yield to exigent circumstances. Or maybe not. But it's still the Republicans' fault if and when the tortured terror suspects may or may not have to be tried in military kangaroo courts.

The Democrats' neurotic mockery of proceduralism is the dry, sadistic, technocratic version of the Republicans' sweaty, sadistic, technocratic mockery of proceduralism. Neither of them can produce anything remotely plausible as justice. Order is out of reach for them both, because they have no idea what it is. So...

Why not simply murder them? Cut through the dithering! Murder is sufficiently spiteful, and surely there's room in the president's "Just War" theory for a murder or four. He could authorize a predator drone if that would sit better with the focus groups.

Posted by Al Schumann on Friday March 5 08:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

Nobody's in favor of book-burning or anything, but there are words and phrases which, when you encounter them, tell you, or should tell you, "Read no further -- this is twaddle."

Among these expressions are "extremist", "progressive," and "spiritual."

"Progressive" is a word used by liberals who don't want to admit they're liberals, and "spiritual" is a word used by religious people who don't want to admit they're religious. ("Spiritual progressive" is therefore of course a quadrate term in pusillanimous euphemism.)

But of the three, "extremist" is perhaps the deadest giveaway. It's never used approvingly; and as criticism, what exactly does it mean, except that anything that's any distance from the dead center is ipso-facto bad?

These reflections were suggested by an item in Alternet, from the deeply concerned pen of one Mark Potok:

Right-Wing Rage: Hate Groups, Vigilantes and Conspiracists on the Verge of Violence
The radical right has caught fire, as broad-based anger over the past year has ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation.

The radical right caught fire last year, as broad-based populist anger at political, demographic and economic changes in America ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation.

Hate groups stayed at record levels -- almost 1,000 -- despite the total collapse of the second largest neo-Nazi group in America. Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80 percent, adding some 136 new groups during 2009. And, most remarkably of all, so-called "Patriot" groups -- militias and other organizations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose “one-world government” on liberty-loving Americans -- came roaring back after years out of the limelight.

The anger seething across the American political landscape -- over racial changes in the population, soaring public debt and the terrible economy, the bailouts of bankers and other elites, and an array of initiatives by the relatively liberal Obama Administration that are seen as "socialist" or even "fascist" -- goes beyond the radical right.

It's always been my view that actual violence is more of a problem than potential violence. Thus the daily actual violence at home and abroad practiced by the "relatively liberal" Obama administration agitates me a good deal more than the potential violence of some Teabagger crackpot. But then, I'm an extremist.

Posted by Michael J. Smith on Thursday March 4 09:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)

I've always found Rabbi Michael Lerner faintly sick-making -- there's something goo-eyed and clammy-palmed, something damp-browed and flabby-mouthed, something stands-too-close and breathes-in-your-face about his authorial persona. I can't explain it, his stuff just makes my skin crawl.

A couple of days ago he put a link on his blog at Tikkun magazine -- and by the way, I know what the word means, but using it to name anything shows a remarkably bad ear -- to a rather fun piece by Chris Hedges. Hedges wrote:

Ralph Nader Was Right About Barack Obama

We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives.

... The timidity of the left exposes its cowardice, lack of a moral compass and mounting political impotence. The left stands for nothing. The damage Obama and the Democrats have done is immense. But the damage liberals do the longer they beg Obama and the Democrats for a few scraps is worse. It is time to walk out on the Democrats.

My recommending the article is not meant to be an endorsement of Chris’s position any more than our circulation of other articles is meant as an endorsement of them. (Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives are nonprofits that are legally bound to refrain from endorsing political candidates or political parties, though we can certainly engage in discussions about them.) ...

On the other hand, in the case of Chris Hedges, he says so much that is true and insightful that we don’t want to distance ourselves too far from his courageous stands,

Apparently he misjudged his distance. One imagines a deluge of rancorous phone calls from apoplectic yentas of both sexes -- canceled subscriptions -- vivid Yiddish maledictions turning the air blue. The next day's dawn saw Lerner backing water so fast his oars were just an indistinct blur, like a hummingbird's wings:

Many of the specific failures highlighted by the article I sent out yesterday by Chris Hedges criticizing the performance of the Obama Administration are legitimate points. But the way Hedges's positions are stated, and the conclusions drawn from them are not the path of spiritual progressives, in my view.There was too much anger in his statement overshadowing our spiritual progressive commitment to compassion and a spirit of generosity toward others with whose politics we disagree. And not enough sympathy for the problems anyone would face trying to get elected as President and to repair the damage of the past 30 years....

Hedges' analysis and particularly the harsh way he expresses it leads to despair and to the "blame game" that has little usefulness in politics. Our difference here is partly the difference between two styles of prophetic leadership: one that rails against injustice, the other that moves beyond the legitimate outrage and seeks to find a way to change the reality.

Posted by Michael J. Smith on Wednesday March 3 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

There are three vacant board seats to fill at the Fed, including the vice chairman's, now held by veteran stooge and lickspittle Donny Kohn, pictured above washing down... washing down... oh never mind, I'll spare Father Smiff's blushes.

Three seats out of 7 -- that's a big chunk of the central bank vote. Okay, so you got 5 regional chairman that get to vote too, every time, but... maybe the right sorta folks could start to turn that Wall Street shithouse around -- maybe openly and clearly dissent from the banker line.

Yikes, baby -- just think -- get some easy-money types in there and....

But alas -- who's said to be the boys Obama has sent out with the lamp of truth in search of these new spirits? You guessed it: Tim and Larry. Delightful, no?

Barking crow Jimmy Kwak over at Baseline Scenario sez he's perplexed by this:

"So now the question is, who will fill Kohn’s seat — and the other two empty seats on the Board of Governors? The Board is supposed to have seven members, and they matter because they have seven of the twelve seats on the Open Market Committee, which sets the fed funds rate. Business Week says that the search is being led by Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, and that the likely goal is to find people to back Bernanke...This confuses me for a few reasons"

Here's Mr Kwak's undoubtedly bull's-eye query: "Does this mean that Obama is going to appoint three centrists who follow the [recent] central banking orthodoxy of putting inflation control over economic growth, and who oppose tighter regulation of banks?" Here's the answer:

YES!

But here's why I read Jimmy every day:

"I think the deification of the Fed chair in the past two decades has been a decidedly bad thing."

Posted by Owen Paine on Wednesday March 3 09:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)