- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
The Country That Never Was. John McCain and Sarah Palin keep presenting themselves as "conservatives", implicitly protecting the best of our culture, the proverbial "good old days". Alas, theirs is a make-believe past. In the "Real America" — not Palin's make-believe 'real America', but the actual Real United States — some lived well at the expense of others. The pretense among this group of hidden racists is that blacks have stolen the future, demanding not just their fair share of the Land of Opportunity but special privileges that whites do not share in. They never did anything wrong, but they're being punished anyway. Let's talk about The Good Old Days, just a quick summary of the most salient points. Sean Hannity and other subhuman scum of the Radical Right are now claiming that Barack Obama compared the United States to Nazi Germany, and reacted furiously to the suggestion that the United States was ever in the slitest comparable to Nazi Germany. What Obama actually said was that at the very time we were fiting Nazism, some Americans felt that our indignation at the Nazi notion of a "super race" was more than a little hypocritical, considering how "Negroes" were treated both at home and in the military. I wrote this email to an older white acquaintance who passed along the Hannity bullsh(asterisk), indignant that Obama was presumably implying that the United States had concentration camps.

In WWII, there were "internment" camps for the Japanese (which may, admittedly, have been warranted); lynchings in the South; segregation even in the Federal Government; legislators and governments policing people's bedrooms; poll taxes and other devices used to prevent blacks from votiing; cops using rubber hoses to beat false confessions out of people in the back room of police stations; and on and on. The United States has NEVER been perfect and NEVER lived up to its ideals as stated in its noblest documents. Even paper money, starting in 1957, starting pushing religion at people who don't want it, putting "In God We Trust" on the money that everybody, including atheists, agnostics, and polytheists who do not believe in a single god, must use; and the Pledge of Allegiance, which initially made no reference to God, was ALTERED to make it a religious oath.
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To pretend that blacks did not suffer from both political and malicious economic oppression in the South is absurd. Blacks were NOT allowed equal rights in some parts of major cities in the North, probably not even in Newark. My mother told us of a kid in our neighborhood named Jackie Condari, an Italian, who tanned so dark in the summer that he was barred from the YMCA swimming pool in the Palisades Park area of Bergen County, in the Fifties. Gay men were regularly harassed on the street, and their bars raided in mass arrests for no good reason. Please do not pretend that aggrieved minorities made it all up.
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I grew up in the Fifties too. It was fine if you were white, straight, and middle class. This was a HORRIBLE country for blacks, even in parts of the North. Have you forgotten the four little black girls killed by a bomb lobbed into their CHURCH? Have you forgotten the images of redneck police siccing German shepherds on peaceful demonstrators, or using fire hoses to chase 'niggers' off the streets who just wanted to "petition for redress of grievances"? Have you forgotten the murders of two white NY civil-rights workers and one local in Mississippi because they wanted to register people to vote? You're 'remembering' a country that never existed. I was there. I was also part of the gay-rights movement in the Sixties, and I see that even now, 39 years after Stonewall, there are still kids being beaten for being gay, and so terrified of letting their nature be known that they commit suicide. This country has had problems at every step of its history, and in many ways is better now than ever before, tho in other regards (the sickening violence of media and video games, the horrendous gap between rich and poor, which is FAR WORSE now than in 1950, the appalling toll of drugs, etc.) the Nation is worse. Wanting to fix the problems and extend socioeconomic equality is what the Founding Fathers set us on the road to doing when they broke from Britain, an astoundingly "radical" idea when it was first proposed.

Why Didn't McCain Make Admiral? There is a saying that "All politics is local". But as regards why people run for office, all politics is personal. John McCain isn't the leader of a movement. He is an abysmally flawed human being who is driven by his own very personal demons to pass his father and grandfather, both of whom were admirals. He, however, never made admiral, and Senator isn't good enuf. You'd think that being one of 100 members of the world's most distinguished deliberative and legislative body would qualify as better than admiral, but it's not to John McCain. A Senator can't order anyone to do anything. Oh, he can issue instructions to his staff, and fire them if they refuse. But they can refuse, or quit rather than obey. Not good enuf. An admiral can order subordinates around on pain of court-martial and even execution. Now, that's power.
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Moreover, there are far fewer highest-level admirals than Senators.

U.S. Code of law explicitly limits the total number of four-star admirals that may be on active duty at any given time. The total number of active duty flag officers is capped at 216 for the Navy. For the Navy, no more than 16.3% of the service's active duty flag officers may have more than two stars, and no more than 25% of those may have four stars. This corresponds to 9 four-star admirals.

But President, "Commander-in-Chief", outranks everyone in the military. John McCain was born on a military base. He was raised in a military family. He went to college at a military academy (Annapolis). Then he entered the active-duty military himself. He stayed in the military until age 45, and retired as a captain, one step below admiral. Why didn't he stay in long enuf to become admiral? Was he advised that he was never going to be made admiral? Was it a question of compulsory retirement? If it was not compulsory retirement, was it a choice he made only once he understood, from what he had been told or his own gut feeling, that he was never going to make admiral? It would be interesting to know, but no one in media who could investigate and tell us, seems to be interested in the answer. Wikipedia says only this.

McCain decided to leave the Navy. It was doubtful whether he would ever be promoted to the rank of full admiral, as he had poor annual physicals and had been given no major sea command. His chances of being promoted to rear admiral were better, but McCain declined that prospect, as he had already made plans to run for Congress and said he could "do more good there."

"Poor annual physicals" suggests a simple disability disqualification. But the fact that he "had been given no major sea command" does not necessarily mean that the reason for that was his physical condition. Certainly if McCain wanted people to think his Vietnamese-inflicted injuries were to blame, he could accept retirement without raising suspicion that he just wasn't fit to command. But is that the real reason?
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Does it matter? That depends upon the answer to the question "Why didn't John McCain make admiral?" If the answer is that the Navy regarded him as lacking in judgment, unqualified for higher command, mentally unstable, too excitable to make rational choices under pressure — anything like that — we really need to know. Indeed, even if the Navy regarded him as unfit for higher rank because he was morally unfit, due to multiple adulteries, or because those adulteries would embarrass the military, which likes the sound of the phrase "an officer and a gentleman", we should know that too. Perhaps public opinion as to the disqualifying nature of multiple adultery has changed, and if that is the real reason John McCain was denied promotion, we can know it but discount it as an antiquated standard. But we should still know. If McCain was denied the rank of admiral merely because he was physically unit, not mentally nor morally, one has to wonder how physically fit the typical desk-commanding admiral has to be. Surely there are admirals who don't have to go to sea but can serve in the Pentagon, Naval War College, or some other spot where physical fitness does not matter.
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Imam Jeremiah Wright. Larry King says that a poll shows that a quarter of Texans believe that Barack Obama is a Moslem. These are, curiously, exactly the same people who complain about his sitting, for 20 years, in CHURCH listening to the "radical" black minister Jeremiah Wright. Huh? So Jeremiah Wright is Obama's IMAM? Why is he called "Reverend" Wright? If Jeremiah Wright is to taint Barack Obama, then you have to believe that Barack Obama sat in a Christian church for 20 years, was married by a Christian minister, had his children baptized by a Christian minister, but is somehow still a Moslem. Hm. You can't have it both ways. Either Obama is a Moslem and did not HAVE a Christian minister, OR he did have a Christian minister with whom he was tite, who was a black militant hostile to the United States. Choose one. A sane person cannot believe two diametrically opposed things (such as that Adam and Eve were the only people at the beginning of the world but their son Cain married a woman who was not his sister, not his mother). The paired assertions that Obama is a Moslem and his minister was an anti-American black militant are intended to influence fundamentalist and intolerant 'Christians' (that has to be put in quotes because real Christianity is not about intolerance), the kind of people who pretend to believe in the literal truth of the Bible, even when the Bible confutes itself, as in the Adam-and-Eve vs. Cain-marrying-a-woman-from-Nod nonsense. Don't expect rationality or logic from such people. In the immortal words of 'Archie Bunker', "Faith is believing something that nobody in his right mind would believe." So they will say Obama was a "secret Moslem" who only pretended to be a Christian, and titled one of his books after something that his Christian minister said only to maintain his 'cover'. You see, Obama knew, 20 years ago, that he would someday be running for President of the United States, and that a Moslem would be unacceptable to the American electorate, so he posed as a Christian, in a one-man sleeper cell of a 'terrorist' Moslem organization devoted to the destruction of "America". Yeah, that's the ticket!
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Never mind that, unlike John McCain, Obama believes that a person can be both a decent family man and an Arab (a term many ignorant Americans use interchangeably with "Moslem"). Remember McCain's taking the microfone away from a woman who said Obama is an Arab, and 'defending' Obama by saying he's not, but is "a decent family man"? Anyone else would have responded, "No, he's the child of an African father and American mother, with no Arab ancestry. And he's a Christian, not a Moslem." McCain didn't say any of that, only that no, he's not an Arab (Moslem). He's a decent family man!
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So what would a decent family man who was Moslem do if he entertained the aspiration to be President? Would he convert, and betray his faith? Or would he fite the good fite to educate people about Islam at the same time as he ran for President? What better rostrum from which to teach? The only way you could think Obama was a secret Moslem while a public Christian in the congregation of a CONTROVERSIAL minister is if you believed that he was too stupid to know that belonging to the congregation of a "radical" minister is no safer for a future political career than admitting to being a Moslem. So Obama would have to be stupid more than just faithless to his true faith. But, then, that's no stretch for people who feel Obama is a black devil out to paint the President's mansion black, destroy the Nation, and turn the world over to terrorists. No stretch at all. Those people (not to be confused with "That one") are John McCain's base. Are you enjoying the company you keep, Mr. McCain, white trash and morons? If so, think about spending the next four to eight years with them chattering in your ear every day. I guess that beats hearing your father's and grandfather's voices saying endlessly inside your head, "You're a failure. You didn't make admiral. We are very disappointed in you."
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Water Over the Bridge. Ben Stein did something on Larry King Live today that I also have done, mix up the two expressions "water over the dam" and "water under the bridge" to "water over the bridge". Yes, sometimes water does go over a bridge, and wash it away. But that's not what we usually mean by either of the expressions both Ben Stein and I sometimes ram together. I hasten to mention that I generally will not listen to anything Ben Stein says, but tonite on Larry King not only did he say some things that were out of keeping with what I hate about him, but his confused metaphor also endeared him to me. I also had to side with him when Arianna Huffington mischaracterized something he said (that Barack Obama is as much a political genius as was George Wallace, who, Stein said, at age 4 was asking neighbors on the street if there was anything he could do for them). So tonite, if on no other nite into the future, I am content to listen to a program in which Ben Stein participates. We'll see about tomorrow.
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Ben Stein lost me again when, in the same show, he said that John McCain sacrificed his youth and his health for us. Oh? What would his father and grandfather have said if little John McCain had said, "You know, I don't want anything to do with the military. What was right for you is not right for me. I want to be a florist." — eh? John McCain didn't CHOOSE military service. It was chosen for him. It was expected of him. It would have taken a supreme exertion of character to REFUSE military service. But John McCain doesn't have that kind of character. He claims to be a maverick now, but little Johnny McCain went into the military not because he made a personal, conscious choice out of all the occupations available to him but because heavy family obligations compelled him to do what he was 'born to do'. Imagine the conversation:

"Son, you are part of a proud family tradition. We expect you to carry on that tradition, and will be very proud to see you in uniform."

"But Dad, I don't like guns. I don't like uniforms. I want to be a florist!"

Yeah, right. That could have happened.
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Alibaba Stealing American Jobs. Very few Americans have, until now, heard of Alibaba.com, but now it is running a commercial about how American small businesses can find manufacturers in China to handle their products. So now, Alibaba brags, even small businesses can operate on the world stage. Except of course that all those manufacturing operations from American small businesses will migrate to Communist China! And all the jobs that American small businesses might generate in the United States will instead go to Communist China, including not just manufacturing but also order-handling and probably also advertising and other matters, like technical support and fone banks. Great. Now American small businesses are to turn their back on their own country too, just like the Big Boys, the Transnational Traitors To Every Country whose only loyalty is to themselves. This is "progress" in the (Republican) Age of Globalization.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,189— for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:21 PM

 
Riots on Election Nite? It's looking as tho the racist scum of the South and white suburbs and some white rural areas may defeat Barack Obama, aided by wilful lies by the despicably dishonest John McCain and Sarah Palin about Obama's tax plan. What happens if racism defeats hope? Will the millions of blacks energized by the Obama candidacy just accept gracefully their defeat by racism? Or can we expect riots? If riots, where? How violent? Violence directed against whom? Will blacks in states that did vote for Obama still riot in Blue States because they can't reach Red States? Have the Obama campaign, civil rights organizations, and law-enforcement agencies developed plans to deal with riots?
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And what of riots in Red States if Obama wins? Certainly there has been a lot of hateful rhetoric from Radical Rightwingers with loaded words that could be seen as code for violent insurrection if a 'nigger' gets elected, aided, again, by the monsters McCain and Palin. There are a lot of guns in Red States, and a lot of violent rednecks who have just barely been held in check in the past 40 years. Is this the last straw for the "white trash" who see the whole damned country being "stolen" from them? They feel entitled to control things even if they don't do anything to advance themselves. They don't go to college, they don't improve their job skills, they don't save, they don't plan for the future. But when other groups move up, they feel they are moving down. And it's those other people's fault. "The damned Gummint has been greasing the skids under poor white folk and giving everything we used to have to them damned niggas. Are we going to stand still for this? What are we going to do about it?"
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Rick Sanchez of CNN read aloud some emails during his show today from people who are appalled at the blatant racism they hear all around them, or decipher from the coded language used by Rightwingers in media. Phrases like "I thought we were better than that" came thru their worried emails. They are right to worry.
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Have the governors of agitated areas put their National Guard commanders on alert for trouble on Election Nite? If not, why not? "We don't want to give people ideas"? Saying you are prepared to put down any cockamamie insurrection, a latter-day Johnny Reb uprising, should not incite violence but put people on notice that you're not playing along and you're not playing, period, but will use all necessary force to maintain public order and defend the electoral process, the Constitution of the United States, in effect everywhere in the Nation, and the unity of the United States against demented talk of a new secessionism. Make no mistake: the Red State white trash who paint Confederate Battle Flags on their pickups or mount a rebel flag under the gun rack in the back of the cab may very well be so delusional and so certain that "white people" — meaning of course uneducated, lazy white trash who feel their racial entitlement trumps education or job skills — are being "sold down the river" by "Warshington", a mispronunciation probably brought to North America by the Scotch-Irish, who are the hardest of the hardcore Radical Right. Those Protestant Scots who helped conquer and hold northern Ireland for Britain for centuries, have a history of militarism and interpersonal violence that they are proud of! They may be so deluded — and drunk, or meth-addled — that they take to the streets or take up their weapons to fite for "white people's rights". Congressman John Lewis was absolutely right to warn that he was hearing echoes of George Wallace's campaign for President:

As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all[.]

Naturally, the pussy Barack Obama substantially disowned Lewis's remarks. It might almost be funny if they came around to bite him in the ass — or put a bullet thru his head.
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Assassination is almost as American as elections. John McCain needs to worry about that almost as much as does Obama. On November 4th, we shall see if we are as sophisticated, democratic, and even-tempered as we like to think ourselves.

Email to Britain. I wrote to a colleague in northern England today who seems sanguine about the election. I'm not.

Alas, I'm unhappy with both major-party choices once again — which is why I and my late friend Stanley [Hauser] started our own little party — and will be voting for Ralph Nader. Given the nature of our electoral system, the popular vote doesn't matter, so if your state is certain to go for a given candidate, if you want to register a protest vote, you can do so safely.
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I'm concerned that racism and tribalism will trump good sense, and McCain will be elected. He has shown himself to have absolutely no principles, but the Democrats won't call him a baldface liar, adulterer, gigolo, and male golddigger, nor ask aloud why it is that John McCain couldn't make Admiral (unlike his father and grandfather; the real reason he wants to be President) but we're supposed to make him Commander-in-Chief. I often feel that the Democrats are an imitation party of the Opposition that puts up a show rather than a fite. McCain-Palin are making traction with their LIES that Obama wants to take money from "working families" to redistribute it to unknown persons (presumably to layabout 'niggers'), and Obama-Biden don't say "That is a flat-out, baldface lie. We want to take money from the rich and super-rich and use it to cut taxes on everybody else, including essentially all the people McCain is trying to rile with his lies about Joe The Plumber (that means you, you white-trash losers!)." Perhaps that last bit of text would be impolitic, but perhaps we should just say plainly, "Listen, McCain wants you to think that you don't want to raise taxes on the rich because you might someday be rich. But let's face facts. The great preponderance of you will NEVER be rich. The rich will see to that. So why are you so eager to lower taxes on the rich and super-rich — the people like John McCain, with his 7 houses and 13 cars — who don't care about YOU at all, not even whether you are thrown out of your ONE house or die because you can't afford an operation that would save your life? You are WHITE TRASH to them, and they HATE you. They are LAFFING AT YOU behind your back, laffing at how easily you can be manipulated into voting to lower THEIR taxes and make them even richer, even as YOU fall deeper into debt every year — debt that they own, and on which they charge you outrageous interest! Wake up, you f* morons! We're on YOUR side. McCain is one of the rich. Count his houses. Count his cars. How on Earth can you think he's one of you?"

Idiotic Subtitles. The 24-hour newschannels apparently have no idea what people need and want to know. Over and over I see interviews in which the person speaking is not identified in the space where such ID could easily rest, in a group of text lines as much as four high. Rather, the ID is flashed on and then taken OFF, in order to leave a description of the general news item the discussion concerns. We can tell from what the person is saying what the topic is. We cannot, however, tell from what he is saying who he is. If anything is to be put up only momentarily and then removed, it is the topic, not the ID.
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These text subtitles and crawls are way out of control. Much too much information is offered, each bit of which may cancel out others by distracting us. People CANNOT multitask without loss of attention and loss of comprehension. The pretense is that we can, and so some morons read and write text messages while DRIVING, with the result that they have accidents that KILL people. There are minor distractions we can handle and others we cannot. Listening to music while driving is something most people can handle. Talking on a cellfone while driving, not so much. Text messaging while driving, damned near impossible. Even changing the channel on the radio or changing a disk in the CD player while driving can cause fatal accidents.
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Altho being distracted by one stream of information, be it spoken or written, from what is being presented on other streams during a news program may not produce fatal accidents, it assuredly reduces the understanding we take away. The mind may even cross-relate unrelated things because they happen to be perceived at the same time. So not only do you lose full comprehension of the main topic being discussed, but you may actually be confused as to why an extraneous thought intrudes upon you when you're trying to recapitulate an interview, in thinking back on what you've heard. Too much information can end up meaning that we come away with too little real knowledge.
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Moreover, I have now seen on at least two different newschannels "THE HEADLINE ...THE HEADLINE ...THE HEADLINE..." on the news crawl, as the people who are supposed to be feeding actual information where "THE HEADLINE" appears can't keep up. When that happens, the crawl should simply go blank until actual headlines are inserted, not show the incompetence of the technicians and news staff by displaying text that might as well read "WE'RE MORONS ...WE'RE MORONS ...WE'RE MORONS...".
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,486 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:52 PM

 
Media Asleep to Republicans' Supreme Hypocrisy: The People's Republic of Alaska. Democrats have allowed John McCain to decry Barack Obama's plan to tax the rich and super-rich at higher rates in order to give tax relief, or more (paychecks for people so disadvantaged by Republican economics that they don't have enuf income to tax), as "socialist", a "giveaway". They apparently do not understand that everything Obama has proposed for the Nation, Sarah Palin has already done for Alaskans. And she wasn't even the first.
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Alaskans pay no state taxes. None. They pay no state income tax, no state sales tax, no state property tax. They pay NO STATE TAXES. But they all receive a check from the Alaska State Treasury, and have done so since 1977, when the "Permanent Fund" of revenues from oil companies was first established (when Sarah Palin was 13 years old). She did not establish the Permanent Fund. But she did raise the contribution to it from the oil companies. In short, Sarah Palin, darling of the Radical Right, RAISED TAXES ON BUSINESS in order to SEND CHECKS TO PEOPLE WHO DID NOT PAY TAXES. John McCain has praised Sarah Palin for raising taxes on business. John McCain has praised Sarah Palin for redistributing wealth from oil companies to every single Alaska resident, even tho NONE of them paid Alaska state taxes. Not one. Did I make that plain enuf? NO ALASKAN PAYS ALASKA STATE TAXES, BUT ALL ALASKANS RECEIVE A CHECK FROM THE ALASKA STATE TREASURY.
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Why is that OK to John McCain, but a comparable program, but less inclusive (only SOME Americans rather than every single one, to receive a check from the Federal Government from the moneys gathered from the rich and super-rich), at the Federal level is "socialist" "class warfare" and "redistribution of wealth"?
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Why are the media such PUSSIES in pointing all of this out? Sarah Palin is a COMMUNIST, according to the standards of the Republican spin machine. Nail her for it, and show the Republican Party to be a bunch of lying hypocrites, and the entire Republican campaign a Them-against-Us tribalist (un)civil war that casts decent, loyal Americans in certain parts of the country as Communists trying to steal from "working families" in order to give their money to, to, — to whom, exactly? "Niggers"?
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I have, finally, heard a very few people, like Chris Mathews on MSNBC, use the word "tribal" in relation to this election. I said weeks ago that tribalism is the actual essence of the so-called "Radical Right", and it is a misunderstanding of the dynamics to attribute to the Radical Right anything like principle. As the whole Alaska-vs.-Lower 49 thing in regard to government checks being sent to people who did not pay taxes illustrates, principle has absolutely NOTHING to do with anything as regards the attitudes of the Radical Right. Liberals have principles. Radical Rightists have only tribe. Colin Powell was a provisional member of the tribe: included only as long as he cleaved absolutely rigidly to the stances of the tribe. Once he "betrayed" the tribe and showed "his true colors" (yes, that does mean race), he was instantly drummed out of the tribe. No one should have been surprised by that, but some people in media seem to have been so surprised. Or were they merely feigning surprise?
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The Republicans have been extraordinarily efficacious at inducing poor "white trash" into keeping themselves poor in order that the rich might become ever more obscenely rich. They have persuaded stupid losers that they don't want to raise taxes on the rich because they might someday be rich themselves, and they surely wouldn't want to pay higher taxes once they do become rich.
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Why haven't Democrats told white trash, in so many words, that they are being played for fools by their "betters"?
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Why don't Democrats say, palinly (oops — I suppose that should be "plainly", tho "Palinly" works at least as well):

If you are 35 years old or older and are not already rich, there is essentially no chance in hell that you will EVER be rich. If you are less than 30 years old but have not achieved an economically useful degree from a prestige college, there is essentially no chance in hell that you will ever be rich. If you are not yet in college, and have no way to cover the costs of college, and cannot get a scholarship, the chances that you will be rich are between few and none. Quite the contrary, if you go to college and have to pay for it yourself thru student loans, you will burden your life for the foreseeable future with thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars of debt that you can never escape, because bankruptcy no longer exists for individuals — it was abolished by George Bush; and now every individual must pay every cent they "owe" — and even if there were such a thing as bankruptcy that erases debt without repayment (which there is NOT), student loans are not included in the debts you can erase. Rather, you will be hounded to the end of your life to repay student loans, even if you fail to achieve a degree but rack up a hundred thousand dollars in debt in the attempt to get a degree that, for some reason or other, you do not get. No, EVERYTHING IS STACKED AGAINST YOU. If you are not rich now; if your parents are not rich now; if you do not now have or are not absolutely certain to secure a degree in a field that guarantees a very high income, high enuf to pay off all your student loans in a very short time, you will NEVER BE RICH. The Republican rich are playing you for a fool. Don't be a fool. Don't believe the lies. The rich want taxes on the rich to be low not so you can have low taxes when you become rich but so they can have low taxes now, because they ARE rich. They know you will never be rich, but they believe that you are too STUPID to realize that you will never be rich, because they have seen to it that the structures of society are such that almost only the rich will be rich, with a tiny infusion of unusually creative people whose dreams align with the economic reality that the rich have created, in the economy and in the government that should, but does not, regulate the economy.

Democrats should tell their huge crowds that if they are not now rich and their parents were not rich and they do not now have and are not likely to get a job-specific degree that will guarantee them an income greater than the deep debt it cost to get it, they will NEVER be rich. If the crowd be 10,000 strong, tell them that if they do not meet that trio of exceptions, they will never be rich, so that in a crowd of 10,000, it will be extraordinary good luck if even 10 people become rich (and that counts people who will win the lottery). All the rest are consigned to modest economic success, or economic misery, for the rest of their life — unless Democrats win office in November.
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Will Democrats burst the bubble of absurdly unrealistic expectations, to tell people that Republicans are playing them for fools in inducing them to vote against their own self-interest? If they don't, they could well lose this election.Sometimes you really do have to be cruel to be kind.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,186 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Mr. McCain, Remember that Plumbers Didn't Work Very Well for Nixon. John McCain was David Letterman's first guest tonite. He stuck by his attack upon Barack Obama for 'palling around with terrorists', and Letterman asked about McCain's relationship with G. Gordon Liddy. What Letterman did not say is that Liddy was one of the "Plumbers", a Nixon Administration secret unit assigned to plug "leaks"of Administration secrets. Liddy is a convicted felon who worked to subvert democracy in breaking into the Democratic Party's headquarters in 1972's Watergate scandal. McCain said tonite that he is fine with knowing (not, of course, "palling around with") G. Gordon Liddy, because Liddy went to prison and 'paid his debt to society'. William Ayers was never convicted of anything, so never HAD to go to prison. Thus, in McCain's twisted worldview, Ayers hasn't paid his debt to society. Living as a decent, responsible member of society and becoming a distinguished college professor and educational reformer somehow is not as honorable as serving time in prison, to John InSain.
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McCain bitched about Ayers's having said "on September 11th" that he did not regret having set bombs (during the Vietnam era) and wished he had done more. I know that McCain seems almost proud of being computer illiterate, but somebody should have printed out for him the Wikipedia discussion of Ayers's statements in September 2001. To begin with, Ayers was interviewed BEFORE 9/11, and it is quotes from before that incident that appeared in The New York Times afterward. He tried to clarify his actual views in a letter published in the Times on September 15th, in which he asserted that the quotes had been used to misrepresent what he meant, and he has subsequently said:

"We weren't terrorists," Ayers told an interviewer for the Chicago Tribune in 2001. "The reason we weren't terrorists is because we did not commit random acts of terror against people. Terrorism was what was being practiced in the countryside of Vietnam by the United States."

So perhaps, by Ayers's standard, McCain was a terrorist. Ayers also said, in a letter published by the Chicago Tribune on September 23, 2001:

"I condemn all forms of terrorism — individual, group and official". He also condemned the September 11 terrorist attacks in that letter. "Today we are witnessing crimes against humanity on our own shores on an unthinkable scale, and I fear that we may soon see more innocent people in other parts of the world dying in response."

Indeed, hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq have died as part of John McCain's "response". John McCain has never apologized for his role in producing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a country that never attacked us. He has never apologized for, but actually bragged about, destroying a government that kept Iraqis safe from Al-Qaeda and held sectarian violence in check. Removal of Saddam Hussein's government at once opened Iraq to Al-Qaeda, whom Saddam had extremely efficiently kept out of Iraq, and unleashed sectarian violence that Saddam had also suppressed. Even Donald Trump, billionnaire supporter of John McCain, recently said that the destruction of Saddam Hussein's government was a grave mistake that destabilized a country that was stable under Saddam. John McCain owes the people of Iraq more apologies than he could ever utter if he apologized 100 times a day every day for the rest of his life, which we can hope won't be long. Indeed, it would be wonderful for the world if he died before November 4th, so the people could choose if they really want Sarah Palin to become President, something they now are only thinking might happen, rather than would definitely happen if they vote for the McCain-Palin ticket. I trust the people have better judgment than John McCain has.
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G. Gordon Liddy, a man McCain is content to pal around with, has never apologized nor shown the slitest repentance for his acts to undermine democracy. Watergate brought down a President, a Republican President at that. Gordon The Plumber was supposed to be helping Nixon, as McCain intends that Joe The Plumber help him become President. It didn't work out that way. Indeed, that Plumber's actions, and the efforts to hide them, brought down the President who surrendered in Vietnam. Is that why Senator McCain is glad to know Liddy? And what of Liddy's advocacy of violence against the United States Government? Here's a sample, from Wikipedia:

on one occasion in 1994, after the federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, Liddy advised his listeners: "Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. ... Kill the sons of bitches."

Isn't that advocating violent insurrection against the Government? Isn't shooting law-enforcement officers an act of extraordinary criminality? When black militants advocate that ghetto residents shoot cops, they are condemned by the likes of John McCain, but McCain is happy to know G. Gordon Liddy, who advocates that people kill ATF agents.
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In his 1980 autobiography, Liddy says "he once made plans with [another Plumber] to kill journalist Jack Anderson, based on a literal interpretation of a Nixon White House statement 'we need to get rid of this Anderson guy'". This is a man about whom John McCain has no reservations.
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David Letterman asked, on behalf of all Americans, and foreigners, for that matter, if McCain was confident that Sarah Palin was the right person to be in charge of the Government thru the next 8 years, in the event of a major international or domestic crisis, like another 9/11 attack. John McCain's response? "Absolutely"!
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I have said here at various times that John McCain is insane. Is any more proof needed than that assertion? If he really believes that, and is not just a very good liar, then John McCain is certifiably insane.
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Conversely, if he is not insane, then he cannot possibly believe that Sarah Palin is qualified to handle a huge international or national crisis, which means he is an inexcusably monstrous liar, lying about a matter of huge national and international importance, so has no decency, no ethics, no morality. He is unfit to draw breath, much less serve in the Senate of the United States, much less be President of the United States. He is a terrible, horrible, evil man who is perfectly content to leave us to suffer the incompetence of a tiny-brained, viciously tribalist, negative character assassin from Alaska if he should die or become permanently incapacitated. And you know why the thought of Palin as President after his death doesn't worry him? Because he doesn't care what happens to us or the planet after he is dead. Everything is all about HIM. And if he is dead, why on Earth would he care about US? As far as he's concerned, once he's dead, we can all die, in agony, and it's no (cancerous) skin off his nose.
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John McCain says endlessly that he has served this country his entire life. That's one way to see it. Another is that he has been a parasite upon the taxpayers his entire life. He never paid for healthcare, but let us pay for it all. He never paid for college, but let us pay for it all. He never held a job in the private economy, but let us pay essentially every cent he ever "earned".
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And what about the "service" he did render? Of what quality was it? He wants us to think he was shot down as a matter of bad luck. Maybe. But maybe he was a lousy pilot, or a cowboy who took unreasonable risks, and that's why he was shot down. Why didn't he make admiral? What did the Navy see that made them decide he was not good enuf to be an admiral? And why isn't anybody asking?
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Senate Choices in Two States: Jew A or Jew B. In at least two states this November, voters for a U.S. Senate seat have no one but Jews to vote for. In my state, New Jersey, we can vote for the incumbent Democrat, Frank Lautenberg, or the Republican, Dick Zimmer — both Jews, in a state that is only 5.7% Jewish. In Minnesota, hardly a center of Jewish population, people can vote for Democrat Al Franken or Republican Norm Coleman, both Jews. Minnesota is 0.9% Jewish. California, which is only 2.9% Jewish, has long had TWO Jewish WOMEN as their only representation in the U.S. Senate.
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The huge overrepresentation of Jews in Congress, and especially the Senate, is a scandal of major proportions. Is it any wonder that both candidates for President pledge fealty to their Israeli overlord? The United States is a slave to Israel, and the completely broken political process of this country accounts for it. The tiny, 2% minority that is Jewish controls the United States Government — owns it lock, stock, and barrel. Because of that, the 294 million of us who are not Jewish are targeted for death by a billion Moslems. Makes a lot of sense.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,185 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
McCain Catastrophe. Barack Obama destroyed John McCain in tonite's debate, and McCain's demeanor was, again, bizarre throughout. At almost every moment that Obama was speaking, McCain sat there with a goofy grin on his face, as tho he were retarded or insane. He launched an attack on Obama's 'association' with William Ayers, and Obama crushed him with it, pointing out the absurdity of trying to tarnish Obama's reputation by linking him to a PROFESSOR who was involved in an educational reform committee funded by a Republican that had Republican participants.
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John McCain came off as a petulant, little man — which he is. Obama came off as mature, serious, dignified: Presidential. Obama didn't answer everything he should have, but he did completely deflate some of the dishonest attacks on his tax policies. McCain kept trying to say that a plumber would be penalized for aspiring to the American Dream, and Obama said no, McCain was completely off the mark (and Obama made plain that he meant that McCain was not just mistaken but maliciously misleading). Obama should have said, as I advised here yesterday, that his proposed tax increases on businesses do NOT apply to small businesses. He did say that something like 95% of small businesses would not be affected in any regard by his tax increases, but did not explain why that is: that business income taxes apply only to profits, not gross revenues before nontaxable expenses (like salaries for the employees of "Joe the Plumber"), statutory deductions, and tax credits, so small businesses would not be affected, because any business that makes profits of the level that would see tax increases (or penalties for not providing healthcare to employees) are by definition not small businesses.
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When I reached this point in this draft, Keith Olbermann on MSNBC's Countdown offered results of a post-debate CBS poll that showed that 53% of uncommitted voters felt Obama won the debate, 25% thought it was a tie, and only 22% thought McCain won. As I say: catastrophe.
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Alas, despite what Obama has said over and over again, before and during the debate, the CBS poll shows that 64% of respondents think Obama will raise their taxes; but 50% think McCain will, which isn't exactly a vote of confidence in McCain's assurances on tax policy. It would seem that uncommitted voters are a very distrustful bunch when it comes to the issue of taxes.
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In that McCain was behind in overall polls of committed and uncommitted voters, McCain needed a big win tonite, and instead experienced a big loss. Good. Now, if only the polls are accurate and not completely wrong because of the Bradley Effect, we should have a big change after January 20th. We certainly need it. (I, however, will not be voting for Obama because of his drug past and pro-abortion stance. In that I live in a very blue state, and the national popular vote means nothing given our electoral-college system, my refusal to vote for Obama will have no effect. I do not accept that I am compelled to vote for the lesser of evils. I'm going to vote for Ralph Nader, whom I would much rather see President than either McCain or Obama.)
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,183 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Advice to Obama. I sent the following email via feedback form to the Obama campaign this evening:

TWO points you need to make in Wednesday's debate: (1) The $250,000 threshold for tax increases refers to PERSONAL income, not small-BUSINESS income, and that business income tax relates to PROFIT, after all tax-deductible expenses, not gross revenues before deductions. (2) William Ayers was NOT a "domestic terrorist" when you met him and in fact NEVER tried to "bring down the Government" but only to get the U.S. to withdraw from Vietnam. He was agitated by the Vietnam War, and attacked the Pentagon with a tiny bomb that did very little physical damage and hurt no one. Opposition to the Vietnam War may have been "radical" early on but became MAINSTREAM, and it is Richard Nixon, a REPUBLICAN, who sent Henry Kissinger (a close advisor to John McCain today who, after the second debate, publicly called John McCain a "dear friend") to negotiate the surrender to Communists in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia — which surrender cost at least three million people their lives. John Kennedy, a Democrat, got us into Vietnam, in honor, to defend the Vietnamese from Communism. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, REPUBLICANS, "waved the white flag of surrender" and ran out of Vietnam in disgrace, their tail between their legs, and that surrender produced the Cambodian "autogenocide". Do not let Republicans, the party of Vietnam surrender, cast hostility to the Vietnam War as a Democratic, partisan, and "un-American" stance. A great many present-day voters were not alive during the Vietnam era, so do not know that it was Nixon and Kissinger who surrendered in Vietnam, so opposition to the Vietnam War was fully as Republican — that is, "conservative" — as "radical". Ayers was not trying to destroy the United States nor even bring down a particular administration, and has in fact not attacked the government since the U.S. left Vietnam. He was never convicted of anything, and multiple murderers have been released, their "debt to society" considered repaid, in less time than has passed since Ayers put little bombs in a few places that killed no one. Now he is fully rehabilitated and is doing good work for Americans. His Sixties activism is part of what changed this country from a racist, sexist hellhole to a place where a black man can run for President, and a white woman for Vice President. So if John McCain wants to disown the Sixties, he should ask Sarah Palin to step down and let a white man replace her on the Republican ticket. In short, Bill Ayers could be a MUCH GREATER EMBARRASSMENT TO REPUBLICANS than to Democrats. For people who do remember Vietnam, reminding them of the Republican withdrawal, with refugees desperately clinging to the runners of helicopters as the military evacuated the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, will remind them as well that it is Nixon and KISSINGER who disgraced us with such a pitiful and contemptible image of U.S. weakness of will. Remind Americans that it is because of Republicans that the main city of southern Vietnam is now called "Ho Chi Minh City". JFK wanted it to remain "Saigon".

Advice to Chris Dodd. John McCain is running ads that accuse Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd of effectively taking a bribe from Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac to induce Congress to take no action to rein in unwise policies. Aside from the fact that no one member of Congress controls what the U.S. Senate or House does, the attack upon Dodd's integrity deserves a fierce condemnation from Dodd himself. If he felt, as many people did, that lenders should give the poor and lower middle class a chance to achieve "the American dream" of home ownership, and it is not their fault that thieves in the banking industry lured people in with low rates but then, in "bait-and-switch" fashion, raised those rates from payments the home buyers could afford to payments two, three, even four times as high that they could NOT afford. It is the thieves and ripoff artists in the banks who made good mortgages bad, not Congress, not Christopher Dodd, not Democrats, but the REPUBLICANS who own and control the banks. These bait-and-switch con artists should be in PRISON, and be made to pay the full costs of their own incarceration. And if John McCain was concerned not with preventing foreclosure due to the crime of the "adjustable rate mortgage" scam, but with preventing poor people from being able to buy their own house, by offering them long-term fixed-rate mortgages at an interest rate they could afford, maybe John McCain should join his banker friends in prison, and have his multimillionairess wife pay for that incarceration.
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Advice for Democrats on McCain. McCain seems to feel he has a free ride on the issue of character. But how well do voters know John McCain? Do voters really know that McCain cheated on his first wife and divorced her when she was CRIPPLED due to an accident, so he could marry his girlfriend and live off her money? How many Americans really want a cheat and gigolo as President?

Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a
leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following John
McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something
wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit.

‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left
behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him
knew it.

‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very
wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was
better.

‘This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no
character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it
all belonged to Carol.’

The people have the right to know about the real John McCain, a man of absolutely no integrity who will say anything to anyone about anyone to become President, not because he wants to serve the people but only because in his own mind he is a failure because he didn't make Admiral. His father was an Admiral. His grandfather was an Admiral. Senator isn't enuf, because a Senator (as I note above as regards Chris Dodd) can't order anyone to do anything. But President, ah, Commander-in-Chief. That trumps Admiral by a lot. That is the be-all and end-all of John McCain's ambition to be President: AMBITION to surpass his father and grandfather, and outrank them. Petty? You bet. But that is the real John McCain: a petty, vain man whose ambition is all personal, and who will sell out any principle and betray any person to become President. Democrats need to alert the voters to the appalling "character" of the man who would be king.
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'Class Warfare' and Redistribution of Wealth. The McCains are megamillionnaires who own 7 HOUSES and 13 CARS. Why haven't the Democrats landed harder on that? Why aren't John McCain's first remarks on the foreclosure crisis not rereun endlessly, contrasted with his own 7 houses? McCain first said, with absolute cold-blooded heartlessness, that if people took bad mortgages (adjustable rate: bait-and-switch) and couldn't afford to make the (hugely increased) payments, then they should just lose their house, and Government shouldn't lift a finger to help them (because they deserved to lose their house). RUN THAT FOOTAGE, every day until the election, and show PICTURES of his 7 houses and 13 cars (if you can get them; and you should be able to get them). If he has a yacht, run pictures of him on that yacht too. And use a slogan like "John McCain has 7 houses but doesn't think you should have even one." Class warfare? You bet: the rich are making war on the poor and middle class, but the poor and middle class are not supposed to fite back. We think it's time for the rich to give back some of our money. Our money? You bet. It's got our name on it: "United States of America". That's you and me. He can't present "McCain Dollars" at the store and get a bag of groceries — or a pair of $520 shoes. That's "U.S. Dollars", not "McCain Dollars". Nobody would sell him a thing if all they got for it was "McCain Dollars". It is only OUR NAME on the money that gives it any value. So if we choose to move some of OUR MONEY from the bank accounts of the super-rich to the U.S. Treasury where it can pay for things the poor and middle class need without crushing the poor and middle class under excessive taxes, we have an absolute right to do that. Maybe in a New America, the rich could afford "only" 6 houses and 12 cars! Awww, wouldn't that be tragic and unfair? No, it sure as hell would not.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:36 PM

 
Black, American, and Proud. Barack Obama has avoided the whole race issue, saying only that his opponents would use race in this campaign (but he would not). It's time for Obama to address the race issue head-on.
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It's time for him to point out that blacks comprise a disproportionately large part of the military fiting to defend us, and are fiercely proud of this country, despite not having been treated very well by it. He should point out that essentially all the traitors who have been caught spying for our enemies have been straight white men, while blacks and homosexuals have stayed faithful. Obama needs to say something like this.

We, the minorities, the newcomers, are the true believers, the keepers of the flame. We haven't hedged our bets and taken a second passport to evacuate if things get bad here. Tho many racists have told us to "go back to Africa", we haven't. And you know why? Because we're not Africans. Sure, we know our ancestors — in my case, my own father, not great-great-grandfather — came from Africa. (My mother's from Kansas, but that's not what seems to interest some people.) And you know what? He did go back to Africa, and I have relatives there. But I'm American, not Kenyan. I have visited Africa and take pride in my Kenyan culture, but I came right back, because I am not Kenyan. Irish-Americans visit Ireland, but they come right back. Mexican-Americans visit Mexico, but come right back. We are AMERICANS, and we will NOT PERMIT anyone to take our citizenship, nor our identity AS Americans, away. You have a problem with people of different groups, be they ethnic or sexual minorities, being absolutely as American as you are? That's un-American!

We are the Melting Pot, remember? That means that we pool our cultures and create something new and, hopefully, better from the blend than any individual component in that mix.

What would the United States be without blacks? A pale imitation of Europe, that's what. Oompahpah bands and violins. That's not the United States. The music of the United States, which has swept the world, isn't white music, but it isn't black music either. It's American music, black, white, Hispanic; the rhythms of Africa and instruments of Europe, with, recently, an admixture of salsa, merengue, and now tiny bits of mariachi and Peruvian Indian music. It is the energy, and anger, of the ghetto and the aspirational essence of gospel. Negro spirituals and jazz. Country and western and Broadway show tunes coexisting with hiphop, and influencing one another. That's America.

Take away all the black influences, and what is left? A bland, 'pale' culture with none of the vitality of the culture that's in our bones and in our hearts. When Stevie Wonder sings his "Songs in the Key of Life", or Diana Ross sings "Ain't No Mountain High Enuf", they aren't singing to blacks alone. They're singing to Americans, and the world, from the heart of our culture. Africa is as much at the center of our civilization as is Europe. Now Asians and Latin Americans are adding their strands to our shared culture, and every year American musical and visual culture becomes richer for the contributions of people some Americans insist on seeing as outsiders. But we're not outsiders. You are not more American than I am. I am not more American than you are. We're equal, and equally proud. You should be proud that I am as proud to be American as you are.

Whether an American's name is Barack Hussein — yes, Hussein, like the late King Hussein of Jordan, a great and important ally of the United States in the Middle East — Obama or María Camacho de Uribe or Sanjay Gupta or Lee Huang Ho or João Pereira da Silva, we are Americans, and we won't let you say we aren't. Our ancestors may have come from Kenya, Mexico, India, China, or Brazil, but we are just as American as people whose ancestors came from England, Ireland, Germany, France, and Russia. You should be glad that we want in, not out. Aren't you proud of our diversity? We are.

There's a lot of work to be done, inside the United States and out. We've got an economy to fix, neighborhoods to rebuild, infrastructure to repair, schools to revamp. In the world, we've got rainforests and reefs to protect, tropical diseases to fite (some of which can come here thru international air travel), sanitation systems and hospitals to build across the Third World. And yes, we've got terrorism to fite, in important part by changing the perception of the United States as a bunch of vicious bigots who deserve destruction. We're here to help, and you are definitely going to need our help.

Millions of Americans and future Americans now accumulating the necessary years of residency to apply for citizenship, extend their hand and offer their strong arms, backs, and minds in making this country everything it's supposed to be. Accept our offer. Extend your hand. Let's work together for a better Nation, and a better world.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:47 PM

 
Stock Manipulators of Fear? Today's heading is like one of those "before & after" Wheel of Fortune puzzles, such as WHITNEY HOUSTON TEXAS. (That example was given by Wikipedia, and Whitney Houston was born in Newark, where I now live, so I'll stick with it. Her mother, Cissy Houston, was also born in Newark.)
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Hundreds of millions of people around the world are puzzled at the continued slide of stocks despite the economic rescue package approved last week. Let me suggest something I have not heard anyone else speak to: deliberate stock manipulation by profiteers intent on driving down stock prices for two reasons: first, to set themselves up for a big financial reward when they are able to buy stocks at artificially low prices, and second, to defeat the Republicans by inducing panic in the American electorate as to induce Americans not just to reject the current Republican ticket for President but also to jettison large numbers of Republicans from Congress, as to give a President Obama a strong Democratic majority with which to ram thru a hyperambitious legislative program, even more ambitious than Obama could now imagine, and utterly transform American society. And even if Obama should not win, due to racism, perhaps this horrendous economic nitemare can win for Democrats a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress, so they can legislate over the head of a Republican President, be it McCain or Palin.
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The first motive, personal profit, should be obvious. Say you own a very large block of stock in a major corporation whose future is uncertain. You bought it a few years ago at 100 (dollars). It went up to 105. But in recent months it has slid to 100 again. You see it is probably headed downward even if you hang onto it, AND that if you sell at 100, that sale in itself will produce a panic. So you sell. The stock does fall. That fits into a wider downward market. After a series of down trading days, the stock has fallen to 57, and you decide that unless the company fails altogether (and the sale of shares of stock issued years ago does not affect the current operations of a going concern), 57 is a terrific price. So you can afford to buy back the exact same stock, having "earned" $43 per share, a 75% profit in two weeks.
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There are two ways to make money in the stock market: buy low and sell high, or sell high and buy low, in that order. So speculators are happy to see the stock market fall, after they have unloaded their own stocks high. They stampede fools into selling good stocks at bad prices, then pick up bargains.
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The second motive of speculators is not at all obvious, however. One might expect Wall Street's "powers that be" to be conservative and to lean heavily Republican, but you might be surprised. Wall Street has been a congenial place for fund-raising for Democrats for a long time, and there are lots of Liberals among the traders. Some may have been chastened by recent events and think, "You know, we really have gone too far, and need more regulation — for our sake, not just the country's", and figure Democrats are more likely to enact salutary regulation.
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Others are concerned about issues beyond their personal profit-and-loss statements. In economics, they understand that the economy is healthiest when the most people have lots of money, disposable income above bare necessities with which to support a wide range of companies offering a wide range of goods and services. Conversely, the economy does very badly when only a few people have money to spend, and everybody else is watching their pennies. So the ever-intensifying concentration of wealth among the extremely rich is bad for the overall economy, and they understand that.
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But even beyond wide economic issues, they may be concerned about things like social justice, racial justice, world development and peace. Some of this might be enlightened self-interest. Some might be selfless devotion to the greater good. Even (some) stock brokers have a conscience.
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So if they feel that things have to get a lot worse before people will wake up and throw the Republican rascals out, they will contribute to waking the public to the catastrophe that Republican rule has been, and return the pendulum to the Democrats. Of course, if the Democrats remain in office too long, they are likely to become ossified, immovable, and stupid too, and Wall Streeters will have to work for their ouster too. But that's then. This is now.
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Other Topics, in (Relative) Brief.
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Don't Shout. WHY IS OBAMA SHOUTING INTO A MICROFONE? HE SOUNDS LITERALLY "SHRILL", NOT CONFIDENT AND CONTROLLED. YOU'VE GOT A MICROFONE, SENATOR. YOU DON'T HAVE TO SHOUT. JUST AS PEOPLE DON'T LIKE TO READ BLOCK-CAP PASSAGES OF LENGTH, YOU REALLY JUST SHOULDN'T SHOUT ALL THE TIME. IT'S ANNOYING.
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Take a cue from the present and past Presidents of France. They speak as tho they are in the bedroom, adoring their mate. The voice is deep, masculine, mature. They don't have to shout from fear that people won't listen unless they do. They know they have people's attention, and speak in a voice that is not just pleasant but also soothing, even sexy. They 'love' the French people, and the French people love them back.
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"Palling Around With a Domestic Terrorist", Your Ass. Why are liberals in media so timid about challenging the lie that, as I heard McCain describe it, William Ayers wanted to "bring the government down", when in fact his efforts were devoted merely to ending the Vietnam War, a disastrous and divisive conflict. Mind you, I believe the U.S. should have stayed and won in Vietnam, not betrayed the people of South Vietnam, Laos, and, especially, Cambodia, but it is REPUBLICANS who "waved the white flag of surrender" in Vietnam. So why are antiwar activists in the Vietnam era now being portrayed as radicals for advocating precisely what REPUBLICANS were to go on to do?
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The implication, especially for the ignorant (the bulk of the audience at Sarah Palin's campaign stops), is that William Ayers was a "domestic terrorist" AT THE TIME Obama served with him on the board of a charitable foundation, whereas in reality Ayers had abandoned radical activities decades earlier and is now part of the educational Establishment in Illinois, a state pretty much at the Heart of the Heartland. Ayers was opposed to the Vietnam War. The majority of Americans came to the same point of view, and it is REPUBLICANS who ran out of Vietnam with their tail between their legs, making a virtue of "cut and run".
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Winning in Afghanistan. The British commander in Afghanistan has said the war against the Taliban cannot be won. Bullsh(asterisk). That's like saying, in 1944, that the war against Fascism cannot be won, so we need to accept that and work merely to limit the successes of Nazism, Italian Fascism, and Japanese militarism, not try to defeat those forces completely.
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Is it important that we win the war in Afghanistan? I believe it is.
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If we MUST win the war in Afghanistan, then we MUST do WHATEVER IT TAKES to win.
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A NATO force of 51,000 is losing the war. What would it take to win? If we had 15 million soldiers in Afghanistan, would we still lose the war? If it is obvious that we would win with 15 million soldiers, and will lose at 51,000, at what level of force between those two figures would we still win? If ground soldiers are not available in such numbers, what else would work? Would tactical nuclear weapons, or even strategic nuclear weapons, destroy the Taliban and the savages in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan who support them and who thus constitute a new barbarian invasion that Civilization must fite off, at any cost? If so, then let's use nukes. Violent mountain peoples have always been the enemy of settled populations: barbarism vs. civilization. In prior times, when hand-to-hand combat with primitive weapons determined the victory, the triumph of civilization was by no means certain. But now, when civilization controls technology of almost unimaginable violence, civilization can lose only thru failure of will.
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Think history. If we are in the position of the Roman Empire in 470 A.D., at the verge of collapse and the sacking of Rome by barbarians, but, unlike Rome, we have the wherewithal to defend ourselves by killing millions of barbarians, do we consent to have our civilization destroyed, or do we kill millions of barbarians? I have no problem deciding between those alternatives.
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In conquering Gaul, which is the only way Roman civilization became influential enuf and long-enuf established to come down to us two thousand years later, Julius Caesar may have killed as many as 40,000 Helvetians in one campaign. It's hard to find hard numbers for the dead, but according to Caesar, 258,000 fewer people returned to Helvetia after the war than set out before it. Even if many dropped off in neighboring lands and others were sold into slavery, that leaves a lot of people who died. The population of the entire world at the time, 58 B.C., was at most 400 million. 40,000 dead would thus have been 0.01% of the total world's population. The same percentage today, at a planetary population of 6.7 billion, would be 670,000. As for the entire Gallic war:

Over a million Gauls, it is estimated, were slaughtered in the course of Caesar's conquest; even more were enslaved. As one historian says, "Requisitions of food and punitive devastations completed human, economic, and ecological disaster probably unequalled until the conquest of the Americas."

(A brilliantly readable version of Caesar's campaign against the Helvetians is online in the form of a blog, "Bloggus Caesari: Weblog by Julius Caesar".)
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One million dead in 58 B.C. equates with 16,750,000 dead today. The population of all of Afghanistan is about 32 million; of the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, about 6.5 million, for a total of 38.5 million. We could kill 43% of the combined populations of Afghanistan and the Tribal Areas and not exceed what Julius Caesar had to do to secure Roman civilization.
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As for the European conquest of the Americas, nobody really knows how many deaths that entailed, nor by what mechanism (diseases indeliberately introduced by contact with Europeans, serial warfare, privation, merciless slave labor in parts of Latin America). The numbers often bandied about, of hundreds of millions of people having been in the Americas before the white man arrived, are almost certainly hugely exaggerated, but aboriginal American populations did decline steeply for a couple of hundred years. They are now up to perhaps half of pre-Columbian levels in the United States and may be higher in other parts of the continent.
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Should we have failed to settle the Americas because of the deaths entailed in the establishment of our civilization? If we could not have settled the United States without causing many deaths to people already here, then what? If we could not have ameliorated conditions and done things differently, as would have made the Indians full partners in creating our civilization, but the only choice were to create the United States at the cost of Indian lives or return to Europe once we realized there were lots of people already here, what would morality require? What would civilization require? What would have happened to the rest of the world if the Americas had not been settled by Europeans, (a) at all or (b) for hundreds of years? At end, then, we have to ask, (1) Was the establishment of our civilization worth the costs in the past, including the deaths? and (2) If we simply have to kill millions to preserve our civilization, do we do that, or instead consent to have our civilization vanish?
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I am not a saint. Nor do I aspire to be one. I do not consent to the destruction of my own civilization just because preserving it might require mass death elsewhere. I believe that good people can conclude that the welfare of the world requires the preservation of American civilization, and almost no price in the lives of our enemies is too high for the benefit the planet stands to gain from the preservation of the United States as a great, powerful, and influential civilization.
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It's not as tho we haven't killed millions already. World Wars I and II killed some 60 million people in the 20th Century alone. The Civil War killed 620,000 Americans on the two sides. Should we simply have let the South secede, and retain slavery to this day, if that had been (white) Southerners' majority choice?
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There are times when civilized people have to make hard choices, and large numbers of people can die as a result of those choices. That's where the duty to warn comes in.
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We can tell Afghans that we are 'dead' serious that their war against us must end. They must stop growing crops to poison our people and kill Americans 10,000 miles from their poppy fields — or we will KILL THEM. They must destroy the Taliban and end its plans to train terrorists to attack us — or we will KILL THEM. And we won't try to distinguish too finely. If poppy fields cover an entire valley, we won't target individual fields or the houses of individual growers. We'll just nuke the whole valley, with a hydrogen bomb that will vaporize the drug crops and kill the drug growers over the entire blast zone, some 150 square miles, with an intense radioactive fallout zone of 800 square miles. So either they crack down on the scum among them, or we will inflict collective punishment and kill them all.
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Perhaps a single hydrogen bomb will persuade the Afghan barbarians that we are not playing games and will not consent to a decades long war of attrition but will end the war quickly by mass death to Afghans, even to the extent of ending Afghanistan as a political and cultural entity forever. So we won't have to drop a second. It took only two atom bombs to persuade Japan to surrender, and Japan is much changed, for the better, as a result of that surrender.
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U.S. reticence to inflict mass death to preserve itself is not universally shared. Israel is happy to visit mass death on non-Jews. One website estimates Iraqi civilian deaths since the U.S. invasion, which was ordered by Jerusalem, at between 88,263 and 96,350. Another website, however, puts the figure much higher: 1,273,378. Add that to the half million (or more) asserted to have died during the sanctions between the first Gulf War and the Iraq invasion, and you get 1.75 million dead in Iraq alone. All that for the defense of a country that today, at its highest population, has only 5.5 million people (Jews, that is, the only people who can reasonably be termed "Israelis"). Then there are all the military and civilian deaths in wars against Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, plus people killed in places farther afield by Israeli bombing, from Iraq on the east to Tunisia on the west. Add the people assassinated in the Occupied Territories. And the people who died prematurely due to abysmal living conditions inflicted upon Palestinian refugees. And on, and on. Now Israel wants the United States to launch another war against Israel's enemies, this time Iran. John McCain, who might become President if the racist vote is high enuf, has already sung of bomb-bomb-bombing Iran. Hillary Clinton swore to "obliterate" the entire country of Iran if it were to attack Israel. And no one high in U.S. Government or media backs away from continuing to kill massive numbers of people for Israel. But for the United States? No significant number of people should have to die to save the United States.
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Israel needs merely to merge into unified Palestine to end the danger to its people. Jews worried about their future in Palestine can emigrate. Most of them IMmigrated, either themselves or their parents, so EMigrating should be no big deal. Jewish culture has never, in over 2,000 years, been dependent upon occupying a particular piece of real estate. Indeed, it is easy to argue that Jewish culture in Israel is inconsequential, and the greatest accomplishments of Jewish people have been achieved elsewhere, especially in the United States.
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Unlike Jewish civilization, which is not dependent upon occupying a particular piece of real estate, American civilization does rest upon the survival of the United States in its current territory (if not also more territory). Oh, if some cataclysm were to destroy the United States as a political entity, an attenuated American civilization would doubtless continue in the people we have already influenced, and in the remnants of our civilization in the Homeland, just as Roman civilization survived the end of Roman political unity in the West. But it wouldn't be the same, and the heirs to our civilization wouldn't be able to make the same kinds of contributions (to, for instance, preserving habitat and both spurring and funding planet-wide economic development), at the same levels, as an intact American civilization is able to do.
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We thus have the moral right to defend our civilization. We dropped nukes on Japan to do that. We can drop nukes on Afghanistan too.
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It is, by the way, essentially impossible to find the total number of people who have died because of the creation of Israel. That info has either never been put together or is carefully concealed. Certainly it does not come up in early results for searches on strings like "deaths caused by Israel". Why is that?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,180 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
"McCain-Palin: Too Slimy for America." The Republicans have turned to their speciality, smear tactics. One attack ad ends: "How dangerous. Obama and Congressional liberals. Too risky for America". In Florida today, Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott, in full police uniform, attacked "Barack Hussein Obama" and endorsed the McCain-Palin ticket. In all decent places, that is forbidden behavior for any policeman, much less someone at the top of the department, and would produce an instant rebuke, probably a suspension, and possibly termination. Sarah Palin, the Republicans' pitbull attack bitch (remember that "bitch" is absolutely proper in describing a female dog), is trying desperately to portray Obama as a friend of a "domestic terrorist", William Ayers. Never mind that the "terrorist" was never convicted of "terrorist" acts, the acts he was to have been prosecuted for took place over 36 years ago, and he is now a reputable member of society, a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago. There are multiple murderers released from prison after less time than it's been since Ayers placed a tiny bomb at the Pentagon, and they (the murderers) are said to have "paid their debt to society", so should be reintegrated into society.
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• His "terrorist" acts were trivial, by the standards of the time and especially by the standards of today.
• He later apologized to a man who was injured by one of his bombs.
• Part of Ayers's early activism was the damnably radical and un-American act of picketing a pizzeria that wouldn't serve black people. The monster! A thing like that would never be tolerated in Alaska. But isn't Palin's husband part Eskimo? So wouldn't Ayers and Palin be on the same side in the struggle against racism?
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Sarah Palin made much of Ayers's having bombed the Pentagon — ohmigod! Here's what Wikipedia says of that bombing:

Ayers participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, the United States Capitol building in 1971, and The Pentagon in 1972, as he noted in his 2001 book, Fugitive Days. Because of a water leak caused by the Pentagon bombing, aerial bombardments during the Vietnam War had to be halted for several days. Ayers writes:

Although the bomb that rocked the Pentagon was itsy-bitsy — weighing close to two pounds — it caused 'tens of thousands of dollars' of damage. The operation cost under $500, and no one was killed or even hurt.

My God! A 2 lb. bomb! A veritable nuclear attack!
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Never mind that those acts were part of the so-called "antiwar movement" during the Vietnam Era, when the Nation was hugely divided and even some decent people, especially the very young, were misled into thinking Communism was "the wave of the future", a revolutionary movement for economic justice for downtrodden people; and that as a result of the "antiwar" movement, the people of the United States turned their back on our South Vietnamese allies, and on the people of Cambodia and Laos, as left Southeast Asia to the tender mercies of Communist mass murderers, who killed millions even after the surrender. If there is blame to be laid, now, for that fiasco, or crime, there is plenty to go around.
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Do we really want to fite the domestic battles about the Vietnam War all over again? I was a hawk, and had a letter published in The New York Times that asked five (I think it was) key questions such as "Which way do the refugees flow, toward Communism or away from it?"
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But it is vitally important to remember that it is REPUBLICANS who surrendered in Vietnam. John Kennedy got us INTO Vietnam, in honor. Richard Nixon got us OUT, in disgrace. So do the Republicans really want to remind the people of who pulled out of Vietnam, with refugees clinging to the runners of helicopters flying out of the U.S. Embassy? And do Republicans really want to remind us about what happened to the people of Cambodia as a result of REPUBLICANS' surrender? We can go there, if they like.
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And shall we remember who negotiated what turned out to be the surrender?: Henry Kissinger, Republican hero, whom McCain proudly cited in the first Presidential debate as being opposed to a Presidential sitdown with Iranian President Ahmadinejad. John McCain welcomed the normalization of relations with the Communist bastards who beat him over and over thru the course of five years of imprisonment in the Hanoi Hilton! Stockholm Syndrome, anyone? Did I mention that McCain Is InSain?
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In an appearance separate from that of the attack bitch, McCain himself said of Obama today that "For a guy who's already authored two memoirs, he's not exactly an open book." Oh? Actually, he is. There's nothing hidden nor mysterious about Barack Obama's background. He is not a "secret" ANYTHING. His openness entailed huge risks. I, for instance, am so hostile to the hard-drug use in his background that it would be extremely hard for me to vote for him even if he weren't an enthusiast for abortion-on-demand.
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Now the Obama camp has hit back with a reminder of John McCain's tainted reputation by referring people to a website, not their own, that produced a 13-minute mini-documentary about the Keating Five scandal, for which McCain was reproached by the Senate. As Craig Ferguson reminded us tonite, people who live in glass houses really should not throw stones.
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Republican Party in Blackface. The all-white Republican Party has suddenly come up with a raft of black spokespersons to carry off the biggest political minstrel show in history. One of these, how can we say?, Uncle Toms? — I've heard that in the book Uncle Tom's Cabin, the character Uncle Tom was a hero, not a race traitor; so how about "house n*rs"? yes — one of these Republican house n*rs claimed on MSNBC's Hardball this evening that Obama said last week that John McCain was "unhinged". I hadn't heard that, and I listen to a lot of news. More to the point, host Chris Mathews, who gets a lot more news than I do, had never heard that, and directed his producers to research that charge. He did not, however, demand from the Republican house n*r the event nor date nor place where Obama purportedly said that. Perhaps a producer or production assistant asked him after the show. I shall be interested to know what they find.
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I have said here on a number of occasions that John McCain is out of his mind; and that I don't know if he was always out of his mind or if the Vietnamese Communists drove him out of his mind, but it doesn't matter. McCain Is InSain.
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The house n*r on Hardball in essence suggested that a satirical skit on this past weekend's Saturday Nite Live — in which Jason Sudeikis, portraying Joe Biden, suggested that McCain was out of his mind — was an Obama attack ad! Shut ... up!
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"Can I Call You 'Herb'?" The McCain forces are trying to tar the Democrats with the brush of having produced the current economic crisis by refusing to regulate the financial industry when McCain was calling for regulation.
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• Never mind that McCain and the Republican Party have been staunch opponents of regulation in general from at least the Keating Five era on.
• Never mind that the savings-and-loan debacle, in which McCain played a major part, cost taxpayers at least $150 billion in 1995 dollars, the equivalent today of over $200 billion.
• Never mind that McCain initially said about huge numbers of foreclosures that people who took on mortgages they couldn't afford deserved to lose their houses, and then that the disaster in the entire banking and credit industry produced by such defaults was merely an 'adjustment' that should be permitted to work itself out.
• Never mind that when the financial industry's house of cards was trembling in the approaching gale, McCain assured us that "The fundamentals of the economy are sound" — in the morning — but by the afternoon of the same day had changed his tune when his handlers, the puppetmasters of the Republican Invisible Hand who control Dumbya and controlled Reagan before him, told him that that would produce his defeat. Obama has, consequently, called McCain's behavior erratic, and plainly it was.
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As to whether McCain is "unhinged", as I believe he is, that depends, in this economic crisis, upon whether McCain controls his CamPain or the CamPain has a mind of its own and contradicts McCain, then forces McCain to echo the CamPain's announced stance.
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That is, it may not be that McCain is a Jekyll and Hyde but that he is Jekyll and the CamPain is Hyde (or the other way around). That is, McCain doesn't have two personalities, nor two faces, but is one personality, with one face, who is countermanded by a CamPain that he must obey, because they have told him, "Before we rescued you, you were nothing. You were done, toast. We lifted you up and made you the nominee. We can make you President. Without us, however, you will lose, no doubt about it. With us, you can win, but only if you do everything we say. We made Reagan. We made Dubya. We can make you. Or we can break you."
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At end, for purposes of Democratic campaign strategy, it doesn't matter whether McC(amP)ain is one entity or two. What t/he/y advocate is Herbert Hoover, true-believer free-marketism, so it is absolutely appropriate to attack MCain as the Herbert Hoover of our day. I thought I actually heard Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the Radical Right loon on ABC's women's talkshow The View, trying to blame the Depression on FDR! But I find thru Google only a reference to a claim last month that FDR wasn't President during the Depression (well after its start). I heard only a very short clip on Bill O'Reilly's show, I think it was, that O'R showed to suggest he might have to calm things down when he appears on The View next week to promote his latest book.
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In any event, Democrats must not let Republicans blame the Great Depression on FDR nor the current alarming financial crisis on Obama and Congressional Democrats. They must instead indelibly imprint on the consciousness of the electorate this simple equation, McCain = Hoover, and warn voters that these are no more ordinary economic times than were the days after the stock market collapse of 1929. Republicans got us into this mess, as they did the mess produced by the freewheeling, unregulated 1920s, and now they not only want to blame Democrats for the financial crisis but, failing that, scare people into feeling (not thinking) that their economic woes are nothing compared to the national-security catastrophe "The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama" threatens us with. Hit back hard: "McCain-Palin: Too Slimy for America" and "Hoover-Palin '08: The Fundamentals of the Economy Are Sound". Now that's what I call a "sound" bite.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,177 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM