More 'Global Warming' Nonsense. As much of the Nation is coated in ice, and millions of people are without power and thus in serious risk of freezing to death, because thermostats won't work and the pumps for oil and gas furnaces won't work without electricity, the moron Al Gore came to Washington yesterday to try to alarm Congress about "man-made global warming". There is no end to that fool's delusionality
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Redistrict the Bastards Away. The Republican Party members still in Congress are there mainly because almost all state legislatures gerrymander nowadays, producing "safe" districts in almost all cases, in which one party or the other is almost certain to control a given district. Because it is so hard to succeed in contesting these "safe" districts, so that there is no chance for the public to oust a Congressman who is unresponsive and out of touch, Congress is saddled with ossified stances that do not adjust to changed circumstances. We need to impose national standards for nonpartisan, uncontrived redistricting of the NATIONAL legislature's districts. This should NEVER have been under the control of the states. Never.
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And the standard should be plain: the ONLY considerations to be used in drawing boundaries should be (a) compactness and spatial regularity of the resulting district and (b) equal number of citizen residents. Congress can and must demand that districting be done by COMPUTER such that only citizen-population figures and geography are entered into the database, and then the computer program starts at either the northernmost or westernmost point (depending on the shape of the state: for NJ, northernmost, for TN westernmost) and proceeds north-to-south, west-to-east thru the entire state (in the fashion of reading text on a page), creating districts as close to square as possible, heeding only residential property lines (so that no one house is split between districts). No heed to party affiliation; no heed to prior voting patterns; no heed to municipal or county boundaries, only to rough equality of citizen populations (that is, people entitled to vote) and, where numerous, nonvoting legal residents (who are entitled to be here and must obey laws made by people they do not yet have the right to vote for). Geographical irregularities would be accommodated only in cases like small islands that could not have more than one voting place and are too distant from adjoining islands or a mainland for voters to get to a voting place easily).
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The right to draw boundaries between Congressional districts should be taken away from states and given to Congress itself. Congress does not draw state boundaries. Why should state legislatures — which may themselves be districted undemocratically — have the power to draw Congressional boundaries?
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Octuplets! The doctors and parents responsible for the recent birth of octuplets need to be PUNISHED. This planet is already grotesquely overpopulated. To the extent there is any planetary stress at all, it is due to overpopulation, and we are permitting irresponsible lunatics to flood this overburdened world with LITTERS of babies? Outrageous.
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If nature says a heterosexual couple should not have children, they should accept that judgment and either work around it — adopting an unrelated baby already here, or, if only one would-be parent is infertile, a third party can be engaged to produce a baby that bears half the couple's genes. Or the marriage should be dissolved — after all, the Radical Right keeps telling us over and over that marriage is for producing children, so, by that reasoning, people who can't have children should not be married.
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Infertility is a blessing to the planet, but quacks are undoing the good of natural population control to increase the overpopulation of this weeping world. They must be stopped.
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When fertility treatments produce multiple births, and especially four, five, six, seven, and even, now, eight babies, the babies should be taken away from those irresponsible and selfish people and distributed to people waiting to adopt a baby, and both parents and doctors IRREVERSIBLY STERILIZED surgically.
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The Bellflower octuplets, it was revealed today, were born to an UNMARRIED woman who already had SIX CHILDREN!, and who lives with her parents, not even supporting herself. Did she nonetheless take fertility treatments? Who would give fertility treatments to a woman in such a situation? Could she possibly have had eight children without fertility treatments? If this was just a freak accident, that's one thing, which warrants no punishment. But if she asked for fertility treatments even tho she already had 6 children, it was the responsibility of every reputable medical practitioner to say NO! Every reputable medical practitioner should now be willing to tie that woman's tubes so this outrage never recurs.
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Forget Bipartisanship — This Is WAR. The Republican Party yesterday spit upon President Obama's attempt to reach out to them, by voting unanimously against the Administration's proposed stimulus package. Democrats did not need any Republican votes to pass the measure by a very wide margin, and should just forget about even attempting to accommodate Republicans. Indeed, Dems should now reconsider whether they want to put back into the bill every single provision they took out in a vain attempt to mollify Republican scumbags, and take OUT of the bill every inadvisable feature they put in only to seek bipartisan support, then RAM IT THRU over the objection of the Republicans.
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Democrats should CRUSH the Republican Party. Knock it down, stomp on its throat, crush its larynx, and make it die, unable to speak or even gasp for breath. The present-day Republican Party is a criminal conspiracy of horrible, subhuman scum. If there were any way to prosecute them under RICO for crimes against humanity, torture, war crimes, willfully stealing from the poor and middle class to give to the rich, it should be done.
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Democrats need to tell the poor white trash of the South and, in lesser measure, Midwest that the Republican Party HATES them and has done everything within its power to ruin their lives, bury them in debt, and make them wage and debt slaves to the rich.
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Democrats should as well immediately move to bring Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands into the Union merged into a 51st State, to solidify their unchallengeable control of both houses of Congress by adding two (likely) Democratic Senators and six (likely) Democratic Representatives.
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CBS Evening News at 8? I tuned to what should have been the sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine at 8:00pm last nite and found instead the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. I checked backwards with my cable system's information feature and saw that it appeared to be a repeat of the regular 6:30pm showing. What a great idea. Unfortunately, it's a one-shot deal, not a regular feature.
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Young people may not know that all three of the major national newscasts used to be at 7pm. During one such 7pm broadcast, NBC News reported, decades ago, that longer work hours and longer commutes were producing declining ratings for the evening newscasts. Within six months of that report, all three moved their newscasts a half hour EARLIER. Not later. Earlier. You see, there were people at the top of the nets that wanted to eliminate the costly newscasts altogether, but they couldn't justify it under their pledge to serve the people's interest in exchange for use of "the people's airwaves", so they contrived to reduce the ratings so much that they could tell the Government that the people don't want to see a national newscast, but prefer local news, which they wanted to expand, or simply watch entertainment programming instead. The Government and media commentators didn't buy into that, but the three major networks continued to show the news at the earlier, 6:30 time, even tho they knew that moving the newscasts earlier meant that each year, more and more Americans would not be able to watch them, because working hours and commute times continued to increase.
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If CBS had decided to offer people who get home late a second chance to catch the national newscast as a regular thing rather than a one-time showing, that would have been great. It might have produced similar rescheduling, at least back to 7pm, by the other networks (in English and Spanish), which would have produced a significant benefit in public-policy terms for helping the electorate become more widely knowledgeable of public issues. But as an attempt to boost the regular newscast in its regular 6:30 slot, it falls far short of serving the public interest.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,236 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:21 PM

 
Stealing "the People's Airwaves". The digital-TV conversion is a scam run by rich corporations and the Government to steal "the people's airwaves" (FCC's mandate) and turn them over to corporations. This scam is sold to the public as an improvement, as tho we are to get something of great value, even tho we have to spend BILLIONS of dollars as a Nation for these "benefits". Government is offering a $40 coupon for up to two converter boxes, each of which could costs $70 or more! And if you have more than two TV's, you're out of luck. You have to pay the entire cost yourself.

Many features are common to all coupon-eligible boxes. That's not surprising. For one thing, the government requires all coupon-eligible boxes to have a standard set of basic features and allows a few optional ones. Approved boxes cannot have higher-end features (such as HD outputs) that the government deems unnecessary for basic functionality.

So if you have an HDTV, which Government and the popular culture have told us for years that we must all someday get, you will have to pay the entire cost of the DTV converter box yourself — for every HDTV you want to be able to watch! What a bargain!
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A video at the Consumers Union website says this conversion could cost $30 to $200 PER TV SET! plus $20 for a new antenna. And recycling of TVs that consumers may feel forced to ditch creates another imposition on individuals. For all this trouble and expense, what are we supposed to get? What improvement in our lives will this massive disruption and cost, bring to us, at a time when people are severely stressed economically? A better picture and sound. Big f*g deal. "More programming choices". Oh? What additional choices? Will over-air broadcasters make cable TV no longer necessary? Will cable channels like Comedy Central and MSNBC suddenly become available on-air to everyone who has a digital TV or digital converter box? No one says any such thing.
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There is absolutely no reason that analog broadcasts cannot continue indefinitely. No reason whatsoever. The technology is in place. The excuse is that the existing analog frequencies are needed for public-benefit activities:

Congress mandated the conversion to all-digital television broadcasting, also known as the digital television (DTV) transition, because all-digital broadcasting will free up frequencies for public safety communications (such as police, fire, and emergency rescue). Also, digital is a more efficient transmission technology that allows broadcast stations to offer improved picture and sound quality, as well as offer more programming options for consumers through multiple broadcast streams (multicasting). In addition, some of the freed up frequencies will be used for advanced commercial wireless services for consumers.

What a bunch of b*. Are we to believe that our police, fire, and emergency rescue services cannot operate now? That's nonsense. If they can operate now, why would they stop being able to operate if we continued analog broadcasting?
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And who ACTUALLY now offers "more programming options for consumers through multiple broadcast streams (multicasting)"? Lots of TV stations are supposed to be broadcasting digitally now. What new programming is there? TVGuide.com shows several digital channels, indicated by an (aptly) digital extension, say channel 4.1 or 7.2. Here is the entire list of 'new' programming in NYC thanks to digital multicasting: Channel 2 and 2.1 (CBS) both show exactly the same programming, including infomercials during the same times. Channel 4 and 4.1 (NBC) show exactly the same programming; 4.2 shows skiing, then hours and hours of informercials! 5 and 5.1 (Fox) show the same programs; 5.2 shows ___; 5.3 shows syndicated reruns. 7 and 7.1 (ABC) show the same programs; 7.2 shows endless local news until 11:30, whereupon it shifts to infomercials! 9 and 9.1 (independent) show the same shows, as do 11 and 11.1 (CW). 11.2 broadcasts in Spanish. 13 and 13.1 (PBS) broadcast the same programming; 13.2 shows children's programming constantly, OVERNITE. Why? What children are watching TV at 3 o'clock in the morning? 13.3 broadcasts Spanish-language programming. 21 and 21.1 show the same programs; 21.2, .3, and .4 — finally — show different programs, but since PBS's programming consists overwhelmingly of reruns, there is very little that is genuinely new. And on and on thru the entire lineup, either identical programming or reruns, with a lot of infomercials. There's almost nothing new, and the cable channels we might be glad to receive over-air so we can stop paying cable companies, is simply not offered.
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Why wouldn't the History Channel, Animal Planet, and other present cable channels welcome DTV and use the extra channels that are to be opened up as another way to deliver their content and advertising? I don't know, but they haven't yet, so there is little reason to think they will after February 17th (or June, or whenever). In short, the "benefits" to TV viewers are minimal. What it really means is more channels filled with trash that wasn't worth seeing the first time and is rerun endlessly, plus many times as many infomercials!
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Here's another zinger:

(Also, multicast technology allows some stations to rent out unused portions of their FCC-licensed spectrum allotment to pay-TV providers, or to use them for other information services.)

Further, if broadcasters reach for the HDTV audience, they will NOT be able to increase programming by much despite a digital changeover:

To provide high-definition television (HDTV) images with surround sound, broadcasters must send huge chunks of information over the airwaves. During HD broadcasts, a local station has only enough room left in the digital pipe (”bandwidth”) to provide one or two more multicast programming streams, rather than perhaps four more otherwise.

So we are NOT likely going to see much more free TV after all but might be CHARGED for additional new programming, and we are thus supposed to spend BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to render ourselves open to more pay TV. It's an outrageous con by the broadcasting industry.
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The claim is also made that broadcasters could lease out part of their bandwidth to "new entrants", by which they imply "minority- and women-owned businesses". But there is absolutely no requirement they do so; nor is there any assurance that small businesses could afford to lease any part of the over-air spectrum, a further twist in this insidious con.
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Even if there is some additional programming, as I have shown, most might be in the form of regular programming on, say, channel 6 and 6.1, weather on 6.2, and local news and sports on 6.3. Is that a benefit worth BILLIONS of dollars of people's money and disruption to their lives in having to change equipment and connections that a lot of people just plain don't understand even at present? What of all those scores of millions of people who have to have a friend hook up their VCR, DVR, or TiVo? How many MILLIONS of manhours is this conversion going to take? For what?
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The supposed picture and sound benefits may be illusory, if not fraudulent misstatements, especially for people who buy HDTV:

Even when I watch the sports on a 13" TV, the bandwidth starvation is painfully evident. There are motion blur, tiling and "mosquito noise" (see http://www.videsignline.com/howto/180207350) so bad that I just about never want to watch it.

And the same website suggests that what is offered may depend on the state of the economy:

Considering the TV advertising situation, I wonder if the local TV stations would end up operating just a few transmitters which would multicast all of the primary (x.1) local broadcasts, thus saving each local broadcaster the total cost of operating an entire DTV transmission facility.

If that turns out to be true, why are we doing this now, when the economy is in tatters? The bulk of benefits, if any, will accrue not to the consumer or viewer, but to major corporations, and the producers of infomercials who attempt to sell us crap by feeding us lies. This is not an issue of the market driving decisions, but of people being dictated to by a high-handed Government that is in the pocket of Big Broadcasting.
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The Congressionally-mandated end to analog TV broadcasts should be not just delayed but reversed by the Obama Administration.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 10:08 PM

 
Stem-Cell Slauter. The Obama Administration has decided that killing children to chop them up for parts is a wonderful thing to do because it might empower older people to live better. In EMBRYONIC stem-cell research — there are other stem cells, whose harvesting does not kill children, but that's not good enuf for today's Frankensteinian science — the issue is not, as Brian Williams of NBC News today put it, whether embryonic stem-cell therapy can work, but whether it is morally permissible. We could seize children or adults off the street, slit their throats, and give their organs to strangers to them who need heart transplants and the like. But Obama & Co. wouldn't dare propose that, nor even defend the suggestion that it be done. We don't even allow FELONS IN PRISON to be chopped up for parts, not even if they are to be executed anyway and not even if they consent to give, during their imprisonment, a kidney or a lobe of their liver, which would not kill them. The only exception is a voluntary organ donation to a member of their own family. That's insane, especially when contrasted with the absolutely blithe ignorement of the killing of babies who have committed no crime, unless we consider being conceived, a crime.
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In regard to embryonic stem-cell research and support for organizations that provide abortions as birth control worldwide, the Obama Administration has put itself firmly on the side of abortion on demand, the mass slauter of babies as subhuman trash. How very odd for a black man to smile upon declaring some defenseless people subhuman, fit only to die, in order to be used to benefit their betters.
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Perhaps we need a new Revolution to kill the Obama Administration's child-slauterers, replace them with decent Americans faithful to the principle from the Declaration of Independence of devotion to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" — note which of those three devotions comes first — and chop THEM up for parts instead.
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O Ye of Little Faith. Some Christian ministers, especially in the black church, are upset that Obama mentioned nonbelievers in his Inaugural Address. They feel threatened that even the mention of nonbelief as an option Americans have the right to consider will cause losses to their churches. If their faith is that weak, then they had better either apologize to their God, or admit that religion is b.s. and become nonbelievers themselves. Maybe we should call such ministers not "Christians" but "petty fidians" or even "nullifidians".
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:22 PM

 
Trans-Atlantic Conversation on Political Philosophy. Over the past week a colleague in northern England and I have exchanged emails about a number of topics, sparked by his remembering something I said here months ago. Here is the exchange, slitely edited (but still lengthy; be warned). He initially wrote:

I remember when you posited the question "What is an economy for?"

Isn't the real political divide on economics between those who want to be average people in a rich country, and those who want to be super-rich people in a poor country? Is the problem with the United States that the rich have converted it from a wealth-creation machine to a wealth-concentration machine?

I found a 2006 article by an author who normally supports free trade, which claims that dirty tricks rather than cheap labor is the real factor behind how China steals First World jobs.

The federal budget deficit and imported oil contribute importantly to the trade deficit. However, the $250 billion federal deficit could not possibly cause an $810 billion trade deficit, and the $275 billion trade gap with China now exceeds net petroleum imports.

Imports outnumber exports with China six to one. That is remarkable, because China is the fastest growing market on the planet for what Americans make best—capital goods, technology products, financial services, and the like.

Many U.S. firms cannot export to China or compete with Chinese products in the United States, because China maintains an artificially undervalued currency, imposes high tariffs on imports, offers subsidies to locate production in China, limits what foreign investors may buy outside China, and enforces other industrial policies to suppress imports and boost exports.

Less than half of China’s price advantage is created by inexpensive labor. The rest, quite plainly, comes from chiseling and cheating on the rules.

Each year, China dumps enough yuan into foreign exchange markets to purchase more than $200 billion U.S. dollars, other hard currencies and securities. That keeps the yuan cheap, Chinese goods artificially inexpensive at Wal-Mart, and U.S. products very expensive in China.

Other Asian governments must follow variants of China’s strategy lest their industries lose markets to Chinese exports. Not counting oil-rich Indonesia, Asia accounts for more than $435 billion of the $810 billion U.S. trade deficit.

New taxes, budget cuts and hybrid cars cannot plug that hole. Without patching it, there is no hope for sustaining American public support for free trade.

International economists have long known a dirty little secret about free trade. A large country like China can manipulate international prices to its advantage and harm its trading partners, much like an abusive monopolist, if those actions go unanswered by other large countries.

By rigging currency markets and other bully tactics, China is doing just that: increasing employment in high productivity activities that compete in trade, and stealing those jobs from the United States and other western economies.

Like the United States, China’s labor force grows at about 1 percent a year but its GDP advances at better than 10 percent; meanwhile President Bush suggests Americans should be content growing at 3 percent or less.

World Trade Organization rules recognize the harm that currency manipulation, subsidies and other industrial policies can cause, and empower members to take compensating actions if harmed.

Seen in this light, proposals like those offered by Congressmen Duncan Hunter and Tim Ryan, which would permit U.S. industries injured by an undervalued yuan to petition for countervailing duties, are not protectionist. Rather, those are sensible responses to Chinese abuses of free trade. Those would either motivate China and others to quit cheating on the rules of global commerce, or undo some of the harm to the U.S. economy by partially rebalancing trade and recouping some lost GDP.

I replied:

The more fundamental question, the answer to which you imply but which is not given in that excerpt, is why the U.S. would tolerate such abuses, from Japan for decades and now from China? Plainly, ruin for many equates with vast riches for the few, here. If there weren't somebody in the U.S. making big money from Chinese misconduct, the industrial ownership class would shut the border down post-haste. As to why there are so many traitorous, greedy people in the top income tiers in the United States, I haven't a clue. Perhaps it's the whole post-Christian thing, where the bulk of people reducing their own countrymen to ruin don't believe there is any price to be paid, not by their body or property on Earth, not by their eternal soul on Judgment Day. No one has found a way to talk people into decent behavior. The Golden Rule is all very nice, but as a practical matter, why should selfish people give a damn about anybody who cannot actually hurt them? Moralists have always had to scare people into behaving morally. And there is not presently any credible threat of punishment of any kind to the super-rich for their crimes against their fellow man. What, pray, do we do about that?
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It's a little hard to complain about Chinese self-aggrandizement, given China's hideous history of poverty and famine. It is thus another case of trying to talk people into treating other people fairly. The Golden Rule doesn't sell well in a country that has had millions die of starvation in the collective memory, especially in one that has no significant Christian tradition, where the Golden Rule has the magic of a deity behind it, implicitly to scare people. I don't know that the Chinese believe in a Last Judgment of any kind, altho many do practice a type of ancestor worship. What would be the point of lavishing attentions on dead ancestors if those ancestors cannot know of such devotions? Nor does the common decency of the common people — if any — control in most countries, which are ruled by people who do not share in any common decency but are personally ambitious and don't care whom they crush in their climb to the top. There's another thing you might recall my having said: The human race is slime.

That brought this response:

In fact China is significantly anti-Christian — for example the Roman Catholic Church is banned in favor of a "Chinese Catholic Church".

One reason why China is so paranoid about religious movements (not just Christianity, but also Falun Gong) is because many rebellions in Chinese history had a religious aspect to them. The worst was the Taiping Rebellion, led a man who claimed to be Jesus's brother. It happened about the same time as the American Civil War, but killed more than 30 million people!

As for who gains — pretty much the entire industrial ownership class is profiting. Traditional protectionism would come into play if American firms were being outcompeted by Chinese firms, but what's really happening is that American workers are being outcompeted by Chinese workers working for the same American firms.

My comment:

I had never heard of the Taiping Rebellion but just checked the Wikipedia article about it. That says that part of the massive death toll was due to starvation, a constant theme in too much of Chinese history. I'm with Mao in seeing the Taiping Rebellion as a war against feudalism. It is shocking that Britain and France helped the Qing government. I'm glad the U.S. shares none of that guilt.

My colleague then added some info from a somewhat different angle:

One example of how the Chinese respect ruthlessness is that they revere Genghis Khan (as he founded the Yuan Dynasty) while Westerners (and even more so Muslims) revile him as a mass murderer.

In fact I've often wondered why Muslims don't view the Mongols as the epitome of absolute evil — just as Westerners view the Nazis. Perhaps it's because they're still devoutly religious and feel no need for a secular Satan-substitute. Then again, the Hamas Charter does liken Zionism to a "Nazi-Tatar invasion", which suggests there is some anti-Mongol (Tatar) sentiment out there.

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

For many of the super-rich, capitalism is a sport and their wealth is a score. There was the case of a successful stock trader going on a tour of the mansion of some early 20th century zillionaire, where the guide describes in detail what he bought with his zillions. The stock trader asked "Who cares about what he spent his money on? I want to know how he made it!"

There's no reason for anyone to have money in enormous amounts, because the more money you have, the less useful it is. If someone living on $20,000 per year had their income double, they would have a significantly higher standard of living in many different ways. If someone living on $200,000 per year had their income double, they'd probably buy a bigger house and fly first class. But what difference would it make for someone living on $20m per year if their income doubled? Perhaps they'd own a corporate jet instead of renting one* when they wanted to fly somewhere, but that's about it.

Perhaps that's why so many super-rich people are scum — once they have enough money to live in ostentatious luxury (which isn't that much), what is left to motivate them but the pursuit of power itself?
____________________

* Speaking of rented corporate jets, they're one half of why 9/11 put Concorde out of business. The time required to pass the strengthened security measures meant that flying on a rented private jet (which was comparable in price to a Concorde flight) became faster — the lack of security checks for private-jet flights more than made up for the aircraft's slower flying speed.

The other half is that many of Concorde's regular customers were killed in the attacks themselves.

My reply, which closed this particular conversation, was:

I knew that the Mongols regard Genghis Khan as a national hero, which is appalling enuf. When I was a late child or early teenager, I saw some film about the Mongol massacres and was horrified. But that the victims of Genghis's monstrousness should admire him is astonishing. Are you sure about that?
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I hadn't heard about the "Tatar" thing in regard to Hamas. I suppose they mean by that to harken back to Hulegu's attack down thru the Fertile Crescent until stopped by the Mamelukes (and what a strange word that is. I thought to check the pronunciation of that monster's name, spelled Hulegu or Hulagu, and find I misread it, which is easy enuf to do given our crappy spelling "system". I had read it húe.la.gù, whereas it's apparently to be pronounced hue.láe.gu. I'd have known that if it were spelled Hulaygu. This is another case that explains why I am a spelling reformer. I took my grandniece, from California, to the American Museum of Natural History and was amazed at the host of words on plaques that you have to GUESS at because there's no way in the world to know how to pronounce them. Only once in a blue moon is there a folk-phonetic pronunciation guide. In my Fanetik, and especially Augméntad Fanétik, spelling (true-)system, you know how to pronounce every single word.
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Anyway, my brother, who has been a millionaire twice, tho I don't know if he still is, especially in that he lost a lot of money from his retirement accounts recently, has said plainly that beyond a certain point, money is just a way of keeping score. Since that is true, you'd think we'd be able to motivate people to keep score of how much money they give away, or pay in taxes; or how smart they are in how they use their money for public good -- "I built 17 library media centers in depressed neighborhoods for $X, when everybody said it couldn't be done for less than $(X+y)." You would especially think this in that it is not the acquisitiveness but the philanthropy of Carnegie and Rockefeller that people most admire. I find it odd that people would crave zeros on a statement of net worth more than the admiration of the world.
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As for the pursuit of power thru money, again we must ask a basic question: What is power FOR? The well-adjusted person says that power is the chance to do good and useful things. The tyrant doesn't see it that way.
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People just don't ask the right questions. Scott Baio was on late-nite cable talkshow Chelsea Lately last nite talking about the quest for fame, which motivates so many people in Hollywood, even after they learn the hard way about the costs of fame (paparazzi invading their privacy, all their less-than-admirable secrets exposed, etc.). Well-adjusted people don't crave empty fame or meaningless fortune. Perhaps that's why nice guys finish last, because they have nothing to prove, no deep psychological need to achieve outsize accomplishments in any realm. The (late) co-founder with me of the Expansionist Party told me I was too smart to succeed in politics, which really meant that I am too rational to pursue power for power's sake, or sacrifice privacy for fame, etc. So we get only twisted personalities at the top of everything, because their irrational, deep, inexplicable NEEDS impel them to strive beyond all reason, as for instance campaigning for the Presidency for two years, for a job that might last only four -- if you're not assassinated in office -- and spending 3/4 of a billion dollars for a job that pays only $400,000 a year. Monomania is rewarded; mental health is punished. And how many principles does anyone have to compromise, even to the point of compromising them away entirely, in order to achieve the highest positions in politics, business, entertainment, whatever? The Faustian bargain is more psychological parable than literal account, but all too many people think that just because they haven't actually pledged their soul to the devil, the compromises and sacrifices they make for an irrational goal don't matter.
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So now Obama will have four years (absent assassination, an all-too-real possibility) to accomplish, to accomplish -- what? How much can anyone accomplish in four or even eight years (we will assume that Congressman Serrano's attempt to repeal the 22nd Amendment and allow unlimited terms will be rejected overwhelmingly -- we wouldn't want George Bush in office for 32 years), on a planet of 6.7B people, and counting? Bill Clinton left the White House having reversed 12 years of Republican profligacy and then having produced the greatest budget surplus in the history of the world. Within 8 months, it was gone, thrown away on the rich by the Bush Administration, which then plunged us into the greatest DEFICITS in the history of the world within another two scant years or so. Plainly a black Presidency will achieve a lot that no other use for $600M or $750M (by the Obama campaign) would achieve, even if that President were assassinated by other than racists (e.g., Islamists) even within the first year. Of course, if he IS assassinated by KKK types, we can expect unprecedented racial strife in the United States, and that would actually set us BACK rather than move us forward racially.
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But in an ordinary year, is $5.3B for an election for President and Congress a reasonable use for so much money? And while we may get the best President and Congress money can buy, is it a good President and Congress?
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I had my golden moment, the "Camelot" of the JFK years, in my youth. I would be very happy for present younger generations to have their own "Camelot", and hope it doesn't end the way mine did.

(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,228 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Bombing the UN. The Israeli Government is so certain that the United States is owned lock, stock, and barrel by Zionists that it took the occasion of a visit to Israel by the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, to BOMB the United Nations' headquarters in Gaza, deliberately destroying tons of food and medicine recently shipped in to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. The chutzpah of the Israelis in showing their utter contempt for the United Nations and the international community makes Mussolini's defiance of the League of Nations seem humble and cooperative by contrast.
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How long will the people of the United States — who host the United Nations' headquarters in New York City — continue to indulge the most outrageous crimes of the Israeli Government? How many more thousands of Arabs must die before even the most callous and heartless American religious loon — who thinks that Christianity and Judaism are the same thing, and that being a Christian requires supporting the people who killed Jesus — realizes that the creation of Israel was an astoundingly stupid and criminal mistake that has produced endless war, massive death, and worldwide disruption, including the attacks of 9/11 upon the U.S. "homeland" (that noxious, Nazistic term)? We don't even want to know the death toll, and no one is keeping track. In this latest of Israel's endless wars against its neighbors, over 1,000 Palestinians have already died, as against less than 20 Israelis, for whose urgent "defense" this criminal aggression is supposedly being waged.
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Because silence implies assent, I have today sent to the Obama transition team the following message via feedback form, under the heading "Reverse U.S. Middle East policy":

President Obama must end all U.S. support for Israel, and instead put Palestine and Israel firmly on equal footing in U.S. policy, or it cannot even hope to serve as "honest broker" for permanent peace. U.S. aid has been used to kill literally countless thousands of Israel's neighbors, and the U.S. Government is wholly to blame for all the atrocities committed with U.S. connivance, including the outrageous bombing, today, of the United Nations' headquarters in Gaza on the very day that the UN Secretary General is visiting Israel! How is the U.S. to restore international law when it smiles upon crimes against the United Nations itself, by Israel?
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How many people must die before the U.S. Government admits the obvious, that the creation of a Jewish state in an Arab land (opposed by the Wilson Administration) was an insane project that has produced endless war — a mistake of the most astonishing stupidity and evil, that we have heretofore compounded but must now correct? Two wars against Iraq and a "sanctions" regime, put together, have killed well over a MILLION Iraqis — for Israel. Almost 3,000 dead Americans on 9/11, and over 4,000 more dead Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan — are all the result of U.S. support for Israel. And that's just part of the death toll from Zionism.
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The United States has become a co-conspirator in the crimes of Israel, and we will be punished for it. 9/11 was just a taste of what the world wants done to us, all because of blind U.S. support for Israel. President Obama must end U.S. complicity in the crimes of Radical Zionism. Cut all aid to Israel. Israel has received over $250 BILLION from the U.S. (in 2008 terms: http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1209/p16s01-wmgn.html) over the 60 years that it has been on WELFARE paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. Israel has money for a space program! So it can damn well take care of itself. We didn't establish Israel; the British Empire, our old enemy, did. We have no responsibility for defending an insane idea we didn't come up with but in fact opposed when it was first put forward.
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The United States must end the endless war in the Middle East — and thus against us — the only way it can be ended: by disestablishing the "State of Israel" and merging it into a multiethnic and multireligious, secular Unified Palestine, in which no one is master and no one SLAVE. President Obama must not continue U.S. treatment of Palestinians as the "NIGGERS" of the Middle East. Make no mistake: in U.S. historical terms, Israel is the KKK; Palestinians and other Arabs are "niggers" kept down by the KKK; and it is all due to the mindless carte-blanche backing of the U.S. Government for a "state" of Israel that should have been left in ancient history. The Romans tried to buy peace in Judea by crucifying Jesus. The United States, today's Rome, is trying to buy peace by sacrificing Gaza. Killing the enemies of the Jews didn't work for Rome and it won't work for us. At end, Rome had to destroy Judea and scatter the Jews. And we will have to destroy Israel, and scatter suchever Jews as will not live as equals with Moslem and Christian Arabs in a united Palestine.

It is incumbent upon decent Americans to agitate by all means necessary to end U.S. complicity in the mass murder endlessly committed by Israel. You can write to the Obama Transition Team by feedback form at http://change.gov/page/content/contact/. Or you can wait until Tuesday and write to President Obama (a message now is probably pointless, since Radical Zionist neocons control the Bush Administration) at comments@whitehouse.gov. Bush could still redeem himself in small measure by cutting off aid to Israel tomorrow. I don't really expect it, but I have sent a version of my message to Obama to the White House today. We must all do what we can to redeem our national honor.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,226 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:17 PM

 
The Poor and Middle Class Have Sacrificed More Than Enuf. I was offended by Barack Obama's saying today that everyone must sacrifice to solve our current economic crisis. No! So I sent this message to his transition team by feedback form at Change.gov. (I used block-caps for not knowing if any other type of emphasis was available in that feedback form.)

The idea that everyone must sacrifice in the current economic crisis is absurdly untrue and insanely unfair. The poor and middle class did NOTHING to produce this problem. It is all the result of misbehavior, even crimes committed by the RICH. And the rich have so much money, despite the problems they themselves caused, that they can pay for EVERY REMEDY easily. Donald Trump, when he was thinking of running for President, said the rich are SO rich they could pay off the entire national debt (as at 1999) with a one-time income-tax surcharge. The rich really are that rich.
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You must RAISE TAXES ON THE RICH to keep the deficit from growing — especially in that deficit spending must be paid for by the little guy, to the rich, who OWN the national debt. Indeed, you could almost certainly BALANCE THE BUDGET by raising taxes on the rich, no matter how much you have to spend to counter the recession/depression CAUSED BY the rich. They are the ones who PRODUCED this mess. THEY are the ones to CLEAN IT UP. Nobody else.
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Don't stop at returning to the tax rates before the current Administration's tax cuts. Return to the tax rates BEFORE REAGAN. It is the Plutocratic Revolution started by the Reagan Administration that underlies the current nitemare of debt and economic devastation. Reagan and Bush 41 quadrupled the national debt, and Dumbya further doubled it. So if Republicans complain about fiscal irresponsibility, just throw their own record at them: they OCTUPLED the national debt! (The unusual word "octupled" will draw attention to that fact. Use it.)
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You must UNDO THE PLUTOCRATIC REVOLUTION with an ECONOMIC FAIRNESS REVOLUTION. Restore the income-tax rates before Reagan, say, in 1985 or 1978 (whichever were higher). How can conservatives oppose returning to income-tax rates of the past? Truly progressive tax rates, and resulting wide distribution of wealth, are the American tradition. The progressive income tax in this country was started by Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican! Attempts to destroy it are, thus, RADICAL, not conservative, whereas a move to restore income-tax progressivity to achieve the ends of socioeconomic equality and truly adequate funding of Government the Nation needs, are genuinely conservative, "All-American".
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In no other area of life — not height, weight, life expectancy, appearance, intelligence: nothing — is one person 100,000 TIMES (or more) as fortunate as another. Bill Gates has over 4 MILLION times as much money as the typical recipient of Social Security. We cannot have social democracy with Third World economic inequality. You MUST raise taxes on the rich and make them literally "pay" for their economic crimes.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:57 PM