Contemplation

Dear Mr. Hurd,

I have found your Pavillion dv9700 series laptop overall to be well made and to meet my needs as a small businessman very well. The one minor exception has been the USB ports, which should be a minor inconvenience, but due to the consistent difficulties I have experienced with your support (chat and phone), this has become a seriously troubling issue.

Three times now I have tried to use your support to fix my issue. Each time I was left with no solutions, no ability to escalate the issue to someone with more expertise, and it appears that the agent simply disconnected when I asked to escalate (though it could have been a fault in the chat client).

Each time the agent seemed to have little understanding of my issue, of the hardware, of the operating system or of the English language. As a professional who sets up service desks for a living, the appearance I have been given is of an outsourced help desk run by inexperienced ESL agents who are giving directions from decision tree software.

While this can be functional for basic issues, customers like myself with more complex issues are left very frustrated when they are told there is no ability to escalate to a more knowledgeable agent. It doesn't help either to be presented with directions like this: "Kelly, Please uninstall the drivers from device manager which drivers are not installed in the device." Not only is this barely comprehensible, but it shows a complete lack of understanding of the issue, which is that Vista is not finding or installing drivers for my USB devices. (This was followed by having me try to use Recovery Manager to re-install drivers for the external device, again showing a lack of understanding of the issue.)

In summary, after a total of several hours of using your support options, both self-service, phone and chat, I am left with no solutions, a great deal of frustration and the impression that your help desk has no function beyond walking customers through the website support data. I have had respect for Hewlett Packard for several decades of using your products, from printers to servers, and I hope this will letter will help fix what I see as a serious deficiency in the support of those products.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Kelly Logan

I just finished watching the third season of MI-5 recently, and one episode ("Frequently Asked Questions") started with a definition of a mercenary. It was similar to this from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Mercenary_Convention>UN definition</a>: "...Is motivated to take part therein essentially by the desire for significant private gain and is prompted by the promise or payment of material compensation..." That got me thinking; how many people do I hear that from? "I'm just doing it for the money." "It's a paycheck." "It puts food on the table." "Got to pay my bills." . . .etc. As a kid, people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and when I said "a doctor" or "a lawyer" they would tell me why I would good be at that job, ask what kind of people I would help, talk about how that would make me happy; I don't remember anyone saying how much money those jobs would make me. It seems like there used to be a sense of pride that motivated people to do their jobs well, an understanding of how they were contributing to the well-being of their family, their friends, their community and their country. What happened to that? It's as if our sense of community itself was another resource that private industry mined and exploited for profit, and now it's all but tapped out. Wasn't it considered the mark of an outcast to have no ties, no duties to something greater than yourself? When did we start making that a goal instead? Mercenaries can be tried as criminals and executed, not because their actions are different from soldiers' but because they are motivated by greed instead of pride and love of their community. I think this reflects that the basic understanding that greed is inherently destructive and corrosive. So how do we get that back for everyone? If you have a sense of pride and contribution in your job, what are the aspects of it that give that to you? How can we apply that in other jobs? If you don't, what do you think would give you a feeling of respect for your work? How could your job mean more for your community?

A friend recently noted to me that he thought I was blaming Israel for Hamas' actions, and that this was like blaming Western countries for Al Qaeda's actions. I found this to be a very apt comparison and expanded on it:

Pointing out that Israel's actions fostered the creation of Hamas is paralleled by pointing out that the USA's actions fostered Al Qaeda. The kind of radical and militant actions that are generally lumped into "terrorism" can only be supported in an atmosphere of crushing abuses and destruction of people and culture.

Israel's decades-long occupation of others' land, their theft and/or destruction of their homes and assets, their pushing of millions into refugee camps like Gaza or into other countries, the theft of resources necessary for survival like water, the constant enforced grind of starvation, homelessness and need are war crimes. Add to this the constantly belligerent Israeli military that uses brutal blockades, collective punishment, assassination, kidnapping, and torture to enforce Israeli government policies and you create an unstoppable need for change and redress in the abused society.

Where that need is directed is also in control of the Israeli government.

If Israel had addressed their responsibilities as an occupying force, the need would have been addressed before being created by supporting basic human rights.

If Israel had submitted to international laws and agreements after committing its crimes, made recompense and taken on its responsibilities after the fact, the need would have been addressed by supporting and submitting to the rule of law.

If Israel had recognized that decades of occupation had not succeeded and changed its policies to accept the 1967 borders and other compromises offered it year after year, the need would have been addressed by supporting diplomacy and negotiation.

By not doing any of these things, Israel creates a constantly growing need that Israel demonstrates they will not address and that they will not allow to be addressed legally or diplomatically.

That need, if given no other outlets, will turn to the radical elements that are present in all societies and become radical militants. When Israel demonstrates that there are no lines it is not willing to cross to meet its goals, it fosters the same actions in those who try to oppose it.

For example, when Israel started kidnapping Palestinians, holding them without charge and torturing them, Palestinians and human rights groups called for legal redress, for the detainees to be charged or released. Israel refused. Radical militants similarly kidnapped military and other enforcement personnel, and used them to negotiate the return; this was successful, proving that Israel would respond only to these types of actions.

Year after year that Israel eroded the rule of law and basic human rights, they made radical militantism more and more attractive to an abused and desperate people.

Now - What does this mean? Is Israel directly responsible for the actions of Hamas? This to me is similar to a landlord illegally throwing all of his tenants in a desperately poor, let's say, Polish ghetto onto the street, which one tenant responds to by holding up a local store to get enough money to move his family to a new home. This robbery, and the squatting and people on the streets in the area, lowers the value of the landlord's property along with the rest of the neighborhood.

So, who is responsible for the robbery? The Polish robber is. If the robber brutalized the store owner, then the robber should be held to account for that.

But in focusing only on the robber's actions, one is unable to understand why the robber acted, and has little information on how to prevent similar actions in the future. If the landlord is protected from rightful prosecution and continues to illegally throw Polish tenants onto the street, then an uninformed observer will conclude that Polish people are given to crime, based on the actions of the few radicals among them.

By being willing to look at the larger picture, one can see how to stop the cycle of violence and destruction, just as so many have seen throughout history, by creating an objective system of equal rights and justice, a rule of law that addresses the primary needs of all before they fester and grow into radicalism. That's why the UN was created. That's why the Nuremberg trials were run. Thats why an international court was created. To show that there was another way to address abuses and crimes other than becoming a criminal.

Democracy Now! has devoted today's show to the situation in Gaza. Leading off there was an excellent debate:

A Debate on Israel’s Invasion of Gaza: UNRWA’s Christopher Gunness v. Israel Project’s Meagan Buren

On the tenth day of Israel’s continued assault on the Gaza Strip and in spite of mounting international protests, Israeli ground troops pushed deeper into Gaza. The death toll has risen to 531 Palestinians and five Israelis. Nearly 2,500 Palestinians have been wounded since the bombing began last week. Forty-nine Israeli soldiers have been wounded since the ground invasion began Saturday. [includes rush transcript]

Guests:

Christopher Gunness, spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), on the line from Gaza.

Meagan Buren, Senior Adviser to the Israel Project, a pro-Israeli group in Washington, D.C. and Jerusalem.

For a while I've wanted to go through and simply summarize and detail the claims in one of these debates to look through them more clinically. Here's my first attempt. Let me know what you think!

Here are the claims:

• There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza - challenged by UN and humanitarian group reports and analysis.


• One million people are without power and will continue to be unless Israel opens the Nahal Oz industrial crossing point - unchallenged.


• At least two hundred and fifty thousand people are without running water - unchallenged.


• UN food stocks will run out in the next forty-eight hours and significant numbers of people in northern Gaza will face a serious threat of hunger unless Israel opens the main conveyor belt at the Karni crossing to allow wheat grain in - unchallenged at the moment, characterized as a "difficult situation" (see below for a revisit of this topic).


• 9,000 rockets have been fired at Israeli civilians (time span unknown) - unchallenged.


• Israeli people have been living in bomb shelters for years and must plan their day in fifteen second increments (presumably the time between an alarm siren and a rocket hit) - unchallenged.


• Rocket attacks from Gaza should be considered terrorist actions and are not lawful - unchallenged.


• The Israeli military action is not a proportional response to the actions of those in Gaza - challenged by claiming that over eight years of rocket attacks (= 9,000 rockets?) on Israel must be considered as justification.


• The Israeli military action may stop rocket attacks in the short term, but is reducing the chances of peace and security for Israelis in the long-term by fostering radicalism - challenged by the next claim regarding Hamas and negotiation.


• Hamas will never negotiate with Israel - challenged by claiming the Cairo talks resulted in a ceasefire.


• The Israelis in Sderot (a town close to the border of the conflict) recognized the success of the Cairo talks between Israel and Hamas and of the relative calm that resulted - agreed.


• The rocket attacks on Israel, though unjustified, are a response to Israeli occupation - challenged by claiming Israel is not occupying Gaza - challenged by claiming that under international law, control of land, air and sea borders constitutes occupation (detailed in a report by Gisha, "Disengaged Occupiers", quick executive summary here).


• Israel left Gaza and used "economic diplomacy" as a peaceful means to stop Hamas rockets - challenged by claiming that the "economic diplomacy" was forcing the "most stringent trade embargo in the history of trade relations" on an occupied people - unchallenged.


• The blockade (economic diplomacy, trade embargo) on food and medical supplies is causing a humanitarian crisis - challenged first by incorrectly claiming that Hamas made this determination instead of the UN, challenged second by claiming that thousands of tons of food and supplies are being sent into Gaza from Israel presumably meaning that this was sufficient to prevent any crisis, and challenged third by Hamas was preventing its people from receiving the food sent in - The first was admitted wrong, the second was not challenged, the third was challenged by a lack of evidence to support it.

A friend recently asked what I was doing politically, and I thought that it would be interesting to share some of the letters I send to our representatives. Here's a recent letter I received from ANSWER and the message I sent to my representatives.

From ANSWER:

The humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian people in Gaza has reached an especially grave level. The deprivation of food and water is the deliberate purpose of the U.S.-backed Israeli government's decision to close border crossings into Gaza.

All crossings for goods coming into the Gaza Strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, are closed. The Palestinians are completed blockaded. A United Nations report issued today states that the blockade and siege of Gaza, which began 18 months ago after the democratic election of the Hamas government, has now resulted in a 49% unemployment rate for the citizens of Gaza. Gaza City residents are without electricity for up to 16 hours a day and half the city's residents receive water only once a week for a few hours. The UN report added that 80% of Palestinians living in Gaza are obliged to drink polluted water.

The United National Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has been forced to suspend food distribution for both emergency and regular programs. The Agency has run out of flour and has now suspended food deliveries to 750,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

The Israeli Occupation Forces have escalated their military attacks on the people in Gaza. Civilians have been killed and Palestinian houses and other civilian premises have been targeted for destruction. This is a deliberate policy to starve and strangle a whole people by depriving them of food, water, fuel and medical supplies.

The U.S. government is bankrolling the Israeli government and its criminal actions. Israel receives $15 million dollars a day and is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the world. The U.S. Military Industrial Complex and the leadership of both the Republican and Democratic parties support Israel because they view the Israeli government as a extension of U.S. power in the Middle East. The Palestinian people deserve the support and solidarity of people around the world. They deserve our support not only in the face of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but in their struggle for self-determination including the right to return to their homes from which they were evicted by the forces of colonial occupation.

And here is what I sent:

We have long held ourselves as defenders of freedom; where is the freedom for the people of Gaza? This country was pledged to fight terrorism and tyranny in 2001 - Who is more terrorized than the people of Gaza, families who never know when Israeli missiles will strike? Who don't know where there next meal may be coming from due to the Israeli blockade of food? Who don't know if their family members who lived despite their injuries from the last Iraqi missile attack will survive, due to the Israeli blockade of medical supplies?

I join with people all over the world in condemning Israel's deliberate starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza. The U.S. government sends $15 million each day to Israel. In addition to the military attacks against the people of Gaza, Gaza City residents are without electricity for up to 16 hours a day and half the city's residents receive water only once a week for a few hours. These are war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Our laws specifically state that our money and our weapons are not to be used for aggression and occupation.

In accordance of our countries laws, the Geneva conventions that we wrote and signed, and for the greatest good of this country, I demand that the United States end all funding for Israel.

It is hardly a surprise that during this time of enormous suffering in Gaza, Israel is working its hardest to prevent anyone from reporting on it. Journalists have been ejected and thrown in jail for trying to report on the conditions there. Israel is now so well protected by the United States and their own arrogance that they can detain and throw out UN inspectors without consequence (or even mention in US corporate news).

What's your opinion? No, don't write it here, write it here! You may disagree with me and with ANSWER (Act Now To Stop War And End Racism), but that's okay - make your voice heard!!! The real problem right now is that so many people are afraid to speak up, are told to simply sit back and let 'top men' take care of the problems. Maybe getting people to take control of their representatives and get more involved with their communities will not create exactly the USA that I want, but it will make us a better country, of that I am sure.

So here's your chance - Do you think that we should be giving $15 million dollars a day to Israel? Do you think that the UN should be allowed to send food to starving children in Gaza? Write your representatives and tell them!

And then if you have the time, paste a copy of it here afterwards. :^)

I meant to do a post on this earlier, but I was motivated by a discussion this morning on 89x to help fill in the blanks where questions were left unanswered. If I have time later, I'll polish this up a bit, or ask me some questions on this and we'll fill it out together. :^)

Just to put some numbers on it, the latest study (NPR story yesterday: Expert Examines Impact Of Big Three's Collapse) of the effects of the loan versus two companies going into bankruptcy found that the cost of a $15 billion loan, even if it is only paid back halfway pales in comparison to the over $60 billion that it will cost taxpayers if two companies go into bankruptcy in lost taxes, welfare, pension coverage and other direct costs, not to mention the rest of the fallout that will occur from having millions on the street with no healthcare.

What it seems that many people do not realize is that all auto companies use the same suppliers, and if the the big three go under, auto supplies will effectively lock up for months. That will push out the rest of the companies as well - where will the jobs be then?

You and your callers hit it on the head though - this is all about killing the UAW. It's not my favorite union, but they are one of the last groups still strong enough to stand up for workers' rights. Ask people this question - when the unions are gone, who is going to keep fighting for a five-day work week, for living wages, for medical and retirement benefits, for a safe and functional working environment? These companies have no problem paying kids to work 60 hour weeks in toxic factories in other countries, why would they care about bringing back the 20's right here in the USA?

Another perspective question - what did auto executives do that every other executive in companies of the same size did not do? Is there any industry of the same size where you couldn't point to greed and bad decisions? This is typical tactics by the Republicans - find some rich person and find something to attack about them so you can blame everyone else, and then if someone brings up the workers, make up some complete lie about how they 'rich' so they can be targetted as well.

Republican leaders don't care about how much it destroys the country as long as they get what they want. Speaking of which, rich Republican voters in Michigan are not regretting a thing; I can tell you about several I know personally that have moved their money and businesses off-shore so that the country can go into the toilet without hurting their bottom line. As you heard last hour, the non-rich (or dupes) are so caught up in this mythology of blaming auto executives and 'rich workers' that regular news networks are peddling that you can't even talk to them rationally.

The bottom line is that not giving a loan to the auto companies will cost US taxpayers at least four times more money, will make it harder for the other auto companies to do business in this country, will hit smaller businesses related to the industry hardest, and will be used as an excuse to take away worker's pay, benefits, retirement and any other corporate responsibility they can get to to push the national standards down even further.

Full disclosure: I have friends and family directly related to auto industries, though I am not, unless an occasional contract for companies like Murray's Parts counts. :^)

Since 1999, a resolution has been submitted every year that defines the term "defamation of religion" under the topic of racism, and seeks to create an internationally legal structure to allow countries to punish those who speak out against religions that they favor.

I think it's worth pointing out that the Bush administration has voted against this resolution every year, and I support them for doing so.

As the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty noted in their analysis of these resolutions and their relation to current laws and internationally recognized rights (principally the "International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," Articles 19 and 20):

The right to disagree and to express dissent peacefully is a fundamental aspect of the freedom of thought. In his report in March 2008, Amyebi Ligabo, the Special Rapporteur
on the protection of freedom of expression, stated that limitations of Article 19 of the ICCPR “are not intended to suppress the expression of critical views, controversial opinions or politically incorrect statements.”

Further, there is no basis in international or regulatory law for the concept of protection of religious ideas or collective rights of a sometimes disparate group of people within a larger faith tradition.19 “Defamation of religions” as a concept undermines the very foundations of the human rights system, which is based on a concept of individual rights.

The grounding of human rights in the protection of individuals instead of in the protection of ideas or of group identities is well established in treaty and custom, in general principles, and academia. Attempts to change this paradigm have met with extreme argument and dissent and thus do not have the force of established international law norms.

Now I bring this up because of two events, one so surreal that the mainstream media has probably covered it, and one so real that they have probably not.

The surreal event is that Saudi Arabia is leading U.N. talks on religious tolerance, which is primarily focused on preventing people from doing anything that their religion will not tolerate.

The real event is that two US representatives have moved to support the Bush administration's U.N. vote by putting forward HR 6146 to help prevent other countries' laws from reducing the freedom of religious (and non-religious) expression here in the USA. I hope you can take a few minutes and let your congresspeople know that you support this bill.

Old post (saved as draft) that I didn't get a chance to finish.

House Oversight Cmte. Hearing on the Role of Federal Regulators (October 23, 2008)

Some parts of note:

Waxman's opening statement:

Today is our fourth hearing into the ongoing financial crisis.

Our previous three hearings focused on the private sector. Our first hearing examined the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. We learned that this investment bank failed after it made highly leveraged investments that plummeted in value.

Our second hearing examined the fall of AIG. We learned that this huge insurance company was brought to the brink of bankruptcy by speculation in unregulated derivatives called credit default swaps.

Our third hearing, which we held yesterday, examined the role of credit rating agencies. We learned that these firms sacrificed their rating standards — and their credibility — for short-term gains in sales volumes.

Each of these case studies is different. But they share common themes. In each case, corporate excess and greed enriched company executives at enormous cost to shareholders and our economy.

And in each case, these abuses could have been prevented if federal regulators had paid more attention and intervened with responsible regulations.

This brings us to today’s hearing. Our focus today is the actions — and inaction — of federal regulators.

For too long, the prevailing attitude in Washington has been that the market always knows best. The Federal Reserve had the authority to stop the irresponsible lending practices that fueled the subprime mortgage market. But its long-time Chairman, Alan Greenspan, rejected pleas that he intervene.

The SEC had the authority to insist on tighter standards for credit rating agencies. But it did nothing despite urgings from Congress.

The Treasury Department could have led the charge for responsible oversight of financial derivatives. Instead, it joined the opposition.

The list of regulatory mistakes and misjudgments is long, and the cost to taxpayers and our economy is staggering. The SEC relaxed leverage standards on Wall Street. The Offices of Thrift Supervision and the Comptroller of the Currency preempted state efforts to protect homebuyers from predatory lending. And the Justice Department slashed its efforts to prosecute white collar fraud.

Congress is not exempt from responsibility. We passed legislation in 2000 that exempted financial derivatives from regulation. And we took too long — until earlier this year — to pass legislation strengthening oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Over and over again, ideology trumped governance. Our regulators became enablers rather than enforcers. Their trust in the wisdom of the markets was infinite. The mantra became: government regulation is wrong and the market is infallible.

Our focus today is financial regulation. But this deregulatory philosophy spread across government. It explains why lead got into our children’s toys and why evacuees from Hurricane Katrina were housed in trailers filled with formaldehyde.

Today we will ask our witnesses hard questions about the regulatory decisions they made and failed to make. But I want them to know that I value their public service and their cooperation with the Committee.

Our Committee has stayed busy in recent weeks as we have held hearing after hearing on the financial crisis. I want all members to know how much I appreciate their involvement in these hearings. It is not easy to travel to Washington when Congress is out of session, especially with an election looming. But the issues we are examining are of immense importance to our nation. I am proud of the work we are doing and especially the contributions of the members of this Committee.

Why is it that so many people are so scared to talk about race in this country?

Statistically speaking, it's one of the top four factors that affect income, education level, infant mortality rate and other critical quality (and quantity) of life issues.

There is this myth of equality that I keep hearing from 'good Americans' who "are proud to be in America, where at least (they) know (they're) free." It's an accepted, unassailable part of the deep, structural and blinding prejudice that makes up our society. And it's presence is even more starkly shown by the intense denial mechanisms so many have had to create to allow it to survive.

A group of white high school students, when forced to allow blacks to sit under 'their' tree, responded by hanging nooses from it. If a bunch of skinheads hung a "Wilkommen zu Auschwitz" sign on a tree that they were told Jews would be allowed to sit under, would you tell those Jewish students that it was "just a joke" and to just get over it?

Consider the strategies of Republican operatives to portray Sen. Obama as an Arab and a Muslim. If they did not believe that bigotry and hatred ran rampant through our country, why would they bother? McCain himself felt this when he ran against Bush and was accused of being a white man with a black child. In response to these claims, who said; so what? Or, how is that relevant?

Media stories on the Obama and McCain smears focussed on the whether these smears were true or not, but never examined the more important issue of how they could be smears in the first place in the 21st century. Imagine for a moment that Democratic operatives launched an aggressive campaign that duped voters into believing that McCain was Spanish and a Methodist. After pointing out the obvious facts that he is neither, wouldn't you want a news story to tell you why they would do this? Wouldn't you expect the story itself to be questioning the sanity of the operatives, rather than their facts or morality?

When a older white man thought it was the funniest thing in the world to make an Obama monkey doll and call him "Little Hussein" at a McCain rally, did anyone not get it? Did anyone think, that's weird, why would he do that?

What if an older black man went to an Obama rally with a doll in a white hood and robes with McCain printed on it? What if he danced it around as the crowd around him smiled and laughed approvingly on camera? Would you demand that Obama denounce these kinds of actions?

What if there was a nationally broadcast Democratic pundit radio host that said that Republicans were engaged for the last thirty years in a movement, a religion of hate, hate, hate for this country and its liberal policies, that it was a US Council for World Freedom, anti-constitutional, anti-American educational movement, and that McCain, Hagee and GOP lawyers were right up to their distended jowls in it? Would you demand that Obama denounce this kind of hate-based support? What if instead Obama sent Sen. Biden to appear on this show where Biden also attacked those GOP lawyers?

What if after all of these actions people were shouting out at Obama rallys that McCain and Palin were secessionists, para-military fanatics, and that they should be killed? What if, when directly accused of racism at his rallies and of fostering it, Obama just said those claims weren't true and didn't denounce the racists themselves or state that racism had no place in a political campaign?

Again, my point here is not to discuss the presidential campaign, but to take this opportunity to examine the story that corporate media and the general public won't or can't talk about, the enormous white elephant in the room of our society.

Update

Two excellent articles on Democracy Now! today really spear the hypocrisy of Far-Right leaders who have been wrapping themselves in false patriotism and attacking those who work for this entire country as traitors and terrorists, while they work to destroy this country and what it stands for. (As always, I recommend watching/reading the entire stories, but here are a couple tidbits I found poignant.)

Like those who support Sarah Palin, a woman who is more religiously fringe than Bush and more politically radical than Cheney.
Max Blumenthal on Sarah Palin’s Radical Right-Wing Pals and Her Ties to the Pro-Secessionist Alaskan Independence Party

In 2007, Alaskan Independence Party Vice Chair Dexter [Clark] unveiled the party’s new strategy at a neo-secessionist convention in Tennessee, which was attended by all the neo-Confederate groups that the Alaskan Independence Party affiliates with. And his new strategy was called the infiltration strategy, that because these fringe parties can’t get anyone elected running under their own party banner, he urged them to infiltrate the other two, the two major political parties, the Republican and Democratic parties. And he pointed to Sarah Palin as the most successful example of this strategy, that she was essentially—this is in his words, and I’m paraphrasing his words—she was essentially an Alaskan Independence Party cadre, boring from within the Republican Party’s infrastructure.
And while the McCain campaign was able to discredit his claim that she was an AIP member, they weren’t able to discredit the fact, and they haven’t even addressed the fact, that she worked hand-in-glove with the Alaskan Independence Party during the early ’90s and throughout her governorship. And when she spoke before the Alaskan Independence Party in 2008, she pointedly refused to or just did not address the Democratic Party. So that raises questions in itself.
...a Kenyan pastor named—a Pentecostal pastor named Bishop Thomas Muthee, who claims that he cast a witch out of a town named Kiambu, Kenya, and then, you know, miraculously planted eighteen churches there. When the Wasilla Assembly of God, Sarah Palin’s church for over twenty years, found out about him through a popular video disseminated through Christian right channels, they flew him over there to bless Sarah Palin when she was running for governor. And he blessed her by saying that we need more Christian leaders in all of the seven spheres in society, and he complained that there are too many Israelites—that was his, you know, obvious codeword for Jews—in government and that Sarah Palin would be a remedy to that. She, after he said that, walked up and turned her hands up to the sky and closed her eyes and allowed him to lay hands on her and protect her from the spirit of witchcraft.
Now, this is the language of spiritual warfare that comes out of her church, the idea that behind reality is a secret spiritual world, a clash between Satan and God. And this is what they believe, and this is, you know, the Manichean worldview that informs Sarah Palin’s extreme conservatism.

Like those who have pushed McCain and Palin to foster kind of extremism, racism and hatred at their rallies:
Former McCain Supporter Accuses the Senator of “Deliberately Feeding the Most Unhinged Elements of Our Society the Red Meat of Hate”

Frank Schaeffer is the bestselling author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. He is the son of the late evangelist Francis Schaeffer and considered himself a lifelong Republican. He voted for John McCain in 2000, and McCain even endorsed one of Schaeffer’s earlier books on military service. But on Friday, Schaeffer published an open letter to McCain excoriating the Arizona senator.
...
AMY GOODMAN: So, here you are, anti-choice, pro-life, and pro-Obama, Senator Obama, who is fiercely pro-choice.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Right, right. And you know what? It’s an imperfect world, but I would rather have a president that I disagree with on the issue of choice who’s fit to be president than an old man who has just shown such a lack of judgment as to literally connect himself to the lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe. It isn’t just someone you disagree with politically. That’s one point.
And I’d say something else about the choice issue. I am pro-life. I haven’t changed in that regard. If people read my book, Crazy for God, they’ll see that I’ve gone left, if you want to put it that way, in many, many areas, but not that one. But I actually believe that if your interest is not ideology and ideological purity, but rather abortion itself, i.e. you want more or less abortions, that the medical and social programs that Barack Obama is talking about for our country, in terms of care of women and children and families, improvement in education and possibilities for all Americans, actually will result in less abortions. So my interest in the abortion issue is that I think abortion is a tragedy. My interest is not the politics of it, as in always appearing to vote for the person who has the correct ideology.
And so, I think there’s a choice for Americans interested in this issue who are like me, pro-life, and that is, do you want to choose ideological purity attached to a party that will so destroy our economy and all the social programs that there will be more abortions, i.e. as there have been through the Republican-controlled years, when they’ve been talking about this issue for thirty years and done nothing about it for actually helping women and children, or would you rather have a president like Barack Obama, who you disagree with on this one ideological point, in terms of what you might call the theology of the issue, but whose program would practically result in a more conducive environment for families to prosper, for people to have children, for kids to go to school, for women to be taken care of? And I would rather vote for a person who’s going to do the job rather than just have the correct ideology.
AMY GOODMAN: Frank Schaeffer, also on this point of terror and terrorists, you make a very interesting point. I read your—was reading your book throughout yesterday and last night, and about—
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Thank you. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: —about your dad and about being invited to the White House by President Reagan—
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —by President Bush, Sr., by President Ford, and you talked about him calling for the violent overthrow of the United States, yet still being invited to the White House.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Yeah. I mean, the hypocrisy is total. Again, it goes back to what Max Blumenthal was saying. And, by the way, I totally commend him. I hope everybody goes to his website and looks at this. This is a huge and underreported story he was talking about, and he is getting to the nub of it. So, well done, Max Blumenthal.
But people who read Crazy for God will come to see that what I decided was happening was that the people who were talking from the right were actually—about patriotism and wrapping themselves in the flag were actually, in a weird way, profoundly anti-American. They wanted disaster. The worse the country got, the closer it was to Christ coming back, the more you needed Christians to tell you to accept Jesus as your savior. You know, they needed—they needed an apocalyptic frame of mind.
AMY GOODMAN: We have eight seconds.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Yeah. So, essentially, yeah, I would just say, you know, my point is, there was a hypocrisy, because the anti-Americanism was very much in the right while the right was talking about and pointing the finger at the left.

David Cay Johnston reviewed the last McCain/Obama debate regarding their economic stances yesterday, but what I would like to point out is the summary he gave on the US' economic policy in general. This points out many of the threads of economic ideas that I have been discussing in much clearer and more precise terms:

Faltering Economy Takes Center Stage in McCain-Obama Debate (emphasis added)

The fact is that we have a government—we were promised in 1980 by Ronald Reagan: “Elect me, and I’ll get you very quickly to balanced budgets.” Instead, we have four times the amount of government debt that we had back in 1980.

The taxes that Americans have paid in advance for Social Security benefits in the future were spent, principally to finance tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Right now, with the bailout in effect next year, all of the tax—the equivalent of all the income taxes that you pay in January, February, March, April and a good chunk of May just go to pay interest on the national debt, you know, and that money goes to China, foreign sovereign funds, wealthy individuals, insurance companies. It is a transfer from working people to those who are already wealthy.

...

There is a fundamental flaw in the economic theory that we have been operating on for years. And that theory doesn’t address (what) matters, what you spend your tax dollars on. We are not spending our tax dollars on greasing the wheels of commerce, building a stable society, educating people and removing the shocks from things like accidents and disease. We are spending it on income transfers to the rich, on war, on interest on the national debt. And it’s impoverishing us steadily.

That is really it in a nutshell. The status quo is transferring income to the wealthy, and it is eating the foundations of this country out from under us.

It occurred to me tonight on the ride home that I may be talking cross-topics with my friends that are big Austrian economy and laissez faire capitalism people. We seem to usually start from a particular issue and each talk about a different aspect of it. For example, I'll focus on the effect of what I see as 'free market' and deregulatory ideas and they will talk about the effect of diluting the 'pure' free market ideas. I understand that there are very intelligent and reasonable economic theories that support their beliefs.

So I'd like to throw this out there and see if anyone can help explain this to me. I understand and agree with the basic concept of capitalism and market forces rewarding successful risks and innovations that bring greater value to consumers. What I don't understand in the 'pure' free market model is what will protect vulnerable consumers from abuses by the powerful. This to me is the crux of any system of distribution. Please note that I did not say 'poor' or 'underprivileged' - my point is not the a system must have some sort of subjective fairness. My point is that if a system does not have a way to prevent the powerful from abusing the vulnerable, then it is inherently self-destructive in a world of finite resources.

So, can someone explain to me either what would stop the powerful from abusing their power if markets were completely deregulated (or just more deregulated), or why these abuses are not a significant issue?

I unfortunately already have plans this evening, but if anyone in the Southeastern MI area doesn't, I recommend this show!

(Copied from Will Copeland's Longhairznews mailing list)
For Immediate Release

Contact Joe Reilly (734) 846-2848, joereillymusic@gmail.com

Ann Arbor Singer and Songwriter Joe Reilly dedicates music night to support Obama

Folk-Rock-O-Rama for Barack Obama

"This music and lyrics are clever, poetic, poignant and playful. Joe Reilly blends hip-hop, blues, gospel, world rhythm and traditional American Indian styles. He writes music with wisdom and humility far beyond his years. Reilly zeroes in on something very powerful and sends it out into the room." ~Ann Arbor Observer

Ann Arbor- Singer Songwriter Joe Reilly is organizing a concert for change in support of Barack Obama and his presidential campaign. Akin to Obama's vision for America, Reilly uses his music to inspire healing changes in our society and to bring people together across lines of race, age, class, and gender. Reilly is excited to offer this event as an opportunity for people in the Ann Arbor area to gather their collective energy in support of the Obama movement. The concert will provide hope and inspiration and give fuel to community support of Obama and the change he promises. Says Reilly,

"Barack Obama represents to me the best side of American political consciousness. His ability to think critically, intelligently, and creatively gives me hope that we can pick up the broken pieces of this country and create something beautiful."

Reilly has released several recordings, the most recent titled Children of the Earth, environmental songs for kids of all ages. Through touring and performances, Reilly shares his gift of singing and songwriting with diverse audiences for the benefit of all beings. Reilly will be joined by drummer Gayelynn Mckinney and vocalist Ann Judge. Performances will also be shared by poets William Copeland and Brian Babb.

Folk-Rock-O-Rama for Barack Obama
Featuring Singer Songwriter Joe Reilly
With Gayelynn Mckinney – Drum Set and Ann Judge-Vocals
and special guests Brian Babb and Will Copeland

Friday October 3rd, 2008
Kerrytown Concert House, 8:00pm
415 North Fourth Avenue - Ann Arbor - Michigan - 48104
Phone 734-769-2999 - Email kch@kerrytown.com
www.kerrytownconcerthouse.com
$10-20 sliding scale, Free admission to anyone who volunteers at least two hours to register voters for the Obama Campaign. To volunteer contact Peter (734) 330-7740 or visit www.barackobama.com

Includes a silent auction fundraiser for Obama Campaign.

Visit www.joereilly.org and www.myspace.com/joereillymusic for music and more from Joe Reilly.

(If you do go, give Will Copeland a hey from Kelly and drop a comment back by here to let me know what I missed! :^)

The first time I remember seeing Paul Newman was watching "The Sting" with my mother, a movie I recently shared with my son; not many movies travel through the generations, particularly to a teenager, but this one did. I believe Mr. Newman was one of the reasons. Through all of his movies he showed a certain style and wisdom that went beyond the usual Hollywood looks, fashion and hype.

Outside of his movies, Mr. Newman showed that this was due to a real wisdom, beyond what he acted on the screen. He stood up for the people who weren't being driven in limos or living in mansions, not only as an activist but also as a businessman, and showed this country that one can act wisely with style and a joy of life.

Thank you Mr. Newman; you will be missed.

Reprinted from Democracy Now's headlines:

Paul Newman, 83, Dies
And the Oscar-winning actor, philanthropist and activist Paul Newman has died at the age of eighty-three. His films included The Hustler, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Color of Money. Newman was also a longtime antiwar, anti-nuclear and women’s rights activist. Paul Newman once said being named on Richard Nixon’s enemies list was the “highest single honor I’ve ever received." In 1969, he spoke out in favor of the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam.

Paul Newman: “We’re here to support one of the main themes of the moratorium, which is business as usual. We are actors, but I don’t remember that anybody asked us to give up our citizenship papers when we became actors. And so, we’re here obviously as citizens protesting what we feel is the tragedy of the Vietnamese war. So, we are asking, respectfully, that people just don’t go to our films on November 14th.”

First, on the debate itself (C-Span video, CNN transcript): I was somewhat suspect at the demand that the audience not react to the debate, thinking that this made it more artificial, though perhaps this prevented the tactic of playing to the crowd with simplistic reactionary rhetoric. Overall however, I found Lehrer to be an able moderator, I think he presented good, clear questions, and that he did work a couple of times to pin down squirmy answers on both sides.

Obama's first comment on the bailout plan was logical, clear and informative. He gave a list of what needed to be accomplished. This was characteristic of his responses throughout the debate. He tended to bring things up to a national and world-wide level, and show issues in context of an overall picture.

McCain's first comment on the bailout started not with facts but with a description of his emotional state. Once he had established the emotion, he wandered around some story-telling descriptions of the situation, again without any meaningful information about them and finally ended by softly supporting oversight without stating it as clearly and strongly as Obama had. This also characterized McCain's responses throughout the debate; he leaned heavily on emotional tools and tended to skirt the factual ones.

Obama set a historical perspective on the housing crisis. He stated the specific actions that he took in 2006 to help prevent this issue. McCain again gave emotional answers to direct questions (Will you vote for the plan? McCain: "I hope so.") and then gave vague assurances that he had warned about these issues with Fannie Mae and CEO pay, trusting to the ignorance and short memory of the electorate to not know what actually happened in 2006 when he supported a weakening in the regulations on the agencies, that one of his top advisors was taking thousands of dollars from Fannie Mae until the public found out about it, or that until he was saying the fundamentals of the economy were sound up until a couple weeks ago.

Obama says that the needs of 'Main street' must be represented and oversight is necessary for that all the time, not just when there is a crisis. He then reinforced the need for a strong regulatory structure. McCain agreed that there are fundamental issues with the system, but calls for "stricter interpretation" of current regulations and 'consolidation' of them. McCain did not echo Obama's note that the regular worker has daily crisis that need to be dealt with as well, and instead took the Bushian, 'isn't that great you have three jobs' stance, praising the American worker for his productivity, with a followup that since this is the greatest country in the world, all it needs is the right leadership.

McCain stumbled on the direct question of what the differences are between his and Obama's plan for leadership, choosing instead to describe generic Republican stances and attack Obama's record on pork spending. Obama answered the question by describing the tax cuts that McCain has proposed, and then described what his plan for leadership will be regarding economic growth. There was more of a debate at this point, on current taxes and their effect on the economy.

Obama dodged the question on what priority of theirs they would give up to pay for their finanical plan, answering instead what he thinks are the top priorities. McCain starts by falling back on the old "{Democratic candidate X} has the most liberal voting record in the United States..." attack, and then more subtley avoids the question by first saying he'd drop something that wasn't one of his priorities in the first place (ethanol subsidies) and then going into a description of why he'll be able to make things better, without explaining how he'll do it; a slightly more wordy version of the Bushism answer, which would be "I'll balance the budget, because I'm a budget-balancer." The moderator tried to pin them down, but Obama does not state any specific changes in his plans. McCain came back on the second attempt by suggesting a spending freeze on everything in the government except defense, veterans affairs and other 'vital programs'. Obama retorted that what is needed is intelligent, directed action, not brute force.

Lessons of Iraq:
McCain followed the Bush administration talking points that the war was mishandled, that the Surge was a distinctly different and successful strategy, that we can't afford to lose in Iraq, that we are winning in Iraq, and that our troops will come home in victory.

Obama showed that the first lesson is not to proceed when we don't know the consequences and costs of our actions and when we don't have a proper plan to proceed in the first place. The next lesson is not to take our "eye off the ball" as we did with Al Qaeda. The main lesson is to use our military force wisely, and that we did not do so in Iraq. McCain dodged the 'redirect' on this point, instead attacking Obama that he didn't talk to Petraus about Afghanistan. Obama responded that McCain was entirely wrong in his characterization of the war when it started. McCain responded by using the Bush strategy of the anonymous insider plea, stating that troops told him to 'let them win'.

McCain also tried to attack Obama with the 'he voted against funding the troops' bit, which Obama handily disarmed by noting that McCain also 'voted against funding the troops' and that their actual difference is that Obama required a timetable of withdrawl and McCain voted against it. McCain also falsely accused that Admiral Mullin (sp?) "says that Sen. Obama's plan is dangerous," which Obama denied as a mischaracterization.

McCain seemed to really lose his footing in reality at this point. He takes the bewildering strategy of defending his and Bush's opposition to timetables by saying that Obama bin Laden and Gen. Petraus agree that Iraq is the primary battleground. Obama easily grounded this by noting that Gates and other realists state that Al Qaeda must be fought in Afghanistan and Pakistan. McCain then defended pulling troops out of Afghanistan and pushing them into Iraq by stating that it was a mistake to have left Afghanistan after the Russians were defeated there. He then tries to say that we can't carry out strikes in Pakistan, which the Bush administration is already doing now, without the support of the people of Afghanistan, effectively denouncing the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that he supported.

After these initial gaffes, McCain did settle down to some reasonable points about the environment of the border of Pakistan and the difficulties in conducting operations there. This could have been an excellent point against Obama, if the Bush administration was not already doing the kinds of attacks that McCain is denouncing, and if he had already not attacked Obama continuously for suggesting the kind of diplomatic work that McCain was now saying was necessary.

Obama followed up on this handily by pointing out that getting the Pakistani people on our side is difficult now because of the US's 20th policy, which McCain supported, of propping up a friendly dictator and having an anti-democratic policy there. McCain reinforced Obama's point by praising the support of Musharraf and saying that he made the right decision there, in Kosovo and in Somalia, therefore he has a record of good foreign policy, once again using the emotional private plea to give him support for his actions. (Apparently one wasn't enough this time, so he also brings up anonymous mothers all over who have asked him to do what he's doing.) Obama notes that he has his own war mother 'bracelet' story, and then used this to point out that these stories are not as important as the real consequences of their policies themselves.

Obama tied this together with his earlier point that McCain and Bush took their eye off the ball by leaving Afghanistan, and drives home the point that McCain was not focussed on Al Qaeda, by singling out a statement of McCain that we could "muddle through" Afghanistan; Obama harps on this point, using an emotional device of repeating this for all the things that the Bush administrationa and McCain shouldn't have 'muddled through'. McCain tried to slip this hit by reviving the point that Obama didn't travel to Afghanistan as a member of the NATO sub-committee (did anyone? research request folks), but it's a weak jab and McCain falls back into another Bush strategy of defending specific failures by assuring the public that he's an expert, that his plan will unaccountably succeed and that listening to his opponent will unaccountably cause failure.

Threat from Iran to the US:
Again McCain focussed on the emotional hot buttons, repeating nuclear weapons over and over, and actually stating that Iran could cause "a second Holocaust" before moving on to the usual Bush administration rhetoric about Iran being the number one world threat, how it is attacking our troops in Iraq..., etc. Obama agreed with the need to defend Israel and points out that the Bush's strategy that McCain supports of refusing to negotiate with a country unless that country agrees to do everything they want is simply not functional. McCain brought back the 'Obama will talk with dictators' point, trying to defend against Obama's explanations by quibbling about the word "preconditions".

One direct point that was actually debated was the effect of off-shore drilling. Obama first stated that since we are 25% of the worlds demand for oil, but only have 3% of its oil reserves, that we will not "drill out way out" of this situation. McCain retorted that off-shore drilling will "temporarily relieve our requirements".

9/11 II - are we safer?
McCain took sole responsibility with Liebermann for creating the 9/11 commission and for implementing the points on the report generated. He also noted that the largest government restructuring ever took place as a result of this; I was a bit disappointed that Obama didn't point out that this caused one of the greatest government inflations in history as well, something you would think a small-government Republicans would have been working against. After this, the debate ended the way it started, with McCain making emotional generalizations and supporting his stances with anonymous private pleas and with Obama making specific points of policy and strategy for his presidency.

Themes throughout the debate:
McCain - McCain is not "Miss Congeniality". McCain brought this up several times in different circumstances. This appears to be the current relabeling of his claim to be a 'Maverick', since that has been so completely disputed.
McCain - Obama doesn't understand. Not so ironically, McCain generally says this before he says something that shows he has a very narrow or completely mistaken understanding of that topic. For example:

"He doesn't understand that Russia committed serious aggression against Georgia." - McCain doesn't seem to understand that it was Georgia's aggressive actions against their province that caused this crisis.

"Senator Obama still doesn't quite understand -- or doesn't get it -- that if we fail in Iraq, it encourages al Qaeda. They would establish a base in Iraq." - McCain tries to cite this Bush rhetoric in order to attack Obama, showing his complete ignorance of the situation on the ground in Iraq and regarding Al Qaeda in general. As the accepted experts point out, it is the Bush administration's mistakes in Iraq that gave Al Qaeda a training ground there against US troops and Al Qaeda is only welcome because they are attacking the American occupation.

Obama - McCain got it wrong. Obama had several talking points on the clear and direct mistakes that McCain had made. Nothing new here, his campaign has been pointing this out from the day that the McCain tried to run on his 'experience'.

My Wrapup - Overall, the debate was pretty much what I expected. Obama ran rings around McCain from a debating and factual standpoint, but McCain seem to use the usual emotional tools effectively. I find that Obama's stance on Israel troubling, but expected. I was a little surprised to hear him support missile defense. Obama's overall picture of the need for supporting the middle class with clear, defined actions to rebuild the economy did come through very positively for me. McCain's praising me as a hard worker, not so much. I don't think McCain successfully defended his record on Iraq, on Afghanistan, or on the housing crisis.

If I only had the debate to go on, I would be firmly in Obama's camp now. As it stands I find his statements in the debate very positive and affirming, but I am still a bit on the fence due to my observance of Pres. Clinton's similar excellent talk, followed by his caving to business interests on deregulation and NAFTA soon after gaining office. To this end I find Obama's continued use of pro-business, free market economic advisors troubling.

As Senator Dodd noted, thousands have been calling, all against the bailout. If you helped with that, excellent work!!!

With Bush's latest 'mushroom cloud' speech though, Congress will need to know that he wasn't able to scare us into another trillion-dollar boondoggle ends up making the real problem even worse.

Please take a minute and go to a Congressional Directory and contact your representatives. This is one of those times that your voice really does matter. Congress needs to know that you are paying attention, and that you're going to hold them to their actions more than Wall Street is. You know their people are there now; you need to be too!

Here's the letter I sent to Senator Levin (his line was so busy I couldn't get a call through).

Dear Senator Levin,

I am writing today regarding the proposed bailout bill to renew my support for standing firm against the Bush administration's rush to force Congress into another quagmire of bad planning, Executive power enhancement and giveaways to their friends.

Bush's claims of the need for immediate action are not supported by the facts, by top economists, or even by the testimony of Fed Chairman, who stated that the bailout was needed to prevent the economy from slowing, not from collapsing.

I ask that you support the move towards a moratorium on foreclosures that Michigan citizens have been asking of Gov. Granholm for several years now, that you reject the Bush plan entirely, and that a plan be created with the advice and consultation with the economic experts that have been describing coming tragedy for the last decade. I also ask that you support the financial reform that is necessary to make a healthy and robust economy with the proper regulations and protections for the taxpayers.

Here are some examples of the principles I think should guide these actions:

Principles to Guide the Bailout
1) Financial institutions should be forced to endure the bulk of the losses with taxpayer funds only used where absolutely necessary to sustain the orderly operation of the financial system.
2) The bailout must be designed to minimize the opportunity for gaming.
3) The bailout should be designed to minimize moral hazard.
4) In the case of delinquent mortgages that come into the government's possession, there should be an effort to work out an arrangement that allows the homeowner to remain in her house as owner. If this proves impossible, then former homeowners should be allowed to remain in their homes as renters paying the market rent. This should be done even if it leads to losses to the government.
5) There should be serious efforts to severely restrict executive compensation at any companies that directly benefit from the bailout.

Principles for Restructuring the Financial System
1) Combating asset bubbles must be one of the Fed's key responsibilities.
2) The government should impose a modest financial transactions tax, comparable to the one in the United Kingdom. This can both restrain excessive trading and raise more than $100 billion a year in revenue.
3) Regulatory agencies should require that potentially tradable assets (e.g. credit default swaps) actually be traded on exchanges.
4) There should be strict limits on leverage for all regulated financial institutions.
5) Fannie and Freddie should remain fully public institutions, returning them to a status comparable to Fannie's prior to its privatization in 1968.
6) The Fed should be restructured so that all the key decision makers (e.g. the open market committee) are appointed by democratically elected officials. Its responsibility is to manage the economy in the interest of the general public, not the financial sector.

(for details, see Dean Baker's article at http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/20/progressive_conditions_for_a_b/ )

Thank you for your time and your excellent work,

Kelly Logan

Call your representatives! Or to make it easy, go to Vote No Bailout and write your letter there. This financial crisis strikes to the heart of this country and decisions taken today and in the next week will affect us for a generation or more. Whatever your convictions on this, please tell Congress to slow down, to make sure that there is a proper debate and that this isn't another rushed, desperate aquiescense to whoever is shouting the loudest.

Here's a couple information sources I recommend to help you understand the situation:

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Robert Scheer and Dean Baker on the Proposed $700 Billion Bailout of Wall Street, the Largest Government Bailout of Private Industry in US History

It’s being described as the largest government intervention in private markets since the Great Depression. The Bush administration has asked Congress to swiftly approve a massive $700 billion package to rescue the crippled financial institutions on Wall Street. Some analysts say the final cost to taxpayers could top one trillion dollars. Over the weekend, the size of the proposed bailout grew as the Bush administration said foreign banks, including Barclays and UBS, should be eligible for the bailout.

{See, hear, read it here}

Kevin Phillips

Recently, even people unaccustomed to paying mind to the world of finance suddenly began to learn a lot about terms like "sub-prime mortgages," "securitization," "derivatives" and, more ominously, "negative equity," and "the great unwind."
And now, when several blue-chip firms have failed in rapid succession, many Americans are getting another crash course in high finance as they try to understand the collapses, buy-outs, and government takeovers of respected household names like Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and American International Group (AIG).

Why has all this taken Main Street by surprise? In part, according to Kevin Phillips, because we've been served up years of faulty statistics and even faultier economic projects. This, Phillips maintains, has lead to a spiral of false economic security — Pollyanna Creep.

I wrote my letter based on an article by Dean Baker at Talking Points Memo, I think he provides an excellent starting point for everyone on this:
Progressive Conditions for a Bailout - Dean Baker (see below)

Here's the letter I sent:

The actions taken now will fundamentally affect this country for the next several decades. Please do not let the Bush administration and financial lobbyistst rush us into turning more of Congress' power over to the executive and creating another short-sighted catastrophe.

Economic experts like Dean Baker state that this does not have to be decided today or tomorrow. Please work to make sure the next actions are properly debated with the gravity and conviction that befits decisions of this magnitude.

Dean Baker presented an excellent set of principles that I urge you to work by in these coming days:

Principles to Guide the Bailout
1) Financial institutions should be forced to endure the bulk of the losses with taxpayer funds only used where absolutely necessary to sustain the orderly operation of the financial system.
2) The bailout must be designed to minimize the opportunity for gaming.
3) The bailout should be designed to minimize moral hazard.
4) In the case of delinquent mortgages that come into the government's possession, there should be an effort to work out an arrangement that allows the homeowner to remain in her house as owner. If this proves impossible, then former homeowners should be allowed to remain in their homes as renters paying the market rent. This should be done even if it leads to losses to the government.
5) There should be serious efforts to severely restrict executive compensation at any companies that directly benefit from the bailout.

Principles for Restructuring the Financial System
1) Combating asset bubbles must be one of the Fed's key responsibilities.
2) The government should impose a modest financial transactions tax, comparable to the one in the United Kingdom. This can both restrain excessive trading and raise more than $100 billion a year in revenue.
3) Regulatory agencies should require that potentially tradable assets (e.g. credit default swaps) actually be traded on exchanges.
4) There should be strict limits on leverage for all regulated financial institutions.
5) Fannie and Freddie should remain fully public institutions, returning them to a status comparable to Fannie's prior to its privatization in 1968.
6) The Fed should be restructured so that all the key decision makers (e.g. the open market committee) are appointed by democratically elected officials. Its responsibility is to manage the economy in the interest of the general public, not the financial sector.

(for details, see the entire article at http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/20/progressive_conditions_for_a_b/ )

I don't push things like this very often, but this is a critical time for our nation. Please do this now:
Go to Vote No Bailout and send a message to your representatives, or call them. Whatever you do, do it soon!!!

Les Misbarack - My mother had me watch it with her she was so impressed, and she hadn't even seen Les Miz before. My girlfriend was in a production and enjoyed it even more than I did. Take three and half minutes and watch this, for your own sake. (If it helps pretend its a different candidate's office, that's really not what makes it amazing.)



Brilliant!!!

89X presented three of the presidential campaign's musical tributes this morning. I'd thought I'd share:





And of course, from the professional political songwriter who brought us "The Saddam Stomp", "The Monica Lewinsky Polka" and "I Wanna Be Your Pokeymon" (only South Park saved us from this secret political movement), Pat Garrett, and Lofton Creek Records comes:
Moose Shootin' Mama

Gov. Sarah Palin lies to help her corporate sponsors at the expense of the public she is supposed to serve, tries to cover up the lies and attack those telling the truth, fails miserably, and is now suing her own government to try to make it lie for her.

We have all seen or participated in it - the lies about global warming. They follow the time-honored traditions of corporate holding actions to squeeze out every last ounce of profit until forced to stop. Deny, cover-up and blockade information, put out disinformation, personal attacks on sources of information and experts, deny earlier denials and actions, and finally 'take the lead' from behind in presenting this 'new issue' that must be dealt with. Each step is grudgingly taken as overwhelming opposition forces it. And for each step along the way, the corporations continue to do horrible damage in order to steal that extra dollar.

Nothing new there, and certainly not a concept that is beyond the grasp of the average American, so why choose a VP candidate that is so blatant about it? You'd think the Republican leadership would have learned with Katherine Harris that pretty doesn't cover up crazy.

Usually, due to the fog of corporate war and their embedded 'journalists', the public gets vague, he said/she said declarations without context. But thanks to the Republican party throwing an inept extremist like Palin on the national stage, the extremes of their positions and actions they take to support them are put on the national stage in such dramatic detail that they cut through that fog like a lighthouse. And like a lighthouse, the message is, "Danger - don't come here."

Let's look at the latest of Gov. Palin's host of attempts at petty dictatorship and corporate pandering: Selling out Alaska for oil profits.

When even Bush's Secretary of the Interior, Dick Kempthorne, was forced by the overwhelming scientific evidence to propose listing polar bears as endangered due to the rapid shrinkage of the ice flows they live on, Gov. Palin's immediate reaction was denial. Without a scientific leg to stand on, she firmly denied polar bears were endangered. Pressed on how she could oppose the clear science, she had the three or four marine experts on the state payroll to review the federal science, and then announced that based on her review of the experts' reports, polar bears were not threatened and should not be listed. Note that listing them would have added protections to ANWR and in general would have hurt the oil industry that Alaska's elites like Palin are dependent on.

The problem is, of course, that her own marine experts agreed completely with the federal findings that polar bears were, in fact, significantly endangered by global warming and the melting of the ice that they need to live on. This was further bolstered by nine studies by the United States Geological Survey, which concluded later that year that by the middle of the century two-thirds of polar bears in the world would be gone and that all of Alaska's polar bears would be lost. The state experts were asked to review these reports as well, and found again that the federal data was not only solid, but that it might be conservative, and that the destruction of polar bears could happen much earlier. Governor Palin once again not only ignored her own experts and the federal experts, but made public announcements that led misled the public about their findings, all the while letting the profit counters in oil industries, like the dollar counters on our gas pumps, whirr faster and higher by the minute.

Denial firmly in place, disinformation campaign actively pursued, Gov. Palin then had to contend with another marine expert, Alaskan university professor Rick Steiner, pointing out the Empress' policy's lack of scientific clothing. First, of course, came the blockading of information; Professor Steiner was told that in order to get the scientific information that Gov. Palin had used to come to her decision would cost almost half a million dollars. After six months of attempts at reducing this ridiculously prohibitive cost by focussing the request further and further, Prof. Steiner finally reached a point of having the final report requested at a final price of $7,000, with the normal fee waiver for university faculty denied. Left with no legal alternative, Gov. Palin's office used the Bushy tactic of declaring executive privilege on the document and refused this final information request.

Prof. Steiner was finally able to obtain the state review from one of the federal agencies it was sent to, and it showed the state experts agreed with the federal experts, and that Gov. Palin's decision couldn't possibly be based on either. Left without a political leg to stand on, Gov. Palin turned to the last gasp of corporate malfeasance; the frivilous lawsuit. Unfortunately in this case she can't turn enormous corporate-backed attorneys against a small environmental group or private citizen as usual, in this case she has made a ridiculous attack on the federal government itself to reverse the now-completed listing of polar bears as endangered species.

Whether you're appalled by Gov. Palin's constant and consistent lies, her vengeful attacks on those who oppose her or her corporate sponsors, or by her utter ineptness at both, I find it very unlikely you'll see the Republican's cynical political move to put her in place as anything but the last desperate thrashings of a party being dragged into the light. I can only hope that revelations like these will open Democrats' eyes as well to the fact that the supposed consumer-led 'invisible hand of the market' is in fact the hob-nailed boot of corporate leadership on consumer's necks, it's laces kept tight and leather shining by politicians in both parties willing to lie, cheat and steal to maintain the status quo.

Update - In the interest of fairness, here is an alternative viewpoint on Gov. Palin: