Crazy For God: Interview with Frank Schaeffer

Hughely's a shitty interviewer, but Schaeffer's interesting anyway.


An earlier interview with Amy Goodman:

The whole movement's gone off the rails.

Fum, Fo, Fie, Fee, I Smell The Stench of Sanctimony

I don't like to go all meta, and start discussing 'blogging" per se, or the practitioners thereof, but...

Come ON, people!

Yes, Rush Limbaugh is a vicious (shrewd) and forthrightly racialist/classist/chauvinist/nativist demagogue. His utterances are repellant, his (apparent) "philosophy" is repugnant, his outlook is reptillian, his appetites are rapacious, and his appearance is repulsive. None of his "bad" behaviors--things that get normal people thrown into state prison for DECADES, with a bunky named Thor--have ever stuck to him. This won't either, and in anything like a logically coherent universe this time, at least, probably it shouldn't.

Slimeball has been on the air (in now over 1000 cities) for more than 25 years. He has a constituency (Hint: the 60 million or so voters who voted 'for' McCain). So, when he said he hoped Obama "fails," he was saying no more than in all probability EVERY Puke member of Congress, their staffs, their wives and their children, and their constituents back home also thought and fondly believed was a patriotic sentiment.

Of course he hopes Obama will fail. Obama's failure is one of only two ways the Pukes and their corpoRat masters will regain the perqs and appurtenances of power (i.e., the command of the military, which will be crucial in the coming troubles; the other being the next 'terror' attack, in which case Obama will be impeached before the ashes are cold, and Slimeball will be instigatiing a lynch mob from his studio at Cap Cities Communications, which owns him).

But I'll tell you a secret. From the day that the Brooks Brothers' riot shut down the Miami-Dace recount, I hoped and wished and desired and wanted Bush to fail at anything and everything, with every shred of my being. Nov. 22, 2000 I began my failure watch. And I know (this is where the sanctimony comes in) that I was not, and am not, alone. Did you REALLY want that smirking, simpering, strutting, swaggering piece of simian turd to succeed?I didn't.

Before 9/11, I cherished every moment of his lack of grace, I reveled in his every bumble, I toasted his inanities. I gleefully partook in Slate.Com's Rumsfeld Death Watch. I reviled the drooling simpleton, I derided his policies, I attacked him personally and as ruthlessly as I could. I was eventually driven off Slate (in the end, around 10 other blogs) for the venom of my vituperation. From the moment he unleashed the white frat boys, I KNEW what was in store for the country. I had absolutely no doubt, and I hated him for it, with a hatred that has not abated, even with his departure from Washington. I want him and his whole crew, at the very least, in stocks for two days on the National Mall.

So I find it amusing and simultaneously galling to read 'left/lib' blogs, in the columns and comments of which the 'victors' (this time) excoriate Slimeball and his ilk for their shameless admission of what is the obvious truth. Slimeball and the rest of the Rightards WANT Obama to fail because if in the extremely unlikely event that Obama and the Dims do not "fail," the Slimeball and the Right cannot hope to regain power. Probably they cannot return to power absent the almost total collapse of the State.

(Much is made of an Obama/FDR, '09/'29 analogy. The Pukes, to take the rhetorical initiative, need to be able to cast Obama as the Dim Hoover. The Dims failed to pin the Hoover label on Bush, where it obviously belongs, but that's maybe because Bush is more like the Coolidge of the analogy. The Pukes are poised in the wings with their latter-day FDR, maybe Jeb Bush (I don't intend the analogy to be any more than structural). But I digress...)

So yes, just as any sane, sensible, reality-based citizen these last eight years wished profoundly that the Busheviks would fail to harm the Nation and the polity any more than they already had, so the insane, insensible, fantasy-based retards of the right now proudly and loudly 'wish' Obama will fail. Yet my strongest objections to the contrary notwithstanding, the Busheviks succeeded beyond their wildest hopes at the chore they were set, which was, in a word, gutting the commons and making the people like it.

Mission: Accomplished.

The occasional Depression is actually GOOD for the Country.

Keeps the people on their toes.

Freshens things up.

Nobody takes anything for granted anymore.

People are grateful for what they get: jobs, health insurance, food, clothes, whatever.

They know their places...can be repossessed at any time, can be taken by somebody more desperate for work.

Insecurity among the Proles is a good thing. Keeps 'em from organizing, cuz they're working so hard just to break even.

Plus, it gives the wealthy/elites/oligarchs a chance to reclaim their property, which they've been leasing to the Proles (though the Proles thought they were buying...silly wabbits), at bargain basement prices, if anything at all; court costs. Chump change, really.

Atheist Richard Dawkins Cranks Some Theocratic Jaws At The University of Oklahoma

One time, when I was at LSU working on my Ph.D., Chomsky was invited in. I attended, but warily, because one grenade in the audience would have wiped out every liberal and/or progressive between Nashville and New Orleans. This was a time of David Duke ascendancy; it was wise to be cautious...I'd have attended this event at OU with the same trepidations...Though, luckily, I escaped Oklahoma in 2000.

Scientists Report Optimists Live Longer Than Pessimists

And this is "good" news because?????????????

Mommas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be TBI Casualties

A report out today from the Army Times (NOT a "librul" rag) that upwards of 100 THOUSAND Iraq and Afghanistan vets suffer from Traumatic Brain Injury (I did not know Glen Beck was a vet...oh, wait, he's not).

Via TruthOut, Kelly Kennedy, in the Army Times says:

"As Army officials announced the beginning of Brain Injury Awareness Month, they offered up a figure that makes it hard to believe anyone in the military could be unaware of the problem: Between 45,000 and 90,000 troops have been treated for traumatic brain injury symptoms ranging from headaches to vision problems to an inability to function beyond a coma state."

Jayzus FUCK! They gotta have a "TBI Month"? Sounds more like the whole fucking Army is reduced to slobbering and stumbling around (as if THAT were something new...) if, with in excess of 50 THOUSAND, and perhaps as many as 100 THOUSAND troops suffer with "traumatic brain injury symptoms ranging from headaches to vision problems to an inability to function beyond a coma state."

Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, said between 10 percent and 20 percent of soldiers and Marines — about 180,000 people — have screened positive for TBI.

Yet military doctors still fight a culture in which some troops believe they can head right back into the fight after being exposed to a blast — even though high school football players know better than to play again for a few days — and commanders may decide to risk sending someone outside the wire after an injury because there aren’t enough people to make up a patrol team.

Experts at the U.S. Military Academy have said it’s important for someone who has suffered even mild TBI to avoid the risk of re-injuring the brain — especially the not-yet-fully-grown brain of someone younger than 24 — because a second injury can lead to permanent damage or even death.

But the culture of the Army makes complaining 'dishonorable,' no matter that 'doing your duty' could well scramble your brain irreversibly or kill you.

Take it from me: There is nothing like High Explosive detonating nearby to redefine irreversibly and forever you idea of a "sudden, loud noise."

Mommas, keep your babies out of the military 'service.' Just do it.

Why Is Space A Vacuum? Because Oklahoma SUX SO BAD!

You simply cannot know how deeply--and proudly--stupid are the people of Oklahoma until and unless you have lived there. The folks there are the least sophisticated, least educated, most xenophobic, most anti-intellectual people in the country, maybe the WORLD! Via PZ Myers/Pharyngula:

Richard Dawkins: banned in Oklahoma?

He's on his way to Oklahoma (no, that's not what rouses my envy), and an Oklahoma legislator has proposed a resolution to condemn him.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE 1ST SESSION OF THE 52ND OKLAHOMA LEGISLATURE:

THAT the Oklahoma House of Representative strongly opposes the invitation to speak on the campus of the University of Oklahoma to Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, whose published statements on the theory of evolution and opinion about those who do not believe in the theory are contrary and offensive to the views and opinions of most citizens of Oklahoma.

THAT the Oklahoma House of Representatives encourages the University of Oklahoma to engage in an open, dignified, and fair discussion of the Darwinian theory of evolution and all other scientific theories which is the approach that a public institution should be engaged in and which represents the desire and interest of the citizens of Oklahoma.

Wow. This from the same crowd that gets all fluttery and happy at "academic freedom" bills — they want to kick Richard Dawkins out of the whole state. I thought I was the scary one when I was the guy getting kicked out of a mere movie theater.

You cannot make this shit up. You really have to live there to understand. Nowhere in the USofA will you find such a collection of narrow-minded, bigoted, god-blighted bible-blatherers as in Okie-dumb...

From The First Day of Bush's Term, I Hoped He'd Fail

There's a lot of smoke and furor over the open admission of some in the GOPuke noise machine that they want Obama to fail.

SO?

I wanted Bush to fail, from the first moment of his regime. I worked for his failure. I gave money for his failure. I donated time and energy for his failure. I wanted him to fail utterly, totally, and completely at the job he was installed by the CorpoRat masters to do: destroying the commons of the US, privatizing the Government, and eliminating the ability of the people to resist.

I wanted the Dims to MAKE him fail.

Who among you wanted him to "succeed" in clusterfucking the country for the profit of his CorpoRat masters?

Not me!

I wanted him to FAIL, horribly, totally, wholly, eternally, embarrassingly, again and again...

What about you?

Did you want him to "succeed" in his attack on Iraq? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in overturning legal abortion? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in breaching the church-state wall? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in blocking international cooperation on climate research? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in denying habeas corpus? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in abandoning New Orleans after Katrina? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in undoing and gutting Social Security? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in torturing detainees? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in domestic spying? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in politicizing the Justice Dept? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in stealing the '04 election? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in packing the SCROTUS? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in gutting the EPA protections? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in opening the inner Continental shelf to drilling? I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in selling off the wildlands to his CorpoRat pals? I' didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" in replacing science with 'faith?' I didn't.

Did you want him to "succeed" at all? Well did you?

I didn't. I ALWAYS wanted the mother-fucker to fail, big time!

Unfortunately, he was all too successful. And we are NEVER gonna undo those "successes," because nothing goes back the way it was.

Political Febreze: Hides the stink, not the rot

I am growing very weary with the "Hopers" who--it seems to me--are guzzling Febreze. They're the folks who believe that Obama's election foreshadows a "new hope" for democracy, or justice, or fairness, or anything else that might redound in the ACTUAL "People's" interest.

What fukcing planet do these people live on?

What color's the sky there?

What do they eat and breathe?

What kind of fantasy life must someone lead for them to conceive, foster and harbor the delusion that the Ruling Class in the US (well, of the world, really) would for ANY single tiny, brief SECOND permit the name of ANYONE to appear as THE candidate of either wing of the Party of Privilege and Property, who posed ANY significant challenge to their immensely powerful, phenomenally profitable global enterprise, much less to be installed in ANY capacity where they had the slightest chance to actually "effecting change" in anything.

If Obama (or any of them) posed even the REMOTEST risk to the established hegemonic order, they would simply never have been presented as the Party's (the "One" Party, that party of Property and Privilege) nominee.

He's NOT going to end the various wars the Busheviks started.

He's NOT going to reform insurance out of the Health Care equation.

He's NOT going to restore the protections of the Constitution that the Busheviks attacked (cuz, as the departing Bushies predicted, he's gonna need 'em, in the coming public crisis, when the next terror attack comes --not "if"-- and the economy self-destructs.)

He's not gonna restructure the economy in any significant ways to prevent the coming implosion.

I am today no less--am, in fact, increasingly, more--certain that the Pukes 'threw' the '08 "contest." The margin --6 or 7 points-- was WELL within their capacity to turn-around, with e-voting irregularities, etc. They did it in '04. That they didn't steal it in '08 only suggests to me that they recognized the clusterfuck Buseviks left behind and didn't want it. Knowing how intractable were the problems, and knowing that, in opposition, they could make the notoriously memory-deprived Murkin electorate forget their absolute responsibility for it all, they threw it, and are pursuing a larger, more long-term agenda: the utter destruction of the Democratic "party" as an instrument of opposition, and the final attack on the capacity of anyone but rich, white males to be the figure-head, by way of what will become the demonstrated inability of Obama & the Dims to turn ANYTHING around.

If Michael Steele is a token (as has been asserted in 'librul' discourse lately), what does that make Barack Obama?

I'll tell you: President Febreze. The whole and only purpose of the Elites in installing Obama was to "clean up" the aura of racism in the country, make it "smell" better, while leaving in place all the essential, racial privileges and preferences...

Nuke Chicago: Frmr. UN-Amb. Bolton Sez "Bring It On!

"
The winds of Weimar were wafting over CPAC (ConservativePoliticalActionCommittee) annual meeting in DC over the weekend, featuring the usual parade of utter lunacy, treasonable speculation, and fascist fantasy. But significant amid all the other stupid shit (always, anytime, really) were the remarks of Bushevik former UN Ambassador John Bolton. Mark Crispin Miller's "News From The Underground" blog carried this report this morning:

Bolton jokes (sort of) about nuking Chicago, Santorum hopes for national catastrophe
(Posted by mcm, March 2, 2009)

Such was the atmosphere at CPAC, where they talked subversion right out in the open–and the media said nothing.

There are two items here, one from motherjones.com, the other from thinkprogress.org.

MCM

John Bolton at CPAC:
The Benefits of Nuking Chicago
By Jonathan Stein | Thu February 26, 2009 9:27 AM PST

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton believes the security of the United States is at dire risk under the Obama administration. And before a gathering of conservatives in Washington on Thursday morning, he suggested, as something of a joke, that President Barack Obama might learn a needed lesson if Chicago were destroyed by a nuclear bomb.

Appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the nation’s largest annual conference of conservative activists, Bolton, one of the hardest hardliners of the George W. Bush administration, spoke at length about Obama’s naiveté and how various nations - Russia, North Korea, Iran - will be exploiting the new president. The most dramatic moment of his speech may have been when he cracked a 'joke' about the nuking of Obama’s hometown.

“The fact is on foreign policy I don’t think President Obama thinks it’s a priority,” said Bolton. “He said during the campaign he thought Iran was a tiny threat. Tiny, tiny depending on how many nuclear weapons they are ultimately able to deliver on target. Its, uh, its tiny compared to the Soviet Union, but is the loss of one American city” - here Bolton changes his tone subtly to prepare for the joke - “pick one at random - Chicago - is that a tiny threat?”

Bolton wasn't the only one who thought this was funny. The room erupted in laughter and applause. Was this conservative catharsis, with rightwingers delightfully imagining the destruction of a city that represents Obama? Or perhaps they were venting vengeance with their laughter. (Bolton is no stranger to inflammatory remarks. He once infamously quipped, "There are 38 floors to the UN building in New York. If you lost 10 of them, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.")

Read more.

Given the fact that Iran has nothing like the capacity to deliver a nuke any further beyond its borders than a team of strong men could throw it, or that it would require a minimum of ten years for them to achieve this feat, and that Bolton was one of the PNAC Ziono-fascists who thought all the Neo-Con Plans needed a "Pearl Harbor" to inaugurate its global coup, it is beyond 'amusing' that Bolton's audience cheered.

Top GOP Contenders for 2012 All Creationists?

Via Mike's Blog Roundup, today, comes this fascinating little tidbit.

Recently, “Politico” has begun referring to a triumvirate of Republican governors -- ("Jingle") Bobby Jindal (LA), Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), and Mark Sanford (SC-- as the presumptive front-runners for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. Bad news? They’re all creationists - and at least in Jindal’s case, empty suits built for grandstanding, not deep thought.

Let’s try to forget Sarah Palin for the moment: you all know how I feel.

Though I bleed Democratic blue, the country needs a meaningful, intelligent conservative party. None of the candidates above will bring that “change.” Even though I’m sure to disagree with them, I want to respect the GOP again. Apparently I’ll have to wait more than four years.

I don't think we need a "real" Conservotard Party. We've got one: The Dims, which are as reliably wedded to the status quo as any could be.

We don't need another "New Deal," or a "Better Deal." We need a whole new DECK: A Socialist Labor party.

Anything else is just window-dressing.

There's This Little "Flaw" In That Whole "Free-Marketplace-of-Ideas" Myth

There's This Little "Flaw" In That Whole "Free-Marketplace-of-Ideas" Myth,... which is that, of course, there is no such thing an a "free marketplace of ANYTHING.

As the following entry from "ThinkProgress" demonstrates:

Coal-sponsored CNN rejects anti-coal ad.

On Thursday, the Reality Coalition launched an ad “to demolish the notion that there’s anything clean about so-called clean coal.” Academy Award-winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen created the anti-coal ad to harpoon the coal industry’s greenwashing campaign. Today, Politico’s Mike Allen reported that CNN rejected the ad, which includes the line, “The most trusted name in coal.” Watch it:

Yes, do. But click on through the TP image, to the You-Tube page, and check the comments. If you can read 'em without feeling like opening a vein (and not of coal), you're a better person them me.

As ThinkProgress has reported, CNN’s presidential campaign coverage received significant backing from the coal industry. The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has also tracked CNN’s Ali Velshi’s promotion of so-called clean coal.

Who is Ali Velshi?Well, apparently he's not the trustworthy information broker CNN makes him ot to be.

Fact: There is simply no way to oxidize carbon without releasing carbon-dioxide. (D-fuukin'uh!) But there are a buncha people who have a LOT of money invested in coal. Wealthy people, with investments, and interests are the single biggest and best reason that there are, in fact, no 'free-markets" in ideas, or speech.

USer Concern For Human Rights Ends Where Runway's Starts

Scott Horton, he of almost overwhelming bloggy ubiquity, examines the USer military quest to replace their Afghanistan supply routes at Harper's "No Comment" blog. He finds that much can be negotiated away in the way of human rights abuses in a country that has what the US wants: in the instant case, an airbase on which to host USer military traffic. (Interestingly, Ms. Clinton made much the same discovery in China last week, pleading for more loans.)

The supply route to Afghanistan became problematic recently when the old Soviet "republic" of Kyrgyzstan withdrew permission for USer troops and supplies to flow through Manas Airfield outside Bishkek, allegedly at the behest of the Russians who view USer efforts to build a toe-hold in the trans-Caspian with the same pleasure with which we greeted the apparent Soviet colonization of Cuba.

Human Rights and Military Bases

By Scott Horton

In his Washington Post op ed last week, Kyrgyzstan’s long-time ambassador to the U.S. gave us a fascinating insight into the process of base negotiations. Once the U.S. had its base, he wrote, all concerns about human rights and democracy went out the window. The base became the alpha and omega of the U.S.-Kyrgyz relationship, a development he wisely termed detrimental to both sides. With U.S. expulsion from its prime supply base in Kyrgyzstan now looming on the horizon just as the Obama Administration prepares to implement its ramp-up in neighboring Afghanistan, the U.S. quest for a base to replace Manas (Ganci) Air Force Base is getting feverish. And how does this affect human rights policy?

On Thursday, the State Department issued its Human Rights country reports—the first to come out of Hillary Clinton’s State Department—though the core of the report was obviously prepared and submitted under Condoleezza Rice’s stewardship. The pages dealing with the Central Asian dictatorships offer some interesting reading. I understand that efforts to replace the Kyrgyzstan base are now focused on Uzbekistan, which once allowed the United States the use of two air bases. The regime of Islam Karimov, often reckoned the most brutal and dictatorial in the region, kicked the United States out in November 2005, ostensibly over U.S. criticism of mass slayings of Uzbek civilians in the Ferghana Valley following a popular uprising there. Now the German government, which has a military base in Termez, is said to be brokering a new deal for the Americans. How has this affected the U.S. take on the human rights situation in Uzbekistan?

Plenty. One of the country’s most acute human rights offenses is its use of involuntary child labor to harvest its cotton crop. Uzbekistan has drawn international condemnation for this practice, and a number of groups in Europe, North America, and elsewhere have called for a boycott of Uzbek cotton. Prior State Department human rights reports heavily criticized the Uzbeks over their child labor practices. In the current report, we learn that the Uzbeks are making great headway in battling child labor abuse: “Enforcement was lacking due in part to long-standing societal acceptance of child labor as a method of cotton harvesting.”

Last year a BBC documentary showed exactly what form this “long-standing societal acceptance” took. Uzbek authorities closed down elementary and middle schools and then bussed away the children to labor in 100 degree heat for a couple of weeks in fields filled with highly toxic pesticides and agricultural chemicals (to which children under 16 are particularly vulnerable). Children who refused to participate were threatened with beatings and were told they would not be able to continue their education. Last year I interviewed a young Uzbek college student who described to me in some detail her own experience in forced cotton field labor and that of her younger siblings, including in the course of the last harvest. “Societal acceptance” has nothing to do with it. Parents who complain about the practices are subject to threats and coercion, and come under police surveillance. The State Department has accepted and recycled the flimsy rationale that the Uzbek government offers up to cover its tracks.

Is this just sloppy research? I doubt it. I’d say that General Petraeus is probably coming pretty close to a new base deal.

The Recrudescence of "Respectable" Racism

The press, the cable, and the culture, too, lately have been full of reports of irruptions of racist bile from if not unlikely, then unexpected sources: the leader of a state GOPuke party organization, the (GOP) mayor of a small California city, among others. The dead chimp cartoon, the magic negro song, and the WhiteHouse watermelon-patch card have achieved due prominence. The frankness of these expressions has only been equaled by the protestations of the perpetrators of the purity and innocence of their intentions.

And as they have done so, there has arisen a discourse which seeks to 'understand' and, to me it seems as much, to excuse these wretched excesses. Because, of course, each is but another window into the depths in the national character at which are cemented these really unpleasant, demeaning, embarrassing, hurtful, divisive (and therefore, to some people, really useful) demons of race.

I am not certain of the exact psychological mechanism, but it seems (counter-intuitively?) that Pres. Obama’s election actually seems to have liberated a strain of bigotry and invective that had, until relatively recently, lain pretty silent if not exactly dormant in the USer public psyche. In a way worth figuring out, I thingk, Obama's election has conferred a kind of 'popular' legitimacy on this kind of ‘humorous’ bigotry. His very public persona is somehow seen, by that segment of the culture which practices such things unashamedly and unabashedly, to make their slurs ‘acceptable.’ This is indicated in their apparent surprise when folks are offended by, and raise objections to it.

I suspect that, in each of these instances, the frisson of having “said what needs saying” (as whites in Louisiana claimed David Duke did) is all the incentive that was need. It would have been similar had Hilary been elected: just, instead of racism, the knuckledraggers would have spread sexist slurs, gay-ron-TEED, chers.

The following, which is part of a colloquy i conducted with a commentator on TP, today, may be illustrative of the issue. Previously the commentor, nymmed "backup" had been asserting that it was necessary to tolerate racism of the kind exemplified by the WhiteHouse melon-patch image and its dissemination by a public official if "we" were going to have any 'uncowardly' discussion of race. He urged that if such matters were met with hostility, or if the perpetrators of such acts weere going to suffer real consequences for their acts, the 'cowardice' would continue. I called bs, and more ore less accused him of both sophistry and 'genteel' racism. He replied:

Tokin. (or anyone). please cut and paste a statement I’ve made that you consider racist.

But that is not the issue, as I pointed out. He WANTED me to personalize it, but the roblem is not individual, but systemic. I said:

you are a talented sophist, i’ll give you that.

but your innocence is another camouflage. you are clever enough to have at least heard–even if you did not believe–that racism is not even particularly about individual acts or words. Racism is a system of arrangements and agreements and understandings among the dominant culture which permits, even encourages those individual acts of terror to achieve the larger social goal of retaining the current imbalances–which are always profitable for the majority, and almost always exclude the minority.

Obama’s election has provided that system with a certain challenge, even though he is not a member of the ‘class’ with which the requirements of justice and equity are associated. He is nevertheless the most prominent AVATAR of those interests. I hope, actually, that the persistence of that rational racism, that ‘respectable’ racism garbed in ‘humor’ may eventually propel Obama to assume the burden of King and others to compel white folks to genuinely apologize, and to finally remove the barriers that still stand between them and us.

The major one of those barriers is economic. Black households own less that 40%-by value, per capita--of those resources designated as wealth and owned by whites. Black America was not ALWAYS poor. It is not wholly so now, though poverty is ever more visible. And devastating. No. Whites conducted a number of race riots in the early and middle years of the 20th Century which, if they were not aimed at the black middle class, certainly had the effect of exterminating it and impoverishing them. Read up on Greenwood, OK, 1908.

You may never have owned slaves, nor your family; but-–depending on where you live–-there’s a pretty good chance you know somebody who’s related to somebody who did a lynching, sometime. There were a LOT of lynchings, and they occurred in some unexpected places. And there were innumerable acts of other kinds of savagery carried out on black folks by whites: beatings, rapes, torture.

What I refer to as your racism comes in your seeking to excuse, somehow to mitigate, and find an excuse for the evidently racist affront Grose committed.

Pardon My Francais?: "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose"

The poster who goes by "mentarch," on WWL, posted this today.

Obama administration defends telecom immunity in new brief

Obama administration tries to kill e-mail case

In "spy case," Obama's Justice Department Holds Fast to State Secrets Privilege

Obama administration defending Bush secrets

Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool

Obama's Top Lawyer Says Obama Doesn't Want To "Weaken" Presidency

Intelligence Policy: New Perspective or Familiar Approach?

Obama eyes $200 bln for war effort: report

Obama's Iraq plan 'more like a Bush plan'

Obama Admin. Reportedly Sending Detainees to Bagram Instead of Gitmo

This list suggests the truth of the contentions of those who, on matters of international relations and internal 'security,' at least, regard there being no significant differences between the 'parties,' because the "parties" are no more than wholly-owned subsidiaries of CorpoRat/Military Murka. It is worth remembering, as I have proclaimed so often as to have become hoarse, that NO PRESIDENT SINCE George Washington has EVER ceded back to Congress the emergency powers they arrogated to address a crisis.

I am one of those who doesn't perceive a nickel's worth of difference between the Pukes and the Dims. Oh, yes, there are individual differences between individual personalities occupying positions of power. But their agendas, their 'ends-in-view', are indistinguishable. Both "parties" work for more surevillance, more militarism, more corporate authoritarianism, less freedom, less liberty, less services (for more taxes).

A Serious Question: Is This All There Is?

It is a puzzlement:

HOW can nominally reasonable, apparently intelligent people even imagine for a single moment, in the deepest fits of collective faith/delusion, that the OWNERS of the country --the elites, the aristos, the oligarchs, the plutocrats, etc-- would EVER turn over management of THEIR insanely valuable "property," (i.e., the Country) or even the system of its administration (i.e., the Government), to somebody--to ANYBODY--who wasn't utterly, totally, and completely trustworthy.

Would YOU turn over your immensely valuable business to someone who posed even the tiniest, remotest, slightest, slimmest CHANCE of undoing the least jot or tittle of your fantastically profitable status quo? Would Macy tell Gimble?

No! Preposterous! Who could believe--who would DO--such a thing?

So we must believe that Prez.O, having necessarily won their trust before even gaining the nomination, has long since faithfully demonstrated he neither will--nor even is particularly inclined to--upset any corporate/oligarchic/elitist applecarts...Obama's just another a game piece. Mebbe not a pawn, mebbe a rook; but nevertheless one whose moves are totally circumscribed by the game and the role he plays in it. But he's no less a figurehead than Bush was, and for exactly the same interests...

And just so you understand: Recessions, depressions, and the like, are GREAT for the wealthy, because in such distressed times, they can recover their assets from the peons to whom they have leased them (what, you thought you 'owned" anything?) at fire-sale prices. Prez.Obama (along with the rest of the Congress, the bureaucracy, and the Press,) is in on the scam, and they play along, happily.

And as to the illustration, and the query included therein: No, he won't prosecute. If he did--to continue for a moment the chess-piece analogy--he'd be a Rook acting like a Queen.

"Jingle" Bobby Jindal

Louisiana's (conservative!) governor, Piyush ("Bobby") Jindal (the slight, sepia-brown hope of the flying-monkey faction of the GOPukes) proved himself utterly unready for prime-time pretensions with his affectless, pedantic, patronizing, predictable 'reply' to Pres. Obama's address to Congress and the People last night. Still, given the fact he was selected--along with his unaccountable but nevertheless increasing prominence, and his evident taste for the national spotlight (though how he handles himself therein is both somewhat problematic and revealing)--it will become increasingly impingent upon his detractors to have at the ready a term of sufficient snark to put the posturing parvenu in his place and infuriate his fans. A bit of semiotic slap-down, as it were.

For this purpose--a sort of snarky "re-branding," you could call it--I propose the term to which the Hed alludes: "Jinglebob." He's already got the diminutive "Bobby." It's no greater diminishment to add the musical descriptor; that is: "JingleBobby" Jindal.

"Jinglebob" is an old cowboy term. It refers to metal, slug-like appurtenances hung by cowboys on the outside of the rowels (the 'spines') on their spurs, to make the rowels 'jingle' as they moved and spun. It was an item of pure, sheer cowboy vanity. They didn't have much, and couldn't afford much, and that little 'jingle' was all they could do to stand out.

It fits, of course, as Jindal is an icon of the vanity of the GOP: a noisy, trivial, substanceless appurtenance to the GOPuke noise machine. Think about that: he's the noise you make by 'spinning'...

And, as one might expect, and happily, there's also the (concurrent) Urban Dictionary 'definition' of "jinglebob": A Christmas 'blow-job.'

So we'll just call him "JingleBobby" from now on.

Works BOTH ways.

That is a term with which almost any child, even, could have a LOT of fun.

Unless you wanna go the route of calling him Piyush. How does one pronounce that? "Pie-Yoosh?" "P'yush?" "Pi-oosh?"

Yeah, I know. It's childish and jejune.

So sue me...

The Jig Is Up! Citi? BoA? You ARE The Weakest Links

Nationalization is coming, for at least two of the most egregiously crooked, corrupt and (coincidentally) failed banks, Citi and BoA, are gonna be nationalized (even if only 'temporarily'). So says the New York correspondent for the British paper, Financial Times (via CJR.

Nationalization is inevitable—and sooner rather than later.

That according to the Financial Times’s New York banking reporter Francesco Guerrera. I like that the paper’s editors let a news reporter use his accumulated knowledge to write a column like this.

Guerrera goes so far to say Bank of America and Citigroup are “likely” to be nationalized. Anybody want to take the other side of that bet? I didn’t think so, but it’s a measure of how false the old conventions of journalism force us to be that this piece seems edgy—Murrow-like even.

The game is up: within the next few weeks, if not days, the US government will have to step in and nationalise one or more banks.

The likely candidates to the dubious honour of being owned by Washington Inc can be found at the end of a sad trail of credit losses, management mishaps and share price collapses.

Come on down, Citigroup, Bank of America and a motley crew of regional and community banks.

I especially like this part:

Why am I so sure? Because, as the US banking guy for the Financial Times, for the past year I have had a ringside seat to the demise of the global banking sector.

The destructive blend of ineptitude, myopia and greed that led to the crisis has made it impossible for piecemeal solutions to work.

When commentators warn that a failure by the latest US rescue plan would lead to a “Japanisation” of the financial sector, they are missing the point. It is too late to worry about banks turning into “zombies” – they already are.

Yes. The real problem here is that almost no individual thinks that these banks aren’t insolvent. It’s the system that’s in denaial—seemingly incapable, like Japan in the 1990’s of admitting the obvious and swallowing hard and paying the price. Far from bringing needed “change,” Obama, by selecting the insider Geithner as Treasury Secretary, has bought into these toxic beliefs. Here’s Guerrera trying to shake us out of it:

Crushed under a pile of toxic assets, paralysed by wafer-thin balance sheets and deserted by fearful investors, once-mighty institutions such as Citi and BofA are barely able to perform basic functions such as lending and underwriting.

In fact, the only reason they have not joined Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual on the financial scrapheap is that taxpayers have propped them up with more than $500bn in cash injections and guarantees.

The kicker:

Banks will not like it – and Citi, for one, is already agitating for yet another bail-out without nationalisation. But as the financial chain comes under unprecedented strain, the time has come to take out its weakest links.

Righto! Applaud the FT for giving Guerrera the freedom to, you know, tell the truth—and make a call.

Yet another case of "how journamalism's spozed to get did!" Bravo, indeed. Unfortunately,and obviously not counting the George Wills and David Broders of the world, no USer paper would have the temerity to unleash a top reporter to tell the TRUTH about anything as inflammatory as the crash of banks.

Here's An Unpleasant Thought: "The Bathtub"

What if this economic crisis is "the Bathtub" in which Prez.O--in the instance (well, somebody's gotta do it!)--will be obliged to "drown" the government--that part of which supports the people--and fulfill thereby (ironically? or not...) Grover Norquist's (owner-approved) Neo-Con project???

There's more than one way to 'reduce' services. Probably the most reliable is to claim such service is too expensive. See any patterns, here?

The recipe for Imperial decline is indelible: increase taxes and reduce services.

Do Not Dawdle, Do Not Shilly-shally, DO NOT Pause In The Order Of Your Going!

Verily!

Get thee hence forthwith and attend to the awesome Driftglass' amazing excursus on the forthcoming CPAC (Conservatard Political Action Committee) convention beginning tomorrow in DC: "Big Fucknozzle Trade Show". There you will discover (and possibly can imagine some use for) an utterly exhausting and exhaustive list of all the funds, foundations, and folks who support Fucknozzles, Unlimited at the CPAC. This is just the "A" List:

The American Conservative Union: who believe that OSHA, commies and liberals are destroying America.

Accuracy in Media: who believe that liberal control of the media is destroying America.

Advocacy Ink : who believe that bad wingnut PR is destroying America.

Alliance Defense Fund: who believe that non-Christians, queers, unregulated vaginae and porn are destroying America.

American Civil Rights Union: who believe that militant atheists are destroying America.

American Federation of Senior Citizens: who believe that liberals are destroying America.

American Future Fund: who believe that non-Limbaugh-approved thoughts are destroying America.

American Service Council, Inc.: who believe that "socialized oil" is destroying America.

American for Tax Reform: who believe that taxes are destroying America.

Americans for Limited Government: who believe that Evil Gummint things are destroying America.

Americas Majority: who believe that non-Judeo Christian morals are destroying America.

AT&T: who believes that iPhones are destroying America.

THe list goes on and on through the rest of the alphabet, all the way to:

Young America's Foundation: who believe that frivolous youth who are not "preserving and protecting Ronald Reagan’s Western White House—Rancho del Cielo—and using this historic presidential property and our newly renovated Reagan Ranch Center in downtown Santa Barbara, California, to pass on to future generations the ideas and lasting accomplishments of this great American President" are destroying America.

Young Americans for Freedom: who believe that Evil Gummint things are destroying America.

Youth For Western Civilization: who believe that Godless liberal multiculturalists who want defile to flower of our Southron Womanhood are destroying America.

(Anybody in Santa Barbara with an extra bottle of crazy glue could do the country a real service...)

P.S.: Am I being paranoid if I wonder whether there is any connection between the beginning of the Conservatard Creap Show and Obama's "Fiscal Accountability Summit," where the best minds in Government will work to find sufficiently secretive ways to put the chogie deep into the anal recesses of the (us) Boomers, whom Prez.O apparently regards with less respect than Ronald Reagan?