Paul Krugman writes:

For the fact is that the modern Republican Party just doesn’t have much respect for people who work for other people, no matter how faithfully and well they do their jobs. All the party’s affection is reserved for “job creators,” a k a employers and investors. Leading figures in the party find it hard even to pretend to have any regard for ordinary working families — who, it goes without saying, make up the vast majority of Americans.

Am I exaggerating? Consider the Twitter message sent out by Eric Cantor, the Republican House majority leader, on Labor Day — a holiday that specifically celebrates America’s workers. Here’s what it said, in its entirety: “Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.” Yes, on a day set aside to honor workers, all Mr. Cantor could bring himself to do was praise their bosses.

Lest you think that this was just a personal slip, consider Mr. Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. What did he have to say about American workers? Actually, nothing: the words “worker” or “workers” never passed his lips.

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

James Jeffrey writes:

Political theorist Hannah Arendt described the history of warfare in the 20th century as the growing incapacity of the army to fulfil its basic function: defending the civilian population. My experiences in Afghanistan brought this issue to a head, leaving me unable to avoid the realization that my role as a soldier had changed, in Arendt’s words, from “that of protector into that of a belated and essentially futile avenger”. Our collective actions in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11 were, and remain, futile vengeance – with drones the latest technological advance to empower that flawed strategy.

Drones are becoming the preferred instruments of vengeance, and their core purpose is analogous to the changing relationship between civil society and warfare, in which the latter is conducted remotely and at a safe distance so that implementing death and murder becomes increasingly palatable.
James Jeffrey serving in Iraq, 2004 The author (at far left) as a lieutenant Challenger 2 troop leader in al-Amarah, Iraq, 2004. Photograph: James Jeffrey

Hyperbole? But I was there. I sat in my camouflaged combats and I took the rules of engagement and ethical warfare classes. And frankly, I don’t buy much, if any, of it now – especially concerning drones. Their effectiveness is without question, but there’s terrible fallout from their rampant use.

Both Pakistan and Yemen are arguably less stable and more hostile to the west as a result of President Obama’s increased reliance on drones. When surveying the poisoned legacy left to the Iraqi people, and what will be left to the Afghan people, it’s beyond depressing to hear of the hawks circling around other theatres like Pakistan and Yemen, stoking the flames of interventionism.

I fear the folly in which I took part will never end, and society will be irreversibly enmeshed in what George Orwell’s 1984 warned of: constant wars against the Other, in order to forge false unity and fealty to the state.

If you want to play gawd…

Glenn Greenwald writes:

As it turns out, this claim is almost certainly false. And now, a week later, even the US government is acknowledging that, as McClatchy reports this morning [my emphasis]:

The Obama administration acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that last week’s assault on the US consulate compound in Benghazi that left the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans dead was a ‘terrorist attack’ apparently launched by local Islamic militants and foreigners linked to al-Qaida’s leadership or regional allies.

‘I would say they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack,’ said Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

It was the first time that a senior administration official had said the attack was not the result of a demonstration over an anti-Islam video that has been cited as the spark for protests in dozens of countries over the past week .’The picture that is emerging is one where a number of different individuals were involved,’ Olsen said. [My emphasis]

Worse, it isn’t as though there had been no evidence of more accurate information before Wednesday. To the contrary, most evidence from the start strongly suggested that the White House’s claims – that this attack was motivated by anger over a film – were false.

[Snip…]

The Obama White House’s interest in spreading this falsehood is multi-fold and obvious:

For one, the claim that this attack was just about anger over an anti-Muhammad video completely absolves the US government of any responsibility or even role in provoking the anti-American rage driving it. After all, if the violence that erupted in that region is driven only by anger over some independent film about Muhammad, then no rational person would blame the US government for it, and there could be no suggestion that its actions in the region – things like this, and this, and this, and this – had any role to play.

The White House capitalized on the strong desire to believe this falsehood: it’s deeply satisfying to point over there at those Muslims and scorn their primitive religious violence, while ignoring the massive amounts of violence to which one’s own country continuously subjects them. It’s much more fun and self-affirming to scoff: “can you believe those Muslims are so primitive that they killed our ambassador over a film?” than it is to acknowledge: “our country and its allies have continually bombed, killed, invaded, and occupied their countries and supported their tyrants.”

It is always more enjoyable to scorn the acts of the Other Side than it is to acknowledge the bad acts of one’s own. That’s the self-loving mindset that enables the New York Times to write an entire editorial today purporting to analyze Muslim rage without once mentioning the numerous acts of American violence aimed at them (much of which the Times editorial page supports). Falsely claiming that the Benghazi attacks were about this film perfectly flattered those jingoistic prejudices.

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

Roldo Bartimole writes:

The problem with school reform is that the real solution doesn’t lie in the school but outside the school – in the home, on the street, in our social life, in our justice system, in our politics, in its financing and in the poor conditions many of our children – and adults – must exist. And the history.

The times are not good. The times have not been good. For many.

As someone who has been writing for more than 50 years, few articles stand out in my mind.

One, actually two, I wrote when I was the Plain Dealer welfare writer do stand out. Because they said – still say – so much about who we are. And why we’re in the trouble we are in now.

It was written at a time when – unlike now – the newspaper had to pay attention to what was happening in our poverty community. It was a time when people were actually working to try to better conditions.

The times screamed for notice. They still do.

Because someone – a social worker – called my attention to a specific building in Hough, I wrote about a boy I called Continue Reading »

Matt Taibbi writes:

Essentially the same thing happened in Kaufman’s biggest reform attempt, the amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill he co-sponsored with Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, which would have broken up the Too-Big-To-Fail banks. But the Brown-Kaufman amendment, which was really the meatiest thing in the original Dodd-Frank bill, the one reform that really would have made a difference if it had passed, just died in the suffocating mass of the Blob. The key Democrats one after another failed to line up behind it, and in the end it was defeated soundly, with Dick Durbin, the number two man in the Democratic leadership, giving it this epitaph: “a bridge too far.”

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

Be Careful Where You Click! Google’s Deceptive Ads Trick Users…

I’m at work on an essay about ending all political incumbency in the United States, but this morning Matt Taibbi makes my strongest case with this simple quote from author and former congressional aide Jeff Connaughton:

“I later learned from reporters that Wall Street was frustrated that they couldn’t find a way to harness Ted or pull in his reins,” Jeff writes. “There was no obvious way to pressure Ted because he wasn’t running for re-election.”

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Why won’t a big city newspaper as the Plain Dealer total up what Cleveland and Cuyahoga County taxpayers have paid in taxes for the real demonstrable deadbeats (as Romney misidentifies them in his Lonesome Rhodes moment)?

Why is the Plain Dealer so reluctant to post what we have given a handful of sports owners in welfare? Why doesn’t Mark Naymik go the extra step in his columns about the financial dealings of the sports owners?

Why doesn’t Metro Editor Chris Quinn demand that his staff produce what is already readily available – the price we have paid?

What are they afraid of? What’s so dangerous about telling the truth?

Are they afraid that they might not be able to promote new taxes for sports facilities if they – in black and white – told what we have already given the billionaire owners? Is that their fear? Why? Why should they be afraid? Who do they fear hurting?

Where are Mayor Frank Jackson and Council President Martin Sweeney and County Executive Ed Fitzgerald hiding?

The true figures of the immense welfare given sports owners in this town are readily available. There is a spread sheet in the Cuyahoga County offices that provides all the data needed. The editors are always carping Continue Reading »

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

Instead of trying to escape into metaphysical questions such as, “Who created the world?” and “What is the purpose of life?” the Buddha began with the truth he saw around him. This is the first ethical guideline: We have to observe deeply what is happening around us before we can understand its causes and hope to transform it. p. 15

From Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society by Thich Nhat Hanh

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

*The conversation wasn’t pretty…

So, how much would you pay for representation you can live with? Let’s do some math.

The current house has 435 members, each representing 717,000 Americans, or a population of nearly 312 million. If we reduce the number Americans each House member represents to say, 100,000, that gives us a House of Representatives with 3,119 members.

Currently, the annual salary for a member of Congress is $174,000 or, at present, about $7.5 million and change per year. At 3,119 representatives, that base expense to the nation balloons to more than half a billion dollars per year. Just for the pure craziness of the figures, consider George Washington’s suggested upper limits of no more than 40,000 Americans per representative and you get an annual salary budget of $1.4 billion.

I would think of that as money well spent, but, yeah, like that’s going to happen.

John Cusack (no seriously, that John Cusack) writes:

I agree completely with Garry Wills who described the Republican primaries as ” a revolting combination of con men & fanatics— “the current primary race has become a demonstration that the Republican party does not deserve serious consideration for public office.”

True enough.

But yet…

… there are certain Rubicon lines, as constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley calls them, that Obama has crossed.

All political questions are not equal no matter how much you pivot. When people die or lose their physical freedom to feed certain economic sectors or ideologies, it becomes a zero sum game for me.

This is not an exercise in bemoaning regrettable policy choices or cheering favorable ones but to ask fundamentally: Who are we? What are we voting for? And what does it mean?

On 8 December 2004, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) slipped Section 111 of Title I, Division J, of the Fiscal Year 2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act (Pub. L. 108-447) and a new national holiday into our collective consciousness: Constitution Day. Our Constitution is the single most important document in Human History; read it all.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Please keep reading…

I never leave home without my pocket-sized copy of our Constitution.
Celebrate Constitution And Citizenship Day.
A Day Set Aside for the Constitution.

Glenn Greenwald writes:

Does anyone doubt that if the Bush White House had “requested” in the wake of 9/11 that all anti-war or anti-administration videos be “reviewed” to see if they should remain on the internet – on the not-implausible ground that they might encourage attacks on American troops or personnel – that Democrats would have little trouble seeing why it is dangerous to have the executive branch taking action to influence private internet companies to suppress political speech? The actions of the Obama White House are no less inappropriate.

In conclusion, Greenwald asks:

My real question for those who insist that advocacy of violence should be suppressed is this: do you apply this view consistently? Do you want those who advocated the attack on Iraq – i.e., who advocated violence – to be arrested? How about those who cheer for the war in Afghanistan, or drone attacks on Pakistanis and Yemenis? The next time someone in the US or UK stands up and advocates a new war – say, attacking Iran – should they be arrested on the ground that they are advocating violence?

Or is it the case, as it certainly appears, that when people say that “advocating violence” should be suppressed, what they really mean is:

it should be prohibited for those people over there to advocate violence against my society, but my society is of course free to advocate violence against them?

As I wrote above, those who apply free speech values inconsistently are not merely being hypocritical; worse, they are attempting to exploit free speech precepts to protect and legitimize the views of themselves and their own side while suppressing those views they dislike and which are advocated by the other side. Indeed, it’s often the very people who insist that “advocacy of violence” should not be permitted who, in the next breath, justify the wars and bombings and drone-attacks of their government.

A little house with two bedrooms,
one bathroom and no car on the street.
A mower that you had to push
to make the grass look neat.

In the kitchen on the wall
we only had one phone,
And no need for recording things,
someone was always home.

We only had a living room
where we would congregate,
unless it was at mealtime
in the kitchen where we ate.

We had no need for family rooms
or extra rooms to dine.
When meeting as a family
those two rooms would work out fine.

Some folk had one TV set
and channels maybe two,
But always there was one of them
with something worth the view.

For snacks we had potato chips
that tasted like a chip.
And if you wanted flavor
there was Lipton’s onion dip.

Store-bought snacks were rare because
my mother liked to cook
and nothing can compare to snacks
in Betty Crocker’s book.

Weekends were for family trips
or staying home to play.
We all did things together —
even go to church to pray.

When we did our weekend trips
depending on the weather,
no one stayed at home because
we liked to be together.

Sometimes we would separate
to do things on our own,
but we knew where the others were
without our own cell phone.

Then there were the movies
with your favorite movie star,
and nothing can compare
to watching movies in your car.

Then there were the picnics
at the peak of summer season,
pack a lunch and find some trees
and never need a reason.

Get a baseball game together
with all the friends you know,
have real action playing ball —
and no game video.

Remember when the doctor
used to be the family friend,
and he didn’t need insurance
or a lawyer to defend?

The way that he took care of you
or what he had to do,
because he took an oath and strived
to do the best for you.

Remember going to the store
and shopping casually,
and when you went to pay for it
you used your own money?

Nothing that you had to swipe
or punch in some amount,
and remember when the cashier person
had to really count?

The milkman used to go
and deliver door to door,
And it was just a few cents more
than going to the store.

There was a time when mailed letters
came right to your door,
without a lot of junk mail ads
sent out by every store.

The mailman knew each house by name
and knew where it was sent;
there were not loads of mail addressed
to “present occupant.”

There was a time when just one glance
was all that it would take,
and you would know the kind of car,
the model and the make.

They didn’t look like turtles
trying to squeeze out every mile;
they were streamlined, white walls, fins
and really had some style.

At one time the music that you played
whenever you would jive,
was from a vinyl, big-holed record
called a forty-five.

The record player had a post
to keep them all in line
and then the records would drop down
and play one at a time.

Oh sure, we had our problems then,
just like we do today
and always we were striving,
trying for a better way.

Oh, the simple life we lived
still seems like so much fun,
how can you explain the game
of kick the can and run?

This life seemed so much easier
and slower in some ways.
I love the new technology
but I sure do miss those days.

So time moves on and so do we
and nothing stays the same,
but I sure love to reminisce
and walk down memory lane.

With all today’s technology
we grant that it’s a plus!
But it’s fun to look way back and say,
Hey Look, guys, THAT WAS US!

Roldo Bartimole writes:

The George Forbes story that he and County Commissioner Tim Hagan offered to build a stadium for Art Modell at the same time the push was on for Gateway’s stadium and arena doesn’t pass the smell test.

And never will unless Art comes back to verify.

Mark Naymik in today’s Plain Dealer takes for fact what Forbes and Hagan say about a football stadium that the two retired politicians – both with images in the garbage dump – say. There’s a lack of backup to the story. If Forbes and Hagan have the details that could be corroborated with unbiased sources, they should provide it. And I don’t mean their lawyers.

Their word isn’t worth the breath it takes to tell it.

George seems to want – as he always has tried – to sculpt a new image for an unbelievable con artist. In his 80s and, according to other pols, not well, he’s now telling a story for the history books. He wants us to read it his way.

Recently, Forbes had a backyard barbecue with numerous council members from his tenure as Council President. He also invited reporters.

No doubt in my mind that the powerful Forbes wants to influence Continue Reading »