The "we hate government crew", shuffling off to Washington

America's dancing patriots, the Tea Partiers
http://blogs.courant.com/capitol_watch/2009/09/tea-party-patriots-cheer-congr.html

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.
-- David Brooks, "The Tea Party Teens"


I'm listening to David Brooks. I was during the 2012 campaign, and these days, I'm listening maybe more than ever. Brooks and Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Jon Stewart, too. But today, David Brooks has my attention. Here's what he had to say in his column yesterday in the New York Times.

Personally, I think we'd be wise to listen and not go on about how American is a democracy based on humanist principals and Enlightenment philosophy. America has another, parallel and conflicting history that we ignore at our own peril. It might be about to own us, just when we thought our own party was starting when Barack Hussein Obama was elected by a heavy margin of victory and inaugurated a year ago.


The Tea Party Teens

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: January 4, 2010

The United States opens this decade in a sour mood. First, Americans are anxious about the future. Sixty-one percent of Americans believe the country is in decline, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey. Only 27 percent feel confident that their children’s generation will be better off than they are.

Second, Americans have lost faith in their institutions. During the great moments of social reform, at least 60 percent of Americans trusted government to do the right thing most of the time. Now, only a quarter have that kind of trust.

The country is evenly divided about President Obama, but state governments are in disrepute and confidence in Congress is at withering lows. As Frank Newport of the Gallup organization noted in his year-end wrap-up, “Americans have less faith in their elected representatives than ever before.”

Third, the new administration has not galvanized a popular majority. In almost every sphere of public opinion, Americans are moving away from the administration, not toward it. The Ipsos/McClatchy organizations have been asking voters which party can do the best job of handling a range of 13 different issues. During the first year of the Obama administration, the Republicans gained ground on all 13.

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply.

A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity.

The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.

The tea party movement is mostly famous for its flamboyant fringe. But it is now more popular than either major party. According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 41 percent of Americans have a positive view of the tea party movement. Only 35 percent of Americans have a positive view of the Democrats and only 28 percent have a positive view of the Republican Party.

The movement is especially popular among independents. The Rasmussen organization asked independent voters whom they would support in a generic election between a Democrat, a Republican and a tea party candidate. The tea party candidate won, with 33 percent of independents. Undecided came in second with 30 percent. The Democrats came in third with 25 percent and the Republicans fourth with 12 percent.

Over the course of this year, the tea party movement will probably be transformed. Right now, it is an amateurish movement with mediocre leadership. But several bright and polished politicians, like Marco Rubio of Florida and Gary Johnson of New Mexico, are unofficially competing to become its de facto leader. If they succeed, their movement is likely to outgrow its crude beginnings and become a major force in American politics. After all, it represents arguments that are deeply rooted in American history.

The Obama administration is premised on the conviction that pragmatic federal leaders with professional expertise should have the power to implement programs to solve the country’s problems. Many Americans do not have faith in that sort of centralized expertise or in the political class generally.

Moreover, the tea party movement has passion. Think back on the recent decades of American history — the way the hippies defined the 1960s; the feminists, the 1970s; the Christian conservatives, the 1980s. American history is often driven by passionate outsiders who force themselves into the center of American life.

In the near term, the tea party tendency will dominate the Republican Party. It could be the ruin of the party, pulling it in an angry direction that suburban voters will not tolerate. But don’t underestimate the deep reservoirs of public disgust. If there is a double-dip recession, a long period of stagnation, a fiscal crisis, a terrorist attack or some other major scandal or event, the country could demand total change, creating a vacuum that only the tea party movement and its inheritors would be in a position to fill.

Personally, I’m not a fan of this movement. But I can certainly see its potential to shape the coming decade.

Let's watch Countdown's Chris Matthews with Democratic strategist Chris Kofinas, too, as they talk about the Tea Partier's holiday season "Die-in" on Capitol Hill, making merry with Republican lawmakers.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And, at a resplendent and elegant Paris New Year's Eve dinner, over oysters from Brittany, langoustines and foie gras, as the champagne, wine and conversation flowed, I debated politics politely (Rhetorical question of the day: Is it possible to ever debate politics politely? In other words, can politics ever be considered polite conversation?) with a Dutch gentleman, married to an American from a well-healed, Pelham, NY Republican family, who graduated Harvard, and who remained silent throughout the exquisite, companionable dinner. At one point in our typical conversation for an American meeting an European at a dinner party, he started in with the age-old "I'm ashamed to be an European" thing (yes, he did say it); he was sincere. He was building up a head of steam, but I cut him off.

"There is no reason for this now. We are past the days of the Marshall Plan, Europe is off its knees and leading, and it well ought to be with 750 million citizens. Look at Denmark, leading the world in environmental regulations and innovations that have given it a world-class financial edge. And do not talk to me about the emergence of China; they do not feel the slightest need to concern themselves with their people. We do, and we must take them, too, into account as we shape our societies, our businesses and our economies. For this, Europe represents a set of social and economic values and government and business practices that produce real gains and successes, and Europe can show the world the way forward." In short, that was then, this is now. He listened, and then he leaned close to me and said,

"You know, I agree with you. A couple of years ago," and here, he glanced nearly imperceptibly towards his wife, seated across the table from him, who I was not sure was appreciating me as much as our hostess had hoped she would, before continuing, "I would have disagreed with you, but now I don't."

Happy New Year.

No, Americans won't like it, but they have every interest in taking a long look around them. Only they won't, as surely as I am sitting here, my feet turning to blocks of ice in my Wellies, writing this.

You've all got your work cut out for you, but I'm sure that Obama and all his voters are up to it. You'd best be, or soon the Tea Partiers will be dancing up the Capitol steps to their offices.

I hear Chris Dodd's is up for grabs.
....

Baseline nincompoopery: James Howard Kunstler tells it like it is

James Kunstler and Duncan Crary, doing a podcast

(check it out, it's here on The Sisyphus Journals --->
or here, www.kunstlercast.com
start with #79 Packin for France)

To some extent that's how I feel about this clusterfuck that we're all witnessing, and that some of us are, you know, actively commenting. I feel like in a way I'm sort of like the Bob Costas of the clusterfuck, you know, giving, you know, blow-by-blow commentary about what's going on, and so for me, you know, it's kind of amusing, although I must say, you know, I'm a little bit daunted by the potential for trouble and danger. Now I'm not very paranoid but, you know, I start seeing these nuts coming out at the health care town meetings and the Sarah Palinites and the Mike Huckabees and the sort of, what what I refer to as the "corn pone Nazis", and I'm not kidding about that; it is a joke, in a way, but it's a serious joke.

You know, I think there's tremendous potential in this country for political despotism and total looniness. It really makes me quake in my boots to imagine those people getting their hands on the levers of power, and it's not that wild to imagine that it could happen if the people in this country get, go through enough hardship and distress, which they seem to be heading into. And it does seem to me that the economy is still unraveling as much as it was in early 2009, that the recovery that's supposedly going on is a mirage, and that we're going to see a lot more mischief in banking and finance, and the economy in general and job loss and foreclosure and all the things that we're now familiar with, these are trends that seem to be in place that you really can't see the horizon on.

So, if I were a 25-year-old who spoke French and had some gold overseas and had some ambitions to, maybe, you know, buy some land and do some farming in Europe, that might not be such a bad idea.

-- James Howard Kunstler,
Podcast #79 Packin for France

This one is also for those who doubt what I say about Life in America, who are charmed by it and the idea that the party will never be over for the talented and those naturally born to take on leadership's august mantle.

Pour les français qui s'intéressent à cette question, je pourrais tenter une traduction mais pas tout de suite. Le sauvetage de notre maison demande mon attention.

Reality Receding

By James Howard Kunstler
on September 14, 2009 6:33 AM

Now that everybody in the USA, from the janitors in their man-caves to the president addressing congress, has declared the "recession" over, is exactly the moment when what's left of the so-called economy is most likely to implode. If there were still shoeshine boys on Wall street, they'd be starting their own hedge funds now, and CNBC's Larry Kudlow would be toasting them in the Grill Room of The Four Seasons. What we've seen in the vaunted rally for the last six months is the triumph of wishing over facts, combined with the most arrant market manipulation by floundering banks backstopped by a panicked government -- all pounding sand down a rat-hole of hopeless non-performing debt, while pretending that the machinery of capital finance still grinds on.

Despite what a few elderly Mr. Naturals may say about abolishing "capitalism", we're not going to have an advanced economy without a coherent banking system, and by advanced economy I mean one in which the lights stay on. By coherent I mean a system that is able to deploy accumulated wealth for productive purposes, in the service of continuing civilization. (And, yes, I know that the followers of Daniel Quinn are not so sure that civilization is worth the trouble, but unless you support the killing-off of about six billion humans right away, things on Earth are not favorably disposed just now for a return to hunting-and-gathering.)

I would hasten to cut through the fog of despair to reassert -- for the thousandth time -- that a true American perestroika is possible, if the public could overcome the plague of cognitive dissonance sweeping the land and form a consensus for action that comports with reality's agenda. But that is looking less and less likely. Instead, what we see is a rush into delusion, seasoned with grievance and gall. Spectacles like last weekend's march on Washington don't happen for no reason, of course. From where I sit, the uproar can be attributed to comprehensively bad American leadership, a crisis in authority and legitimacy that has left a functional vacuum in every executive office throughout the land -- from the White House to the state houses, to the lairs of the CEOs, to the towers of the deans and department chairs, to the glitzy sets of the nightly news deliverers, to the makeshift quarters of the NGO chiefs. In former times, clueless and impotent leaders stuck their heads in the sand. Nowadays, with pandemic narcissism abroad in the land, the heads are more usually inserted into the aperture that leads into the large bowel....

But I indulge in diverting objurgation when I should perhaps explain this American perestroika more clearly. The Russian word roughly translates to "restructuring." They flubbed it in 1989 because their system was too ossified and too far gone -- though history and circumstance eventually did it for them. A similar outcome is possible here, too, in which things just have to completely fall apart before emergent reorganization occurs. But you can be sure that if we allow this to happen, an awful lot of things will get smashed along the way, including lives, careers, families, property, and cherished institutions.

This monster we call the economy is not just an endless series of charts and graphs -- it's how we live, and that has to change, whether we like it or not. Now, it is obviously a huge problem that a majority of Americans don't like the idea. If they were true patriots, instead of overfed cowards and sado-masochists, they'd be inspired by the prospect. But something terrible has happened to our national character since the triumphal glow of World War Two wore off. I just hope that the Palinites and the myrmidons of Glen Beck don't destroy what's left of this country in a WWF-style "revolution." In the best societies, such idiots are marginalized by a kinder and sturdier consensus about justice. In America today, the center is not holding because there is no center.

American perestroika really boils down to this: we have to rescale the activities of daily life to a level consistent with the mandates of the future, especially the ones having to do with available energy and capital. We have to dismantle things that have no future and rebuild things that will
allow daily life to function. We have to say goodbye to big box shopping and rebuild Main Street. More people will be needed to work in farming and fewer in tourism, public relations, gambling, and party planning. We have to make some basic useful products in this country again. We have to systematically decommission suburbia and reactivate our small towns and small cities. We have to prepare for the contraction of our large cities. We have to let the sun set on Happy Motoring and rebuild our trains, transit systems, harbors, and inland waterways. We have to reorganize schooling at a much more modest level. We have to close down most of the overseas
military bases we're operating and conclude our wars in Asia. Mostly, we have to recover a national sense of common purpose and common decency. There is obviously a lot of work to do in the list above, which could translate into paychecks and careers -- but not if we direct all our resources into propping up the failing structures of yesterday.

The most dangerous illusion, of course, is a belief that we can return to a hyped up turbo debt "consumer" economy -- and perhaps the most disappointing thing about Barack Obama, is his incessant cheerleading for a "recovery" to what is already lost and unrecoverable. The man who ran for office on "change" doesn't really have the stomach for it. But, of course, events are in the driver's seat now, not personalities, even charming ones. I'd venture to say that if Mr. Obama thinks he's seen a crisis, and gotten through it, then he ain't seen nothin' yet. We are for sure not returning to the kind of credit orgy that made the last twenty years such a nauseating spectacle -- of which, by the way, the misfeasances and wretched excesses of Wall Street were just one manifestation.

Some theorists out there say that economy follows mood, not vice-versa, and that the anger and sourness on display around the USA, in events like the weekend Washington march, is a clear sign that tectonic shifts in the structures of everyday life are sure to follow. There are too many truly good and intelligent people in this country, to leave our fate to the Palins and the Glen Becks. But the good people had better man up and start telling the truth with some conviction that the truth matters.
....

Bailed out! It's fun being a billionaire!

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

"Well -- uh --, yes, yes, I have to admit, it's fun being a billionaire."
-- Sir Allen Stanford

Hey! I saw this guy on a news program while we were away skiing. They were looking for him to arrest him, and here he is, right on national television, enjoying himself and being a billionaire!

What Battered Newsrooms Can Learn From Stewart's CNBC Takedown

By Will Bunch, The Huffington Post, March 5, 2009

The most talked-about journalism of this week wasn't produced in the New York Times, CNN, Newsweek or NPR. It was Jon Stewart's epic, eight-minute takedown on Wednesday night's Daily Show of CNBC's clueless, in-the-tank reporting of inflatable bubbles and blowhard CEOs as the U.S. and world economies slowly slid into a meltdown. You can quibble about Stewart's motives in undertaking the piece -- after he was spurned for an interview by CNBC's faux populist ranter Rick Santelli -- but you can't argue with the results.

The piece wasn't just the laugh-out-loud funniest thing on TV all week (and this was a week in which NBC rebroadcast the SNL "more cowbell" sketch, so that's saying a lot) but it was exquisitely reported, insightful, and it tapped into America's real anger about the financial crisis in a way that mainstream journalism has found so elusive all these months, in a time when we all need to be tearing down myths. As one commenter on the Romenesko blog noted, "it's simply pathetic that one has to watch a comedy show to see things like this."

But that's not all. The Stewart piece also got the kind of eyeballs that most newsrooms would kill for in this digital age -- planted atop many, many major political, media and business Web sites -- and the kind of water-cooler chatter that journalists would crave in any age. In a time when newspapers are flat-out dying if not dealing with bankruptcy or massive job losses, while other types of news orgs aren't faring much better, the journalistic success of a comedy show rant shouldn't be viewed as a stick in the eye -- but a teachable moment. Why be a curmudgeon about kids today getting all their news from a comedy show, when it's not really that hard to join Stewart in his own idol-smashing game?

Here's how:

1) Great research trumps good access to the powerful: The Stewart piece makes this controversial but critical point in two different ways. For one thing, the story shows how access to the nation's most powerful CEOs -- supposedly the big advantage of a journalistic enterprise like CNBC -- isn't worth a warm bucket of spit when it results in slo-pitch softball questions, for fear of offending the rich and powerful. And so we see Ford's CEO grilled about Kid Rock's performance at the auto show, Ponzi scammer (later revealed) Alan Stanford quizzed on whether it's fun to be a billionaire, and Maria "Money Honey" Bartiromo gushing at how corporate chiefs were still telling her that their companies were doing great, even as the massive iceberg was casting its shadow over the hull of the American economy.

Jon Stewart's act of journalism -- reported, of course, by his ace team of writers -- worked because there were no interviews at all. It all hung instead on meticulous research, dredging up lethal quips of CNBC's stock pumping hosts to hang them with their own undeniable words -- Jim Cramer's "buy buy buy" when the Dow was roughly double what it is today, his touting of Bear Stearns' and Bank of America's doomed stocks. The kind of research that's so hard for most newspapers to do anymore, with downsized staffs and ever-looming deadlines, but which can so often belies the spin from our "accessible" sources.

2) The American public is mad as hell right now, so why isn't the mainstream media? Balanced reporting is important, but a balanced, modulated tone of voice? Not now, not when millions are hurting from lost jobs and under-water mortgages, and many millions more are living in fear of the same fate. People need information but what they so desperately want an outlet that shares their passion -- and, yes, that rage -- and so Jon Stewart gave people what they weren't getting anywhere else.

3) Tear down this wall... of pretending that the media itself isn't a major player in American society, and isn't a factor in most big stories. Sure, there were greedy bankers and their pocketed politicians working in unintended tandem to take the Dow from 14,000 down to 6,600, but these popular TV pundits were there every step of the way, as The Daily Show revealed, and their contribution was consequential. Mainstream media, after all these years, has a hard time understanding that one of the major political forces in this country is mainstream media, something the audience knows all too well.

4) The First Amendment doesn't say anything about not being funny, or not being passionate. I don't know about you, if you actually watched the piece, but I feel like I learned something important -- confirming the cheerleading nature of the nation's most-watched source for business news, even in a moment of oncoming disaster -- but I also busted my gut laughing as I did. And there's nothing wrong with that, informing and entertaining at the same time -- isn't that what newspapers are charging people 75 cents for?.

You know, sometimes people do some crazy stuff when they realize their days are numbered. I don't have the answers to problems facing American journalism -- not my own newsroom, mired in Chapter 11, nor the others that face a possible death sentence. But fighting for life will mean living each day like it was your last, with passion, anger and laughter, the way The Daily Showshined a light on a crevice of the nation's battered economy on Wednesday night.

Oh, and all of us, over here? Those of us not in the United States? We're just great -- those of us whose spouses work for the public health care system, anyway --, so what's Peter Goodman talking about in today's poor, beleaguered New York Times?

A Rising Dollar Lifts the U.S. but Adds to the Crisis Abroad

Oh, right, the panic over the financial crisis that everyone and her brother is talking about. That financial crisis.

As the world is seized with anxiety in the face of a spreading financial crisis, the one place having a considerably easier time attracting money is, perversely enough, the same place that started much of the trouble: the United States.

Try Googling today's world newspapers and let me know what you come up with. They're having a lot of fun.

No, no. Let me guess. That would be much more fun.

....

The crazies at the end of the subway car

And, while we're having fun, Frank Schaeffer -- Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (from a former Republican) -- (click here for my caveat) is not kissing -- "and there's a lot to kiss" -- Rush Limbaugh's -- "Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill," -- ass:



I'm going out for a run.

Oh, and remind me to tell you about my nightmare this morning.
....

When the thieves come home to crow

Evening, both lindens are done

No, it's good; I still have partial use of my hands. Both of them. I can't get my rings off, but my mother-on-law wouldn't like it if I went without them, anyway. I should take that as a compliment. I do.

My timing, if not my hands, was exquisite. My hands look like they belong to someone much, much older and coarser than I.

Ahem.

The weather was beautiful for several days, before the clouds scuttled in yesterday afternoon, and a chill wind blew, bringing rain last night and again this afternoon. I don't remember when it started, only that the sun shone. Sunday, I worked outside and cleaned out the daylily border on the right intermediate terrace. For those of you who haven't been reading me -- doggedly; I'm sorry -- since last year, I provide the link to the plan. It will help you to understand that the house sits on the top of five terraces. For the complete description, see that post, but for our purposes, it will suffice to know that the two linden trees are the big rounds on the house terrace. They look -- please excuse me -- like breasts (the guys just ran to check it out). The other circle, the one between them and a little higher, is the old fountain that Audouin turned into the pond-in-a-fountain, or basin (full account of his efforts in the same post).

You'll notice that there is a stair that cuts down the "center" of the garden, on axis with the French door into the main living space of the house, and that the garden is approximately symmetrical about that axis.

Descending the first few stairs, you arrive on the shallow second terrace. The raised planting borders on the southern side (downhill slope) contain the lavender bushes, the two weeping roses, and several very old, woody tea rose bushes. Roses are not particularly compatible with lavender, preferring a moister, heavier soil, but they manage. I cut them back exceptionally vigorously this year, and to my chagrin, I later realized that I left nothing but a single overly large woody stem from the first white one on the right. I'll have to replace it. It did quite well, too. That will teach me to cut back with such vigor before I have adequately pruned the lavender and can see what I am doing.

At one end, there is an enormous bay, and at the other end, there is a set of stairs, leading to the perpetually humid and moss-covered guest room terrace. It doesn't get sun. If I cut out the overgrown ivy and the ancient, lichen-covered unrecognizable apple tree, that should help. Beside the stairs is the dogwood I planted a couple years back, and behind that, the suffering rhododendron Victor and Tony gave me the firesale price for last summer, with a wink. They knew I'd get it to thrive. It's doing well, and Chloé lies just beyond its roots now. She'll have many beautiful spring flowers. Perhaps I'll plant her a new apple tree. A crab. We'll see.

From this point, three stairs lead to three different areas. The stair along the axis leads to the bottom of the garden, half civilized, with a pool, and half overgrown and waiting for my administrations, and a garage.

The shorter stair to the right leads to what I refer to as the right intermediate terrace, and the same stair to the left leads, most sensibly, to the left intermediate terrace, and a farther one, somewhat lower, where the garden widens at its lower levels, behind the France Telecom utility building at street level. We'll get to that one. It's just above the side of the bottom garden that has the pool, and the birch and tulip tree cluster.

The right and left intermediate terraces each terminate on the downhill side with a very tall -- 9-10' -- retaining walls. Each terrace is made of banks of St. John's Wort, which tumble from the roses and lavender to the paths at the borders, daylilies on the right and sage and oregano (not a particularly good idea) on the left side. The retaining wall is topped on the right with a series of 7 urns that punctuate the daylilies with cascades of petunias in the summer. The right side being larger, a niche is cut into the center of the sloped bank of St. John's Wort with a small retaining wall, against which is placed a bench.

The remaining terrace to the left, off the left intermediate terrace, contains an octagonal gazebo, called a "gloriette", and a barbecue. Both need rebuilding. Another project.

Very little of this was visible -- practically -- 8 years ago, when I saw it for the first time. The garden had not had a caretaker, a gardener, for many years, although some of the structures appear to date from 1991. While they knew how to build an ugly barbecue, they seemed unaware that plants require pruning, borders weeding, everything care.

The daylily border rid of the dead leaves from last year, left to protect the roots and help mulch against weeds, and the paths rid of the several tons of leaves the wisteria on the arch over the central stair is capable of dropping, I decided to undertake the biannual pruning of the linden trees, described yesterday and the day before. I have already exhausted two chains, after just these two trees. I did cut out a fair number of extraneous main branches that were growing into each other and making the canopies too dense. I hope that with them gone, more light will filter down to the ground below and give us some mottled sun, rather than deep shadow. Audouin lay in his sickbed, offering, "Tu travailles bien," and a weak smile every time I came up to see how he was faring.

In 6 1/2 years, I have never seen him not go to the hospital 2 days in a row. I avoided our room like the plague it promised, delivering glasses of water, Coca-Cola, orange-mango juice that went undrunk until yesterday, when the cortisone opened his swollen, angry throat enough to let him get some sips down. Before that, most everything came back up, the unpleasant way. I guess there is only one way it can, and it is unpleasant. I stood and watched him, waiting to see a sign that there was hope for a full recovery. It came yesterday with his first real smile.

The one that makes me wonder why I think I need to divorce him half the time, when I am really furious for one reason or another, and why suddenly seems frivolous.

I know it's time to get out of there and back to whatever I am doing, wherever there is, and whatever I am doing, when he smiles it.

He does deserve better, doesn't he?

....

We're all lovin' him

It looks like taking my advice to keep talking to the American people, which you have been so good at doing, and not to their elected representatives in Washington (for now), which no president is so good at doing (it's their job, as they see it, to resist you), is working, Mr. President.

OK, so I wasn't the one to whom he was listening, but I did say it, somewhere in here, back in January. Today's Wall Street Journal online article "Obama Gets Strong Support in Poll" shows that it's the way to go:

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama enjoys widespread backing from a frightened American public for his ambitious, front-loaded agenda, a new poll indicates.

He is more popular than ever, Americans are hopeful about his leadership, and opposition Republicans are getting drubbed in public opinion, the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests.

Which is one piece of good news as we have to swallow another less than palatible one, which is that the ex-leadership of Countrywide is profiting from the bad loans they offered that catapulted the global economy into catastrophic free-fall.

“It is sort of like the arsonist who sets fire to the house and then buys up the charred remains and resells it,” said Margot Saunders, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center, which for years has sought to place limits on what it calls abusive lending practices by Countrywide and other companies.

It figures. Win on the upside, and win again as it's all coming down around everyone else.

Is it that this requires a special talent, or merely the overriding of all personal ethics, which some of us seem unable to do?

Oh, it's nice to hear that this is at least helping some be able to hold onto their homes, with 50% decreases in their mortgage interest rates making their payments affordable again.

....

Of frogs and fish

Audouin was most certainly mistaken. It must have been his own voice croaking weakly in his feverish head that he heard because there is no sign from the frogs, somewhere in all that siltish muck.

I'm waiting.

The fish, on the other hand, appear to be taking courage in their little public housing project temporary residence in trash can and concrete block. I pulled one of the Eric Tabarlys over, the ones that have been sitting in pots, waiting for the house to be finished for replanting in their newly christened planting beds below the balcony (I hope they are as patient as I have to be, and Job), and let its oddly horizontally growing stem hang down over their concrete block and water. It makes a little reflection and gives them something to look at, like a crib toy.

It's raining. I won't be burning all of this pruned wood today. I guess I'll clean our bedroom and save the walk with the dogs for later. I missed our window of opportunity.
....

The age of aquarius: he remembered

I awoke at 7:30 this morning, the littler cat in my arms, Audouin's hand on my chest where it had come to rest in his sleep, and the sun shining beyond the sheet hung in the window to keep the eyes of the workers from penetrating the privacy of our room, and when I came down after Audouin had gone to the hospital, I found the note above and the following in my email in-box:

At dawn on 14th February the day dedicated to St. Valentine, the patron saint of Love, the Moon in Libra enters the seventh house of relationships. And Jupiter and Mars are aligned in Aquarius in the twelfth house of spiritual transformation.

Forty years ago, the intuitive words of a song called Aquarius brought the dawning of the new age into our collective awareness:

When the Moon is in the seventh house
and Jupiter aligns with Mars.
Then love will rule the planets
and peace will steer the stars

At dawn on 14th February the Cosmos actually embodies this perfect alignment to support our collective manifestation of love and peace and dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

The Aquarian chart of 14th February reveals an incredible concentration of cosmic influences blending with the energies of Aquarius in the twelfth house. Expansive Jupiter and energetic Mars are aligned with the higher purpose of the North Node. The presence of Chiron the wounded healer offers us the opportunity to heal the schisms that have separated us for so long. Neptune emphasizes collective humanitarian movements and the co-creation of social justice. And the presence of the radiant Sun enlightens the entire alignment.

Mercury also in the twelfth house but just beyond the cusp in Capricorn, allies with transformational Pluto to communicate and anchor the Shift throughout our global structures and institutions.

The Moon in Libra in the seventh house emphasizes harmonious relationships.

Venus in Aries in the first house energizes and empowers dynamic co-creativity.

And whilst Saturn the great task master in opposition to Uranus the unexpected awakener is suggesting an ongoing confrontation as the dregs of the unsustainable old paradigm reluctantly give way to the untested hope of the new, their placements in Virgo and Pisces brings practical altruism and visionary inspiration to the transition.

At 7.25am on 14th February - and f or the 18 minutes of the alignment, I invite you, in the universal heart, to add your own intention f or love and peace and to co-create the dawning of the Age of Aquarius to that of the Cosmos.

Hair, the film -- 1979

Maybe the Age of Aquarius was really dawning when we sang along in Susan Lowitz's split-level ranch playroom in 1968, second-graders liberated by song. We graduated high school in 1979, and the musical will be revived in March in this Age of Aquarius, in the year a man with a black father and a white mother took the oath of office as president of the United States, 2009.

I am a Libra. My husband is Aries, ruled by the planet Mars. Maybe we are entering, despite the conflicting signs in the pyrotechnics of our relationship, a time of harmony and understanding,
sympathy and trust abounding.

Then, there is the reconnection to our half-sister, our father's third daughter, bringing a brother-in-law and three nephews (I chatted with 4-year-old Colin, my little twin, on Facebook, "efskjdah fsifsoeh ehsoien"). Elizabeth will see her Monday, after 43 years. I will see her in May, when the peonies are in bloom in the beds at the edge of the top terrace. This was never considered possible, but she says she has been smiling this past week, and that "it has made [her] very happy". I don't use words like "happy", although I do smile. Maybe I will.

How can one doubt now that we are in the Age of Aquarius? Call the astronomers.

I'd like to take the other thing I found when I came downstairs as a sign. There it is, at the top of the post. It only looks like general conditions of repair and payment for the BMW garage. It is actually a Valentine's Day card.

You can tell by the heart and the words, "Valentine's Day".

It is a love note.

You can tell from the words, "I love you".

A very subtle Valentine's Day love note. So subtle that if Wisp hadn't been sitting on it when I stopped to give her a good morning pet, I might have missed it, although I do doubt that I would have put it away without seeing the heart drawn with my O.3 drawing pen on the back of the repair bill for the repairs after the attempted theft of the poor old BMW.

Pst? Have you signed the Courage Campaign petition to invalidate Prop 8, Ken Starr's appalling attack on the gay couples who married in California between May and November 2008, divorcing them? The deadline has been extended; you have until March 2 now, but why not sign today, Valentine's Day?


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.


I resume my story.

I didn't remind him when he left for his day and night on duty at the hospital. I only reminded him that it is his godson Hugues' birthday. 19.

"Oui, j'essayerai de l'appeler de l'hôpital, et ce fut l'anniversaire d'Aude avant hier."

"J'espère que tu as pensé de l'appeler," dis-je, a tiny bit mockingly, thinking to match very considerately his feelings for his first wife.

(Je suis désolée, Aude, mais c'est vrai. Il y a des choses que vous n'auriez pas du faire, et dire. Vous le savez, je le sais.)

"Non, je n'y ai pas pensé." He sounded too normal. There was no mocking. He'd have called his first wife to wish her a happy birthday? The story of the years following their marriage explain why that wouldn't come immediately to mind. I was confused. Aude. Hugues. Godson. Aude... Goddaughter.

"Ah, ça serait gentil de l'appeler, quand-même." I didn't miss a beat. Morning sluggishness of thought covers many things. The world made sense again.

"On ne fêtes pas son anniversaire à jamais quand on devient grand." I thought of those who love to celebrate their birthdays at 50 and gone.

"Ce n'est pas vrai. Les Floris ne fêtent pas les leurs, et ne l'ont jamais fait. Ce n'est pas la même chose." Audouin and his sister put their feet down. No birthday parties. Not even the 50th. I lost on Audouin's 50th. The friends carried the day. I hadn't been around long enough, even though I knew many of them as far back as when he was still married to Aude (the other one). The proof was when my brother-in-law put his foot down in the case of his wife's 40th last year, and the email frenzy that ressembled the French massing in the streets to demonstrate another projet de loi -- Non à pas de fête! Non à pas de fête! -- very suddenly ceased. He'd been around long enough, fathered their four children, tended the seasonal pruning needs of his parent's-in-law's two properties' gardens (and I'm stretching the word for the one in the southwest) to put his foot down and not receive collective punishment of our many friends and large family.

But, that's not really true from the one family photo album I finally saw at my in-law's house at New Year's. My mother-in-law has rarely had a camera, battery and film in the same place at the same time for the important occasions, so this album seemed something like a miracle. A series of baby photos and first birthdays, with a growing number of older siblings surrounding the baby in front of the cake. I had looked for give-away traits in the one-yea- old faces to see if I could tell which baby it was from the adult I know, without reading the caption, or identifying the siblings present, either. I couldn't.

And, my husband does not celebrate Valentine's Day. I am not sure he has ever left a "mot" [note] to mark the occasion. That's so American. So Hallmark. So commercial.

Written on the back of the BMW garage receipt of payment for the car I recovered and drove yesterday for the first time in 3 months today, that is so Audouin.

I still wonder why he loves me and now he can, when you hear our arguments about child-raising and the concept of growth in the economy. My heart rages in my chest for Paul Krugman when he castigates all the economists in the world for being in bed with the forces of corporate and financial evil. I just can't feel romantic when my husband is more than suggesting that he would call his congressman to vote no on the ARRP and let the economic system that he considers to be riddled by the cancer of credit die. Not even as the clock approaches midnight, the eve of Valentine's Day.

"Et tous ces gens qui perdraient leur emplois, les millions de personnes et de familles sans les moyens de payer la maison, la voiture, le fioul pour chauffer leur maison, la nourriture pour manger, les frangs pour s'habiller. Tu laisserais le système économique s'arrêter? Ce n'est plus possible. On ne peut pas l'arrêter pour le recréer. On ne peut le redémarrer et le corriger avec les réglementations mises en place au juste apèrs la dernière grosse crise en enlevées par Phil Gramm et compagnie dans le sénat en 1999 avec l'abrogation de l'act Glass-Steagall, chose que les Republicans ont cherché à faire depuis les 1980's. Le système a toujours, toujours fonctionné avec le crédit, depuis que l'échange de commerce entre les pays et les peuples a commencé. Ce qu'il faut c'est de l'honnêteté dans la valuation et l'offre et la demande de crédit." He wasn't buying that, other than the honesty aspect, which he more than agrees is missing, replaced by a glut of avidité.

It was barter, he said. Barter in the village markets. Yes, but the barons seized what they needed, or sometimes paid against time or other services, whose value had to be determined. Not quite like a barrel of grain for a chicken. And once the boats started to arrive in the ports, loaded with silk from the East, slips of money changed hands in the port city to pay for the cargo and the risk to the boat and the contents of its hold assumed by the financier of the voyage.

"Mais ce n'était pas jusqu'au 18ème siécle!"

"Tu n'as jamais lu le Marchand de Vénise?" And on and on, until he declared that the discussion was over. I continued.

"C'est fini. On n'en discute plus."

"Mais..."

"Fini. On fait la vaiselle." I got a few more words in, and dumped the boiled water from the cheap saucepan onto the pile of dishes in the sink. I heard the glass in which I had noticed a horizontal crack crack farther. I'll use it until the milk or water served at table leaks out, or the top half of the glass falls off. I hate waste, almost as much as I hate credit interest myself.

But, you can't run a world economy on direct payment for all services. I had brought up Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel for his program of microloans in Bangladesh. How could you argue against credit when presented in those terms?

"Le Nobel ne veut rien dire pour moi."

Ce n'est pas possible. I hadn't mentioned Paul Krugman, nor his shiny new Nobel. I couldn't bear to hear it shot down.

He was asleep before I turned off my laptop and came up the stairs, the light extinguished in the larger crack under the door, where the floor boards plunge towards the end wall of the house. I brushed my teeth, examined the signs of another day on my face, and turned out the bathroom light. Wisp got caught beneath my feet and took off for the the stairs. I opened the door for her, and she turned on a dime, trotted into the room and waited to install herself in my arms, like a baby, her head on my shoulder, her body curled in the crook of my elbow for the night.

My funny Valentine.

And my funnier, nearly incomprehensible, far too prickly Valentine, off at the hospital.

Peace and love.
....

The edge

"It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge."
-- Paul Krugman, February 5, 2009, "On the Edge"

Don't push me, cause I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head, uh huh huh huh huh
Its like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under

From our Barack Fans in the Colbert Nation for Obama BFF, Grand Master Melly Mel C

On the Edge

Published February 5, print issue February 6, 2009

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

Go to Columnist Page » Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners.

Meanwhile, our main line of defense against recessions — the Federal Reserve’s usual ability to support the economy by cutting interest rates — has already been overrun. The Fed has cut the rates it controls basically to zero, yet the economy is still in free fall.

It’s no wonder, then, that most economic forecasts warn that in the absence of government action we’re headed for a deep, prolonged slump. Some private analysts predict double-digit unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office is slightly more sanguine, but its director, nonetheless, recently warned that “absent a change in fiscal policy ... the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to potential levels will be the largest — in duration and depth — since the Depression of the 1930s.”

Worst of all is the possibility that the economy will, as it did in the ’30s, end up stuck in a prolonged deflationary trap.

We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.

As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on.

And deflationary traps can go on for a long time. Japan experienced a “lost decade” of deflation and stagnation in the 1990s — and the only thing that let Japan escape from its trap was a global boom that boosted the nation’s exports. Who will rescue America from a similar trap now that the whole world is slumping at the same time?

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.
....

Okay, keep it up, Mr. President; you were getting much warmer with the tone you hit yesterday at the House Democrats' retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia. We'll play in the same sandbox and share our toys and make the rules of the game together, but here's one for starters: we're in the mess we're in because of you and your old ways of doing things, so that's one toy we don't want in the sandbox. We're playing a new game to get ourselves out of the fix into which you got us. Face it.

Rough 'em up a little. Knock some sense into 'em. What is their problem, exactly, anyway?

Oh right, they complain that this isn't a stimulus bill, it's a spending bill, but you told them! That's the point, guys. A stimulus bill is a spending bill, and Mr. Krugman thinks it should be a whole lot bigger. Who said to shoot for $1 trillion rather than a shy almost $1 trillion?

That's the stimulating ticket. This might make Jericho a little more right than Q, for right now, anyway, and than I.

Lots of people are pretty shaken. I learned a little myself yesterday.

Several days ago, I presented my Citibank Visa card number to the hotel where Sam and I will be staying to ski in a little more than a week. They contacted me to say that it had been refused. I was perplexed. That account was nowhere, and I mean nowhere near the credit limit on the account.

I let a couple of days go, sure they had made some kind of mistake, and then I happened to go online and check something on that card. My attention was caught by the fact that I only had $201 remaining credit on the account.

Hunh? How could that be? I went to the information on the account. The credit limit had been dropped from double-digits to just above my low remaining balance, and I called the toll free number faster than I dial my son's cell phone number in an emergency.

A very nice, polite, personable young man apologized for the situation, lowered my interest rate back to prime plus 5% (better than what it was... I'll take them on for more later), refunded what had been paid in interest since they raised it, and then explained that he couldn't do anything about the lowered credit limit, assuring me that I had to have done something very bad to have gotten that treatment.

But, I hadn't done anything very bad. I have next to no creditors, low or non-existent balances (owing to having moved to personal credit adverse Europe almost 7 years ago and having learned to change my financial attitude and behavior), and the only thing I had done wrong was pay my last Citibank Visa bill a day late because I lost track of the reminder email in a sea of incoming email while we were at the peak of our MYBO Grassroots Inaugural Ball 2009, the Social! in January. He suggested I call back when the people with the authorization to handle my problem would be in the office, or after 7 am CST.

I called on the stroke of 2 pm here, and reached Lisa. I told her the truth. I acknowledged my passion for getting Obama elected, my getting carried away in planning a grassroots ball for the volunteers and the regular people at Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington on Martin Luther King Day, and she listened patiently.

"Thank you," she said, "for your honesty. Most people don't admit to having done anything wrong."

"I did," I said, figuring a little more mea culpa couldn't possibly be ill-advised right then. We exchanged a few more pleasantries, in which I made it very clear that I haven't spent anywhere near my credit limit in years and years, that I regard the previous credit limit as for emergencies -- while traveling, for example --, pay more than the minimum payment each month, and when I made my last payment, it was far in excess of the $64.03 that had been overdue a day.

"I see that," she said, "and I do see that you have been a customer for 23 years [don't remind me, please], so I am going to submit your file for review and suggest that your credit limit be returned to its previous level."

I thanked her, and I went out of my way to tell her how important my good credit rating is -- know that credit bureaus view any reduction in credit limit, whether through your own fault or the prevailing economic climate and bank fear, as a negative and adjust your credit rating accordingly --, especially since while I am certain my husband loves me and isn't about to walk out the door, one never knows, and I might just need that to set myself back on my feet one day.

"Oh, I hear you," she said, "I hear you."

Thank heavens for other women when you're in a bind, especially fellow Obama supporters.

Thank you so much, President W.

Beware, everyone.

Let's hear it from Paul Krugman...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here, Joe gets credit for the single-stupidest statement:

"In the 1990's, I don't know that there was gridlock, there was a separation of powers, and, uh, uh a division of authority that I personally think worked well..."

Gingrich's whole program, his Contract With America, was refusal to cooperate with any Democratic initiative. Just ask Dole. You go, Joe!


Update: February 9, Citibank Visa credit limit reinstated.
....

Others crossed the Umbridge to Nowhere before I

I am a little embarrassed about this post (Dolores Palin, Sarah Umbridge) because somehow I had no idea others (including, it seems, although I can't find any video online to prove it, besides his mentioning the name of Dolores Umbridge yesterday, Keith Olbermann) had also thought of the Umbridge/Palin parallel way back in the first week of September. Just Google "sarah palin dolores umbridge" and start reading. It's okay, though, because I am merely chronicling now for myself. You are welcome to read along.

As (you pick the adjective) as Sarah Palin is, it shocked me more that a political party thought she is a politically viable choice to advance their ticket to govern The United States of America.

It said to me how very, very far things have gone, and how very, very closely reality can resemble the invented world of stories because -- well-written or not, sophisticated or simple, for children or adults, literature or pulp for the grand public -- they tell the story of the human heart, and it's not always a Hallmark Valentine.

I thought if Palin sounds so very much like Dolores Umbridge, then who is John McCain. Voldemort was the easy answer, but it didn't fit because he is not the source, he is not the one they serve. He is a servant in the system of emptiness and evil. He is not a mastermind. He is the interesting character, in a way. His was a special brand of snake oil. Someone recently said that maybe his truest desire is to destroy, the Republican party by failing, to smash it to bits. If that is true, why? Did he or did he not serve it? Did he or did he not act as they did? Almost everything you can think of to say about his claims can be turned upside down and inside out when you do a little digging, from earmarks, to lobbyists to service. How much of John McCain was a projection of what John McCain wished and not what John McCain would, much less did. No, he's not Voldemort.

I reserved that for Rove. Rove has been acting in the Republican political establishment since his college days. I don't know Rove as a child. I don't know the inside of his heart and mind, but I do know that he was born politically in the midst of Watergate, from the inside the Nixon machine. I cam across the footage from the CBS Evening News that is in the middle of the page. Be patient. You will see him, not yet bloated. He is a subject for the biographers.

While Keith Olbermann is comparing Palin to Addie Polk, the 90-year-old who shot herself in the chest when they tried to evict her from her Akron home after her mortgage was foreclosed after 38 years, saying that both are caught up in something bigger than they are, over their heads,

"In much the same way we, America, in the corporate persona of Fannie Mae, have forgiven poor Addie Polk of Akron, Ohio, we, America, also need to forgive poor Sarah Palin of Wasilla, Alaska. They are both in situations that are beyond their ability to cope, they are both stuck in a crucible caused by forces they cannot comprehend, they are both unable to understand what they are doing."

He's right. We do not need so much to be afraid of telegenic, winkin', Golly-gee-whillikers Sarah Palin; there are tens of thousands of her out there. We need to face who put her there, who picked her out of a crowd of Sarah Palins and made her the TV face for their social and economic political agenda. The difficulty, it seems to me, is that in reality, there is not one villain, there is not one Voldemort with his helpers that the hero and his helpers can confront and eliminate. In fact, literature even seems to recognize that one story told is prelude to others to come. That is the way it is.

My early education taught me, inadvertently, I imagine now, to believe that the US having defeated the uber-villain, who did monstrous things through his rise to power in Germany, was the great hero. That evil vanquished was vanquished. That humans everywhere had to understand this as an aberration of the human spirit that could not happen again. I now believe that it is as universal and present as any part of good in humans, and that the Republicans have long understood this. They used it, and in channeling the visceral power of fear and control, rather than courage and cooperative action, they have brought it to America.

I read the other day that the original definition of fascism is a relationship between corporations and government, and that this was fascism as Mussolini practiced it, but that in 1968, the definition changed in the dictionaries.

Not having a good English dictionary at my disposal here (gift idea), I resort to Dictionary.com. Here is the definition the American Heritage Dictionary gives:

fas·cism (fāsh'ĭz'əm) n.

1. often Fascism
a. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
b. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.

2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.

[Italian fascismo, from fascio, group, from Late Latin fascium, from Latin fascis, bundle.]

Word History: It is fitting that the name of an authoritarian political movement like Fascism, founded in 1919 by Benito Mussolini, should come from the name of a symbol of authority. The Italian name of the movement, fascismo, is derived from fascio, "bundle, (political) group," but also refers to the movement's emblem, the fasces, a bundle of rods bound around a projecting axe-head that was carried before an ancient Roman magistrate by an attendant as a symbol of authority and power. The name of Mussolini's group of revolutionaries was soon used for similar nationalistic movements in other countries that sought to gain power through violence and ruthlessness, such as National Socialism.

The American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition, provides this discussion:

fascism [(fash-iz-uhm)]

A system of government that flourished in Europe from the 1920s to the end of World War II. Germany under Adolf Hitler, Italy under Mussolini, and Spain under Franco were all fascist states. As a rule, fascist governments are dominated by a dictator, who usually possesses a magnetic personality, wears a showy uniform, and rallies his followers by mass parades; appeals to strident nationalism; and promotes suspicion or hatred of both foreigners and “impure” people within his own nation, such as the Jews in Germany. Although both communism and fascism are forms of totalitarianism, fascism does not demand state ownership of the means of production, nor is fascism committed to the achievement of economic equality. In theory, communism opposes the identification of government with a single charismatic leader (the “cult of personality”), which is the cornerstone of fascism. Whereas communists are considered left-wing, fascists are usually described as right-wing.

Note: Today, the term fascist is used loosely to refer to military dictatorships, as well as governments or individuals that profess racism and that act in an arbitrary, high-handed manner.

Note this last.

The American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition makes reference to the historic associations of fascism with socioeconomic control -- the Dictionary.com Unabridged version 1.1 makes it clearer in their definition:

(sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism -- suppression of opposition through censorship and controls, and a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism, but today, it is "loosely" understood as nothing more than "military dictatorships".

It strikes me that the neutering of the term fascism to make it a meme for something that appears impossible in US democracy has been a ruse of genius. Fascism has been unbundled for an American sensibility, the association with commerce, with social control -- that was what the Soviet Union did, not the United States government --, racism and nationalism stripped away from the bundle.

Our military, we say, fights wars for its people; it is great and good; its soldiers are just and honorable; our wars the more so. We made ourselves infallible in our eyes, and in those of an older generation of world citizens who still remember the USA for D-day and the liberation of Europe from fascism, but in the 60 years since, other eyes have opened on the fascism that has been nutured in the USA, as racists fumed against the advancement of colored people (I am thinking of the mission of the NAACP), as the controllers of the nation's great wealth on Wall Street and in the corporate boardrooms of the US sought political advantage to deregulate their businesses and allow them access to even more spectacular profits, handed in out in astronomical CEO salaries and year-end bonuses, safe from taxation in the off-shore accounts for which the US Tax Code provided with a nudge and a wink.

Power concentrated in the hands of ever fewer, ever more fearful of a population that would rage if it bothered to finally understand in what it had been complicit.

And not everyone agrees that the Jews did not "deserve" what "they got", nor that Muslims do not deserve the same. The right has been sure to keep those coals stirred. Sarah Palin's Christianity decries mine, and those of more ecumenical pastors and priests. Fundamentalist extremism carries many passports, including that of the United States of America.

It's possible to get too close to the evil, to spend too much time thinking about it. I had a nightmare. I dreamed that my hair salon was closed. In its place was an array of cubicles with low-walls, filled with banks of communications equipment, dials and screens. Everything was black and white. No one sat at those desks. The few people at the reception desk would say nothing. I felt panic. What had happened? Where had it gone? There were other women and men asking the same, but no one would answer. There was no face to tell us.

"But what a terrible thing, and Bonne Marché just across the street? What will happen?"

Don't ask it to make sense. It is a dream. It's our job to make sense of it. I am overdue for a hair cut and color, so of course I have that on the brain, but it is also expensive, a luxury. So is everything sold inside Bonne Marché. Creative people who drive Vespas covered with stickers from world cities and have fascinating tattoos, jewelry and points of view work inside, alongside people from just about every rung of society, from the shampoo boys and girls, to the receptionists, to the hipper stylists who work in that salon. It is a sort of luxury crossroads, and it was gone.

That's my fear talking in my dream. Luxury and individual expression -- the luxury of individual expression? -- gone, replaced by listening and recording equipment, while we are so powerless as to only discover that and feel shock.

Our world changed between appointments.

Look at the contortions through which our society has gone, from Civil Rights to Voting Rights and Women's Rights. Anger and fear were born of those movements on the part of those who felt threatened enough to kill its leaders. It is a cultural war. It isn't over. A half black, half white child of that time has come of age to ask to lead us as our president, and the majority of us desire this. We are ready. We asked for those changes in society, we supported them, some organized and fought for them. Others fought against them. While bills were signed into law by LBJ, the right prepared to fight the only way left to them, to confound and constrain those who would attempt to benefit by that rule of law.

They have worked around the law, in contempt of the law, and still, we haven't acted. We say, "Let us elect Senator Obama, and then there will be time to identify the criminals and punish them." What, put Bush and Cheney and Rove in jail? I doubt it.

They say, "Let us pass this emergency bail-out legislation to save our economy, and then there will be time for the hearings to identify the wrong-doers and punish them." What, put Wall Street, corporate America and Congress in jail? I don't see it.

What will get in the way of doing the right thing next? This economic crisis that was the child of the great Republican (mostly) power and money grab? You betcha'.

Our country is full Americans chanting "YOU ESS-AY!! YOU ESS-AY!!" -- at home and abroad -- and sporting their flag pins and bumper stickers.

The right is full of fascists yelling "Communists!" at the left during Palin rallies.

It never made sense, and it still doesn't now. Hitler first justified the murder of Jews for their communist, or leftist, anti-commerce ideas, or just another way of framing racist German social nationalism in her hour of post World War I humiliation to make it more palatable -- and yet the Jews were historically persecuted in Europe for their wealth and "sinfulness", stemming from their understanding and development of international finance, having been given that role by a Church that told its adherents that to profit from the exchange of money was sinful, and so, therefore, the Jews were sinners, whose wealth must be confiscated for the good of society. This is why it is frowned upon to focus on the making of money and talk about one's salary in certain upper circles, descended from the deposed aristocracy in Europe. They don't even realize why.

We're still fighting the same war.

But as these huge banks go down, their directors and CEOs asking for the salvation of the state to shore up the caving cliff of America's former economic might, undermined by their greed, their chosen political leaders' wars for a greater share of control of the world's oil, the whipping up of anti-Islamic sentiment to gain support from Christian fundamentalists so inclined to go their way, and American's passion for acquisition that has resulted in an unprecedented individual debt, what are the executives doing?

Why, they are whipping out their golden parachutes, and going to the spa.

You're asking the fox to watch over the hen house, my friends in Congress, unless you mean it when you promise hearings and punishments. They seek to make fools of those who still believe in Great Principles.

"What he lacked in experience, he's made up in fight."
from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Where, oh where, is Mr. Smith in America's hour of need? We stand for peace, we stand for social justice, we stand for the protection of sustainable capitalism and renewable energy, we stand with Obama, and they throw us Palin, the ruin of the global economy, and, if you listen to the whispers, perhaps the North American Union Army to quell post-election civil unrest in the event the Republicans declare victory and martial law.

And so it goes.

Ah, Kurt, ya died too soon.

I am going to rejoin my fellow supporters of democracy watching the Obama sign and out for freedom of expression for all of us.
....

Live Broadcast by Ustream.TV

Talking down Maddow -- Paul Krugman on the Bailout

So, I found this video this afternoon, looking for something entirely different (video of Sarah Palin's Pensacola, Florida rally October 6th). It is an echo of a conversation I had with Cowtown and some others this morning on CHAOS. Actually, it was a conversation that turned into my performing a rant, which turned out to be me expressing my inner Paul Krugman.

This is recovery?
Paul Krugman on with Rachel Maddow

I guess I have been listening to him more carefully than I imagined, to have been able to get so many of his points.

This should encourage us all to give up our lives and becomes student of politics and economics. We might actually eventually learn enough to grasp what the pundits are saying, before they say it.

If you don't believe me, ask Cow.

The following is a transcript of Krugman's answers, for you cut and paste pleasure.

Rachel Maddow began by asking if the the bailout worked. Would it have been worse with it, or without it. Krugman laughed wryly and said, "Both." He went on to say:

Krugman: A lot of people are looking at the Dow, and it gets them really scared, but the professionals are lookng at the credit markets and that has them even more scared. The truth is what happened to the stock market is not that important. It's just kind of an imperfect reflection of the platonic truth of what is happening in the credit markets, which is really bad. They are completely frozen. The passing of the bailout didn't do anything.

Maddow then asks what are the indicators that we non ecnomists should be looking at to determine how things are going.

Krugman: Well, you know, there are, it's getting a little, ah, we're all kind of scrambling now beause it's hard, we are not used to tracking this stuff. I look at a lot of the interest rates on short term US government debt, 1 month, 3 month Treasury bills, the lower they are the worse things are. If people are piling into these things because nothing else looks safe to them, then this is a bad sign, and they are very low, they are about as low as they were in the worst of the crisis last week, so that's really, really bad. You kook at, I'm going to get too technical here, but there are a bunch of indicators, and they all failed to improve after the bailout was passed, so I thought we would be back to the drawing board in a couple of months, and now I am wondering if that's more like a couple of weeks, or maybe a couple of days.

Maddow then asked, "Should the bailout have given more confidence to the credit market? Should it have worked better?"

Krugman: Well the trouble with the bailout plan was it never really made sense, and they never really explained why it would work but the story was, "Trust us, this will work, and people will believe in it, and it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy," and none of that happned. Um, Some kind of bailout is needed. I think what they really need to do is go back to the drawing board. But, uh, this is a bad scheme and, erf [he actually shivered], it, I'm pretty angry because it was clear from day one, when this thing started being discussed, that they did not have a clear view of why this thing was supposed to help, and they stuck us with it, and it would have been very dangerous not to pass it in on Friday because who woud have known what would have happened?

How, Maddow asked, would the next bill be different:

Krugman: Well, this grant, this was "We're going to buy some of this toxic waste off the banks, and that's somehow going to solve the problem", and it wasn't clear why that would help. Uh, what we really need is, we need, well, capital, we need to put money in the system and, in effect, what always happens in a financial crisis is a partial nationalization, partial and temporary nationalization of the financial system, and that is, I, you know, I predict with almost 100% confidence that is how it will end, ah, but the Paulsen Treasury wasn't willing to talk about that. So that, something which puts money in, something where the US government is providing cash and taking partial ownership shares in return, is the wasy it's going to have to go, and the question is how long before they are willing to do that, and at the rate things are going, it might not be very long.

Maddow finished by asking how long it will be before political reality catches up with economic historical reality.

So here I got it a little wrong. I said Obama would essentially govern, from immediately after the election, through the congress; Krugman sees his team moving right into the treasury. I'm good with that:

Krugman: You know, I am having fantasies right now [so am I! so are we all!] that as soon as the election is over, we can't wait until January 20th, we might have to have, in effect, the incoming Obama team move into the Treasury and start coordinating the rescue because this is going to be a very bad transition if we don't do anything until we have a new administration.

From the sage's mouth.

Maddow wasn't down off the ceiling, but it helped a little to hear about a new team in the Treasury.
....