Yes, Mittens, Government Can And Does Create Jobs

By Manifesto Joe

Mitt Scumney lost Tuesday night's encounter with President Obama on points, and Obama showed more fire than he did in their lackluster first debate. Scumney, though, seemed prepared for a more spirited show from Obama and didn't do badly, on the whole. But one "point" he emphasized stuck in my mind because of how dead wrong he is on it.

"Government doesn't create jobs," Scumney said repeatedly, with passion and emphasis.

Scumney didn't live through World War II, nor did I. But if that war effort wasn't powerful, compelling proof that government can and does create jobs, there couldn't be anything more to demonstrate that. Suggesting otherwise has become part of the mindless nonhistory of contemporary America.

A mantra of Republicans in my younger days was that "The New Deal didn't get us out of the Depression; World War II did."

Yes, exactly. And here's why.

The New Deal was a bid to mobilize the U.S. against the Great Depression, but it was often blocked, with a reactionary Supreme Court striking down two of its centerpiece programs, the NRA in 1935 and the first AAA in 1936. Southern Democrats often sided with the Republican minority against the more far-reaching measures, and a double-dip in the business downturn followed FDR's moves toward austerity during 1937-38.

It wasn't until Dec. 7, 1941, when U.S. military forces suffered a direct and devastating attack, that the national government finally got a free hand. Defense industries flourished as direct recipients of government contracts. The Detroit auto industry was literally commandeered for national defense. No new civilian automobiles were built for four years, and the assembly lines became the source of tanks, Jeeps, and other military vehicles. Commodities such as meat and sugar were rationed.

And soon, the U.S. had full employment, with a jobless rate of about 3% in comparison to nearly 25% during the 1932-33 depths of the Depression.

It's a valid point that government isn't a long-term solution to joblessness. The Soviet Union and its imitators were proof of that. But World War II was vivid proof that it can work in the short term as a way of jolting an economy back into motion. The Obama stimulus plan didn't profoundly affect the American workforce, mainly because a stubborn right wing would never have let it go far enough.

Obama can't afford to contest that point too much, because the job-creation myth has become one of economics' sacred cows. He responded to Romney with his own soliloquy about the so-called free enterprise system. Since he's already being labeled a "socialist" by ignorant right-wingers who don't know what that word means, he's got to play it cool.

And the consensus was that he won Debate No. 2. Too bad he's still having to play the game according to "rules" that history belies.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

"Ayn" Can't Decide Whether He's Eddie Munster Or Pinocchio

By Manifesto Joe

It was refreshing to see a Democrat (Joe Biden) acting tough and fiesty at Thursday night's vice presidential debate. But something that's often been lost in the analysis is how many brazen whoppers Paul "Ayn" Ryan told in the 40 minutes that he spoke.

Perhaps the most obvious distortion from "Ayn" was on unemployment. He depicted the jobless rate of 10% or so in Biden's hometown of Scranton, Pa., as representative of conditions throughout the country.

This may have gotten by a lot of people who don't follow the news, and the aggressive Biden did miss an opportunity to double up on this point. This absurd distortion came only days after the Bureau of Labor Statistics' most recent U.S. jobless figure of 7.8% was the top story for most media outlets.

Igor Volsky of ThinkProgress points out further that the U.S. jobless rate dropped from a year before in 325 out of 372 metro areas that the bureau surveyed. Here's a link to Volsky's entire analysis.

Myths about Social Security and Medicare

"Ayn" also rehashed the old myths about Social Security and Medicare going broke. Volsky also addresses this "malarkey," as Joe Biden described it:

[T]he possibility of Medicare going bankrupt is —- and historically has been —- greatly exaggerated. In fact, if no changes are made, Medicare would still be able to meet 88 percent of its obligations in 2085. Social Security is fully funded for another two decades and could pay 75 percent of its benefits thereafter. There is also an easy way to ensure the program’s long-term solvency without large changes or cuts to benefits.

Social Security is taxed regressively, with the levy collected on annual incomes only up to $110,100. It would be very easy to shift some of that payroll tax onto people with higher incomes, thereby making the system able to pay 100% of obligations.

But many Mainstream Media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal are demagoguing this issue in a way that favors the wealthy, and keeping alive the myth among younger people that Social Security and Medicare won't be there for them. It isn't that the programs are destined to fail -- it's that the Republican Party is under the spell of people like Grover Norquist (and "Ayn") who lust for their failure and are doing all they can to undermine them.

Here's a link to an article on the subject by Travis Waldron.

The terrorist bogeyman

It had already become clear, listening to gaffes by the fool heading this "ticket," Mitt Scumney, that these people remain mired in a Cold War mentality. Now comes Eddie Munster, beating war drums and rattling sabres over Iran. That country seems to have become the latest villain in The Enemy of the Month Club.

More from Volsky:

(Quote from Ryan) "When Barack Obama was elected, they had enough fissile material -— nuclear material to make one bomb. Now they have enough for five." This is misleading and unproven. Iran now has enough fissile material, but has not yet enriched to the necessary level for a weapon. The Institute for Science and International Security says "it would take Iran more than two months to produce that amount if it started with 20%-grade uranium, and 'several months' to make enough for a bomb using low-enriched uranium. That would give the world community enough time to detect the operation and organize a response, ISIS noted in June."

Well, at least "Ayn" stopped short of saying that Obama wants to implement Sharia law in America. It wouldn't surprise me if he privately thinks that's seriously possible.

Tomorrow night, Obama gets his second shot at Scumney. I hope he's as aggressive as Biden. He made no mistakes on the facts, but his lack of aggression was his perceived failure in the first presidential debate.

With liars like these perhaps only weeks away from the two highest offices in the land, the stakes couldn't be higher.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Joe Biden Stomped All Over Eddie Munster's Ass -- But Obama Will Have To Do Something Similar

By Manifesto Joe

It seems a picture of split verdicts on the vice presidential debate, held Thursday night. I suppose there are enough people living in alternative universes to make that so. I watched every word, and it looked to me like legendary badass Joe Biden drew blood at least five times for every one time for "Ayn."

Of course, I'm prejudiced, but I was a bit concerned about Obama's performance at the first of the presidential debates. Obama is going to have to win the second and third encounters with Scumney. He turned in a dry, professorial performance in their first debate, roughly scoring a boring draw, which was something that worked in Scumney's favor because expectations for the latter were rather low.

It's sad that American politics is so often rooted in the visceral in the outcomes. And debate outcomes aren't always that pivotal. If they were, John Kerry would be a departing president now.

But this race is close, and much will hang on the debate outcomes. Expectations for Obama have been high, given that he is regarded as a superior orator. Against Scumney, the second and third times, he will have to demonstrate that he can think on his feet.

Stay tuned.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Only Jobless Rate Romney Ever Reduced Was The One In China

By Manifesto Joe

News came out Friday that the U.S. unemployment rate, as measured by nonpartisan sources, had fallen from 8.1% to 7.8%, a 44-month low, with the main reason being people moving into new jobs.

No sooner had the news been announced than right-wing Republicans were up to their usual bilge. Most notably, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, infamous for cooking the books at the corporate conglomerate when he was there, was accusing those biased nonpolitical appointees at the Bureau of Labor Statistics of cooking the books right before the election.

Here's a link to an Alternet story on the right-wing response to the loss of one of their big talking points.

One of Scumney's bogus debating points Wednesday night was the notion that he will create 12 million jobs if elected. He neglected to mention that a lot of economists already project that the economy itself will create something like 11.8 million jobs in the U.S. no matter who is elected president next month.

Here's a link to a story on Scumney's assorted inaccuracies at Wednesday night's debate.

Scumney has to distort thusly, because he's got no record of his own to run on. Massachusetts wasn't overly prosperous during his single term as governor there, and as head of Bain Capital he did much more to cut the unemployment rate in places like China than to do anything to help Americans get jobs. The objective of Bain Capital was, in his own words, to "harvest" companies. Lots of U.S. jobs are sent overseas with that kind of harvesting.

But, something it appears we can expect from Republicans for at least another month is this habit: They blame Obama for anything "bad" that ever happened on any day of his watch, even for the calamities he obviously inherited from Il Doofus (Bush 43). But he gets no credit for anything "good" that has happened during the same period. That kind of thing either had to have been done by his hapless predecessor, or in spite of Obama.

Obama was very dry and lackluster for the first debate. I hope he'll be loaded for bear for the second and third ones.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Depressing Letdown: Obama MIA At 1st Debate

By Manifesto Joe

I felt pretty depressed after watching every word of Wednesday night's debate between President Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Scumney. Oh, it could have been worse for Obama supporters. It looked pretty much like a boring draw, if you'll pardon the boxing analogy. There were no knockdowns.

But this worked very much in Scumney's favor. Expectations for him were pretty low, so this performance actually gave many people the perception that he won. Never mind that the fact-checkers had a field day with all the bogus numbers he was tossing around. TV debates are about telegenic image (ask the ghost of Dick Nixon). He'd been well-coached, and made no major mistakes. He looked sharp -- well, as good as it gets -- and primed for battle.

Obama, in contrast, looked tired, as though he really didn't feel very good and didn't want to be there. His performance was adequate, but very dry and academic, as though he were back at the University of Chicago giving a lecture on constitutional law. He let Scumney get away with a lot of factual liberties, too.

Obama seemed to labor a lot, and with the mummified Jim Lehrer, 78, as the moderator, he ultimately spoke for about 4 minutes longer than Scumney. But he pretty much blew any opportunities he had to score with heavy punches.

Sometimes TV debates don't count for very much. I watched every word of the first 1984 encounter between Reagan and Mondale, and I thought Mondale mopped up the floor with the senile old man. There was a second debate, and a highly coached Reagan was relatively impressive the second time. That seemed to be enough for most of the voters who'd paid any attention -- he won with 59% of the popular vote.

And, I thought John Kerry pretty much pummeled Il Doofus all three times that they met in 2004. But he never quite went for the jugular. The right-wing voters apparently just decided that Kerry was a pointy-headed liberal who had learned how to argue better along the way, and so the debates didn't influence them much, if at all.

On the "strength" of this, Scumney seems to be back in this thing. Obama is probably getting an earful from his staff, and probably from Michelle, too. I pray that he's listening -- he's only got two more debate shots at Scumney this month.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Samuel L. Jackson Says His Piece

Politicians are, generally, not good people. But no, they are not quite all the same. Some are more on your side, others less so. Samuel, in this video, tells it like it is, from my standpoint, anyway.

http://www.mostwatchedtoday.com/tag/wtfu-2012/



Check it out. I'll try to get a better version up soon. -- MJ

'Slick Willard' Isn't So Slick Anymore

By Manifesto Joe

After the past couple of weeks, I'll have to stop using the nickname of "Slick Willard" to refer to Mitt Scumney. He hasn't been slick at all, and some of the American people are getting a chance to see whom this really is.

I suppose his asinine behavior while visiting the Summer Olympic Games in London should have been enough foreshadowing of this. Like Obama's predecessor, this is a doofus, a son of privilege whose main talent seems to be for making a fool of himself.

He followed up on insults to America's closest ally with the Libya debacle, attacking alleged weakness in the Obama administration even before the victims' families had been notified. Even many top Republicans were aghast at that one.

Then there were the "47 percent" remarks, which appear to show Romney as the ignorant plutocrat he really is. The only "redistribution of wealth" that people like him object to is the kind that travels down the socioeconomic ladder. When it comes from the bottom up -- as it usually does -- it's called "smart business."

'Incompetent' was polite

Even prominent plutocrats are upset. Peggy Noonan, the onetime Reagan speechwriter who's now with The Wall Street Journal, said she was being polite when she called the Scumney campaign "incompetent." What she meant, she said, is that it is more like a "rolling calamity."

Here's a link to a story about Noonan's dismay.

Many polls are now showing Obama in the lead, reversing previous trends. One factor, I would say, is a closing of ranks among America's "center-left." Obama's lack of fight, at least for a long time while faced with Republican intractability, was disheartening to many. But the Republican Party has come so much under the spell of its kook element that the "center-left's" potential dissidents realize that Obama is the only person standing between us and utterly irresponsible right-wingers.

I worry, though, remembering an old adage that nobody ever lost a dime underestimating the intelligence of the American people. It has surprised even me, just a bit, how many people are still obsessing over where Obama was born when the U.S. is being faced with such a grave choice in November. The "birthers" always deny this, but I think the fact that there's an uppity n----r in the White House is what bothers them most. I would have thought that the Il Doofus (Bush 43) disaster would have spoiled the "Republican brand" for at least a generation, but the election of a black president seemed to make a lot of Il Doofus' damage invisible to many middle-class white people.

Scumney may still be able to make it close enough for the Republicans to steal it with their voter disenfranchisement strategy, and so forth. But at least the latest gaffes are giving people a chance to see whom he really is. As Massachusetts governor, he talked like a moderate, and even governed like one to a great extent. But recent missteps, plus his choice of Paul "Ayn" Ryan as his running mate, make clear that this is merely a privileged, opportunistic dork who's willing to tell anybody anything to have the office to which he obviously thinks he's entitled. The Republican right wing owns him now, and they also will do anything to grab power.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Manifesto Joe's Great Moments In Conservative History, Part 12: Right-Wingers Rewrite U.S. History

I can't add much to this link, so here it is.

Enjoy.

I got my tower back several hours ago, so I'm back in action. -- MJ

Computer Woes Again

I'm out of commission, yet again, with PC issues. My tower is in the repair shop. Hope to be back in the saddle soon. -- MJ

This Is 'Gone With The Wind' For Birthers

By Manifesto Joe

Someone I know urged me to watch this, so I did, all 76 minutes of it:



The bottom line seems to be the insistence of one Verna Lee, 95, that neither she nor her office could ever have made a mistake on a birth certificate in her official capacity in Hawaii back in 1961 (not 1960, as the investigator repeatedly says).

A number of years back, I had to get a copy of my own birth certificate. I was most surprised to learn that I was born at 3:25 p.m. The doctor recorded it as 3:35 a.m. My mother recalled that the event occurred in the dark of the early morning hours, and I think that she was there. In any case, my Texas birth certificate was screwed up by an incompetent person on the day I was born. So was my mother's -- her name was misspelled on hers.

But in Texas, they make such mistakes all the time. The officials in Hawaii were perfect, every time, even back then.

The person who urged me to watch this said it convinced him that President Obama's long-form birth certificate, as presented to the public in PDF format, is a forgery. It raises a couple of interesting questions, but ultimately, he got me confused with someone who actually gives a shit.

I really, honestly don't care if Obama was born on Jupiter. His opponent has a running mate who's a disciple of hag selfishness cult leader Ayn Rand, and who has proposed to convert Medicare into a voucher system. The "GOP" ticket has me worried about a great deal more than where Obama was born.

The whole "birther" thing seems to me like a diversionary nonissue, the kind that right-wingers just love. They were floating these the full eight years that Bill Clinton was president. Now, with them horrified at the prospect of a second term of President N----r, can we expect any less?

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

A Labor Day Warning About Job Scams

By Manifesto Joe

Ever heard the old adage that if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is?

I recently joined the ranks of America's unemployed, and that bit of wisdom is coming in quite handy for me as my job search heats up. There are job scams galore out there, and if you've got e-mail addresses involved in your search, you're certain to be getting all kinds of offers from con artists.

With as many nervous and vulnerable job hunters as there are out there, there are countless vultures ready and willing to prey on them and put their unemployment benefits in a different bank. I can identify several types of these scams.

1. Insurance companies

However good their pitch, and however reputable they sound, this is one of the most common scams. Oh, it's legal, and they tend to merely stretch the truth rather than outright lie. If you've uploaded a resume, any resume, on any kind of a site like careerbuilder.com, you've either gotten these kinds of offers or will soon get them. The requirement for their interest: a pulse.

I almost fell for one of their common ploys -- a presentation that serves as a sort of preliminary interview. I decided recently to accept an offer to do this, so I suited up, printed out my resume, got my briefcase out and used this as a "dress rehearsal" for a one-on-one interview.

The presentation was good, I had to admit. But I looked around the room. These prelim events generally have five to 15 prospects in the room. I was one of 10, so we were very average. There were people there from all walks of life, all levels of education. Most already had jobs and were looking for a different sort of opportunity.

It all sounded pretty good, until you are told that it's going to cost quite a bit of money to get licensed by the state. It's also 100% commission, and they avoid telling you that most "agents" don't survive the first year. Even among the ones who do, there's a trainer there who's going to help you build a call list, and that person is very likely to take the lion's share of the money. They say it's not a pyramid scheme, but you eventually find that's how it works.

When a company sends you an e-mail, Google the company's name and then type in "scam." I'll bet you get numerous hits on that every time.

I'm not going to name names, but I'll go so far as to say that it's every single one of them that directly contacts resume posters. Here's a good rule of thumb: If you didn't send a resume directly to this company, chances are 99.44% that this is a scam.

2. Franchises

Again, these outfits will send you an e-mail and lay lots of flattery on you about your "experience." They will tell you how much money you can make, and how you can be your "own boss" as a franchisee.

Delete, with extreme prejudice.

3. Work-at-home schemes

Again, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. A common one of these is how one can make $77 an hour working at home on one's PC.

Do yourself a favor and get rid of it.

4. For-profit colleges

Ever gotten into what looks like a job-search website, then get bombarded by pop-up ads for those "for-profit" online colleges?

They'll gladly take your money for a degree that, in the end, you may be unable to use.

Exit these, post haste.

One problem that's not exactly a scam, but is a disgusting time-waster, is when you're trying to apply for a company's advertised job, and your software isn't communicating with the company's. This is tied in with how unhealthily dependent companies have become on computer programs. In this case, the company's IT people haven't updated their system to be compatible with a wide range of PC software. So, you get taken around in circles until you realize that this is an exercise in futility.

Perhaps the worst scammer of all is Corporate America itself

This is happening where I used to work, and it's common all across the U.S. People get laid off from full-time jobs with benefits. Then, six months to a year later, if they're still available, the same company offers them a part-time job, with no benefits, of course.

Also, have you noticed how many of the advertised job openings are part time, or for temporary contract posts, etc.?

We live in the age of the Throwaway American Workforce. More than ever, people are being replaced by computers, and employee pension plans are being abandoned so that corporations can "afford" to pay lavish executive pensions.

The official U.S. unemployment rate has generally been 8-9% for years. If you take into account the number of people who are underemployed, stuck in no-future jobs with no benefits, I think you could double that percentage for all practical purposes. And then, there are millions who have just plain given up.

Bottom line: If you are hunting for a job, be careful out there.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Clint, God Is Not On The Republicans' Side -- He Hates Stupid People

By Manifesto Joe

Hard-core film buffs may recognize the title of this post as a paraphrase of a line that "Blondie" (Clint Eastwood) speaks to "Tucco" (Eli Wallach) in the quintessential spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1967).

As an actor, Clint was OK, but always a bit more archetype than character, sort of like John Wayne was to an older and less-hip audience. As a director, he blossomed into a world-class auteur, aided by the tutelage of cinematic masters like Sergio Leone and Don Siegel.

It was tragi-comic to see an 82-year-old Eastwood make a doddering fool of himself before a prime-time TV audience Thursday night at the Republican National Convention.

For one thing, I thought Clint had learned a few things about his "friends" on the right. His reaction to having right-wing critics like Michael Medved spray bladder juice all over his 2004 boxing masterpiece Million Dollar Baby was angry and defiant. The film seemed, in the view of right wingers, to support euthanasia. Clint seemed at the time to have distanced himself at least somewhat from the political right, with his obvious and apolitical question about any script: Is it a good story?

But he's always been a fiscal conservative, and was a Republican as mayor of Carmel, Calif. Old habits die hard.

Back to the post title -- God may not be on the Republicans' side, but from what one can tell, He, She or It often doesn't seem to be on ANYBODY'S side. The deity, presuming that one exists, doesn't usually intervene in human affairs. Jews and other victimized groups were not spared holocausts, and black people were not rescued from slavery, at least not for centuries.

Humans are mostly left to their own devices. They can do things to make the world a better place -- or they can make it a hell on Earth, which they quite regularly accomplish. It's often sad to watch, but that's what free will is all about.

God didn't even stop Il Doofus (Bush 43) from being president for eight long years, declining to step in as apparent election fraud was committed. He, She or It didn't stop 1.4 million Iraqis from being killed over official lies.

And, perish the thought, He, She or It may not prevent Slick Willard Scumney and Paul "Ayn" Ryan from being "elected" to the Nos. 1 and 2 offices in the land. Atheists and agnostics seem to expect the deity to intervene in human affairs, but that seldom happens. We can foolishly and avariciously screw things up just as much as we please -- I learned that from watching "Blondie" on the Big Screen when I was just a lad of 11. It's up to us.

He, She or It may hate stupid people -- but that's never stopped them before.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Like Others In 'GOP,' 'Ayn' Ryan Is Shameless Liar

By Manifesto Joe

No sooner did U.S. Rep. Paul "Ayn" Ryan have his big chance to "introduce" himself to much of the American public than he was already spouting gross lies, and just as shamelessly as many other Republicans.

During his speech to the "GOP" National Convention on Wednesday night, Ayn blamed President Obama for the closing of a General Motors plant in his hometown of Janesville, Wis.

He seemed to have conveniently forgotten that the closing was announced while his good buddy Il Doofus (Bush 43) was president. Where was he during this convention, by the way?

Ryan also slammed Obama for ignoring the advice of the so-called bipartisan debt-reduction panel -- "the cat food commission" -- neglecting to mention that he himself opposed its recommendations.

Not that much of this is surprising. Slick Willard Scumney has been telling the voters that money has been absconded from the Medicare trust fund, when in reality no such thing has happened.

Meanwhile, Ayn, his running mate, is the author of a plan to convert Medicare into a private voucher system. It's estimated that if this is done, it could end up costing U.S. seniors as much as $6,400 more per year.

Ayn repeated the stale rhetoric that the Democrats are all out of "ideas" and have nothing left but promoting fear and division.

I suppose there's truth in the suggestion that Democrats' "ideas" basically all hark back to the New Deal in the 1930s. But there's certainly nothing "new" in the Republicans' "ideas." One can read an 1873 satirical novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, co-authored by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, and get an idea of how old their notions are.

What's most pathetic is that, even though reporters for big media outlets like the Los Angeles Times have little trouble finding the inaccuracies in Ayn's speech, lockstep Republicans and Tea Party cretins will swallow it all whole. As Mr. Twain phrased it, a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

'Family Values' Republicans Spend Three Times As Much As Dems At Titty Bars

By Manifesto Joe

That's according to a study by the Association of Club Executives, an organization that represents the 4,000 "gentlemen's club" owners in the U.S.

Here's a link to a story on the subject from CNN.com.

The survey found that Republicans typically spend $150 per person at strip clubs, compared with $50 per person for Democrats.

I find this a bit confusing, that the sexually repressed "family values" crowd would go ape in titty bars, and it's reported that there are 50,000 people who are about to descend on Tampa, Fla., for the Republican National Convention.

Tampa has a rep for being the strip club capital of America. I suppose I shouldn't use the term "bar" regarding Tampa, because even with that rep, I understand that you can't order booze in one of that city's strip clubs.

Even so, just imagine all those Todd Aiken types, prowling the city at night for a chance to drool at pole dancers.

As far as the amount of money they spend in these establishments, perhaps it's simply that Republicans usually have a lot more dinero to throw around, and tuck under garters, than Democrats have.

Regarding the very actions themselves, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. A man who used to collect Dumpster trash outside a popular North Texas hotel told me that the empties of vodka and gin would increase as much as tenfold when Southern Baptists would come to town for a convention. The rationale is that vodka and gin are harder to detect on someone's breath than other alcoholic beverages. And of course, Southern Baptists are supposed to be teetotalers.

Back in Tampa for this week's shenanigans, I read that one strip club has hired a Sarah Palin lookalike just in time for the GOP Convention. That's right -- she comes complete with the glasses, the hairdo, and everything else. Here's a link to that story on jezebel.com.

That ought to bring a bulge to many a pair of right-wing trousers.

Personally, I'm not much of a fan of titty bars. A friend of mine used to like going to them, so I've seen the inside of several. Although the young women are said to be well-paid, it's a very exploitative situation, plus a sad amount of the earnings go up the dancers' noses. I eventually decided that I'd rather not exploit nubile young women, or subsidize their cocaine habits.

But hey, since I'm considered a Democrat, they don't make that much quid off of me, anyway. It's the right-wingers who are the big spenders in such places. Get ready, Tampa -- there'll be no calm after the tropical storm.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Incredibly, Missouri GOP Has A Senate Candidate Even Crazier Than The One In Texas

By Manifesto Joe

Rep. Todd Aiken, a Republican, represents Missouri's 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House. I didn't think it possible, but he's even more of a kook than former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, who's likely to be this state's next U.S. senator.

Aiken, 65, suggested during a TV interview Sunday that women who are victims of "legitimate rape" are biologically unlikely to become pregnant -- attributing this ludicrous "science" to "doctors." A lot of top Republicans have called on the congressman to withdraw from his challenge against U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat.

Akin has apologized for his remarks, but he insists that he'll stay in the race. The deadline for him to drop out passed on Tuesday.

It's a close call, but I'd say Aiken's foolishness has exceeded that of Cruz, 41, who's on record as saying a good many insane things. To quote Tarrant County (Texas) Democratic Party Chairman Steve Maxwell:

Cruz is on the record saying there is a conspiracy to eliminate golf courses, unemployment benefits lead to more unemployment and that Sharia law is a "enormous" problem.

None of the above is very surprising, as the Texas Republican Party came under the control of psychopaths long ago. More from Maxwell:

Similarly, the Texas Republican Party Platform ranges from the silly to downright frightening –- doing away with minimum wage, repealing the Voting Rights Act, promoting corporal punishment in schools, but eliminating critical thinking (which makes sense, based on the fact that it is now clear, Republicans have done away with all thinking).

But I would say that Aiken, with his pronouncement that a "legitimate" rape victim can shut down the advance of an unwelcome sperm through sheer biological will, has Cruz bested in the category of mental illness.

Scumney's attempt at distancing

I suppose it can be marked just a bit to his credit that Slick Willard Scumney immediately realized what an appallingly stupid thing this was to say. But his struggle to distance himself from kooks like this rings hollow.

The problem is that Scumney chose Rep. Paul "Ayn" Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate. And Ayn has worked closely with Todd Aiken in the past, as recently as 2011.

Ayn and Aiken co-sponsored a bill that would ban abortions in the case of "forcible" rape. These two have co-sponsored quite a few anti-abortion bills, including the proposed "Sanctity of Life Act," which says that "every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood." And by that, they mean that a "person" exists from the very moment that an egg is fertilized.

Ayn's public positions on abortion are no different from Aiken's. But now, of course, he wants to be vice president, so we're not hearing much from him on this issue.

This gaffe needs to be kept alive through the first week of November. The Republican Party has been hijacked by lunatics, and now it's across the nation, not just in Texas (where that happened long ago).

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Back To The Roots: Here's The Flamin' Groovies, Live In 1972

I thought it would be well to give the old band their shot. I think Webb's cover is "tighter." But, hindsight is always 20/20. The Groovies were a gas, and I'd say that Mick, Keith & the Stones were actually no better at the time.



Unheralded stars! -- MJ

Webb Wilder's Most Excellent Cover Of 'Slow Death'

I had been waiting for someone to download this wonderful cover. You may notice that, along with pictures of Webb, 58, and his veteran Nashville band, that there are stills of the Flamin' Groovies, who did this song back in the early 1970s.



One thing that I think hampered all of them, including the old band the Flamin' Groovies, is that they all played this pretty tongue-in-cheek, even this explicitly anti-drug song. Webb has always played everything for laughs. I don't know why that should limit anyone. All should be stars now! -- MJ

A Movie That Sucked So Horribly, Nobody Wants To Remember It Except Me

By Manifesto Joe

I don't know how many people got their money taken from them during the winter of 1976-77, by paying to sit through the movie called The Way He Was, an attempt at a parody of Dick Nixon and his assorted Watergate buffoons.

I thought of this movie recently, as one of very few in which I've seriously considered going to the box office and demanding my money back.

Their headliner for this incredible schlock was Al Lewis, better-known as Grandpa in The Munsters. I won't go so far as to speculate that he had gambling debts, but his retirement couldn't have been too cushy if he was willing to take a paycheck for this excrement. And, to be honest, I don't even remember which role he played. I was pretty disgusted halfway through the flick.

They actually had a dude in a Nixon mask playing the lead role. And, Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were depicted as The Three Stooges. It had lots of "funny" lines, like when somebody has an appointment with the president, and under the mask, a Nixon impersonator who's no better at it than I am responds in Nixonesque accent, "Well, tell 'em to fuck off!"

The thing is, I tried to find some kind of reference to it online. Internet Movie Database, which prides itself on having something about damn near everything, had nada, nothing, on this one. Rotten Tomatoes had an entry, but no reviewers would touch it.

I remembered this as being one of the most truly, incredibly BAD movies I've ever seen, including things like Wrestling Women Vs. the Aztec Mummy. Of course, at this particular time, everybody left and right was kicking the shit out of Nixon, who's now remembered as one of America's most intelligent -- and craziest -- presidents. The paranoia factor there just was too much for the rest of the package to justify.

His interviews with David Frost came soon after that. Nixon kicked Frost's inexperienced candy ass in their first encounter, but didn't fare well after that. He'd done too many bad things, and Frost got better in the succeeding faceoffs.

Anyway, we've come such a long, long way since those primitive 1970s. Nixon would be regarded as a liberal now. And movies are better than ever!

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Rand, Paul Ayn's Idol, Was Hypocrite Who Took Social Security, Medicare

By Manifesto Joe

Republican vice presidential pick Paul Ayn has gotten by with some prospective voters by flashing them that shit-eating grin. But not everybody has forgotten about his past pronouncements of admiration for the garrulous swill of would-be novelist Ayn Rand.

"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," said Rep. Ayn at a D.C. event honoring the so-called author. On another occasion, he proclaimed, "Rand makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism."

Let us recall that this demented slut Rand, who characterized those who take government payments as "moochers" and "parasites," took Social Security herself, and Medicare, too, when the inveterate chain smoker was confronted with self-inflicted lung cancer at the age of 69. She had previously proclaimed scientific warnings about smoking to be a hoax.

Here's a link to an article on the subject.

Just in passing, let us note that despite a cult of mentally ill admirers, Rand is generally regarded by serious critics as a vapid purveyor of nonliterature. Her seemingly endless railings were so awful that Whittaker Chambers, a darling of the far right after he was a witness against Alger Hiss, was essentially exiled from much of the right-wing twit "movement" after he wrote a scathingly negative review of Atlas Shrugged for the National Review in 1957.

As a novelist, she just plain sucked. OK, we'll put that aside for a moment. The horrific effect that her toxic, selfish ideas have had on generations of American pseudo-intellectuals is yet another issue. And now, with a likely vice presidential candidate who's a "disciple" of this ugly slattern, we've seen the poison of her influence come to full fruition.

I suppose it can be argued that, since Rand was the ultimate spokesperson for selfish opportunism, it shouldn't be surprising that she'd be a hypocrite who would cash in on the welfare state when she got the chance. She would just characterize something like that as her good luck, and somebody else's bad luck in a less prosperous and charitable time.

Slick Willard Scumney does his best to project himself as the captain of his own vessel, but make no mistake -- his choice of Paul Ayn as a running mate is a clear overture to the "GOP's" powerful far right wing. For a while he didn't seem like one of them, but he's made clear that he's telling the "I've got mine, so fuck you" wing of the Republican Party that he'll generally do what they tell him to do.

Unfortunately, we've had a few powerful folks in Washington who have been "disciples" of the Ayn Rand Cult. Longtime Fed chief Alan Greenspan immediately comes to mind. Yet even he, as the U.S. economy came dangerously close to collapse circa 2007-09, eventually had to admit that his "free market" dogma may have had some points of error.

I would have hoped that the near-collapse of our economy would have relegated these sophomoric trolls to the back waters of American discourse, where they belong. I suppose I was being too optimistic, because even the Great Depression couldn't educate Rand, who became popular as a "literary" apologist for robber barons during that very era.

Even if the Scumney-Ayn ticket loses in November -- and I pray that Obama and Biden will do everything possible to expose this cult follower in the meantime -- Ayn will probably be peddling his opportunistic snake oil again in 2016. This kind of venom just never seems to go away, no matter how discredited.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Eric Hobsbawm Discusses 'Responsible Capitalism'

I have some misgivings about Professor Hobsbawm, given his past as sort of an apologist for Stalin. But I thought he has some excellent observations here, and I was surprised to discover that he's still alive.



Again, this is Professor Eric Hobsbawm, (1917- ), recorded in January. -- MJ

'Biggest Brown-Noser' Ryan To Be GOP VP Pick

By Manifesto Joe

If this is Romney's choice for a running mate, 99% of Americans under 55 should prepare to be thrown under the bus.

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, 42, looks to be Slick Willard's choice for a vice presidential running mate. It's a pretty clear signal from Scumney to the Republican Party's powerful far right wing -- pssst, I'm really one of you guys! I just played like a moderate to get elected governor of Massachusetts.

Ryan, who was literally voted "Biggest Brown-Noser" by his 1988 high school classmates, is a Young Republican poster boy. Here's a link to his Wikipedia biography, by the way.

My wife, who is not much better at brown-nosing than I am, keeps telling me that it pays off. In Ryan's case, it certainly seems that way.

If the Scumney-Ryan ticket wins in November, we will have a heartbeat away from the presidency a man who has very seriously proposed privatizing Social Security and replacing the current Medicare program with a voucher system. The concrete proposals have been for phase-ins (should I say phase-outs?) that wouldn't apply to Americans over a certain age, generally given as 55. That makes all this more palatable for older people -- retired Tea Party types can keep collecting their checks while throwing younger people under the bus with nary a thought.

A sad thing about politics, in any country, is that there usually has to be a bloody, fatal wreck at the intersection, so to speak, before someone will put up a traffic light. Social Security, in effect since 1935, is largely taken for granted. There are no seniors around who can remember the time before we had Medicare, starting in 1965. So, as collective memories grow fuzzy, it is looking like tragic reality that people are going to have to see, with their own eyes, what American life will be like with no such entitlements.

The Obama-Biden ticket would be well-advised to make Ryan's record on these issues a centerpiece of their campaign. Of course, they'll be accused of fear-mongering and "class warfare" and such -- fine, let the other side talk that trash. The American Class War looks like it's been effectively over for decades anyway (want to guess who won?), so it's a guerrilla struggle from now on.

One afterthought is wonderment about how someone like Paul Ryan could be elected to seven terms in the U.S. House from a seemingly progressive state like Wisconsin. This is a place that elected the La Follettes, Bill Proxmire and Russ Feingold.

But, Scott Walker is governor there now, having survived a recall election. And Joe McCarthy was elected to the U.S. Senate there -- twice.

Oh, well. There's plenty to be ashamed of in Texas. But at least we never sent Joe McCarthy to Washington. We had to settle for Martin Dies.

Unfortunately, it looks alarmingly as though Paul Ryan will be going back there soon, and perhaps with a promotion.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Rich Have Offshored Their Wealth -- Scumney, Too?

By Manifesto Joe

We live in a time in which ordinary people are being told to expect far, far less. Social Security isn't even a given, nor is Medicare. And yet, now we hear this:

Super Rich Holding $21 Trillion Overseas to Avoid Taxation

Here's the link. That number is "conservative" -- the actual one could run as high as $32 trillion.

This not only comes at a time like this for America -- EU countries are in a bind, too.

I have a "conservative" friend who once made a reference about "money we don't have." Bullshit. Fucking BULLSHIT. It's there, and we KNOW who has it. They are hiding it in places like the Cayman Islands.

Is Slick Willard one of them? We can only guess. Why won't he release his tax records?

The era of "responsible capitalism" is over

It would appear that the only thing that forced that situation was the international challenge of socialism. Granted, socialism didn't hold up well, for reasons that don't have to be enumerated. But when faced with something like an international challenge, "capitalists" had to behave more responsibly.

Karl Marx was certainly wrong about a lot of things. But one thing he predicted was that, despite myriad attempts to "reform" capitalism, it would always revert back to its original, brutal form. It's looking like Karl was right about that one.

So, what to do now?

Revolutions don't generally turn out well, when you look at history. I can't say that I would recommend them. But if there isn't some kind of serious turnaround in Western societies within the next decade -- well, something else dramatic will have to happen. If it doesn't, we will be walking around as plutocrat trolls for the next couple of centuries. The plutocracy has the technology to commit this atrocity, unless we the people prevent it.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Chick-Fil-A Runs A Ruse On Their Customer Base

By Manifesto Joe

I haven't looked at many Chick-Fil-A's around the country, so I'm going mainly by what the Mainstream Media say about this. There are gaping primates all over the country standing in line outside the stores, dragging their knuckles to the door just to get a rarefied taste of that unique blend of featherless cardboard and white-bread goo.

I was born, but it wasn't yesterday. I had heard long ago that Chick-Fil-A was a right-wing fundamentalist company, worse than all those Republican-donating burger chains out there. I recall eating there only one time, maybe 20 years ago, when there was absolutely nothing else around to eat. Blah.

By putting out a homophobic statement denouncing gay marriage, the chain's CEO has boosted sales tremendously, from what I've heard. I don't think there can be much doubt about the effect that this has had. Gay people and those reasonably sympathetic to them weren't eating there a lot in the first place, so any boycotts that have resulted have been negligible. It's the traditional Chick-Fil-A customer base that has been energized by this.

Aside from their politics, I always thought the Chick-Fil-A ad campaigns, you know, the billboards with the semiliterate cows, were detestable and in the poorest of taste. You remember those -- "Eat mor chiken," and such. And I'm not even a vegetarian. It's just stupid to make fun of unfortunate barnyard animals.

(Sadly, I've had Tea Party commenters on this site who were no more literate than the Chick-Fil-A cows were.)

Personally, I decided decades ago that their food totally sucks, and later I learned that they were prehistoric fundamentalists who always close on Sundays (See you in church).

But clearly, the effect that this had was calculated. Their traditional customer base, the great unwashed, all decided at once that they just HAD to have themselves one of those no-taste Chick-Fil-A sandwiches.

They are welcome to them. I can find better things to eat from tins in a dollar store, tossed with sauteed veggies and a bowl of pasta.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

RIP, Gore Vidal: 1925-2012

I can't say that he was just always my huckleberry. But I thought ol' Gore said some funny things at times, and I would say that, rather unfortunately, he had a good handle on what was wrong with America in modern times. Bon voyage, Mr. Vidal. -- MJ

Ted Cruz Racks One Up For The Kooks!

By Manifesto Joe

Early returns are good enough for former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz to claim victory in the Republican runoff for U.S. Senate from Texas. He leads Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst with about 55%, so just about everybody is calling this one for him.

Cruz, 41, was always the Tea Party fave in the race, and even got the endorsement of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. I don't think many liberals like rich boy Dewhurst, 66; but he's perceived as an establishment Republican, one who might actually not treat Democrats like pond scum if he had been elected. Cruz apparently has the support of all who want to lead the U.S. into some kind of civil war. He seems pretty certain to win the general election over his Democratic opponent, former state Rep. Paul Sadler. We'll see how effective he is at working across the aisle.

Personally, I don't especially mind seeing this sort of thing happen regularly, because it will take that for Republicans to realize that they've got a Frankenstein monster on their hands. It was already that way with the "Religious Right." Now, the Tea Party has given the crazies of the right wing a more secular focus, and they are getting their voters to the polls.

This will mean more high-profile politicians who favor teaching creationism in public schools, and who oppose abortion even in cases of incest and rape. This will mean more of them who favor cutting taxes for the super-rich, even when the federal deficit is in the trillions and big corporations are on record as paying no income tax at all. This will mean more of them who think all Muslims in America are terrorist sympathizers -- you know, the kind who take arsenals into movie theaters and kill a dozen people.

In other words, the differences between the right wing and everybody else will be more clearly delineated. I doubt that Cruz himself believes all of the above, but I would be willing to bet that at least one-third, and perhaps even half, of all Texans who voted for him would lean toward agreement with all of the above. This state has no shortage of ignorant lunatics.

The only impediments Cruz faces are that he has a Hispanic surname -- lots of people would deny it, but there's still a shitload of racism in this state -- and his physical appearance. If Bill Murray and Pat Buchanan could have a male child, Ted Cruz is what it would look like. That dark, goofy countenance won't help him much.

But he has strong appeal for a psychopathic element in Texas politics, and is more than likely to be our next U.S. senator. The state will soon likely rival Oklahoma (James Inhofe and Tom Coburn) for having the most certifiably insane U.S. Senate delegation in the nation.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

America The Stupid, Part 4

63% of Americans think Mitt Romney's business background would make him more able to manage the economy.

By Manifesto Joe

Yep, that's according to a recent poll conducted by USA Today/Gallup. Here's a link to the story.

That's in spite of Bain Capital's reputation as a predatory, job-destroying, job-exporting entity, and all the attendant publicity thereof.

And that's in spite of the fact that, according to another poll, 44% of Americans think that Slick Willard isn't releasing his tax returns because there's something damaging there that he wants to hide.

That poll was taken just a few days earlier, by the same organization. Here's a link to that story.

What this means is that a significant number of Americans think that although Romney did something on his taxes that would be politically very damaging, their eyes still glaze over when somebody shows them a rich MF who was the CEO of a big corporation.

Must be smarter than I is, they thinks.

Well, sadly, I fear that this may be so. But just barely.

"Mitt the Twit" Scumney just got through making a ludicrous fool of himself at the Summer Olympic Games in London, so we're pretty sure he's no diplomat. And managing a sleazy enterprise like Bain Capital doesn't make him any economic wizard, either.

A sad feature of the American "mentality" is the equation of intelligence with wealth. "If you's so smart, why ain't you rich?" is an old quotation that sticks in my mind. I have no doubt about the nationality of its origin.

And charlatans have parted many an American from his or her money along the way. One of the most visible nowadays is the contemptible Robert Kiyosaki, "author" of a book called Rich Dad Poor Dad.

This pompous ass apparently did well being a parasite in the real estate market, and is now separating people from their money with classes telling how they, too, can do this.

His biological father was a highly educated man who became superintendent of the Hawaii State Department of Education, but was "poor." In contrast, his alleged mentor (some critics question whether such a person ever existed) was a high school dropout with lesser income who put his money into passive-income investments, such as real estate, and became the "richest" man in Hawaii.

Sounds to me like Kiyosaki's biological father was a stalwart person who actually devoted his life to doing something for the betterment of society as a whole. His "mentor," if such a person does exist, was a parasite who amassed a fortune being some kind of slumlord.

Now back to Slick Willard Scumney. He's spent all summer on the defensive, and I suspect that more gaffes and missteps are on the way.

But in a society stupid enough to fork this much cash over to a mountebank like Robert Kiyosaki, one worries that Scumney might be able to pull in more than, say, 49% of the electorate. The rest of us must fight to ensure that he does not.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Laid Off, And Taking A Short Break

I'll be posting again shortly, but I've gotten word that I'm being laid off from my job. I've been a little preoccupied since hearing that news. The last full day I was unemployed was March 4, 1982, so this will be an experience I haven't had in a long time. I'll be posting again soon -- and maybe I can persuade Geekus to do something, since he hasn't worked in years. -- MJ

Mainstream Media And Corporate Neoliberalism

By Manifesto Joe

Biased toward the left -- and biased toward the right. How can both be true?

Leave it to America's Mainstream Media -- they have somehow managed to give both impressions to different groups of activists, and I think I can explain why.

I will preface by saying that I have a very admitted and open bias toward the left, at least by American standards. And, that's the very reason why I'm writing this blog, as it is clearly a consistent expression of opinion. After nearly 56 years on this planet, I know that the "left" has no monopoly on the truth or on facts. But I find myself agreeing with their world view at least 70% of the time, so I chose sides long ago.

But what one finds upon close examination of the American MSM is a sort of "neoliberal" mind-set that can seem downright radical to a right-wing evangelical Christian, and then like 19th-century apologists for robber barons to progressives and liberals.

Evangelicals tend to be focused on social issues -- and generally anything that has gained much social acceptance since the 16th century or so is something they view with suspicion. To them, abortion is murder, pure and simple, with no gray areas. Women should be content to be second-class citizens and strictly obey their husbands and fathers. Cultural diversity is liberal hogwash, as it in their view ignores the simple "fact" that one's own group, church, race, etc., is always presumed superior to any other.

My bias toward the left tends to include an open mind, at least of sorts, regarding social issues. It runs contrary to my experience for someone to propose that my group, race, or whatever, is in some way intrinsically superior to another person's. And considering the vast holocaust that our society carries out against our partner animals daily, it's hard for me to consider ending the life of a first-trimester fetus that has a tail (and little brain activity) to be the same as homicide. It's a sad and even gruesome thing, but legislating one's religion seems inherently much worse.

Something one does routinely see in the MSM is a mind-set that is center-left on most social issues, at least by American standards. The basic corporate MSM line is:

Diversity ... GOOOOOD

The MSM accept racial equality as a given, are usually sympathetic toward abortion rights, and tout cultural diversity as a thing that people must have been mentally ill cave dwellers to have not embraced decades or even centuries ago. These are assumptions now, and in the eyes of right-wingers, an ironic form of liberal dogma.

And, the MSM won't get too much argument from me about all of the above. True, as a working-class white male, I was passed over for decades for jobs and promotions so that women and minorities could get their feet in the door of the middle class. (And meanwhile, the good ol' boys who REALLY belonged to the club were quite unaffected, because they always had their OWN affirmative-action program.)

OK, fair enough -- the viewpoint of women and minorities would likely be, now at least some of you white male SOBs get just a tiny taste of the kind of shit we had to eat for centuries. I understand that viewpoint well.

But the typical working-class, white American male listening to Rush Lardbaugh doesn't generally share that world view. They cream their pants with glee when Herr Lardbaugh launches into tirades about "femi-Nazis" and continues with barely masked exhibitions of racism.

To them, the MSM have a liberal bias, if only for the reason that Herr Lardbaugh lies just a bit outside of how the MSM usually defines the political mainstream.

Personally, I have few problems with the MSM's mind-set in this regard, whatsoever.

But that's not the whole story.

In particular, study the pages of the U.S. business press, and lots of us can quickly detect a very different sort of bias:

Capitalism and free markets ... GOOOOOOD. Labor unions and big government ... BAAAAAAD.

I remember being asked once if I thought that the MSM outlet that I work for has a liberal bias, because obviously the person who asked the question believed that to be so.

My reply was that, well, if they're so liberal, perhaps they'd let me try to organize the staffers into a union shop. I ventured that I didn't think I'd last very long.

The man asking me the question had no response to that.

The key word here is neoliberalism. It is essentially an acceptance, as a given, of 20th-century attitudes toward social issues -- but accompanied by a strict adherence to 19th-century "classical" economic theory.

Upon close inspection, it becomes apparent that America's business media are generally in the hands of people who grew up in solidly middle-class homes, at least. They and their families could take for granted being able to afford good colleges, and their climb up the journalism ladder was never in much doubt, because they probably knew people who could and would help.

The articles I've seen have referred to an average haircut as costing $45 (where are these people getting their golden locks trimmed?), and about how the thrifty habits of people like Carlos Slim and Warren Buffett have done so much to aid them in amassing vast fortunes, and so forth. Like, they still live in relatively modest homes that they bought decades ago, and some of them don't even own private jets! Wow, such deferment of gratification!

Thinking of such people as being the least bit "in touch" with the lives of ordinary Americans is not unlike portrayals of Mitt "Slick Willard" Romney as some kind of Man of the People.

If you've never been in a grueling, low-paying, exploitative situation with Eddie Haskell types for bosses, then I suppose you would have no reason to understand why someone would want to give 4% of their paycheck to a labor union. (For one thing, you can bet that in a union job, the paycheck would be much bigger even after one pays the dues.)

But you don't find people with that kind of labor experience in the business press, nor does one generally find them among U.S. news executives. From what I've seen, those offices are mainly populated by people who have led very charmed lives. They don't end up being the "grunt" workers of the industry, and they always knew that was never what the profession would hold for them.

So, folks like this get to feel just, oh, so enlightened on social issues, while toeing a primitive company line on anything that's work- or economics-related.

And that, boys and girls, is one of the big reasons why righties call the MSM "liberal" and believe that it is biased that way, while lefties can clearly see that they would quickly land in the unemployment line if they dared to bring an organizer onto the property.

And that is how different groups can somehow call the MSM biased in opposite ways. "Neoliberalism," anyone?

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

America The Stupid, Part 3

By Manifesto Joe

I will preface by saying that I don't think Americans are inherently more stupid than any other nationality. Stupidity is something that seems to know no boundaries of nation or group. Daily reading of the international pages of newspapers offers ample evidence of that.

But American stupidity seems less forgivable than that found in other places, because of affluence. And, ironically, it appears that much domestic ignorance is rooted in that very affluence.

Oh, there's certainly a sizable underclass in America. Somebody born to a crack whore for a mother, and who doesn't know who his or her father is, probably doesn't stand much of a chance, decent public schools or not. Income inequality is probably a big factor. And, I can't say that I grew up affluent, at least not by American standards.

But, the middle-class Americans I have known grew up largely taking plenty for granted that can't be taken so elsewhere. Among those things seem to be even the most modest intellectual achievements. Middle-class Americans often grow up complacent, with computer games and Smartphones, generally believing that there will always be "brains" out there who will manage to devise such things. Never mind where they came from. Affluence seems to furnish a path to intellectual laziness.

As Exhibit C, I will offer the findings of Newsweek, which gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. citizenship test. Candidates for citizenship are given a random list of 10 questions from among 100 included in the full test, and they have to get six of them right to pass.

Some 38% of Americans who took that test failed, including 29% who couldn't name the current vice president, and 73% who couldn't correctly say why we fought the Cold War.

I took the test with a sample of 20 questions, and got 18 of them right. I suppose that's very good, but as a career journalist with over three decades of experience, I should have gotten them all. What did I miss? I guessed that there were 26 constitutional amendments, rather than 27, and I named power to regulate interstate commerce as one of the original powers that the Constitution gives the federal government (that didn't come until later).

Here's a link to an article on the subject, and you can also take a version of the test here.

The big problem here is that a lot of those among the 38% who fail are voters. Are these people you want making civic decisions? I'll leave you to ponder that question.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Now Scum-Sucking Right-Winger Scalia Will Have To 'Get Over It'

By Manifesto Joe

Oh, I'm not buying drinks for the house just yet. This was Round 2. There will be many more rounds to go. But the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court to uphold almost all of "Obamacare" was significant.

Problem is, on Monday the Supreme Court also came down with a nasty 5-4 decision for the Citizens United grotesquerie for a second time, which means that even the lukewarm compromise that was "Obamacare" is still in danger. (See my previous blog post.) That decision pretty much ensured that American politics will be awash with corrupting money for at least another generation, so there's not really much to celebrate.

But I love to see right-wingers being upset. Especially Antonin "Get Over It" Scalia.

Another big problem is, we've still got an abysmally stupid population here in the Free World's Leading Country. It's really worse than it is in a lot of other places, and that's saying plenty. Last night I was working, but happened to catch a snippet of some talking head on CNN. This woman said something like, "We're not living in some socialist country, like Russia." (And nobody corrected her.)

Wow. For one thing, I'm not sure if this person has ever heard, but the Soviet Union broke up over 20 years ago. Russia now seems to be ruled by a coalition of oligarchs, robber barons and gangsters. (Like, wow, that all sounds very familiar!)

For another thing, even if the Soviets were still around, the comparison is moronic. As I understand the way this is going to work, the private insurance companies can look forward to about 30 million more "customers" (the word I'm thinking of actually starts with an "s"), and with taxpayer subsidies to boot. Sounds a hell of a lot more like corporate welfare than socialism.

I can't blame Obama too much for that, because he seemed to be resigned to just putting over what he believed that he could. And, given how this measure has been getting by on the skin of its teeth, he was probably right.

What's really needed is single-payer -- a system that will get most of the profit motive out of medicine. People are evil enough that nothing will purge the system of that entirely, but a public option that anybody could take would attract millions (including me), and would eventually put private, for-profit insurers out of business.

Mainstream News Media fail pretty often at informing a fundamentally stupid public about some of this. Much hay is made of Medicare fraud, but there isn't much publicity about the fact that Medicare's administrative expenses are generally lower than those found among private insurers. Here's a link to PolitiFact -- let me warn that I don't set much of a factual store by them, but even they concede a "half" truth here.

I had high hopes for single-payer just a couple of years ago, because the health care system in the U.S. is going to get worse, not better, and "Obamacare" is just patchwork. It doesn't really address the fundamental problem of medicine for profit.

But, I'll repeat, the Supreme Court stood by Citizens United on Monday for a second time, striking down Montana's century-old campaign finance law. Until that shitty decision is revisited, big money will win most of the political battles in the U.S., and that includes almost anything to do with health care. What's "left" of the left will be doing well to preserve most of Obamacare for the next 20 years.

Now, after this ruling, it probably won't require a constitutional amendment to make single-payer a reality here. But it WILL require a quantum leap in the general civic intelligence of Americans.

I won't be holding my breath.

But meanwhile, I'm enjoying the fact that Scalia is probably having a bad night. May he have many, many more.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

'Citizens United' Ruling May Be Much Worse Than Strikedown Of 'Obamacare'

By Manifesto Joe

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to reject Montana's case challenging Citizens United. This could actually be a death knell for democracy in America, and something much worse than a high court strikedown of "Obamacare," which could come Thursday.

Tossing the health care law could actually work in the Democratic Party's favor, and even result in some kind of single-payer system in the foreseeable future. Well, I'll amend that to say that it could have had that effect. Since the "justices" essentially ruled yesterday that government entities can be bought by the highest bidder, even the broad public outrage that will inevitably result from a strikedown on Thursday will run up against an iron wall of corporate money.

In America, we can kiss democracy goodbye, at least for the foreseeable future. It's a plutocracy now, and there's no doubt.

I always thought things were going to have to get worse here before they can get better. Now, we're going to see them get a LOT worse, and it will probably be a generation or two before anything can really be done about it.

We saw with the Equal Rights Amendment how a very determined and well-funded minority can thwart the will of a solid majority in this country. It takes a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress to send a proposed constitutional amendment to state legislatures, and then three-fourths of the legislatures have to approve the amendment for it to become law. The Equal Rights Amendment looked like a no-brainer for a while. But it was stalled, and eventually "lost."

If the same 5-4 right-wing majority of justices votes to overturn "Obamacare" on Thursday, it would probably take a constitutional amendment to establish something to the effect of Medicare-E (Medicare for everybody).

Now, with yesterday's decision, we might as well sit back and wait for the next glacier to move through. I had high hopes for single-payer just a couple of years ago, but the corporate money will likely be too much for any groundswell in this country to defeat. Now my generation will not see single-payer, of that I'm all but certain.

Problem is, a constitutional amendment for reasonable campaign finance reform in the U.S. will have to be enacted first. Health care would have to follow, and it's going to take an enormous groundswell of public will to get rid of Citizens United first.

I'll be 56 next month, and so this probably guarantees that I'm going to be writing a blog for the losing side of American politics for the rest of my days. That takes a lot of the joy out of it. But many of us will carry on -- I've got nothing better to do with my spare time. Just get ready for at least 20 more years of The New Gilded Age.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

'Tres Hombres' Inside Album Art

ZZ Top's Tres Hombres (1973) was a fantastic album, but the inside art made it even better. Yum!


An afterthought: One thing I always wondered about was -- how could those dudes keep their beards out of the food? -- mj

America The Stupid, Part 2

I can't say that I've always agreed with everything I've ever heard come out of Gore Vidal's mouth, or with everything that he's written. But, sadly, I think he's got the American people pegged quite well. This is a 2008 interview with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman:



The past 12 years have done more to convince me of an epidemic of American stupidity than all of the previous 44 years I've been alive. Is it something in the water? -- mj

Postscript: The secondary videos are good, too. Look for the interview he did with Joy Behar, apparently around 2010.

America The Stupid

For the past day or so, I've been listening to people wringing their hands about why Wisconsin voters would have voted to keep Gov. Scott Walker in office in a recall election.

Watch this video, and there should be no more room for doubt. It's the unspoken truth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6r1IcY1pv0



Americans are stupid!

Please watch the related videos, too, if you have time. Even the Fox News one is unintentionally funny. (The shopping is fantastic!) -- MJ

10 Biggest Lies Of The Right Wing

By Manifesto Joe

About 40 years ago, a neocon named Arnold Beichman, (1913-2010) a man who pretty much spent his life being an anti-communist crusader, wrote and published a book called Nine Lies About America. At the end of his life he was a research fellow for the Hoover Institution and a columnist for the then-Moonie-financed Washington Times. The man had started out as a Columbia grad and journalist for publications such as PM and Newsweek, so he seemed to keep increasingly bad company as he aged.

When Nine Lies was published, around 1972, the Western world's left wing was admittedly engaged in some excesses that lefties have lived to regret over the years. So, there may have been some reason for the wide popularity of this book.

But from what I've seen since that book came out, while I was still in high school, the Western world's right wing has arguably become even more excessive, promulgating what I refer to in the title of this essay. Here are 10 lies of the right wing, categorized by subject:

Poverty

I have spent much of my nearly 56 years on this planet being relatively poor (you know, by American standards), so I know something about this firsthand. To hear right-wingers tell it, being poor is mostly a self-inflicted wound. One's advancement up the economic ladder is mainly a question of individual self-improvement, deferment of gratification, and so on.

These are certainly important considerations and traits. But anyone who has worked in the corporate world for any significant length of time has surely seen plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Humans are pack animals, and that holds true in the workplace. Bosses often tend to make decisions about promotions more according to personality than performance. Then, as observed by Dr. Laurence J. Peter, co-author of the famous 1969 book The Peter Principle, the promoted toady tends to advance to what finally becomes his or her level of incompetence -- and stays there, generally to screw things up for years and years.

Conversely, Peter observed another phenomenon in the workplace -- the supercompetent underling. This is from Wikipedia:

In addition, Peter suggested the idea of “Super-Competence” in an inappropriately low position. He proposed that this employee will have two paths dependent upon their leadership. Competent People Managers will promote this employee for the betterment of the company. Incompetent People Managers will most likely feel intimidated and/or threatened by this employee. This employee is a disruption to their perceived natural order and will almost certainly drive them to set this employee up for failure and/or dismiss them. Organizations with poor leadership cannot handle this type of disruption to their hierarchical structure. A Super-Competent employee “…violates the first commandment of hierarchical life with incompetent leadership: [namely that] the hierarchy must be preserved…”

From what I've seen, this employee is highly competent and intelligent, but doesn't usually "suck up." The person's stellar performance is not rewarded, and managers will actually resort to making things up to either hold them down or, preferably, fire them.

In America, the "social safety net" is so porous and flimsy that losing a job means almost certain poverty, at least in relative terms, for most people to whom this happens.

There are also factors such as catastrophic illnesses, and of course the sheer luck of the draw at birth. I've seen "well-born" people do all kinds of things like flunk or drop out of college, lose job after job, get busted, etc., then finally clean up their act and start taking advantage of opportunities by the time they are 30 or so.

If, on the other hand, a person is not "well-born" but instead has "losers" for parents, that person usually can't afford to blow one, not even one, of the rare opportunities life will present to them at a tender age. If they do, by the time they are 30, it's usually far too late. Such people rarely have second chances.

In short, the right wing's depiction of poverty and its causes is pretty much a lie.

Welfare

In the 1990s, when I was in a shop, a clerk who had apparently been reading books by Rush Limbaugh, and taking them seriously, tried to tell me that since 1965, the U.S. had spent $6 trillion on welfare. I told him he was sadly mistaken. He started trying to find a passage in that silly book. It was taking too long, so I just left with my merchandise.

Later I realized where Limbaugh, or some other right-wing demagogue, had come up with that figure and was getting the rubes to believe it. He was including ALL federal social spending since 1965, which would include Social Security (which operates not like welfare, but rather like an insurance policy), Medicare, Medicaid, and all others.

When somebody says "welfare" to me, I think of the program called Aid to Families With Dependent Children, which was actually a very small and restricted program that was in operation from 1935 to 1996. That year, Congress replaced it with the program that is now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

For the sake of brevity, I won't delve into whether what Molly Ivins famously called the "welfare deform" of 1996 was a good idea, dependence, unwed motherhood, and such. I'm sticking to the unfortunate fact that millions of ignorant Americans believe that the federal government has blown trillions of dollars on "welfare."

In 1996, spending on AFDC peaked at $24 billion. Even if you presumed that the government spent that much in real dollars in each of those years since 1965 -- and it damn sure didn't -- multiply that times 30, and what you get is $720 billion, a far cry from the alleged $6 trillion.

These are lying assholes, and they lie deliberately to gullible rubes.

Health Care

The right has been persistently lying about this for many decades to keep the U.S. from "socializing" medicine. They consistently invoke "free market" arguments on this issue.

Even if one presumes the superiority of "free markets" -- and that's a big presumption -- health care has never met the "free market" model. When you are sick, do you get to shop around for ambulance services or hospitals, like some Arab trader? Ultimately, I don't even get to choose my own doctors. They have to belong to the "network" that my private insurance covers.

The invocation of "free market" arguments on health care has been one of the right's most pernicious and toxic lies, for it has resulted in the denial of affordable health care to millions upon millions of Americans. They don't even tell you that you often end up paying higher taxes and premiums, anyway, because uninsured people go to charity hospitals for care.

Health care doesn't meet the criteria of the "free market" model, and it never has. They lie, and lie, and lie some more.

Say's Law

This is still a staple of classical economic theory, and it's the biggest crock of bullshit in the right-wing economist's arsenal. It is, in short, that supply creates its own demand.

My understanding is that one of the major causes of the Great Depression was that supply simply outstripped the capacity of consumer demand to absorb it. Wall Street could afford to keep factories producing ever-greater numbers of cars, but Main Street was falling behind and couldn't afford the payments. So, inventory stacked up, people got laid off, they could afford even less, and a vicious downward economic cycle was set into motion.

In recent years, we've seen similar things, to wit in what we now call the Great Recession. There's no problem with productivity -- the U.S. economy doubled in size since 1980. Problem was, wages and salaries were stagnant, so people either couldn't buy what they were producing or had to go deeply into debt to afford the stuff.

It's time to put Say's Law on the ash heap of history, where it belongs. But it remains as a lie on the pages of economics textbooks.

The Invisible Hand

You know this one -- Adam Smith's amazing self-correcting capitalist economy. Problem is, it only works when you have a lot of competitors in a given sector, few barriers to entry, and honest price competition. Absent those things, there's a reason why the hand is invisible -- it probably isn't there.

Oh, but sometimes it is. I've felt that invisible hand a few times. Always felt more like a fist to me.

Jail

I recall having an argument with a person who was working in some area of law enforcement. The person was basically in favor of putting each and every lawbreaker in prison and throwing away the key. The person was also in favor of making prisons a lot tougher. They were supposed to be too much like country clubs.

I've never been in prison myself, but I've known a few people who have been there, and none of them ever described it like any country club you'd want to belong to. They are nasty, ugly places, with many cell blocks actually run by the worst prisoners themselves while corrupt guards turn a blind eye. The word "punk" originated from the term for kids who were forced to submit regularly to sodomy by older and tougher convicts.

OK, suppose we've settled the matter that prison isn't a place where any sane person wants to go. The U.S. has nearly 2.3 million adults incarcerated. Taxpayers are already paying to have 1% of all American adults in some sort of jail. Can one seriously think that they are going to pay more? Here's a link to a Wikipedia article on the subject.

Then there is a basic human-rights issue involved here. When you put a person in jail, even for a night, you have taken away this person's freedom. I don't know how you think of that where you're from, but to me that's always seemed like a pretty big deal. To a sane person, the burden of proof seems to be on society as a whole. Society had better have a damn good reason to deprive me of freedom and levy fines -- not just because I chose to smoke something other than tobacco.

Capital punishment

The idea that it deters crime hasn't borne up historically, and now, in the age of DNA testing, we're finding that it probably has led to the execution of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people.

But even presuming guilt, does a person about to commit murder think in sane terms about deterrence? Would they do it if they didn't think they could get away with it?

As Gallagher says, it don't make no sense.

American exceptionalism

This, again, is from Wikipedia:

Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense. To them, the United States is like the biblical "shining city on a hill," and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries.

Since the 1960s, postnationalist scholars have rejected American exceptionalism, arguing that the United States had not broken from European history, and has retained class inequities, imperialism and war. Furthermore, they see most nations as subscribing to some form of exceptionalism.

With the events of recent years, the proponents of "American exceptionalism" are finding out the hard way that our Japanese, Chinese and Russian competitors regard it as nonsense.

War

A man I knew in the 1980s presented to me the extraordinary idea that war is often a very good thing. He explained to me that his parents met because of World War II, and besides, sometimes you need a war once in a while so that bad elements of society can be eliminated -- as though criminal types are the only people who get killed in wars.

At the time, I was practically speechless. If I heard that man repeat this today, I'd urge him to go visit the nearest VA hospital and take a good look at the basket cases. He might also want to visit a homeless shelter and look at all the amputees, many of whom would not have survived past conflicts. Nearly half of veterans returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are filing disability claims, promising an enormous burden on the taxpayers of the future.

It's never been worth it. And, it's a monstrous lie.

"Socialism"

Most right-wingers don't even seem to have a clear understanding of what socialism is.

All dictionary definitions refer to it as an economic system in which the MEANS OF PRODUCTION is predominantly owned either by the government or cooperatives, not by private concerns.

To right-wingers, the criterion is "redistribution of wealth." I have news for them. Every time government, at any level, taxes and appropriates money for projects of any kind, wealth is redistributed. It is strictly a question of to whom. They seem to object only when the beneficiaries are relatively poor, not when they are rich. In the latter case, it's viewed as "smart business."

I suppose it's a lot like Stephen Colbert's definition: A socialist is anybody who wants to spend government money on something you don't like.

Well, that's 10 lies, I believe. Until next time ...

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

This Memorial Day, No Millionaire Left Behind

U.S. disparity of income is setting records by some measures

It's 2012 -- the financial crisis happened over four years ago, and the Great Recession is supposed to have been over long ago. After all this time, the American people, or at least the ones with the most juice, don't seem to have learned a thing.

Corporate profits hit record levels in 2011, and with that increase, compensation for CEOs went up about 6% as well. The CEO of a typical public company made (off with) $9.6 million in 2011, as CEO pay was largely in the form of stock awards tied to "performance."

For more particulars about this report, here's a link to an online story in The Seattle Times.

The way some fools have spun this is that shareholder activists can claim a victory of sorts, because the corporate boards aren't just shoveling over as much "pay for pulse" as they once did. More of CEO compensation is tied to "performance," in the form of higher profits.

The U.S. business press, in its usual myopia, does not perceive the hideous structural problem that this represents. The CEOs making a killing now, it appears, are the ones who run their corporations in such a way as to squeeze the maximum profit from American consumers that they possibly can. Bleed them white, milk them dry, and you get more stock awards!

The shareholders are then happy, I suppose. But what of the consumers? Do those schmucks even matter? It would appear that they matter only to the extent that they pay up, to the max -- even if they have to go heavily into debt. And then, of course, the banking companies can own their very souls. It's like a modern version of the company store.

The Seattle story did touch upon the fundamental problem here:

CEOs managed to sell more, and squeeze more profit from each sale, despite problems ranging from a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating to an economic slowdown in China and Europe's debt crisis.

Still, there wasn't much immediate benefit for shareholders. The S&P 500 ended the year unchanged from where it started.

Including dividends, the index returned a slender 2 percent. ...

And the main concern of many shareholders -- that pay is just too much, no matter what the form -- has yet to be addressed.

"It's just that total (compensation) is going up, and that's where the problem lies," says Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

The typical American worker would have to labor for 244 years to make what the typical boss of a big public company makes in one. The median pay for U.S. workers was about $39,300 last year. That was up 1 percent from the year before, not enough to keep pace with inflation.

The main problem is that, even after the sobering experiences of a financial crisis CAUSED by the misconduct of financial institutions themselves, and the Great Recession, the U.S. economy continues to grow top-heavy, prolonging a disturbing (and for most people, painful) trend that's been going on since the late '70s and early '80s.

An illustration of the dilemma lies in a labor anecdote involving UAW legend Walter Reuther (1907-70). A Detroit automaker wheel was showing Reuther the new robots that could perform tasks on the assembly lines.

"Let's see you try to get one of these robots to join your union," the wheel told Reuther with amusement.

Reuther's reply: "Let's see you try to get one of these robots to buy one of your cars."

The further these predators keep pushing ordinary Americans into debt, and the less they pay them, eventually the ordinary schmucks can't afford car payments, or fall behind on them. Then what happens to profits -- and then ultimately, CEO compensation?

A pungent Japanese observation about U.S. corporations is that they think in terms of the next 10 minutes (well, perhaps the coming quarter), while in Japan they think in terms of the next 10 years. Popular depictions are that the Japanese economy hasn't fared well in recent years -- but still, it might be wise to start thinking, as they do, more long-term. Their CEOs certainly don't make even remotely what their American counterparts do, and they pay their common workers comparatively well. They can't claim to have achieved utopia, but their way may ultimately prove more sustainable, long-term, than ours.

In any case, it should be clear by now to "the 99 percent" that what we've got going on here -- capitalism reverted back to its most primitive and cannibalistic forms -- can't go on much longer.

As a parting Memorial Day thought, I suppose there are plenty of "patriotic" Republican types out there who will be honoring those who died, and who returned as basket cases, (please check out this link) on and from the deserts and mountains of the Middle East. Yeah -- they got shot to pieces and blown up so that corporate CEOs could rake in $9.6 mil a year, buy their Montecristo cigars by the box and their single-malt Scotch by the case. Such sacrifice.

Postscript: I forgot to mention that two-thirds of U.S. corporations are effectively paying no income tax. Perhaps these patriots could ante up a little better, given all the glorious profits they are making, so that we could cut that deficit!

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Fracking Could Turn Much Of America Into A Wasteland

By Manifesto Joe

They've already seen a lot of this in rural areas -- the dumping of industrial waste, the fouling of well water, the loss of bucolic hills and trees. But it's not something that just happens in sparsely populated rural areas anymore. It's come to the city.

"Fracking" -- the hydraulic fracturing technique of drilling for fossil fuels -- is now an urban phenomenon. My wife and I live in a large city, and we've got fracking wells less than half a mile from where we live, and in two different directions.

There's still much debate going on about the side effects of this technique, with the Environmental Protection Agency right in the middle. Where we live, what they're exploring for is mainly natural gas, and the gas industry denies any effect on drinking water, and any significant pollution in general.

I've noticed very strong petroleum-like odors in our neighborhood when drilling activity is hot. Also, we've got a large holding pond next to a gas field that's not too far from our house. I haven't noticed any of the neighborhood children trying to go skinny-dipping in that thing.

I suspect that the people who live next to that holding pond have seen their property values plummet, probably far more than any perks they got from selling their subsurface mineral rights. ... Which brings me to another topic.

My wife and I were among the last "holdouts" in our neighborhood. We ignored the landmen for a couple of years, and were getting all sorts of offers in the mail. There's a certain economic logic to this, because we ended up getting about twice as much for our mineral rights as did the schmucks who took the first offer they got.

I wasn't happy about the idea of having gas drilling this close to where I live, anyway. But in Texas, the way I understand the laws governing mineral rights, if you are the last SOB standing in the way of a company's extraction of fossil fuels -- well, in essence, they can just TAKE it from you. If all your neighbors have signed on -- and I know that ours did -- the company has the law on its side to just run right over you.

So, after a long holdout, we signed a lease. Now I almost wish I hadn't done it, since some unpleasant facts about the side effects of "fracking" are coming out.

I don't know very much about the technical end of this, but some areas of America are seeing some very ugly sides of the "fracking" bonanza. Truthout has been doing a lot of good reporting on the subject. Here's a link to one of their most recent posts on this.

A few years into the boom, we're finally seeing city councils and neighborhood associations getting concerned and involved, but in many ways it's far too late. The Trojan Horse, so to speak, is already in the city. I can't understand where a lot of these whiners were when the gas company landmen were tossing all that money around.

There have been serious, lethal explosions result from gas drilling. We're having earthquakes happen all over Texas now, in places that never had them before. People are reporting well water that they can set on fire with a lit match. But to hear the companies tell it, this is all nonsense.

You see, it's common knowledge that rural Texas is rife with rabble-rousing Marxists who live to destroy the lush fruits of unbridled capitalism. They are all making this stuff up, just because they hate to see anybody making a profit.

Well, it's not just in the country anymore. City slickers have gas wells nearby, too. I look at a couple of sites every time I drive to work.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

More Computer Problems -- Hope To Be Back Very Soon

Joe's suspicious that new contributor Geekus Maleekus had something to do with this. He's a confessed computer saboteur.

Hope to have this issue resolved by next week. Hang in there, loyalists! -- MJ