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
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Sunday, August 19, 2012
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
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
Saturday, August 18, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, August 17, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
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
Again, this is Professor Eric Hobsbawm, (1917- ), recorded in January. -- MJ
Saturday, August 11, 2012
'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.
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.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
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.
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.
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.
Monday, July 30, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, July 20, 2012
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
Monday, July 9, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, July 2, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, June 29, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
'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.
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.
Monday, June 18, 2012
'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
An afterthought: One thing I always wondered about was -- how could those dudes keep their beards out of the food? -- mj
Sunday, June 17, 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
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
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
Sunday, June 3, 2012
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.
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.
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