Thursday, September 23, 2010

LAST CHANCE - September 23, 2010

The key to the coming election, if there is one at all, is that this is the last chance for the populace to avoid the devastating consequence that would attend a GOP control of the US Congress. While I fully agree with the dismay of the People over the leadership of the Dem Party offered in this time of desperate crisis by Barack Obama, the imposition of the consequences upon the People of that failure of the Enlightenment’s ability to foresee and manage the affairs of the nation would be ruinous not only for the next 2 years, but for however long it would require to resuscitate the economy after that. We have seen how hard it has been to make any improvements after the catastrophic Bush-Cheney regime, and the legacy imposed upon us in the form of the manic Supreme Court will only grow worse. The People can punish Obama for failing to remedy things quickly without their support, but it is we, not he, that will bear the burden of joblessness, homelessness, and despair if we put things back into their hands. The starkness of that choice must be made clear to them right now. Another month of nursing our disappointment and annoyance will fall, unfortunately, on those seeking revenge for the slowness of response that seems to have eluded Mr. Obama’s dream of securing consensus for the methods of recovery that match his bipartisan hopes. Unfortunately, little people like me have no means to stand against the power that the SC has conferred on the wealth of the plutocracy to deliver the mechanisms of persuasion to a somnolent populace. The only voice loud enough to be heard, not to say credited, is that of Obama, not only President, but also said to be the leader of the Dem Party. It is we, the People, who will bear the true costs of having our precious Economy degenerate into a peculiar form of plutocratic servitude if it falls into the half-witted control of the unthinking mob that is the Tea Party. It is now over 2 millennia since Plato, and his ghost of the future is facing us today.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

TRUMPET - Thursday, September 16, 2010

It is possible that Obama has issued forth the trumpet that will never call retreat, though in any case, it is an uncertain trumpet, and late at that. In any case, there is the hope that it will not be like W’s trumpets. That one was full of promise after promise and those were all that we were offered, while his owners in the proprietor class were satisfied aplenty, due to the ministrations of Cheney. Still, it was a lesson in how easily the US people could be satisfied by talk, if it seemed full enough. But if one is going to play very hard ball, there are positions that Obama has the power to take and which would confirm his alleged concern with the vast majority of the people at the center of the income pyramid.It has been abundantly obvious from Election Day 08 that the GOP strategy was one of total obstruction, aimed at delivering a record of uselessness for the Dems. And once that was seen, the strategy of seeking to seduce them with sweetness and compromise was as dead as it could be. If the Dems could not be rallied to confront venom with anger, then that has given us the impasse we confront today. And if they will not take advantage of the fact that they have a lot of power left, in both the veto and the power of appointment, then they become the owners of the impotent mess that half-measures and failed compromise cannot cure. If that is their destiny, then it is possible to commit themselves to battle, sound the trumpet and let slip the dogs of war, to mix the metaphor. It is better to go down fighting for a worthy cause than to allow the hirelings of the plutocracy to bring a decent offer of participation to degenerate into a policy that will allow one’s self to be nibbled into impotence. There are still troops ready to fight the good fight, if one can believe the leader’s devotion. But the promise of compromise has proven to be a door to failure in this case, and we should not see Obama beaten by relying on a dream of decency from GOP.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

TRUMPET - September 9, 2010

It is possible that Obama has issued forth the trumpet that will never call retreat, though in any case, it is an uncertain trumpet, and late at that. In any case, there is the hope that it will not be like W’s trumpets. That one was full of promise after promise and those were all that we were offered, while his owners in the proprietor class were satisfied aplenty, due to the ministrations of Cheney. Still, it was a lesson in how easily the US people could be satisfied by talk, if it seemed full enough. But if one is going to play very hard ball, there are positions that Obama has the power to take and which would confirm his alleged concern with the vast majority of the people at the center of the income pyramid. It has been abundantly obvious from Election Day 08 that the GOP strategy was one of total obstruction, aimed at delivering a record of uselessness for the Dems. And once that was seen, the strategy of seeking to seduce them with sweetness and compromise was as dead as it could be. If the Dems could not be rallied to confront venom with anger, then that has given us the impasse we confront today. And if they will not take advantage of the fact that they have a lot of power left, in both the veto and the power of appointment, then they become the owners of the impotent mess that half-measures and failed compromise cannot cure. If that is their destiny, then it is possible to commit themselves to battle, sound the trumpet and let slip the dogs of war, to mix the metaphor. It is better to go down fighting for a worthy cause than to allow the hirelings of the plutocracy to bring a decent offer of participation to degenerate into a policy that will allow one’s self to be nibbled into impotence. There are still troops ready to fight the good fight, if one can believe the leader’s devotion. But the promise of compromise has proven to be a door to failure in this case, and we should not see Obama beaten by relying on a dream of decency from GOP.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

DUE PROCESS - September 2, 2010

It is interesting to see how the processes of law impact differently on people of differing social positions and resources. I am looking today at the behavior of the legal process in the cases of ex-Governor Blagojevich of IL and ex-House whip Delay of TX. In the one case, he was overheard bemoaning that it was not possible for him to cash in on a unique opportunity to profit from his political position, as so many others had done before him, and in the other, he was proven to have profited from his own. The apparent logic seems to be that Blagojevich was revealed to be greedy, though unavailing, while Delay was shown to be successfully corrupt, if possibly not proven beyond reasonable doubt. In the one case, Blagojevich was shown to be a Bad Man, and the federal attorney has promised to have him punished for the moral lapse, while the other managed to get his case dismissed by the Department of Justice (?) because doubt about its legal certainty hangs on a thin thread. Of course, Delay comes from TX, a state almost as widely considered morally corrupt as IL, except that he found a way to collect his booty with support from those who share his degree of exemption from the fingers of the Law. In fact, the situation of those exposed as morally corrupt is that they can be punished without any such due process, while “solid citizens” can often get away with open flouting of the law. TX conservatives, of course, are considered solid citizens, and their Party stands behind them, so Obama’s administration turns them free. Meanwhile, the US Attorney has made himself the agent of the Wrath of God, so that anything so strict and formal as certainty is not required when harassing a Democrat of working class roots. In this administration, the nature of one’s persona might be sufficient to respect the façade of a GOP grandee, while Obama’s regime might otherwise extract vengeance in a case of bare suspicion.