Obama came rolling into office bipartisan guns a-blazin’. He met with congressional Republicans. He met with conservative columnists. He courted, compromised, and curried favor, but never seriously called them out on their incessant whining about insufficient (in their view) tax relief contained within the president’s stimulus plan. Birth control provisions were dropped, tax cuts added. In the end, the stimulus package was far more modest on infrastructure related items than most economists think is demanded by a crisis of this magnitude. (100,000 jobs cut this week alone – good grief!) And yet, when it came to a vote in the House, not one Republican supported it. My first reaction to this news was, well… okay, then can we have the original package back – the one Democrats could have passed two weeks ago? What the hell – the G.O.P. acts like a dog that can’t eat all his food, so he pisses on it. So much for bipartisan good will.

Personally, I think this notion of bipartisanship is way overvalued. For one thing, the ultimate expression of it is the one-party state (and we practically have that now). Aside from that, I don’t see the point in bending over backwards to bring the G.O.P. along if it means adopting a large portion of their program – namely, the same supply-side, deregulatory, neoliberal nonsense that got us into this mess in the first place. Sure, a lot of Democrats – probably most – helped get us here as well, but they have become born-again Keynesians in the face of this almost unprecedented economic meltdown. Republicans are still selling the same old soap as before, whether it’s McCain talking or Boehner or that brown haired buy who isn’t Boehner: tax cuts. Not only that, but “fast-acting” tax cuts… which is to say the same kind as Bush passed (mostly benefiting the rich) with the term “fast-acting” stitched on to make it sound as though the savings would land in anyone’s pocket before May 2010.

They’ve got it ass-backwards, of course. We need to raise taxes on all those folks who made out like bandits over the past 25 years (and particularly since Bush’s last two rounds of tax cuts), including those Merrill execs who took multi-million dollar bonuses home from their failed company. We need to slap excess profit taxes on the oil companies retroactive to the last eighteen months or so. We need to slash the ludicrously bloated Pentagon budget, repurposing the billions mindlessly sluiced into useless aircraft carriers, Virginia-class submarines, joint-strike fighters, and missile defense, into useful projects. We should do all this and more, whether Republicans sit on their hands or not.

He’s back. New Yorkers now have a new senator, a relatively conservative Democrat named Kirsten Gillibrand whom animal rights activists have dubbed “New York’s Sarah Palin” (with some justice, as she is a gun nut / hunting freak). A bit unnerving to me was the sight of Al D’Amato on the podium at her public introduction… standing right behind her. Apparently he’s an old family friend. Gaaaack. It took us 18 years to get that asshole out of the Senate… only so that Patterson could name one of his surrogates. Some justice there.

luv u,

jp

Welcome to the third presidency of this humble blog. I started posting this screed back in 1999. (Who can doubt that cawing pterodactyls carried my postings to the server in their enormous, leathery beaks?) Certainly this is the most highly anticipated administration of the three and, I firmly believe, of the past 40 years. The phenomenal crowd at Obama’s inauguration was evidence of that. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen so many people that happy to be standing out in the cold. Expectations are high, no doubt of that…. perhaps unreasonably so. Still, it is a little hard not to feel uplifted by that spectacle, just as the sight of those people in Chicago on election night was something of a thrill. It makes you feel as though we’ve arrived at a whole different kind of place in America, even if just for a moment. Nice feeling. Though, speaking personally, an even nicer feeling was had when I saw Bush climb aboard that helicopter and fly away, far far away, to the land of yesteryear. Gone for good… and I do mean “good”. That was worth the price of my ticket.

Well, that part is over. And here comes the next thing. Untangling the unholy mess that Bush and company made of the economy is going to be the fight of the century, particularly if we are going to attempt to move the nation in a progressive direction for a difference. Will Obama’s stimulus package accomplish this? Not in and of itself. (That one-third portion of G.O.P.-appeasing tax cuts, certainly not.) But I can tell you, there must be something worth doing in there, because the Republican leadership is screaming bloody murder. You can hear the whining from outer space. Some freak G.O.P. congressman was on MSNBC complaining that infrastructure projects would take two years to get rolling and that direct aid to states in the form of unemployment benefits and food stamps would run out in two years. No shit, congressman. Any other insights you’d like to share? Clearly, these fuckers would prefer more massive tax cuts to the richest Americans, since this is the only kind of “stimulus” they seem to understand. Trouble is, they don’t work. Whether or not they agree with the Obama package, you’d think current circumstances would compel them to admit that the same old thing is not what we need right now.

We’d be well advised to keep this in mind: those who wish to undo the remnants of the New Deal and the Great Society are hoping to use this crisis towards that end. And don’t think I’m singling out Republicans – there are plenty of Democrats on that bandwagon as well. As Naomi Klein has pointed out more than once, natural disasters, wars, and economic upheaval present great opportunities to roll back public goods, like social programs, public housing, etc. People are in shock and disoriented to the point where the powerful can pull the rug out on them before they even know what’s happening. You can hear the mutterings about this now. For instance, we have just witnessed massive infusions of public cash into private enterprise. That has not to any reasonable extent translated into public ownership of those companies. Instead, I keep hearing the topic of “entitlements” being raised as something that must be addressed. Is that how we are to pay the tab for A.I.G., Goldman, and CitiGroup?

So… sure, I celebrate the end of another Bush era – one particularly more noxious than the first. That said, we will need to be particularly vigilent in the months ahead.

luv u,

jp

I expect you saw one or more of the closing performances put in by our erstwhile commander in chief. The last, his farewell address to the nation, was a flaccid medley of his most oft-repeated themes, a bit tired-sounding after eight years, but drafted semi-competently for Bush by whoever is left to do these things at the White House. This was Bush the product – the visionary warrior-prince with the wry “by crackee” half-grin and glint of optimism. For my money, the final press conference provided a far more honest portrait of the man. This is the Bush we really knew – arrogant and dismissive; an obvious imbecile who talks down to you; a man constitutionally incapable of admitting error and for all appearances utterly delighted with the very thought of himself. For him, the presidency is an intensely personal experience – so much so that he seems to measure every trial he put the nation through by its effect on his demeanor.

It was a pretty amazing performance. I wonder what any sane psychiatrist (i.e. not Charles Krauthammer) would make of Bush’s decision to term the absence of WMD in Iraq as a “disappointment”? Yes… how disappointing it must have been for him personally when the facts on the ground failed to conspire with the fictions he and his administration feverishly spun around that sorry nation. Here is what he had to say about his critics:

“I view those who get angry and yell and say bad things and, you know, all that kind of stuff, it’s just a very few people in the country. I don’t know why they get angry. I don’t know why they get hostile.”

I hardly need to comment on this, but what seems most striking is his depiction of people’s anger as baseless. He has obviously made millions angry over the past eight years with one disastrous decision after another, one cynical (if clumsy) deception after another. But that’s in that other country he’s never been to… that country called the United States.

Then there was the stuff he said about Katrina. The thing about the “helicopter drivers” rescuing people on rooftops was just kind of non-sequitur, of course. What was fascinating was the fact that, of all his administration’s failings during that disaster, the item that appears to have stuck in his tiny mind (he “thought long and hard” about this) was his decision not to land Air Force One in Baton Rouge.

“The problem with that and — is that law enforcement would have been pulled away from the mission. And then your questions, I suspect, would have been, how could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge, and police officers that were needed to expedite traffic out of New Orleans were taken off the task to look after you?”

Amazing stuff. It’s really all about him, isn’t it?

Of course, he’s not done yet. He and Congress are fully supporting Israel’s rampage in Gaza, even as they attack UN-run shelters for refugees, even as they drop burning white phosphorus on crowded urban neighborhoods. Bush’s diplomatic team is doing its usual slow walk – just as they did during the Lebanon attack in 2006 – giving Israel as much time as possible to burn its way to its objectives. They’ve got the blood of hundreds of innocents on their hands, including more than 250 children, and it’s not over yet.

Bush is going out the way he came in: an insufferable fool, presiding over needless slaughter. He’ll be missed.

luv u,

jp

Well, I’d been expecting to see it right along – the 1.000-word diatribe from Chuck Krauthammer in support of Israel’s rampage in Gaza. And it did not disappoint… it contains all of the elements that make Krauthammer’s screeds extra special: the hollow moralism, the chilling portraits of Palestinian depravity, the meticulous attention to select details coupled with a total neglect of even recent (i.e. the past year’s) history. One brief example – he cited 6,464 rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza on southern Israel over the past three years. Since we’re counting, I wonder if anyone has bothered to calculate the number of munitions expended by Israel on that sorry strip of land over the same period? No, I thought not. Never once does Krauthammer so much as suggest that Israel bears even minimal responsibility for the massive death and destruction now taking place in Gaza. Quite the contrary, it is Hamas that “is committed to causing the most civilian pain and suffering” while Israel is “committed to saving as many lives as possible.” That fiendish Hamas – using those peace-loving Israeli tanks and warplanes as instruments of terror. Will they stop at nothing?

How, you may ask, does Israel demonstrate their commitment to protecting the innocent? Well, Krauthammer reminds us that they phone warnings to people prior to air strikes. It’s like a wake-up call, except that the voice on the phone tells you your home and everything you value will be incinerated very soon – have a nice day! Of course, the notion that the Israeli government is somehow obsessed with the well-being of the people they bomb would almost be laughable were it not for the landscape of terror it is attempting to conceal – one noxious product of the decades-old policy of dispossession that Israel has pursued relentlessly and Krauthammer (along with most articulate opinion) chooses to ignore. He speaks of Israel as a charitable, enlightened, even somewhat over-indulgent neighbor that graciously allowed the man-beasts living in Gaza the opportunity for self-determination in 2005 when, after 40 years of brutal occupation, they pulled out – an opportunity they squandered, according to Krauthammer. He apparently feels as though Palestinians in Gaza should be grateful for Israel’s largess, even as it kills them by the hundred.

The facts disagree. Israel still controls Gaza – any child can work that out. They control exit and entry on all sides. They control the sea and the air. They have veto power (regularly exercised) over electricity and water supplies, to say nothing of food and medicine. They have been applying that power with great effect over the past two years, since Hamas won legislative elections in 2006, then anticipated the coup Israel and the U.S. worked to foment through compliant elements in Fatah (i.e. Abbas and friends) and drove the Palestinian Authority from the strip. And yet Israel’s apologists, from their ambassador to the U.S., to Krauthammer and his fellow pundits, to the Israel Project’s Meagan Buren, talk as though a.) Israel is bending over backwards to give Gazans what they need, and b.) Gaza is an entity separate unto itself, totally divorced from the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Israel is perpetrating collective punishment on nearly 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, but also on the balance of Palestinian society elsewhere in the territories. While its apologists speak of “peace”, they provide cover for the encroachment of settlements that has taken place consistently over the past 40 years.

Israel – fully supported by the Bush administration – wants to knock Hamas out, not because of scattered rocket attacks on southern Israel, but because they will insist on real concessions from Israel. Krauthammer’s job is obscuring that fact. Would that he were the only one on that beat.

luv u,

jp

Is this the spring of 2002, summer of 2006, or winter of 2009? I’ve lost track. The Israelis are again engaged in using their enormous (largely U.S. supplied) military might to crush a virtually defenseless people they are compelled by international statute to protect, dropping so-called precision weapons on one of the most densely populated parcels of land on earth and blaming the predictable resulting civilian deaths on those they target. Soon their tanks will roll into the open air prison that is Gaza on yet another mad, premeditated mission of murder and rampage, punishing 1.5 million Palestinians for voting the wrong way two years ago and, more fundamentally, for refusing to disappear as a people. Israel’s leaders, once more bloodying the ground for the next election, are intoning the rhetoric of the injured party, the enlightened state that has already endured too much, been too lenient, too forgiving, etc., as they pursue a strategy long in the making to decapitate Hamas while scoring substantial injury on all Palestinians. Their government officials and spokespersons, their surrogates in the American press, and their apologists in our own government repeat the mantra of self defense, likening lowly Hamas to the legions of Hitler (per Netanyahu) when comparisons even to Hizbullah are ludicrously overblown.

Like their depraved campaign in the West Bank in 2002 and the murderous war on Lebanon in 2006, this is the kind of assault that should be taken up by the U.N. Security Council and, ultimately, the Hague. I’m not holding my breath. From around the world, the response has ranged from equivocation to full-throated support for Olmert and Barak’s war. As Ali Abunimah said recently on Democracy Now!, Israel is waging war against a captive population, bombing mosques, hospitals, universities, and refugee camps. It is the most wanton attack against Palestinians in decades, and they are following through on it behind a protective shroud of silence. Israeli policymakers are confident that the United States government will be behind them no matter what they do, and that spineless leaders from Britain to Bahrain will refrain from raising their voices, or merely imply some kind of moral equivalency between the attackers and the victims. When Russia took action against Georgia, the outrage was deafening. Yet Israel bombs the most miserable place on earth, and you can hear crickets.

Let us not forget the genesis of this particular outrage. Hamas won the parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories in 2006. Israel and the U.S. found this unacceptable and immediately began undermining the results of that election, applying pressure on Abu Mazen, their hand-picked Palestinian representative, to move against Hamas. They supplied Fatah with arms and were in the process of stoking a coup in Gaza when Hamas anticipated their move and drove Fatah from the strip in 2007. Since then, the Israelis and the United States have held the Gaza strip under siege, starving its populace, denying basic medical supplies, and generally engaging in collective punishment against the population in hopes that they would turn against Hamas. The vaunted cease-fire has never been observed by Israel, which has run bombing raids on Gaza through the duration. They picked this opportune moment to complete the job Abu Mazen was unable to finish for them more than a year ago.

In 2002, Arafat was the “terrorist” and the obstruction to peace. Now it’s Hamas, precisely because they earned the support of a majority of Palestinians. Hamas is willing to negotiate on equal terms with Israel – that makes them unacceptable. Israel wants a negotiating partner they can roll over and dictate terms to. What we’re seeing is their attempt to ensure that advantage will continue, through air raids that recall Guernica and god knows what else.

Make your voice heard. This killing will stop only if we abandon our silence.

luv u,

jp

Hi again, campers. Back to the Obama to-do list. Since the guy’s on vacation, I imagine he might even be able to find the time to read this one. Pull it up on your blackberry while you’re sitting on the beach. That’s http://www.hammermilldays.com/, Mr. President-Elect. There’s a good chap. This week, domestic policy.

Auto bailout. This is indeed a miserable business. The Bush administration has made such a muddle of the economy that it actually makes some of his other monumental failures pale in comparison. And yet when he came forward with the terms of his proposal, he did so in a somewhat self-righteous way, as if to lecture the industry on its failings. There are plenty of failures to take note of, that’s for sure… but Bush is in no position to criticize, quite frankly. (It’s a bit like Bernie Madoff giving advice on prudent investing.) What is particularly maddening is his focus on the auto workers. In what appears an attempt to throw his fellow Herbert Hoover republicans a bone, he has made the loan offer contingent on substantial labor concessions to bring their wages in line, as he sees it, with those of foreign manufacturers.

Here’s the real joke – UAW workers are making about the same as their non-union counterparts right now. Conservatives like to throw around wild numbers like $73 an hour as somehow representative of UAW scale. That’s what Bush used to call “fuzzy math.” They’re lumping wages together with retiree pensions and benefits and dividing that across the current active workforce. (Labor activist Gregg Shotwell gave a pretty good overview on Democracy Now! last week.) He and the G.O.P. leadership are keen to force some sacrifice on workers, even as corporate executives in the financial industry are still pocketing millions of dollars, including many of those at A.I.G., recipient of more than $150 billion in TARP funds.

This is consistent with the prevailing economic philosophy that favors maximizing corporate profits through outsourcing. As Shotwell explains, the auto companies have been investing overseas for years, so if their U.S. operations fail, they will still have enough assets in other countries to actually start “exporting” cars to the U.S. This would be a much more profitable model for them. Meanwhile, GM’s financial arm, GMAC, has managed to get itself classified as a bank holding company so that it can get a piece of the financial bailout cash. So the car companies can survive even if they employ next to no one in the United States.

Mr. President-Elect – take the workers’ side, for chrissake. If we’re going to try to make the domestic auto industry competitive with foreign auto makers, we’re going to need to move to a single-payer national health plan that provides universal coverage (not some kind of frankenstinian public-private hybrid). That’s what our main competitors have, along with more robust government sponsored pension systems. And if we’re going to bail out the automakers, let’s take an ownership stake in those companies and use that influence to steer them in a better, more sustainable direction that encourages domestic production of more fuel-efficient vehicles, as well as the development of greener mass transit.

Oh… and get a handle on this TARP bailout. These fuckers are walking off with boatloads of cash, and Congress seems unable to do anything about it. Enjoy your vacation.

luv u,

jp

I had resolved to dedicate my blog rambling to a suggestion list for the incoming Obama administration over these few remaining weeks of the Bush II era. (Suggestion #9 – drop the homophobe preacher.) But sometimes events overtake us… events in the shape of a size ten shoe. Actually, two size ten shoes, tossed quite skillfully at the commander in chief himself, who dodged them – also quite skillfully – much as he’s been able (up to this point, at least) to dodge responsibility for the mass death and destruction he has brought down upon Iraq. This was for the widows and orphans and the thousands killed, said Muntazer al-Zaidi as he hummed the second limo at our fearless (or clueless) leader. My first thought was, huh… an anger so pervasive that it was able to penetrate even the octuple security of the Green Zone’s inner sanctum and make the president duck. And, as I’m sure someone has observed, it was no lame duck…. quite adept. Makes me wonder if people chuck things at him more than we know. (Barney, perhaps?)

Be that as it may, al-Zaidi’s act of defiance resonated throughout the poorer quarters where the despised of both Bush and Saddam claw their way through life, and far beyond. Is this as close as Bush will ever come to a genuine “accountability moment”, as he puts it? Perhaps. Prospects for any kind of constitutional come-uppance appear to be nil at this point, and it seems unlikely that he’ll see his day in court (this side of the Hague, anyway). There may be a broad recognition of this fact, perhaps even global in scope, bringing expectations of justice so low that even this purely symbolic effort takes on tremendous significance. Who hasn’t felt frustrated that Bush may be sailing obliviously off into a comfortable sunset, convinced of his own righteousness? In a world of misery made worse by his tenure, who hasn’t wanted to chuck that shoe… or at least hoped to see it chucked by someone else?

Particularly in Iraq, the feeling is more than understandable. To this day there is no real acknowledgement of the degree to which Iraqis have suffered as a result of this invasion, just as there remains to be any acknowledgement of how much they had suffered under the preceding dozen years of truly murderous economic sanctions and the destruction of the 1991 Gulf War. Their resentment of American intervention in their nation has been evident from day one. Even when our military orchestrated the pull-down of Saddam’s statue in the square packed with Chalabi’s people, cordoned off from the general public, they couldn’t keep signs of resistance out of the carefully composed television images. I can remember the flustered T.V. commentator reading on-air the sign that read “Go Home You U.S. Wankers”, fully expecting it to be some kind of celebratory message. In the midst of a whirlwind of triumphalist press about our successful invasion and drive to Baghdad, there was that irrepressible anomaly that presaged the great unraveling that was to follow.

Have we arrived at another such moment? Will Bush actually be held to account, along with other members of his administration? Has he unfurled the “mission accomplished” banner a bit prematurely once again? We can only wait and see if there is yet one more shoe to drop.

luv u,

jp

Another segment of suggestions for president-elect Obama as he completes what feels like the longest presidential transition ever. Before I get into that, however, I will briefly join the chorus of people sounding off on Illinois governor Blagojevich and his jaw-dropping, bald-faced, kleptocratic frenzy to fill Obama’s senate seat with the ass of the highest bidder. I think of myself as a fairly jaded individual, generally speaking, having trawled through the sludge of American politics most of my life on one level or another (never a very elevated one)… and yet somehow that transcript of Blagojevich saying “this thing is [fucking] golden” struck me as, well, appalling and depressing, even as it made me laugh. Just the sheer mind-numbing greed of it made me think, as Keith Olbermann said the other day, of Zero Mostel in the original movie “The Producers” … “Oh! I want that money!!” Holy shit.

Anyway, back to another Illinois politician of note, a certain Barack Obama. This week, domestic policy. (No, I’m not done with foreign policy…. just need a break.)

Health Care. National Health Care is too expensive – that’s what we’ve heard year after year, my entire life through. And yet when major banks and investment houses start to cave in on their glorified ponzi schemes, it’s declared a national emergency and we somehow put our hands on the hundreds of billions it takes to float their pirate ships again. Why isn’t the collapse of our health care system a national emergency? The 44 million without coverage – not an emergency? The millions more underinsured and one illness away from bankruptcy – not an emergency? The constant upward pressure in costs that is driving even those with decent insurance closer to the brink – not an emergency?

I think Obama recognizes that something needs to be done, but I’m concerned that “something” will be a series of half-measures. We need a national health system, similar to the Canadian / European model. The current highly privatized insurance system is bankrupting workers, strangling employers, and spinning out of control. It will take something far more comprehensive than a few tweaks and some computerized records to make it work the way it needs to. And don’t let them tell you we don’t have the resources, because we do. We spend an enormous amount right now on a system that doesn’t work. We can certainly afford one that does.

Poverty. Poverty is growing in America. People who had relatively secure middle-class lives a few years ago are now wearing cardboard belts and eating out of local food pantries. Unfortunately, the only tall politician with good hair (i.e. not Kucinich) who talked about this has felled himself with a tawdry sex scandal, in effect bringing the entire issue down with him. (Very costly affair, wouldn’t you say?) Obama needs to take up this gauntlet. Poor people may not vote in large enough numbers to constitute a reliable electoral block, but that doesn’t mean they should be ignored. “The poor” is not a static population… people of relative means fall into poverty all the time. We need to press for policies that will bring about full employment, repair the social safety net, and stop punishing people for not having money.

Okay, I’m through with you for this week. You can record your radio address now.

luv u,

jp

The president elect is getting an earful from just about everybody these days, not surprisingly. (His impossibly lame successor is now fully occupied with patching his own image. More on this later.) Surely the O-man won’t mind hearing from one more stranger, one more time. Let’s find out. Here are a few more things to bug him about.

Somalia. Our government has been pumping cash into the Ethiopian regime for years, despite (or perhaps because of) their poor record on human rights, and in 2006 we assisted them in the invasion of Somalia, throwing that sorry nation into another tailspin of chaotic bloodletting (more than a decade of which it had only recently extricated itself from). Apparently the Bush administration had a problem with Somalia’s ruling Council of Islamic Courts, claiming it was run by Al Qaida operatives – a claim that had about as much credibility as the White House’s claims about Saddam Hussein’s bin Laden ties. (I’m not talking fancy neckwear, here.) Between the indiscriminate violence of the Ethiopian military, U.S. air strikes, and resurgent warlordism, as many as 10,000 Somalis have died in the last two years as a result of this invasion.

Our strategic interest in the horn of Africa stems from the early days of the Iranian revolution, when the Carter administration was looking for a replacement for Washington’s close ally in the region, the Shah. They found one in Somalia’s dictator at that time, Mohammed Siad Barre, whose corrupt regime received hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from the Reagan/Bush I administrations before collapsing of its own torturous weight in the early 1990s. The Council of Islamic Courts was not a Jeffersonian democracy, but it was better than the chaos that had prevailed in Somalia after our long “assistance”. (Not an unusual result – think Afghanistan; think Haiti…) That is too valuable a piece of real estate, apparently, for us to relinquish, sitting so conveniently just across the Gulf of Aden from the Arabian Peninsula. Our imperial hooks are still in that carcass. Obama needs to pull them out.

Haiti. Speaking of Haiti. This is the coup that was. (Venezuela is the coup that wasn’t.) In 2004, with the support of Bush and the crew, a bunch of thugs drove President Aristide from power and into exile, the U.S. obligingly flying him (unbeknownst to the Haitian leader) to the Central African Republic, an amazingly remote nation that apparently owed us a favor. Four years later, Aristide lives in exile in South Africa as his nation struggles to regain its footing under the nominal leadership of Rene Preval, who presides while Washington holds a gun to his head. Time for this outrage to stop. Haitians want Aristide to return – let it happen.

Tell Obama what you’re thinking at http://change.gov/ – rumor has it they read the posts. We’ll see.

Bushcapades. While his minions work feverishly to wreck everything they didn’t get around to wrecking in the last eight years, Bush has been making the rounds, giving talks (inspired by bacon boy Karl Rove) to patch up his well-deserved bad image. Bush’s vision of the middle east was criticized for being too “idealistic”, per the president. Not the first word that comes to mind.

luv u,

jp