Good Friday

Arbitration: A lose/lose for consumers

One of my favorite Texans (and that’s a very small group) Jim Hightower writes a long, devastating critique of the arbitration clauses that are now a mandatory part of so many contracts we sign on a regular basis. Hidden deep in the fine print when we apply for a credit card, purchase an item or sign up for a service, very few of us even know these clauses exist until there is a problem, and then it’s too late.

Arbitration has been sold to us by companies and pro-business organizations as a fairer, faster and less cumbersome alternative to litigation, but in reality these clauses are a “Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free” card for corporations who, surprise, almost always come out on top. Hightower provides background on the slow and insidious way that corporate America rigged the system and left consumers virtually helpless when it comes to getting justice. 

Current Affairs Quiz

It’s time to play, “Guess the real headline.” They say truth is stranger than fiction, but who are “they” and why don’t they identify themselves? Anyway, one of the headlines below is the real deal, ripped from today’s news. The others will probably be real headlines in a day or two. For successfully identifying the authentic headline, a toothless hermit living in a Bavarian cave will light a candle in your honor.

1. North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un Says He Will Start WWIII If Adam Sandler Does Not Receive An Honorary Academy Award
2. Tea Party Boycotting FOX News for Being Too Liberal
3. Rick Perry Appoints Himself President of Texas
4. NRA Claims Guns Don’t Kill People, Bullets Do
5. Chicago Cubs Preseason Pick to Win It All
6. Ford Is Bringing Back the Edsel

(If you picked number 2, you spend too much time internetting)

Batty Bachmann Behaving Badly

Minnesota’s favorite loon, Congressperson Michele Bachmann, is facing a congressional ethics probe. The article in today's Daily Beast offers a laundry list of accusations being leveled against Bachmann from people who worked on her recent presidential campaign.

Shit happens when you live in an alternate universe. Confusing right-wing propaganda and slurs with facts, the Tea Party Darling is a living legend when it comes to jaw-dropping misstatements and hallucinatory pronouncements. If you have heard only a fraction of the ludicrous, fact-challenged utterances from Bachmann over the years, you know that she is a proud member of the unreality-based world. So it should come as little surprise that she would ignore the rules and regulations of a reality that she does not acknowledge.

One can only hope she is ultimately saved from herself and admitted to an institution that is equipped to deal with people who are untethered from the existence in which most of us find ourselves. Congress, unfortunately, is filled with far too many enablers.

Who are the adults in the room?

One of the interesting tendencies of many on the far right is to portray themselves as the adults (read “patriarchs”) in the room, while liberals and progressives are the noisy children with their heads stuck forever in the clouds. Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly et. al and countless Republican politicians have all used this metaphor at one time or another as a way of framing themselves as (to use Krugman’s words) Serious People.

The problem is, when you look at the evidence, a thing Serious People don’t have the time or inclination to do, you find that the metaphor doesn’t really pan out. Surprise, surprise. No. In fact, when it comes to childlike behavior, well, you know where I’m going with this. Ask yourself who more often displays these traits, the Loony Left or our friends on the far right edge of the scale.

• The schoolyard bully: Derides you if you don’t agree with him. If you prove him wrong, he becomes irrationally angry and hurls threats and insults. Likes to intimidate people. Believes violence is an acceptable way to settle disputes.
• The kid who claims he’s going to hold his breath until he gets what he wants: Doesn’t listen to reason, he only wants what he wants when he wants it. Won’t accept any alternative to what he feels he deserves. Sees himself as the center of the universe and his desires as more important than anyone else’s.
• The kid who laughs loudest when someone trips and hurts themselves: He lacks empathy and has a child’s sense of humor, which is broad slapstick that usually involves somebody getting hurt or embarrassed. Doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to appreciate subtlety or satire.
• Teacher’s pet: Slavishly worships authority. Will do or say whatever it takes to ingratiate himself with the person in charge. Has no moral compass, and will side with authority figures almost without question.
• The snotty rich kid: Feels those who are not rich are beneath him and deserve what they get. Refuses to believe that there are real-world obstacles that keep people poor and powerless. Only rarely says it out loud, but believes the majority of people are lazy and unmotivated and that he deserves what he as acquired because he is more gifted than most.

Here we go again. This time it's Syria.

On the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a totally unnecessary war that cost thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and trillions of dollars, we have a cadre of armchair generals in the Capital (both Republicans and Democrats) calling for America to intervene militarily in Syria based on second-hand reports of rebels using chemical weapons. Some are already calling for boots on the ground.

Jesus H. Christ. Where do these morons come from? Why are they in positions of power? Why do we keep sending soulless, callous, clueless dolts to Washington to vote on matters of life and death? No country that continues voting for people like Michele Bachmann, Lindsey Graham, and yes, even Dianne Feinstein, can stand the test of time.

Our elected officials seem determined to keep us in a state of never-ending war, constantly sending young men and women off to a jungle or a desert to die or be maimed for life to satisfy the blood lust of a fading empire and war profiteers who are already rolling in piles of gold.

I make a modest, but serious, proposal. Any elected official in congress who votes for war or any military action involving violence must either a) have served in the military or b) have an immediate family member serving in the military. They are so anxious to send off faceless, nameless Americans to die in foreign countries, maybe, just maybe, they might be a bit more reflective and cautious if they were involving someone they loved in the bloodshed.

It will never happen, but maybe someone has a better way to stop the war madness that plagues America’s elites. 

Ten Years After

On the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, this is Donald Rumsfeld's Twitter post for today:

"10 yrs ago began the long, difficult work of liberating 25 mil Iraqis. All who played a role in history deserve our respect & appreciation."

Thanks Donald. Here's what you deserve:

Beyond Atheism

They say as you grow older you tend to become more religious. This makes some sense as one draws closer and closer to life’s exit door. I’m just the opposite. Organized religion looks more and more childish to me as time passes and I wonder how anyone with any education can really believe such contradictory and unsubstantiated nonsense as that found in the Bible, Koran, etc. Religions are basically collections of stories, many of which have been passed down from the dawn of human consciousness. These stories are attempts to explain the unexplainable and ease the terror of those living in a world that on the surface makes very little sense.

 The questions are profound. Why do we die? Is death final? Why do good people fail and bad people prosper? Why must we suffer so much? Does life have any meaning? We still have no answers to these questions, but we do have stories, and if you believe they are true, they provide structure to the universe. God created us. Yes we die, but after our physical bodies fail, our spirits go somewhere else that is wonderful. In that spiritual world, good people are rewarded and bad people are punished. Life does have meaning if you follow God’s rules.

Comforting stories, but stories nonetheless filled with magic and contradictions. For instance, we are told in the Bible that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, the seeds of the human race. They had two sons. Think about that. Make sense? It’s an origin story and there are hundreds more like it from different cultures and parts of the world. Stories of a great flood predate the Bible. Noah and the ark? Forget about it. So does rejecting organized religion make me an atheist? Not really.

I think science is slowly leading us to the realization that there are other realities that exist beyond, or perhaps alongside, the one which we experience. Just think about the past 100 years and the new worlds we have discovered from black holes to DNA to subatomic particles to the recent confirmation of the Higgs Boson, the so-called God Particle. We’ve unlocked all of these previously mysterious worlds in a mere century of scientific research. Think what the next century will bring.

What animates living things? Some call it a soul or spirit, but I call it energy. We exist in an animated form for 70 or 80 years and then we die, our physical bodies wear out, entropy, and our energy leaves our corporal being. The promising part of this scenario is that science tells us that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but only take another form, so the energy that animates us when we are alive is not destroyed when we die, but merely takes another form. It’s possible that our energy simply dissipates into the universe, but it is also possible it exists in another reality. Based on the trajectory of scientific discoveries, I think we will someday come to the realization that our reality is only one of many that exist in time and space.

Ironically, science is taking me beyond atheism. I don’t make any claims to know what exists beyond our own reality—no streets paved with gold or 72 virgins at my beck and call, and I think at this point it is unknowable, but I am growing convinced that our energy, that thing which animates us, exists beyond our physical death in some state. It doesn’t seem implausible to me anymore, but then, that exit sign is closer today than it was yesterday.

Crystal Ballz

I got an email today from something called Gold Psychics offering me a free opportunity to ask a psychic a question. I wrote back saying, “The answer is 32. What is the question?” Haven’t gotten a response yet.

Drones Over Peoria?

In the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration began asserting the need for a stronger executive branch (dusting off their “unitary executive” theory) under the guise of the threat of terrorism. A president needed to act quickly and decisively to protect the country from another devastating terrorist attack, they argued, and, according to Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld, that meant giving the president new powers to capture and kill real and potential threats to the U.S. So over the remaining years of his Administration, Bush, with the help of the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act, assumed, more power to act unilaterally, resulting in Guantanamo Bay and black sites worldwide.

Of course, Bush’s second term ended in 2008 and a new President was elected. Unfortunately, the powers that Bush’s team coopted in the heat of a terrorist attack were quickly adopted by the new President, Barack Obama. And what would you expect? If you were the CEO of a company and your board of directors gave you sweeping new powers, would you, as the new CEO, rescind those powers? Probably not. One thing rulers are loathe to do is give up powers that they have. So fast forward to today, and you have the announcement that the Obama Administration believes it can use lethal force against American citizens on American soil under certain circumstances. This means if the President feels you are a threat, he can use drones to wipe you out. In Peoria or Denver or New Orleans. No arrest. No trial. No due process. Just “boom,” you’re dead.

Now Barack Obama seems like a sensible guy, and I’m sure others in his administration are just as sane and mentally stable as he is. They have all convinced themselves, and are trying to convince us, that of course no one is going to have to order the bombing of a house in Peoria. We’re sensible, rational people. You can trust us.

Uh, no we can’t. And that is why we have a Constitution. The Constitution is supposed to be our (the people’s) safeguard against the accumulation of too much power in the hands of too few leaders. That was the point of creating three branches of government as opposed to simply appointing a President (or king) to rule as he or she saw fit. Thanks to Bush and his posse of neocons, we now have an executive branch that thinks it has the power to be judge, jury and executioner under certain circumstances. And they get to determine the circumstances.

While Obama may be reasonable, what about the next President or the next? What if we elected a shoot-first-ask-questions-later cowboy like Rick Perry? Do you want him deciding who’s a threat to America and who isn’t? During the Occupy movement’s brief kerfuffle, the FBI categorized them as a terrorist group. The potential for abuse here is massive.

Defenders of the drone decision like to use hypothetical situations as evidence that the President needs this power. What about a guy strapped with explosives walking into a football stadium? That kind of thing. We are a nation of laws. The police already have the power and authority to stop a madman from hurting others, either by arresting him or, if the threat is imminent, shooting him. If there are people plotting terrorist attacks, they should be arrested and tried. Let the justice system determine their guilt and punishment, not a small cadre of government employees in a White House office.

The drone decision is frightening in its implications and we should all be letting Washington know that it is an unacceptable abuse of executive power.

Eight former Drug Enforcement Administration chiefs want the federal government to immediately sue states that legalize marijuana to nullify the legislation

News or Propaganda? Who Cares?

If you missed the story late last week, Breitbart.com editor at large Ben Shapiro broke a story indicating Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel took money from a group called "Friends of Hamas.”  The “scoop” was picked up by FOX News and reported as fact. Unfortunately for everyone involved, there is no group called Friends of Hamas and the story was blown up from a joke made by someone to a GOP source. What’s interesting in the aftermath is that a) Shapiro and Breitbart.com reject the idea that they did anything wrong by publishing the story as an allegation, and b) FOX News had the sketchy editor Shapiro on a show acting as a knowledgeable Washington pundit.

What the Media Matters article fails to point out is that in the conservative media bubble, news and propaganda are the same thing. What we consider news; reasonably objective stories based on verifiable facts, is not what the conservatives consider news. For them, it’s only news if it embarrasses Obama, makes liberals look bad or makes America look good. Facts are not part of that equation. Studies have clearly shown that FOX News viewers are the least well-informed consumers of television news. So it should come as little surprise that Shapiro sees nothing wrong with his unfounded smear of Hagel. 

Worship me or I'll hold my breath until I turn blue

Iraq: An Unwelcome Anniversary Approaches

There has been a hew and cry over the past few years that no major Wall Street honchos have gone to jail related to criminal acts leading up to the 2008 financial meltdown from which this country is still trying to recuperate. And so there should be. However, as much as I think these white collar criminals should pay for their crimes, and as much damage as they did to ruin the financial futures of millions of Americans, they did not send our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, off to a foreign country to kill and die under false pretenses.  

Ten years ago this March 19, President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq. Aided and abetted by administration neocons Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney and others, Bush lied us into a war that went on for nine years, cost $3 trillion dollars, and resulted in the deaths of nearly 5,000 Americans and over 100,000 Iraqis. There were no WMDs, and Saddam Hussein was not working with Al Qaeda. What a decade of investigative reporting has uncovered, is that far from the blundering incompetents they are made out to be by some, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others knew they were starting a war under false pretenses. They had planned to topple Hussein from the earliest days of the Bush Administration.

If anyone should be tried for anything, it should be Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for instigating a disaster of epic proportions that continues to have negative ramifications for our country a decade later. These people are war criminals and should be treated as such. They used 9/11 as a pretext to rain war down on a country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on America, and had the gall to ridicule and marginalize those who disagreed with their rush to battle.

The roadblock to justice is that there was such widespread collusion among America’s elites and the media that no one wants to open up that Pandora’s Box of embarrassment. Not to mention that even though he opposed the Iraq war, President Obama seems to have no desire to pursue criminal charges against an ex-president, especially now that he has drone blood on his hands.

I’m afraid our only hope is that we will have history on the side of truth, but even then, it’s a toss up at this point as to what the “official” history of the Iraq war will be. George Orwell knew well the dangers of relying on history for truth when he wrote, “He who controls the past, controls the future; and he who controls the present, controls the past.”

2013

I want to write a sequel to Orwell’s 1984. I’m going to call it 2013. Clever, huh?  Basically, it’s set in a country where the citizens are under the influence of very subtle and sophisticated mind control techniques that, like a drug, lull them into believing they live in the greatest country in the world, when in fact the government is very evil and corrupt.  

I’ve been jotting down some notes about this fictional country. It’s an updated version of Oceania, where the techniques used to control society are much more modern and sophisticated. Here are some thoughts:

• Although the government does not control the media outright, the major media channels—newspapers, magazines, television, radio—are all owned by a small group of companies that tightly monitor content. Despite the appearance of a free flow of information, messages are limited to those that support unfettered capitalism, corporate ideology and the status quo. Alternative views and dissenting voices are marginalized and ridiculed. 
• A huge, bloated military establishment is sold to the people as necessary for the country’s defense. It is unpatriotic to criticize the defense industry or its budget. Small-scale wars are fought continuously around the world to justify the trillions of dollars spent on the military.
• Whistleblowers, those who speak out against government and corporate abuses and excesses, are punished.
• Groups opposing the status quo are treated as terrorist organizations.
• The richest 1% of the population, the true elites, control the vast majority of the country’s wealth.
• Elections are tightly controlled so that only candidates who support the status quo and the aims of the capitalist elites are considered serious contenders to be the country’s leader.
• Leaders of the country claim the right to kill suspected enemies anywhere in the world at anytime.
• Intelligence agencies routinely monitor citizens by tapping telephones, intercepting Internet communications and mail, and infiltrating organizations based on nothing more than hunches and guesses. Presumption of innocence no longer exists.
• The government operates behind a thick veil of secrecy, which people are told is necessary for the country’s defense.

So what do you think? Too outlandish? I realize it is a stretch to create a country like this where the citizens would allow such treatment and not rise up in revolt, but stranger things have happened. 

Look at Obama's Actions, Not His Words

Many liberal publications have gone ga-ga over the President’s SOTU speech last night. “A liberal agenda for his last term.” A progressive road map.” People, people, people. Haven’t we been through this before? Like, oh, the 2008 presidential campaign? Change. Lofty ideals. Progressive buzzwords. Changing the way Washington works. Transparency. Bring the troops home. Help for the middle class. What did we get? Drone wars. Less transparency than the Bush Administration. An administration stacked with Washington and Wall Street insiders. Capitulation. Half-hearted economic policies.

The SOTU was the classic Obama bait and switch. He presses all the liberal and progressive hot buttons in his speech, but when he gets back to the Oval Office it’s Washington business as usual — more war, candy for Wall Street and the head-smacking insistence on trying to negotiate with an opposition party fighting intellectual battles the rest of the world moved past in the nineteenth century.  

Obama is no liberal. As Chomsky noted, Obama would have fallen into the category of moderate Republican not too many years ago. It is way too premature to get excited over a speech with lots of pretty liberal words. The President has given many speeches. It’s his actions that are important. We can start by looking at whom he’s appointing to fill open cabinet vacancies. It’s hardly a bunch of liberal firebrands, but old Washington war horses who have zero interest in changing the way things work in the nation’s capital.

It was a nice speech last night, but Obama’s initial actions are not a promising start to a new term.

A Match Made in Hell

On the heels of his announcement he would be attending tonight’s State of the Union Address, rocker and NRA board member Ted Nugent made a startling revelation this morning that is sending shockwaves through the conservative pundocracy. According to a press release from Nugent’s publicist, he and author and right wing pundit Ann Coulter are engaged to marry.

According to Nugent, he and Ann met at a mock lynching of President Obama at a survivalist compound in Montana. “I have to tell you,” writes Nugent, “It was love at first sight. When she touched the barrel of my AR-15 I thought I was going to lose it. Fortunately, the safety was on.”

The Motor City Madman says that the wedding ceremony is set for August 15 and will take place at San Antonio’s Alamodome during halftime at the 2013 Monster Truck Marathon. “I’m a bit of a romantic,” says Nugent. “Everyone coming into the Alamodome will be given an air horn, and when Ann and I kiss after the ‘I do’s’, ten thousand air horns will go off. It’ll be epic.”

The press release also details the newlyweds honeymoon plans. Immediately after the ceremony, the lovebirds will fly to Haiti for a helicopter peasant hunt and then it will be off to Brazil for an adventure on the Amazon River stalking animals on the endangered species list. “It’ll be an awesome opportunity to kill things together and really bond as a couple,” says Nugent. Finally, the couple will fly to North Korea where they will be the guests of leader Kim Jong Un, who will detonate a nuclear device in their honor. “We have much to learn from these people,” said Nugent.

Attempts to reach Coulter for comments were met with death threats. 

Bush in the Bathroom

So someone hacked George Bush’s email and we are treated to two recent paintings by the former President, one of him in the bathtub, and one of him standing in a shower.

I am not a painter nor am I a psychologist, but that won’t stop me from looking at these paintings and asking WTF? Technically, the work is amateurish and almost childish, but, of course, that’s not what makes these pieces so interesting. It’s the subject matter.

Let’s just say that I had a hankering (we’ll pretend I’m a Texan) to start painting. After buying my canvases and brushes and paints, I need to decide on something to paint. Fine. What’s the first thing I think of? Perhaps a nice still life. You know, a vase with some apples and pears lying around on the table. Or a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Too boring? How about a nice landscape of the Texas hill country or the dramatic plains of West Texas? No? Okay, then what do you think of naked pictures of yourself in the bathroom?

You have to wonder what in the world George was thinking when he decided to paint pictures of himself lying in a bath and standing naked in the shower. Was it a joke? Is there some context to the pictures that we simply don’t get? Otherwise, huh?

Water, especially running water, is a symbol for spiritual cleansing. Think baptism. The water is running in both the tub and the shower pictures. In the shower painting, we see his face reflected in a small mirror. Cleansing. Reflection. Could these paintings be George’s inner desire to be cleansed for his past sins (of which there are so many)? Is he hoping the Almighty will forgive him if he washes his soul clean of his past worldly mistakes? Could he be suffering from a guilty conscience?

Not likely, at least not consciously. Perhaps the tub/shower paintings are part of a bathroom trilogy, and the third will feature Bush sitting on the toilet reading the latest issue of Guns & Ammo. Makes as much sense as any other explanation.

How Does Washington Work? It Doesn't.

Read a good Rolling Stone review of the book Bailout from one of my favorite political writers Matt Taibbi. Bailout was written by Neil Barofsky, the TARP Inspector General in the years following the 2008 economic blowout. What Taibbi finds most interesting about the book is not so much the procedural details involved in the bank bailouts following 2008, but Barofsky’s anecdotes about how Washington works; how people in positions of power do or do not interact with each other. As Taibbi notes in the article:

“… it's a bizarre, almost tribal mentality that rules our capital city – a kind of groupthink that makes extreme myopia and a willingness to ignore the tribe's ostensible connection to the people who elected them a condition for social advancement within.”

The article helped clarify my understanding of the idea that our government today is not really in the business of solving problems. Those of us in the outlands may think that our elected officials and the people they choose to run various government agencies are working night and day to fix things that are broken, but that is a naïve and simplistic view of how Washington actually works.

You see, solving problems means making decisions. When you make decisions, it means that there are going to be people who are happy and people who are unhappy. The question is always: Who will be unhappy with the decision I make? Who will I alienate? Now, foolish you might think that the primary question on the minds of our officials should be: Will this benefit the people of the United States or not? Silly person. As insider Barofsky makes clear, the real needs of the huddled masses outside the beltway are far down on the list of political priorities among our government bureaucrats.

If Washington is not about solving problems, what is it about? It’s about the appearance of trying to solve problems. Officials make adjustments, recalibrate, fine-tune, issue course corrections and modify policies in an attempt make it look like somebody is doing something, when in fact they are merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.  

With the iceberg fast approaching, the captain and his crew are more worried about keeping the first class passengers comfy than steering the ship to safety.

Gun (debate) Control

Solid, straightforward, factual article in today’s Mother Jones refuting the top 10 pro-gun arguments you hear from the NRA and others. One of the problems in America with trying to have a reasonable debate on gun control is that the media, both FOX News and the mainstream outlets, allow opponents of gun restrictions to make outrageous claim after outrageous claim without challenging them to provide any research or data to back up their assertions. If you are not a well-informed viewer and you hear someone with a position of authority in the NRA or a congressperson make a statement as if it is a proven fact, you might be inclined to believe it is true. Anyway, the article is worth a read.