Grownups who were unable or unwilling to take the policy measures necessary to reduce inflation told us children that price inflation was our personal responsibility, just as similar cowards and charlatans today tell us that addressing global warming is a moral responsibility of ordinary people, not a technological issue to be resolved by governments and utilities. I remember the U.S. retreat under fire from Indochina under President Gerald Ford and the debacle of the Desert One mission to rescue the American hostages in Iran under President Jimmy Carter.
And then there is the most painful memory of all: the killer rabbit. On April 20, 1979, a White House photographer captured an image of the beleaguered President Carter using his paddle to fend off a rabbit as it swam toward his fishing boat in Georgia. The photo was suppressed until the Reagan years, and Carter's press secretary explained that the creature was a ferocious "swamp rabbit." But headlines like "President Attacked by Rabbit" gave a comic spin to the widely shared feeling that the U.S. government had become feeble and ridiculous.
I've got those killer-rabbit blues again. And I'm not the only one.
Some Democratic partisans have claimed that the pathetic, lobby-written healthcare bill is the greatest expansion of social insurance in the U.S. since Medicare. Possibly true, but so what? Passing the greatest social reform since the days of LBJ is easy, like being the greatest novelist in Lichtenstein or the greatest tap dancer in Mongolia. There isn't much competition. Since the 1960s our increasingly paralyzed Congress seems to have become incapable of enacting any reform that isn't trivial, or botched, like the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, or corrupted beyond recognition, like the healthcare bill.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2009/12/28/bumbling
In the press coverage of President Barack Obama's recent decision to deploy more US troops to Afghanistan, a historical milestone has gone curiously unmentioned—the 30th anniversary of the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan, which began on December 27, 1979.
An examination of the circumstances of this event undermines Obama's claims that American policy in Afghanistan is motivated by a "war on terror," revealing instead the imperialist aims behind US policy.
At the time, President Jimmy Carter seized on the Soviet intervention—which aimed to suppress mujahadeen rebels fighting the Soviet-backed regime of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)—to undo a decade of détente and escalate tensions with the USSR. This critical decision unleashed a conflict that would ultimately devastate Afghan society.
It emerged only years later that the Soviet invasion was itself a response to a deliberate US attempt to set up a new military front against the USSR in Afghanistan. Even before the Soviet invasion, Washington was secretly assisting the mujahadeen, with the aim of provoking a Soviet intervention and trapping the USSR in a bloody quagmire. The US foreign policy establishment's ultimate goal in pursuing this policy was to destroy the USSR and promote an expansion of US power in strategically located, oil-rich Central Asia...
Washington's policy towards the Soviet-Afghan war was marked by unsurpassed cynicism. It unleashed a barrage of sanctimonious protests against an invasion it had helped promote, including organizing a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. As it sent billions of dollars in weaponry to the mujahadeen, it publicly denied that it was giving the rebels any assistance.
Though Washington proclaimed that its Afghan proxies were "freedom fighters," the mujahadeen and their international backers were social reactionaries. With the assistance of right-wing Muslim regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the US promoted Islamic fundamentalist warlords within the resistance. Washington turned a blind eye as they exterminated competing mujahadeen factions and funded themselves through large-scale opium sales.
When the mujahadeen proved incapable of organizing attacks on Kabul and strategic roadways, the CIA armed and trained international Muslim recruits to launch terrorist attacks and suicide bombings. The young Saudi billionaire Osama bin Laden oversaw these global recruitment networks, which later formed the core of Al Qaeda.
By now The Simpsons is among the most predictable institutions in America. Not in the sense that the show is boring or unsurprising—though many will argue that it is—but predictable in that, after two decades, it's still on the air every with new episodes Sunday night at eight o'clock. Like baseball or The Ramones, The Simpsons has come to be synonymous with America.
Picked up the following off indybay.org, a most cool Bay Area-based site if you haven't seen it before. We'll be watching for updates on the Facebook situation:
CANNABIS CULTURE – For reasons unknown, Cannabis Culture Magazine's Facebook page has been disabled by the popular social networking site.
The Cannabis Culture Facebook page, which had over 25,000 fans, (and was available at this link) disappeared on December 23, 2009. Shortly afterward, administrators of the page received an email notification:
Hello,
You created a Page that has violated our Terms of Use. A Facebook Page is a distinct presence used solely for business or promotional purposes. Among other things, Pages that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed. We also take down Pages that attack an individual or group, or that are set up by an unauthorized individual. If your Page was removed for any of the above reasons, it will not be reinstated. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result in the permanent loss of your account.
If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit the Terms applicable to Facebook Pages at http://www.facebook.com/terms_pages.php.
The Facebook Team
CC editors have contacted Facebook and we hope to have the page reinstated soon. We are still trying to figure out how our page violated their terms; hopefully they do not consider discussion of cannabis "obscene".
http://calpotnews.com/pot-pourri/facebook-yanks-high-profile-cannabis-pages/
Instead of false teeth, a small ball of cells capable of growing into a new tooth will be implanted where the missing one used to be.
The procedure needs only a local anaesthetic and the new tooth should be fully formed within a few months of the cells being implanted.
Paul Sharpe, a specialist in the field of regenerative dentistry at the Dental Institute of King's College, London, says the new procedure has distinct advantages over false teeth that require a metal post to be driven into the jaw before being capped with a porcelain or plastic tooth.
"The surgery today can be extensive and you need to have good solid bone in the jaw and that is a major problem for some people," Professor Sharpe said.
The method could be used on far more patients because the ball of cells that grows into a tooth also produces bone that anchors to the jaw.
Every properly cultured person admires jazz, not necessarily in its rumbustious, earthy form, but certainly in its great moderns. The Duke himself, but above all Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and their zillion followers. You have to, don't you, really? Well, sorry. I like early classical music and late classical music. I like opera, even Wagner these days. I like rock, pop, folk and (very much) the blues.
And then there's jazz. I don't mean the great singers, but the infuriatingly snazzy, oopla-poopla, jingly, endlessly self-referential up and down and roundabout stuff that takes itself sooo seriously and requires you to wear a martyred frown and a horrible striped jacket — and quite possibly unfortunate facial hair — to appreciate it.
What's it really about except showing off? Too many notes, as the Austrian emperor is supposed to have complained about Mozart. It doesn't make me excited, sad, wobbly, calm or indeed anything much. Jazz just goes up-down, back-forward, wurble, wurble — pointless. Friends have tried to open my ears. They're big enough, yes, but they aren't big enough for that stuff.
Stephen Hough, pianist, on Bach I'm quite embarrassed about this, but I don't like Bach. I admire him enormously, of course — who couldn't? Every bar he wrote is extraordinary. I hear people talking about the "universality" of it, and the "deep spirituality of it" and the expression and the romanticism, but it just doesn't reach through to me. I feel like a priest who's lost his faith. I really am meant to believe this, but somehow I don't.Occasionally I put the B Minor Mass on in the car thinking: "This is the greatest Mass ever written, get on with it," but within a couple of minutes my mind starts to wander.
I played Bach when I was learning, of course, but I always found the Romantic pieces more fun. That's something I thought I would grow out of, like someone who at first prefers a very sweet cream sherry rather than a drier one, but as we get older those things often change. Maybe I'm still a kid, but as yet I've not got to that stage. There's clearly some important screw missing in my musical mechanism.
Emily Maitlis, Newsnight presenter, on Romeo and Juliet
I think Romeo and Juliet is a terrible play and should be ditched in favour of West Side Story whenever possible. The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is, mainly, that it isn't a tragedy at all. It's just a postal mishap. Relevant to our times, perhaps, but hardly high drama. Basically, they fall in love (and we'll leave aside the paedophilic connotations of sex with a 13-year-old girl), run away and then come a cropper when a (fairly key) message fails to reach Romeo and it's suicide all round. Tragedy has to be about fatal flaws, about personal growth, about emotional annihilation — not a dicky delivery service and a hot-headed youth. These lovers had their wires crossed not their stars.
It's like hearing that someone died from tripping over a biscuit. It's odd and it's quite sad but more than anything it's just bloody ridiculous.
Nicky Haslam, interior designer, on Monty Python
It leaves me absolutely cold. Cleese and those other guys are completely up their own arses. It is humour made for dolts. I never made it through a complete episode of Flying Circus because it was so bad. I hate sacrilege too — so Life of Brian was an unfunny idea, too easy to sustain a whole film. It was the same with the Goons and Charlie Chaplin, who I could never stand — that kind of dopey, physically silly, male, oh-look-at-us humour. I prefer girls in backless dresses saying witty things in 1940s films, the kinds of movies that have a dry, crisp wit to them, and screwball comedies too. Python and its like rely on easy laughs — the parrot sketch is just ghastly — I prefer the kind of humour that creeps up on you, the kind that builds up so that, out of nowhere, you find yourself in hysterics. Humour should be subtle.
Jude Kelly, theatre director, on Rubens
I don't like Rubens. He's undoubtedly masterful technically. But I think there is a sentimentality to him and a sort of voluptuousness with regards to flesh — a combination of coyness and sexuality that I find very cloying and slightly disturbing. It's not that they are large; it's something about the way Rubens paints the texture of the flesh that is so clammy. I have always had the feeling that it's on the verge of titillation.
His cherubs seem far too knowing and they always seem to me to have a slightly sexual, devilish air. They always look as though they have eaten enormous amounts of chocolate. They seem to be the antithesis of spirituality, the way they prop themselves up with their head on their hands, sort of languorous. Where's their work ethic, that's what I want to know.
Edward Watson, principal dancer, Royal Ballet on The Nutcracker
I first danced in The Nutcracker when I was 17 and a pupil at the Royal Ballet Upper School. I joined the Royal Ballet the following year and then seemed to be in it almost every year for the next ten years. It feels as if I've danced practically every role in it — the Father, the Spanish dance, the Waltz of the Flowers, even the Sleigh Driver. I know every part inside out, so the whole thing drags along in a kind of Groundhog Day blur.
I danced the Nutcracker Prince in Tokyo a couple of years ago. I stood in the wings during the performance in a really uncomfortable outfit, feeling completely miserable. I promised myself there and then that that I wouldn't put myself through another one.
Matthew Parris, Times columnist, on the Beatles
I remember well enough the early Beatles in the 1960s. I was 14, a colonial boy in Africa, and listening to Jim Reeves, Ricky Nelson and Pat Boone — then along came these four lads from Liverpool, and everyone went crazy.
Exuberant, they said; a blast of fresh air. She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah. Darling, it's so marvellously simple! Youthful passion, careless energy, innocent art. The sound that finally broke the spell of the Second World War. The Mersey beat (er, where is Mersey?) putting Liverpool on the map.
Well, it left me cold. I just thought it was crass. All that banging about, boring, babyish tunes and noisy choruses. I slightly fancied George Harrison, but that was all.
Tony Hall, chief executive of the Royal Opera House, on Gilbert and Sullivan
I don't really like Gilbert and Sullivan, and that's partly because when I was a child in Birkenhead, my great uncle used to sing in amateur operatic society versions of The Mikado and a variety of other Gilbert and Sullivans, and I just don't like it. It brings back memories of sitting through — even though I should be very proud of my great uncle's voice — some fairly ghastly productions, and I just find it all rather twee.
Chris Addison, comedian, on Charles Dickens
To be fair to Dickens, he never really stood a chance with me because, like many middle-class children brought up in the 1970s and 1980s, my first real exposure to him was in the form of turgid, cardboardy BBC adaptations. These were pre-Andrew Davies times, remember, but even now for me Dickens is inextricably associated with the depressing back-to-school miasma of a dark Sunday evening. I've tried to get past this but I merely have to pick up a copy of one of his books and I can smell the Vosene of hair-washing night and the fear of knowing that I hadn't finished my homework. Not to mention the resentment of the fact that I was missing Buck Rogers on the other side.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/specials/article6964184.ece
He fought the Nazis. He braved the Pacific. And he hated being called a hero. Jonathan Brown looks at the extraordinary career of Knut Haugland, the last Kon-Tiki survivor
A heavily decorated commando who escaped three times from the clutches of the Nazis, his bravery and endurance gave rise to one of the most enduring legends of the Second World War – one retold in spectacular style in a Hollywood movie.
Yesterday Haugland's successor as director of the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, where thousands flock each year to relive the optimism and excitement of that intrepid voyage, announced that the former radio operator had succumbed to natural causes in a city hospital, closing the final chapter on an extraordinary life.
Haugland's death, following that of Heyerdahl himself in 2002, marks the passing of the last of the six-man crew that set sail from Callao in Peru in April 1947, bound several thousand nautical miles for the far-flung islands of Polynesia based on little more than an anthropological hunch. That journey set a new benchmark for modern adventurers, spawning an international best-selling book published in 66 languages and an Oscar-winning film in which Haugland played himself. It also helped popularise Heyerdahl's passionately held belief that the great oceans had been highways and not barriers for the movement of ancient seafaring civilisations.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/knut-haugland-a-reallife-adventure-story-1851472.html
Books by Chris Hedges, Thom Hartmann and Cass Sunstein suggest that we've nearly lost our sense of self-government. None show the way to get it back.
By Kirk Nielsen
I read the three books in less than two weeks; friends ask how that was possible. The trick is to avoid not only Facebook and Twitter but also: celebrity news, cable news, Oprah, Jerry Springer, American Idol, The Swan, other reality-TV shows, professional wrestling, violent pornography, positive psychology and right-wing Christian fundamentalism.
The latter list includes some of the spectacularly mind-numbing American pursuits that Chris Hedges examines in Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. Hedges submits that while they mesmerized large portions of the American citizenry, CEOs being paid millions of dollars a year to run companies that feed on taxpayer money usurped our government — with the help of elected officials bought by campaign contributions and tens of thousands of corporate lobbyists who now write many of the nation's laws.
"Those captivated by the cult of celebrity do not examine voting records or compare verbal claims with written and published facts and reports," Hedges writes. "The reality of their world is whatever the latest cable news show, political leader, advertiser, or loan officer says is reality. The illiterate, semiliterate, and those who live as though they are illiterate are effectively cut off from the past. They live in an eternal present. They do not understand the predatory loan deals that drive them into foreclosure and bankruptcy. They cannot decipher the fine print on credit card agreements that plunge them into unmanageable debt. They repeat thought-terminating clichés and slogans. They seek refuge in familiar brands and labels. ... Life is a state of permanent amnesia, a world in search of new forms of escapism and quick, sensual gratification."
The wider public might view investment bankers as 'vampire squid', as one commentator put it, but the newspaper of the business world has made him its 'person of the year'
Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, recently claimed that bankers were doing 'God's work'. Photograph: Chip East/Reuters
Hats off to the Financial Times for refusing to pander to lily-livered liberals. The pink paper has opined that its "person of the year" for 2009 is none other than Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of the widely reviled Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs.
In the parallel universe inhabited by the FT, Blankfein is a hero - a "master of risk". The FT accepts that Blankfein has struggled to find an effective rebuttal of a deluge of public criticism unleashed on his bank.
But it says the former gold trader from the Bronx has "steered Goldman adeptly through the crisis, betting correctly that the global investment banks would survive the turmoil (with government help) and not be dismantled by regulators".
The FT's John Gapper continues: "The bank has stuck to its strengths, unashamedly taking advantage of the low interest rates and diminished competition resulting from the crisis to make big trading profits."
How charitable.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/andrew-clark-on-america/2009/dec/28/goldmansachs-financialtimes
Remember, as far as most of the Republican establishment is concerned, disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) is the ultimate "ideas man," if not a bona fide "visionary." National Journal recently asked Republican insiders to name "the most creative thinker" in the GOP. Gingrich was easily the biggest vote getter.
If ol' Newt is the intellectual Republican powerhouse, the GOP has cause for concern.
Newt Gingrich became the latest to play the ridiculous "it's snowing so global warming must be a hoax" card. Gingrich took to Twitter -- where he's been schooled before -- on Saturday morning to share a few thoughts about the storm:
newtgingrich As callista and i watched what dc weather says will be 12 to 22 inches of snow i wondered if God was sending a message about copenhagen
Got that? A snowstorm along the East coast in December was, according to the former Speaker, a divine signal about international efforts to combat climate change. Seriously.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_12/021560.php
I dare YOU to watch a full hour of Glenn Beck on Fox News. I DARE YOU! I did not long ago and realized that no matter his father reported him or not, he is a mentally unstable radical who should be put on every NO FLY list in the world. 
Of course the CSA does exempt oil, fiber and nonactive seeds from regulation, but because all growing plants contain some level of THC, the court's reasoning is that the stated exceptions to regulation are, essentially, meaningless for farming purposes.
North Dakota farmers have been struggling with the DEA since the state passed a law to reintroduce hemp as a rotational crop in 1999. The law originally required state-licensed farmers to receive DEA approval, but after the agency made it clear it would make the farmers comply with regulations for drug manufacturing and would then also drag its feet in reviewing and deciding on the those applications, the state repealed that provision of the law. Wayne Hauge, a farmer from the northeastern part of the state, and David Monson, from the northwestern section and also a Republican state representative, were the first licensed in the state to grow hemp but have yet to do so because they face federal drug prosecution if they do so without DEA approval. The DEA has not acted on their applications to the agency for permission to grow the plant.
Now with the Eighth Circuit agreeing that the DEA has the power to regulate the cultivation of hemp, Hauge, Monson and the state of North Dakota have few options. They could appeal to the Supremes, as unlikely as that sounds, or they could go to Congress. That appears a more likely route, though how quickly that would result in any change is an open question: Texas Liberpublican Ron Paul has been trying to reauthorize hemp farming for years, but still hasn't gotten his bill a committee hearing. And last year the North Dakota delegation said it wasn't interested in pushing for hemp farming rights, even though the issue is a big one for constituents (there's representative government at work, thank you very little).
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/News/Blogs/index.html/objID932032/blogID/
Sphere: Related ContentBy Susan Davis
Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin's Facebook allegation that the Democrats' health-care overhaul would include "death panels" to decide whether seniors and disabled people were worthy of care was named "Lie of the Year" by fact-checkers at Politifact.com.
"Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest," writes Politifact.com, the non-partisan, Pulitzer Prize-winning site run by the St. Petersburg Times. Palin's "assertion — that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care — spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings."
"Opponents of health-care legislation said it revealed the real goals of the Democratic proposals. Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink," Polifact.com says.
The "death panels" allegation accounted for 61% of about 5,000 votes cast at Politifact.com to determine 2009's Lie of the Year. It is the first year Polifact.com has held such a contest.
Politifact.com credits Palin for coining the phrase. Shortly after she first made the charge in August, fact-checkers rated the statement as "Pants on Fire" on their truth-o-meter.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/12/22/palins-death-panels-charge-named-lie-of-the-year/
Andrew Sullivan: "The cries of freedom. They bring tears to my eyes and hope to my soul. The sound: it makes every human stop in their tracks and demand that this vicious oppression end."
Police in Iran shot at protesters today, killing at least 10, including the nephew of a prominent opposition leader. Today is the holiday of Ashura, a sacred observance in the Muslim calendar which honors the martyrdom of the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. More: New York Times, BBC, and a statement of condemnation from the White House. Times Online: Is this Iran's Berlin Wall moment? I'm following Cyrus Farivar on Twitter for English-language pointers to updates, please share other links in the comments.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/27/meanwhile-a-revoluti.html
By Yasha Levine
 |
| AP / Charles Dharapak |
Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government "handout" as socialism. What her followers probably don't know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That's right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.
And she's not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.
Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama's attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is "reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom."
But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization's records, Bachmann's family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann's recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or "socialized"—businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America's bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann's free-market dream world as Cuba's free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.
However, Bachmann doesn't think other Americans should benefit from such protection and assistance. She voted against every foreclosure relief bill aimed at helping average homeowners (despite the fact that her district had the highest foreclosure rate in Minnesota), saying that bailing out homeowners would be "rewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules." That's right, the subsidy queen wants the rest of us to be responsible.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/michelle_bachman_welfare_queen_20091221/?ln
| Too bad Barack Obama hasn't followed through on his promises of legislative transparency. Then we all could have watched Harry Reid live on C-SPAN handing an oversized Publishers Clearing House–style $100 million check to Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson. |
Let's face it, if James Cameron had made a movie with the Iraqi resistance as the heroes and the U.S. military as the enemies, and had set it in Iraq or anywhere else on planet earth, the packed theaters viewing "Avatar" would have been replaced by a screening in a living room for eight people and a dog.
Nineteen years ago, Americans packed theaters for "Dances with Wolves" in which Native Americans became the heroes, but the story was set in a previous century and the message understated.
The Na'vi people of "Avatar" are very explicitly Iraqis facing "shock and awe," as well as Native Americans with bows and arrows on horseback. The "bad guys" in the battle scenes are U.S. mercenaries, essentially the U.S. military, and the movie allows us to see them, very much as they are right now in 177 real nations around the world, through the eyes of their victims.
People know this going into the movie, and do not care. For better, and certainly for worse, they do not care. Millions of people stand in lines, shell out big bucks, wear stupid-looking 3-D glasses, sit in the dark for three hours, identify with twelve-foot-high pointy-eared blue people, cheer as the credits roll, and simply do not care that actual human beings suffer the same fate as the computer-generated creations, albeit without miraculous happy endings.
Imagine if a tenth of the people who now sympathize with these bony blue beings were to take three hours to read a book or watch a movie about the people of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Yemen or Iran. Our real planet would then be a different world.
When I saw "Avatar" in a packed 3-D theater in Virginia, and the crowd cheered the closing shot, I shouted: "And get out of Iraq too!" No one cheered for that. But no one called me a traitor either.
As I understand it, certain pundits are struggling with finding an appropriate name for the decade now mercifully coming to an end.
What's the problem, I wonder? Are their word processor dictionaries redacted of all four-letter words? I mean, I could think of a few dandies, right of the top of my head.
Short of the 1860s or 1930s, this was perhaps the most disastrous decade in American history, and it deserves a good goddamed label to celebrate that fine achievement.
More on that below. Meanwhile, whatever the appropriate term, it's important to keep things in perspective. I think the most crucial notion to understand about our time - and perhaps the only way to make sense of it - is to see it as the point where the process of imperial decline shifted into third gear. That explains a lot. I like to think that even Americans wouldn't be capable of the sick stupidity we've witnessed over these harrowing years without the effects of rapid altitude decline and the loss of cabin pressure that the ship of state has been experiencing during this era.
Perhaps I'm too generous toward a people who don't deserve a lot of that sentiment, either because of their diminished intelligence, generosity, compassion, sophistication or all of the above. I imagine that would be the feeling on the streets of, say, Fallujah, where the attitude might well be confined to a lovely blend of schadenfreude and indifference, were it not for the fact that the paroxysms of the flailing elephant send so many fruit stands flying as the mortally wounded beast goes careening down the main street of the global village, toward inevitable defeat in its struggle with unforgiving gravity.
America probably must come down to earth again, its abortive 'century' of world dominance having anyhow been artificially fabricated from a toxic combination of circumstance and theft right from the beginning. I can even say that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it is, of course, all relative to what replaces Pax Americana. Anyone who assumes that it can only get better on the international front isn't thinking real clearly or real historically. Indeed, in all fairness, the US may well have run the most benign and least imperial empire in history - though not for lack of trying by the likes of, say, Paul Wolfowitz or John Bolton.
Thus it may well be that the next big thing is even less pretty. Watching the Chinese government in action at home, where they are unfettered, doesn't exactly inspire confidence in what a Pax Sinica would bring once they are also unfettered abroad. If the same cats who brought us Tiananmen Square and Tibet are next gonna be seeking planetary domination, for once in my life I may actually come to appreciate the value of nuclear weapons...
A blow-by-blow breakdown of the young president's first year reveals that today's frustration stems not from a lack of policy so much as a lack of common ground. The myth of the American center looms in this, the second part of a week-long series on our country since the 2008 election.
BONUS QUIZ: How Well Do You Know the News of 2009?
By: John H. Richardson
Read more of Esquire.com's "The Year of Obama" series with part one from Charles P. Pierce, part three from S.T. VanAirsdale, part four from Thomas P.M. Barnett, and part five from Scott Raab
I have figured out The Problem With America Today. My inspiration was the recent one-year-later cover of Newsweek, which encapsulates the current conventional wisdom about President Obama in a single headline: YES HE CAN (BUT HE SURE HASN'T YET). Or, as Saturday Night Live put it, President Obama's two biggest accomplishments thus far are "Jack and Squat." You can find other versions of this perspective from Matt Lauer and David Gregory on NBC, from thousands of obnoxious bloggers, even from the hapless governor of New York.
These days, the argument that Obama hasn't accomplished anything may be the only example of real bipartisanship in America.
Here's the conventional wisdom in a single paragraph: Three hundred and sixty-four days after he was elected president, Obama is still stuck in Iraq, hasn't closed Guantánamo, is getting deeper into Afghanistan, hasn't accomplished health-care reform or slowed the rise in unemployment. His promises of bipartisanship are a punch line (see above). And there's still no peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. What a failure! What a splash of cold water in the face of all our bold hopes!
But the conventional wisdom is insane. Consider the record:
A week before he was sworn in, Obama jammed part two of the bank bailout down the throat of his own party — a $350 billion accomplishment.
Two days after he was sworn in, Obama banned the use of "harsh interrogation" and ordered the closing of Guantánamo.
A day later, Obama reversed George W. Bush's funding cutoff to overseas family planning organizations — saving millions of lives with the stroke of a pen.
Three days after that, Obama gave a green light to the California car-emissions standards that Bush had been blocking for six years — an important step on the road to cleaner air and a cooler planet.
Two weeks after that, Obama signed the stimulus bill — a $787 billion accomplishment.
Ten days after that, Obama formally announced America's withdrawal from Iraq.
A week later — we're in early March now — Obama erased Bush's decision to restrict federal funding for stem-cell research.
In April and June, Obama forced Chrysler and GM into bankruptcy.
In June, Obama reset the tone of our relations with the entire Arab world with a single speech — an accomplishment that the Bush administration failed to achieve despite a series of desperate PR moves (anyone remember Charlotte Beers?) and a "public diplomacy" budget of $1 billion a year.
Also in June, Obama unveiled the "Cash for Clunkers" program, a "socialist" giveaway that reanimated the corpse of our car industry — leading, for example, to the billion-dollar profit that Ford announced on Monday.
I haven't even mentioned Sonia Sotomayor, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the order to release the torture memos, Obama's push for charter schools, his $288 billion tax cut, or the end of Bush's war on medical marijuana. Or the minor fact that he seems to have — with Bush's help, it must be said — stopped the financial collapse, revived the credit markets, and nudged the economy toward 3.5 percent growth in the last quarter.
Oh, and one more thing: President Obama is now a month or two from accomplishing the awesome and seemingly impossible task that eluded mighty presidents like FDR, LBJ, and WJC — health-care reform.
By Cenk Uygur
There are many debates among progressives now on the true nature of Barack Obama. Did he mean anything he said on the campaign trail? Is he really a progressive? Did he ever mean to challenge the status quo or was he using the word "change" as a campaign gimmick? Is he just a corporatist like most other politicians?
After talking about this with a great many progressives on our show, I've come to some conclusions. These are so self-evident that they will be viewed as obvious in hindsight.
Does he mean well or does he have bad intentions? Come on, don't be ridiculous. Of course, he means well. But in his own mind, George Bush thought he meant well, too (for the most part). I'm positive that Obama thinks that he is doing the best he can to bring about as much change as he can within the limits of this system.
Is he a true progressive or a corporatist sell out? Well, that depends on what you mean. Has he wound up helping corporate America tremendously through health care "reform," finance "reform," etc.? Well, Wall Street certainly seems to think so (and so do most progressives). Did he do that because he thought, "I can't wait to help corporate America and screw over the little guy"? No, I'm sure he thought he had to accommodate the powers that be in order to affect any change at all in this system. But the bottom line has been the same, either way - the system has been tweaked but corporate America chugs along with even more government largesse than before.
I'm sure Obama is a progressive that would help the average American if he thought he could. But apparently he thinks he can't. He can only bring them a small amount of change because of what he thinks the system will allow.
You can criticize him for lack of imagination, duplicity during the campaign, lack of spine and political miscalculation. And you might be right about some or all of that, but all of those aren't the essence of Obama. The core of Obama is a man who is a cautious politician. That is what he is at his center. He can't help himself. Asking him to be something else is asking a rock to be a little less hard. He is what he is.
So, what Obama does by his nature is find the middle ground. As an excellent innate politician, he will find the political center of any field and rush to it. That's where elections are won - the center. So, that's why he sounded so progressive during the primaries, because that was the center of the left. And why he sounded like such a reformer during the general election because the great majority of Americans desperately wanted change.
So, what happened to that Obama? The country is the same, so why did Obama drop the progressive reformer angle and go toward the right and corporate America? Because his field changed. He went from campaigning all across the country to being in the middle of Washington, DC. The center of Washington is very different than the center of the country.
The Washington bubble leans far more to the right than the rest of the country (poll after poll indicates this). The corporate media in Washington are pros at protecting the status quo and view people who challenge the system as fringe players. A natural politician would naturally move right to accommodate this new environment. Obama can't help himself. Why does a scorpion sting, why does a horse gallop? Because they were made to. Hoping Obama snaps out of it is hoping against reason and nature.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-Progressives-Can-Move-by-Cenk-Uygur-091224-432.html
Anonymous note:
Once again, I was disqualified from my neighborhood "Best Decorated House" contest due to my 'bad attitude'! Folks with tons of money to spend on decorations, lights, and utility bills in these hard times just don't appreciate simplicity.
http://artoftheprank.com/2009/12/25/disqualified-decorations/
Most daily newspapers, in fact, operate in the black but massive debt accumulated during multiple rounds of consolidation earlier this decade were threatening their existence. The threat is still there, but it looks like there was more fat in newspaper operating budgets than many observers had believed. Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth has pointed out that her paper employs twice as many journalists as it did during the Watergate years, even after multiple rounds of cutbacks.
Time to celebrate? Hardly. This industry is not a growth story and probably never will be, but it does appear that publishers are finding ways to gracefully manage their print operations down to sustainable levels. Early experience indicates that online news publishers can the profitable at about 20% of the expense level of their print counterparts. It's likely that some publishers will figure out ways to get there without shutting down the brand entirely. Of course the price of advertising is also in decline, but that's a different problem entirely.
It turns out that shares a Gannett Corp. were a heckuva buy in March when they plummeted to $1.85. The stock hit $15.49 on Wednesday as a leading analyst upgraded his outlook for the newspaper industry, saying December could be the industry's best month in three years. Well Fargo Securities analyst John Janedis said the slide in advertising is slowing and that ad revenues could be down only 8% or 9% next year, compared to more than 30% this year. Janedis raised his rating on Gannett to "outperform" from "underperform" and on New York Times Co. to "market Perform" from "underperform."
We continue to be amazed at how newspapers bury the lead when announcing bad news about themselves. Check out this press release from the Washington Times as reprinted on Talking Points Memo:
The Washington Times today announced that it will begin producing a more focused Monday through Friday edition designed to feature its most distinctive news and opinion content.
Offered as a combination controlled market and paid general interest newspaper at a price of $1.00, the new print edition will be available at retail outlets and newspaper boxes throughout the D.C. metropolitan area. The current newspaper's last Sunday edition will publish on December 27.
That's right: the news is that the Times is killing its Sunday edition. This is on top of laying off 40% of its staff a few weeks ago. The paper is also reportedly considering eliminating its sports section entirely. Perhaps the Times reporters wouldn't bury the lead on this particular story, but the PR department surely did.
Convoy diverted British troops from front but generator may never be used
by Jon Boone in Kabul
An enormous hydroelectric turbine dragged at huge cost by British troops through Taliban heartlands last year may never be installed because Nato has been unable to secure a 30-mile stretch of road leading to an isolated dam in northern Helmand.
The daring mission to deliver 220 tonnes of equipment to the Kajaki dam in Afghanistan in September 2008 was hailed as one of the biggest success stories of the British Army's three-year deployment in Helmand.
Two thousand British troops took part in the five-day convoy through enemy territory, which was launched because the main road leading to the dam was too vulnerable to Taliban attacks.
Senior British officers privately say the enormous diversion of scarce military resources for the operation allowed the Taliban to make major gains in other critical areas of the province, including Nad Ali, which subsequently saw some of the most intense fighting between British forces and insurgents.
Within a couple of months of the Kajaki operation, areas close to the British base in Lashkar Gah had deteriorated so badly that troops had to be resupplied by air drop.
The dam continues to be besieged by Taliban fighters and, 15 months after the mission by the UK troops, the turbine's components remain unassembled because huge amounts of cement that are required to install the equipment cannot be delivered safely.
Now the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the wing of the United States government which has so far pumped $47m (£29m) into the project, intended to electrify much of southern Afghanistan, says it is packing the turbine parts away and looking for other energy projects to invest in across Afghanistan.
"Our message is that until we have a secure road we cannot continue with the installation of turbine two," said John Smith-Sreen, head of energy and water projects for USAID in Kabul.
"When the turbine was moved in by British and American forces it was a huge effort and it was done in a point of time. But we can't move in the large quantity of cement and aggregate that we need in a point of time, we need a sustained effort," he said.
The road would need to be secured for about half a year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/13/afghanistan-turbine-taliban-british-army
Large, "lost," or simply unusual, a bevy of prehistoric beasts were brought to life in National Geographic News's most popular paleontology stories of the year.
 | 10. Biggest Trilobite Sea Beasts Found ... in Swarms The "remarkable," yard-long, horseshoe crab-like arthropods roamed in swarms of up to a thousand animals, a May study suggests. |
 | 9. "Lost World" of Dinosaurs Survived Mass Extinction? An isolated group of dinosaurs may have outlived their doomed relatives by as much as half a million years, an April study suggested. |
 | 8. A Third of Dinosaur Species Never Existed? Young dinosaurs weren't Mini-Me versions of their parents, evidence presented in October suggests—meaning that up to a third of dinosaur species may be misidentified. |
 | 7. Tiny "T. Rex" Found —150-Pound Species Came First No heavier than a small man, Raptorex was Mini-Me to T. rex's dinosaur Dr. Evil. But in this case, the tiny gave rise to the titanic, researchers said in September. |
 | 6. Five "Oddball" Crocs Discovered, Including Dinosaur-Eater A "saber-toothed cat in armor" and a pancake-shaped predator are among five strange, dinosaur-era crocodile cousins discovered in the Sahara, archaeologists announced in November. Meet BoarCroc, PancakeCroc, DuckCroc, RatCroc, and DogCroc. |
A few weeks ago, I wrote about two particularly nasty Verizon Wireless practices. First, Verizon doubled the early-cancellation fee for smartphones, the price you pay for canceling before your two-year contract is up (it's now $350).
Second, I passed along a note from a Verizon whistleblower who identified a really outrageous Verizon profit center: if you accidentally hit one of the arrow keys on your Verizon cellphone (which come premapped to various Verizon Internet functions), you're charged $2 instantaneously, even if you cancel instantly. (Verizon confirms that on many models, you can't remap those buttons to other functions even if you're tech-savvy enough to try.)
To my delight, the F.C.C. got on the case, even citing my original post. It formally asked Verizon for some answers about both issues.
Verizon hemmed, hawed, asked for an extension on the deadline, and finally responded on Friday. You can read the entire outrageous document here here.
Why is it outrageous? Because basically it denies everything. It says, in essence, "We've doubled the cancellation fee because we felt like it," and "We don't charge those $2 accidental-Internet fees. You must be mistaken."
O.K. Let's take these one by one.
First of all, Verizon explains the doubled cancellation fees like this: "Verizon Wireless incurs additional costs to sign up customers, such as advertising costs, commissions for sales personnel, and store costs. These costs are higher for Advanced Devices."
Huh? It costs more to advertise a BlackBerry than a regular flip phone?
Verizon also says that the higher fees help to recoup its expenses for building up its data network. Yet no other other carrier has felt the need to double the fee.
Here's what really gets me, though. Verizon justifies early-cancellation fees by noting the huge gap between a customer's purchase price and a phone's real cost. For example, you might pay $200 for a BlackBerry that, on the open market, would cost $500. Over your two-year contract, you're paying Verizon back the rest of the full price. That's how the American cellphone industry works.
O.K., great. We're with you so far.
But if I were the F.C.C., I'd have two big questions about this:
1. How come our monthly bills don't drop at the end of two years, once we've fully paid for the phone?
2. Verizon says that we, the customers, can avoid the early-cancellation penalty if we're willing to pay the full retail price of the phone up front ($500 or whatever). Fine. But then why do we have to pay the same monthly fee as somebody who got the discounted price?
What are we missing here?
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/verizon-responds-to-consumer-complaints/
