The Unspoken Message
For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more
abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even
that he hath--Matthew 13:12
In the 19th century, America was agricultural and most folks knew how to grow vegetables and raise chickens. In the 20th, America was industrial and countless shade tree mechanics tinkered with machines. Today, in the 21st century, America is financial--and people can barely reconcile their checkbooks, let alone wise up to what’s happening on Wall Street.
Given our dismal knowledge of the dismal science, we are suckers for trash talk about economics. Politicians right and center and pundits corporate and conservative batter us daily with nonsense about the money and how it gets used and abused.
Though it all sounds confounding (confusion helps keep us docile), there is a constant but unspoken central message at work: the rich don’t have enough while the rest of us have too much. This message cannot be openly proclaimed because it doesn’t sound right or proper. Willard Romney or Obama buddy Robert Wolf can’t just announce that they’re depending on the sacrifices of ordinary Americans to make them richer. At least, they can’t say it quite yet.
Nevertheless, that goal is the main reason why Wall Street and its rented pols in Washington do what they do. Take any of the economic issues in the news: there’s debt (though only government debt is defined as a danger), there are bank bailouts, there’s the ongoing Fed gift of free money to big-time stock and bond players, there’s austerity, there’s ‘entitlement’ reform, there’s rewriting our tax system, and, as ever, there’s beefing up our military.
The CEOs, senators, tea baggers and such we hear raising alarms about this stuff like to affect an air of civic responsibility. They’re forever warning us about the awful price our kids and kids’ kids will pay for our profligacy unless we get our finances in order. Carefully unmentioned is that each of the items above is, in fact, designed to make our progeny poorer. For it turns out, on the even slightest examination, that they are nothing more than schemes to transfer wealth from the bottom, middle and top to the top of the top.
For instance, our debt will impoverish our kids only if they keep paying it off to wealthy creditors who keep producing ever more of it. For instance, our military burden will keep growing only if we keep playing the imperial game.
Like our obesity epidemic, our economic situation is not complicated and has a simple solution. For the former, it’s eat less and better food and exercise more. For the latter, it’s spread the wealth.
Unfortunately, the simple solutions are often the hardest to do.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Pointless But Oh So Profitable
Washington — President Obama on Sunday will unveil a new package of NATO initiatives that includes the alliance purchasing a fleet of surveillance drones...
Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing--Vince Lombardi
Not anymore, Vince.
Now its more like this: “American officials acknowledge privately that the bar has been significantly lowered on how success in Afghanistan is defined after 11 years of combat.”
Vietnam, which ended 37 years ago, was our last war in which losing was controversial. Wars have since become about continuity rather than victory or defeat. It’s not how they end up but how long you can make them last. Likewise, our reasons for making war no longer require justification, let alone debate. Any soldier will tell you that there aren’t any ‘whys?’ anymore; it’s simply a matter of good guys (us) going after bad guys (anyone else). Nothing more needs to be said.
Also, little disputed is that our president now has the self-granted powers of a potentate. Obama has claimed a prerogative to start wars without notifying Congress, let alone respecting its constitutional right to initiate hostilities (viz., Libya, Yemen, Honduras, etc.) And the president has demonstrated that our permanent state of undeclared and unjustified war allows him to kill anyone, even Americans, anywhere merely on his own word. Ghengis Khan or Joe Stalin couldn’t have asked for more.
By and large, the nation has taken all of this in stride. Last week, a federal judge in New York ruled out some of the powers assumed by Obama. But no doubt the government will appeal that decision right up to a Supreme Court that’s at least as imperious as the president.
What's this all about? First and foremost is that people with power always want more power. War, by its nature, confers the greatest power. The history of western civilization is largely about limiting the lust for power and replacing it with laws. But history is also about the determination of power addicts to evade those constraints. We are currently in a time of war and economic crisis that favors the power grabbers, and our president is taking full advantage of that.
Second is what goes with power: wealth. In 2001, Al Qaeda spent $500,000 (some say much less) to organize and carry out 9/11. Our subsequent universal war on terrorism has so far cost in the trillions. It should be obvious that those two facts have about as much to do with each other as a jack rabbit has to do with a herd of buffalo. In other words, 9/11 was a handy excuse to escalate (remember that word?) us to a condition of endless war everywhere.
Those trillions are monies taken from taxpayers and given to the corporations that comprise and command the war machine. Every time a Pentagon drone launches a million dollar Predator missile against a ten dollar mud hut, those contractors make money, ridiculous and preposterous amounts of money. It’s that accretion rather than any aggression that keeps our wars going.
It’s a general rule that whenever you commercialize an institution, be it a school, a church or an army, the original purpose of that institution, be it education, faith or fighting, becomes secondary to making money. Our transition from discrete to constant wars has paralleled the transformation of our military from a fighting force to a profit center. All that remains is for our wars to to be traded on the NYSE or Nasdaq with our 401K counselors advising us on how best to make a killing in killing.
Washington — President Obama on Sunday will unveil a new package of NATO initiatives that includes the alliance purchasing a fleet of surveillance drones...
Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing--Vince Lombardi
Not anymore, Vince.
Now its more like this: “American officials acknowledge privately that the bar has been significantly lowered on how success in Afghanistan is defined after 11 years of combat.”
Vietnam, which ended 37 years ago, was our last war in which losing was controversial. Wars have since become about continuity rather than victory or defeat. It’s not how they end up but how long you can make them last. Likewise, our reasons for making war no longer require justification, let alone debate. Any soldier will tell you that there aren’t any ‘whys?’ anymore; it’s simply a matter of good guys (us) going after bad guys (anyone else). Nothing more needs to be said.
Also, little disputed is that our president now has the self-granted powers of a potentate. Obama has claimed a prerogative to start wars without notifying Congress, let alone respecting its constitutional right to initiate hostilities (viz., Libya, Yemen, Honduras, etc.) And the president has demonstrated that our permanent state of undeclared and unjustified war allows him to kill anyone, even Americans, anywhere merely on his own word. Ghengis Khan or Joe Stalin couldn’t have asked for more.
By and large, the nation has taken all of this in stride. Last week, a federal judge in New York ruled out some of the powers assumed by Obama. But no doubt the government will appeal that decision right up to a Supreme Court that’s at least as imperious as the president.
What's this all about? First and foremost is that people with power always want more power. War, by its nature, confers the greatest power. The history of western civilization is largely about limiting the lust for power and replacing it with laws. But history is also about the determination of power addicts to evade those constraints. We are currently in a time of war and economic crisis that favors the power grabbers, and our president is taking full advantage of that.
Second is what goes with power: wealth. In 2001, Al Qaeda spent $500,000 (some say much less) to organize and carry out 9/11. Our subsequent universal war on terrorism has so far cost in the trillions. It should be obvious that those two facts have about as much to do with each other as a jack rabbit has to do with a herd of buffalo. In other words, 9/11 was a handy excuse to escalate (remember that word?) us to a condition of endless war everywhere.
Those trillions are monies taken from taxpayers and given to the corporations that comprise and command the war machine. Every time a Pentagon drone launches a million dollar Predator missile against a ten dollar mud hut, those contractors make money, ridiculous and preposterous amounts of money. It’s that accretion rather than any aggression that keeps our wars going.
It’s a general rule that whenever you commercialize an institution, be it a school, a church or an army, the original purpose of that institution, be it education, faith or fighting, becomes secondary to making money. Our transition from discrete to constant wars has paralleled the transformation of our military from a fighting force to a profit center. All that remains is for our wars to to be traded on the NYSE or Nasdaq with our 401K counselors advising us on how best to make a killing in killing.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Laughing While Crying--Yet Again
It is by the fortune of God that in this country we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either--Mark Twain
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in--H. L. Mencken
The main message from the current presidential circus is that our politics remain as inane as they were back in the days of the above quoted gents. Twain’s time was the Gilded Age and Mencken’s was the Roaring Twenties. Both eras were characterized by the cruel concentration and shameless flaunting of wealth, with the swells inside their rococo palaces eating peacock off gold dishes and urchins outside in the alley picking through the garbage for table scraps.
The rich owned just about everything, including the politicians. So what's new? In such periods, business takes over directly and the role and status of politicians diminish as they are seen correctly as little more than go-fers for the go-tos. Today that same drop in rank applies even to richies like Romney when they dive into retail politics. Their peers see them as posturing. When you are already a master of the universe, what beside the pomp would make you stoop to the mere presidency of a country?
On top of that, legislators hardly write legislation anymore. Laws are now more commonly drafted, down to the jots and tittles, by corporate lobbyists. The pols are reduced to chaperoning them through Congress and to the president's desk. So what’s left for politician to do? They have become our court jesters, making the most of the old line that politics is show business for ugly people.
Regardless of who wins this November, it’s obvious that the Reps put on a better show for the money. That’s because they have better material. The Reps are a fount of spectacularly appalling ideas and atrocious initiatives. You never know what horror they’ll come up with next. With them it’s like rubber-necking at car wrecks. The poor Dems, by contrast, haven’t had any ideas, good or bad, in decades. I recently plowed my way through the official Democratic Party platform to see how it compares with the programme of the Front National, France’s fascist party (see Karman Turn for Apr 17). Written in a mixture of bureaucratese, newspeak and hortatory cliches, the Dem declamation makes a soporific superior to the Philadelphia White Pages.
The Dem campaign will get a tad livelier in the months to come. Obama's rhetorical skills will help pump things up, though not as much as back in 2008. Pathetically, he will be delivering the Dems' weakest and most hesistant ripostes to the Reps. After all, today's Dems don't want voters to think they’re extremists like FDR and Truman. Mencken and Twain are no doubt grinning in their graves.
Bonus or Malus?
click on image to enlarge
It is by the fortune of God that in this country we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either--Mark Twain
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in--H. L. Mencken
The main message from the current presidential circus is that our politics remain as inane as they were back in the days of the above quoted gents. Twain’s time was the Gilded Age and Mencken’s was the Roaring Twenties. Both eras were characterized by the cruel concentration and shameless flaunting of wealth, with the swells inside their rococo palaces eating peacock off gold dishes and urchins outside in the alley picking through the garbage for table scraps.
The rich owned just about everything, including the politicians. So what's new? In such periods, business takes over directly and the role and status of politicians diminish as they are seen correctly as little more than go-fers for the go-tos. Today that same drop in rank applies even to richies like Romney when they dive into retail politics. Their peers see them as posturing. When you are already a master of the universe, what beside the pomp would make you stoop to the mere presidency of a country?
On top of that, legislators hardly write legislation anymore. Laws are now more commonly drafted, down to the jots and tittles, by corporate lobbyists. The pols are reduced to chaperoning them through Congress and to the president's desk. So what’s left for politician to do? They have become our court jesters, making the most of the old line that politics is show business for ugly people.
Regardless of who wins this November, it’s obvious that the Reps put on a better show for the money. That’s because they have better material. The Reps are a fount of spectacularly appalling ideas and atrocious initiatives. You never know what horror they’ll come up with next. With them it’s like rubber-necking at car wrecks. The poor Dems, by contrast, haven’t had any ideas, good or bad, in decades. I recently plowed my way through the official Democratic Party platform to see how it compares with the programme of the Front National, France’s fascist party (see Karman Turn for Apr 17). Written in a mixture of bureaucratese, newspeak and hortatory cliches, the Dem declamation makes a soporific superior to the Philadelphia White Pages.
The Dem campaign will get a tad livelier in the months to come. Obama's rhetorical skills will help pump things up, though not as much as back in 2008. Pathetically, he will be delivering the Dems' weakest and most hesistant ripostes to the Reps. After all, today's Dems don't want voters to think they’re extremists like FDR and Truman. Mencken and Twain are no doubt grinning in their graves.
As you may know, I write a monthly satire column for the print edition of In These Times. My editors at this excellent general news publication have allowed me to share it with my blog readers. I begin with my April 2012 column.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
The Secret of Their Success
The countries that are doing very well in Europe are the Scandinavian countries....they all have strong social protection and they are all growing. The argument that the response to the current crisis has to be a lessening of social protection is really an argument by the one percent to say: “We have to grab a bigger share of the pie.” – Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner and former chief economist of the World Bank
Since Argentina defaulted on $95 billion of international debt nine years ago and blew off the International Monetary Fund, the economy has done remarkably well.--Mark Weisbrot--Co-founder, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)
Lean in close to your computer because I have to whisper this: the most closely guarded secret of this global economic meltdown is that some countries are actually prospering even though they are not supposed to.
It’s a secret because they are countries that have given the middle finger salute to the banksters and bond traders by rejecting austerity, budget balancing and the like and concentrating instead on providing jobs and benefits for their people.
The biggest secret of them all is Argentina. A decade ago, it welshed on its nearly $100 billion debt to the International Monetary Fund. The Argentine is a good-sized country (double the population of Greece and Portugal put together) with a developed economy. Do you recall the pandemonium and panic when it defaulted? Of course not. You probably didn’t even know that Argentina had gone belly up big-time. Who pays attention to such stuff besides Wall Streeters?
Previous to its remissness, Argentina had been an obedient servant of our empire and its bond mavens. The ‘pro western’ succession of governments down there not only took all of Washington’s best advice on running their economy, they even adopted the dollar as their currency. The result was years of misfortune, misery and stagnation for the many and fat profits for the few.
The locals got sick of being poor and made a peaceful revolution (bet you didn’t hear about that either). They took to the streets and even occupied factories. They went through four presidents in quick succession before they found one who had some cojones. In the nine years since, the bad eco indicators have gone down and the good ones have gone up. Poverty has been greatly reduced, which is more important to my mind than transferring the country's wealth to speculators in the name of solvency. The current president was just reelected with such a strong majority as to give pause to Obama’s coup-making gremlins.
We are now being deluged with scare stories from Greece. The dread is that Athens will make like Buenos Aires and walk away from its arrears. Oh my God, this may collapse the Euro and even harm us over here! Hell will be unleashed!
Not so much. All that’s likely to happen is that outrageously rich people who trade sovereign bonds might drop a notch to indecently rich. Indeed, if they’ve shorted Greece, they’ll get even richer.
The real fear of our economic betters is that ordinary people are waking up. Not only Argentina, but Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, etc., not to mention the Scandinavian countries, are prospering by doing exactly the opposite of what conservatives preach and Washington practices.
Our leaders try to make economics a hard study so as to discourage the hoi polloi from figuring out how the system screws them. That works in prosperous times, but in hard times, that kick in your empty stomach gets painful enough for you to start asking where it came from.
The countries that are doing very well in Europe are the Scandinavian countries....they all have strong social protection and they are all growing. The argument that the response to the current crisis has to be a lessening of social protection is really an argument by the one percent to say: “We have to grab a bigger share of the pie.” – Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner and former chief economist of the World Bank
Since Argentina defaulted on $95 billion of international debt nine years ago and blew off the International Monetary Fund, the economy has done remarkably well.--Mark Weisbrot--Co-founder, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)
Lean in close to your computer because I have to whisper this: the most closely guarded secret of this global economic meltdown is that some countries are actually prospering even though they are not supposed to.
It’s a secret because they are countries that have given the middle finger salute to the banksters and bond traders by rejecting austerity, budget balancing and the like and concentrating instead on providing jobs and benefits for their people.
The biggest secret of them all is Argentina. A decade ago, it welshed on its nearly $100 billion debt to the International Monetary Fund. The Argentine is a good-sized country (double the population of Greece and Portugal put together) with a developed economy. Do you recall the pandemonium and panic when it defaulted? Of course not. You probably didn’t even know that Argentina had gone belly up big-time. Who pays attention to such stuff besides Wall Streeters?
Previous to its remissness, Argentina had been an obedient servant of our empire and its bond mavens. The ‘pro western’ succession of governments down there not only took all of Washington’s best advice on running their economy, they even adopted the dollar as their currency. The result was years of misfortune, misery and stagnation for the many and fat profits for the few.
The locals got sick of being poor and made a peaceful revolution (bet you didn’t hear about that either). They took to the streets and even occupied factories. They went through four presidents in quick succession before they found one who had some cojones. In the nine years since, the bad eco indicators have gone down and the good ones have gone up. Poverty has been greatly reduced, which is more important to my mind than transferring the country's wealth to speculators in the name of solvency. The current president was just reelected with such a strong majority as to give pause to Obama’s coup-making gremlins.
We are now being deluged with scare stories from Greece. The dread is that Athens will make like Buenos Aires and walk away from its arrears. Oh my God, this may collapse the Euro and even harm us over here! Hell will be unleashed!
Not so much. All that’s likely to happen is that outrageously rich people who trade sovereign bonds might drop a notch to indecently rich. Indeed, if they’ve shorted Greece, they’ll get even richer.
The real fear of our economic betters is that ordinary people are waking up. Not only Argentina, but Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, etc., not to mention the Scandinavian countries, are prospering by doing exactly the opposite of what conservatives preach and Washington practices.
Our leaders try to make economics a hard study so as to discourage the hoi polloi from figuring out how the system screws them. That works in prosperous times, but in hard times, that kick in your empty stomach gets painful enough for you to start asking where it came from.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Forget Iran, Next Stop Sinai?
There is no security, there is only opportunity--Gen. Douglas MacArthur
It looks like the 33-year-old but still serviceable Iran nuke threat is being switched from panic mode back to standby mode. In recent weeks, a minyan of top Israeli soldiers and spooks have started downplaying the ever handy danger, while Obama, our Mars in residence, has tempered the tough talk. Having repeatedly declared that he’s taking no options off the table, the president has perhaps discovered that the table is shy a leg or two.
At the height of the scare in March, we were beset with dire warnings that the mad Persians were once again just nano seconds away from deploying and dropping the big one. The two other possibilities, that Iran already had or didn’t want a bomb, were never bruited since they offered no opportunity for power and/or profit.
If Tehran was already packing nuclear heat, that meant it was, as a practical matter, intimidation proof. The empire couldn’t treat it like, say, Honduras. And if the Iranians were really telling the truth, so help them Allah, that they didn’t want and didn’t have nukes, that just made the Israelis and Americans look like lying war mongers.
There was another problem with rolling out the specter of a mullah bomb yet again: both Middle East politics and the global economy were too shaky to tolerate a war of bluff let alone a real shooting match.
Washington’s economic blockade of Iran (an act of war in itself) was seriously screwing up the world’s energy trade. Iran was one of the top five oil and gas producers, and its longterm customers were suddenly faced with having to scramble for new sources simply to please the Pentagon. With an election looming in November, Obama didn’t want to explain to the voters why, without a war, they were now paying $8 a gallon to protect themselves from the uncertain weapons of a country that had not attacked anyone in 273 years.
Besides, Israel, the war monger par excellence in this drama, found itself with new problems--and possibilities--in the Sinai. That part of Eretz Israel (Genesis 15:18) that it had reluctantly returned to Egypt in 1982 in exchange for an alliance with Cairo was again restive. With the Arab Awakening, the local Bedouin tribes started acting up, the Israel-Egypt gas pipeline was under constant attack, and the Gaza strip in which the Israelis had imprisoned a million Palestinians suddenly had an open back door.
I would hazard that at the moment, Israel’s high military circles are more worried--and tempted--by the Sinai than they are concerned about Iran. It’s got lots of oil and empty space. Should the new Egyptian government give up on ex-dictator Mabarak’s cozy cahoots with Israel, we could well see Merkava tanks rolling back into the Sinai. You heard it here first.
There is no security, there is only opportunity--Gen. Douglas MacArthur
It looks like the 33-year-old but still serviceable Iran nuke threat is being switched from panic mode back to standby mode. In recent weeks, a minyan of top Israeli soldiers and spooks have started downplaying the ever handy danger, while Obama, our Mars in residence, has tempered the tough talk. Having repeatedly declared that he’s taking no options off the table, the president has perhaps discovered that the table is shy a leg or two.
At the height of the scare in March, we were beset with dire warnings that the mad Persians were once again just nano seconds away from deploying and dropping the big one. The two other possibilities, that Iran already had or didn’t want a bomb, were never bruited since they offered no opportunity for power and/or profit.
If Tehran was already packing nuclear heat, that meant it was, as a practical matter, intimidation proof. The empire couldn’t treat it like, say, Honduras. And if the Iranians were really telling the truth, so help them Allah, that they didn’t want and didn’t have nukes, that just made the Israelis and Americans look like lying war mongers.
There was another problem with rolling out the specter of a mullah bomb yet again: both Middle East politics and the global economy were too shaky to tolerate a war of bluff let alone a real shooting match.
Washington’s economic blockade of Iran (an act of war in itself) was seriously screwing up the world’s energy trade. Iran was one of the top five oil and gas producers, and its longterm customers were suddenly faced with having to scramble for new sources simply to please the Pentagon. With an election looming in November, Obama didn’t want to explain to the voters why, without a war, they were now paying $8 a gallon to protect themselves from the uncertain weapons of a country that had not attacked anyone in 273 years.
Besides, Israel, the war monger par excellence in this drama, found itself with new problems--and possibilities--in the Sinai. That part of Eretz Israel (Genesis 15:18) that it had reluctantly returned to Egypt in 1982 in exchange for an alliance with Cairo was again restive. With the Arab Awakening, the local Bedouin tribes started acting up, the Israel-Egypt gas pipeline was under constant attack, and the Gaza strip in which the Israelis had imprisoned a million Palestinians suddenly had an open back door.
I would hazard that at the moment, Israel’s high military circles are more worried--and tempted--by the Sinai than they are concerned about Iran. It’s got lots of oil and empty space. Should the new Egyptian government give up on ex-dictator Mabarak’s cozy cahoots with Israel, we could well see Merkava tanks rolling back into the Sinai. You heard it here first.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
How The Dems Got That Right
I left you last week with the question of how the Democratic Party has moved right, yes right, of France’s Front National fascist party on most major issues?
The answer is part of the bigger question about how our country has been steering to starboard for the last 40 years--no matter whether the Reps or Dems are in power. That continuing wave has left us with ridiculously richer rich people, a disappearing middle class, permanent war, immunity for the powerful and a police state for the rest, and the ruination of what’s public and the exaltation of what’s private. In short, we’re turning into one of those banana republics where the bunch who own everything could all attend the same lawn party with plenty of room to spare for the pheasants and flamingos.
I left you last week with the question of how the Democratic Party has moved right, yes right, of France’s Front National fascist party on most major issues?
The answer is part of the bigger question about how our country has been steering to starboard for the last 40 years--no matter whether the Reps or Dems are in power. That continuing wave has left us with ridiculously richer rich people, a disappearing middle class, permanent war, immunity for the powerful and a police state for the rest, and the ruination of what’s public and the exaltation of what’s private. In short, we’re turning into one of those banana republics where the bunch who own everything could all attend the same lawn party with plenty of room to spare for the pheasants and flamingos.
This ongoing conservative tide has five sources. The first and most powerful is the global money crowd avid to free itself of taxes and regulations so they can more easily plunder their own system as well as everyone else’s. In a word, they covet the world.
The second is their chosen instrument, the Republican party, which grows more extreme as its dominance expands. But the Reps are by no means a perfect tool for financiers since many among them would dilute our extant plutocracy by adding a rival theocratic power center. The third is our commercial culture which celebrates selfishness, acquisition and a suck-up and kick-down ethos.
Fourth are the media who lend endless credibility to the incredible nonsense emanating from the right by rarely questioning it. They leave that job to the late night comics, who have far more cred among the public than do the corporate cocottes of CNN, NPR and their like.
Fifth among the fountainheads of reaction in America is the Democratic Party. Contrary to myth, the Dems have never been a purposely progressive party such as Canada’s New Democrats or Labor in the UK. Once an uneasy coalition of southern racists and big city political machines, the Dems go with the flow. From the 30’s into the 60’s when the freshets issued from the left, they championed lots of good stuff like Social Security, unemployment insurance, the GI Bill, Medicare, civil and labor rights, and on and on. The highpoint of Dem liberalism came in 1972 with the McGovern campaign. That crushing defeat for progressive Dems gave pro-business Dems the opportunity to turn the party rightwards. It’s been heading in that direction ever since.
Sadly, progressives have yet to mount a serious effort either to regain influence within the party or to create a new liberalism outside the party. With some honorable exceptions they gradually shed their liberalism and decided that if the Reps were the party of Business, they would be the party of As Usual. From that point on, if you asked Dems what they believed besides winning elections you would get a blank stare or a change of subject.
Dem leaders were able to hold on to what was left of their ‘progressive’ base by projecting the party as a lesser evil rather than a real opponent of the right. Voters were told they should vote Dem not because the Dems were going to do good things but because otherwise the Reps would do bad things.
The trick was to make sure that the progressives had no where else to turn. The Dem honchos declared war on left tendencies within and without the party. Typically, they heaped scorn on ‘extremist’ Dems like Dennis Kucinich and demonized outside lefties like Ralph Nader, spending millions on countless law suits to keep progressive third parties like the Greens off the ballot.
The trick has worked perfectly for decades. Progressive Dems will tell you, as if playing a tape, that they can’t nominate a progressive for president because that would lose centrist votes. And disgruntled Dems argue that they can’t vote for a third party because that would also throw the election to the Reps. All they can do is to accept an Obama, who populates his cabinet with Wall Streeters and frankly flaunts his buddy-buddying with banksters and his admiration for the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
And when the next even more right wing Dem candidate comes along, they will say exactly the same thing about her. Thus the notion of having a center-left, let alone a left, party here remains as unlikely as Americans ever getting the month-long paid vacations enjoyed by the Swedes and such. No, we are heading the other way, into a corporatocracy that doesn’t even offer the sop of social benefits such as those favored by European fascists.
A glimmer of hope: this morning's news reports that two Dem insurgents beat two two sitting business-as-usual Congressmen in the Pennsylvania primaries. "Last night the Democratic Party became more liberal," said Hugh Reily, Dem chairman for Schuykill County. Let's hope the glimmer brightens.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
The Democrats:
How Right They Are
I’ve been following the French presidential elections, the first round of which kicks off this Sunday. There are ten certified candidates from the Hitlerite right to the Trotskyist left. Since everyone is the self-labeled real item there’s no time wasted on accusations of “socialism,”“fascism,” etc., that occupy so much of our political space. That, to the logical French, would be like denouncing a duck for being a duck.
The leading candidate on the right is Marine Le Pen, the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the gray eminence of the Front National who recalls the Nazi occupation with a certain nostalgia. Though I used the word “Hitlerite” above, that was a trifle unfair. Le Pen fille represents a new generation and has endeavored to move the FN away from its collabo politics of yesteryear and into the contemporary world of European racism.
Interestingly, I found myself watching Marine’s speeches with disgust but also with a yen to learn more about the FN. So I Wikied the FN in English and then checked out their platform in French. From the former came this quote: “Under her leadership, Marine Le Pen has been more clear in her support for protectionism, while she has criticised globalism and capitalism for certain industries. She has been characterized as a proponent of letting the government take care of health care, education, transportation, banking and energy...Le Pen opposed the invasions of Iraq, led by the United States, both in the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War."
From the FN Programme, i.e., la bouche du cheval, I learned that the party wants
to boost taxes on the rich and on luxury goods. It favors a “strict application of laicite” (secularism) in the schools and the state generally. It proposes government training programs for youth and the jobless. It supports retirement at 60 for workers with strenuous jobs and wants a lower retirement age for mothers of three or more kids. To be sure, the FN shows its fangs with the draconian policies by which it would halt further immigration and torment immigrants already in France.
Are you thinking what I am?
That a French fascist party is well to the left of our Democratic Party on major issues!
That maybe Dems should be wearing little swastikas, or at least the fleur de lis, next to their Obama buttons. That perhaps they should switch their World War II hero worship from Winston Churchill to Marshal Petain?
How did this happen? How did American politics steer so hard to starboard that not only our yahoos, but our 'liberals' as well, line up as ultra-right nut cases in comparison to Christendom’s uber conservatives?
I’ll offer my two cents on that subject with my next blog. Until then, my favorite in Sunday’s balloting is the smart, tough and witty Jean Luc Melenchon, candidate of the Front de Gauche. He provided the campaign with one of its best laughs when he dismissed Socialist candidate Francois Hollande, the Mitt Romney of the French left, as a “pedal boat captain.” And imagine the brouhaha if Romney or Obama ran a campaign ad like this one.
How Right They Are
I’ve been following the French presidential elections, the first round of which kicks off this Sunday. There are ten certified candidates from the Hitlerite right to the Trotskyist left. Since everyone is the self-labeled real item there’s no time wasted on accusations of “socialism,”“fascism,” etc., that occupy so much of our political space. That, to the logical French, would be like denouncing a duck for being a duck.
The leading candidate on the right is Marine Le Pen, the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the gray eminence of the Front National who recalls the Nazi occupation with a certain nostalgia. Though I used the word “Hitlerite” above, that was a trifle unfair. Le Pen fille represents a new generation and has endeavored to move the FN away from its collabo politics of yesteryear and into the contemporary world of European racism.
Interestingly, I found myself watching Marine’s speeches with disgust but also with a yen to learn more about the FN. So I Wikied the FN in English and then checked out their platform in French. From the former came this quote: “Under her leadership, Marine Le Pen has been more clear in her support for protectionism, while she has criticised globalism and capitalism for certain industries. She has been characterized as a proponent of letting the government take care of health care, education, transportation, banking and energy...Le Pen opposed the invasions of Iraq, led by the United States, both in the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War."
From the FN Programme, i.e., la bouche du cheval, I learned that the party wants
to boost taxes on the rich and on luxury goods. It favors a “strict application of laicite” (secularism) in the schools and the state generally. It proposes government training programs for youth and the jobless. It supports retirement at 60 for workers with strenuous jobs and wants a lower retirement age for mothers of three or more kids. To be sure, the FN shows its fangs with the draconian policies by which it would halt further immigration and torment immigrants already in France.
Are you thinking what I am?
That a French fascist party is well to the left of our Democratic Party on major issues!
That maybe Dems should be wearing little swastikas, or at least the fleur de lis, next to their Obama buttons. That perhaps they should switch their World War II hero worship from Winston Churchill to Marshal Petain?
How did this happen? How did American politics steer so hard to starboard that not only our yahoos, but our 'liberals' as well, line up as ultra-right nut cases in comparison to Christendom’s uber conservatives?
I’ll offer my two cents on that subject with my next blog. Until then, my favorite in Sunday’s balloting is the smart, tough and witty Jean Luc Melenchon, candidate of the Front de Gauche. He provided the campaign with one of its best laughs when he dismissed Socialist candidate Francois Hollande, the Mitt Romney of the French left, as a “pedal boat captain.” And imagine the brouhaha if Romney or Obama ran a campaign ad like this one.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Holiday in Venezuela
Not everything the empire does is evil. It’s given lots of countries reason for a national holiday, with kids off from school, colorful parades and blaring bands. What those people are celebrating is beating off the empire’s army, ridding themselves of occupation, or booting a Washington imposed dictatorship.
Party time comes to Venezuela this April 13, occasioned by the tenth anniversary of the defeat of a military coup hatched in Washington and aimed at replacing the nation’s popular democracy with an obedient plutocracy of the sort it used to suffer.
On April 11, 2002, the right wing opposition to the elected government took to the streets while elements of the military surrounded the presidential palace. President Hugo Chavez was taken prisoner and members of his government were arrested or went into hiding.
The coup capos issued a decree dissolving the courts and all elected bodies. They promised elections--but allowing only candidates “chosen in accord with this decree.” All pro-government media were banned and protestors were ordered shot on sight.
The Bush administration immediately recognized its spawn and offered aid and encouragement. The NY Times welcomed the overthrow, editorializing that “democracy was no longer threatened" in Venezuela. They forgot to add that that was because it had been abolished. By contrast, every nation in Latin America angrily denounced the coup as a tiresome replay of Yanqui business as usual and demanded the restoration of the legitimate elected government.
The plotters threw a big shindig for themselves at Miraflores, the presidential palace, inviting the media to record the event. They even had the elite in attendance sign off on their decree, never dreaming it would shortly end up as evidence of their treason. The event looked like it came out of a 19th century French revolutionary novel. Beaming capitalists, colonels and clerics offered up champagne toasts to the restoration of the ancien regime. If you want to see both sides of a military coup, go to You Tube and watch The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Chavez: Inside the
Coup. (The key scenes in this eye-opening documentary start at about the 40 minute mark.)
At first, the palace party goers could only dimly perceive the rumble of the raging citizenry gathering at the gates. As it grew louder and and angrier, they got the message and began to scatter. The great majority of Venezuela's people and the best part of their military were not about to surrender their democracy. With overwhelming numbers they swept out the coup plotters like so much trash. The plan was to kill Chavez but loyal enlisted soldiers disobeyed orders and foiled the assassination. Paratroopers rescued the president from his island prison. By April 13, a mere 48 hours after the outrage was launched, Venezuelans were celebrating the restoration of the new order.
The battle was won, but the fight goes on. Obama is just as intent as Bush on reversing the outbreak of independence in Latin America--with the Chavez government still target numero uno.
Venezuelans go to the presidential polls in October. Washington is backing--with your tax payer bucks-- Henrique Radonski Capriles, the right wing scion of a media conglomerate who took part in the April 2002 coup. The fact that media conglomerates and their scions still thrive and contest for power in Venezuela gives the lie to the endless propaganda that Chavez is a dictator. If he were, the chosen opposition candidate would now be resting comfortably six feet down. In fact, the Chavez government was surprisingly mild and even conciliatory in its handling of the golpistas it captured. Only those who had committed violence, including the murder of demonstrators, were prosecuted.
Despite the fact that the Chavistas enjoy a solid majority, the upcoming election is fraught. President Chavez is battling cancer. That has occasioned a scramble for position within his democratic and broad-based socialist party among leftist and more conservative elements over which will predominate should Chavez pass from the scene.
Whatever happens, Chavez is, by his deeds so far, assured a place in history as one of Latin America’s greatest leaders. His movement brought independence, popular democracy and economic justice to Venezuela’s long beaten down poor. Like Bolivar, Juarez, Zapata and Marti before him, he’s beloved by the many and hated and feared by the few. I wish the Venezuelans many happy returns of their April 13 holiday.
Not everything the empire does is evil. It’s given lots of countries reason for a national holiday, with kids off from school, colorful parades and blaring bands. What those people are celebrating is beating off the empire’s army, ridding themselves of occupation, or booting a Washington imposed dictatorship.
Party time comes to Venezuela this April 13, occasioned by the tenth anniversary of the defeat of a military coup hatched in Washington and aimed at replacing the nation’s popular democracy with an obedient plutocracy of the sort it used to suffer.
On April 11, 2002, the right wing opposition to the elected government took to the streets while elements of the military surrounded the presidential palace. President Hugo Chavez was taken prisoner and members of his government were arrested or went into hiding.
The coup capos issued a decree dissolving the courts and all elected bodies. They promised elections--but allowing only candidates “chosen in accord with this decree.” All pro-government media were banned and protestors were ordered shot on sight.
The Bush administration immediately recognized its spawn and offered aid and encouragement. The NY Times welcomed the overthrow, editorializing that “democracy was no longer threatened" in Venezuela. They forgot to add that that was because it had been abolished. By contrast, every nation in Latin America angrily denounced the coup as a tiresome replay of Yanqui business as usual and demanded the restoration of the legitimate elected government.
The plotters threw a big shindig for themselves at Miraflores, the presidential palace, inviting the media to record the event. They even had the elite in attendance sign off on their decree, never dreaming it would shortly end up as evidence of their treason. The event looked like it came out of a 19th century French revolutionary novel. Beaming capitalists, colonels and clerics offered up champagne toasts to the restoration of the ancien regime. If you want to see both sides of a military coup, go to You Tube and watch The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Chavez: Inside the
Coup. (The key scenes in this eye-opening documentary start at about the 40 minute mark.)
At first, the palace party goers could only dimly perceive the rumble of the raging citizenry gathering at the gates. As it grew louder and and angrier, they got the message and began to scatter. The great majority of Venezuela's people and the best part of their military were not about to surrender their democracy. With overwhelming numbers they swept out the coup plotters like so much trash. The plan was to kill Chavez but loyal enlisted soldiers disobeyed orders and foiled the assassination. Paratroopers rescued the president from his island prison. By April 13, a mere 48 hours after the outrage was launched, Venezuelans were celebrating the restoration of the new order.
The battle was won, but the fight goes on. Obama is just as intent as Bush on reversing the outbreak of independence in Latin America--with the Chavez government still target numero uno.
Venezuelans go to the presidential polls in October. Washington is backing--with your tax payer bucks-- Henrique Radonski Capriles, the right wing scion of a media conglomerate who took part in the April 2002 coup. The fact that media conglomerates and their scions still thrive and contest for power in Venezuela gives the lie to the endless propaganda that Chavez is a dictator. If he were, the chosen opposition candidate would now be resting comfortably six feet down. In fact, the Chavez government was surprisingly mild and even conciliatory in its handling of the golpistas it captured. Only those who had committed violence, including the murder of demonstrators, were prosecuted.
Despite the fact that the Chavistas enjoy a solid majority, the upcoming election is fraught. President Chavez is battling cancer. That has occasioned a scramble for position within his democratic and broad-based socialist party among leftist and more conservative elements over which will predominate should Chavez pass from the scene.
Whatever happens, Chavez is, by his deeds so far, assured a place in history as one of Latin America’s greatest leaders. His movement brought independence, popular democracy and economic justice to Venezuela’s long beaten down poor. Like Bolivar, Juarez, Zapata and Marti before him, he’s beloved by the many and hated and feared by the few. I wish the Venezuelans many happy returns of their April 13 holiday.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Anomalies In The News
Not So Free Enterprise
If we elect a hippie president, can she force us to buy marijuana? The Supreme Court is currently considering a similar question: can the government make us buy a product that’s as illegal in the first world as smoke is here?
Toke on this: it’s unlawful to sell basic health care for profit in just about every country whose citizens wear shoes most of the time.
It’s verboten because health is a right. Turning it into a business is a crime because it would deny care to those who can’t afford the product. Since the goal is having a healthy, long-lived population at a reasonable cost to society, the most humane, economical and efficient way to achieve that goal is to make health care a public service like fire or police protection. Or so modern capitalist countries agreed decades and decades ago.
In the U.S., which has resigned from the first world, health is a hugely profitable business. The most lucrative part of it consists of financial companies who do no health care themselves but merely broker its provision.
After secretly consulting with its obscenely remunerated executives, the Obama administration promoted a law guaranteeing the vast profits of these financial companies by obliging citizens to buy their overpriced products. The Supreme Court will decide the fate of this giveaway. Odds on, it will give the big money crowd what it wants. But you never know. One or two of those irascible reactionaries on the court may really believe in free markets. Meanwhile, people living in the first world will be taking summer vacations on the money they saved by way of publicly-financed health care.
Rome In Havana
On arriving at Havana, the pope urged Cuba to “strive to build a renewed and open society, a better society, one more worthy of humanity, and which better reflects the goodness of God.”
That, to be sure, is a worthy goal for every polity. But Cubans could hardly be blamed for treating that message as ironical rather than inspirational. A very well educated people, particularly on their history with the Roman church, they were aware that those words were uttered by one of the most reactionary and secretive of the modern popes. That history told them that when Cuba was under Spain up until 1898, “priests were immune from prosecution in civil court, church buildings were erected and clergy members were paid partly out of state coffers. The Church's authority was backed by the might of the state and the force of law, and the profession of other religions in the colonies was illegal. Furthermore, until the 1880s, there was no marriage other than the canonical”
At the least, Joseph Ratzinger’s pontificate represents nostalgia for those good old days, if not worse. Another irony: though they approach it from different sides of history, the medieval pope and the Marxist Castro tend to agree on the excesses of capitalism.
Not So Free Enterprise
If we elect a hippie president, can she force us to buy marijuana? The Supreme Court is currently considering a similar question: can the government make us buy a product that’s as illegal in the first world as smoke is here?
Toke on this: it’s unlawful to sell basic health care for profit in just about every country whose citizens wear shoes most of the time.
It’s verboten because health is a right. Turning it into a business is a crime because it would deny care to those who can’t afford the product. Since the goal is having a healthy, long-lived population at a reasonable cost to society, the most humane, economical and efficient way to achieve that goal is to make health care a public service like fire or police protection. Or so modern capitalist countries agreed decades and decades ago.
In the U.S., which has resigned from the first world, health is a hugely profitable business. The most lucrative part of it consists of financial companies who do no health care themselves but merely broker its provision.
After secretly consulting with its obscenely remunerated executives, the Obama administration promoted a law guaranteeing the vast profits of these financial companies by obliging citizens to buy their overpriced products. The Supreme Court will decide the fate of this giveaway. Odds on, it will give the big money crowd what it wants. But you never know. One or two of those irascible reactionaries on the court may really believe in free markets. Meanwhile, people living in the first world will be taking summer vacations on the money they saved by way of publicly-financed health care.
Rome In Havana
On arriving at Havana, the pope urged Cuba to “strive to build a renewed and open society, a better society, one more worthy of humanity, and which better reflects the goodness of God.”
That, to be sure, is a worthy goal for every polity. But Cubans could hardly be blamed for treating that message as ironical rather than inspirational. A very well educated people, particularly on their history with the Roman church, they were aware that those words were uttered by one of the most reactionary and secretive of the modern popes. That history told them that when Cuba was under Spain up until 1898, “priests were immune from prosecution in civil court, church buildings were erected and clergy members were paid partly out of state coffers. The Church's authority was backed by the might of the state and the force of law, and the profession of other religions in the colonies was illegal. Furthermore, until the 1880s, there was no marriage other than the canonical”
At the least, Joseph Ratzinger’s pontificate represents nostalgia for those good old days, if not worse. Another irony: though they approach it from different sides of history, the medieval pope and the Marxist Castro tend to agree on the excesses of capitalism.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
A Model For Others To Emulate?
Not So Much
We spend so many zillions on our elections that NPR has a full time reporter-cum-accountant named Peter Overby just to keep track of them. This morning he was sending me back to sleep with comparative superpac numbers.
Of course, the zillions spent here are only part of it. Our government shells out for “democracy” in countless other countries. I just read about another $50 million on tap for Russia even though they just finished their presidential voting. Then there are messy situations from Venezuela to Egypt where our “pro democracy” efforts are treated as illegal foreign influence. Us? Foreigners? Though we have such laws here, Washington apparently feel free to ignore them elsewhere.
The justification our leaders (both Dems and Reps) give for meddling in the politics of others is that since the U.S. is the global exemplar of democracy, it has an obligation to help the less virtuous model themselves on us. Apparently, that’s an opinion that provides either a good guffaw or a bad fright to the rest of the world. Below is a round-up of foreign comment on our election campaign so far.
From Germany
The Republican presidential contest in America is a 'freak show,' said Marc Pitzke in Der Spiegel. The candidates vie with one another to spew the most outrageous hard-right positions, denying evolution while endorsing torture and joking about electrocuting illegal immigrants. How did a major party in the world's sole superpower become a 'club of liars, debtors, betrayers, adulterers, exaggerators, hypocrites, and ignoramuses?' These know-nothings are enabled by a U.S. press that has been 'neutered by the demands of political correctness' so that it can't say what's obvious: These people are daft! Instead, it 'proclaims one clown after the next to be the new front-runner.' Newt Gingrich, is actually considered an intellectual merely because he can create sentences with multiple clauses. Scarcely a one has even the most basic grasp of foreign policy. One said Africa is a country, another that the Taliban rule in Libya . Collectively, 'they expose a political, economic, geographic, and historical ignorance that makes George W. Bush look like a scholar.
From France
That's the scariest part, said Lorraine Millot in Liberation. The only GOP candidate who knows a thing about diplomacy, Jon Huntsman, is dead last in most polls. The others careen to extreme positions that include starting new wars and abandoning old allies. And that's when they even have a position. Herman Cain, now thankfully out of the race, was the front-runner even though he couldn't find a single coherent word to say about President Obama's policy on Libya. He even boasted of knowing little about foreign countries. And yet it was his adultery, not his astounding ignorance that brought him down.
From the UK
There's a simple explanation for this bizarre phenomenon, said Max Hastings in the London Daily Mail. In the lunatic, gun-toting badlands of America's Hicksville, Tea Party country, it's considered suspiciously elitist to show any interest in modern science or the world beyond America's borders. Say what you like about British politics, no MP of any party would dare to offer themselves as town dog-catcher while knowing as little about the world as the Republican presidential candidates. We take public service seriously. Yet we in Britain, and everyone in the rest of the world, will suffer if 'one of the lunatics' vying for the nomination makes it to the White House. The American political system has seldom, if ever, looked so inadequate.
Don't worry, said Matthew Norman in the London Independent. The fact that Gingrich is the latest threat to Mitt Romney's inevitability confirms how inevitable Romney's nomination is. The thrice-married, ethically challenged Gingrich is unlikable in the extreme. Which means the nominee will be Romney, 'the slimiest, phoniest opportunist to run for president since...well, ever.' So sit back and enjoy this circus passing for a presidential election. It can't possibly end in a GOP victory. Can it?
From Cuba
The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is — and I mean this seriously — the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.”--Fidel Castro, who has survived ten U.S. presidencies.
(Thanks to LDB for providing all but one of the quotes)
Not So Much
We spend so many zillions on our elections that NPR has a full time reporter-cum-accountant named Peter Overby just to keep track of them. This morning he was sending me back to sleep with comparative superpac numbers.
Of course, the zillions spent here are only part of it. Our government shells out for “democracy” in countless other countries. I just read about another $50 million on tap for Russia even though they just finished their presidential voting. Then there are messy situations from Venezuela to Egypt where our “pro democracy” efforts are treated as illegal foreign influence. Us? Foreigners? Though we have such laws here, Washington apparently feel free to ignore them elsewhere.
The justification our leaders (both Dems and Reps) give for meddling in the politics of others is that since the U.S. is the global exemplar of democracy, it has an obligation to help the less virtuous model themselves on us. Apparently, that’s an opinion that provides either a good guffaw or a bad fright to the rest of the world. Below is a round-up of foreign comment on our election campaign so far.
From Germany
The Republican presidential contest in America is a 'freak show,' said Marc Pitzke in Der Spiegel. The candidates vie with one another to spew the most outrageous hard-right positions, denying evolution while endorsing torture and joking about electrocuting illegal immigrants. How did a major party in the world's sole superpower become a 'club of liars, debtors, betrayers, adulterers, exaggerators, hypocrites, and ignoramuses?' These know-nothings are enabled by a U.S. press that has been 'neutered by the demands of political correctness' so that it can't say what's obvious: These people are daft! Instead, it 'proclaims one clown after the next to be the new front-runner.' Newt Gingrich, is actually considered an intellectual merely because he can create sentences with multiple clauses. Scarcely a one has even the most basic grasp of foreign policy. One said Africa is a country, another that the Taliban rule in Libya . Collectively, 'they expose a political, economic, geographic, and historical ignorance that makes George W. Bush look like a scholar.
From France
That's the scariest part, said Lorraine Millot in Liberation. The only GOP candidate who knows a thing about diplomacy, Jon Huntsman, is dead last in most polls. The others careen to extreme positions that include starting new wars and abandoning old allies. And that's when they even have a position. Herman Cain, now thankfully out of the race, was the front-runner even though he couldn't find a single coherent word to say about President Obama's policy on Libya. He even boasted of knowing little about foreign countries. And yet it was his adultery, not his astounding ignorance that brought him down.
From the UK
There's a simple explanation for this bizarre phenomenon, said Max Hastings in the London Daily Mail. In the lunatic, gun-toting badlands of America's Hicksville, Tea Party country, it's considered suspiciously elitist to show any interest in modern science or the world beyond America's borders. Say what you like about British politics, no MP of any party would dare to offer themselves as town dog-catcher while knowing as little about the world as the Republican presidential candidates. We take public service seriously. Yet we in Britain, and everyone in the rest of the world, will suffer if 'one of the lunatics' vying for the nomination makes it to the White House. The American political system has seldom, if ever, looked so inadequate.
Don't worry, said Matthew Norman in the London Independent. The fact that Gingrich is the latest threat to Mitt Romney's inevitability confirms how inevitable Romney's nomination is. The thrice-married, ethically challenged Gingrich is unlikable in the extreme. Which means the nominee will be Romney, 'the slimiest, phoniest opportunist to run for president since...well, ever.' So sit back and enjoy this circus passing for a presidential election. It can't possibly end in a GOP victory. Can it?
From Cuba
The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is — and I mean this seriously — the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.”--Fidel Castro, who has survived ten U.S. presidencies.
(Thanks to LDB for providing all but one of the quotes)
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