Saturday, August 1, 2009

Swan Songs?

Businesses go away when consumers find other more attractive paradigms and products. Then other companies or paradigms form to fill the void. It's called creative destruction.

In this case the destruction comes because the music industry took gross advantage of consumers, retailers and the artists themselves. I think no group of people are happier than artists at the demise of record companies. No one needs them anymore and everyone is happy about it.

Why should we not be happy about the demise of companies that instead of creatively finding ways to satisfy consumers sued them?


Multifarious
USA
August 1st, 2009
9:17 am

Monday, May 11, 2009

May 11th, 2009 8:50 am

"It looks as if America may finally get what every other advanced country already has: a system that guarantees essential health care to all its citizens."

Not to me.

I have had continuous health insurance for over 30 years.

My partner and I were paying $2004 a month for coverage. She is a breast cancer survivor (over 10 years) and I had bypass surgery 11 years ago.

When the policy came due in February they raised us 29% shoving us right out of the system.

Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing.
— Multifarious, USA

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist: Harry, Louise and Barack

May 10th, 2009 9:36 pm

"It looks as if America may finally get what every other advanced country already has: a system that guarantees essential health care to all its citizens."

Not to me.

I have had continuous health insurance for over 30 years.

My partner and I were paying $2004 a month for coverage. She is a breast cancer survivor and I had bypass surgery 11 years ago. When the policy came due in February they raised us 29% shoving us right out of the system.
— Multifarious, USA

Friday, April 24, 2009

Drawings of Some of The Slaves From The Slave Ship Amistad


In 1839, the Spanish slave ship Amistad set sail from Havana to Puerto Principe, Cuba. The ship was carrying 53 Africans who, a few months earlier, had been abducted from their homeland in present-day Sierra Leone to be sold in Cuba. The captives revolted against the ship’s crew, killing the captain and others, but sparing the life of the ship’s navigator so that he could set them on a course back to Africa. Instead, the navigator directed the ship north and west. After several weeks, a U.S. Navy vessel seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island. The Africans were transported to New Haven, Connecticut, to be tried for mutiny, murder, and piracy. These charges later were dismissed, but the Africans were kept in prison as the case turned to salvage claims and property rights. In a trial in Federal District Court, a group of Cuban planters, the government of Spain, and the captain of the Amistad all claimed ownership of the Africans. After two years of legal battles, the case went before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately ordered that the captives be set free. Thirty-five of the former captives returned to their homeland; the others had died at sea or while awaiting trial. New Haven resident William H. Townsend made drawings (and in most cases recorded the names) of the Amistad captives at the time of their trial. These drawings have been preserved in the library of Yale University.

The drawings are here: http://www.wdl.org/en/search/gallery?ql=en&a=-8000&b=2009&c=SL&c=CU&r=NorthAmerica From The World Digital Library a wonderful resouce.

Google, Microsoft finance UN Library of World's Knowledge site


The U.N. rolled out a new website on Tuesday that offers free access to rare manuscripts, books, films and map ranging from 8,000 old paintings to recent books.

The site cost $10 million and was financed by private donors, including Google, Microsoft, the Qatar Foundation, King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The World Digital Library, an online project by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), aims to display and explain just how broad and diverse human cultures are by displaying the content for free in seven languages.

Among the artifacts is a 1,000-year-old Japanese novel that is believed to be the first novel in history and the earliest known map to mention America by name.

About a tenth of the 1,200 exhibits are from Africa - the oldest an 8,000-year-old painting of bleeding antelopes

The project was launched by James Billington, a librarian at the US Library of Congress, the world's biggest library.

The website currently in early stages and only has about 1,200 documents but is expected to grow substantially.

The material is drawn from about 30 libraries and archives across the world, and will be made available in English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

On the Net:

www.wdl.org

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Yanks in Crisis

"The Great Depression altered the national consciousness. So far, the Great Recession has not."

But being manhandled by banks and credit card issuers might.

We do not use banks out of choice, we need them. We carry credit cards because we cannot function without them.

We American's want to be left alone by our government and be free to live our own lives as best we can but there are limits and those limits have been crossed.

As individuals there is nothing that we can do to combat abusers of our system of free enterprise. Only government can.

April 23rd, 2009 10:18 pm

Reclaiming America’s Soul

April 23rd, 2009 9:52 pm

Justice is always after the fact. Looking back is the only way to see where justice is required and no price is too dear to pay for it.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

The Debate Over Online News: It's the Consumer, Stupid

"We have seen the future and it is here. It is a linked economy. It is search engines. It is online advertising. That's where the future is. And if you can't find your way to that, then you can't find your way" so says Charlie Rose at the end of his conversation with Ariana Huffington and Tom Curley, AP's president and CEO.

Catch Ariana's commentary on the interview here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-debate-over-online-ne_b_185309.html

Ariana is correct, it's ALWAYS about the consumer, always.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

You Don't Burn Down The Whole House Just To Kill One Mosquito


I found Newt Gingrich's response to the North Korean missile firing, well, quizzical to say the least.

On Fox News Sunday the ex Speaker of The United States House of Representatives seemed to be saying that we should have taken out the North Korean missile. Like I said, quizzical.

I lived and worked in South Korea for over 35 years. When I arrived in Seoul South Korea in the autumn of 1971 I found that the Korean Peninsula was the most heavily armed piece of real estate on the planet.

The two Korea's were divided by a "Demilitarized Zone" (talk about an oxymoron) when fighting stopped in 1953. By 1971 there were nearly 1million soldiers facing each other across the DMZ. There was a massive amount of heavy artillery on both sides of the divide; there still is.

The capital of South Korea, Seoul, lies just 35 miles south of the DMZ, well within range of the the North's artillery. Seoul is a large city of 10 million. The Seoul National Capital Area which includes Seoul and the major port city of Inchon has a combined population of 24.5 million making it the worlds second most populated metropolitan area.

I have seen estimates that between 5 and 8 million people in the Seoul metro area would be killed within the first 24 hours after the outbreak of war. To anyone with any common sense this is a chilling reality.

The standoff between north and south has been facilitated in part by China who props up the North Korean regime, the U.S. who provides a defense umbrella and Japan which has deep economic ties and still allows the United States to base soldiers on its territory. Each of the three have much to lose in the ghastly event that war should break out.

Today, South Korea fears greatly the collapse of the regime in Pyongyang. It is important to remember that entire families were torn apart when the DMZ was established. Mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters were separated mostly never to see each other again. Most don't know whether their relatives lived or died.

South Korea is today a booming middle class economy. Seoul has been rebuilt (beautifully) from the ashes of war and life is good.

North Korea is a basket case. Drought creates the starvation of millions of people and as advanced as the South Korean economy is that is how devastated the North Korean economy is. A nighttime satellite picture of the Korean Peninsula tells the story; the south glistens with lights, the north is virtually completely dark. The image is striking.

The South Koreans learned much when with the fall of East Germany and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly a divided German was one again with one half being wealthy and the other relatively poor. The melding of the two was a big hit to the West German economy. But what could the German's do? After all, these were brothers and sisters, mothers and children, husbands and wives who had been separated for decades. They were all German's.

The same is true of the two Korea's. Should the North Korean regime collapse there would certainly be war (between the armies) while millions of North Korean refugees would go south and others would go north seeking refuge in China. The last thing China needs is more people!

Of equal concern for the Chinese would be the presence of the American Army on their southern border as the South, with the help of the Americans would certainly defeat the North Korean Army and the north would be taken over militarily by South Korean and American forces.

It is unbelievable to me that the ex Republican Speaker of The House of Representatives would sanction a disaster now to avert one that will probably never occur due to a North Korean missile attack on the United States.

The North Korean regime is a bad one, its leader Kim Jong Il is frankly nuts. But Kim Jong Il and the leaders of the North Korean Army understand the concept of annihilation.

The Korean's have a saying "you don't burn down the whole house just to kill one mosquito", just what the reckless Mr. Gingrich seems to be advocating.

RIP Old Media


I laughed the other day when I read that the Chairman of AP, Dean Singleton rattled his sabers at Google and Yahoo. Poor guy, he just doesn't get it. "AP Fighting to Reclaim Revenue From Web Portals"

In 1996 Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of MIT's Media Lab published "Being Digital". It is still a great read and highly recommended.

Being Digital opened my eyes to what the future held. It is still a great read and highly recommended.

Negroponte taught me the difference between atoms and bits. It is not atoms that we want, it is bits that we want. We don't want a CD (atoms), we want the music (bits) that is on the CD. We don't want a DVD (atoms) we want the content on the DVD (bits). And we certainly don't want a newspaper, we want the content that is printed on it.

To much ridicule (I'm 61) as most of my contemporaries thought I was nuts, I proclaimed the Internet the backbone of the future. "CB radio of the '90's" I heard. "A passing fad" they said.

About the same time I heard a radio interview, Fresh Air I think, with Andy Grove then Chairman of Intel. In the interview Grove said that by the following year more individual Email's would be sent than letters through postal mail. A few days later I mentioned this to a VC that I was pitching and he laughed in my face.

Executives in the Music, Movie, Newspaper and Magazine industries apparently didn't read Professor Negroponte's book and if they did they didn't understand it or laughed at it.

At the time I recognized the need for a catalog of Web sites (we got Yahoo! and LookSmart)and was having the conversation about what the economic model for the Web would look like. I was assured that Web sites linking to content would have to pay publishers for the right to link to it. I didn't see it that way because I believed that the Internet would dominate media, communications and much more from that point forward.

I would love to see Google and Yahoo! grant Mr. Singleton his wish and stop linking to AP headlines for a week or so. AP better keep the paddles handy, Mr. Singleton's reaction would be interesting.

Monday, April 6, 2009

China's Yuan Ambitions


China is playing a growing role in discussions over solutions to current economic problems. Much of the talk has focused on money. Beijing has signed currency swap agreements with six central banks: Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Belarus and most recently Argentina. China has long wanted its currency to play a more important role in the global financial system. These swap arrangements come in the context of that broader policy aim. Read the entire WSJ story here: China's Yuan Ambitions

Saturday, April 4, 2009

A National Rifle Association advertising campaign distorts Obama's position on gun control beyond recognition.

A National Rifle Association advertising campaign distorts Obama's position on gun control beyond recognition.

The NRA is circulating printed material and running TV ads making unsubstantiated claims that Obama plans to ban use of firearms for home defense, ban possession and manufacture of handguns, close 90 percent of gun shops and ban hunting ammunition.

Much of what the NRA passes off as Obama's "10 Point Plan to 'Change' the Second Amendment" is actually contrary to what he has said throughout his campaign: that he "respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms" and "will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport, and use guns."

The NRA, however, simply dismisses Obama's stated position as "rhetoric" and substitutes its own interpretation of his record as a secret "plan." Said an NRA spokesman: "We believe our facts."

Perhaps so, but believing something doesn't make it so. And we find the NRA has cherry-picked, twisted and misrepresented Obama's record to come up with a bogus "plan."


Thanks NRA, keep up the good work you sicko's. See post below.

The facts are here:http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/additional/Obama_FactSheet_Western_Sportsmen.pdf

Friday, April 3, 2009

14 Dead in Rampage in Binghamton, N.Y.

The massacre continues. A nursing home in North Carolina. A church in Tennessee. A center to teach immigrants to become American citizens in Binghamton New York. A war on the Mexican border being fought mostly with assault rifles bought from U.S. arms dealers since Bush let the ban on them lapse. Four police officers were fatally shot March 21 in Oakland, California.

Three police officers were killed in Pittsburgh this morning at the hands of a nut job "armed with an AK-47 rifle and several powerful handguns, including a .357 Magnum" says the New York Times.

According to the Times several of this monsters friends say that he feared ''the Obama gun ban that's on the way'' and ''didn't like our rights being infringed upon.''

What the hell is the matter with you people?

The blood of the dead and wounded is on the hands of the members of the NRA.

No one wants to take the guns from sportsmen, but how many bullets does it take to kill a deer?

Tell me, just how many holes can you put into a paper target anyway?

You people are nuts and innocent people are dying because of your idiocy.

Rupert Murdoch Doesn’t Get IT

This is already an old argument, I've been having it for nearly 15 years.

In a speech before The Cable Show, an annual cable television industry event, in Washington, D.C. Rupert Murdoch showed just how out of touch he is.

"People reading news for free on the Web, that's got to change," said Murdoch.

Reviving an already tired argument Murdoch raised his concern that search engines, blogs and portals steal revenue from newspaper sites by linking to stories published by them. The covetous Mr. Murdoch seems to resent that the referring site earns advertising dollars that he thinks belong to him.

"The question is, should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyright... not steal, but take," said Murdoch. "Not just them but Yahoo."

This is the Internet era and Mr. Murdoch has it backwards. The real question is should newspaper publishers pay the referrer for sending traffic to their sites not the other way around.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1995 to 1997, was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 2001. His analysis of the Obama Administration's bank bailout plan offers insight as to why the plan is a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

The definition of insanity....doing the same thing over and over again and each time expecting a different outcome


What surprises us that a declaration of war creates a war? In this case, a war that has gone on for 30 some years that will cost the United States over $14 billion this year alone.

What surprises us about the lack of gun control creates uncontrollable gun violence? In this case violence that has killed 7,337 people since January 2007 in this war alone.

What surprises us about demand creating supply? In this case drugs on one side and guns on the other.

What surprises us about draconian unpopular laws creating social disorder, mass civil disobedience and unsustainable demands on civil society?

Steele Ridiculous


Charles M. Blow writes in the New York Times this morning about the circus that is known as the Republican Party. His witty and insightful piece highlights the empty heads that now constitute their "leadership".

These are serious times that require serious thinking by seriously thinking people.

Maybe it’s me but has anyone heard anything of substance from any of the clowns of the media/political circus known as the Republican Party?

Eric Kantor was asked yesterday morning by the comedy team of Doocy/Carlson if he found “symbolism” in the fact that the Republican “budget” proposal only contained 19 pages when the Administrations budget was some 140 pages. You bet there’s symbolism in that - one was substantial, the other, well, empty.

It is truly distressing that in a time that demands rational thinking and cooperative effort that the best the Republican’s can come up with are the likes of Cantor, Limbaugh, Steele, Malkin, Hannity, Levin, Coulter, etc who don't represent American ideals in any way. They are deeply wounded people who are incapable of intelligent discourse.

http://blow.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/steele-ridiculous/?apage=4#comment-16815

Friday, March 27, 2009

The Market Mystique

Dr. Krugman nails it again...as he points out, we've got foxes protecting hen houses....

The bank I use, Wells Fargo, has become absolutely predatory charging outrageous fees for simple banking and holding incoming funds for as long as they legally can. I received a check from a Fortune 100 company and Wells held it for 18 days….18 days!

Banking in the US is a mess. Banks have become the enemy of their customers. They are big and strong and impossible to talk to.

It seems to me that what is needed at this point is besides strict regulation is nationalization of the largest banks. We then turn them into “national” banks owned by the government (the people) and a second banking system that goes back to the days of toasters, state banks. Small regional banks that know their customers.

With strict regulation as to what the National Banks can and cannot do banking will become much more competitive.

We cannot afford to have a system that holds us hostage to ever increasing fees.

I don’t like banks, I never have. But I NEED a bank the same way I need electricity. Our local electric company is regulated and they still manage to get electricity to us all while remaining in the background. Have you ever heard anyone say that they hate their electric company? Not true of banks, telecoms and cable providers-monopolists all.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/was-i-unfair/#comment-157171

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Obama's 'Science' Fiction

Charles Krauthamer must be the smartest person on the planet, or he may be second behind Limbaugh, or third behind Hannity or maybe first amongst equals, what's the difference. You guys are experts on science, bioethics, medical ethics, economics, governance, science, so many things...it must be really awesome to be you. You are smarter than scientists, doctors, effective politicians, Nobel Prize winning economists and it seems the vast majority of the people of the planet, after all, so many of us are so wrong about so many things in your eyes. Wow, what it must be like to be so smart about so many things.
3/13/2009 1:28:11 AM

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

From The Torches and Pitchforks File......Psssst, pass it on.


Help Us Dig Up The Praise That Today's Bailout Bandits Once Received
"Over the past few months we've seen the media begin to cast a hairy eye on many of the financial characters it once dubbed as experts, creators of great wealth and oracles of market behavior. Many of these people are now considered the perpetrators of our current financial crisis.

We need your help to collect the heaps of praise that newspapers, magazines and TV news shows doled out when times were good. Now that times are bad, it's even more important to remind ourselves how easily the wool can be pulled over the media's eyes and, consequently, those who consume it.

We want to find laudatory reports on not only the alleged Ponzi fraudsters like Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford, but also executives like former Merrill CEO John Thain and former top Citigroup adviser Robert Rubin. We need your help to research front-page magazine spreads, fawning TV interviews, and any other gratuitous praise of the perpetrators of this economic meltdown. It doesn't matter how far back you need to go.

Email submissions+praise@huffingtonpost.com with the articles you find. Include your name, the date the article was published, and let us know if you would like to remain anonymous.

Some examples of people to start with are John Thain, Robert Rubin, Dick Fuld, John Mack, Ken Lewis, Jacob Ezra Merkin, Vikram Pandit, Allen Stanford, Bernie Madoff and Walter Noel to name a few."

This Is Not a Test. This Is Not a Test.

America is constipated from having gorged on an imagined banquet.

Our national dialog is dominated by those whose political voice still screams from the narrowness of their own greed-those who earn millions of dollars a year to spew that which profits them, regardless of the truth. Listen to the dialog, it’s shallowness is appalling yet it still dominates our discourse.

The real ability to address real issues is drowned out by the noise spewed across our airwaves. Jon Stewart vs. Jim Kramer. Rush Limbaugh against us all the rest of us. Sean Hannity screaming unverifiable absurdity - nothing real, nothing of substance, just the stuff that is believed by those too lazy to unveil the truth.
Instead of thinking and learning we allow our own laziness to substitute for genuine rational, intelligent and informed discourse.

There is NOTHING today that cannot be verified by a simple Web search if we will are only willing to use some of our God given intelligence and energy to find it. Our discourse is dominated by the petty because we allow it to be so.

The issues are lost in a scream-fest. Some of us who think that we are betrayed by the captains of finance, others who bemoan the loss of the politics of the 1980’s. We are a bewildered populace assaulted by a media that has degenerated by a narrowness fed only by its own ratings and greed.

The American people must emerge from the fog of the absurd idea of God given right to live in energy thirsty McMansion’s and the unsustainable belief that unfettered access to petroleum and the monsters that gulp it up is a right granted to American’s because we are somehow exceptional.

No longer America, no longer.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

You guys are just so fuked.....


Barack Obama towers...

God Bless Us All


Tonight, Barack Obama melted the pavement.

The tributary known as Black History flowed into the river known as American History and they began to flow as one.

Great speech President Obama. We are blessed to have you as our leader.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Slumdogs Unite!


Americans “resent people who appear to be living high off a system dominated by insiders with the right connections.”

By FRANK RICH
Published: February 7, 2009
SOMEDAY historians may look back at Tom Daschle’s flameout as a minor one-car (and chauffeur) accident. But that will depend on whether or not it’s followed by a multi-vehicle pileup that still could come. Even as President Obama refreshingly took responsibility for having “screwed up,” it’s not clear that he fully understands the huge forces that hit his young administration last week.
The tsunami of populist rage coursing through America is bigger than Daschle’s overdue tax bill, bigger than John Thain’s trash can, bigger than any bailed-out C.E.O.’s bonus. It’s even bigger than the Obama phenomenon itself. It could maim the president’s best-laid plans and what remains of our economy if he doesn’t get in front of the mounting public anger.

Like nearly everyone else in Washington, Obama was blindsided by the savagery and speed of Daschle’s demise. Conventional wisdom had him surviving the storm. Such is the city’s culture that not a single Republican or Democratic senator called for his withdrawal until the morning of his exit. Membership in the exclusive Senate club, after all, has its privileges. Among Daschle’s more vocal defenders was Bob Dole, who had recruited him to Alston & Bird, the law and lobbying firm where Dole has served as “special counsel” when not otherwise cashing in on his own Senate years by serving as a pitchman for Pepsi and Viagra.

In New York, editorial pages on both ends of the political spectrum, The Wall Street Journal and The Times, called for Daschle to step down. But not The Washington Post. In a frank expression of the capital’s isolation from the country, it thought Daschle could still soldier on even though “ordinary Americans who pay their taxes may well wonder why Mr. Obama can’t find cabinet secretaries who do the same.”
As Jon Stewart might say, oh those pesky ordinary Americans!

In reality, Daschle’s tax shortfall, an apparently honest mistake, was only a red flag for the larger syndrome that much of Washington still doesn’t get. It was the source, not the amount, of his unreported income that did him in. The car and driver advertised his post-Senate immersion in the greedy bipartisan culture of entitlement and crony capitalism that both helped create our economic meltdown (on Wall Street) and failed to police it (in Washington). Daschle might well have been the best choice to lead health-care reform. But his honorable public record was instantly vaporized by tales of his cozy, lucrative relationships with the very companies he’d have to adjudicate as health czar.

Few articulate this ethical morass better than Obama, who has repeatedly vowed to “close the revolving door” between business and government and end our “two sets of standards, one for powerful people and one for ordinary folks.” But his tough new restrictions on lobbyists (alreadycompromised by inexplicable exceptions) and porous plan for salary caps on bailed-out bankers are only a down payment on this promise, even if they are strictly enforced.

The new president who vowed to change Washington’s culture will have to fight much harder to keep from being co-opted by it instead. There are simply too many major players in the Obama team who are either alumni of the financial bubble’s insiders’ club or of the somnambulant governmental establishment that presided over the catastrophe.

This includes Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary. Washington hands repeatedly observe how “lucky” Geithner was to be the first cabinet nominee with an I.R.S. problem, not the second, and therefore get confirmed by Congress while the getting was good. Whether or not this is “lucky” for him, it is hardly lucky for Obama. Geithner should have left ahead of Daschle.

Now more than ever, the president must inspire confidence and stave off panic. As Friday’s new unemployment figures showed, the economy kept plummeting while Congress postured. Though Obama is a genius at building public support, he is not Jesus and he can’t do it all alone. On Monday, it’s Geithner who will unveil the thorniest piece of the economic recovery plan to date — phase two of a bank rescue. The public face of this inevitably controversial package is now best known as the guy who escaped the tax reckoning that brought Daschle down.

Even before the revelation of his tax delinquency, the new Treasury secretary was a dubious choice to make this pitch. Geithner was present at the creation of the first, ineffectual and opaque bank bailout — TARP, today the most radioactive acronym in American politics. Now the double standard that allowed him to wriggle out of his tax mess is a metaphor for the double standard of the policy he must sell: Most “ordinary Americans” still don’t understand why banks got billions while nothing was done (and still isn’t being done) to bail out those who lost their homes, jobs and retirement savings.

As with Daschle, the political problems caused by Geithner’s tax infraction are secondary to the larger questions raised by his past interaction with the corporations now under his purview. To his credit, Geithner, like Obama, has devoted his career to public service, not buckraking. But he still has not satisfactorily explained why, as president of the New York Fed, he failed in his oversight of the teetering Wall Street institutions. Nor has he told us why, in his first major move in his new job, he secured a waiver from Obama to hire a Goldman Sachs lobbyist as his chief of staff. Nor, in his confirmation hearings, did he prove any more credible than the Bush Treasury secretary, the Goldman Sachs alumnus Hank Paulson, in explaining why Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail while A.I.G. and Citigroup were spared.

Citigroup had one highly visible asset that Lehman did not: Robert Rubin, the former Clinton Treasury secretary who sat passively (though lucratively) in its executive suite as Citi gorged on reckless risk. Geithner, as a Rubin protégé from the Clinton years, might have recused himself from rescuing Citi, which so far has devoured $45 billion in bailout money.

Key players in the Obama economic team beyond Geithner are also tied to Rubin or Citigroup or both, from Larry Summers, the administration’s top economic adviser, to Gary Gensler, the newly named nominee to run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and a Treasury undersecretary in the Clinton administration. Back then, Summers and Gensler joined hands with Phil Gramm to ward off regulation of the derivative markets that have since brought the banking system to ruin. We must take it on faith that they have subsequently had judgment transplants.

Obama’s brilliant appointees, we keep being told, are irreplaceable. But as de Gaulle said, “The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.” You have to wonder if this team is really a meritocracy or merely a stacked deck. Not only did Rubin himself serve on the Obama economic transition team, but two of the transition’s headhunters were Michael Froman, Rubin’s chief of staff at Treasury and later a Citigroup executive, and James S. Rubin, an investor who is Robert Rubin’s son.
A welcome outlier to this club is Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairmanchosen to direct Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. But Bloomberg reported last week that Summers is already freezing Volcker out of many of his deliberations on economic policy. This sounds like the arrogant Summers who was fired as president of Harvard, not the chastened new Summers advertised at the time of his appointment. A team of rivals is not his thing.

Americans have had enough of such arrogance, whether in the public or private sectors, whether Democrat or Republican. Voters turned on Sarah Palin not just because of her manifest unfitness for office but because her claims of being a regular hockey mom werecontradicted by her Evita shopping sprees. John McCain’s sanctification of Joe the Plumber (himself a tax delinquent) never could be squared with his inability to remember how many houses he owned. A graphic act of entitlement also stripped naked that faux populist John Edwards.

The public’s revulsion isn’t mindless class hatred. As Obama said on Wednesday of his fellow citizens: “We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success.” But we do know that the system has been fixed for too long. The gaping income inequality of the past decade — the top 1 percent of America’s earners received more than 20 percent of the total national income — has not been seen since the run-up to the Great Depression.

This is why “Slumdog Millionaire,” which pits a hard-working young man in Mumbai against a corrupt nexus of money and privilege, has become America’s movie of the year. As Robert Reich, the former Clinton labor secretary, wrote after Daschle’s fall, Americans “resent people who appear to be living high off a system dominated by insiders with the right connections.”

The neo-Hoover Republicans in Congress, who think government can put Americans back to work with corporate tax cuts but without any “spending,” are tone deaf to this rage. Obama is not. It’s a good thing he’s getting out of Washington this week to barnstorm the country about the crisis at hand. Once back home, he’s got to make certain that the insiders in his own White House know who’s the boss.

Treasury Chief Aims to Restore ‘Lost Faith’ in Bailout

Lost faith huh......

February 10th, 2009 2:51 pm

Consumer credit????? The major banks, I personally know of two incidents one involving Wells Fargo and the other Bank of America, of refusing to release funds claiming that it would take 11 business days to clear an out of state check.

It seems to me that getting these banks to start lending again is now less of a priority than getting them to release our own funds.

11 business days, in this case including President's Day (a bank holiday) is a total of 18 days.

The banks are taking gross advantage of consumers and small business in order to increase their float. This is causing, certainly in our case, extreme stress on our ability to do business. They are holding funds needed for payroll and other expenses. By holding our funds they slow our cash flow to the detriment of our company, our employees and those that we rely upon for goods and services to run our business.

The banks must be either nationalized or come under strict regulation that ensures that they do the right thing for our country and our economy.
— Multifarious, USA

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Will Obama Save Liberalism?

397. EDITORS' SELECTIONS
January 26, 2009 6:01 pm

So conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of do they?

Decades of conservative led deregulation of the financial system has left the country gorged by greedy Wall Street bankers, our monetary system feckless and our economy in the worst shape since the 1930’s.

Jihadism rages while we are bogged down in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that continue to cost America inconceivable amounts of lives and treasure.

Law and Order? America leads the world in the percentage of our citizens that are incarcerated. Do you really consider that a success?

A New York Times editorial published August 12, 2007 points out that The World Health Organization ranked the United States 37th in the world in the quality of our health care and conservatives remain obstructionist regarding universal health care falsely labeling it as “nationalized health care”.

Our educational system is ranked amongst the lowest of developed countries and we have one of the highest school drop-out rates in the world.

Liberalism has triumphed over conservatism in America because conservatives, when given the opportunity, governed selfishly and to the detriment of the greater good.

Mr. Kristol, while berating President Obama’s reference to America’s founding fathers (little did we know that conservatives have the phrase copyrighted!) says that today’s dangers are less stark than those of The Greatest Generation. This after 7 years of conservatives declaring Jihadism the greatest threat that civilization has ever faced.

Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have nothing to be proud of and I for one will not miss Mr. Kristol’s exhortation of the virtues of conservatism on these pages.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Field of Dreams

I've watched Field of Dreams, maybe one hundred times, more or less. I've been brought to tears every time I've seen it, as I remember.

Field of Dreams is the kind of story that tells you what you need to hear, every time you see it and when you need to hear it.

Tonight; faith. Field of Dreams is about faith. It is about believing that what you need to happen, happens when you need it. Faith.

I first learned what a "circular reference" was when I learned to use Lotus123. Field of Dreams is a story within a story within a story....it keeps telling itself.

Virtual Face-Off: What Does Google Owe Newspapers?


NEWSPAPERS CRASHING AND BURNING

37. February 4, 2009
10:21 pm

So, say Google enters into negotiations (which it won’t) with the newspapers and Google doesn’t agree to one of the papers demands or the amount the paper want’s to charge? Which paper wants to be the first to be left out of the search results?

Remember 1998 when newspapers started to squirm about what to do with this new technology? Many refused to put their content online-they lost. Some tried registration schemes (so how are you monetizing the registration information?). Some tried to sell content or charge a fee for “premium” content (we know how that worked out don’t we NYT…).

Buggy whips, telegrams, victrola’s (don’t even get me started on the idiots who run the music business!), sundial’s……….

We need in-depth investigative reporting. I love the NY Times and have been a reader for most of my life. But content is king and content producers are the Crown Prince’s and Princess’es of this new technology. I have no doubt that Thomas Friedman, Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks (not William Kristol!!!!) will find plenty of outlets that will be more than willing to pay them to write. Eyeballs, eyeballs, eyeballs. The papers better get over it really quickly and get with the program.

— Multifarious

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Internet Money in Fiscal Plan: Wise or Waste? (2)

Reading the comments posted by readers of this article you start to understand how most people don't even understand what broadband is.

255.February 03, 2009 5:50 pm
Link

DSL is NOT broadband. DSL is an old joke perpetuated by monopolistic telecommunications companies. Allowing Verizon, Cox Communications and COMCAST to dictate our future is ludicrous. The US should launch anti-trust action against these monopolies and break them up or force them to do what is good for the public and the future of our economy.

Internet Money in Fiscal Plan: Wise or Waste?

Extension of broadband into rural areas of the U.S. (absolutely necessary) will not come close to meeting the real broadband needs of a 21st century America. I am afraid that current proposals mask the real issues and lull us into complacency.

The United States currently ranks 14th (as low as 18 as measured by some) in broadband amongst the nations of the world. We are driving on a two-lane road when a multi-lane superhighway is required.

For the United States to be competitive with the rest of the world, and for our citizens to learn, research and consume in a modern world a high-speed broadband infrastructure is not an option.

According to A new study by the Communications Workers of America (Speed Matters http://www.speedmatters.org/document-library/sourcematerials/cwa_report_on_internet_speeds_2008.pdf) the median download speed in the U.S. is an agonizingly slow 2.35 megabits per second. Compare this to Japan where the median download speed is 63.60 Mbps. In South Korea it’s 49 Mbps and in Finland it’s 21.7Mbps.

All manner of Internet and Web development is stifled without assurance that advanced applications are accessible to a wide-spectrum of user.

South Korea, which already offers its citizens broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps, is planning to introduce 1Gbps service by 2012. That’s a tenfold increase. Comcast and Verizon are only now planning for speeds approaching 100 Mbps by 2010.

The major carriers in the United States are without adequate competition, or in its place, government "stimulation" or mandate. While these carriers concern themselves with maintaining control over what they consider to be THEIR infrastructure and access to the public through it, the rest of the world is moving swiftly to ensure modernity for their societies.

Broadband is a necessary public utility, the development of which requires urgent federal government attention.

220.February 03, 2009 3:30 pm

Sunday, February 1, 2009

"Raise More Hell"


Betsy Moon: What Would Molly Ivins Think?

I miss Mollie Ivins. Her death was untimely.

Every column she wrote was biting and humorous and you always knew where she stood. She was a fearless advocate of First Amendment rights and an outspoken critic of hypocrisy.

Here is some of the best of Molly Ivins:
Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?
You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You
Shrub : The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush
Bushwhacked : Life in George W. Bush’s America

Herbert Hoover Lives


Once again, Frank Rich nails it......

401.February 01, 2009 12:03 pm
Link

Poor Michael Steele, he has just become Chairman of nothing left to lose.

Rush Limbaugh flies from NFL game to NFL game in his private jet while he thinks that it is still 1999 and that the country is as fat and happy as he is. In a dark hour some humor is a necessity and so Mr. Rich – watching the far-right hijack what is left of the Republican Party is a laugh riot.

There is a complete void of leadership in the Republican Party due in large part to the abrogation of responsibility for the sake of ideology. Limbaugh is filling that void.

In the words of George W. Bush "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again".

These are serious times that call for serious people with serious solutions for serious problems. Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the obstructionists are not close to being that.

The vast majority of the American people won’t be fooled again. Limbaugh will lead the rest into a vast right wing irrelevance.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

“The risk of a near-depression shouldn’t be underestimated.” ....Nouriel Roubini


Roubini Sees Global Gloom After Davos Vindication
By Simon Kennedy

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- At the World Economic Forum two years ago, Nouriel Roubini warned that record profits and bonuses were obscuring a “hard landing” to come. “I really disagree,” countered Jacob Frenkel, the American International Group Inc. vice chairman and former Israeli central banker.

No more. “Roubini was intellectually courageous, and he called the shots correctly,” says Frenkel, whose AIG survives only on the basis of more than $100 billion of government loans. “He gained credibility, and he deserves it.”

This week, New York University’s Roubini returned to the WEF and the Swiss ski resort of Davos as the prophet of the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression - - joining the ranks of previous “Dr. Dooms” who made their names through contrarian calls that proved correct.

Even as he wins plaudits for his prescience, Roubini, 50, says worse lies ahead. Banks face bigger credit losses than they realize, more financial companies will require state takeovers and the world economy will keep shrinking throughout 2009, he says.

“The consensus is catching up with me, but it’s still behind,” Roubini said in an interview in Davos. “I don’t know what some people are smoking.”

‘Catastrophic’

As long ago as February 2007, Roubini was writing on his blog that “the party will soon be over,” and warning of “painful consequences for the U.S. and the global economy.” By last February, his tone had become apocalyptic, raising the specter of a “catastrophic” meltdown that central banks would fail to prevent, triggering the bankruptcy of large banks with mortgage holdings and a “sharp drop” in equities.

The next month, Bear Stearns Cos. failed, to be taken over by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in a government-backed deal. Then, in September, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. went bankrupt, prompting banks to hoard cash and depriving businesses and households of access to capital. The U.S. took over AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index suffered its worst year since 1937.

“I was intellectually vindicated,” Roubini says. “But I was vindicated by having an economic disaster which has political and social consequences.”

Predecessors

Roubini’s predecessors in the role of economic nay-sayer include some well-known names: Joseph Granville, publisher of the Granville Market Letter, who forecast the stock-market declines of 1976 and 2000; Henry Kaufman, who as a managing director at Salomon Brothers projected rising interest rates that led to a U.S. recession in the early 1980s; Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, who predicted the 1987 stock crash; and Yale University’s Robert Shiller, a former colleague of Roubini’s, who forecast the end of the dot-com bubble in his 2000 book “Irrational Exuberance” and said in a second edition in 2005 that the U.S. housing market had undergone the biggest speculative boom in U.S. history.

Granville, 85, says the key to being an outlier is not to doubt your analysis.

“I don’t have anything to do with emotion,” says Granville, who’s based in Kansas City. “Keep your head, follow the numbers and ignore the rest.”

Roubini was born in Istanbul, the son of an importer- exporter of carpets, and spent his childhood in Israel, Iran and Italy. It was while living in Milan from 1962 to 1982, he says, that he became attracted to economics: “Economics had the tools to understand the world, and not just understand it but also change it for the better.”

International Economics

After a year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he earned an economics degree at Milan’s Universita’ L. Bocconi and then his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1988, where he specialized in international economics.

Jeffrey Sachs, he says, became his “role model” at Harvard by demonstrating that economists could shape public policy -- as Sachs did by lobbying for poor countries to have their debts relieved by richer governments. Sachs is now a professor at Columbia University.

“You sensed there was something beyond academia, that you have to figure out the big issues of the global economy,” says Roubini. “You have to be engaged, and can’t just be in an ivory tower.”

For much of the 1990s, Roubini combined academic research and policy-making by teaching at Yale and then in New York, while also spending time at the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve, World Bank and Bank of Israel.

Joining Clinton

By 1998 he had attracted the attention of President Bill Clinton’s administration, joining it first as a senior economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers and then moving to the Treasury department as a senior adviser to Timothy Geithner, then the undersecretary for international affairs and now Treasury secretary in the Obama administration.

Roubini returned to the IMF in 2001 as a visiting scholar while it battled a financial meltdown in Argentina. He co-wrote a book on saving bankrupt economies entitled “Bailouts or Bail- ins?” and opened his own global consulting firm, which now employs two dozen economists and publishes a popular Web site and blog.

“Nouriel has a rare combination of economics and the real world, and so has great insight because of that,” says Shiller. “He looks into the details and rolls up his sleeves.”

Roubini says working on emerging-market blowouts in Asia and Latin America allowed him to spot the looming disaster in the U.S. “I’ve been studying emerging markets for 20 years, and saw the same signs in the U.S. that I saw in them, which was that we were in a massive credit bubble,” he says.

Still a Pessimist

With that bubble now popped, Roubini remains more pessimistic than economists elsewhere. The IMF forecasts global growth of 0.5 percent this year and bank losses from toxic U.S.- originated assets of $2.2 trillion. By contrast, Roubini sees the global economy shrinking this year, and banks writing down at least $3.6 trillion -- compared to the $1.1 trillion disclosed so far.

While the U.S. government is resisting nationalizing its biggest banks, Roubini says it will have no choice because they are now “effectively insolvent.” And the outcome may be even worse than even he anticipates if governments fail to take aggressive steps to recapitalize banks and revive their economies, he says: “The risk of a near-depression shouldn’t be underestimated.”

Roubini, who’s now working on a book about the crisis, says he takes no particular pleasure in his role as Dr. Doom or the attention it brings him.

“I’m not a permanent bear,” he says. “I’ll be the first to call a recovery, but I just don’t see it yet, and it’s getting uglier.”

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Health care now!

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.....
Health Care Now

The Worst Is Yet To Come


The origins of this (recession) (depression) call it what you will I think go back to the idea that "government is the problem". There are some things that only government can do. One is to regulate financial markets. The idea that markets are self-regulating, I hope, has been totally discreditied. Regulation is the only way to reign in greed.

There are many answers here, they are not pretty: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4590

For months and months and months, talk-talk-talk-blah-blah-blah radio, along with the likes of Phil Graham insisted that there was no recession while the people who knew were shouted down.....we get what we deserve. The lesson: leave your ideology behind and pay attention.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Will Obama Save Liberalism?


The New York Times Editorial Board has finally come to their senses and William Kristol will no longer be a Times columnist.

Mr. Kristol is a hack. His articulation doesn't rise to the level of Times columnists and his columns continually contained unsupported drivel.

His assertion in his last column that "all good things must come to an end", as usual, twists the truth. The end of conservatism is indeed the good thing.

His column follows:

All good things must come to an end. Jan. 20, 2009, marked the end of a conservative era.
Since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, conservatives of various sorts, and conservatisms of various stripes, have generally been in the ascendancy. And a good thing, too! Conservatives have been right more often than not — and more often than liberals — about most of the important issues of the day: about Communism and jihadism, crime and welfare, education and the family. Conservative policies have on the whole worked — insofar as any set of policies can be said to “work” in the real world. Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of.

They also have some regrets. They’ll have time to ponder those as liberals now take their chance to govern.

Lest conservatives be too proud, it’s worth recalling that conservatism’s rise was decisively enabled by liberalism’s weakness. That weakness was manifested by liberalism’s limp reaction to the challenge from the New Left in the 1960s, became more broadly evident during the 1970s, and culminated in the fecklessness of the Carter administration at the end of that decade.

In 1978, the Harvard political philosopher Harvey Mansfield diagnosed the malady: “From having been the aggressive doctrine of vigorous, spirited men, liberalism has become hardly more than a trembling in the presence of illiberalism. ... Who today is called a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?”

Over the next three decades, it was modern conservatism, led at the crucial moment by Ronald Reagan, that assumed the task of defending liberty with strength and confidence. Can a revived liberalism, faced with a new set of challenges, now pick up that mantle?

The answer lies in the hands of one man: the 44th president. If Reagan’s policies had failed, or if he hadn’t been politically successful, the conservative ascendancy would have been nipped in the bud. So with President Obama today. Liberalism’s fate rests to an astonishing degree on his shoulders. If he governs successfully, we’re in a new political era. If not, the country will be open to new conservative alternatives.

We don’t really know how Barack Obama will govern. What we have so far, mainly, is an Inaugural Address, and it suggests that he may have learned more from Reagan than he has sometimes let on. Obama’s speech was unabashedly pro-American and implicitly conservative.

Obama appealed to the authority of “our forebears,” “our founding documents,” even — political correctness alert! — “our founding fathers.” He emphasized that “we will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.” He spoke almost not at all about rights (he had one mention of “the rights of man,” paired with “the rule of law” in the context of a discussion of the Constitution). He called for “a new era of responsibility.”

And he appealed to “the father of our nation,” who, before leading his army across the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776, allegedly “ordered these words be read to the people: ‘Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it.’”

For some reason, Obama didn’t identify the author of “these timeless words” — the only words quoted in the entire speech. He’s Thomas Paine, and the passage comes from the first in his series of Revolutionary War tracts, “The Crisis.” Obama chose to cloak his quotation from the sometimes intemperate Paine in the authority of the respectable George Washington.

Sixty-seven years ago, a couple of months after Pearl Harbor, at the close of a long radio address on the difficult course of the struggle we had just entered upon, another liberal president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also told the story of Washington ordering that “The Crisis” be read aloud, and also quoted Paine. But he turned to the more famous — and more stirring — passage with which Paine begins his essay:

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

That exhortation was appropriate for World War II. Today, the dangers are less stark, and the conflicts less hard. Still, there will be trying times during Obama’s presidency, and liberty will need staunch defenders. Can Obama reshape liberalism to be, as it was under F.D.R., a fighting faith, unapologetically patriotic and strong in the defense of liberty? That would be a service to our country.

This is William Kristol’s last column.


So conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of do they?

Decades of conservative led deregulation of the financial system has left the country gorged by greedy Wall Street bankers, our monetary system feckless and our economy in the worst shape since the 1930’s.

Jihadism rages while we are bogged down in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that continue to cost America inconceivable amounts of lives and treasure.

Law and Order? America leads the world in the percentage of our citizens that are incarcerated. Do you really consider that a success?

A New York Times editorial published August 12, 2007 points out that The World Health Organization ranked the United States 37th in the world in the quality of our health care and conservatives remain obstructionist regarding universal health care falsely labeling it as “nationalized health care”.

Our educational system is ranked amongst the lowest of developed countries and we have one of the highest school drop-out rates in the world.

Liberalism has triumphed over conservatism in America because conservatives, when given the opportunity, governed selfishly and to the detriment of the greater good.

Mr. Kristol, while berating President Obama’s reference to America’s founding fathers (little did we know that conservatives have the phrase copyrighted!) says that today’s dangers are less stark than those of The Greatest Generation. This after 7 years of conservatives declaring Jihadism the greatest threat that civilization has ever faced.

I am tired of the deification of Ronald Regan. Communism was going bankrupt when he took office, it merely collapsed during his tenure. He gave us the collapse of the Savings & Loan system, made mockery of environmental efforts and allowed the spread of AIDS through his ignorant homophobia. He gave us Iran-Contra, a clearly illegal enterprise for which several of his top aids were convicted of crimes against The United States.

Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have nothing to be proud of and I for one will not miss Mr. Kristol’s exhortation of the virtues of conservatism on the pages of The New York Times.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

It's Pretty Grim Out There, But At Least We Have Rob Blagojevich......


Is there any question that Rob Blagojevich is the funniest man in America? Watch it Steven Colbert!

No Time For Poetry

I have been amused this week to hear the pundits on the right denigrate President Obama's (oh that sounds good!) inaugural address.

As Frank Rich so aptly writes today
"But there’s a reason that this speech was austere, not pretty. Form followed content. Obama wasn’t just rebuking the outgoing administration. He was delicately but unmistakably calling out the rest of us who went along for the ride as America swerved into the dangerous place we find ourselves now."

Let us not forget, George W. Bush won the 2004 election decisively. A majority of American's voted for him.

It's hysterical that Rush and crew decry President Obama's policies as socialist. Sean Hannity rails 5 days a week that American's want the government to take care of them. In this regard, you've got to agree with him, it's time for personal responsibility. It is also time to recognize that there are some things that only government can do and that it is time that the American government start getting it right.

Patricia J. Williams wrote an interesting article in The Nation recently in which she talks about a list a friend of her's wrote: "Millions of people are expected to descend on the nation's capital for the inauguration of Barack Obama. It is unprecedented: churches, temples, mosques and tribal councils have hired buses to attend. Schools are closing for the day. Universities are setting up JumboTrons to watch the festivities. Global media will join the dancing in the streets.

A friend recently asked me if I thought all these constituencies were celebrating the same things. Did I think this coronation-scaled civic bliss was mostly about Obama's being our first African-American president? Or was it because his win convinces us that some "post-race" American Dream has been ultimately affirmed? That he's going to improve the economy? Repair global relations?

The question made me reflect for a moment. Yes, the symbolism of his race is significant, although it certainly cannot be equated with the end of racism. And surely we're uplifted by Obama's being so genuinely likable and smart. No doubt the euphoria is also unusually great because his campaign drew constituents into political engagement--the phone banks, the door-to-door canvassing, the social networks, mass e-mails and text messages. As a result, people feel personal, even possessive, satisfaction about his victory.

But at least as important as all that, I think, is a kind of Wizard of Oz-ish fizzy relief about George W. Bush's exit--as in Ding Dong, the Wicked Warlock is melting into a nice little past-tense puddle. There's a giddily celebratory sweeping out of the indubitably, absolutely, completely, very worst president in our history. So many bad things have happened in the past eight years that it's hard to keep them all in one's head at one time. Another friend says he hung a list in the hallway of his apartment building, tabulating all the really awful things he blames Bush for. Other neighbors added to it. At first, he said, he was going to use it to host an inauguration party at which people would knock back a shot for each phenomenally inept executive flub. But then, he says, "I realized we'd all be drunk for a year."

The entire article is here, but here is the list. It's certainly food for thought.
"Pax Americana and the aspiration to consolidate a global American empire. The Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive warfare. Hurricane Katrina and "heckuva job, Brownie." The explicit rejection of the Geneva Conventions. John Yoo's and Alberto Gonzales's redefinition of torture. Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank subsidizing his girlfriend. Ahmad Chalabi. The FCC allowing greater consolidation of media. The outing of Valerie Plame. The manipulations asserting that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The addled handling of Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court. Opposition to stem cell research. The looting of the National Museum of Iraq, and the burning of Baghdad's National Library. Donald Rumsfeld's remarks that rioting in Iraq was the sign of a liberated people and that Iraq was no more violent than some American cities. Stacking the Civil Rights Commission with conservatives, like Abigail Thernstrom, who want to overturn sections of the Voting Rights Act. The shooting death of Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari and injury of journalist Giuliana Sgrena at the hands of American soldiers. The appointment of ultraconservatives John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Cheney filling his friend with birdshot. The USA Patriot Act. Doing away with habeas corpus. The National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping of citizens' phone calls and e-mails. The notion of an unchecked, unaccountable "unitary executive." The failure to keep official numbers of dead Iraqi civilians. The forbidding of photographs, or even visibility, of American military dead. The multilayered, high-level lying about how football hero Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan. Halliburton taking kickbacks from Kuwaiti oil suppliers. Paul Bremer dispensing billions of dollars for contracts in Iraq, which disappeared, never to be accounted for or recovered. Blackwater mercenaries accused of murdering Iraqi civilians. "Military tribunals" established outside the military justice system, with no due process or right to an attorney or to cross-examination or even to know the charges. The silly disparagement of the national anthem sung in Spanish. Bush talking directly to God. Abu Ghraib. Profiling Arab, Muslim and Latino immigrants. Guantánamo. Extraordinary rendition. Lousy veterans' benefits. Lousy veterans' hospitals. The failure to provide soldiers with reinforced armored vehicles ("You go to war with the army you have," explained Rumsfeld). The refusal to recognize post-traumatic stress disorder as a legitimate condition. Monica Goodling's political litmus tests in hiring for nonpolitical posts in the Justice Department. Expelling Helen Thomas from the White House press room and putting in fake reporter "Jeff Gannon" to throw adoring softball questions. John Ashcroft's draping of bare-breasted sculptures in the Justice Department. His subpoenas of more than 2,500 records of abortions performed at public hospitals. Gonzales firing US Attorneys around the country for political reasons. Oh, and did I forget the economy?"

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

On Day One, Obama Sets a New Tone

“Problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Albert Einstein

Monday, January 19, 2009

The Election of Barack Obama Makes Us Proud


Barack Hussein Obama
The 44th President
of The United States of America


A Surprise for the Right: Obama's Election Has Caused a Patriotic Spirit to Sweep America
Tomorrow will be a day that Americans will remember for years to come. It will be a day when most Americans -- whatever their partisan bent -- will feel particularly good about our country. But it will also be a day when people around the globe look at America differently than they did the day before. And they too will be inspired that everyday Americans mobilized successfully to take our country back -- that America did not fail them. The world will celebrate that we chose to chart a future governed by the American principles that they have long admired -- not the arrogance and selfishness they had come to loath.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking at Mason Temple, Memphis, TN on April 3, 1968.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this speech in support of the striking sanitation workers at Mason Temple in Memphis, TN on April 3, 1968—the day before he was assassinated.




Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy in his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It's always good to have your closest friend and associate say something good about you. And Ralph is the best friend that I have in the world.
I'm delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow. Something is happening in Memphis, something is happening in our world.
As you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" — I would take my mental flight by Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there. I would move on by Greece, and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality.
But I wouldn't stop there. I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and esthetic life of man. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I'm named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church in Wittenberg.
But I wouldn't stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating president by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
But I wouldn't stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy." Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a away that men, in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same — "We want to be free."
And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we're going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demand didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence.
That is where we are today. And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I'm just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period, to see what is unfolding. And I'm happy that He's allowed me to be in Memphis.
I can remember, I can remember when Negroes were just going around as Ralph has said, so often, scratching where they didn't itch, and laughing when they were not tickled. But that day is all over. We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God's world.
And that's all this whole thing is about. We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that we are God's children. And that we don't have to live like we are forced to live.
Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the salves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.
Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we've got to keep attention on that. That's always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened the other day, and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers were on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need of a doctor. They didn't get around to that.
Now we're going to march again, and we've got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be. And force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God's children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That's the issue. And we've got to say to the nation: we know it's coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.
We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do, I've seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round." Bull Connor next would say, "Turn the fire hoses on." And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denomination, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water.
That couldn't stop us. And we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them; and we'd go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we'd just go on singing "Over my head I see freedom in the air." And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, "Take them off," and they did; and we would just go in the paddy wagon singing, "We Shall Overcome." And every now and then we'd get in the jail, and we'd see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers, and being moved by our words and our songs. And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn't adjust to; and so we ended up transforming Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in Birmingham.
Now we've got to go on to Memphis just like that. I call upon you to be with us Monday. Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we're going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, "Be true to what you said on paper." If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.
We need all of you. And you know what's beautiful tome, is to see all of these ministers of the Gospel. It's a marvelous picture. Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, and say, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Somehow, the preacher must say with Jesus, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor."
And I want to commend the preachers, under the leadership of these noble men: James Lawson, one who has been in this struggle for many years; he's been to jail for struggling; but he's still going on, fighting for the rights of his people. Rev. Ralph Jackson, Billy Kiles; I could just go right on down the list, but time will not permit. But I want to thank them all. And I want you to thank them, because so often, preachers aren't concerned about anything but themselves. And I'm always happy to see a relevant ministry.
It's all right to talk about "long white robes over yonder," in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It's all right to talk about "streets flowing with milk and honey," but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can't eat three square meals a day. It's all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God's preachers must talk about the New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do.
Now the other thing we'll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people, individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively, that means all of us together, collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That's power right there, if we know how to pool it.
We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles, we don't need any Molotov cocktails, we just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, "God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you."
And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy—what is the other bread?—Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right.
But not only that, we've got to strengthen black institutions. I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown and deposit your money in Tri-State Bank—we want a "bank-in" movement in Memphis. So go by the savings and loan association. I'm not asking you something we don't do ourselves at SCLC. Judge Hooks and others will tell you that we have an account here in the savings and loan association from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We're just telling you to follow what we're doing. Put your money there. You have six or seven black insurance companies in Memphis. Take out your insurance there. We want to have an "insurance-in."
Now these are some practical things we can do. We begin the process of building a greater economic base. And at the same time, we are putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask you to follow through here.
Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point, in Memphis. We've got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus; and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters in life. At points, he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew, and through this, throw him off base. Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn't stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But with him, administering first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the "I" into the "thou," and to be concerned about his brother. Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn't stop. At times we say they were busy going to church meetings—an ecclesiastical gathering—and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that "One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony." And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem, or down to Jericho, rather to organize a "Jericho Road Improvement Association." That's a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effort.
But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that these men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as a setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles, or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
That's the question before you tonight. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?" The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?" "If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question.
Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.
You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?"
And I was looking down writing, and I said yes. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, you drown in your own blood—that's the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply, "Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School." She said, "While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze."
And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, been in Memphis to see the community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze.
And they were telling me, now it doesn't matter now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, "We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night."
And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.