Month: March 2009

Cross posted from TH!NK ABOUT IT and The European Tribune and Daily Kos

In a shock development it has emerged in the last hour that the European Parliament Elections scheduled for this June are to be cancelled.  A Spokesman for Commission President Barroso stated that it had been decided to cancel the elections for reasons of a lack of public interest.

“We have conducted an extensive survey of EU citizens and have concluded that the turnout is unlikely to be in excess of 30%.  In the circumstances a fair and valid outcome, as required under the Nice Treaty, is unlikely to be possible.  Less than 15 % of EU citizens were aware that the elections were due to happen in any case, so there is unlikely to be much public disappointment at their cancellation”.

The spokesman added that as Manuel Barroso was already assured of re-appointment as Commission President, an additional election now would serve little purpose.  Given the scale of the current economic downturn, it is vital that we economise on all unnecessary expenditure, and the cancellation is expected to save hundreds of millions of Euro in election expenses in the member states.

In a further economy measure, sittings of the current Parliament will be restricted to Brussels and will take place only for 1 week in each month.  This is expected to save a further €1.5 Billion in Parliamentary and associated administrative expenses.  “This reduction will also make a significant contribution to achieving our Kyoto targets for reduced greenhouse emissions”, the spokesman added.

A spokesperson for President Sarkozy stated that the French delegation would walk out of the Parliament if at least half the remaining sessions were not conducted in Strasburg.

A spokesman for the Czech Presidency of the EU was unavailable for comment, although one Czech source who didn’t want to be named stated that the measure was unlikely to be opposed by the Czech Presidency as as half the Parliament had walked out on President Klaus at a recent session of the Parliament in any case.  “No doubt the Parliament will operate even more efficiently if its sessions are reduced by half” he stated.

Declan Ganley, the Chairman of Libertas, complained that this was a disgraceful attempt to prevent Libertas from achieving a significant presence in the next Parliament.  “This is typical of the elitist bureaucracy in Brussels and their contempt for popular democracy ” he added.  “Libertas would be quite happy to fund the elections with donations it was receiving from all over the world, so there is no excuse for the EU not to go ahead with the elections.  Libertas is currently outspending all other political parties in Ireland in any case”.

The cancellation of the elections is expected to be discussed on the fringes of the G20 summit in London.  A spokesman for President Obama stated that it was their view that Europe needed a political stimulus package and the President would be happy to put his fundraising machine, BarackObama.com, at the disposal of the Commission.  It is understood that the CIA has already earmarked significant funds for the election in any case.

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Putin, attending the G20 Summit in London stated, that Russia had long been of the view that elections were over-rated in any case.  “When you have an outstanding leader like Vladimir Putin, you do not need to have an election so often”, he stated, noting that Mr. Putin had remained in power despite not even standing for re-election as President.

A Spokesman, for Prime Minister Brown, the G20 Summit host, noted that they had also cancelled plans for referenda on the EU constitution in nearly all EU member states.  “If it weren’t for those bloody Irish, no one would have noticed” he added off the record.

It is expected that the cancellation will also help the Parliament avoid the embarrassment of having Jean-Marie Le Pan as its President for one day in July – as it is customary for the oldest MEP to be President of the Parliament until a new President is elected.  “It is expected that all the Officers and leaders of the Parliament will remain in place until new elections can be scheduled” stated April O’Foolsjoke, a Parliamentary spokesperson.  “We are hoping that Monsieur Le Pen, 80, won’t be around when  the next elections are called.”   She noted that Le Pen himself had often stated that elections were but a minor detail of history.

After I finished teaching today I had to make a stop at Martin’s Food Store over near Interstate 81 in Hagerstown, MD. This is a brand new facility, which is one of the reasons I’ve started going there. It’s clean, well maintained, has great employees who seem to have been trained very well… and it actually makes grocery shopping fun.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a very BIG store… I get a lot of exercise just wandering the aisles. It has a nice organic food department, its fresh fruits and veggies are top notch and it has a wonderful meat department, too.

Today I tried their “Easy Shop” program – which strongly emphasizes the trust between store and customer. When I check in by running my Martin’s Bonus Card in front of a scanner. Then I am issued a handheld device that I use to read the labels on products as I shop and I take a bunch of bags to put in my cart  –   I bag things as I buy them. The handheld device keeps track of what I bought, shows me how much I save with my Martin’s Bonus Card and gives me the option to put things back if I find better deals on other items.
When I’m done shopping I hold the device in front of the machine that reads them, and it takes my bank card, rings it up, and gives me a receipt. No waiting in lines, no watching register girls and stockboys fool around with my stuff. In about two minutes I’m done.  I saved about 10% over all on prices that were lower than other places.  When I go outside I went to the Martin’s gas station, scanned in my card, and since I spent over $200.00 in the last couple of weeks (I bought my diabetes test strips in their pharmacy last week – as well as a week’s worth of groceries and pet supplies),  holding my Martin’s Bonus card up to the scanner on their gas pump told me I had a 20¢ a gallon discount on what was already the lowest gas price in the area.  I saved another $3.00 there compared to buying my gas at the best priced station in Shepherdstown.

So, the point of all this? I had a pleasant and rewarding consumer experience… the first one I’d had all week. Then it made me think: why can’t all shopping experiences be like this?

The government has agencies to protect banks, to protect gas companies, to protect major manufacturers, to protect organized laborers… but we have no Dept. of Consumer Affairs on a Federal level. Jimmy Carter tried to get one many years ago, and the lobbyists who protect the big boys I mentioned a moment ago got it squashed.

Now we’re here in a major economy disaster and we hear statements from the President and others that we have to get consumers confident in the government and the big suppliers again. Then they’ll buy new cars, and they’ll buy big appliances, and they’ll certainly buy more gas and hotel rooms and plane rides to vacations.

But the trust is NOT there. Why? Because no one is standing up for us at the same level.  I don’t trust bankers or investment firms or automotive CEOs any more. I don’t trust what became Bernie Maddow and I don’t trust the GM CEO who had to resign. I don’t trust the Republican Conngressfolk who make believe that their party didn’t cause most of this, and I don’t Trust Democratic Congressfolk who let the Republicans have whatever they wanted over the last decade.  I’d like to trust President Obama, but I’m seeing a lot of campaign promises go by the wayside as he is engulfed with all kinds of problems to solve.

But a Secretary of Consumer Affairs? I’d support that in a minute. Hell… I’d volunteer to BE it.

Under The LobsterScope

It’s the time of the month when I have to pay for the rent, the server, etc., so if you’d like to see this place avoid bankruptcy maybe you could provide a little bailout money to the Frog Pond? I’d really appreciate it. Advertising revenue was the lowest ever this month. It doesn’t help to be a loudmouth contrarian, either.

Any little thing will be very appreciated.

Did you know that high-ranking government employees have the option of getting a ride to work? Neither did David Sirota. Even his own readers are snickering at that one.

Also, I hope Obama quickly explains to Netanyahu who gives the orders in this special relationship. Who is Bibi to lecture us about what we must do?

The 20th-Century saw two major forms of totalitarianism: communism and fascism. Communism represented the far left and fascism represented the far right. The American left and the American right can sometimes resemble in a faint way the excesses of 20th-Century totalitarians, but they never willingly want to be associated with them. It’s a shame that Hitler’s party was named the National Socialist German Workers’ Party because it confuses conservatives. They see the words ‘socialist’ and ‘worker’s party’ and they think that the Nazis were some kind of party of the proletariat.

In fact, they were anything but.

The Nazi Party presented its program in the 25 point National Socialist Program in 1920. Among the key elements of Nazism were anti-parliamentarism, Pan-Germanism, racism, collectivism, eugenics, antisemitism, anti-communism, totalitarianism and opposition to economic liberalism and political liberalism.

That’s not to say that the Nazis didn’t engage in populist demagoguery. They equated finance capitalism with a Jewish conspiracy to screw regular working folks. They proposed nationalizing all corporations.

The onset of the Great Depression, which preceded the coming to power of Hitler, greatly discredited capitalism in the eyes of the world. The Nazis were not capitalists, but (at least on economic policy) an attempted mid-way between capitalism and Soviet communism. So, if you are an American right-wing laissez-faire capitalist, much of the rhetoric and many of the actions of the Nazis are going to appear in retrospect to be left-wing in nature. But the economic policies of the Nazis are not what has earned them eternal condemnation. Take a look at the following terms and tell me if they better describe America’s right-wing or left-wing.

Anti-parliamentarism (anti-Congress)
Pan-Americanism
Racism
Antisemitism
Anti-communism
Opposition to economic liberalism
Opposition to political liberalism

On those last two, ‘liberalism’ doesn’t mean left-wing per se but more like principles of free markets, private property, and human and political rights.

The modern-day American right supports economic liberalism but they’re pretty squishy on political liberalism. There’s a reason the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is considered an enemy by the Republican Party.

In any case, nationalizing the car industry is something Nazis might do. But you know what else they might do?

1. Demonize ethnic and religious minorities like Hispanics and Muslims.
2. Discriminate against homosexuals.
3. Fetishize female fertility and discourage female employment in the work force.
4. Characterize the homeland as the rightful property of ethnically pure (white) citizens
5. Promote a nationalistic and imperialistic foreign policy
6. Call all of their opponents ‘communists’ or ‘fifth-column communist sympathizers’
7. Suppress the black vote
8. Call President Obama a ‘magic negro’
9. Support torture and do warrantless surveillance on political enemies and reporters
10. Fetishize an idealized past when the country was truly great

I could go on, but you get the picture.

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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

Even though the Republicans’ response to Obama’s auto plan is all over the map, they agree that the firing of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner is a travesty.

Republicans did agree on one thing — they were uncomfortable with the idea that the White House was ousting Wagoner, the CEO of GM for the past nine years.

“If, in fact, Wagoner resigned because somebody in government said, ‘You have to resign,’ then I think we have nationalized the auto industry, at least GM, and I think that’s bad to have the government have a socialized car industry,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told POLITICO.

Set aside the merits of Chuck Grassley’s argument. If the one thing that the GOP can agree on is that it is socialism for the government to fire a totally incompetent CEO whose company is on government-funded life support, then how do you think they are doing politically in this whole debate?

I’d like to see a poll of how many Americans think the government should bailout corporations without removing the management that ran those corporations into the ground. If you think about the AIG bonuses controversy, people weren’t making distinctions about capitalism versus socialism. They were just howling mad at AIG for losing all the money in the world and they didn’t want anyone that was even two-steps removed from those decisions getting a dime of taxpayer dollars (even if they had already performed the work they were being compensated for). If anything defined the AIG blowup it was a refusal to make fine distinctions about culpability, the law, or even the Constitution. People just wanted a pound of flesh, and they got it.

Now, again, I’m not talking the merits but only the politics. Does the GOP really want to be on the record moaning about a CEO getting shit-canned in this environment? A guy with a $20 million retirement package?

For the Democrats, this is like Derek Jeter playing tee-ball.

When Republicans say things like this, I wonder if they mean it and if they understand the implications of what they’re saying.

Michigan Rep. Candice Miller (R) said the president’s latest steps meant he now essentially “owns” the auto industry, and is responsible for its survival.

“The president and the auto task force have now determined that they know better how to run these complex manufacturing organizations and are going to force changes,” Miller asserted. “By implementing these changes, they now become accountable for achieving success — accountable for the jobs, accountable for the livelihoods of the families which are at stake and accountable for the survival of American manufacturing.”

I know it is horrible for the federal government to fire the CEO of a company that has failed so utterly that they require taxpayer money to keep their factory doors open, but did Rep. Candice Miller seriously think that wouldn’t happen? As far as the government (or the people) owning General Motors, that has nothing to do with General Motors’ senior management, but with the amount of money we’ve been forced to invest. We can pretend we don’t own these companies or we can act like we do.

What’s odd is that Miller responded this way on a day when Obama announced he was not immediately taking over these companies and in which he denied them, for the time being, their funding requests. What I really wonder is what it would be like to have a president that didn’t take responsibility for safeguarding the livelihoods of American families and the future of American manufacturing. Oh wait! We just got rid of one of those presidents.

The GOP’s wailing and gnashing of teeth doesn’t even make sense. They are just setting up impossible standards so that they came blame Obama when he doesn’t meet them. If only he hadn’t had the temerity to fire some CEO’s all of this would have worked out great for the auto industry.

Our communities are more than just the physical spaces, or indeed even the relationships, that constitute them.  Rather, our communities are a reflection of the countless individual times when each and every one of us has looked beyond our parochial interests to invest time, energy, and resources into something bigger than ourselves.  Bringing food and comfort to an ailing neighbor, organizing a block party, or even stopping to pick up a single piece of litter; these are the actions that build a community. 

Every year, tens of thousands of Americans, young and old, feel such a strong commitment to their local, state, national, and international communities that they choose to participate in full-time service programs such as AmeriCorps and Peace Corps.  Participants engage in a range of community-building activities, such as after-school tutoring, environmental clean-up, and home building, and receive a meager stipend and, in some cases, tuition assistance or loan forbearance.  In addition to strengthening the physical and social infrastructures of communities, these programs strengthen economies by providing a transition into the workforce or higher education for participants. 

The House and Senate have both recently passed legislation to dramatically expand these programs, and President Obama has expressed enthusiasm, citing his own work as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago.  In times of economic instability, these types of investments—grounded in our values, and yielding long-term economic and social benefits—make so much sense.

I put down the crack pipe and pick up the remote control. I turn off the TV. Was there ever a time when Wheel of Fortune wasn’t on the air? If fortune is a wheel then this particular spin of the wheel called “my life” is decidedly unsuccessful.

I sit in the darkness in the quiet, a trace of burning base filling the air. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, because of chronic short-term memory failure, I remembered why I put down the crack pipe and picked up the remote control in the first place.

Someone had entered the room.

In the dark he was hard to see. There was only a fragment of moonlight. But, still, it didn’t take a rocket scientist, which I’ve never wanted to be, to see the visitor wasn’t from around these parts. Wasn’t from America. Not one of us.

First of all he was completely naked except for a tiny loin cloth which would make Tarzan’s a tux with tails. And second he stood there with a spear, taller than him, one end in the ground and the other pointed toward to the sky. And finally, and maybe most importantly, time will tell, around his neck was a huge snake. A serpent draped down to his knees.

Now maybe it was the crack or the single-malt Scotch or the medium-rare pork rinds, but the sight of this silhouetted man, framed in the doorway against the abyss of my failed potential, did not unnerve me in the slightest. Perhaps it was his size, maybe five-foot tall and he couldn’t have weighed more than eighty or ninety pounds, but the man wasn’t starving. He was strong. Alert. Poised. Comfortable in his own skin.

We stared at each other for a moment. Me in my La-Z-Boy and him in his body-paint and loincloth. And spear. He was a hunter. Mustn’t forget that. He hunts for his survival and I spray RAID to murder miserable little pests before they find their way to my well-stocked pantry. I have my GPS and he’s guided by the moon and stars. I live in the relative security and comfort of the First-World and he’s a charter member of the primordial goo. Everything separates us but our humanity.

We stared for a long moment until he broke the silence. He shot me a withering glance like my grandfather did when I failed at something or other any two-year old could do. After countless generations of upwardly mobile success of both material and spiritual wealth, I was the bust-back, presumably for reasons better relegated to the Wheel of Fortune than any deeper meaning. I made the black sheep in the family look like Prince Charles back in the day before he chewed his brains from the inside out and mistook himself for a King. Ah, Charlie, if only we could have stayed in Bangkok forever.

The aboriginal apparition, the universal earthman spoke in perfect English. With an English accent. I wish Diana were here to hear it. She’d laugh and laugh in that way of hers with a wicked smile before she dropped down for another line.

The visitor said in a clipped British tone, “Am I supposed to stand here forever or are you going to invite me in?”

To me he was already in and there was no inviting to do but an explanation of why the hell the little squirt was standing in my doorway with a loincloth and a spear. But as an American, I only thought these things to myself.

“Come in,” I said. “Sorry. May I get you a drink?” I declined my recliner and hobbled to my feet.

“Water,” he said. “From the tap into a clean glass, please.”

I turned to get the native man a glass of water. “Sure you don’t want bottled water?” I asked, suddenly remembering again what I swore I’d never forget – they found a bunch of poisonous chemicals in the water supply. Drink at your own risk – meanwhile you can buy bottled water which is ‘clean.’

“When water is a prisoner she cries. But sometimes the wail of a siren is preferable to her embrace.”

I didn’t quite understand how an ambulance was a her and water was a her and why they both cried.

“Would you rather have a beer?” I asked.

“Water is so hard to find?”

“No, it’s easy,” I say, “It comes in a bottle from the store.”

“I prefer to dip my hand in the river,” he says.

“Well,” I say, feeling chipper and at the top of my game thanks to the drugs and drink and dancing fantasies of Vanna White on a bear-skin rug with a flute of White Star and a mirror of cocaine, “You never know what crap folks put in the river upstream. Better to buy clean water from the store. Better safe than sorry.”

“I am a man and you are a ghost,” he says. Then he laughs. At me. Do ghosts have feelings, asshole? Huh? Do ghosts bleed when you stab them with the dagger of regret? Huh? Do ghosts smell up the bathroom in the morning while reading the 31st Psalm or Guns and Ammo, whichever is within reach? Huh?

And it’s then I lunge at the bastard. Arms out, fingers extended like some demented monster of Frankenstein I lunge at the little diapered Gandhi with a Bush smirk, ready to strangle the water-mocker like I’ve seen it done a thousand time in the movies.

Though, they never wait long enough in the movies. It takes much longer to kill someone in real life. Especially by strangling. Maybe ten seconds max in the movies. Well, people don’t go that easy let me tell you from experience. They’ll try to trick you and make you believe they’re dead and then when you let up they grab you in the balls and poke you in the eyes and generally fight like hell to survive. Even pampered little country club, city spa, chalet in Aspen bankers will fight like hell to survive. The little twerps.

So, I’m lunging at little black Sambo right out of a Tarzan movie with the stupid little spear and the stupid little grin and before I can say, “Gotcha you miserable little bastard” the miserable little bastard steps out of the way as I tumble to the ground and he places the point of his spear on the back of my neck. Okay, the years of neglect, the tons of sugar, the kilos of black, brown, green and white, the decades of debauchery, mainlining popular culture, yeah, maybe I lost a step. Or maybe it was the same corner of the damn rug I always trip over and been meaning to tape to the hardwood floor since 1987. Or maybe it was voodoo magic from the Amazonian psychedelic patch. The point is I’m in a slightly vulnerable position for no other reason than I’ve got no good drinking water from the tap and the little hunter-gatherer-warrior-shaman dude can’t abide Perrier.

Wasn’t it him who invaded my space unannounced, uninvited and unclothed liked he was dropped out the sky by the Zetans as some kind of practical joke? I was trying to be a good host and give him what he wanted, but no, all he wants is water from an unsafe tap. I saved his life and this is the thanks I get. Ungrateful little Third World Neanderthal. And all this is going through my head instead of my life flashing before my eyes because who wants to rewind that fucking disaster, when all of a sudden I’m pulled to my feet and instantly somewhere else.

Like a cloud or something. But a conference room too. Like a conference room in a cloud somewhere in a dream. It’s all white. And there are people sitting at a conference table looking at me standing before them. Men and women looking at me. Maybe seven or eight of them. Judging, evaluating, reckoning, setting the penance.

Finally one of them says, “Where’s Bob?”

And then I realize the little pigmy grunt is standing next to me, still holding the damn spear. I look at him and sure enough all of a sudden he does look a little like Robert Guillaume the guy who used to star in Benson when I was a kid and I realize this is a very bad dream, but still not a nightmare as I’m not being chased, yet.

And one of the people in the conference room in the cloud says, “Well? Well gottlieb? What do you have to say for yourself? Huh?”

Well what can I say really except it’s indigestion and maybe a loose sphincter or something equally as embarrassing because I really have no idea what’s going on and frankly was loosing interest because I just realized the Wheel of Fortune is actually a very profound game show. And the comfort of my Easy Boy and my freedom-of-choice remote control and as a devotee to finance capitalism and the ideals of ‘get-rich-quick’  – all these things called to my dream and prodded to get me back to real world.

And sure enough, I awoke in my recliner as Vanna White was turning a Q. The category was “America’s Favorite Pastime” and I thought “there is no Q in baseball.” Or Mom’s Apple Pie for that matter. And I thought of all the Q words which could be America’s favorite pastime that wasn’t baseball. And I couldn’t think of one. Vanna just stood there smiling stupidly into the camera like “Come on gottlieb you dumb fuck.” And I just couldn’t think of it. Like it was staring me right in the face: Wheel of Fortune, the letter Q, America’s favorite pastime and I wished I was back in the dream in the stupid conference room in the sky with the pigmy named Bob and the scrutinizers judging me unworthy… and all of a sudden I get it. And I say it: “Quack!”

And I know it’s true but I don’t why. Kind of like Jesus and The Beatles wrapped into one thing you know like a pot-sticker. America’s favorite pastime is to quack. Like a duck. Quack! Quack! Quack! Like Burgess Meredith as the Penguin.

Holy Breath of Life, Batman, my life is flashing before my eyes. And I realize I’m dying, probably from an overdose of undiagnosed guilt for all things I never did but could have to help out humanity, and the stranger from the Amazon was probably an angel of death sent to carry me to the “other side” of the Styx where everyone dresses in loin cloths and there’s unlimited sex with no jealousy and lots of Ambrosia. Lots and lots of Ambrosia.

And I’m sitting in the Cozy Boy recliner with the remote control in one hand and a scotch and soda in the other and on the screen is a documentary about the Amazon. There’s Bob in a little reed boat which makes primitive modern and he’s throwing his spear at something in the water. He smiles to the camera as he retrieves his tethered spear. He’s caught something all right. Something big. Something to feed his family for a week. The camera zooms in. It’s a Rolex Watch. With part of an arm attached.

And Bob smiles at the camera in his loin cloth and paint. He holds up the arm. And a phrase comes on the screen underneath the picture of Bob and the detached arm with the Rolex watch: Get Rich Quick!

And I scream and I run from the house and I run all the way to the hospital and check myself in but I have no money or insurance so they kick me out as a bum and I wonder who I am in Obama’s America.

And then I know: A Quark. And then I think back to Vanna and wonder how I had it so wrong and curse god “why can’t I have her on the rug in front of the fire with bottle of Moet and a few grams of coke?” When we’re both in our twenties and unafraid of passion instead of now sitting in an old folks home with an IV in a wheelchair overlooking the parking lot of a Walmart which won’t even have me as a greeter.

Where did it go? It goes by so fast. Even the most boring life is over before you can say “poof.”

“Are you ready?” Bob says from behind.

“Ready when you are Bob,” I say, “Ready when you are.”