Month: January 2010

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Obviously, Obama is treading very carefully on the issue to avoid irritating either party in the I/P conflict. The courage laid down in his Cairo speech was short-lived as reality on the ground in Judea and Samaria works in favor of Eretz Israel.

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

Hello again painting fans.

This week I’ll be continuing with the painting of the towered Cape May house.  I will be using the photo seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylics on a small 5 by 5 inch canvas.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does in the photo directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

Looking at the original photo, I decided that the far left side, seen in shadow, was best handled without showing details such as the windows.  In other words, it would be painted as thick, obscuring shadow.  But that meant other shadows should be consistent.  That included the shadow draping toward the double front doors.  And then it occurred to me that this could be a much more dramatic image.  Suddenly the painting took a turn that I had not envisioned.

I did indeed paint those heavy shadows described above.  Also complete are the double doors, windows and the siding surfaces.  All of these elements are handled in a manner that is consistent with the heavy shadows.  The roof sections appear in the same gray as the windows and double doors.  Finally, the street and sidewalk have been painted in grays with some blue highlights.

 
The current state of the painting is seen directly below.

That’s about it for now. Next week I’ll have more progress to show you. See you then. As always, feel free to add photos of your own work in the comments section below.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

If Ben Bernanke’s nomination to head the Federal Reserve gets scuttled, the head of the Kansas City Fed might be an attractive alternative.

For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

NOTE: Shortly before I finished this post Ben Bernanke was confirmed by the Senate for a second term as Fed chairman.  I’m posting this anyway because I think it was a terrible decision that will only look worse with time, and maybe if we are lucky he will not serve his full term – in which case the post is relevant again.  Stranger things have happened; you never know.

In December I made the case for Kansas City Fed chairman Thomas Hoenig to succeed Ben Bernanke.  It was a mostly speculative post based on Bernanke’s less-than-inspiring Senate appearance and scattered rumblings among activists.  Scott Brown’s surprising victory last week appears to have been a “come to Jesus” moment for Washington Democrats, though, and now the astounding unpopularity of Wall Street has made everyone a populist.

The Obama administration is issuing cool assurances that Bernanke will sail through, but opposition has grown.  If nothing else, rejecting him would imply a small measure of responsibility.  During his tenure he presided over the popping of a huge speculative bubble, the economy went into a tailspin, and conditions remain terrible.  People want a scalp, and they want a senior one – not some low level schmuck who was left holding the bag and didn’t have the savvy to cover his tracks.

The tepid support for Bernanke outlined in my previous post has remained lukewarm.  Paul Krugman favors it “only because rejecting him could make the Fed’s policies worse,” and after laying out his case concludes it is “not a ringing endorsement, but it’s the best I can do.”  He then writes the following, which sums up the corrosive and unworkable conventional wisdom that seems to have set in on even liberal economists: “If Mr. Bernanke is reappointed, he and his colleagues need to realize that what they consider a policy success is actually a policy failure.”

It is hard to imagine a more depressing formulation.  He calls for reappointment and then admonishes Bernanke to change course, which gets it exactly backwards.  The onus is on Bernanke to admit his policy was a disaster prior to being reappointed.  It is pure madness to send the architect back to his post based on the hope, supported by no evidence whatsoever, that he will change course.  If Bernanke had gone before Congress, frankly admitted his failure, and outlined what aggressive steps he was planning to correct them if he were fortunate enough to win another term, that might be a different matter.  (Might.)

He did no such thing though, and the sensible conclusion is that firmly intends more of the same.  We would be better off with not just another nominee but one with another economic philosophy entirely.  (The soundness of doing so was further endorsed in the form of egregious dumbass Tim Geithner’s dire warnings against it.)

For those who care about this issue, it is extremely important to get some other names out there immediately.  MIT professor of economics Simon Johnson recommends Hoenig.  In his Bernanke piece Krugman mentions San Francisco Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen, as has the economics blog Calculated Risk.  She may well be a fine candidate, even better than Hoenig, but I heard her name floated just this week.  Since I have not had time to familiarize myself with her I will restate the case for Hoenig.

First, the caveats.  Hoenig, like Bernanke, privileges inflation over employment.  There is no reason to think he would substantially depart from the current fantastically exaggerated fear of it.  He could regard the current double digit unemployment rate as undesirable but inevitable.  Moreover, he sees inflation in an undifferentiated way; in a 2005 speech on it he noted “businesses may face higher labor cost pressures, and depending on competitive conditions, these costs may increasingly be passed on to consumers.”  That such higher labor cost pressures translate into a better standard of living for the labor in question, a situation once known as “The American Dream,” does not seem to matter.

That same speech utters not a word about real estate.  It would have been nice to know he was at least aware of that massive time bomb as it ticked towards detonation.

These drawbacks may actually make him a better nominee, though.  Last year’s speech “Too Big Has Failed” outlines an attitude towards large financial institutions that twenty years ago would have been unexciting, boilerplate economic conservatism, but now has a revolutionary ring to it.  That may be about as sharp a break as the capitol can handle.  Maybe it would be more acceptable if accompanied with a dose of familiar, soothing DC orthodoxy and washed down with a cup of Wrong On Housing Too.

There are probably many nominees who would serve the country well.  I first became acquainted with Hoenig because of “Too Big Has Failed” and have tried to learn more about him since.  People whose judgment I greatly respect like Yellen as a first choice, so she would probably be great too.  There does not need to be unanimity on a successor, just that it not be another victim of cognitive regulatory capture.

BENEATH THE SPIN * ERIC L. WATTREE

War Crimes

It’s been suggested more than once that the only reason I’m so passionate about having the Bush Administration charged with war crimes is because I’m a liberal, and therefore, harbor some sort of deep-seated hatred for George Bush. But that’s not true. The fact is, I neither hate George Bush, nor any other conservative. I’m a progressive, not an ideologue, so I have no ideological motive to see any adversity brought into Bush’s life, or anyone elses. My passion stems from the fact that because I am progressive, I have a progressive’s lust for justice.

As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, progressives have but one guiding philosophy, one that entails the primacy of humanity, justice for ALL, and the search for truth – wherever that truth may lead, and regardless to whose ox is gored as a result. It’s just happens that in this case, the ox that must be gored is in our own backyard.
But in today’s political environment, I can certainly understand how people might feel the way they do, especially conservatives.  It is far from lost on me that many of those who claim to be progressives are actually quite partisan – they’re ideologues. They view politics from the perspective of a sports fan – it’s our team against theirs, and the more pain their team sustains, the better we like it.

But I want to assure you that’s not the case here. I’m looking at this situation purely from the perspective of what is just, and what is just in this case, is for Bush, Cheney, and their cohorts be held strictly accountable for their criminal conduct in Iraq.  And I sincerely hope that once I’ve laid out my case that even the most cynical of you will understand my point of view – even if you disagree with it.

Let us go back to what we were feeling during Nine-Eleven for a moment. Think about how much horror and pain we went through as we witnessed three thousand of our citizens being brutally murdered. It was such a traumatic experience that now, close to a decade later, we’re still traumatized by it. It seems like it only happened yesterday.  

But we’ve never once stopped to consider that if that one day could be so traumatizing to the American psyche, what it must be like for the Iraqis, who have been forced to watch hundreds of thousands of their people killed, and have had to face the horror of a Nine-Eleven every day of their lives for the past seven years.  The horror that has been brought upon the Iraqi people goes far beyond what I can express here in words, and the injustice of their situation is bruatally unconscionable – and the Iraqi people did absolutely nothing to us.

Yet, just think of the pure hell they’ve had to go through just to try to protect their children in a Nine-eleven-like environment everyday for seven years; never knowing when something – anything – might explode tearing to shreds the little bodies of the children that mean more than anything else in the world to them.

Imagine what it would be like to have some country come over here and kill hundreds of thousands of Americans (millions in order to have the impact we’ve had on Iraq).  Then later, having that country say, “You know, now that we’ve thought about it, we shouldn’t have done this. It was a mistake. But what the hell – what’s done is done, so we need to look forward.”

And even as they speak of “moving forward,” you’re thinking of the past – of happier times.  You think of mother’s smile, your father’s laugh, the dreams of your beautiful young sister, and how goofy your silly little brother could be.  But now, they’re all now gone. You’re the only one left, so far.

Would you be willing to accept a simple apology? I don’t think so. Well, that’s what the United states is trying to give the people of Iraq to replace justice – at least, President Obama.  Dick Cheney’s only regret seems to be that he didn’t torture enough of them.

For the U.S. to think it can just casually walk away from committing that kind of atrocity to hundreds of thousands of families, then simply say, “We’re sorry for what happened, but now’s the time to look forward – forward, but without any accountability – speaks volumes about American arrogance, who we are as a people, and why people want to kill us.

President Obama spoke of “change.”  But what could he possibly thinking, if this represents change?  What kind of change could he possibly be speaking of where politics is more important than the horror we’ve committed? Doesn’t he realize that if we don’t bring the people responsible for the atrocities in Iraq to justice, America will never be safe again?   And  beyond that, the U.S. will never be able to look the world in the eye and claim to be a nation that believes in justice, and the rule of law ever again.

And it’s not only what we’ve done that’s so horrible, the cycical, greedy, and corrupt motives behind our actions was almost as bad as the act itself – and that corruption of the American soul still walks among us.  We haven’t learned a thing.  Dick Cheney claims that terrorist want to kill us because they’re jealous of our freedom. That’s complete bullshit. They want to kill us because we won’t mind our own business, and we keep trying to steal their oil.

America has got to learn two things: First, if you keep slapping your neighbor and picking his flowers, eventually he’s going to hit you back. We may think that we’re “exceptional,” but that doesn’t give of the innate right to abuse others with impunity.  And secondly, if you break into your neighbor’s home and wipe out his family, then you get caught with a pocketful of his valuables, trying to plead self-defense won’t fly. Any court in the world will convict you of being a murderer and a thief.

We’ve never executed one criminal in the history of America whose crimes even approached the seriousness of the crimes committed by Bush and Cheney – and many, against our own troops. The crimes committed by Dick Cheney makes Tookie Williams look like a choirboy. Yet, now we want to simply walk away and expect the world to believe that America stands for justice? I don’t think so.

As long as we continue to think the rest of the world is beneath us, and the lives of others aren’t as valuable as our own, we’ll never be just, we’ll never be safe, and we’ll continue to move farther away from what it means to be Americans:

A MESSAGE TO BUSHLAND

It’s scary how easily the American people can be manipulated to the point that they find the death of entire families a hoot; how we can sit in front of the tv set with chilli dogs and fries and cheer on the death of others like we’re watching the Super Bowl. And it’s a tribute to psychosis how America can unleash mass destruction in “an attempt to prevent mass destruction,” in the name of God.

Can’t you see that many of “those Towel-Heads” are children just like your own? You didn’t really think the U.S. could unleash destruction like we saw and not kill children did you? Rumsfeld said, “Well, shit happens.” But shit doesn’t just happen–you allowed it to happen. You made it happen. You cheered it on! Consider that as the children bleed and you’re admiring the beauty of “Shock and Awe.”

Think about your own children as “collateral damage.” Think about them screaming in horror while you’re helplessly watching their limbs being blown off. Think about them desperately reaching out to you for comfort as life slowly drains from their tiny bodies. Think about foreign boots kicking down your front door, then strangers walking through your home systematically killing every man, woman and child. Picture the last sight that you ever see on this Earth is of your sweet little six year old daughter, with her brains spilling from her tiny little head. Think about that picture, America–then ask yourself, who’s really the terrorist?

Where has America gone? Who’s left to stand up for justice and humanity? You say, God Bless America? You’d have to be a fool to think God is gonna bless America after what we’ve done–for choosing Standard Oil over Justice, and Exxon over God himself. In God we trust? How dare you blame this atrocity on God! It is in Bush you trust:

You trust Bush that God has entrusted you to blow off Iraqi arms and wrap them around you to enable them to embrace your benevolence. And you trust Bush that you must lovingly pluck out Iraqi eyes to enable them to see the wisdom of viewing the world through your own. And you trust Bush that in the name of all that is good you must slaughter their children in a desperate attempt to provide them with a better future. You also trust Bush that you must rape their land and steal their wealth in order to allow them to choose the government of their choosing– (so long as they choose the government that Bush chooses for them to choose). And you trust Bush that you do all this in the name of American charity.

You also trust Bush that God will bless America–but this Ain’t America. America is the land of the free, and home of the brave, the land of just souls who freed their slaves. No, this is not America, this is Bushland-the land of small pox infected blankets; the land of public lynchings and church-place bombings; the land of imprisoned Japanese-Americans, and corporate murderers.

Yeah, God Bless Bushland!
The land of the free and home of the slave; the land of My Lai, and Calley’s mass grave.
And you trust that God will bless Bushland?

Well trust this -You are blind, my friend.

Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com

Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like me – it’s just that God does.

You know, if someone is standing at a podium and talking way over your head, they’re not necessarily lecturing you. I know you guys majored in Business Administration and thought English and Philosophy were for queers, but a basic familiarity with logic, grammar, and usage isn’t reserved for just liberal arts professors, you freaking goons.

‘the bodacity of hope’ is Philip Weiss’ cynical play on the title of Obama’s book, the Audacity of Hope, because there is apparently much less boldness left in Obama after one year’s experience facing off with Israel in the Middle East. We know he just gave the Republicans a licking in Maryland, but at a Tampa, FL town hall meeting one day after the SOTU address, “everyone is talking about Obama’s meltdown..,” as Philip Weiss put it somewhat disgustingly, but it was done by a college student when she asked Obama about Palestinian human rights.

Last night in your State of the Union address, you spoke of America’s support for human rights. Then, why have we not condemned Israel and Egypt’s human rights violations against the occupied Palestinian people and yet we continue to support financially with billions of dollars coming from our tax dollars?

Philip Weiss described Obama’s response:

There is the president’s inane temporizing as he tried to collect his thoughts-turning to another youth and asking if he had gotten those beads in New Orleans-and then a phrase that George W. Bush could have come up with, “The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries…” Till finally Obama had mentally assembled a few hollow phrases that did not answer Laila Abdelaziz’s question. Adam Horowitz says that it is the first real gotcha moment he has seen with Obama, and it came at the hands of a young Arab-American.

This follows the State of the Union speech in which Obama never talked about Israel/Palestine, thereby walking away from the Cairo promise of last June. As well as the solidification of his neoliberal braintrust around essentially the same policy that the neoconservative braintrust of his predecessor had: we support the Israeli occupation.

I try to be optimistic, and the answer to the Establishment’s political collapse is stirring all around us. In the nonviolent movement inside the West Bank, in Judge Goldstone’s championing of Palestinian dignity, in the BDS movement on college campuses (which I keep saying that even “liberal Zionists” will have to sign on to in some way), in the Nation’s description of the West Bank as “apartheid,” in the rise of firm realist opposition to Obama’s policy, and also in this 54-member Congressional letter to Obama demanding an end to “the de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip.” Collective punishment! 54 members of Congress finally spoke of collective punishment of Palestinians (bold added).

Yes these are all just stirrings. But the political diversity of this gathering, of those who regard the Israeli occupation as brutal and central, is remarkable. In the words of William James that Pete Seeger has painted on his barn, that’s how movements work: “I am… with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of mans pride, if you give them time.”

LINK

Here is Huffington Post’s report of the incident, which also apparently ticked off Arianna whose coverage was provided through the confrontational title, Obama Asked Why US Doesn’t Condemn Israeli Human Rights Abuses.

Obama’s response was recorded by CNN (below). It is not pretty, containing much of the same ol’ worn out cliches probably used in the past by Clinton and Bush. The worst one was that he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, or something like that.

VIDEO

UPDATE:

Here’s a further note on Obama’s timidity in the face of the towering Netanyahu, who apparently is now running the foreign policy show for America, at least in the Middle East. We know that he stuck it to Obama on the settlements issue (refusal to stop building), but now he is twisting the knife.

From Phil Weiss:

I’m sorry, you can say anything you please but Walt & Mearsheimer nailed it. This is about the Israel lobby

Posted: 30 Jan 2010
Link

Robert Fisk, in the Independent:

When Obamas elderly envoy George Mitchell headed home in humiliation this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated his departure by
planting trees in two of the three largest Israeli colonies around Jerusalem. With these trees at Gush Etzion and Maaleh Adumim, he said, he was sending “a clear message that we are here. We will stay here. We are planning and we are building.” These two huge settlements, along with that of Ariel to the north of Jerusalem, were an “indisputable part of Israel forever.”

It was Netanyahu’s victory celebration over the upstart American President who had dared to challenge Israel’s power not only in the Middle East but in America itself.

Related posts: Mearsheimer: Walt and I welcome a debate on the lobby with the director of the American Jewish Comittee. Andrew Sullivan gets religion on the Israel lobby (3 years after Walt and Mearsheimer published). Walt and Mearsheimer Are Honored In England. Disgraced Here.

Written about Ireland, but more generally true.

It is remarkable how little attention is devoted to interrogating the political economy model that has led us into the present crisis; indeed, it is rare indeed to even find acknowledgement that such exists. For example, in reading the range of recent books by journalists and commentators on the present crisis, what is striking is the personalist nature of the analysis advanced. By this I mean that the many ills analysed – the poor quality of governance, the too close relationship between politicians and so-called `developers’, the failures of regulation, the growth of a banking culture that threw caution to the winds in its lending practices – are ultimately attributed to the failures of individuals. There is a deeply ad hominem quality to it all.

http://www.progressive-economy.ie/2010/01/interrogating-irish-model.html

I found this on ET http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2010/1/28/11468/2683

At this moment in our nation’s history, it is important that we close America’s gaps in opportunity by ensuring speedy job growth and marshalling the resources of all groups and communities in our efforts to rebuild the national economy. 

Three steps we can take to expand opportunity for all people in the United States include:  (1) investing in community health centers in neighborhoods with few health providers; (2) supporting formally incarcerated people in their efforts to obtain employment; and (3) assisting skilled immigrants in obtaining jobs commensurate with their qualifications. 

I.  Invest in Community Health Centers in Neighborhoods with Few Health Providers

Health is central to both opportunity and economic security.  In our efforts to rebuild America’s economy, we need to do everything possible to support the health of all people here. 

But, in this time of economic uncertainty, America’s unmet health needs are growing.  45.7 million Americans are uninsured, and approximately 60 million people—many of whom have health insurance—have no accessible primary health care home because of a local shortage of doctors.  
Community health centers are categorically open to everyone—irrespective of income, insurance, ethnicity, or gender,  and provide comprehensive primary and preventive health services including physician, dental, nurse, laboratory, X-ray, pharmacy, obstetrics, child and adult medicine, specialty and in-patient referral, and follow-up on a sliding fee scale based on income.   For patients covered by private or public insurance plans, community health centers will bill the insurance providers.   However, federal, state, and local governments generally will support the health centers by providing subsidies to cover the cost of services provided to the uninsured.  

We can push our elected officials to provide increased funding for community health centers in those neighborhoods with few health providers, which would create construction jobs, health care jobs, and improve overall health. 

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act initially provided $2 billion to be invested in community health centers.   However, because investment in community health centers provides exponential economic growth, often in the nation’s most economically challenged neighborhoods, increasing funding to these programs would substantially expand the opportunity for health and economic security for all people in the United States.

II.  Support Formally Incarcerated People in Their Efforts to Contribute to Our Economy

People grow and change over time, and everyone deserves a chance to start over after their missteps or misfortunes.  But, according to a report by the Legal Action Center even though employment is known to substantially reduce recidivism and increase public safety, many formally incarcerated people in America never get the chance to utilize the skills have gained before, and during, their incarceration to contribute to the American economy. 

In the year 2008, approximately 700,000 people reentered communities from prisons around the nation.   Most faced daunting legal restrictions, licensing requirements, occupational bars, inadvertent and deliberate discrimination practices, and cultural stigmas, all of which drastically hindered their abilities to obtain employment and rebuild their lives.  

For example, numerous federal and state laws disqualify people from jobs and licenses based on their criminal record.   Very often, decisions to deny employment to applicants with criminal records are made without consideration of the relationship between the criminal record and the duties of the job, how old or the seriousness of the convictions, and without consideration of a person’s post-conviction rehabilitation.  

Moreover, in probable violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, many private employers have flat bans against hiring people with criminal records, without a business necessity to justify their blanket exclusion.  

We can expand opportunities for formally imprisoned people, ensure rapid and robust job growth, and strengthen public safety by: 

•  pressuring our state or federal legislators to reaffirm that flat employment bans against formally incarcerated people are discriminatory, unfair, and unlawful;

• pressuring our local, state, or federal government to fund the creation and maintenance of transitional job programs, which combine immediate placement in time-limited wage-paying subsidized employment with case management, support services, counseling, mentoring and referrals, and ultimately help transition participants into unsubsidized jobs while maintaining job retention assistance;  and

•pressuring Congress to increase the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC)—which employers receive if they hire low-income people with criminal records—to the tax credit available for individuals who qualify as Long-Term Family Assistance recipients.  

III.  Assist Skilled Immigrants in Obtaining Jobs Commensurate with Their Qualifications

America has long stood for the promise of opportunity.  In order to fulfill that promise, and to grow and meet the challenges we face in rebuilding the economy, we should pressure our local, state, and government actors to take steps that will enable everyone to contribute their full skill set to the economy. 

According to a report by the Migration Policy Institute, as of 2006, there were more than 6.1 million immigrants in the United States, 25 years or older, with a bachelor’s degree or higher.   But, due to significant obstacles in obtaining employment commensurate with their qualifications, as of October 2008, more than 1.3 million of these college-educated immigrants were unemployed or working in unskilled jobs such as dishwashers, security guards, and taxi drivers.   Their work in these jobs constitutes a waste of human capital that could otherwise substantially aid America on its road to economic recovery. 

A major barrier to utilizing the skills that immigrants bring to the United States is the nonrecognition, or discounting, of foreign academic and professional credentials.   At the national level, this barrier can be ameliorated by developing policies that:  (1) make an assessment of overseas credentials a standard pre-migration requirement so that, once skilled immigrants enter the U.S., they will not have to spend months or years individually proving that their coursework or skills should be accepted; (2) create fair and accessible national standardization of state, local, and professional credential evaluation assessment processes;  or (3) promote international accreditation that would stream-line the transferability of credentials across countries.  

A concrete and immediate step that we can take is to pressure our elected officials to integrate skilled immigrants into the U.S. labor force by supporting “bridge training,” which would help foreign-educated workers fill in the often-minor gaps to their education, skills, or language training that are required by their states, localities, or professional associations.  This public investment would limit the waste of human capital and have the potential to quickly raise the productivity, earnings, and tax contributions of immigrants.

For more information on the status of equality in America today, see The Opportunity Agenda’s updated equality indicators at: http://opportunityagenda.org/stateofopportunity/measuringequality. 

Jeb Hensarling is a particularly bone-headed backbencher from suburban Dallas who has aspirations to join the Republican leadership. He was the last Republican congressperson to ask the president a question at the House Republican Retreat today in Baltimore. The president insisted on calling him ‘Jim’ even after he was corrected, but it hardly mattered because Obama just eviscerated his talking points and made him look like a fool. Below is the transcript of their exchange.

The video is even more humiliating than the transcript (although you’ll have to skip to end to see the exchange). I recommend that you send around the CSPAN video link to friends and relatives, or tell them to watch on the television tonight at 8pm when it will be rebroadcast.

Obama performed as well as any British prime minister during Question Time. The same cannot be said for the Republicans who, by and large, tried to use dishonest arguments and demonstrably inaccurate statistics only to have Obama tell them to get serious and stop trying to score cheap political points. I can honestly say that if as many Americans watched today’s Q & A with the Republicans as watched the State of the Union, our political problems would be over. If we had Question Time, we’d have a much easier time winning over public opinion and sustaining support for progressive policies.

The Republicans certainly will not want to repeat this extremely painful beat-down.