Undernews for 26 May 2011

Flotsam & Jetsam: Factories of fame
Sam Smith

Attempting to find some justification for my continued viewing of “American Idol,” it finally dawned on me that I was actually watching a detailed exposition about the manufacturing of one of the last products made in any significant quantity in our country: fame.

I had initially assumed the show was about music but was soon disabused of that. After all, most of the contestants were adequate but unexceptional. If they had shown up at an audition for a Broadway musical it is unlikely that more than a handful would get past the first cut. I also noticed how much better the accompanying musicians often were than the singer contestants. Further, as with so many so-called concerts these days, the music was frequently driven into the back row in favor of color, lighting, random explosions, sexual manipulations, dancing, acrobatics, excruciating facial expressions, and over emotional screeching of utterly mundane lyrics. Finally, the audience, presumably there to hear the music, engaged in such pervasive screaming that it would have been hard for any sounds from the stage to have actually reached their ears.

Then I realized it wasn’t about music at all. It was a play by play demonstration of how to manufacture famous people in just a matter of weeks. Every move, every scene, every comment, every costume, and every step was calculated to make one think that something important was happening and for good reason. The judges and Ryan Seacrest engaged in endless promotion of the show and its contestants who were, however, the least important, least expensive, least carefully constructed element – just young performers deliberately ordinary enough that millions of could relate to and fantasize about them. It was Hollywood and Madison Avenue reconstructing the American dream for a post-modern era.

American Idol is a living metaphor of everything that we are now supposed to desire, buy, cheer and vote for. While there are still real artists, heroines, singers, and leaders, their role in American society has been largely eclipsed by fame factories that transmogrify the ordinary into something we are finally convinced is grand.

Perhaps the most startling example can be found in our politics. Bearing in mind the process, culture and style of American Idol, consider again the rise of our two last Democratic presidents – Clinton and Obama – or the current crop of GOP contenders.

Neither Clinton or Obama had any particular qualifications to be president. But according to the media and the Randy Jacksons, Steve Tylers and Jennifer Lopez’s of their party they were incredibly magnificent (with a just few reservations for the sake of reality) . . . which is to say the contestants had the ambition while the American Political Idol show had the money, the moxie and the public relations manipulation to turn them into icons. And so on the same night that I watched Scott McCreery returning home to North Carolina and pitching to his old baseball buddies and Obama going to Ireland and playing ping pong with the British prime minister I felt like it was the same show.

Our political contestants have to prove themselves in the primaries just as Idol singers have to prove themselves in numerous weeks of competition, but in both cases the original choice of whom America will get to choose among has been made at the start of the season and largely out of sight of the public. Think of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as Scotty McCreary and Laura Alaina and you get the idea. The show’s producers would have been happy with either one, because they had created chosen and reconstructed both. And, while you’re at it, think of the trio of judges as panelists on Meet the Press and Ryan Seacrest as the show’s David Gregory, and it all begins to become clear.

Even this year’s undistinguished Republican crowd is reminiscent of the early season Idol shows. We know practically nothing about almost all of them, but months before the first actual primary, the inside selection process is already underway, witness the unexplained sudden departure of some.

The key part of the metaphor is that if you go back to the beginning of the season, you will find something much like that outlined in Wikipedia:

|||| Contestants go through three rigorous sets of cuts. The first is a brief audition with three other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. The number of auditioners can exceed 10,000 people each city, but only about 100–200 contestants in each city may make it past this round of preliminary auditions. Successful contestants are sent through to audition in front of producers. More contestants are cut in the producers round before they can proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on the show. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10–60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood. At the end of the Hollywood week, 24–36 contestants were selected to move on to the semifinal stage.|||

In other words, though the illusion is that the American Idol is picked by tens of millions of viewers, this is far from the case. It all started in seven cities with 10,000 or more contestants in each. This was winnowed down to 24 to 36 before the public was brought in. The fame factory eliminated some 70,000 in its own manner and of its own choosing, before the public had a damn thing to say about it.

In other words, a pretty good analogy to American national politics. And to how we get to choose a lot of things in this land. . .long after many important choices have already been made.

So don’t be surprised in the coming months if you hear Wolf Blitzer of Chris Matthews say of a presidential candidate, “His speech was a little pitchy but clearly he is in it to win.” It's just another season of American Idol.
A short history of the United States

Mentions of the Constitution in books since 1800 as calculated by Google
Obama's illegal war

Doug Bandow, The National Interest - Many presidents have been lawyers. Barack Obama is one of the few to have been a constitutional law professor. But he is no less ready to violate the Constitution.

President Obama took the country into war against Libya without a declaration of war. He continues to bombard Libya contrary to the War Powers Resolution. He has compounded one of America's stupidest wars by making it indisputably illegal.

U.S. participation in Libya's civil war never made any sense. The conflict posed no security threat. The oil supplies at stake were modest. Most civilian casualties resulted from the fighting, not government massacres.

. . Moreover, Washington is essentially broke. Busy with one very hot war and the remains of an even hotter one, America cannot afford another war.

. . The latest military misadventure yet again illustrates why the Framers wrote the Constitution as they did. If Congress had said yes, it would share responsibility for the impending debacle. If it had said no, it would have spared the country yet another unnecessary and stupid war.

Today chicken hawks fill Congress, but the early Americans were not fond of war. They particularly didn't like the British system that allowed the king to plunge the entire empire, including the American colonies, into war for the most frivolous of reasons. So the Founders were determined to make war less likely.

George Mason explained that the president "is not safely to be entrusted with" the power to decide to go to war. He advocated "clogging rather than facilitating war." Thomas Jefferson approved of the constitutional convention's work, pointing to the "effectual check to the dog of war by transferring the power of letting him loose."

James Wilson insisted that the new Constitution "will not hurry us into war." The new system "is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is in the legislature at large."

The Constitution is clear. Article 1, Sec. 8 (11) states that "Congress shall have the power...to declare war." James Madison explained that the "fundamental doctrine of the Constitution that the power to declare war is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature." Other essential war powers also were given to Congress: raise the army, set the rules of war, issue letters of marque, ratify treaties, and approve military spending. In contrast, the president's power was limited to managing the armed forces as commander-in-chief.

Those who favor executive war making are reduced to arguing that to "declare" is just to acknowledge reality. The president can launch an unprovoked invasion of another nation thousands of miles away, while Congress is limited to affirming that yes, indeed, the two countries are at war.

Obviously, the Founders could have made this the law. They knew it well, since it was the British system. But at the constitutional convention only South Carolina's Pierce Butler pushed to give the president monarchical war powers. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts responded that he "never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the executive to declare war."

. . Of course, the president is empowered to deploy the military to defend the nation from attack. For this reason the convention delegates changed Congress' power from "make" to "declare" war. Roger Sherman approvingly noted that the president could "repel" war. That, however, is very different from the president initiating war against other states.

. . President Obama once believed that the Constitution limited executive authority. Candidate Obama was asked whether he could bomb Iran. He responded: "The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." Candidate Hillary Clinton was equally direct: "I do not believe that the president can take military action-including any kind of strategic bombing-against Iran without congressional authorization."

Senator Joseph Biden also took Congress' war powers seriously. He threatened impeachment if President George W. Bush bombed Iran without congressional authority. Sen. Biden explained that the Founders "were determined to deny the president" the "unfettered power to start wars." He added that the "Framers intended to grant to Congress the power to initiate all hostilities, even limited wars."

This has all been forgotten with Libya.

The recording industry is not the music industry

Mike Masnick, Tech Dirt - The recording industry is merely a subset of the music industry, and it's quite unfortunate that many (including in the press and among politicians) seem to think that the recording industry is the music industry. However, if you actually take a look at the larger view, you quickly realize that almost every other part of the music industry has been doing quite well over the past decade. It's really just the recording industry part that's struggled. In fact, we've pointed to studies covering the UK, Sweden, Sweden and Norway which have all seen their overall music industry grow.

Even more importantly, in all of those, musicians themselves were making a lot more money than before. That's because the shift in the industry was towards markets and business models where the artists were able to collect the money, rather than a gatekeeper who kept most of it (i.e., the record labels). In an excellent article for the Toronto Globe and Mail, by professor Dwayne Winseck, which details all the problems with the copyright reform proposals in Canada, Winseck also does the same analysis for Canada, and once again finds that pretty much every other area of the music industry is growing: When you look at it that way, you begin to realize that perhaps the only real issue is that one segment of the industry is becoming obsolete. But the other parts of the industry are more than making up for it . . . So why are we wasting so much time around the globe trying to pass laws to buck up that one obsolete segment? And why do politicians and the press buy this false story that the industry is in trouble?

As Winseck notes: "Ultimately, only once the myth that the music industry is in peril, and that it is the canary in the coal shaft for all media, is discarded will we get copyright laws fit for these digital time "

Progressive Review - A 2002 list of top artists ranked them by sources of their income. It was only Eminem and Jay Z - who can fairly be described as the least musical of the lot - who got most of their income from recordings. Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, Celine Dion, Cher, Bruce Springsteen, Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John and the Eagles all got most of their income from live concerts. For example, for Dion it was 72%, for The Eagles 86%, for Paul McCartney 90%.
Emendation
Your editor supported John Edwards for president in 2008 based on his much better stand on the issues than either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. But the Review was also one of the few journals that reported the National Enquirer expose of Edwards' sex scandal. In fact, the Enquirer in 2010 applied for a Pulitzer Prize for its story but was rejected by the establishment press. Here's an excerpt from a story the Review published in the midst of the 2008 campaign:

The hazards of praise

Sam Smith

The Edwards affair helps to explain my reputation as a doubter; and it provides added support for one of my basic journalistic principles: the quickest way to get into trouble into say something nice about a politician. As one whom I had once admired, Marion Barry, put it to another reporter, "Sam's a cynical cat."

In fact, the overwhelming proportion of my journalistic misjudgments have been the product of excessive optimism. So statistically obvious is this bias that I never compliment a politician anymore without considering the risk involved, the letters I will receive and the ridicule I may endure.

One of the ways I try to protect myself is by not fudging the story. Thus, I have noted of another recipient of Smithian praise, "If I find Ralph Nader driving a Hummer, I'm going to report it."

Which is one reason why the Review was among a tiny number of journals that reported last December on the National Enquirer's claims about John Edwards, even though I believed - and still do - that Edwards was the best Democratic candidate who stood a chance. The other reason was that I figured if those readers who went to conventional supermarkets had at least read the headlines in the checkout line, those readers who preferred Whole Foods should be given equal status.

As for the actual adulterous act, there has been a rush among lazy liberals to defend Edwards by comparisons to Franklin Roosevelt, JFK and Bill Clinton. On the surface there are similarities. And then some. For example, I knew a guy who as a young man drove Kennedy during a key portion of the 1960 campaign and was specifically instructed to make sure that Kennedy remained in his assigned locations and didn't make a tryst-bound escape. On at least one occasion, he failed

But there are also striking differences. For example, a Huffington huffer writes:

"Some will claim, as they did with Bill Clinton, that it's not the affair but the lies that went along with it. Really? Did JFK come out and tell the American people - or his wife - 'by the way, while my wife was in the hospital I was having an affair with not one, but several women at the same time?' No, of course, he lied too. Every man that has ever cheated on his wife has lied (and so has every woman who has ever cheated). It is part and parcel of the affair."

What is not mentioned, of course, is that JFK did not lie under oath to a grand jury, deny a former sex partner a fair court hearing, and end up being legally punished not for casual sex but for being a legally contemptuous prevaricator.

Liberal denial notwithstanding, the Clinton story is different in a number of other ways:

- Although unreported, the Clinton sex escapades were so chronic they bordered on the pathological, as when - according to one of his police drivers - he had sex in car next to his daughter's school playground.

- The women - all of whom were later deserted, rejected or ridiculed by the women's movement - suffered more than the normal pangs of male sexual opportunism. They felt threatened, sometimes with good cause as with the skull found on the porch or a bullet laid on the front seat of their vehicle. One felt compelled to leave the country, another to another state.

- As I noted early in his presidency, Clinton's Don Juanish sexual behavior mirrored his political actions. He was no more to be trusted in one type of affair than in the other.

There is, on these grounds alone, a world of difference between Edwards, FDR and JFK on the one hand, and Clinton on the other.

There is another: his affair aside, Edwards was a clearly positive force in America. He was the first Democratic presidential candidate since the 1960s who had both a chance of winning and a program that would was in the best tradition of the most for the most. A liberal constituency absorbed with its own success (not to mention the socio-economic cleansing of our cities) wasn't interested.

I am sometimes criticized for being too priggish about politicians and how they should behave. Far from it. Two of the leading political scoundrels of modern time - Lyndon Johnson and Adam Clayton Powell - got more good legislation past in less time than anyone in American history. I was there to cover the story and I learned from the experience not to expect perfection but compensation. Here's how I explained in later in writing about DC mayor Marion Barry:

||||| When Barry ran for mayoral reelection the last time, I took the position that I was all in favor of redemption; I just didn't see why you had to do it the mayor's office. I broke up one talk show host by suggesting that Barry follow the example of a recently disgraced Irish bishop and go help the Indians of Guatemala.

On another talk show, Barry said that the press was always blaming him for all the city's problems. I said that wasn't fair; I only blamed him for 26.7% of the city's problems. 'I'll buy that,' Marion replied. . .

Yet I also knew that Barry - like other urban ethnic politicians - had far more to blame than himself. Whatever his faults, he knew he had been granted dispensation because - like a feudal lord - he provided significant favors in return. Barry had lived in Memphis and I often suspected he had learned his politics from Boss Trump. For he understood the quid pro quo of traditional urban corruption that had helped the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Poles break down the worst corruption of all - that of an elite unwilling to share its power with others. It was far from a perfect deal but in the interim before the 'reformers' seized office again on behalf of their developer and other business buddies, more people would get closer to power than they ever had or would again. It happened in Chicago, in Boston as well as in Washington under Barry.

And now the reformers are back. The young gentrifiers who think the greatest two moments in the city's history are when Barry went to jail and when they arrived in town. And their politicians, who don't feel it necessary to even tithe to the people. ||||

That's where we found ourselves earlier this year. Two candidates - Obama and Clinton - running overwhelming for themselves and another, Edwards, at least tithing to the people.
GOP out to restrict right to vote
AFL-CIO - Republicans in 36 states are going after the most sacred American right¬the right to vote.

Last week, the Wisconsin Senate added another chapter to its anti-democratic record by passing a voter ID bill that the non-partisan state Legislative Fiscal Bureau says would disenfranchise 20 percent of the state’s voters, especially in rural areas. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University estimates that 11 percent of voters nationwide do not have official IDs that would pass muster for these new and proposed state laws.

Here are examples of similar legislation being enacted or considered in other states:

In South Carolina, Gov. Nikki Haley signed into law a voter ID bill that would take away the right to vote for 178,000 people, including minorities, and eliminate student IDs as a valid form of voter identification.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott last week signed sweeping election reforms into law, changes the Orlando Sentinel says “dramatically overhauls state voting laws by changing longstanding procedures that allow a person to change his or her registration or name at the polling place, puts in new requirements for third-party voter registration groups and shortens the number of days available for early voting.”

In Minnesota and North Carolina, Democratic Govs. Mark Dayton and Beverly Perdue, respectively, are expected to veto voter ID legislation if it passes the state legislatures.
The value of love based on the Dylan model
Improbable Research - The Value of Love, Using the Dylan Model by Joseph Cliburn, Andrew Russ, Tiny Montgomery and Zeke de Cork

Starting from a statement brought home by Bob Dylan [1965a] we estimate the value of Love using basic algebra of need [Mottram, 1965], perhaps some calculus, maybe a bit of the geometry of innocence [Dylan, 1965f], and a lot of wishful thinking.

The Limits of Love

We begin with the following assertion by Dylan [1965a]:

(Love – 0) / No Limit (1)

using the expression on the record label in preference to the statement on the back cover [1965b], and taking a cue from the author ‘s statement that it is a fraction [1965c]….
Public schools charging students through fees
Wall Street Journal Medina Ohio - Karen Dombi was thrilled when her three oldest children were picked for student government this year¬not because she envisioned careers in politics, but because it was one of the few programs at their public high school that didn't charge kids to participate.

..Budget shortfalls have prompted Medina Senior High to impose fees on students who enroll in many academic classes and extracurricular activities. The Dombis had to pay to register their children for basic courses such as Spanish I and Earth Sciences, to get them into graded electives such as band, and to allow them to run cross-country and track. The family's total tab for a year of public education: $4,446.50.

..At high schools in several states, it can cost more than $200 just to walk in the door, thanks to registration fees, technology fees and unspecified "instructional fees."
Congress applauds Netanyahu more times than it did Obama
Glenn Greenwald, Salon - According to ABC News, Netanyahu received more standing ovations from the U.S. Congress (29) than the U.S. President did the last time he spoke (25); all of the ones Netanyahu received were from the super-patriots of the GOP caucus (and most from the Democratic caucus as well), whereas those right-wing patriots joined in only a small fraction of the ones received by their own country's President.

What makes this more remarkable still is that this foreign leader whom they were cheering so boisterously and continuously just completed a public, ugly conflict with the American leader and has a long record of demonstrated indifference to American interests; yet the super-patriots of the American Right sided so brazenly and publicly with this foreign leader over their own country's President.
A complete guide to the West's foreign policy
Reuters, July 23, 2010 - French defense company Dassault Aviation is in talks with Libya over the sale of 14 Rafale fighter jets, in a deal that could be concluded before August 11, French business daily La Tribune said on Friday.
A Dassault Aviation spokesman could not immediately be reached to comment on the report. The Rafale multirole combat aircraft is a flagship programme for the French defence industry but has had problems attracting export buyers.

Pakistan Defense, March 11,2011 - Several countries and their Air force commanders having [been] watching the Libyan no fly zone and bombing campaign with 24 hour non-stop concentration.

It appears that India Brazil & UAE & Qatar have been massively impressed by the Rafael true multi-role ability.

Although F18 F16/52 Mirage2000 and Typhoons have all played a part, it's the new generation Rafael that is taking all the headlines.
Friends of DSK offer money to African relatives of housekeeper
NY Post - Friends of alleged hotel sex fiend Dominique Strauss-Kahn secretly contacted the accusing maid's impoverished family, offering them money to make the case go away since they can't reach her in protective custody, The Post has learned.

..While the DA's office has sequestered the maid -- and is even monitoring her phone calls -- her extended family lives in a village that lacks paved roads, electricity and phone lines. The average monthly income is $45, which is near-starvation, and some of her family members can't even afford shoes.

..Meanwhile, in another development yesterday, it emerged that Strauss-Kahn allegedly shouted, "Do you know who I am?" as he assaulted the victim, according to a new report....While she begged him to stop, he allegedly pressed the attack, dragging her down the hall and forcing her to perform oral sex. The maid finally escaped by pushing him into a piece of furniture in the $3,000-a-night Sofitel suite, she said. Sources said that the Frenchman has a gash on his back where he hit the armoire and that blood was found on the sheets.
Recycling diapers with mushrooms
Economist - Despite their name, disposable nappies are notoriously difficult to dispose of. Studies of landfills suggest they may take centuries to rot away. But Alethia Vázquez-Morillas of the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City thinks she has found a method of speeding the process up. As she and her colleagues describe in Waste Management, cultivating the right type of mushroom on soiled nappies can break down 90% of the material they are made of within two months. Within four, they are degraded completely. What is more, she says, despite their unsavory diet the fungi in question, Pleurotus ostreatus (better known as oyster mushrooms), are safe to eat. To prove the point she has, indeed, eaten them.
Letter to Arne Duncan
A letter from David Reber, who teaches high school biology in Lawrence KS

Mr. Duncan,

I read your Teacher Appreciation Week letter to teachers, and had at first decided not to respond. Upon further thought, I realized I do have a few things to say.

I'll begin with a small sample of relevant adjectives just to get them out of the way: condescending, arrogant, insulting, misleading, patronizing, egotistic, supercilious, haughty, insolent, peremptory, cavalier, imperious, conceited, contemptuous, pompous, audacious, brazen, insincere, superficial, contrived, garish, hollow, pedantic, shallow, swindling, boorish, predictable, duplicitous, pitchy, obtuse, banal, scheming, hackneyed, and quotidian. Again, it's just a small sample; but since your attention to teacher input is minimal, I wanted to put a lot into the first paragraph.

Your lead sentence, "I have worked in education for much of my life", immediately establishes your tone of condescension; for your 20-year "education" career lacks even one day as a classroom teacher. You, Mr. Duncan, are the poster-child for the prevailing attitude in corporate-style education reform: that the number one prerequisite for educational expertise is never having been a teacher.

Your stated goal is that teachers be "...treated with the dignity we award to other professionals n society."

Really?

How many other professionals are the last ones consulted about their own profession; and are then summarily ignored when policy decisions are made? How many other professionals are so distrusted that sweeping federal legislation is passed to "force" them to do their jobs? And what dignities did you award teachers when you publicly praised the mass firing of teachers in Rhode Island?

You acknowledge teacher's concerns about No Child Left Behind, yet you continue touting the same old rhetoric: "In today’s economy, there is no acceptable dropout rate, and we rightly expect all children -- English-language learners, students with disabilities, and children of poverty -- to learn and succeed."

What other professions are held to impossible standards of perfection? Do we demand that police officers eliminate all crime, or that doctors cure all patients? Of course we don't.

There are no parallel claims of "in today's society, there is no acceptable crime rate", or "we rightly expect all patients -- those with end-stage cancers, heart failure, and multiple gunshot wounds -- to thrive into old age." When it comes to other professions, respect and common sense prevail.

Your condescension continues with "developing better assessments so [teachers] will have useful information to guide instruction..." Excuse me, but I am a skilled, experienced, and licensed professional. I don't need an outsourced standardized test -- marketed by people who haven't set foot in my school -- to tell me how my students are doing.

I know how my students are doing because I work directly with them. I learn their strengths and weaknesses through first-hand experience, and I know how to tailor instruction to meet each student's needs. To suggest otherwise insults both me and my profession.

You want to "...restore the status of the teaching profession..." Mr. Duncan, you built your career defiling the teaching profession. Your signature effort, Race to the Top, is the largest de-professionalizing, demoralizing, sweeter-carrot-and-sharper-stick public education policy in U.S. history. You literally bribed cash-starved states to enshrine in statute the very reforms teachers have spoken against.

You imply that teachers are the bottom-feeders among academics. You want more of "America's top college students" to enter the profession. If by "top college students" you mean those with high GPA's from prestigious, pricey schools then the answer is simple: a five-fold increase in teaching salaries.

You see, Mr. Duncan, those "top" college students come largely from our nation's wealthiest families. They simply will not spend a fortune on an elite college education to pursue a 500% drop in socioeconomic status relative to their parents.

You assume that "top" college students automatically make better teachers. How, exactly, will a 21-year-old, silver-spoon-fed ivy-league graduate establish rapport with inner-city kids? You think they’d be better at it than an experienced teacher from a working-class family, with their own rough edges or checkered past, who can actually relate to those kids? Your ignorance of human nature is astounding.

As to your concluding sentence, "I hear you, I value you, and I respect you"; no, you don't, and you don't, and you don't. In fact, I don't believe you even wrote this letter for teachers.

I think you sense a shift in public opinion. Parents are starting to see through the façade; and recognize the privatization and for-profit education reform movement for what it is. And they've begun to organize --Parents Across America, is one example.

No doubt some will dismiss what I've said as paranoid delusion. What they call paranoia I call paying attention. Mr. Duncan, teachers hear what you say. We also watch what you do, and we are paying attention.

Working with kids every day, our baloney-detectors are in fine form. We've heard the double-speak before; and we don't believe the dog ate your homework. Coming from children, double-speak is expected and it provides important teachable moments. Coming from adults, it's just sad.

Despite our best efforts, some folks never outgrow their disingenuous, manipulative, self- serving approach to life. Of that, Mr. Duncan, you are a shining example.

Wall Street family values

Business Insider - John Delaney, founder and CEO of Intrade, the prediction market, has died while trying to climb Mt. Everest. He was less than 50 meters from the top, according to the Daily Mail. Even sadder: Delaney never got to hear the news that his wife had just given birth to a baby daughter, Hope.

Peter Peterson & Bill Clinton out to squeeze Americans again

Dean Baker, Huffington Post - Last spring, Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson hosted a lavish daylong conference devoted to the budget deficit. One of the highlights was an appearance by President Clinton. Clinton boasted of how he had wanted to cut Social Security back in the mid-90s but congressional leaders from both parties wouldn't let him.

The cut he had wanted would have reduced the annual cost of living adjustment by 1 percentage point annually. This would have left seniors in their 70s, 80s, and 90s with Social Security benefits today that are about 15 percent lower than their current level. How great would that have been?

Peterson is back with Round II this week, another lavish affair devoted to the deficit. President Clinton will be again be playing a starring role, although it is not clear whether he will still be boasting about his wish to cut Social Security benefits.

What is clear is that Peterson is using his vast fortune to push an agenda that has little to do with deficit reduction, and everything to do with cutting Social Security, Medicare and other programs that are vital to ordinary working people.

This fact is apparent from the list of attendees. This is supposed to be a group seriously committed to deficit reduction, yet one of the highlights will be a talk by Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican Chairman of the Budget Committee.

Israel: A dysfunctional relative, not an ally

Sam Smith

The sooner we get over treating Israel as a sacred ally the sooner the Middle East situation will start to be resolved. Israel is not an ally; it is much more like a dysfunctional relative who we once liked but has worn out our patience and our pocket book to fulfill various addictions. In the case of Israel the cost to us has been over $100 billion.

And that’s before adding in the ancillary expenses such as that of the war on terror. It is not unlikely, for example, that there never would have been a 9/11 if Israel has been acting in a more mature and peace seeking manner in the previous years.

Even the slowest and most incremental progress in peace seeking can calm things down. But we don’t allow peace experts much on our network news shows or at the White House so we don’t hear much about this.

Instead, we egg on, and join in, Israel’s masochistic machismo – as Obama did before AIPAC - and then wonder why we have people trying to blow our things up.

Rules of thumb

If you're playing cards in any gambling game for over 20 minutes and have not figured out who the patsy at the table is, then it's you.

NY Times pretends Green Party doesn't exist

The mainstream media really doesn’t like the Green Party, as illustrated by this remarkably off-fact story by Joseph Berger that claims:

“In some ways, the Left remains locked in place. Its three major national parties are still confined to cramped Manhattan offices that are plastered with gaudy posters and honeycombed with pamphlets for distribution and envelopes for stuffing.”. . .

“All three have greatly shrunk from their heydays. The Socialist Party has about 1,000 members nationally. The Communists claim 2,000. The Democratic Socialists, which for many years included luminaries like Michael Harrington and Irving Howe, have about 6,000.”

In truth, the Green Party has more members just in Maine than these three parties and over a quarter million nationally.

Word

[When] I was a student at the University of Chicago, I had a conversation with my thesis advisor about the arts in general. At that time, I had no idea that I personally would go into any sort of art. He said, "You know what artists are?" I didn't. "Artists," he said, "are people who say, "I can't fix my country or my state or my city, or even my marriage. But by golly, I can make this square of canvas, or this eight-and-a-half-by-eleven piece of paper, or this lump of clay, or these twelve bars of music, exactly what they ought to be!'" - Kurt Vonnegut

Pocket paradigms

Like a hit and run driver, America's elite has left the scene of the accident. More and more, those who run this country have the character of wealthy, isolated strangers -- armed but afraid, intrusive yet indifferent, personally profligate but politically penurious, priggish in rhetoric yet corrupt in action. No longer does national myth connect them with the greater mass of America. Nor, any longer, does politics separate them from each other; Republicans and Democrats have become, rather than choices, degrees of the same dismal thing.. - Sam Smith

Tax dollars for school vouchers fund religious lies

Alternet - Are your state’s tax dollars funding the teaching of religious supremacism and bigotry? What about creationism? The answer is undoubtedly yes, if you live in a state with a voucher or corporate tax credit program funding “school choice."

Religious schools across the nation are receiving public funds through voucher and corporate tax credit programs. Many hundreds, if not thousands, of these schools use Protestant fundamentalist textbooks that teach not only creationism, but also a religious supremacist worldview. They offer a shocking spin on politics, history and human rights.

In 12 states and the District of Columbia, almost 200,000 students attend private schools with at least part of their tuition paid with public funds. The money is taken from public school budgets to fund vouchers or by diverting state tax revenues to tuition grants through corporate tax credit programs. An interconnected group of non-profits and political action committees, led by the wealthy right-wing school privatization advocate Betsy DeVos and heavily funded by a few mega-donors, is working to expand these programs across the nation. The DeVos-led American Federation for Children hosted Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and Michelle Rhee at a national policy summit earlier in May.

Washington Post covers up police abuse of man in wheelchair

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Huffington Post - Two days ago, in DC's U Street neighborhood, there was an "encounter" between a "wheelchair-bound man" and Metro Transit Police. What kind of "encounter" was it? Did the wheelchair-bound man and the Metro Transit Police trade some recipes, or something? Did they come together to share their feelings with one another? Are Metro Transit Police now providing street-side psychotherapy sessions with DC's underserved populations?

Nah. Mostly these two cops just hoisted the wheelchair-bound man out of chair, threw him on the ground, and cracked his head open on the sidewalk. There's video of the whole thing. Also, some terrifically weaselly reporting from the Washington Post, who apparently find the "encounter" too vague an incident to actually describe correctly.

According to statements provided by the police, the unidentified man was spotted by Metro Transit Police with an alcoholic beverage that he was allegedly drinking in public. The transit cops "tried to issue a citation, but [the unidentified man] 'refused to comply.'" He was then informed that he would be placed under arrest, and is said to have resisted that arrest. The transit police allege that, at some point, the man assaulted a police officer -- from his wheelchair.

ENDS

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