A committee has been selected in Texas to define the science curriculum for the next decade. The 6 man committee consists of 3 reputable scientists, two co-authors of a new Intelligent Design textbook, and one chemistry professor who is known for his Intelligent Design stance.

Fair and balanced, right? Oh, the tie-breaking chairman of the group is an openly Creationist dentist. Should I mention that one of the co-authors is actually Vice President of the Discovery Institute?

Here’s more detailed information from Texas and from Minnesota.

But my point isn’t that they have 4 out of 7 anti-biology people on the board to determine science standards that will profoundly affect the other states. You see, Texas has such textbook buying power that it essentially chooses what texts will be available to most other states. My point is that they have two authors of a book on the board appointed to select which book should be used in classes.

One simply should not be allowed to judge a contest in which one is entered. It just isn’t proper.

Sarah Palin has given up spinning the truth.  It’s just a lot easier to tell lies then run off, as Jon Stewart reports.   Such a sad day for American politics.  It’s also amazing that after choosing someone as incompetent as Sarah Palin, that John McCain is still getting 40% of the vote in many places.

Sure it could. The same way fascism always happens. Not imposed, all of a sudden, from above, like a boot on your neck in the dead of night. It grows and festers in dark corners of society, feeding off the irrational fears and resentments and feelings of entitlement of an angry minority and growing ever stronger, with noone noticing it, until it bursts into pungent & infectious & malignant life, strangling its host. Fascism grows from the ground up and keeps growing uncontrolled until it stops - or is stopped.

Tim Wise at Redroom has written an eloquent and timely call-to-arms entitled “This Is How Fascism Comes: Reflections On The Cost Of Silence.“

Before you read the whole thing, I present some snacks to whet the appetite:

If fascism comes it will dress like a hockey mom, or a NASCAR dad. It will believe Toby Keith to be an artist, Larry the Cable Guy to be a comic, and that the world was made in six literal days less than 6000 years ago.

If fascism comes it will come from the small towns; the ones Sarah Palin, quoting a famous racist and Jew-hater, said “grow good people,” and which occasionally do, but which, just as often grow provincial, isolated, fearful and superstitious ones. 

If fascism comes it will come from faux populism, from anti-immigrant hysteria, from persons who have more guns in their homes than books, or whose books, when they have them, are principally volumes of the Left Behind series, several different copies of the Bible, and a plethora of romance novels.

My favourite:

…democracy isn’t what you have, it’s what you do.

(more…)

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

President George W. Bush, Aug. 5, 2004

If Abraham Lincoln debated Sarah Palin . . .

I’m currently reading Rob Walker’s 2008 book, Buying in: the Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are. I’m finding Walker’s chapter on “Hello Kitty” especially interesting in its own right and also because his description of the success of Hello Kitty has helped me to understand Sarah Palin.

Walker repeatedly points out that corporate logos are symbols and it is the consumers of modern corporate symbols (not those who create or promote those symbols) who imbue these symbols with meaning. Hello Kitty is an especially good example.

The Hello Kitty logo was created out of thin air in 1974 by the Japanese firm, Sanrio. Hello Kitty was not a character in a movie or story. When Hello Kitty was created, the symbol was “empty of specific meaning.” The Hello Kitty artwork was the work of an employee of Sanrio, Yuko Shimizu, who had been asked to design some logos to place on some small vinyl purses. Fast forward to the present. Hello Kitty can now be found on toys, clothes, computers, watches and lingerie. The symbol has had “astonishing success.” The Hello Kitty line has developed under licensing arrangements worth more than $1 billion a year in sales.

What is the secret of hello Kitty? According to Sanrio, “We work very hard to avoid things that would define the character.” The “mouthless cat” cannot be said to stand for any social or cultural idea, according to Walker. “Hello Kitty stands for nothing.” Yuko Shimizu indicates that she was simply trying to make an image that would appeal to little girls. A scholar named Brian McVeigh (quoted by Walker) indicates that Hello Kitty succeeds because the symbol has “projectability.”

Hello Kitty’s blank cryptic simplicity, he argues, is among her great strengths; standing for nothing, she is “waiting to be interpreted,” and this is precisely how an “ambiguous”– and let’s be frank: meaningless– symbol comes to stand for nostalgia to one person, fashion ability to another, camp to a third, vague subversiveness to a fourth.

“Without the mouth, it is easier for the person looking at Hello Kitty to project their feelings onto the character, explains a Sanrio spokesman quoted by McVeigh: “A person can be happy or sad together with Hello Kitty.” Hello Kitty, McVeigh argues, is a mirror that reflects whatever image, desire or fantasy in individual brings to it.

Belson and Bremner (also mentioned in Walker’s book) return to this theme repeatedly in their own book on Hello Kitty.

“What makes Kitty so intriguing is that she projects entirely different meanings depending on the consumer,” they write. The cat is “an icon that allows viewers to assign whatever meaning to her that they want.” . . . not only can Logos have meaning, and not only can that meeting be manufactured– it can be manufactured by consumers. Ultimately, a cultural symbol that catches on is almost never simply imposed, but rather is created and then tacitly agreed upon by those who choose to accept its meaning, wherever that meaning may have originated. That’s what Hello Kitty is: a cultural symbol. And a successful brand.

(Walker, pages 15 to 19). This idea of an empty and projectable logo also seems to describe Sarah Palin. Many conservatives loved Palin before they knew anything substantial about her. Granted, they knew Palin could read a teleprompter and rev up a crowd of conservatives, but what did they know about Palin’s character, her knowledge base and her ability to govern? They knew nothing about those critically important issues early on, but that didn’t stop them from making wild claims that Sarah Palin would make a great Vice-President. Now that freely available information shows that Palin is actually an ill-informed, spiteful, secretive woman deeply entrenched in cronyism, many conservatives love her all the more.

Those who, in the absence of substantiating evidence, believe that Sarah Palin has what it takes to be Vice-President are projecting. They are defining Palin rather than taking the time to learn who Palin really is.

Even though Sarah Palin actually has a mouth, her well-rehearsed beauty pageant smile, combined with the serious office she seeks, leaves us with a wide range of interpretations of who she is. Is she your girlfriend, your mother, a small town mayor, a Vice-President, an attack dog, a flirt, a hyper-moral woman, a neo-conservative, a maverick, a super-mom, a neglectful mother, a quick-study or someone who is proudly ignorant? Palin offers a lot of real estate to you as material for your personal projection as to who she is. And, vague as all of this is, this is as coherent as it gets–this is who she is, at least for those of us who are allergic to facts.

Hello Sarah.

“BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS NOT FROM AMERICA, IS A TERRORIST AND A MUSLIM!” Shout McCain-Palin.

Man, these guys have reached an all-time low, even for the GOP.  They are trying to distract us from thinking about the economy.

At a Florida GOP rally, a Sheriff in full black regalia announced that on November 4th the voters there “would leave Barack HUSSEIN Obama wonderin’ what happened!” That sheriff is now under investigation for violations of the Hatch Act which prohibits political activity while in uniform.

We have Gov. Sarah a.k.a. “Caribou Barbie” Palin running around the country accusing Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama of “pallin’ around with terrorists!” Hey, Caribou Barbie, what’s that about people who live in glass houses?

Gov. Palin will repeat any lie she is able because, in her mind, she is on a mission from God. I swear if I hear another dropped ending “g” from Caribou Barbie, I’m a gonna be barfin’, you betcha!

And there are the viral e-mail campaigns about Sen. Obama’s nationality, Muslim faith, and such which smack of George W. Bush and Karl Rove’s famous “McCain is insane” and “McCain fathered an illegitimate child of color” smears against John McCain in the run-up to the GOP South Carolina primary in 2000.

So, here’s the major distraction from McCain-Palin fueled by Karl Rove to keep people from thinking about the economy and the mess it’s been made of by George W. Bush and John McCain, who admits he votes with Bush 90% of the time, and on the “most transcendent issues” even more than 90% of the time.

John McCain publicly bemoaned the plight of those who lost their homes to foreclosure in the second debate. But, even before the debate, McCain and his GOP supporters had launched a campaign to purge voter rolls of those which had lost their homes to foreclosure in Michigan.

The McCain and GOP efforts in Michigan prompted a lawsuit which alleged the campaign was racially discriminatory in its intention and effect as it targeted areas where there were both high Democratic votes and significant African American and Hispanic populations. In the suit filed in the District Court of Michigan the long history of racially discriminatory practices of the GOP/RNC are recounted, the many voter discrimination lawsuits filed against and lost by the GOP/RNC are recounted. Most prominently, the lawsuit filed in the District Court in New Jersey which resulted in a consent decree by the RNC to refrain from activities which suppress minority votes is mentioned in detail.

So, as we go forward to Election Day on November 4, 2008, it is clear that the McCain-Palin campaign wants two things  It doesn’t don’t want you to think about how George W. Bush, John McCain and the GOP have made a shambles of our economy and of middle class access to the American Dream.  And they don’t want African-Americans, Hispanics or anyone who has lost their home to foreclosure to vote.

Yes, John McCain. We know quite well who you are, and we don’t want anyone with your ego and your temper to have the power to fire American nuclear weapons.

While we’re on the issue of violence, are you consciously trying to get one of your enraged followers to inflict physical violence on Barack Obama? Listen to your rhetoric at your recent rallies. And see here.  I’m not the only person to wonder whether you are trying to incite violence.  See this post by Jeffrey Feldman. Consider this: You have successfully convinced your followers that Barack Obama is a terrorist.   What would you think one of your followers might be inclined to do once they became convinced that a “terrorist” was about to become President?

Then take a long look in the mirror.  Doesn’t your behavior and your rhetoric at recent rallies remind you of the sort of hate-filled political rallies you’d find in the sorts of despotic countries you’d like to overthrow? Doesn’t it further trouble you when a uniformed officer helps stir up the crowd on behalf of your ticket?

Senator McCain:  You didn’t have much further you could fall in my book, but you’ve just slipped from disgraceful to despicable.

Wick Allison was Editor in Chief of The National Review from 1990 through 1993.  Allison donated a lot of money to John McCain during the primaries, but he is now endorsing Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States:

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

Allison concludes his endorsement by commenting on what has happened to conservatism by using a quote of Eric Hoffer:  “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

Why use a pre-made Obama sign when you can make your own?  This question became obvious this weekend.  My neighborhood was sponsoring an art fair along a long boulevard, “The Shaw Art Fair.” (here’s some of the art). Almost 150 artists showed up.  One of the neighbors set up a big tarp and provided blank signs, markers and paint.  For free (or for a small donation) this neighbor offered folks a chance to make their own political signs.

Many people took advantage of the opportunity, as you can see from these drying signs.  By my neighbor’s estimate, more than 200 people took advantage of his sign-making materials.  Quite often, parents and children worked together on the signs.

It occurred to me that this was a clever strategy.  If my neighbor had simply offered to give people pre-made Obama signs, I don’t think he would have had quite as much business.   Because he offered to let families make their own signs, he was instrumental in getting hundreds of homemade Obama signs erected on lawns.  After all, when you work on a sign with your kids, they will insist you actually stick it in the front yard when you get back home.

My family took advantage of this opportunity.  Above, you can see one side of our homemade sign, designed by one of my daughters.   Below, you can see that I had a less artistic backside to the sign.  Yes, I do have some (not many) McCain-supporting neighbors and they are not going to like this direct and accusatory approach to campaigning.

It is interesting how so many Americans are so willing to plop pre-made signs on their lawns rather than making their own personal statements and creating their own artwork.   The home-made aspect of these signs reminds me of an earlier post where I complained about store-bought greeting cards. Why buy mass-produced Hallmark cards when you can make your own, and the message will be so much more personal?   Same thing for political signs for the front yard.  My unsoliticed advice:  Go express yourself politically!

Tina Fey once again plays Sarah Palin in this reenactment of the VP debate. In this skit, Sarah Palin is certainly being given the respect she deserves.

CNN Anchor Campbell Brown thinks parity is overrated, according to a recent NYT article:

“As journalists, and certainly for me over the last few years, we’ve gotten overly obsessed with parity, especially when we’re covering politics,” Ms. Brown said. “We kept making sure each candidate got equal time — to the point that it got ridiculous in a way.”

“So when you have Candidate A saying the sky is blue, and Candidate B saying it’s a cloudy day, I look outside and I see, well, it’s a cloudy day,” she said. “I should be able to tell my viewers, ‘Candidate A is wrong, Candidate B is right.’ And not have to say, ‘Well, you decide.’ Then it would be like I’m an idiot. And I’d be treating the audience like idiots.”

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

Published with Permission by Cagle Cartoons

Unlike some in Congress, I took the time to read the House version of the proposed bailout of Wall Street.  It failed and I believe that was the right thing.

In Section 118 of the House bill under “funding” the bill said “the Secretary [of Treasury] may use any authority granted under Section 31 of Title 31 of the US Code to fund the bailout.”

I “Googled” “Title 31, Section 31 of the US Code” and came up with how the government funds itself. But, included in that Title 31, Section 31 was a provision for the Secretary of the Treasury to issue obligations equal to the monthly payments needed under Title II of the Social Security Act.

So I “Googled” “Title II of the Social Security Act” and it seems those are the payments to the elderly recipients of such funds, among other things.

Secretary Paulson apparently could have deemed the monthly obligations payable under Title II of the Social Security Act to be those obligations which fund the bailout.

Wait a minute! So one guy in Washington who spent his whole career on Wall Street could just up and declare the payments to be made under Social Security to be the payments made for the purchase of bad debts from his former colleagues on Wall Street?

Here’s the kicker! The obligations declared for and issued by the Secretary for the bailout are deemed appropriated as soon as the Secretary makes a purchase of the bad debt. And the obligations issued to make monthly Title II Social Security payments are deemed, as a matter of law, to not be part of the debt limit.

And the reverse kicker! The whole deal is done where there is limited review under the law; it’s off-the-books and transfers billions from Social Security to Wall Street. Enron, anyone?

So, the bill that a bunch of far right wing House ideologues shot down was the last gasp of George W. Bush’s efforts to privatize Social Security! Or, if my analysis is wrong, they just made their dying last stand against the tide which will wash out of the Congress the last of the truly bitter partisans which have held our nation hostage. Either way, America wins.

For those of you who haven’t experienced Rolling Stone assassin Matt Taibbi’s uncompromising, pointy and funny-as-heck style, first cop this excerpt from his Palin pwnage piece on 27 September …

It even crossed my mind that there was an element of weirdly self-destructive pique in McCain’s decision to cave in to his party’s right-wing base in this fashion, that perhaps he was responding to being ordered by party elders away from a tepid, ideologically promiscuous hack like Joe Lieberman — reportedly his real preference — by picking the most obviously unqualified, doomed-to-fail joke of a Bible-thumping buffoon. As in: You want me to rally the base? Fine, I’ll rally the base. Here, I’ll choose this rifle-toting, serially pregnant moose killer who thinks God lobbies for oil pipelines. Happy now?

… and then go and read the whole thing.

Heh heh, ” … serially pregnant moose-killer … ” That’s gold!

It is often hard to be a person on the planet Earth. It can be scary, overwhelming, fraught with obstacles, and most of all, inescapably lonely. We are, after all, alone in our minds, our bodies, and our selves. I think most all of the stuff we do as people - creating, building, loving, consuming and communicating is meant, at the most basic level, to help us forget or at least put a band aid on the ache of that loneliness.

That is one reason we band together in tribes of similarity and often poke fun (or worse) at those who are other. Race, nationality, politics, religion, non religion, gay, straight, gender, geography. We work so hard to escape the singularity and loneliness of existence by being a part of something bigger. Today this country is as divided as I ever thought I’d see it. After 2000, 2001, and then 2004 I didn’t think it could get worse, but it feels like it is. Do you remember the horror, the rage, the fear? I think back on it a lot these days. I saw grown men on all sides of the political spectrum weep and rage. I watched people of all flavors do both beautiful and horrible things. Just like now.

I am as sad as I am hopeful. We are faced with terrific challenges today. Yet we cling so tightly to the myths that separate us instead of reaching for the meanings that could unite us. I, like everyone, often take refuge in the ability to reach out to those who think as I think, or who recognize me as part of their team. “Lifelines in the midst of the madness”, I say to myself, so thankful I have the opportunity. It might be friends, family, colleagues, or acquaintances I meet online, might be a chance encounter and conversation that makes my day. These days we have tools to help us seek out other people like us, whatever us might mean. It can be easy to find someone to answer our need to not be alone, our need to be understood.

One danger is that all this connectivity within easy reach can reinforce the tribes of sameness we cling to so tightly. It often makes us more rigid instead of less, and less tolerant instead of more. I think we need so much to belong, to understand and be understood, to find connection and meaning that takes away the ache of loneliness, that in our searching and our finding we forget that everyone else is doing it too. Thus ,those who are not part of our tribe become less human. It reduces us, collectively, as people, and it is dangerous.

It is so common, and it scares me. I’m trying to fight it within myself, trying to see the humanity within the folks that frighten and enrage me. Its not easy. I have to leave the comfort zone of my tribe, and work to see something that humanizes the other. It is hard to fight the “us vs. them” mentality that seems so central to any discussion today. It becomes easier when one practices seeing it as an artificial divide, a human construction.

That practice requires fearlessness. If one accepts the premise that what divides us is not a given, but our own creation forged from our own fears and vulnerabilities, then so are the group identities that give us comfort and meaning. Thus, we find our selves truly alone, which is the uncomfortable position that contributed to the mess in the first place. Hopefully, though, the practice and effort will yield a healthier and more realistic perspective, and most importantly, the ability to reach out with compassion and strength, instead of lashing out and manufacturing distance from fear.

Are you out there, can you hear this,
Jimmy Olsen, Johnny Memphis
I was out here listening all the time,
And though the static walls surround me
You were out there, and you found me,
I was out here listening all the time

……Are You Out There, Dar Williams

How many posts at this site have been about the election? I haven’t counted them, but there are so many that it almost seems like an obsessive pursuit. It’s almost a little embarrassing, especially for a website that does not present itself as a current events or news commentary site.

On the other hand, the upcoming election is compelling to many of the authors at this site (I am the most guilty), because John McCain and Sarah Palin embody so many of the characteristics that inspired the creation of this blog in the first place.

Back in 2004, a handful of my acquaintances became emboldened by the national political mood and came fully out of the closet with their fundamentalist explanations for how the world works and how it must be changed. The positions were strikingly uninformed and one-sided. They were proud of their lack of any basis for the conclusions other than the Bible or their version of our “Christian” government. They showed no ability to understand the basis for the beliefs of people who disagreed with them. They quoted the Bible incessantly without showing any understanding of the historical development of the Bible as a book of stories, many of them entertaining or inspiring, but many others disturbing and self-contradictory.

I took advantage of this opportunity, just as I still do today, to question such beliefs.  Because I was hearing such silliness out of the mouths of real human beings, I was inspired to write, research, converse, and write some more, in an attempt to figure out what was going on. I wanted to know if my worldview was utterly and starkly disconnected from that of fundamentalists and neocons or whether there was some possible translation by which we could still communicate with each other.  In those early days of this blog, I remember feeling frustrated, sometimes angry with fundamentalism of all stripes.  I now realize that good-hearted people who happened to have traditional religious beliefs (but who were not fundamentalists) got caught up in my frustration. It’s not that I don’t have differences of opinion with non-fundamentalists religious believers, but I have gradually come to the conclusion that it is fundamentalism that is the real problem.  I am now fully aware that there are many good hearted people who sincerely believe in a sentient God who are my full-fledged allies, despite our many differences in the way we respond to the mysteries of life.

One way of illustrating my re-orientation is to consider that there are many agnostics, ignostics and atheists out there with whom I have less in common than with many good-hearted and thoughtful believers in gods and religions. This becomes all the more clear when I articulate what really should be our main concern as inhabitants on this planet: to get along with each other and to make the community a better place for all people.  Yes, many nonbelievers are also good-hearted (Ebonmuse of Daylight Atheism is one of my favorites), but not all nonbelievers are good-hearted. The ultimate question is to ask with whom I would have more in common: a goodhearted thoughtful believer in “God” or a self-centered and intolerant nonbeliever?  Because the answer to that question is clearly the former group, this means that I am not here to wage a war on religion itself.  It is my firm belief that each of us acts on beliefs that we cannot prove. My attack is on destructive impulses, regardless of the manner in which someone packages his or her destructive belief system.

I will continue to explore why people who claim to believe in God make their (to me untenable) supernatural claims. This is a fascinating topic that deserves the increased amount of discussion that it is now getting.  It is clear to me, however, that thoughtful and kind-hearted people who believe in gods and who belong to religions are not a threat to my way of life, whereas fundamentalism is a threat because it shuts down the brain in a way that prevents meaningful discussion of real-life issues and all too often inspires heavy-handedness, reckless and insensitive conduct. Fundamentalism is usually based upon out-of-control anxiety and fear, hyper-groupishness, obeisance to authority, and intolerance to the differences of others. It is also clear to me that fundamentalism comes in a variety of flavors, the most visible being religious fundamentalism (there are Christian, Muslim versions, for example). There is also political fundamentalism, of course. Those who are neoconservatives represent an especially dangerous version. It is my belief that the highly visible decay of the United States is due to the rise of both political and religious fundamentalism.

I started this site back in 2006 because I realized that humans need a constant and a healthy dose of skepticism to keep themselves from falling prey to various types of fundamentalism.  This self-vigilance needs to be unrelenting, but our inner personal battles also need to be fought intelligently. Those of us who are too skeptical become paralyzed with doubts and we thus fail to reach back out into the world to actually make the world a better place. For fundamentalists–those who reject skepticism–there will be lots of reaching out in the community because movement always seems like progress, but there is a huge difference between changing one’s community and intelligently changing one’s community. There is no better example than the US invasion of Iraq, where our political and social leaders were anxious for some sort of tangible activity that would “respond” to the 9/11 attacks.  It is clear now that what we got is an extremely expensive (in terms of money and lives) endeavor which made the world and the United States worse off and completely failed to “respond” to the 9/11 attacks.

John McCain and Sarah Palin now assert that they are different than George W. Bush.  It is equally clear that they wish to continue the same failed policies of the current Administration, especially the war-mongering.  Based on the kinds of answers they are giving to questions posed to them, it is also clear that McCain and Palin are political fundamentalists who reject any evidence that does not fit in their pre-conceived notion of how the world works.  We can’t afford any more leaders who reject the importance of inconvenient evidence.  We desperately need leaders who are self-critical and who are not embarassed to admit this.

It is without apology, then, that we will continue to take an unrelenting side-excursion into politics, at least until November, because it is really not detour at all. Rather, the current campaign is allowing us to see, in a tangible and high-stakes way, the intellectual concerns raised in this site ever since we appeared in 2006.

The real problem with the economy of the United States is massive debt.  Sooner or later, we’re going to have to change our ways, and it’s not going to be pretty.  How much work? Consider this description of the amount of debt, by Kevin Phillips:

We’re not just looking at a real estate mess. Over the last quarter century, the total of public and private credit market debt in the United States — most of it, in fact, is private — has more than quintupled from $8 to $48 trillion, the biggest such orgy in world history. Over that period, domestic financial debt - the money borrowed by the financial sector for expansion, consolidation, empire-building, leverage, exotic mortgages, gambling, you name it - swelled from just $1 trillion to some $14 trillion. Employing these economic steroids, the financial sector ballooned itself from 14-15% of what back in the mid-1980s was the Gross National Product to 20-21% in 2004 of the newer Gross Domestic Product calculation. In the meantime, the once-dominant manufacturing sector fell far behind, dropping to just 12% of GDP. In a nutshell, the economy has been hijacked in recent decades by the very groups who now purport to have remedies - Wall Street, from whence Paulson emerged, and the money-bubbling, don’t regulate the dangerous practices Federal Reserve Board, from whence Bernanke comes . . .

Will this bail-out solve the current mess? Of course not . . .  The leader of the hundred House Republican conservatives, Congressman Jeb Hensarling of Texas, summed it up quite neatly: “Enough is enough. It’s time to bail out the American taxpayers from bail-out mania.”

Phillips, a former Republican strategist, has been a political and economic commentator for more than three decades.

Frederick Deligne, Nice-Matin, France

Reprinted with permission from Cagle Cartoons

One more thought.  What if we had been handling our national budget responsibly for the past few decades?  What if we only owed a relatively small amount in national debt today, say “only” a trillion or two, we could handle this mess.  The problem, though, is illustrated by the many graphs and tables here.  We’re way over our heads and no responsible economist is suggesting that what we’re doing is safe for our economy.  No one thinks that it’s a good idea, for example, that we need to chop $400 Billion out of the national budget every year to pay for interest on existing obligations.  Hence, the terror in the eyes of the politicians who are cobbling together the current “bailout.”  Notice, further, that no one in a position of power is suggesting that the current bailout will be the final massive government bailout of a private entity, even this year.

Not to keep spreading bad economic news, but if you want to understand the extent to which American families have gone, from merely 30 years ago, Economist Elizabeth Warren has some incredibly bad information for you.  We’ve gone from a family that saved almost 11% of its annual income to a family that saves a negative 1% of its incomes and runs a credit card debt amounting to 15% of its annual income.  Watch what has happened to fixed costs, such as health care, mortgage and taxes–the average family now spends 75% of its income to these meet fixed costs.  All of this financial pressure has pushed many middle class families toward the need for two incomes, a much higher risk of not being able to pay their fixed costs and (as you’ll see at about 48:00) significantly higher risk of going through bankruptcy.   The causes:  Job loss, medical issues (especially health care costs) or family breakup (death or breakup of family).  More children now live in homes that is going through a bankruptcy than live in a home being affected by divorce (50:00).  Bankruptcy is a shameful thing for many people; Warren indicates that 85% of the families now filing for bankruptcy are hiding it from their extended family and friends.

This financial stress of the middle class has numerous detrimental repercussions, as Warren explains at 52:00.  Warren goes so far as to conclude that we are moving from a three class system to a two-class system.  This loss of the middle class threatens to damage our economy and our democracy itself.

Do the comedians of Saturday Night Live understand Sarah Palin?  They see right through her:

If you want to look at the comedy version side-by-side with reality, watch this short clip that was highlighted on CNN:

At the debate last night, McCain scolded Obama for some allegedly irresponsible statements regarding a possible U.S. military incursion into Pakistan.  Obama responded by mentioning McCain’s singing of a song about bombing Iran.   This video has been around for quite awhile on the Internet, but I am posting it here because I think it says something deep and disturbing about McCain that he would make light of dropping bombs on any country for any reason.

Jon Stewart’s team does a great job of editing George W. Bush speeches from five years ago and from recent days.   It does seem to be the same speech.

Consider this earlier post, and the opening lines from the BBC’s terrific documentary: “The Power of Nightmares: The Shadows In The Cave.”

In the past, the power of politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people.

. . . Politicians were seen simply as managers of public life. But now they have discovered a new role that restores their apparent authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us . . . from nightmares.

To be clear, I do believe that the American economy is in horrendous shape, primarily because we are hemorrhaging in debt.  We are running massive trade deficits and budget deficits.  This is a problem that has been going on for many years, and it’s been obvious to all honest economists.  Essentially, our “solution,” has been that we are financing long term debt with short term notes.  It’s inexcusable.  We are so extremely vulnerable.  All that has to happen to throw this country over the edge is that our “pushers,” those foreign countries that are continuing to finance our irresponsible ways, decide to stop doing business with us.  That is what our big problem is, and it has been big for many years, extending all the way back to Bush I and Reagan.

Consider this statement by economist John Bogel, being interviewed here by Bill Moyers in September 2007:

But you don’t have to be an economist to know that a great deal of or a minimum in our economy is coming from borrowed money. People are spending at a higher rate than they’re earning, and we’re starting to pay a price for that now. Particularly in the mortgage side. But, eventually, that could easily spread and people won’t be able to do that anymore. You can’t keep spending money you don’t have. It gets a lot of it, you know, and it wasn’t that many years ago — maybe a couple of generations ago — that if you wanted something, you saved for it. And when you completed saving for it, you bought it. Imagine that. And that wasn’t so bad. But, now, we know that we can have the instant gratification and pay for it with interest payments, of course, over time, which is not an unfair way to do it. We’re going to pay a big price for the excessive debt we’ve accumulated in this society both in the public side and the private side.

And it’s no secret that this lack of savings in our economy — just about zero — is putting us at the mercy of foreign countries. China owns — I don’t know the exact number — but, let me say about 25 percent of our federal debt. China does. What happens when they start to buy our corporations with all those extra dollars they’ve got there? I mean, I think that’s very– these problems are long term, are very much worrisome and very much intractable.

Nothing about the current economic “fix” is going to protect us from that danger.  In fact, the current “fix” is to put the country $700 Billion further into debt, because we don’t have $700 Billion.  We’re either borrowing it or we’re diluting the dollar by printing lots and lots of paper dollars.  I’m no economist, but the current “fix” sounds like a Band-Aid, and the big financial corporations will be back for more in six months because the “fix” is not a long-term solution of any sort.  Rather, it’s like a “fix” of cocaine, something to get us through the next couple of months.  Something to allow us to pretend that there’s not a huge problem, much bigger than the one that is obsessing us at the moment, that we are refusing to acknowledge.

I sleep with a lot of books near my bed so that I can learn by osmosis, I joke.  Now, check out this surreal statement by Sarah Palin on why Alaska’s proximity to Russian and Canada bolsters her foreign policy credentials.

And notice another reference to the impending attack on the U.S. by Russia.   Such bull in a china shop diplomacy!

Here’s SNL’s recent skit concerning John McCain’s wave of dishonest campaign ads:

What should we do about Sarah Palin?  Bill Maher, Naomi Klein, Will.i.am and Andrew Sullivan discuss politics and religion.  Well worth a view: