Category: AAA-Very Very Best

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To Serve Mankind

“My view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.”

Did you miss this revelation? From the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee– the Congressional body that regulates the banking industry– Spencer Bachus.

Bachus received about $1 million in campaign contributions from the banking industry.

“Now is the time to get the farmers out of the way,” said Bachus, “so the foxes can create chickens and grow the farm.”

There is a Twilight Zone episode in which aliens land on earth promising solutions to all mankind’s problems, energy, food, pollution. They also encourage humans to come visit their planet. They have with them a guide book in their own language which some stubborn scientists have obtained and try to decipher.  One of them succeeds.  It translates as “To Serve Mankind”.

Hundreds of humans are happily boarding the alien spaceship, breathing a sign of relief.

But just as the protagonist has decided to get on the spaceship and visit the alien world, a friend of his, one of the scientists, rushes to the spaceport. She screams at him, “don’t get on the space ship!”.

They have succeeded in translating the rest of the book.

It’s a cookbook.

Spencer Bachus has arrived, with his cookbook, to serve Americans.

If you thought there might be relief in sight from the Democrats, you should know that Barney Frank himself, the outgoing Democratic chairman, accepted about $1 million in campaign contributions from the banking industry.

I’ll bet the Tea Party people are really upset about that.

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Lost Obama

Reading the comments section of a piece on the New York Times website, one is struck by the unanimity and passion of the readers who feel that this last one, this deal with the Republicans to keep the Bush tax cuts, is the last straw: they will never vote for Obama again. They feel betrayed, disappointed, angry.

The depth and breadth of rejection is stunning– post after post after post, categorically insisting that Obama is done.

Why didn’t we just elect McCain/Palin and get it over with? Other than Health Care, is there anything important that would be different? Is the Health Care plan even all that great, after gutting it of all the genuinely progressive elements?

It is striking. It is almost tragic. Suppose they got really mad and decided they would support someone progressive and liberal and passionate in the next round of Democratic presidential primaries, someone who is about change, who promises a new approach to government, and who seems to genuinely care about the average working stiff: they will never know until it’s too late if that person is going to be another Obama. They will never know until it’s too late if that man or woman is going to be signing another massive tax break for rich people, or cutting social security, or putting people on trial in front of military tribunals.

The funny thing is, if a nut case like Sarah Palin got elected, she’d probably do exactly what she promises to do, leading us all into disaster after disaster, like Iraq, Afghanistan, coal-fired power plants, ethanol, and the collapse of the financial industry.

An esteemed colleague of mine makes a compelling case that it’s too early to judge– every recent president plunged in the opinion polls at this stage of his presidency. Clinton and Reagan both recovered. George W. barely recovered. Health care may yet prove to be the jewel of his administration and the economy could turn around and everyone might eventually forget all about the mid-terms and the winter of 2010. It’s possible.

It’s possible that it takes two years for a new man to really begin to fit into the suit of the presidency, to know the length of it’s sleeves, the ability to stretch, the tightness around the crotch. Maybe we will see somersaults in 2011 and 2012.

Obama has made some exceptional appointments, and the government is at least behaving rationally on a range of domestic issues that never see the front page. But like those readers of the New York Times, I wonder why when some asshole on the right campaigns on stupid ideas like environmental and banking deregulation and aggressive military policies and lower taxes for the rich, he gets to do exactly what he said he was going to do, but when someone rational on the left wins an election, he always seems to track so far to the middle you have to wonder why we even have two parties.

Why not just let the tax cuts expire? Obama made it reasonably clear that he wanted to keep the tax cuts for the lowest earning Americans and the middle income Americans. Why not refuse the deal with the Republicans and say, fine, let them all expire. Most Americans, in poll after poll, support the elimination of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans, as Obama proposed. Why didn’t he have the guts to fight for it? He just traded about $4 trillion in benefits to the well-off for about $56 billion in aid for the jobless.

Very, very good deal if you are rich in America. In fact, there’s a word for it, if you are rich in America, during a time of economic hardship and war: “obscene”.

He won’t get credit for extending the tax cuts anyway– the Republicans will be crowing about this for years to come. They’ll let everyone know that Obama was against it, even though he signed it into law. He won’t get credit for compromising– this kind of compromise looks weak and indecisive. And the projected deficits will be even bigger than they already were, which the Republicans will use as an excuse to attack Social Security and Medicare.

That’s the Republican way: create deficits and then campaign as fiscal hawks.

It looks for all the world like a lose-lose situation, and it looks humiliating and insulting and embarrassing.

Is it a done deal? I’m watching with great curiosity. There is a bit of rumbling among Congressional Democrats that they might not vote for it. It’s a very intriguing idea. Especially if you just got creamed in the mid-terms and you have this feeling of having your noses rubbed in it.

Especially if you are ambitious and think there might be room of the left for an insurgency in 2012.

You should have voted for Hillary instead? What would she do differently? Well, take a cue from Bill, for one thing: Clinton stood up to the Republicans when they held the government hostage to their agenda in 1995.

What did Clinton do?

Armey replied gruffly that if I didn’t give in to them, they would shut the government down and my presidency would be over. I shot back, saying I would never allow their budget to become law, “even if I drop to 5 percent in the polls. If you want your budget, you’ll have to get someone else to sit in this chair!” Not surprisingly, we didn’t make a deal.

Wow. So what happened to the uncompromising Clinton? The highest approval ratings since he took office in 1992.

On the other hand, the glee with with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell greeted the announcement of the deal is positively nauseating.

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Excited Delirium and Other Scurrilous Syndromes of the Police State

Have you heard about the new medical condition that causes people in police custody to suddenly die? It’s called “excited delirium” and it is exacerbated by “multiple drug toxicity”. It also, don’t you know, actually gives people “super human” strength. I’ll bet you thought that only happened in comic books!

Now, if you had a number of men who were drunk or high, and loud and abrasive, or experienced a sudden influx of superhuman strength, there are many unfortunate things that could happen to them but one of the least likely– and veritably unknown before the use of the taser– is sudden death.

But if you had an equal number of men who were tasered repeatedly by the police, then thrown to the ground, hand-cuffed, and tasered again, we know you will likely have a few deaths. In those cases, we hereby declare that the deaths are caused by contagious “excited delirium” exacerbated by “multiple drug toxicity”. The superhuman strength is of no avail in these situations.

I’ll bet that right now, if you are a cop with a taser, you are making a point of memorizing the phrase: “excited delirium” and “multiple drug toxicity”.

Some day, those words might save your career.

And I’ll bet you didn’t know that “excited delirium” is not a real condition. It was invented by the taser industry to explain those inconvenient deaths of people being tasered.

*

Lest you think I am anti-cop… I’m not. I’m only against bad policing and police cover-ups.

I just saw a documentary on Frontline about a group of cops in New Orleans called to a bridge in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina because a man was seen with a gun. Now, first of all, this IS America: what’s the problem? Oh wait– he was a black man. Okay, so the cops pull up in a rented cube van, two in the front and about eight in the back where they couldn’t see what was happening. As they are pulling up– I’m not making this up– one of the cops in the front fires a warning shot. Seriously. A warning shot. The rest of the cops in the back think there is something happening so they quickly jump out of the truck and take positions and carefully assess the situation to try to determine where the shots are coming from, how many gunman are involved, if there are any civilians in the line of fire, and how best to ensure public safety in the face of the threat.

Hoo ha! Had you! Just kidding, of course.

Actually, they jumped out of the van, guns a’blazin’, and shot wildly in all directions. Eight people were hit, two of them fatally. Fortunately, no dangerous guns were found. At least, not on the civilians.

Well. Cops are under a lot of stress, you know, what with all the bizarre super humans with excited delirium going around. My theory is that these guys on the bridge were displaying symptoms of “prescient excited delirium with multiple inactivity inversion”.

[Update: 2011-08-05. Apparently, the five officers involved have been convicted of… well, did you think they would be convicted of murder? No. They were convicted of various civil rights offenses, and covering up the shooting. They still complain bitterly that even though Ronald Madison was running away from them at the moment he was shot, he still probably would have had a gun if he could have and would have turned around fired it at police if he had been what the New Orleans police thought he was…. wait–]

Some of these links will be dead by now.  Too bad.

 

What is “excited delirium”?

I googled it.  Here’s what I found

 (in wikipedia):  Excited delirium is a condition that manifests as a combination of delirium, psychomotor agitation, anxiety, hallucinations, speech disturbances, disorientation, violent and bizarre behavior, insensitivity to pain, elevated body temperature, and superhuman strength.[1][2] Excited delirium is sometimes called excited delirium syndrome if it results in sudden death (usually via cardiac or respiratory arrest), a relatively frequent outcome particularly associated with the use of physical control measures, including police restraint and tasers.[1][2]

Shockingly, African American men seem disproportionately disposed to affliction by this medical condition.

You should read that last line carefully: death is a frequent outcome   “particularly associated with the use of physical control measures…”

How wonderful to be a short-tempered cop and have a syndrome that can be applied to anyone with the indecency to die on you during a tasering.  How wonderful for a corporation to be able to invent and sell a syndrome to explain why people die when using your product.  (Yes, a victim is “using” the product manufactured by Taser International.)

And here’s the bottom line: neither the American Medical Association nor the American Psychological Association recognize “excited delirium” as a real medical or psychological condition.  The standard authority on mental illness, the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) does not list it.   Let the lobbying begin…  What will it take?  A big fat donation to the right “charity”?  Future employment with lavish benefits to a current panel member?  Whatever… it’s not that hard to do.

A real doctor talking about excited delirium.

If you want to believe the police on this one, that is certainly your privilege. IF you want to believe the police would not lie about the actions of the victim, or the necessity for force, or the prudent application of the taser…. I have two words for you:

Robert Dziekanski

In my humble opinion, “excited delirium” is the product of a rather distasteful collaboration between police officers and medical examiners to cover up instances of excessive force used by the police causing death.

More of Bill’s hysterical over-reactions to the use of tasers:

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CBC News: Copying CNN’s Dismal Formula

Richard Stursberg came to the CBC about six years ago, hired some American consultants who told him that people want more weather, more banter, more light news, more trivia in theirs newscasts, and systematically destroyed the least worst news broadcast in Canada.

My wife and I now watch PBS news from the U.S. I’ve tried out CTV occasionally. Incredibly, it is better than the CBC National. I didn’t think I would ever be saying that.

So here’s the CBC:  Nancy Wilson is the hostess on the weekend. She is a perfect little hostess and I think she should take time out from her busy hosting gig to maybe hock a little Tupperware or Avon on the side. In the meantime, she conveys to the viewer just how remarkably trivial the world is out there. One minute it’s a tornado or earthquake or war killing thousands of people, the next it’s chilly out there– did you bring a sweater, Mark? Might be a good day to curl up with a warm book. Did I mention the airplane crash? Let’s go to the reporter in the news room– look! He’s got his sleeves rolled up! He must be working very hard, and you can tell he’s incorruptible because, for God’s sake, he has his sleeves rolled up. And he’s moving! He’s walking from one desk to… where-ever. The camera is moving with him. By golly, this is real news I care about, not some mere journalist. And now, let’s cut to Diane to explain how we can keep our kids safe from meteorites– Diane? Diane has moved to the same desk as Nancy– they are having a conversation about the news, just like people you know.

I’ll admit, the PBS Newshour seems a little dry in comparison. There is a ten or fifteen minute lead story, explored in depth, then the news headlines, then three more stories, usually, each allotted about 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes, compared to most news broadcasts, is a lot of time. Stories can be explained and analyzed in depth. The expert guests often look rather plain– you immediately suspect they were recruited for their expertise rather than their looks.

Stursberg has now resigned, with no explanation. I hope the CBC realizes they made a big mistake and chooses to head off in a different direction. The first step should be to unmakeover the National.

Am I the only one who does not like the National makeover?  No, not by a long shot.  Ratings are down between 30 and 40%.  More on Richard Stursberg.

The idea was that even if old fogies like me get pissed off, the new format would attract young people. One prays for future generations if they’re right.

So, when do they admit failure and move on to something more interesting?

By the way, CTV News ratings are currently about double the CBC’s.

The CBC makeover into a pale clone of CNN is not a coincidence. The chairman of the CBC, Richard Stursburg, openly wanted the CBC to be more like the big American stations.

So that’s why we also got absurd programs like “The Border” and “Dragon’s Den” and “Battle of the Blades” and “All for one with Debbie Travis”.

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The Puritanical Conspiracy

You can’t not be wary of being accused of paranoia, of being one of “them”– the conspiracy theorists. But you can’t not be aware, as well, of the fact that the people responsible or not for the conspiracy would be fully cognizant of the fact that people can be persuaded to label people who understand what is going on as “paranoid”. As I have noted before, the best friend any Kennedy assassination conspirator might have had would have been Kennedy assassination conspiracy buffs, like David Lifton, who posited that Kennedy’s body had been surreptitiously stolen from Air Force One and surgically altered to cover up the fact that shots came from the front (wouldn’t it have been easier to just shoot him in the back?).

If I had been involved in a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy, I would not have had some stooge write a book asserting that there was no conspiracy– I would have a stooge write a book asserting a conspiracy, and let slip that aliens might have abducted the brain. Far more effective at manipulating public perception: it’s not cool to believe in conspiracy. Coolness is always more important than veracity.

And so to Clinton. Looking back, fifteen years later. To the impeachment scandal. You have to think about what happened to Julie Hiatt Steele.

Follow me:

Suppose it was a conspiracy of sorts– and I don’t mean a deep, dark, coordinated effort master-minded by some evil genius from within his impervious bunker. Keep the straw men out of it. I mean a group of powerful financiers including Richard Mellon Scaife, and group of complicit Republican politicians who probably were not fully aware of how things were being managed for them. Why would they be? What advantage would it be for Scaife if Asa Hutchinson or Henry Hyde knew that this was all a plan? They didn’t need to know. They just needed to know that Clinton could be harmed and they just needed to tools provided by one means or another. Scaife probably started the process, but Kenneth Starr and his cronies managed it quite well within their own fraudulent agenda.

Anyway, we have Starr struggling– unsuccessfully– to convince America that Clinton, like Nixon, had to go. The Republicans were not averse to voting for impeachment without public support, but the decisive votes would have to come from across the aisle, and the only way to get them was to persuade the Democrats to cut Clinton loose and vote for impeachment.

It was a strange situation. Several Republicans on the impeachment parade had themselves cheated on their wives. Newt Gingrich carried on an affair with a staff member while his wife was in the hospital being treated for cancer. The public didn’t think the issue was big enough to impeach a popular president. So Kenneth Starr was struggling.

Kenneth Starr looked like a less sophisticated version of John Roberts, current chief justice of the Supreme Court. Like Roberts, Starr was good at pretending to examine all the facts carefully as if he actually had an objective opinion on anything, and then, shockingly, arrive at the conclusion he always wanted: impeachment.

So Starr is struggling. The evidence was not as strong as he had liked. He tried to nail the Clintons for Whitewater by bullying Susan MacDougal into corroborating the allegations but she wouldn’t do it. So here’s what he did: he charged her with obstruction of justice. The “obstruction” was her failure to bend to his will and lie about the Clintons’ involvement with a illegal or inappropriate $300,000 loan. The other witness had really done something illegal and had agreed to testify against Clinton in exchange for a plea bargain. That’s how American criminal justice works. Only in the movies and TV are actual evidence and guilt involved in the equation.

So along comes Kathleen Wiley. Wiley had a history of prevarication and wasn’t a very good, credible witness, and she had openly flirted with Clinton and tried to arrange a tryst, to no avail. Then she went to Kenneth Starr and accused Clinton of groping her. On the day her husband, who was himself charged with misappropriating client’s funds from an investment scheme, shot himself to death in his car on a side-road somewhere.

Wiley claimed that a woman named Julie Hiatt Steele, who does appear to have been a sensible, rational person, also admitted to her that Clinton had groped her, and could testify that Wiley had told her about the groping long before the scandal broke (implying, of course, that she was jumping on a bandwagon). Wiley also had Michael Isikoff from Newsweek in her bag, and a book deal. The only thing she lacked, in fact, was credibility.

Did I mention the book deal?  The profit center?  The money, which should always be followed?

Yes, complicated. Let’s say for a moment that Kathleen Wiley’s story was completely untrue. Does it take a genius to conceive of the idea of her making it up? Maybe not out of whole cloth… maybe yes, out of thin air. Julie Hiatt Steele naturally denies the story. Kenneth Starr subpoenas her to testify. When she denies the story, as any perfectly truthful person would do, she is charged with Obstruction of Justice, which carries a potential sentence of 40 years.

Kenneth Starr, obviously out to prove that some tiny portion of the $50 million his investigation cost actually produced something, simply chose to punish the witnesses who refused to bend their testimony to his will by using his extraordinary powers to indict them for “obstruction of justice”, a term that meant whatever he wanted it to mean, Alice.

Then he leaked portions of their grand jury testimonies– a serious criminal offense, by the way– to the media, knowing full well that most news organizations wouldn’t bother to either fact check, or hold the leakers accountable for suggestive and inaccurate details.

Kind of whacky, isn’t it? But if this was the actual result, it is easily possible to imagine that someone planned this outcome, very carefully. Steele must have been enormously tempted to give in and corroborate Wiley– she was threatened with all kinds of dire consequences, her apartment searched, friends and relatives intimidated– if she did not cooperate, and all kinds of sweetness and light if she did.

It will be more difficult for them to employ this strategy against Obama, but I don’t doubt for a second that they will try. Wait for it. It’s coming. Remember, it will structured in such a way to permit Republican leaders to seem uninvolved in revelations, the leaks, the rumours, and then weep crocodile tears about doing their “duty” to investigate.

A carefully developed account of how the scandal was manipulated by Kenneth Starr, Lucianne Goldberg, and Linda Tripp.

Am I paranoid? Or not. If I am right about the Clinton impeachment, I might be right to anticipate that some kind of similar effort will be made against Obama at some point, especially if the Republicans gain a majority in the House (allowing them to hold inquisitions). Suppose Richard Mellon Scaife or the Koch brothers are out there right now with millions of dollars available to bring down the president, through whatever means possible, and without the slightest constraint of ethics or morals? How could they do it?

Well, the myth of the Tea Party is a start. The Tea Party does not exist, as the media would have you believe, in the sense of a powerful, influential, successful political force. Check the real poll numbers: the Tea Party is utterly impotent, in terms of real influence. There is not a single Republican candidate in any district who is winning because he or she is a “Tea Party” candidate, but there are least 16 who are losing, for that reason.

And it is beyond nauseating when establishment Republicans like John Boehner now strut around claiming that they have always represented the unsullied puritan ethos of those saintly tea party activists with their lovely racists signs and posters.

Most Americans– and I mean MOST, as in about 70%– shrug them off as inconsequential and embarrassing. Have you checked Sarah Palin’s numbers lately? The Democrats can only dream that she will be the Republican nominee for president in 2012. John McCain must weep at night knowing what he will now be remembered for.

In terms of fake influence, however, the Tea Party soars. In terms of “perception”, the news media, including the alleged liberal media, give it far more prominence than it deserves. Why? Because the Wall Street Journal and Fox News have ordained that the Tea Party is BIG NEWS. Because they believe that if they shout it out loud and often enough, people will actually begin to believe that America is embracing the political ideology of these idiots. Because they are funny and scary and outrageous. I believe their own insignificance will become apparent to them by January when Trent Lott’s dictum becomes true: “we need to co-opt them”. They will not resist, though, in some ways, I wish they would.

Anyway, Scaife and others would never do anything that would conspicuously link them directly to any of the more insalubrious efforts against Obama, including the pseudo-racist rumours about Islamic beliefs or Kenyan culture. They would merely fund groups who do, researchers, investigators, people like Linda Tripp who are willing to do the dirty work on behalf Mitch McConnell and the like.

 

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Vertiginous Spectacle

“Who could object to being tricked in this way? The audience, knowing more than Sugar does, is rendered dizzy by the vertiginous spectacle of one movie star so shamelessly “doing” another. ” New York Times article on Tony Curtis as Josephine being “seduced” by Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like it Hot”, directed by Billy Wilder.

In the scene referred to above, Tony Curtis, who recently died, is pretending to be a wealthy playboy named Shell Oil Jr. He has convinced Marilyn Monroe that he is impotent. Good sport that she is, Monroe is determined to end his agony and “cure” him. But the “doing another” reference above is not actually a comment on the seduction– it’s a comment on Curtis deliberately playing Shell Oil Jr. as Cary Grant.

I don’t think it’s a mean-spirited parody. It just, probably, seemed like a fun thing to do, and Billy Wilder, a very good director, obviously decided to go along with it.

I’m more interested in the word “vertiginous”, which means, according to Wiki, “characterized or suffering from dizziness or vertigo”. So I guess the writer, above, means that Curtis’ performance is so exciting that the viewer may be left dizzy, which, in fact, he suggests in an earlier phrase: “rendered dizzy”, making the entire sentence sound like “the audience was rendered dizzy by the dizzying spectacle of Tony Curtis” blah blah blah.

I like the word and I will try to remember it the next time I need to describe someone or something that causes me to feel dizzy. There was a staff member last week— shall I? “Last week I had the vertiginous experience of attempting to correlate B’s specifications for a web site into actual html and css code.”

I just ran into another word: anodyne, in reference to the names of various associations in the U.S. which are fronts for conservative donors and which run ads in various districts attacking the Democrats. Anodyne means “not likely to cause dissent or offense”. Such as “American Growth Fund” or “Keep America Strong Foundation”.

Most of politics, in the U.S., and elsewhere, consists of providing anodyne expression of vertiginous debacle.

Upstairs, I hear K. D. Lang’s collection of Canadian classics playing. So far, without exception, they are terrible.

K. D. Lang has a voice, a technical instrument of great virtuosity. If that’s what you listen for in a piece of music, by all means, she’s your man. But “Helpless”, for example, is about a feeling of desolation, of disconnect, and vulnerability. You can’t make a song sound like that by showing off your pipes, but Lang can’t resist doing it because that’s what she does.

Meg Whitman in California has spent close to $130 million of her own money on her campaign so far (for governor). Jerry Brown, her democrat opponent, has spent about $4 million. They are tied in the polls.

[added December 6: Brown won.]

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President Mrs. Wilson

For the last 14 months of his second term as President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson was virtually incapacitated. His condition was kept secret from the American public and most of the government. His wife, Mrs. Wilson– Edith Bolling Wilson– effectively ruled for him, appointing and dismissing officials and advisors, and shielding him from the scrutiny of members of Congress and even the vice-president.

How does a person know if one is not competent? Woodrow Wilson, apparently, did not know he was incapacitated. Mrs. Wilson did not know that she was not qualified to run the United States of America.

The sky did not fall.

On the other hand…. The New York Times article (sidebar) by Morris makes the argument that history might have been radically altered had Mrs. Wilson properly notified the authorities that her husband was no longer capable of executing the office of President of the United States. Instead, in what is surely one of the most outrageous cases of hubris in history, she decided that she would just do it herself. These men! These cabinet secretaries and advisors and senators and staff… what do they know that I don’t know?

That’s what Morris’ article is about– how do you know what you don’t know? The answer, of course, is that you can’t know what you don’t know. In other words, if you are incompetent, you are not likely to have the faculties of good judgment that would allow you to accurately assess your own performance– by definition.

Think about this the next time you see Timothy Geithner or Lawrence Summers or Bernard Bernanke on TV. Think about this as Senators fall over themselves to eulogize Robert Byrd, Senator for over 50 years, who seems have been much beloved. Who loved him? The citizens of West Virginia who rhapsodize about all the goodies he brought them from the federal government, all the buildings and freeways and public squares now named for him.

Edith Bolling Wilson was careful, in her auto-biography, to insist that Wilson was mentally competent at the time, and that it was Wilson’s own doctor (who was dead when she published), among others, who insisted that humble little Edith Bolling undertake the task of relaying Wilson’s authentic wishes to the world. But Wilson’s doctor and chief steward, in their own accounts, were clear: Wilson had no capacity whatsoever to convey any wishes, authentic or not, to anyone, or to govern; his reason was impaired. Though he later improved somewhat, he was never the same person after the stroke as he was before it. Edith Bolling Wilson, however, issued numerous communiqués from her husband which were invariably written in her own tiny little script. No one else was permitted anywhere near him.

There was no way for any reasonable person to get past Mrs. Wilson to determine if it ever actually was Woodrow who was doing to governing.

It was a critical moment. The international treaty creating the League of Nations was up for ratification in the U.S. Senate. Senate Republicans, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, were against certain provisions of the treaty. But Wilson seemed to take a hard line: no compromise. He’d rather see the bill fail than make a few adjustments, or give the Republican’s a face-saving concession. Wilson– or Mrs. Wilson, concerned that anyone should perceive a vacuum of leadership, brooked no dissent, no argument.

The treaty went down in flames.

Vice-President Thomas Marshall would surely have agreed to some of the amendments proposed by the Republican opposition– as might have a healthy, rational, Wilson– and the treaty would have been ratified, and the might and influence of the United States might have saved the League of Nations from it’s cruel fate of impotence, ineffectiveness, and its ultimate collapse in the face of German aggression and French and British intransigence.

It is possible– perhaps even likely– that no stroke: no Hitler.

This is not the same as saying that Woodrow Wilson was indispensable. The tragedy of Edith Bolling Wilson’s deceit was precisely the result of her delusion that Wilson was indispensable, that no one else should be allowed to lead the country at a critical moment in world history –the same delusion held by Robert Byrd who should have retired years ago.

It should also be said that a responsible Cabinet minister or Secretary of State or General should have insisted that Mrs. Wilson step aside and allow accountable political leaders to determine if the President was capable of carrying out his duties.  If Mrs. Wilson had insisted on blocking access to her husband, they should have followed the law and removed him from office.

But you can see the difficulty.  Do you have the Secret Service arrest Mrs. Wilson?  What if Mr. Wilson was partly coherent?

Tonight, I watched a documentary on the Berlin Wall. There it was again– Eric Honecker, Chairman of the Council of State for East Germany during the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Honecker also did not know what he did not know. As Hungary opened it’s borders and Lech Walesa overturned the Polish government and Gorbachaev transformed Russia with perestroika, Honecker clung to what he knew: the totalitarian communist state.

As tens of thousands of East Germans marched in the streets, he ordered the police to crack down, like the Chinese in Tiananmen Square. His deputy, Egor Krenz, simply refused to transmit the order, and a lower echelon functionary inadvertently– I’m not making this up– announced that the borders were open, immediately. The guards, confused, confronted with streaming crowds of refugees, opened the gates, and the genie was out of the bottle.

The Unknown Unknowns

  • Marshal Petain did not know that he did not know how to fight a war in 1939.
  • He still had all the knowledge he needed, however, to fight another war in 1914.
  • The White Star Line did not imagine that a situation would occur in which the number of life-boats on board the Titanic would matter.
  • Richard Nixon did not know that his actual culpability for the burglary of the Watergate offices of the National Democratic Party Headquarters would not matter, but his discussion of the incident in the Oval Office would eventually lead to his impeachment.
  • Nicholas II did not know even the Russian peasants no longer regarded his position as the result of the direct intervention of God in the affairs of men.

Errol Morris in the New York Times

Eric Honecker

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G20 Opium Wars

The biggest Security Theatre show in the world takes place in Toronto this week. The people who are supposed to represent us, the voters, will do everything they can to keep as much distance as possible between their lavish affair, their snack bars and drinks, their banquets and soirees, and us, the smelly, worried, unprivileged mob.

In fact, they clear the expressways so the cavalcade of bulletproof limos and security mobs can proceed from airport to conference center without having to meet the gaze of frustrated travelers. You wait so Obama can glide. You have to wonder if any of these leaders have the slightest clue anymore of what real life is like for their own citizens.

It’s not surprising that some terrorists out there might think it’s a good target: the display of monumental privilege must surely excite them. The fences and guns and helicopters — it’s all like a wonderful, violent opera.

It also creates a perception among the easily persuaded that these leaders are so important, so indispensable– such marvels of brilliant leadership and vision– that no expense can be spared in keeping them safe. In fact, every one of them is very dispensable— the graveyards are full of them, as De Gaulle observed. The security services don’t mind colluding with the politicians because, if politicians are important, the jackboots protecting them are necessary.

If you think, well, it’s a lot to put up with, but, after all, these meetings are important. No, they aren’t. The idea of public disagreement is so horrifying to the organizers that they have their cronies work out all of the language of all the announcements weeks before hand. If there is real disagreement, the announcements only cover the areas where they agree: we will improve the environment, encourage economic growth, seek justice and purity and the preservation of our bodily fluids. Amen. So, surrounded by security theatre, we have political theatre.

Have you considered… how come they don’t shut down the nation’s capital every time parliament is in session?

History is full of oddities.

In the 19th Century, Britain and other European nations were trying to develop a healthy trade relationship with China. Chinese ceramics, silk, and tea were in huge demand in Europe. Britain sent a delegation to the Qing dynasty to show them some of Europe’s most exciting new technologies to be offered in exchange. The Chinese were not impressed, and demanded silver instead. As supplies of precious metals began to dwindle, the European nations settled on a different product they wished to offer the Chinese. Wait for it: opium. Yes, the British East Indian Company was your local drug pusher.

Those crazy Chinese– they didn’t see the wonderful upside to this innovative trade relationship, and decided to ban opium. This led to the First Opium War, in which the European powers humiliated the Qing dynasty and forced it to sign a humiliating armistice, the Nanking Treaty, granting the European powers the right to brutally exploit Chinese markets and labour. The treaty also ceded Hong Kong to the British, if you’ve ever wondered why the British eventually ceded it back.

I’m always impressed by the righteous outrage expressed by oppressors when their victims summon the courage to fight back. The Boxer Rebellion was portrayed in the West as an attack on missionaries and Christian Chinese. The missionaries themselves only seemed dimly aware of their function as cultural emissaries of British and American imperialism. They didn’t see any problem with associating Christianity with gunboat diplomacy.

Another historical oddity:

In 1945 when Japan surrendered, Chiang’s Chongqing government was ill-equipped and ill-prepared to reassert its authority in formerly Japanese-occupied China, and asked the Japanese to postpone their surrender until Kuomintang (KMT) authority could arrive to take over. [From Wikipedia entry on Chiang Kai-shek]

This is not the only time an ally– a freedom-loving, democratic, liberal, enlightened, western power– actually asked the Japanese– spawn of Satan just moments before– to hold a population down so a new oppressor could take over for the old oppressor without the local people being given a chance to form a representative government.

Well, let’s all not get patriotic here. This is what governments do. They do it with far more sophistication and polish in the west, but they do it nonetheless: pin you down long enough to have your pockets picked clean. You can spot the patriots easily: they have flag pins in their lapels. They get teary-eyed when you play the anthem. They invite the press to view them touring the graveyards for the men they sent to die for your sub-prime mortgage, your derivative, your Enron stock, your gasoline.

You almost never find them in uniforms themselves.

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Clarence Thomas, Wake Up

Thomas criticized the majority for imposing ”its own sense of morality and retributive justice” on state lawmakers and voters who chose to give state judges the option of life-without-parole sentences. ”I am unwilling to assume that we, as members of this court, are any more capable of making such moral judgments than our fellow citizens,” Thomas said. NYTimes, May 17, 2010

That is a stunning declaration.  What I do, says Thomas, as a Justice on the Supreme Court, is rubber-stamp any cockamamie decision you want.  But we know: as long as it is a conservative decision.

Wow! Even for a long-time follower of the diminutive career of Justice Clarence Thomas, this one is particularly mind-boggling. He appears to have forgotten what the Supreme Court is for. He calls it a “moral judgment” but what he is talking about is the job of the court to ensure that government legislation and policy does not infringe on the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. Thomas, having accepted the job of navigator on this airplane, suddenly exclaims, “why are we on an airplane? We should be on a boat instead” and jumps out the window.

What is a “moral judgment”? The majority (6-3) simply agreed that the Constitution of the United States prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment”. Is it a moral judgment to force voters and legislators to obey the constitution? Could it be that the framers of the constitution didn’t mean cruel and unusual? Maybe they meant to ban “reasonable and humane” punishments instead.

One has to ask the obvious question: does Clarence Thomas know he is on the Supreme Court? Does he understand what a Supreme Court does? If the Supreme Court is not capable of “making such moral judgments” about what was meant by “cruel and unusual”, then what exactly, one wonders with astonishment, is the function of the Supreme Court?

But then we know what Clarence Thomas’ answer would be: to prevent suspects from defending themselves against criminal charges. To prevent citizens from suing corporations. To prevent corporations from being unprofitable. To prevent minorities from oppressing the majorities with their extravagant demands for equal opportunity, fair wages and a safe workplace. To prevent women from stealing jobs from white men. To prevent black men from stealing jobs from white women. To prevent parents of minority school children from demanding trained teachers and science labs. To prevent reporters from demanding information. To prevent police from having to seek medical attention for injured prisoners. To prevent privatized prisons from having to provide adequate space and staff for prisoners. To prevent witches from witching and sorcerers from corrupting the minds of young children with their liberal theories and scientific text books and pagan culture. To prevent feminists from being feminine and masculine men from using mescaline. To prevent guns from falling into the hands of pacifists and pacifists from falling into the hands of lesbians. To prevent lesbians from being lesbians or living in sin or enticing gay-bashing preachers to have children they could adopt.

Let us all now and forever and again deliriously sing the praises of the unlawful, the unconstitutional, the transcendent Clarence Thomas. May he go down in history as the only Supreme Court Justice to ascend directly into heaven.

Thomas might answer that the Constitution is not a moral document. But that’s not the issue and he knows it, for he asserts that Congress and the voters have the right to make “such moral judgments”. I think Thomas would concede that what he is saying is that the “moral” content of the judgment that a life sentence is too harsh for a mere property crime is not subject to constitutional constraints.

If the public wants to torture and hang a witch– so be it. Who are we to say they shall not torture or hang a witch? Who are we to say there are no such things as witches?

My other ecstatic tribute to Justice Clarence Thomas.

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Just Sentencing: 35 Years

Why is there no discussion about criminal sentencing in the U.S., other than the usual nut cases advocating even more and more of it?

Is there a single politician in the U.S. who doesn’t run on a platform of “getting touch on crime”. Those criminals! They commit crimes. Next thing you know, they’re out there just walking the streets and committing even more crimes, right after their 30 year sentence is up!

There is a logical absurdity at work here, of course. Ever since Nixon in 1972, every American politician, including Democrats Clinton and Carter, have pledged to get tough on crime, just like the Republicans do. But if every new generation of leaders gets tougher on crime than the previous generation, we must have long ago reached maximum toughness. In fact, I think we’re at a level of insanity that approaches the very high standards set by Salem, Massachusetts in the 17th Century, and Spain during the Inquisition.

So, how would you react if someone said, “you know what– I think we need to start showing some compassion, and we need to reduce prison time, improve prison conditions, and concentrate more on rehabilitation? How would you react? I’m not sure. Polls suggest that most people will react with sneering and laughter. Are you nuts? Do you know how easy criminals have it? Man, I wish I could sit around all day in my comfy prison cell just watching TV and stuffing my face all at taxpayer expense! No worries! No bills! Did you know how often they weasel out any sentence at all?

I would challenge anyone who thinks like that to spend a day in one of our lavish, over–crowded prisons.

What we have is a society that has become vicious, heartless, vindictive, and irrational. Yes, that’s us. We’re nuts. We have been increasing sentences– in the U.S., at least– and Harper wants to do it in Canada– and we have reached a level of absurdity: 20, 30, 40 years for property and drug crimes!

How does anyone know what the right sentence is? I just read about a first-time offender in the U.S. who got 33 years– I’m not making this up– for hiding a video camera in a women’s locker room. How do you know 33 years is “right”? What is 33 years? What pleasure does the judge get when he looks into this man’s face and decides his life should be destroyed. It was his first mistake– enough. Destroy him. Crush his spirit. Erase his existence. Annihilate his soul.

You could argue that it likely wasn’t his first mistake: it was the first time he was caught.  But you could also argue that most of us have sinned at one time or another and never been caught.

That is the kind of human being the judge is: he will deny it until he is blue in the face, but it’s true– he takes pleasure in doing it. It gratifies him. He should admit it, so we can have an honest discussion of crime and punishment in America.

And America needs to look at itself and ask: if what we believe about crime and punishment was true, how come we’re not the most crime-free society on earth, because almost nobody punishes as harshly and ruthlessly as we do.

On Obama:

Tommy Barnett, 56, an independent of Cullman, Ala., said: “Somebody told me he’s not from here. I said I never heard of Barack Obama, that’s not American, then we find out he’s Muslim. What they got somebody like that running our country for?” (NY Times, April 21, 2010)

He doesn’t. You do.