Dakota Today

*** Earthly confluence

Really not much of a confluence, but somewhat interesting anyway.  This morning I got an Esquire magazine and read the politics column on page 80 of the May issue. The conclusion of the article laid heavy responsibility on Democrats to save the country from current GOP insanity.

The Democratic party has an obligation to beat the Republican party so badly, over and over again, that rationality once again becomes a quality to be desired. It must be done by persuading the country of this simple fact. It cannot be done by reasoning with the Republicans, because the next two generations of them are too far gone. The state legislators now passing all manner of crazy laws represent the next generation of national Republican leaders. They are proudly unknowing. They are certain, because it is impossible.

Read the whole column here Esquire Democrats' Duty: Bring Back the GOP from Crazy by Charles P. Pierce.  Of course I like that because I have probably written something too similar for several years..only more in the injunction form of "Send the GOP howling in the Wilderness for the next 50 years.".

And, Pierce wrote a paragraph that fit right in with PBS  "Earth: The Operator's Manual today on SDPB-TV

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Republican party, root and branch, from its deepest grass roots to its highest levels, has become completely demented. This does not mean that it is incapable of winning elections; on the contrary, the 2010 midterms, as well as the statewide elections around the country, ushered in a class of politicians so thoroughly dedicated to turning nonsense into public policy that future historians are going to marvel at our ability to survive what we wrought upon ourselves. It is now impossible to become an elected Republican politician in this country if, for example, you believe in the overwhelming scientific consensus that exists behind the concept of anthropogenic global warming. Just recently, birth control, an issue most people thought pretty well had been settled in the 1960s, became yet another litmus test for Republican candidates, as did the Keystone XL pipeline, to which every Republican presidential candidate pledged unyielding fealty despite the fact that several prairie Republicans and an army of conservative farmers and ranchers are scared to death of the thing. ( And another link not in above text to Pierce concerning unnecessary voter ID restrictions. )

The PBS "Earth Manual" seemed at least to make a rather scientific case that man-made factors have greatly influenced our climate..which Pierce calls "The concept of anthropogenic global warming".   Buy the DVD at PBS Store.

Years ago in another context, the slogan was "Stop the Insanity".  That phrase applies well to the current collection of retrograde Republicans including John Thune, Kristi Noem, Willard "Mitt" Romney, Sarah Palin, ...oh, and sadly the list could go on and on.

The current GOP party view of their ideal American can be summed up by "Government of the Patriots, by the theocrats and hack Mythologists, and for the Plutocrats.".

Sorry (well not really) if this did not meet your high standards for "confluence".

*** Stay tuned. There is enough GOP insanity to write a modern bible--- Doug Wiken

 

 

 

*** GOP Hypocrisy on Fuel price increases....another aspect or two

GOP presidential and congressional opposition and roadblocks to CAFE standards are also a factor in fuel prices. The GOP nonsense in the face of evidence and reality also made it easy for the US auto industry to get lackadaisical about safety and fuel economy. They are still playing catchup with the rest of the world automakers.

Hundreds and perhaps thousands of people have died needlessly in vehicles because of GOP opposition to even cheap safety design features. They are not only responsible for higher fuel prices, but the social costs of needless traffic fatalities and insurance costs.

Their current GOP hypocrisy, mythology, and denial of reality on these issues is (to use hyperbolic Santorum speak) enough to make a person want to vomit.

A note about this post: A friend reminded me of the GOP CAFE standards hypocrisy this morning.  I made the above comments relevant to that first at Mt. Blogmore.  And, if you want to read a good post by Kevin Woster at Mt. Blogmore that is also in a category of long-ever-do reality checks, take a look at:

Woster on Rush Limbaugh and his vituperative attack on a Female Congressional Witness

Truly, at "long last", I could not have written it better myself...well maybe, but little need to go over that again.

*** Stay tuned even if all I do is reference you to better ideas--- Doug Wiken

*** Assassination by flying drone or religious drone

Recently a US drone plane killed an enemy of the US in Yemen.  That has churned up a blizzard of issues since the piece of crap killed had once been a US citizen.

Now, the Obama administration claims a Moslem in the US was part of a plot by Iran to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the US by hiring Mexican drug gangs..  Outrage is the middle name of the US response.

NPR had a discussion with incoming calls today.  Unfortunately for the Obama administration, the fact that Bush and Cheny used a smoking turd collection of lies to justify the invasion of Iraq, the Obama Administration inherits doubts of their charges.

I don't know what to think for sure about this, but the combination of flying drone assassination, religious drones assassinations and mad bombing, and ideological drones blombing innocents, Iran hiring contract killers, past overnment lies and distortion,etc all are a terribly tangled skein.  

Nobody seems to have clean hands in these matters.  That is going to be a problem for the US until international rules on assassination by governments are established...if they don't already exist.

*** Stay tuned even if you have never heard of a tangled skein and did not know it was fiction written about Nazi Occupation of Norway --- Doug Wiken

9-11 and all that

In the media runup to the anniversary of the 9-11 tragedy, commentators were wondering what listeners had learned or decided was significant to individuals now years after.

I thought about that and decided the most important lesson for Americans to come out of the tragedy was that our American political critters will exploit any kind of tragedy for incredibly expensive extraneous partisan political goals.

Then we have the Florida minister threatening to burn a Koran just for the hell of it...well actually to protest the idea that Islamicists want to build a mosque a few blocks away from "ground zero".  What you ask may we have learned from that?

Well, from my warped perspective, it appears we should be burning every religious document or words of every religion since they seem to all be useful mainly to lunatics and scoundrels, and social retrogression.  Burn the Koran, burn the Bible, burn whatever Jews think are significant.

Or in the area of less broad a broadside, If the Florida minister is a Christian fanatic, the Islamicists who threaten to kill Americans because of the Florida fanatical lunacy demonstrate their own complete lunacy, ignorance, barbarism, primitiveness, and dangerous retrogression.

If there really are moderate Muslims, they should be condemning  those  who exploit their religion for pure unadulterated evil and primitive nonsense.

And, in my annual pissing into the wind, I again suggest that September 11 should become the new Labor Day to celebrate the lives of those who went to work and were killed by primitive barbarian religious insanity.

Using the site of a successful terrorist attack as a memorial area also seems passing strange to me.  It appears to be announcing to the world annually that terrorists were successful.  Rebuild the buildings or turn ground zero into a park.  Build a memorial honoring those who died on the highest hill in the nearby area.  Add a notice at the ground zero site that those killed by the religious insanity are memorialized at the high hill memorial.  Have all memorial ceremonies at that memorial high ground site instead of at "ground zero".

We don't turn areas with many killed by tornadoes or hurricanes into "sacred" memorial areas, and we ought not turn other catastrophic tragedy areas into memorials...especially if those areas primarily give joy to the religiously insane whose terrorism killed thousands of innocent workers.

September 11 in the boondocks is mainly another reminder that Osama bin Laden is still running loose somewhere laughing in perverse glee at the poltical pilgrimage to the site of his most insane "triumph" and at the incredible amount of money the US and other western countries have squandered in unsuccessful pursuit of his sorry ass.

The US Congress should pass a law especially for bin Laden if he is captured.  The law should allow his victim's relatives  to chop him into bite-sized pieces and feed them to hungry pigs.  Then bury the resulting hog manure under building foundations at "ground zero".

** Stay tuned even if problem solutions involving hog feeding spoil your taste for pork--- Doug Wiken

**Economist "Engineer" Robert Shiller finds danger in growing US wealth inequality

Recently, economist Robert Shiller was interviewed on the Charlie Rose show. It was an interesting hour based loosely on his new book "Animal Spirits" which is not quite what you might expect from the title. Robert Shiller correctly predicted the economic meltdown. He is an astute observer and listening to him, I really could not say if he particularly liberal or conservative. He considers himself an "economic engineer" who is not interested in destroying capitalism nor in destroying government, but in making them work better and in protecting them from future catastrophe.

I ordered his book "Animal Spirits" and a couple others on the economy. Hopefully, they can be the basis of some somewhat more informed posts here and elsewhere.

Shiller views the current economic meltdown as serious, but views the increasing concentration of more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands as being even more serious in the long term. The inequality of wealth distribution has increased to historical highs. Shiller, I think, implies that such inequality and the government policies generating it breeds resentment and also a decline in effort on the part of those unable to accumulate wealth and finding that effort more and more difficult.. in short weakening of the "work ethic".

My question at this time for those conservatives and very rich and of politicians protecting the inequality of wealth and who often label any improvement proposals as "class warfare" or "economic war" follows.

At what point will conservatives be satisfied that the very rich have gotten control of enough of the wealth to satisfy them? 

This Tax Policy group, probably at Brookings Institution indicates the top marginal tax rates by year from 1919 to 2009.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213

This link provides multiple forms of information on personal wealth. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/listdocs.cfm?topic2id=49

Wealth estimates from 2001 estate tax filings. May not relate directly to current situation. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=556&Topic2id=49

Download a complex pdf from the federal reserve. Charts and graphs with lots of data manipulation aimed at providing a better picture of true wealth. http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2006/200613/200613pap.pdf

Easier to understand compilation from the federal reserve info above http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/04/change_in_the_d.html

More analysis of some of the data contained in above with additional info and perspective. http://www.wealthandwant.com/

This is a perhaps shaky source, but suspect the income data on the "Fortunate 400" if not the interpretation is correct anyway.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/mar2008/rich-m07.shtml

Some information on actual control of wealth: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

This from census data may be unbiased if you have time to download and dig through it

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/wealth/wealth.html

This may indicate the problems with large family size and wealth accumulation and may thus suggest that the mal-distribution of wealth is related to family..I read only the abstract.

http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpma/0004051.html

This might have the most interesting and useful information.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/4Inequality.htm

You may choose to be ignorant of income disparity if you wish, but the information is available and sticking your head in the conservative wingnut sand pile does not change anything for the better or even change the information. We may however disagree on the future impact of continued worsening of wealth disparity based on our ideology. 

[[Note: Most of the above post was apparently viewed as too controversial to be posted at Mt. Blogmore for reasons I don't understand. ]]

**Stay tuned, paw through the data, and please report back with comments-- Doug Wiken

** Guilt by association: McCain and the Viet Cong, Palin and Secessionists

Either explicitly or implicitly, the McCain campaign or its surrogate mudslingers have been trying to claim Sen. Obama is some kind of a terrorist because he knows Bill Ayers who about 40 years ago was in the Weather Underground which took radical action in the misguided belief that was a way to convince our government to get our men out of Vietnam and stop wasting young men and women there. Palin has been fanning the flames on this to make it appear that Sen. Obama is somekind of "other".

Well, if they think that guilt by association proves anything, they better start worrying about Sen. McCain being labeled as a Viet Cong since he associated with them ..also forty years or so ago and for all we know is some kind of "Manchurian Candidate". If that isn't enough, he may also be a white collar criminal since he associated with Charles Keating and the "Keating Five".  [A bit more info on that association both with McCain and with the current financial debacle  here ].

 As for Palin, she has been sleeping with a guy who was in a secessionist party in Alaska. If that isn't sufficient guilt by association proof, nothing is.

 It might be wise for McCain, Palin, and their rabid loon sympathizers to cease and desist in their attempt to make Sen. Obama into some kind of a radical terrorist with strained guilt by association tales. The loudmouth jerk at a McCain meeting worrying loudly about the socialistic takeover of government might want to learn what socialism really is and then do a check on McCain's position on the Banker/broker bailout debacle.  The McCain/Palin "meetings" are taking on the character of mobs bent on burning down buildings.  A McCain Mob is not a pretty thing.  Time to cool the outrageously distorted rhetoric.

Guilt by association is a mediocre form of logic. It is stock and trade perhaps of the truly desperate dreadfully short of actual issues.  Repeating it over and over again is the big lie technique of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. 

 In the meantime, the Bush administration and the Wall Street Market fundamentalists have driven the US economy and country into a huge hole. Sure wouldn't want McCain and Palin to be talking about an actual issue however.

**Stay tuned and remember there will be Sabbath Gasbags spinning full speed in the morning-- Doug Wiken

***AIG needs faster horses, younger massagers, corrupter politicans, MORE MONEY

A month or so ago, AIG got a truckload of taxpayer money in a bailout. A few days ago they got even more. You can find some of the information with links on more of this following the ad below which was on the back page of the June 20, 2005 The Week  magazine. The above is most of a scanned image, but not an exact copy. Some of the small nearly unreadable text has been moved and enlarged. The really fine print listing AIG addresses, subsidiaries, etc has been cropped. The essence of the ad is there however, but in a form readable on the internet. Click on the image for a slightly larger version.

 Events seem to have shown that our great, great .... grandchildren may still be paying for the bailout and might be the kind of ad propaganda to make potential parents think about getting their tubes tied or having a vasectomy.

 Some links which just don't seem consistent or are very ironical with the implicit promises in the ad above.
 The Big Picture-- AIG Bailout facts DU--Two weeks after Big Bailout
 AIG Execs Party in Style..at your expense

And below from AIG to Get Additional Funds More at this link.

A.I.G. to Get Additional $37.8 Billion By BARRY MEIER and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH Published: October 8, 2008 The Federal Reserve Board said Wednesday that it would provide up to $37.8 billion to the embattled insurer the American International Group to help it deal with a rapidly dwindling supply of cash. The additional assistance is on top of $85 billion in a bridge loan that the Federal Reserve extended to A.I.G. in September, but it will take a different form. A spokesman for A.I.G., Nicholas Ashooh, said the new assistance was intended to keep the company from having to draw down the Fed loan so quickly. The Fed threw A.I.G. the $85 billion lifeline shortly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when the financial markets were reeling and there were doubts the system could weather the demise of another big financial services company. At the time, the Fed's loan was the most radical intervention ever by the central bank in a company's affairs.

**Stay tuned even if you can never waste the huge amounts of money fast enough to justify a bailout to pay for your manicures at a spa--- Doug Wiken

**Nothing behind the $700 Billion Curtain, worry about important issues

When real issues fail or baffle the Republicans, they get all interested in religio-politico "issues" with the greatly appreciated feature of diverting attention from the gross governmental incompetence of the GOP.

 So, forget about that $700 Billion. It was a large dollar amount pulled out of some treasury official's rear end anyway...barely qualifying as a rough guess even. So get serious about the abortion issue (also known as Rapist Rights) and start waving a bloody shirt for the NRA to make sure militias are never short of weapons for killing deer and fish in barrels.

 Forget about losing your house or car, you might have a third cousin contemplating women's rights to choice and you know how serious that is. And by golly, your redneck cousin who likes to shoot coons in trees is damn sure that when liberals get done putting diapers on all the cows and horses, they will come around in the middle of the night to grab his shotgun and deer rifle. So keep your powder dry and your eyes on all the important issues. Never mind the curtain.

 

** Stay tuned even if you have a terrible time keeping your priorities straight and your money in your mattress with the distraction caused by all the gays trying to get married --- Doug Wiken

**Whoa, pull the blinders off and put the brakes on. Haste makes waste.

Millions and billions and billions but it is not astronomy and stars, it is a blind government bailout of the very, very rich by the many more poor and middle class. The Bush Administration has been driving the economy into the gutter over the past nearly eight years and now "all of a sudden" we have a looming economic catastrophe?

Nothing that can't wait until Congress figures out ways to ensure that not one nickle of the bailout disappears as if it is money dumped from a plane in Iraq. There must be real accountability coupled to stringent accounting. This bailout or more correctly "free lunch for the very rich" appears to be on the way to costing between $2400 and $3000 for every man, woman, and child in the US. Got four in your family? Think about setting fire to $12,000 because George Bush tells you that you just must do it and do it now.

 Let the government take over the good debt first and see what appears to be left. Then see what these corporations can do to clean up their own messes. A corporate executive who was paid $190 million last year is right in the middle of the collapse. There is no necessary correlation between high pay and competence. There may be a correlation between obscene greed and compensation however.

 The government should not allow oligopolies and monopolies to grow to the point they are "too big to let fail". The government  also ought not save any corporation in a condition that leaves it too big to fail again in the future. Executive compensation in the US should be limited to no more than that paid the US president unless corporations or other entities pay matching immediate direct taxes dollar for dollar to the Treasury with every regular paycheck or bonus payment that exceeds the salary of the US President. If corporation boards of directors are so insane they are willing to pay more than twice the salary of the president, then a triple immediate tax should be paid. Huge executive salaries drive excessive risk and excessive growth.

Unlimited capitalism is a bubble waiting to burst. Unlimited government control is constriction to the point of stagnation. Somewhere in between is a medium which may work without the danger of nearly sure collapse or the reality of sure stagnation. Our Congress must get control over any bailout with details nailed into concrete legislation. To give the rotten Bush administration uncontrolled and unmanaged opportunity to dump money into corporations so shaky and flaky they can't be trusted by other business or investors is insanely irresponsible.

 Congress let Bush lie with near impunity about the excuses for going to war with Iraq. They should know better this time. No more war powers, no more economic powers given without regard to the interests of the actual people these congress critters represent and within boundaries constitutionally defined. Haste will uncertainly be waste.

Found a link at Salon TT to a Krugman article that relates a bit to above:

Paul Krugman NYT OP ED-- No Deal

***Stay tuned, somebody will start totaling up salaries and losses and see what the connections really are--- Doug Wiken

**Sen. Obama, please apologize. There are limits.

Here is a straightforward message to Senator Obama related to his lipstick on a pig remark.

 

Sen. Obama apologize to all the pigs of the USA for associating them with the dreadful Bush-McCain Economic Policy failures and absurd proposals of McCain and Palin.

There, had to get that message out of the way much as I now hate to complain about Obama  since he has been attacked by Lindsey Graham, Rudy Guiliani, Fred Thompson, and  Mrs. Sarah Palin unknown woman governor and mayor from the of the frigid northlands: but, after all, there just are limits on porcine invective.

Stay tuned, I'm sure there will be more lies and distortions from McCain and Palin..after all, truth is not on their side--- Doug Wiken