Will Ebola Claim the Obama Presidency?

For months, as the Ebola virus spread precipitously throughout Africa, American citizens have engaged in the usual rampant speculation that accompanies modern pandemics. Questions were asked about how the disease is spread, how it can be contained and, most importantly, whether nor not the United States was in any danger of it spreading to these shores.

At every step, the official response from medical professionals was dismissive, to the point of smugness. No, they said: Ebola will not come to America. And then they said the odds were simply way too low for anyone to consider. We were told all this assiduously, by men and women whose primacy as experts rendered them incapable of being credibly second-guessed. Whether it was the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, or our own Department of Health and Human Services, the pushback against public concern was delivered with the same self-satisfied certainty once used to anoint Wall Street CEOs as “masters of the universe”—and we know how well that worked out.

But now, with the first diagnosis of Ebola on these shores, with everyone that person contacted now in quarantine, and with an NBC crew on its way back in quarantine after their own cameraman tested positive for Ebola, one thing that should be obvious is that the experts were wrong—dead wrong, about almost everything—and that their failure means innocent people are going to die.

A man with Ebola lied his way onto a plane that carried him—and the virus—from Liberia to Dallas, where he then contacted multiple people before showing symptoms himself. Multiple airline officials failed to stop him from getting into the US, even after being warned of what to look for and how to proceed. At that point, doctors in Dallas failed to diagnose him, and the CDC only got involved because people close to the patient made the call, not hospital staff. Even now, with the man’s condition a national story, his family sits in quarantine, along with their neighbors in their apartment building. The man’s contagious vomit was pressure-washed by cleaning crews without proper safety equipment, and his soiled linens remained sitting at home in a plastic bag as this is being written. As with the airlines, established safety protocols were not followed, to devastating effect.

Right now is probably not the time to be thinking in terms of accountability. These failed experts are still the best at what they do, and the priority must remain on containing the disease and doing everything possible to help those already affected. However, when this current outbreak is over, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs, and one of them might be the President of the United States himself. Right-wing conservatives whispering about impeaching Obama have been handed an early Christmas present: Every Ebola diagnosis within US borders makes it easier to advance the case for impeaching a president whose own personal failings made a bad situation much, much worse.

Obama’s sorry handling of the Ebola debacle has been somewhat consistent with his handling of pretty much everything this year, and it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to wonder if maybe there’s something seriously wrong with him. After all, this is the same president who referred to ISIS as “the JV squad” while they were building critical mass in Iraq and gaining a foothold in Syria, and then admitted on-camera that “We don’t have a strategy yet” to deal with them. This is the same president whose underlings allegedly threatened the family of James Foley for being open to paying ransom for him—and then, after he was murdered on video, Obama offered half-hearted condolences with no tie on, minutes before running off to play golf. This is the same president whose Secret Service has been compromised more times than his own principles, with no real consequences.

This is the same president who recently saluted a Marine guarding his helicopter while holding coffee in his right hand, and whose advocates complained about the resulting controversy, which only occurred because the White House released the video themselves. It’s not about the salute; it’s about how one of the most successful politicians of the post-war era has suddenly forgotten how politics works. It’s hard to say what would be worse: that he didn’t know how that would look, and how people would react, or that he didn’t care. Further, not one member of his staff intervened to block the release of the video, and none of them seemed to care at all about its practical effect on the election. He was elected because he wasn’t George W. Bush, and now, five years later, that’s all he’s got.

At the very least, it comes at the worst possible time for congressional Democrats, who already face serious losses in a tight, contentious mid-term election season that culminates just a month from now. Part of any president’s job is to be the leader of their party, and in that regard Obama may go down as one of the absolute worst presidents of the past century, in terms of the brutally negative effect his presence has had on the fortunes of his party, which controlled both houses of congress at the time he took office in 2009. Since then, Obama’s greatest political legacy has been to empower the most reactionary elements of his opposition, which has cakewalked into dozens, if not hundreds of elected offices on local, state and national levels from coast to coast, driven largely by reflexive hatred and fear of a president who, amidst all this, has never offered any real resistance.

If Republicans are able to maintain their control of the US House, and somehow manage to take control of the Senate, there will be nothing to stop them from at least trying to impeach Obama. Nothing, that is, except their own fear, which is legitimate. It’s quite possible that voters will be thrown off by the ugliness of it all, and might retaliate by voting out the principal aggressors and rallying behind the Democratic nominee (presumably Hillary Clinton) in 2016. Of course, the last president impeached was Bill Clinton, whose successor was a Bush. That could easily happen again—assuming that there’s anyone left to actually vote in 2016. As always, time will tell.

 

sheltonhull@gmail.com

October 2, 2014

 

Random extra thoughts on #Trayvon, #Zimmerman and their fans…

Have you ever noticed that many of the same folks who say that Trayvon Martin should have just submitted to the random, arbitrary authority of some gun-toting stranger are the same ones who openly encourage sedition against our government? That many of the same folks who suggest that the boy’s clothing, gold teeth and junk-food preferences lead inexorably to his being a “thug”, and thus fair game for an assailant with similar prejudices are also the same ones who say that, because the president’s dad was a Muslim, that he must be a Muslim, too, no matter how vigorously he asserts his allegiance to Christ? That many of the same folks who say the boy’s social media pictures with guns and pot also have pictures of guns and pot on their pages as well? That the same folks who say Trayvon should have just done whatever the guy told him are also the same ones who say George Zimmerman had no responsibility to follow the 911 dispatcher’s professional instructions? That protesters are accused of “playing the race card” by some of the same people who’ve accused every black person who has complained of any type of mistreatment over the last 50 years of playing the race card, as well? That the same folks who accuse Obama, of dividing the country have been pushing a narrative of “us vs. them” from the moment he took office? Yeah, me neither, LOL…

A Note on the Effervescent Swag of the Reverend Jesse Jackson…

#SWAG

Love him, hate him, or both, but the Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. is arguably the greatest black politician in American history–and that covers a whole lot of ground, including The White House. He stepped into the spotlight in a moment of near-total darkness for progressives nationwide, following the murder of his mentor, Dr. King, and then proceeded to ball out in unprecedented fashion for 45 straight years. He has many, many critics, and rightfully so, but not one of them has even half his hustle on his worst day, whether it’s international hostage negotiations, high-level national politics, or building mass-movements from scratch across multiple platforms. Yeah, he didn’t become president, but he’s helped put three in office so far, and Hillary Clinton might be the fourth in 2016.

Jesse Jackson meets with Dream Defenders in Tallahassee, July 30, 2013

His work in Tallahassee today was masterful: Dream Defenders had been up there for days, and their appeals were curtly dismissed by elected officials–then Jesse showed up, wielding a power that transcends party politics, and transformed the dynamic of the whole situation is less time than it took him to put on their t-shirt. He’s like a walking signal-flare alerting national media to the relevance of situations they were otherwise inclined to ignore–and he’s done this for three generations, with a record of consistent long-term success unmatched by anyone since Saul Alinsky, if not the legendary “Boss” Tweed himself.

Put most simply: Jesse is to President Bill Clinton and President Obama what “the American Dream” Dusty Rhodes is to “Nature Boy” Ric Flair and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, in terms of being an early prototype for the type of politician that would eventually thrive in the new reality, and today pretty much certifies that. Is he shady and controversial? Of course–he’s from Chicago! His efforts over the past couple days have really helped reinforce the essential role he has played in organizing–and galvanizing–activist groups, and those efforts are worthy of praise, independent of ideology.

Money Jungle: Deficits and Debt, Credit and Control

I’m writing this on August 1, as President Obama is trying to secure a deal with Congress to raise the ceiling on our national debt (currently hovering around $14 trillion, or 98% of GDP) and avoid possible default on America’s financial obligations. This is the kind of political theate rWashington specializes in.

Of course, longtime readers of this column already know the subtext: America is broke, and has been for the better part of a decade. Osama bin Laden’s master plan to bankrupt the “bleed”Americadry through a series of ill-conceived, poorly-planned and ineffectively-executed military adventures in all of the wrong countries worked so well that we had to blow his brains out just to silence his constant snickering. The national debt has more than doubled (from $5.7 trillion) since 2000, and is projected to exceed $22 trillion by 2015, or 134% of GDP. Anyone who thinks any of this will ever be paid back, or that it’s even possible, is either lying or insane. Maybe both.

Looking at the legendary US Debt Clock website, which belongs on everyone’s list of favored sites, the brutal truth now being revealed to the population is laid bare in cold statistics. On Saturday, July 30 (three days before the deadline) one sees the national debt hovering just above $14.5 trillion. At that moment, our GDP was only $14.8 trillion (a debt-to-GDP ratio of 98%), and the amount of currency currently in circulation was less than $10 trillion. The interest on debt stands at $3.6 trillion for this year alone, which is only slightly less than the total national debt a decade ago, pre-war.

The debt debacle unfolding on Capitol Hill offers the nation’s youth an ideal object lesson in the dangers of a debt-based economy. Not only has theUnited Statesruined its own economy, and helped undermine the financial stability of its allies, but our dependence on foreign countries to sustain our lifestyles has forced us out of the position of global leadership that we’d held since World War II. Just as our addiction to OPEC oil left us unable to check those nations’ continued support of Islamic terrorism (which is essentially funded by the money we send to OPEC, as well as military aid to Pakistan), our slavish dependence on China leaves us impotent to check its expansion into the Western Hemisphere. Centuries of evolved political wisdom faded, like old cotton candy, under the heat of economic expediency.

Let’s make this country-simple: The bailout was a mistake. President Obama laid down like a prostitute for Wall Street, because the underwrote his campaign. He stacked his economic team with people who were directly complicit in the illegal and unethical behaviors that led to the recession, and their time has been spent throwing good money after bad, while working hard to ensure the guilty never face the consequences of their actions, either fiscal or physical. Having demonstrated that you can cheat the system and destroy human lives in the process, while being rewarded for it, Obama eliminated any possibility that Wall Street’s excesses can be reined-in.

Federal finances are in shambles, but under that is a whole matrix of personal and institutional debt that could also collapse if triggered by federal default. Like the abusive spouse who gets a second chance, Wall Street now feels empowered to do anything—and that makes it almost a certainly that our recession is going to get much, much worse. Nearly 15 million Americans are out of work, and millions more labor at jobs that pay poorly, offer no benefits or room for advancement. A majority of citizens are stuck in this cycle of revolving debt, but no one has suggested any relief for them.

No one suggests putting a moratorium on the fraudulent foreclosures that have ruined millions of families, or forgiving student-loan debt, or exempting certain key public workers (like nurses, teachers, cops and firemen) from the federal income tax, or cutting through the labyrinth of paperwork that impedes so many from starting businesses in this country, or containing the artificially-high medical costs that are the primary cause of personal bankruptcy. The only wisdom we’re receiving from our political “leaders” consists of calls for enhanced austerity on one hand, tax hikes on the other—approaches that will only cause economic growth to stall even further. Which means this whole debate will not end with any deal struck this week or next, this year or next. Our nation is in big trouble, but the only people who don’t know are us.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; August 1, 2011

 

Money Jungle: Demolition Men

Election 2010: Is this Where Florida Ends?

Folio is published every Tuesday, but it’s unclear how many of you actually read it that day. If the office has ever done any research into the subject, I have no idea; it’s possible, since they’re pretty good at understanding their audience (other than the whole “Steven Humphrey is worth more than Money Jungle” calculation, which really does nothing to dispel the stereotype of Floridians as being terrible at math). Certainly, many readers are not able to pick one up on Tuesday; some hold off until the weekend.

I only mention this because this Tuesday, August 24, is the day for primaries in the statewide elections that will ultimately be settled on November 2. No need to preview the race, since most of you will have already voted by now. Obviously, this is the most important cycle for local elections in many, many years, and the results are all but guaranteed to be catastrophic for Northeast Florida, and the state in general. We are about to take major steps backwards in terms of the competence of our elected officials, and in the overall desirability of life in Florida.

While the election of Barack Obama was awesome for the country, it seems now clear that his administration kinda sucks, and that our hopes of dramatic positive changes were naïve pipe-dreams, invested in someone who basically represents the interests of the most corrupt and dangerous elements of Wall Street and Washington. Chicago Flash and his loyal team of Clinton-betrayers have been such a disaster that an unspeakable outside possibility has now been raised: that the likely loss of his congressional majority may be followed by the loss of his job in two years.

The problem, in my opinion, is that many Americans, who sometimes coalesce under the Tea Party banner, still believe that it’s possible to kill our way out of this. If we can just start another war, the theory goes, or cut even deeper into services for children, old people and the poor, the old America will come right back, like the shining silver that emerges after a good polishing. By this analogy, the polish is spewing from the mouth of Glenn Beck, and being rubbed in by Sarah Palin on the campaign trail.

The right loves their “free market”—the idea that, if corporations are given godlike authority its workers and consumers, altruism and civic responsibility will trump the profit motive. Well, ask a Gulf fisherman about that, if you can find one. Having had the central theme of their ideology repudiated by those very markets, the right has found itself a new baby: Austerity. The Republicans of 2010 are running on one promise: to lower taxes for the rich, which is fair enough, but also to put the screws to the underclass like nothing this country has ever seen. Deregulated banks have pissed away the life’s savings of millions, and the only thing that appears to have been manifested by health care “reform” is the Manchurian Candidacy of Rick Scott.

It’s really depressing to think about—a truly hopeless situation. If Jeff Greene beats Kendrick Meek, thereby making Charlie Crist the hold-your-nose choice for US Senate, and Rick Scott beats Bill McCollum for the right to stomp Alex Sink for Governor, you can basically close the door on Florida for the next decade. Being a political junkie myself, I’ve been looking at the 2010 elections across the board, and unfortunately I can report that Florida is leading the nation in collective myopia, willful self-destruction and craven capitulation to the wave of Trojan Horse candidates that is flooding this country like a busted sewer line. But at least you can grow plants with sewage; the only things these guys can grow are gravestones.

Here in Jacksonville, which has already paid a terrible price for not taking this state over when we had the chance, the elections that follow in 2011 will basically mark the end of 30 years of our leaders making good faith efforts (however blatantly shady) to build up this city. It saddens me to think of all those dead (and dying) political giants that once walked among us, putting personal interest aside to do what’s right—or, at least, what they thought was right—for the people, and to know that in 20 years all of their names will have been effectively erased from history, as history itself is eclipsed by the exigencies of present-time or, as Obama puts it, “the fierce urgency of now”.

Today’s Florida kids will have to endure the kind of hardships that most of us have only read about on the “Internets” (Ted Stevens, RIP), and they will probably never know that none of it had to happen. But, like any generation facing existential crises, they will need scapegoats, and that dishonor belongs to those of us casting ballots in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Our terrible decision-making will have “forced” them into whatever fake choices they decide are necessary. I’d hate to be their parents!

sdh666@hotmail.com; August 16, 2010

Gusher In the Gulf, pt. 2

Gusher In the Gulf, pt. 2: A national emergency, complicated by conflicts-of-interest.

Voters of Gulf states are maybe now regretting the poor decisions they’ve made in the booth in recent years. If we’d had better leadership, it’s possible that BP, etc. would not have gambled and lost on the Macondo Prospect, which has drained over $100 billion from public and private coiffers, bringing America’s fake recovery to a dead stop. The spill has become a magnet for all the preexisting theories of what comes next.

It will surely be months or years before the American People know the full truth about how this catastrophe came to pass, if indeed we ever really know. But there is a lot that we do know already:

*BP has actively lied at every stage of the process associated with the project. When applying for permission to drill the well, they knowingly overstated their ability to handle any leaks, spills or other problems that might occur. Given the unprecedented nature of the project itself (drilling so deep, though such a dense section of ocean floor), a layman might expect a number of contingencies to be put in place, but nothing of the sort ever happened. Instead, they cut corners repeatedly.

*BP estimated the project to take 51 days, but budgeted for 78, allowing for the possibility of construction time being extended up to 53%. This can be interpreted as further proof that BP officials were fully aware of the potential complications. Each day beyond day 78 cost BP approximately $1 million. The rig blew up and sank on day 80.

*Embattled BP CEO Tony Hayward (who made around $6 million last year) sold a third of his own stock just four weeks before the explosion. He was already aware of problems related to the Macondo Prospect.

*Goldman Sachs sold off 43.7% of its shares of BP stock, according to filings dated three weeks before the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Omitting (for legal reasons) any reference to the many overlapping insider connections between the two companies, they may have just interpreted Hayward’s move as a sign of trouble. The thing about the stock trades is that summer usually brings big profits for Big Oil; heck, even I drive a little bit this time of year!

*Goldman Sachs also owns Nalco, which makes the controversial oil dispersant Corexit. BP has dumped 3 million gallons into the Gulf so far, with mixed results. Some critics allege that BP used the stuff to push the greater amount of oil below the surface, thereby removing much of their potential liability.

*Halliburton, a company subcontracted by BP to help build the well, announced its purchase of Boots and Coots on April 9, 11 days before the rig blew up and 18 days past schedule on completion of the job. By that point BP, Transocean and Halliburton were already engaged in acrimonious debate as the project faltered. (Several of the key whistle-blowers on the Deepwater Horizon conveniently died in the explosion.) Maybe they deserve some credit; having seen BP’s reckless disregard for safety, and knowing what kind of forces they were trifling with, maybe Halliburton decided on a strategy of preemption? Dick Cheney would appreciate that!         

*BP has given more money (over $77,000) to Barack Obama than any other politician of the last 20 years, even though Obama’s only been a national political figure for six years now. He reversed his position against offshore drilling after taking office, approving BP’s fraudulent bid for the project in question. But we can’t blame him for doing what everyone has always done.

*The Vanguard Group, an investment company that administers the two mutual funds through which President Obama maintains his personal wealth, is the biggest single holder of BP stock. Like Goldman Sachs, Vanguard also dumped a chunk of their stock at about the same time—over a million shares, but that amounts to only a fraction of the company’s total BP holdings.

At the very least, we can presume that industry insiders already knew what a problem the Macondo Prospect had become, and hedged their positions on BP with the expectation of major losses. The circumstantial cases to be made for insider trading, fraud, collusion, obstruction of justice and worse seem fairly obvious. The construction, explosion, burning and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to properly investigate the actual rig, whether there was any evidence of sabotage or widespread safety violations and regulatory shortcomings. But the paper trail speaks for itself, even if the victims cannot.

 sdh666@hotmail.com; June 21, 2010

“Gusher In the Gulf”: BMac vs BP, Part 2

Americans’ understanding of the Deepwater Horizon debacle has evolved quite a bit over the last month since the rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. What was originally written off as an insignificant trickle of negligible volume (and not even publicly announced until two days after it began) is now widely recognized as a catastrophe of near-boundless scope. Even the best efforts of BP to cover-up the reality of what has occurred, among the other corporations with a piece of this action–like Transocean, Hyundai, Halliburton, Nalco, Goldman Sachs and others–have failed to obscure what should now be obvious: Massive environmental destruction is upon us, and this is happening because of the corruption of these companies and the elected officials they’ve bribed into submission.

Even President Obama, who is legally empowered to immediately sweep in and take control of a disaster of this scale, has been looking extremely weak on the issue, as Congress scrambles to obscure their own complicity in allowing BP officials to believe they could flout  the conditions of their lease with impunity. It appears, so far, that they were right, but that has been widely documented elsewhere.

Florida’s Attorney General, Bill McCollum, was just one of the public officials to be embarrassed by BP in the early days of the debacle. When McCollum endorsed BP’s efforts at a) cleaning up the spill, and b) fairly compensating Floridians who stand to lose billions, he did so based on a conference call with AGs from Louisiana, Texas, Alabama and Mississippi and cursory tour of the site. He was probably unaware, at the time, that BP was actively covering their own asses as he spoke; they made him look like he’d been paid off, which surely rankled.

McCollum has long been known as one of those pols who is always looking to move up. Barely an electoral cycle goes by without McCollum standing for some spot or other; he forfeited a very successful 20-year career in the House of Representatives to run, unsuccessfully, for the Senate seat won by Bill Nelson in 2000; four years later, he failed to win the seat won by Mel Martinez. As AG, he succeeded the much-maligned yet remarkably resilient Charlie Crist, who’s spent all year running for the Senate and has shown almost no tangible leadership during what should be a career-defining moment. Crist is certainly no Bobby Jindal–but Jindal, being an eyewitness to the post-Katrina fallout that tanked a number of political careers in his state, knows better than be project weakness (or, worse, distraction) in a crisis.

Of course, like his boss McCollum is also trying to do one job while running for another–Governor, again, this time against Florida CFO Alex Sink. His early, stupid endorsement of BP could have ended those aspirations, if our whole political system weren’t already greasy from BP’s largess. He has since reversed himself, in the grand Florida tradition, taking a position more like his original one: Don’t Trust BP!

To that end, he sent a letter to CEO Jack Lynch, dated May 20. He’s basically putting it out there now that the Gulf will still be full of oil as the summer hurrican season begins on June 1. Such a combination of potential factors has no known precedent, and it’s highly proactive of McCollum to put BP on the spot in advance about their massive potential liability. It’s worth noting, though, that at this writing BP has still not formally signed anything eliminating the existing cap on liability; that no one has yet forced them is, at best, suspicious.

Charlie Crist and the Great Triangulation of 2010

The old cliché that people get the leaders they deserve is usually true—in America, anyway—and rarely as much so as in the curious case of Charlie Crist. Just three months ago, it seemed likely that he would be shuffled off to the private sector, a high-profile casualty of an economic meltdown he helped set in motion. Whether Rubio beat him in the Senate primary or not, logic almost dictated that Kendrick Meek would beat the GOP nominee with a brutal decisiveness worthy of Randy Orton.

That would have been both fair, and fitting. But instead, the embattled Governor of Florida stands at the mid-way point of the most audacious act of political triangulation since Obama’s “Black Caesar” act in 2008. Like Obama, Crist has challenged his party’s establishment and all conventional wisdom, hoping to assert himself amidst utter chaos on all levels of the electoral system. He’s like a surfer, riding waves of boiling-hot water, on a surfboard made of ice—but oh, such balance!

The text of Crist’s announcement, in St. Petersburg on April 29, was amazingly not leaked beforehand, although the essence of speculation proved correct. He is running as an Independent, turning the Senate race into a three-way dance that could be the most entertaining spectacle of what should be a hilarious year.

Crist’s speech was scheduled for 6pm, then pushed back half an hour; the headliner didn’t start talking until 5:51. Insert your own joke here. He might as well start wearing robes with sequins and feathers, and calling himself the New Nature Boy. Some might say he’s been doing that for a long time, more power to him. He’s already got the hair and the rep; all he needs is better enforcers.

Crist’s theme—“Straight To November”—will surely elicit witty responses from the blogosphere, which has been flogging rumors of Crist’s sexual complexity ever since he was a candidate for Governor in 2006. It’s anyone’s guess to as which elements of this broken system will choose to play that card first, or why, but it seems a certainty at this point. The politics of personal destruction, typified by the ongoing campaigns against Sarah Palin, fills a vacuum created by an absence of real debate, just as it did in the late ‘90s, in the years just before 9/11 briefly realigned America’s focus on policy concerns. Crist may be lucky to have hit the national stage just as Americans are getting tired of the Beltway’s parlor tricks.

Whenever the media is openly talking about a politician’s sex life, people should take it as a clue that something else is going on. In this case, Florida is in serious trouble. Both Meek and Rubio erred severely in not linking Crist inextricably to the recession in Florida, even though it would have happened anyway. Rubio is too beholden to the fake conservatives holding down the right to ever question the wisdom of tax cuts, and Meek might be understandably reluctant to point out that, by inducing an economic crisis here, which quickly went national, Crist helped Obama get elected.

The property tax cuts that Crist forced through, to benefit downstate development interests that anchored his 2006 campaign, cut into the operating budgets of most cities in Florida. The I-4 corridor that has dominated Florida politics for three decades draws enough revenue from other sources that their budget issues were neither as dramatic nor traumatic; there was some cushion for the impact of the tax cuts. Things were worse up north, but ultimately bad everywhere: Almost every municipality has had to deal with budget issues during Crist’s term. Services have been slashed, workers fired, taxes and fees raised; longstanding political alliances were torn apart faster than, well, anything that gets between Justin Bieber and his fans. For the smallest counties, the results have been catastrophic—whole departments closed, lifestyles permanently altered.

And it’s only just begun. The budget-wrangling will continue for years to come; rebuilding the state’s revenue base is a generational matter. As for pensions, we’ve been having the relevant discussions in Jacksonville for some years now—John Peyton knows the subject back-and-forth—but the entire country is facing multi-billion-dollar shortfalls that cannot be rectified during a recession that has proven persistent, to say the least. While I question Crist’s decision to go to Washington, for many reasons, here’s one argument in its favor: He won’t be in Tallahassee when the hammer drops.

Crist has shown a real gift for political calculations—witness the way he used his veto of merit pay for teachers to burnish his centrist cred ahead of the party switch. The bill was devised as a fairly-transparent union-busting move, one which undermined the efficacy of merit pay a supplement to fair, competitive compensation for teachers. As Governor, and nominal leader of his state party, he could have pulled just enough strings to keep such weak, ill-conceived and unpopular legislation from ever passing at all, if he felt that strongly about it. He could have intimated to key pols in Tallahassee that he would veto the bill if it did pass, and encourage them to put their energy into any of a number of things that he would happily sign into law.

Instead, he allowed the bill to develop, along with several weeks of accompanying public discord, including protests by thousands of students, teachers and parents up and down the state, who took the time to lobby Crist in a direction he was already leaning. He wasted their time, so he could score political points by sweeping in with his veto pen, like he didn’t initiate the budget crisis that has led to so many teachers having to worry about their jobs. Crist correctly calculated that his move would be seen as an act of heroism, rather than cold, cynical manipulation of women and children.

There is a glut of bland, boring blubber-butts in Florida politics, a bunch of lightweights that are barely shadows of the folks who held their spots a decade ago. Charlie Crist is one of them, of course, but he has found a way to be slightly better than his peers, and that’s pretty much all you can ask of Florida. As for Meek, his chances were low-balled from the get-go by a Democratic Party that began projecting its vulnerabilities before the Obamas had finished one load of White House Laundry.

As Crist and Rubio dove headlong into a caterwauling catfight that leaves the impression that the smoldering hatred for one another is rooted somewhere beyond policy beefs, the odds should have solidified in Meek’s favor. But they haven’t, which left room for Crist to move. Instead of being pressed between Rubio’s hotshot push and Meek’s liberal legacy, Crist made the election about him and not the issues. It became a game of personalities, which is unfair because his opponents have none.

Instead of taking 2008 as a real mandate for change, and then consolidating control of state and local governments, they’re working a rope with no dope. And that is just not how power works. Clearly, Democrats in Washington are reluctant to challenge their friends across the aisle, even if the feeling is not reciprocated or is, in fact, exploited to install a brand new batch of sorry-ass Republicans, already greasy with gluttony, graft and malicious intent. It’s all a replay of 1994. How Obama (and, critically, Rahm Emanuel) have played right into it is a complete mystery to the entire world, and probably themselves. Instead of Crist kissing up to Obama, maybe Obama should be kissing up to Charlie Crist!

sdh666@hotmail.com; April 29, 2010

Money Jungle: “Starship Pain”

President Obama’s visit to Cape Canaveral is conveniently set for Tax Day, April 15, and it occurs in a context of general discomfort for all involved. The ostensible purpose is to stop a slow trickle of support flowing away from Obama in a crucial battleground state, which is itself living a political nightmare. The White House won’t admit it, but Florida bears directly on the future of the Obama Agenda, whatever that is.

Obama’s doing damage control after unveiling a package of brutal cuts to NASA and affiliated contractors. Floridians have every reason for concern. With Discovery in orbit right now, there are only three flights remaining in the shuttle schedule. After that, it may be decades before Americans return to space under their own power. With foreign programs also vulnerable to economic or political shifts, and still years behind what we’re set to scrap, mankind has seemingly awakened from a dream that obsessed our ancestors from the days of DaVinci, Icarus and Elijah. And once again, the inspirational legacy of JFK gets pissed away.

Like so many of the catastrophic maneuvers to occur under Obama’s watch, the collapse of America’s space program is hardly his fault. The cuts being pushed right now were all but inevitable before he was even elected, a result of long-term budgetary trends and the slow-motion disintegration of the country’s overall mechanical capacity. Neither factor was controllable by 2009. The reality is that our commitment to space exploration, in the terms defined by JFK in 1961, effectively died alongside the heroes we lost aboard the Challenger when it blew up in the sky over Florida in 1986.

And let’s be clear, here: The Challenger crew died because of neglect and hubris on the bureaucratic level—defects enshrined, by default, as official policy for the quarter-century that followed. The tragedy that followed, 17 years later, was a logical, inevitable extension of that policy. No serious efforts were ever made to replenish the Shuttle Fleet or modernize the design to reflect changing strategic priorities. The next generation(s) of manned spaceflight will be organized around private industry, with foreign governments (Russia, China, India) performing functions typically associated with NASA. Good luck with that. Obama, at least, has positioned himself as unwilling to put more lives at risk on behalf of goals abandoned before he got there.

From agriculture and industrial production to engineering and information technology, our educational system has become incrementally worse, and production of the most vital goods for life has fallen apace. As in so many other cases, so exhaustively documented here and elsewhere, the recession is being used as an excuse to accelerate trends that began while the economy was still at or near its fake, fraudulent peak. Mass-firing as a profit-padding technique has been in effect since the ‘80s: the family farms, the mom-and-pop stores, factory towns all over the country.

I just happened to be polishing this column in the minutes just before the shuttle Discovery took off April 5, and a recurring theme in the coverage was that there won’t be much more of this stuff—not for Americans, anyway. And that’s a shame. This is another sign of Florida’s changing fortunes under Obama. He’s made no enthusiastic display for Kendrick Meek’s Senate bid, and the White House has done nothing to defend the House seats at risk in November. The timing of the NASA cuts implies ambivalence, at best, to the fates of many Obama loyalists; at worst, it suggests frightful ignorance of the reality on the ground. Where have we heard that before?

This is the worst year for incumbents in living memory, but the GOP has done a much better job of training candidates. Besides yielding the open seats and not defending their incumbents, Beltway Dems show no inclination to seriously challenge the other side. President Obama is increasingly defined by his enemies, and he does not control his message. Meek should be positioned to inherit all the scorched-earth of this ridiculously shady Crist-Rubio primary debacle, but instead he’s looking lucky to keep the margin in single digits against either of them. That means real disaster for Florida: a stuffed-shirt GOP sandbagger doing the bidding of whomever has the photos of them together.

All the plans were made years ago, and most of the science has been in place. But corporate greed, political incompetence and collective myopia leaves the US trading on glories from 40 years ago, as the world snickers. Spaceflight is just a recent example. Funding issues aside, the courage and intelligence of our astronauts far outpaces that of our elected leaders, to the point where it now presents an obvious danger to their lives. The biggest question, frankly, is will America even be able to safely cease manned spaceflight without a third major disaster? 

sdh666@hotmail.com; April 5, 2010

Money Jungle: “Worth A Murtha”

Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha (1932-2010), who died January 8, was the first combat veteran of the Vietnam War elected to national office; he was also among the last. Murtha began his first of 18 terms in the US House 35 years ago this month, and he was a virtual lock for reelection this November, despite becoming one of the most controversial public servants of this incredibly shady era in American politics. His words and actions during the Bush 43 administration bear directly on the country we live in today, and even his most bitter enemies must acknowledge the weight of his passing.

Murtha was a hard man who exerted soft power through the complex and deeply important business of manipulating the appropriations process to the benefit of his state. The people of Pennsylvania paid out millions in salary and benefits that will extend on for years to come for an inside track that could transcend the fluctuations of electoral activity. It is what legislators are hired to do, but details are generally left up to the individual. Murtha was just one of many, but he was considered one of the best—so much so that, when he turned on a war that our government and media establishment unanimously supported, his spot was only briefly jeopardized.

Murtha’s anti-war shift helped precipitate a chain of events that culminated with the election of Barack Obama. Granted, that has meant no tangible gains for the anti-war movement so far, but it certainly brought humanity a good ways back from the edge of total disaster for long enough to brainstorm solutions. Murtha’s turn legitimized views being voiced before the war even started, but which were effectively censored from the public debate through what is now understood to be a web of bribery, intimidation and willful deceit affixed to social connections between members of Congress, the Bush and Clinton administrations and reporters at several key media institutions. It was a deliberate process “assisted” (in the Scientology sense) by officials of at least four governments. Please look it up yourself right now—I’ll wait….

See? All of this is public record, through various proceedings and anecdotal data contributed by the principles themselves, including John Murtha, who, like all of us, was sold a set of falsehoods that ultimately reversed the greatest economic boom in history, induced an atmosphere of bitter division among civilians and led directly to the death or permanent physical or psychological injury (including lost jobs, broken families, homes foreclosed) of more American soldiers than can ever statistically quantify. Hell, we’ve all heard stories from friends, loved ones, colleagues, but Murtha (who earned a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts in Vietnam) surely heard a lot more than almost anyone, and one can easily imagine the effect it had on him.

Murtha wasn’t stupid, and he was no pacifist. He was a conservative Democrat who was for the war before he was against it. He knew the fix was in, and he said so, even at a cost that routinely proves too high for our so-called “leaders”. He was already under investigation, already widely associated with classic-style political corruption (the type eclipsed in the post-9/11 era), yet he chose to draw heat from an administration known for its vindictiveness because he felt it was his patriotic duty. He thus proved that peace was not a partisan issue. We now know that many of the men who waged the first war in Iraq, from frontline soldiers right up to the executive branch, were opposed to another one, for reasons that now seem obvious. Those soldiers should have never been in Haditha in the first place; they should have been home, protecting their own cities. It’s a price we’ll never stop paying.

The irony, of course, is that his stance against the war, which many at the time thought would be Murtha’s political undoing, instead helped elevate him from general obscurity to becoming a household name on par with Cindy Sheehan, who was the much-abused public face of the anti-war movement until Murtha arrived. It speaks to his legacy that his death (attributed to botched gall bladder surgery) was instantly declared in some outposts of the ‘Net to be an assassination. His death would have otherwise passed with barely a mention. Instead, Murtha’s name will live on as a sterling example of what real leadership—the dirty, dangerous kind—looks like. Well, kids, look closely, because you aren’t likely to see anything like it again, not anytime soon. RIP.

sdh666@hotmail.com; February 8, 2010

Money Jungle: “Blacker The Barry”

It makes perfect sense that, in a country that seems more and more about the symbolic value of things, as opposed to reality, the first major political scandal of the new year involves nothing concrete or physical, just words. The controversy surrounding Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is not just funny, it’s stupid to boot, and it goes a pretty long way toward demonstrating why his party has failed on every front.

The Nevada Democrat caught volcanic heat for remarks quoted in a new book about the epochal 2008 campaign. We already knew that the Republicans were in total free-fall that year, with a pathetic nominee and a worse batch of strategists and advisers who took an American hero and made him look even weaker and more doddering than second-term Reagan. (Which is quite an accomplishment, given that Reagan cultivated that gimmick on purpose to insulate himself from complicity in the Iran-Contra mess.) The mere presence of Sarah Palin on that ticket is now regarded as evidence of a larger strategic collapse, an extreme version of John Kerry’s role in securing victory for Bush-Cheney in 2004 by picking the noxious John Edwards as his running-mate.

What we didn’t know, and are only now learning about, is that the Democrats were a whole hot mess of their own. By offering the most honest depiction of 2008 yet seen, Game Change, by John Heileman and Mark Halperin, promises to be the first “must-read” book of the year, in terms of general entertainment value, and specifically indispensable reading for political junkies. The publishers have done an amazing job of whetting the public’s appetite with tidbits so juicy, in some cases, that they could have potentially changed history had they come out contemporaneously. And that is the big revelation: that both parties deliberately kept quiet about their issues with Barack Obama because they viewed his victory as our country’s best chance to escape a whirling vortex of debt and death that their “bipartisan efforts” had driven us into.

Reid remarked in private that Obama could win because he was “light-skinned” and because he had “no Negro dialect, unless he wants to”. Well? The tragedy of Reid’s statements is not that he made them, but that he was right. Obama was able to draw support from segments of White America that would have never supported any other black candidate, precisely because of how his blackness was finessed by his handlers. Obama had the advantage of being thoroughly-versed on these issues, as evidenced by his painstaking efforts to teach himself the dialect of black clergy—Martin Luther King’s other gift to his people—and his ease at blunting the sharpest edges from the liberation theology he learned in those churches.

In Chicago they still talk about Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, Marcus Garvey and Wallace Fard, George Collins and Harold Washington (who many believe were also murdered); they talk about COINTELPRO, which has been excised from the revisionist tales told about the civil rights movement. How many black men have seen the shattered face of Emmett Till? Not nearly enough!

They talk about these things, but not on TV, and not in mixed company. Baby Boomers have short memories, and for them the future is just an abstraction. Obama has never revealed how much was revealed to him, but we know that he learned how to do the impossible: get a black man elected president, with overwhelming white support. It is the alchemy of advancement; it is the dream of all those black parents out there who still bother to raise their children, even though the streets never lack for mindless “soldiers” willing to kill and/or die for the white man’s drugs, the white man’s money, the white man’s consumerist fantasies that have ruined the world.

Hell, there’s nothing more “authentically black” than having whites debate your blackness. It rings true for me. My mom sent me to Catholic school for my first three years, inculcating a way of speaking that has been fodder for thousands of racist jokes from all sides, not to mention countless beatings and a permanent spot on the bottom of the ‘hood hierarchy. To this day, barely a week goes by without my meeting a reader who exclaims “Wow! I had no idea you were black!”

Harry Reid knows the truth. His state was built by the very mobsters that black men have been trained to worship since Coppola made the first of his “Godfather” Mafia recruitment films. Without Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and especially Bugsy Siegel, there would be no Harry Reid, just as there’d be no Obama without Al Capone and the Ford Foundation. Like 9/11, Obama was allowed to happen, and the wave of scandals due to pound his agenda into the sand (Tiger Woods-style) is merely an expression of buyer’s remorse from the losers who bought into something—and someone—they didn’t really understand. Obama, like his very name, gets blacker by the day.

sdh666@hotmail.com

Money Jungle: “Mass. Casualties”

The week of Barack Obama’s first anniversary as President was marked by serious hits to his administration, encapsulated by their dramatic rise of Scott Brown to become the next Senator from Massachusetts. There has been no shortage of debate and analysis of that race and its implications for the White House; predictably, there is not much of real use to be found amid most existing reports. The restrictively dualistic nature of the “left vs. right” standard of political thinking, which is so rigorously enforced by the gatekeepers of establishment media and the major parties themselves, has again failed miserably to truly understand why it happened, and what it really means.

But we shouldn’t be too surprised, since those same trusted sources also failed to get a proper handle on the Obama himself, and as such have done an even worse job covering the backlash than they did mapping the trajectory of his ascent. This is too bad, since it appears the administration remains joined at the hip to those interests who helped him forge a fantastical façade that has now developed sizable cracks. Expectations were raised very high, but it now appears clear that neither Obama, now the Republicans, the media or the American People ourselves had any clue just how deeply the systemic rot ran into the heart of the globalized economy. Amazingly, many still don’t.

The GOP was too quick to claim credit for Brown’s defeating the hapless Martha Coakley; that’s like whoever bombed the levees in New Orleans angling for a piece of the Saints’ Super Bowl split. Those losers helped force through the policies that created such widespread anger among the population, then piggybacked existing activist groups to serve their typically nefarious needs.

If Obama’s supporters had been half as classy and gracious as the man himself, he might still be in a position to force through his agenda. In fact, Obama should personally shoot the person responsible for the proliferation of the disastrously counterproductive “teabagger” meme; that phrase has become this President’s “Axis of Evil”, as surely as Goldman Sachs became his PNAC. The Tea Party demonstrations that happened in 2009 began as disparate, disorganized malcontents from a GOP that had been in free-fall since Katrina. By blithely dismissing legitimate concerns in snarky, insulting tones, Obama’s acolytes set him up as the strawman for the same mock-populist demagogues who once advocates the very policies whose results get them so mad.

Ultimately, the “teabaggers” were just the first of those millions to lose their jobs in this recession. As those numbers grew, it provided a ready-made base for action. Like the Sarah Palin phenomenon, as just a different expression of the same sentiments that helped sweep Obama into office. There was a window in which Obama could have used them every bit as effectively as the Republicans did, but his submission to Wall Street (which is a key factor in assessing the failed stimulus and the debacle that was this round of health care “reform”) made it impossible to win them over.

To this day, these cadres have neither credible leadership nor even full comprehension of their own origins, and with some two dozen former Republican congressmen contemplating running for their old seats again, who knows what may happen? The situation in Florida, where Charlie Crist is presiding over a meltdown of his state GOP, illustrates how volatile things are. Until the party embraces the economic vision of Ron Paul, they cannot fully access those masses. But neither can Democrats, and that is the issue: the majority of voters hate them both now.

The Tea Party movement represents the intersection of political concepts being generated from across the spectrum. To reduce them to their most vocal extremes is a dangerous simplification. “Independents” and “moderates” of the two parties have been radicalized by what they have come to view as an increasingly hopeless situation, and they are coalescing around a wide variety of specific concepts. The conduits of such information (from Glenn Beck to Rachel Maddow) have reaped the benefits.

A year ago, it seemed entirely possible that the Democratic Party could control all three branches of government for eight years, while steadily uprooting Republican power bases in major states like Texas and Florida. Now, the party Bush left for dead is stirring, and Obama has one-term potential. To avoid this fate, Obama should reassert his policy footing while finding ways to subtly remind the people what they already know: There may be no one else who can do his job, especially after last year.

 sdh666@hotmail.com

January 26, 2010

Money Jungle: Pew Sez “P.U.!” to Florida

The latest in a lengthening line of reports raising serious questions about the long-term economic stability of the United States was issued recently, and the questions it raises has no clear or easy answers. But still, those questions must be asked.

“Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril” was put together by the Pew Center on the States, a division of the Pew Charitable Trusts, one of the nation’s leading sources of foundation money. As such, it represents the cream of established thought, organized by people with significant access to the dominant centers of financial, cultural and political power, on all levels of government and industry. The center has offices on E Street in Washington, as well as on Market Street in Philadelphia, a city that in itself offers vast anecdotal data related to the current breakdown of civil society.

“Many economists are optimistic that America’s Great Recession may be turning the corner,” writes the center’s Managing Director, Susan Urahn. “States, however, are not celebrating.” Urahn led a team of 14 in preparing the report, which was then vetted by 15 colleagues before it was issued in mid-November. Its purpose is to elaborate on the well-known issues related to California by showing how that state is hardly alone on the fast track to financial emergency. This has been widely documented already—the formalized collapse began years ago—but our leaders have been reluctant, at best, to really speak directly to the problem, for fear of making it worse.

Working with data available though July 31, the Pew report evaluates states based on six criteria: 1) foreclosure rate; 2) change in unemployment rate; 3) change in revenue; 4) size of state budget gaps, relative to its General Revenue; 5) the letter grade assigned by its own Government Performance Project (GPP); and 6) “legal obstacles to balanced budgets”, namely whether the states require a supermajority to change budget policy. By their standard, California is in far worse shape than anyone there cares to admit, but it is hardly alone. Among the nine other states listed—including Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin—Florida is actually in better shape, despite being one of the first states affected by the crisis.

“The Great Recession has not just stalled Florida’s growth—it has reversed it,” says the report. “In 2005, Florida ranked second among the states in economic growth. In 2008, it ranked 48^th.” This precipitous drop was spurred by Governor Crist’s decision to throw our cities into instant deficit with tax cuts to benefit his political base, cuts that came just before the bottom fell out of the construction and real estate markets. Florida was in recession long before it formally spread nationwide.

Like America in general, Florida’s business model required perpetual growth for sustainability. With so much to offer new residents, and a record of steady growth for decades on end, it’s not surprising that we would take our extreme good luck for granted. Much as California (which had major financial issues in the 1990s) continued to reinvest in failed policies long after they should have known better, and as the country doubled-down on disaster in every realm, our state proceeded as if there was no possibility of conditions ever changing, despite abundant evidence to the contrary.

The past year was the first in living memory without the explosive growth we had become accustomed to. “Not too long ago,” according to the report, “Florida was adding as many as 445,000 residents a year; between April 2008 and April 2009, its population actually shrank by 58,000. … [T]here were at least 275,000 homes for sale or rent in Florida that nobody wanted, and the state has the second-highest foreclosure rate [2.72%] in the country.” Judging by the words and actions of our political “leaders”, the shock of the “revelation” has not worn off, and reality has still not set in. Heading into the genre-defining election cycle of 2010-2011, no one is even pretending to have any solutions, besides more painful cuts to essential services.

“States’ fiscal situations are widely expected to worsen even when the national economy starts to recover.” Bad news, given that the national economy is not going to recover at all. Such “optimism” is merely a smokescreen to draw more Americans into Wall Street’s “sucker’s rally”, a desperate attempt to prop up our failed system. Obama botched his only chance to get things in line, and now he, like most of the mayors and governors of this country, is powerless to do anything but watch the numbers and spin the brutal facts into more palatable truths. By stacking his economic team with people who bear direct responsibility for collapsing the economy, he has permanently undermined his own credibility as a reformer and change agent.

sdh666@hotmail.com; November 23, 2009

“Don’t Count On It”: an Interview with Magic 8-Ball

From our earliest days, humans have sought means of prognostication, in hopes of getting an inside line on events of the future and, by extension, a greater mastery of the world around us. From psychics and soothsayers to oracles, witch doctors and sophisticated computer programs, mankind’s quest for the edge on fate has never ceased, with mixed results all around. In recent years, there have been two true constants: “Money Jungle” and the Magic 8-Ball. Combining the two, in one space, is guaranteed to be a major event—and now, at last, it has happened!

With so many serious (and not-so-serious) issues facing the country right now, the people have been hard-pressed for good answers and reliable information. Independent media has ably filled the void, despite extreme pressure from its corporatized competition to toe the establishment line, regardless of the typically disastrous consequences of doing so. Quite often, it seems like major decisions are being made almost at random; as such, the Magic 8-Ball has never been more relevant. It was invented in 1946, and millions have been sold by the Mattel Company, a testament to the great faith with which it is held by Americans.

This reporter sat down with the official Magic 8-Ball recently for the first installment of what is probably the most extensive and hard-hitting interview it has ever been subjected to. It was presented with some of the most serious questions of our time, as well as some questions about sports and pop culture to lighten the mood. In accordance with ground rules set in advance, all questions were phrased in such a way that Magic 8-Ball answered with variations on “yes” and “no”.

Magic 8-Ball (not to be confused with the apocryphal rapper of the same name) offered up incomplete or ambiguous answers here and there, forcing follow-ups; it was particularly evasive regarding the fate of TV pitchman Vince Offer, who’s been out of the public eye since getting arrested for fighting with a prostitute in late 2008.Generally, though, it was clear, direct and forthcoming in ways few public figures would be, even in the hyper-confessional culture of our times. Magic 8-Ball tends to reflect conventional wisdom on many topics, but its answers were downright shocking in regard to others.

SDH: Let’s begin with a test question, to establish the basic veracity of your views: Am I the finest free-agent acquisition in American media today?

Magic 8-Ball: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Good—let’s proceed. Will President Obama accede to Gen. McChrystal’s recommendation of sending 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Will Osama bin Laden ever be killed or captured?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Was the Ft. Hood shooter acting alone?

M8B: Signs point to yes.

SDH: Has al-Qaeda infiltrated any aspect of the US military?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Was the collapse of the American economy in any way the result of someone’s deliberate action? That is, was the collapse a desired result?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Have we already passed through the worst of the recession?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Is now the right time to get into real estate?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Again: Has al-Qaeda infiltrated any aspect of the US military?

M8B: Signs point to yes.

SDH: Did Lee Harvey Oswald kill JFK by himself?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Was he assisted, in any way, knowingly or unknowingly, by any member of the US government or the Mafia?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Was 9/11 an inside job?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Will Communism in Cuba die with the Castro brothers?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Will marijuana ever be decriminalized on a national level in the US?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Will the US government ever formally declare an end to the War on Terror?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Can the H1N1 virus be contained?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Will universal health care pass this year?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Will any other members of the Bush family ever be elected President?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Will Sarah Palin ever be elected President?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Will Charlie Crist be elected to the Senate in 2010?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Will the new Duval County Courthouse be finished and open for business within five years of today?

M8B: My sources say no.

SDH: Will marijuana ever be decriminalized on a national level in the US?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: And now, sports. Will the Jaguars stay in Jacksonville?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Will Tim Tebow become an NFL superstar?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Will Tebow play for the Jacksonville Jaguars?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Again: Will the Jaguars stay in Jacksonville?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Really, is anyone better than Kanyon?

M8B: Reply hazy, try again.

SDH: Again: Is anyone better than Kanyon?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Will William Regal ever win a world title?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Will Brock Lesnar be beaten in 2010?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: And will Regal win that world title?

M8B: My sources say no.

SDH: Is Michael Jackson really dead?

M8B: Signs point to yes.

SDH: Was Michael Jackson murdered?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Will the guy from the Shamwow and Slap Chop commercials do any further work?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Is Lady Gaga a hermaphrodite?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Is it possible that she’s crazy enough to willfully spread the rumor that she’s a hermaphrodite just for the publicity?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Again: Will Vince Offer work again?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Will Amy Winehouse ever record an album as good as her last one?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Will Winehouse die of old age?

M8B: Signs point to yes.

SDH: Are the “Twilight” stars involved?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Will Kanye West and Taylor Swift ever work together?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Will Vince Offer work again?

M8B: Reply hazy, try again.

SDH: Is there a God?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Is the AntiChrist alive and somewhere on the Earth right now?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Is it Obama?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Are you sure?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Is there a contradiction between your answer to the first question and the second?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: So I ask again, is Obama the antichrist?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Did the Republican Party pay you to say “yes” the first time?

M8B: Signs point to yes.

SDH: Wrapping up: Do you know the way to San Jose?

M8B: Signs point to yes.

SDH: Last time: Will Vince Offer work again?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Is the “Magic 8 Ball” concept a bunch of bullshit?

M8B: Very doubtful.

sdh666@hotmail.com; November 13, 2009

 

 

Dems determined to throw 2008 election!

The Democratic National Committee, whose conventions in 2000 and 2004 were marred by left-wing protests (the former ultimately undermining Al Gore’s chances to become the 43rd President), has apparently learned nothing from that painful experience. The Denver Post reports that protesters at this year’s convention will be corralled behind fences, in an attempt to bury their legitimate concerns about a party whose commitment to its own stated values tends to depends on day-to-day exigencies.

They know this won’t work; in fact, they should realize that the effect of such action will be exactly the opposite of their desired goal of a convention scrubbed clean of Clintonistas, a captive audience for what should be some pretty amazing additions to the Obama personality cult. Given their understanding of the stakes, and their knowledge that a Democratic victory in November will be the result of long-simmering resentment among the American people, particularly among the young and the poor, it’s worth questioning the party’s commitment to winning. Imagine the blogging that will come out of that protest pen; imagine the camera-phone video that will come out after the inevitable civil unrest.

The smart thing would have been to let the protesters protest, allowing them to engage the self-satisfied suits who run the party, trusting that Obama (who is extering enough control to move party operations from DC to Chicago, but has remained silent on the protest-pen issue) is a real enough deal to bring all these people together. Instead, Howard Dean and friends are handing the Republicans an opportunity to present the Democrats as being too factionalized to run the country effectively. After all, the Democratic congress has done nothing since they took over 18 months ago, seemingly afraid of the slightest criticism or blowback from actions that the American people elected them to put into motion, and the primary process was marred by public infighting that is only now starting to cool down a bit. The Democratic convention could potentially serve as Exhibit A for the proposition that the Dems don’t have what it takes.

Nader’s batshit Obama dis

2008 Presidential also-ran Ralph Nader cut a promo on Obama in the Rocky Mountain News. Just when one wonders why Obama hasn’t acted to engage him, he upbraids the guy for not being sensitive enough to the issues affecting black communities in this country. The critique itself is very much debatable, but it’s not really one that a non-black can make with any credibility–it comes off as the sort of passive reverse-racism that crops up among white liberals, often a case of overreaching to show empathy.

The plague of gangsterism forced onto black youth by corporate media (specifically, Interscope, Viacom, Clear Channel and Time-Warner) results largely from the efforts of misguided whites to embrace and, indeed, sponsor a narrow slice of the African diaspora as a uniform standard. Just as whites are constantly pressured to conform to stylistic norms through the idealized projections of mass media, black have been pressured to be a certain way over the last 20 years–the men, especially. Among black men, the rate of attrition has been unprecedented for populations not under direct assault–but, of course, they are, and that’s one of those things that cannot be said in print.

Obama spent many years doing good work in, around and for the streets of Chicago, and so it is inevitable that he may know as many casualties of those years as most black men his age do. Anyone who thinks he does not, or will not take those memories and lessons with him into the future is a mark. For Nader to play that card makes him look ever more that way. For his sake, one hopes that he is saying such things to help Obama by torpedoing an argument someone else might have made with more finesse later.

I’ve always felt the Wright “scandal”, for example, was a net positive for Obama because it fleshed out his backstory, floating a bunch of memes that he may or may not agree with, baiting his opponents into overstretching and squandering resources on the chasing of false leads, wasting tons of TV time and reminding minoriy voters how gullible some of the media elite think they are. The scandal revealed two things: 1) Chicago is shady; 2) the media just realized that.

Gore Endorses Obama

Al Gore’s endorsement of Barack Obama was a foregone conclusion, as it’s impossible to think of any GOP candidate who could challenge for the votes of Gore and his many acolytes. As nominee, Obama has begun to consolidate the Democratic machine, and as his effort proceeds he will take note of Gore’s failure to do the same in 2000, and the disastrous consequences that had for the world. He benefits from having the rub from Gore, but the private counsel could be just as valuable.

The third act in Gore’s political career has been a study in how a single person can exercise real power from the outside. Arguably, no politician in American history is as versed in the core scientific and technological issues that will be crucial for shaping the species’ future heading deeper into the century. Look for Gore to augment his facility with energy, climate change and Internet policy–positions that will need to be fleshed-out in the immediate weeks and months ahead–with a growing interest in biotech and nanotech, and to be even more omnispresent on these subjects than he’s been already.

I will never forget sitting halfway back inside the historic Sunshine Theatre in NYC, with “?uestlove” Thompson’s afro only slightly obstructing the view, watching “An Inconvenient Truth” in summer 2006. To see it early on, before the subsequent hype that confirmed the theory, was to see a new Al Gore, a man of vast political potency. Gore saved the climate change issue from a culture that would happily sacrifice all hope of peace in our time for a few more years’ worth of a depleting unrenewable resource. Without the cadres that coalesced around him, the topic might be as “third rail” as the epidemic of violence against women and children by state-sponsored predators has become.

All this begs the question of what Gore’s role inside an Obama administration would be. Suffice to say that he could have spot he wants, but he would be unlikely to take anything that didn’t involve real action. No cabinet spot offers such power–my bet would be as Secretary of State, the role Adlai Stevenson (who ended up as our greatest UN Ambassador) wanted with Kennedy. If Gore could be persuaded to be Obama’s running mate, that would be better; he might be a better sell than the Hillary Clinton to the hordes of haters in their party who fear her more than they do the uncertain future we all face.