Category: politics

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s public address. NLD Headquarters, 14 November 2010.

“I  have to begin by thanking you for your support.

“We haven’t seen each other for a long time but I am happy to see that our mutual faith remains strong, it fortifies me.

“We Burmese blame it all on luck. But do you know what luck means? Luck means you reap what you sow. So if there is anything you want, you have to work to achieve it.

“We cannot simply bribe the people and promise them the impossible (Cheers and applause). We will try hard and pave the road that the people want. We will pave it together and we will take that road together. It’s not right that one person paves the road while the other stands idly by. Speaking of paving roads, maybe I picked an inappropriate analogy (laughter and cheers). It was a slip of the tongue. What I mean is that we will walk the road that leads to the democratic goals. We will walk on it together, we will pave it together. It is only this way, can we reach our goals.

“Don’t wait for others to do it for you.

“I want to tell you not to be dejected.

“Sometimes there may be some things in our country that will make you feel dejected. Surely you must feel that we have not gotten anywhere or that there has been no development (applause).

“But there is no reason to feel dejected. We must strive hard.”

More on this later.

Political reflection is so very important but yet so very challenging when the majority population is…

“…emasculation of community in whatever form by a corrupt culture that itself has whored itself to commercial ends.”

In the meantime:

“As Plato noted, and most people still don’t want to admit, the drawback to democracy, despite all its virtues, is that ignorant, compassion-impaired, and even mentally ill folks have as much influence on decisions as the wise and noble. smart, smart.”

Perhaps we are too late.

h/t Zo

Medical error ranks as the country’s eighth leading cause of death, more deadly than breast cancer or highway accidents.

Between 44,000 and 98,000 patients die every year in of hospital acquired infections or as the consequence of a mistaken diagnosis or a bungled operation.

Various cut/paste snippets of Lawrence Latham’s The God in the Machine:

American hospitals and doctors are paid for the amount of care they produce, not for its effectiveness or its quality—their first care is for the treatment of paper.

It isn’t that the country lacks for competent and caring doctors, but too many of them have been infected with the virus of the profit motive, overburdened with the ceremonial filling out of forms…

They discuss the positioning of decimal points, the relative value of this or that budget estimate… the cash flows to be drawn… the health of profit margins… preserving the life of stock prices…

The “waste” and “inefficiency” in the system is its bone and marrow.

The annual tithe collected by the medical-industrial complex: The corpses in waiting serve as sacrificial offerings placed on the altars of the god in the ATM.

On corporate capture of our governments, in 1913 Woodrow Wilson wrote:

If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don’t you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now?

Don’t you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it?

Must capture the government? They have already captured it.

Edward Kane at Boston College wrote:

This ugly financial episode we’ve all had to live through makes clear that taxpayers must protect themselves against two things:

1) the corrupting influence of bureaucratic self-interest among regulators and

2) the political clout wielded by the large institutions they are supposed to police.

That authorities and financiers could so callously violate common-law duties of loyalty, competence, and care they owe taxpayers and financial-institution customers is evidence of a massive incentive breakdown in industry and government.

All our regulators must:

…make themselves politically and financially accountable for the ways in which they exercise their discretion.

All our regulators must:

…fearlessly bond themselves to disclose enough information about their decision making to allow the community or interested outsiders to determine whether and how badly they neglect, abuse, or mishandle their responsibilities.

1) The people are rejecting both parties.

2) All recent elections were rejections, not affirmations.

Thomas Ferguson:

What the election really shows is not that the parties can’t agree — Democrats and most of the GOP leadership finally agreed on the bank bailouts, for example — but that the American people will not accept the policies that leaders in both parties prefer.

In 2006 and 2008, the population voted no-confidence in the Republicans on the war and the economy. They have just now presented the Democrats with another resounding a no-confidence vote. What makes the current situation intractable is the fundamental reason for these serial failures.

It’s obvious !

Big money dominates both major parties.

American political parties are mostly bank accounts. What you are told is the voice of the people is usually the sound of money talking.

If you want a happy ending, you probably shouldn’t follow our system too closely in the next few years.

---

A few things to note… the two Presidents who added to the debt at the quickest rate were GW in first place and Reagan in second.

When people don’t scream and hurl nonsense invective at each other.

Jon Stewart nails it:

As Stewart persuasively argued, “We’ve all bought into the idea that the conflict in the country is left and right,Republicans and Democrats.” Furthermore, an insidious, attention-grabbing news media “amplifies a division that I don’t think is the right fight … [because] both sides have their way of shutting down debate.”

“It’s become tribal,” he declared, and the major culprits aren’t Tea Partying loons — they’re the CNNs and Foxes and, yes, MSNBCs of the world.

Meanwhile, “The real conflict is corruption vs. non-corruption, extremists vs. non-extremists.”

Is

Not

Republican.

---

Here’s why the president will win re-election in 2012.

wtfhassarahpalindonesofar.com

Fizzle !

Election expenditures are “clearly adding to economic activity” but probably would have less impact per dollar than a direct government spending program such as President Obama’s stimulus effort.

Republicans, for example, spent twice as much on country clubs and golf courses, while Democrats spent more on caterers and liquor.

Washington Post:

Total spending for the midterms nears $4 billion.
The ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program was just $3 billion.

Campaigns paid banks to handle their money, consultants to map out their strategies and media buyers to book their advertising. Karl Rove Crossroads Media was paid more than $40 million.

The biggest winners of all were broadcasters, which together are expected to rake in about $2.5 billion in ad revenue from federal, state and local campaigns.

Please ponder Andrew Doran’s tweet:

“Cutbacks because of debt, debt because of financial bailouts.”

Who funded The Big Lie?

It seems to me that the last year or so has represented the triumph of untruth. —Andrew Sullivan

Certainly not the Tea Party on their sofa.

Let’s poke around to learn why politicians succeed with neither truth nor fact. Study the ugly nueromarketing of 2010 and try to stay on point, folks.

“The real risk is that politicians will not want us to know that they are using influencing tools.”

“It has already been used in the last two elections and I believe it will become an even more significant factor in the future.”

“It’s easier to trust the response you visualize on a MRI than to trust what people tell you.”

Republicans appear to be using neuromarketing more than Democrats, if this midterm is any indication. They are appealing to the emotion of voters’ triggers.

“No Democratic candidate I know of has used them [neuromarketing tactics], nor has any major Democratic organization appeared to express any interest in them.”

How to to capitalize on the narcissists in our midst.

Maybe we should reduce Congress to two members, one of each Party with the remainder looking on to approve or disprove. Why?

Groups with approximately two narcissists on board tended to outperform those with more or fewer narcissists.

Transparency | Number10.gov.uk

“We want to be the most open and transparent government in the world.

“Publishing all this information is a massive job…”

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT:      Transparency and Open Government

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government. Government should be transparent.

But these days, one source of anger trumps all others. We are perhaps most furious about our dysfunctional political system, one that cherishes acrimony over cohesion, backstabbing over unity, bickering over a calm and respectful, unified vision.

Mark Morford on keeping the anger, the dread, the paranoia alive —the Tea Party chugged it like Coors-flavored heroin:

You don’t have to believe me. Just wait until nothing at all is done to service the Tea Party non-agenda, because it’s ridiculous and impossible to service. Just wait until you note how there is no actual shrinking of government, no restoring some bogus sepia-toned idealism that never existed, no saving of your job.

There is, of course, but one GOP agenda: furthering their personal stranglehold on all things powermad and avaricious.

---

“For there to be common ground, both sides have to be looking for it.” —Helen Philpot

The EPA backlog for evaluating chemicals for risk to health & hazard is 55 years !

Chiefs, kings, tyrants and thieves teach each other so many tricks.

“If they can give someone $300,000 for not winning a game then that means Zimbabwe should have no reason whatsoever to have people that are hungry, suffering or oppressed.”

Leaders get away with what they’re provided: our tolerance of up.

Decision Points. G.W. Bush is counting down to his book sale:  “11… 9… 10…”

He’ll be on the Today Show waterboarding veal cutlets.  —David Letterman

I’m not going to read it until he reads it.  —David Letterman

High Fiving Birth Certificates. “That the nation just cast millions of sour, terrified votes against some un-understood version of socialism is a not-so-necessary reminder of just how scary most people find this sort of talk outside of a football-related context.”

Cleopatra mythologized herself before anyone else had the chance.

Popes, pulpits, politics, pundits too. Y’think?

It’s dizzying to contemplate the thicket of prejudices, personalities and propaganda … biased, xenophobic, politically motivated and sometimes sensationalist writing… for an audience;  for an audience that expected to be dazzled…

Aw shucks. And here I thought hammers were for nails.

Decision Points. :::nuff sed:::

The facts are painfully apparent.

Though hundreds — if not thousands — of people in D.C. are professionally paid to pretend these facts require debate and analysis and parsing and speculation and press releases and pithy Tweets and Sunday Show roundtables and C-SPAN symposia and to-camera cable-TV rants and lengthy thousand-page books, they don’t require any of that. The facts are simple.

The facts are obvious.

The facts are undeniable to anyone not paid fistfulls of sweaty money to lie or sensationalize…

Clarity is always relief.

So much better hotly written:

We’ve got lives to lead, we’ve got struggles to struggle through, we’ve got bills to pay – in short, we’ve got to get through the shit you’ve created and continue to create.

And as you now incessantly bitch about the alleged scourge of those evil election-losing liberals, as you whine and wail and cry from the cocktail and hors d’oeuvre paradise of TV studios and green rooms and congressional offices and party fundraising events, you’ve made quite clear you don’t give a shit about the harsh reality we all face – the harsh reality we all face thanks to you.

Knowing all of that, I’ll end just to reiterate my one succinct request: All I ask is that as you continue your hard work to prop up the kleptocracy, as you continue to clog our last remaining democratic conduits with your viscous rhetorical shit bombs, please, do us all a favor and for the love of whatever god you worship – please just stop wasting our damn time and go fuck yourself.

Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson:

But amid the wreckage of Tuesday’s GOP rampage, there’s one person for whom I feel awful: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She’s losing her job not because she does it poorly but because she does it so well.

Pelosi would never ask for, or even accept, my sympathy – that’s not her style. Her place in history was secure the moment she became the first woman to take possession of the speaker’s gavel. Still, she squeezed every drop out of her four-year tenure.

To string together a couple of sports cliches, she came to play and she left it all on the field. I regret that the nation has never come to know the actual Nancy Pelosi.

Oh, now you’ve done it. See?

But hey, when Americans are angry and nervous, they do stupid things. Like vote Republican. It happens. Just did.

http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com

“The Tea Party has been a great schtick for the GOP — a bunch of rallies, some don’t-tread-on-me talk, and suddenly the people who screwed the economy are elected as its saviors!”

Political TV advertising is designed to do only one thing: suppress turnout of the opponent’s supporters.

If the TV ads can turn you off enough not to vote (“they’re all bums”) then their strategy has succeeded.

The astonishing thing is that voters haven’t figured this out.

“It’s astonishing to see how Americans have been conditioned to think that political action and engagement is futile.” —Yves Smith

Small comfort that a large crowd attended Jon Stewart’s Rally for Sanity: 250,000.

It was certainly the largest gathering I’ve seen at a DC rally since the anti-Vietnam protests of the late sixties and early seventies.

And contrary to the predictions of some, it was not dominated by the young — seniors were well-represented and stories abounded…Michael Winship

That’s roughly three times wingnut rallies, tho’ not three times the noise. The Park Service contracts AirPhoto for accuracy, posted here. Many sister rallies in many cities, including Wasilla of course.

reasonableness and moderation in our country’s rhetoric

Interesting that much of our population in hardship & worry shrinks charitable & political contributions yet this midterm election is reaching a record $4.2 billion.

Oligarch spending dominates, and I’m not surprised the best these bullies have done is to dredge myth-kickers and sociopaths to help them. There’s the intriguing two sides of this election, the wealthy and their wacky.

‘All they ask for is an unfair advantage‘ is Michael Winship’s one-man assay of political spending, i.e. the temblor & tilt from the US Chamber of Commerce: 300,000 members, but half of its $140 million in contributions from just 45 donors.

Open any newspaper, magazine or political website and the coverage of corporate campaign largess, much of it anonymous, bedazzles the mind.

When all is said and done… outside interest groups could spend $400 million or more by Election Day. House and Senate candidates have already shattered fundraising record for a midterm election… the equivalent of about $4 million for every congressional seat.

Industry leaders with conservative provocateurs recruiting flamers & fruitcakes to help them fight for the status quo are vigorously opposed to legislation that would require identifying the money behind sponsors and campaign ads.

A recent conservative strategy & tactics session called “Understanding and Addressing Threats to American Free Enterprise and Prosperity” was not attended by media flamers, coffee shop pundits or Tea Party candidates. None of their carny shills raised up for this election were in attendance.

Claiming to be ‘dedicated to defending our free society’ but merely funding Republicans for the simpler purposes of stalling financial and  consumer regulations, derivatives reform and equitable taxes et et et.

The GOP is opposed to all this: “They have already signaled to Wall Street that, starting the morning of November 3rd, 2010, the GOP will be the party that fights sensible Wall Street reform and returns us to the world of 2009, the world most favorable to Wall Street.”

For that, they’ve plucked silly candidates from their serfdom and raised a foolish electorate. “An energized minority trumps a tepid majority every time.”

These wealthy reveal an embarrassing incompetence. The bandit viciousness that pilfered our nation has launched nothing better than a political frenzy. Shame. Stunning not merely for its dominance & distortion, but for its poverty of reason & solution.

Tax cuts don’t pay for themselves !

If the press won’t call Republicans on this obvious falsehood, how can we trust them on anything? The press ought to ask something like:

“Are you this ignorant about economics, in which case why should anyone vote for you, or are you deliberately misleading people? I’ll assume you aren’t ignorant, so here’s the question:

“If you are willing to make false claims about the revenue generated from tax cuts in order to promote them for the wealthy, what other falsehoods will you be willing to promote in order to serve political ends?

“If voters can’t trust you to tell the truth about tax cuts, how can they trust you on anything?”

Oh, They Know What They Are Selling. “It’s hard to know where to start. There is just so much here.”