BY GLENN GREENWALD
Wikipedia
GLENN
GREENWALD
MONDAY, AUG 29, 2011 10:30 ET
The decade's biggest scam
The Los Angeles Times examines the staggering sums of money
expended on patently absurd domestic "homeland security"
projects: $75 billion per year for things such as a Zodiac boat with
side-scan sonar to respond to a potential attack on a lake in tiny
Keith County, Nebraska, and hundreds of "9-ton BearCat armored
vehicles, complete with turret" to guard against things like an attack
on DreamWorks in Los Angeles. All of that -- which is independent of
the exponentially greater sums spent on foreign wars, occupations,
bombings, and the vast array of weaponry and private contractors to
support it all -- is in response to this mammoth, existential, the-singlegreatest-
challenge-of-our-generation threat:
"The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type
terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of
people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who
has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.
Last year, McClatchy characterized this threat in similar terms: "undoubtedly more American citizens died overseas
from traffic accidents or intestinal illnesses than from terrorism." The March, 2011, Harper's Index expressed
the point this way: "Number of American civilians who died worldwide in terrorist attacks last year: 8 -- Minimum number
who died after being struck by lightning: 29." That's the threat in the name of which a vast domestic Security State is
constructed, wars and other attacks are and continue to be launched, and trillions of dollars are transferred to the private
security and defense contracting industry at exactly the time that Americans -- even as they face massive wealth inequality --
are told that they must sacrifice basic economic security because of budgetary constraints.
Despite these increasing economic insecurities -- actually, precisely because of them -- the sprawling domestic Security State
continues unabated. The industry journal National Defense Magazine today trumpets: "Homeland Security Market
‘Vibrant’ Despite Budget Concerns." It details how budget cuts mean "homeland security" growth may not be as robust
as once predicted, but "Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman . . . have been winning more
contracts from DHS"; as a Boeing spokesman put it: "You’ll still continue to see domestically significant investment on the
part of the government and leveraging advances in technology to stand up and meet those emerging threats and needs.”
Of course, the key to sustaining this Security State bonanza -- profit for private industry and power for Security State officials
-- is keeping fear levels among the citizenry as high as possible, as National Defense expressly notes, and that is
accomplished by fixating even on minor and failed attacks, each one of which is immediately seized upon to justify greater
expenditures, expansion of security measures, and a further erosion of rights:
Polls still show that there is increasing public concern about another terrorist attack. It is this fear and an
unrealistic American perception of risk that will continue to propel some aspects of the market,
analysts say. . . .
Small-scale attacks, whether successful or not, will continue to prompt additional spending, the market
analysts at Homeland Security Research Corp. say. They point to the failed 2009 Christmas plot of a man trying to blow
up a flight to Detroit with explosives sewn into his underwear and the attempted car-bombing in Times Square early the
next year. Though unsuccessful, these events led to immediate White House intervention, congressional hearings and
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2011/08/29/terrorism
an airport screening upgrade costing more than $1.6 billion.
The LA Times, while skillfully highlighting these wasteful programs, depicts them as some sort of unintended inefficiencies.
That is exactly what they are not. None of this is unintended or inefficient but is achieving exactly the purposes for which it is
designed. That's true for two reasons.
First, this wastefulness is seen as inefficient only if one falsely assumes that its real objective is to combat Terrorist
threats. That is not the purpose of what the U.S. Government does. As Daniel Weeks explains today, the Congress --
contrary to popular opinion -- is not "broken"; it is working perfectly for its actual owners. Or, as he puts it, "Washington
isn't broken -- it’s fixed":
Our problem today is not a broken government but a beholden one: government is more beholden to special-interest
shareholders who fund campaigns than it is to ordinary voters. Like any sound investor, the funders seek nothing more
and nothing less than a handsome return -- deficits be darned -- in the form of tax breaks, subsidies and government
contracts.
The LA Times, and most people who denounce these spending "inefficiencies," have the causation backwards: fighting
Terrorism isn't the goal that security spending is supposed to fulfill; the security spending (and power vested by
surveillance) is the goal itself, and Terrorism is the pretext for it. For that reason, whether the spending efficiently addresses
a Terrorism threat is totally irrelevant.
Second, while the Security State has little to do with addressing ostensible Terrorist threats, it has much to do with targeting
perceived domestic and political threats, especially threats brought about by social unrest from austerity and the growing
wealth gap. This Alternet article by Sarah Jafee, entitled "How the Surveillance State Protects the Interests Of the Ultra-
Rich," compiles much evidence -- including what I offered two weeks ago -- demonstrating that the prime aim of the
growing Surveillance State is to impose domestic order, preserve prevailing economic prerogatives and stifle dissent and
anticipated unrest.
Pointing out disparities between surveillance programs and the Terrorist threat is futile because they're not aimed at that
threat. The British Government, for instance, is continuing its efforts to restrict social media in the wake of the povertyfueled
riots that plagued that country; as The New York Times reports today, it is secretly meeting with representatives
of Twitter, Facebook, and the company that owns Blackberry "to discuss voluntary ways to limit or restrict the use of social
media to combat crime and periods of civil unrest." That revelation prompted taunting condemnations of British tyranny
from China and Iran, both of which have been routinely excoriated for surveillance abuses and Internet suppression of the
type increasingly common in the West.
Meanwhile, much of the anti-Terrorism weaponry in the U.S. ends up being deployed for purposes of purely domestic
policing. As the LA Times notes: those aforementioned BearCats are "are now deployed by police across the country; the
arrests of methamphetamine dealers and bank robbers these days often look much like a tactical assault on
insurgents in Baghdad." Drones are used both in the Drug War and to patrol the border. Surveillance measures
originally justified as necessary to fight foreign Terrorists are routinely turned far more often inward, and the NSA --
created with a taboo against domestic spying -- now does that regularly.
Exaggerating, manipulating and exploiting the Terrorist threat for profit and power has been the biggest scam of the decade;
only Wall Street's ability to make the Government prop it up and profit from the crisis it created at the expense of everyone
else can compete for that title. Nothing has altered the mindset of the American citizenry more than a decade's worth of fearmongering
So compelling is fear-based propaganda, so beholden are our government institutions to these private Security
State factions, and so unaccountable is the power bestowed by these programs, that even a full decade after the only Terrorist
attacks on U.S. soil, its growth continues more or less unabated.
-- Glenn Greenwald

Wisdom from Fannin County, Texas

Citizens’ Call June 2011

an e-mag on citizen information

Republican Economics

Gene Marshall

Bonham Citizen

The only people who should be excited about Republican economics are some dead economists who can’t vote.

Republicans ran up the national debt with tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens, a needless war in Iraq, and support for an almost unregulated banking establishments that squandered trillions of dollars of wealth. Now they are proposing debt solutions that take it out on Medicare patients and that slash health, education, social services, alternative energy, and every other remotely useful program.

Even wealthy CEO’s and high-paid investment speculators need to notice that Republican economics will lead to the destruction of the economy that has so unfairly rewarded them. Taking money from struggling citizens who have to spend it and giving it to those who don’t need to spend it does not stimulate the economy. Trickle-down economics is an illusion. Republicans actually favor trickle-up economics. Theirs is an economics of downright thieving from middle and lower classes.

Of course money isn’t everything. Republicans also promise to pamper your racism and religious bigotry. If you don’t like a brown-faced president and want to believe Obama was born in Kenya, some Republican people-pleasers have pretended to agree with you on that weird story. Or if you think that your religious beliefs have to be forced into the bedrooms and doctor’s offices of people who dare to believe differently than you, some Republicans have made a career of pretending to agree with you on that bit of old-world theocracy.

Or how about this one? Some Republicans pretend to support you in the illusion that this country of immigrants should shut its doors to Central American workers and potential immigrants in order to preserve an American culture that has never existed.

Even if you don’t believe that money is everything, most of your Republican politicians do. All the questionable social issues that may or may not interest you actually mean nothing to most Republican office holders. They are only interested in money for their wealthy supporters. Money is indeed everything for them. All else is subterfuge and downright lying to get your votes.

How can can we ordinary voters put up with Republican lying about Medicare in order to enrich some health insurance companies, lying about global warming in order to enrich some oil and coal companies, lying about banking practices in order to protect greedy bankers and speculators, lying about Democratic candidates in order to give their mostly incompetent money-pushers a chance at the polls?

So is there any reason for an ordinary Fannin county voter to vote Republican? None at all.

Shall we believe the fiction that Democrats are just a bad as Republicans? Democrats are not perfect, that is certainly true. From my perspective their deepest flaws have to do with going along too much with Republican nonsense. But in general, Democratic office holders (minus some bad apples) are concerned for the well-being of ordinary citizens, the rescue of the U.S. Economy from its worst warpings, the forging of an honorable foreign policy, and an openness to hear from you and me on how they can serve us better. I for one have a lot to say about that. Some Democrats at least listen.

If I am exaggerating about how badly Republicans are lying to us, it is only because there are a few libertarian Republicans who actually believe that government should let the corporate money handlers do whatever they want unimpeded by big government regulations. They honestly claim, it seems, that everything will work out gloriously if we just let the free-market solve everything with its supply and demand magic. But this magic is not as wondrous as claimed, and besides that we do not have free markets. We have markets controlled by the biggest money pools. So we might as well laugh the honest libertarians out of the conversation and get down to business on how to regulate businesses so that businesses serve the pubic good rather than the biggest pocketbooks.

Basically, I am calling upon all citizens to throw out every Republican office holder and never vote for another until Republicans clean up their act. We can deal with the cowardly and half-hearted Democrats after that. This is a democracy. Citizens count. It is way past time for we ordinary citizens to actually be counted.

How Can We Solve the Jobs Crisis?

by Sarah van Gelder

Excerpts from

Yes Magazine

May 11, 2011

At a time when millions of Americans are without work, the political debate has taken a bizarre turn. Instead of discussing how to make the public investments necessary to get Americans back to work, the political right has used the deficit “crisis” to push for cuts in workers’ rights and pay, without explaining how the economy can recover if potential consumers are too poor to buy anything.

What we need is livelihoods, fairness, and ecological sustainability, which together is our best bet for an economy that can support American families.

There are millions of people with talents, skills, and the desire to work. There is a backlog of work that needs doing: people who need food, homes, and education; communities that need bike lanes, rapid transit, renewable and reliable sources of energy, and rebuilt bridges and water systems. There are empty factories and offices, natural resources, and skilled workers ready to pitch in.

The problem is not that we’re broke. It’s that transnational corporations and the extremely wealthy have captured federal government decision-making, skewing policies to allow the exhaustion of the Earth and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of billionaires, while undermining job security for everyone else. Government money floods into unstable big banks and financial institutions, while small businesses, homeowners, state and local governments are left to sink or swim on their own.

Creating sustainable jobs will require restructuring our economy to more equitably share the work and wealth of this country, without destroying the foundation of all economies—the natural world.

So What Can We Do Right Here in Fannin County?

By Gene Marshall

Bonham Citizen

We need to vote Democratic, but more. We need to challenge the lies being told in our local newspapers, churches, public meetings, and casual conversations. Politics is a matter of understanding some basic things about our common life and talking about them. We do not need to adapt to the foolishness around us into order to elect somebody. We need to change the foolishness so that the population can elect and support the leadership we need. Let us keep thinking about how this can be done. This is the CALL to Fannin CITIZENS.

Is Horrific Weather Related to Global Warming?

By Gene Marshall

Bonham Citizen

No particular hurricane, tornado, drought, or flood can be directly tied to your car driving or your electric power plant, but it remains true that the rising average temperature of the planet is caused by fossil-fuel burning and that a higher average temperature on Earth makes weather events more extreme and more frequent. Global warming results are already happening. What we are experiencing was set in motions decades ago. And our current fossil-fuel use will produce even more unwelcome results for our grandchildren.

For a more detailed discussion of this important matter here are a few paragraphs from Bill McKibben:

A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? Never!

By Bill McKibben

Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.

It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas — fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been — the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected.

If you did wonder, you see, you would also have to wonder about whether this year’s record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest — resulting in record flooding along the Mississippi — could somehow be related. And then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.

It’s far smarter to repeat to yourself the comforting mantra that no single weather event can ever be directly tied to climate change. There have been tornadoes before, and floods — that’s the important thing. Just be careful to make sure you don’t let yourself wonder why all these record-breaking events are happening in such proximity — that is, why there have been unprecedented megafloods in Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan in the past year. Why it’s just now that the Arctic has melted for the first time in thousands of years. No, better to focus on the immediate casualties, watch the videotape from the store cameras as the shelves are blown over. Look at the news anchorman standing in his waders in the rising river as the water approaches his chest.

Because if you asked yourself what it meant that the Amazon has just come through its second hundred-year drought in the past five years, or that the pine forests across the western part of this continent have been obliterated by a beetle in the past decade — well, you might have to ask other questions. Such as: Should President Obama really just have opened a huge swath of Wyoming to new coal mining? Should Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sign a permit this summer allowing a huge new pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta? You might also have to ask yourself: Do we have a bigger problem than $4-a-gallon gasoline?

Better to join with the U.S. House of Representatives, which voted 240 to 184 this spring to defeat a resolution saying simply that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” Propose your own physics; ignore physics altogether. Just don’t start asking yourself whether there might be some relation among last year’s failed grain harvest from the Russian heat wave, and Queensland’s failed grain harvest from its record flood, and France’s and Germany’s current drought-related crop failures, and the death of the winter wheat crop in Texas, and the inability of Midwestern farmers to get corn planted in their sodden fields. Surely the record food prices are just freak outliers, not signs of anything systemic.

It’s very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies. If worst ever did come to worst, it’s reassuring to remember what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Environmental Protection Agency in a recent filing: that there’s no need to worry because “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” I’m pretty sure that’s what residents are telling themselves in Joplin today.

Bill McKibben is founder of the global climate campaign 350.org and a distinguished scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Wonderful year for candidate watching.

I'm cross posting this so that I can link to it without showing the title (which might get it kicked off Facebook.

Tea With Frankenstein: Please, No Masturbation

by David Michael Green

Just when you thought you’d reached the ground floor in the well of American self-destruction, you find out once again that that pit is absolutely bottomless.

Now that primary season is almost over, the far-right tea party movement has scored impressive victories over the far-right establishment in a slew of Republican primaries. I’ve always said that the regressive movement would end up eating its young, and now it is.

The new batch of Republican monsters includes a candidate – now the official Republican nominee for the United States Senate from Delaware, mind you – who has staked out a tough position against – no, I’m not kidding here – masturbation.

Christine O’Donnell once averred that “The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can't masturbate without lust.”

And why the hell not? Surely the reason that our country has so rapidly fallen into decline is that god is punishing America because so many of us are jerking off all the time.

You know who you are.

Oh, and did you hear that she was once a witch? That she believes that scientists have bred mice-men with human brains? That she has no job? And that – despite running on a platform of cleaning up Washington’s fiscal disaster – she has a train wreck for a record of her personal finances?

I’m not kidding. Remember way back when – like, you know, yesterday – when you would have accused me of bad comedy writing for making such things up? Guess what? None of these are.

America, this is you, 2010. Kinda makes you pine for the good ol’ days of the thirteenth century, doesn’t it?

Here in New York the nominee is a bazillionaire who sends out racist and pornographic email to people. Hah-hah. Love that kind of real working man’s humor, don’t you? After being rejected by the Republican party initially, Carl Paladino hired Richard Nixon’s political hit man to run his campaign, injected millions of his own money to fund it, and trounced the hapless establishment candidate, Rick Lazio, who just couldn’t get extreme enough to win, whore himself as he might, and as he readily did.

The Christian Science Monitor notes that, “Paladino, who espouses family values, has a daughter with a former employee who is not his wife”. It is also noted of this great and incendiary paragon of small government that, “As a landlord, he made a lot of money renting space to the state in Albany and using state tax incentives for his real estate empire”.

Similarly, Paladino has compared labor unions to pigs, and, according to the Huffington Post, “said he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in ‘personal hygiene’”.

Did I mention that his father was employed by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression? Perhaps if Franklin Roosevelt had incarcerated père Paladino and instructed him in better hygiene – instead of wasting taxpayer money to create a monstrously big government in remote Washington, DC that continually oppressed the people with stupid wasteful programs that like, oh, you know, kept starving Americans alive – we in New York wouldn’t be stuck with the fruit of his loins assaulting our senses today.

Whatever. I mean, what’s the point of having Republicans if it’s not gonna be all about hypocrisy and twisted sexual obsession, anyhow?

Meanwhile, America’s thirty year March to the Sea goes on unabated. It is the most astonishing thing, if you think about it. Of course ‘thinking’ and ‘America’ are increasingly becoming words that can no longer be smashed into the same sentence anymore, even with the use of advanced new weaponry the Pentagon is producing. But indulge me for the moment.

What has happened to this country is that the United States – which was holding a pretty goddam good winning hand, thank you very much, by the middle of the twentieth century – started following (what were inaccurately labeled) conservative politicians and policies in the 1980s, and things got a lot worse. Then we followed even more regressive idiots this last decade, and things got a whole lot worse yet.

So what are we up to now, in reaction to these twin debacles of precambrian policymaking? Following even crazier still über-extremist right-wing monster freakazoid criminals dressed up as ordinary angry citizens, of course. Natch, babe. In for a penny, in for a pound. In for a pound, in for a planet.

It is the stuff of fiction, really – almost unimaginable to remotely sentient beings operating in the real world. Something that requires a master novelist to do it proper justice. But Orwell’s long dead, so even that possibility is off the table.

Not everybody quite gets how perilous is the moment, however. Democratic pundits who are rejoicing over the tea party primary victories, thinking that they are good for the Democratic Party, are stupid slugs who ought to have the living shit kicked out of them, just for brainlessly taking up space on the planet. First of all, who could possibly care in the slightest about the fate of the Democratic Party? Am I really supposed to be so filled with motivating joy about the prospects of electing slightly less regressive agents of the American oligarchy to Congress that I will run down to party headquarters and start phone banking for my local Democrat? Are we really supposed get electrified and rally around our president and the inspirational likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, simply because they are marginally less obnoxious than the alternative? Golly, I just don’t think so.

But more importantly, Democrats are the very reason for the tea party, this latest episode of American idiocy. Had the party done something with the grand historic opportunity handed to them two years ago, none of this would be happening. Had they not booted so badly a rare alignment of the stars that gave them crises allowing real, serious solutions, along with a despised opposition allowing the final crushing of the conservative disease for a generation or more, we wouldn’t be sitting here today laughing at serious candidates for the United States Senate who have staked out firm positions on the societal perils of onanism.

If Barack Obama had channeled Harry Truman instead of Neville Chamberlain, this show would have been over a long time ago. But the president instead decided to make nice with vicious thugs, even though he never needed to, and even though they were publicly excoriating him in the ugliest and most deceitful terms, just as he was negotiating with them. And negotiating. And negotiating some more. The Fool Down The Hill spent a year cutting deals with Republicans in Congress on his health care debacle, giving in to them at every turn, and stiff-arming the progressives who had made him president, only to achieve exactly what anyone who has been remotely conscious since Joe McCarthy’s day knew would be the outcome: no Republican votes for a bill they themselves had helped water down to near insignificance. Add to that Republican obstruction on every other issue, the almost complete absence of GOP votes on anything – even legislation they had previously sponsored – the Democrats favored, along with the right’s continuous assault on every real or (mostly) imagined personal characteristic of the president, and now you see a huge part of the explanation for the tragicomedy that is American politics at this moment.

What’s worse, Obama’s stupidity is a gift that will keep on giving for a long time. By means of his actions in the White House so far, he has nearly guaranteed that he cannot recover in the coming years, no matter what. He has done one of the few things that more or less assures his presidency of being finished. The right will never let up on him, even if he were to adopt their agenda wholesale. And let’s be clear about this – he more or less already has. If you lay out the positions of the Obama administration on everything from civil liberties to gay rights to economic policy to national ‘defense’ and more, there’s hardly a damn shred of difference between his positions and George W. Bush’s. It’s a ludicrous lie to call this milquetoast regressive in a Democratic suit a liberal, let alone a socialist. And we’ve only just begun with Bad Barry, folks. After he gets his ass royally kicked in November, Obama will lurch even further to the right. But that will engender even greater scorn from the sickos living over there under their slime-infested rocks, as well as endless congressional investigations of bogus administration scandals, likely including an impeachment. Or did you miss the 1990s entirely, Barack?

But that’s only the start of it. Because Obama was too dumb to recognize that everything hinged on reviving the economy (did you miss the last century, too, Bro?), and because he was too cowardly to move boldly on anything whatsoever that he did, he has also lost ordinary, centrist, independent voters who think both parties are generally worthless but will vote for anyone who can actually produce solutions. It’s possible that you can bring those people back, but it ain’t likely. The first rule of politics is that people vote their pocketbooks. Thus, any prayer at winning again would require an economic recovery. But that isn’t gonna happen, in part because Half O’Bama half-assed the stimulus bill, partly because he was seeking bipartisan support which – wait for it now – never came, despite the compromises which reduced the size of the stimulus and turned one-third of it into ineffective tax cuts that the one-tune-jukebox Neanderthals demanded. It’s also not gonna happen because this downturn is less a one-off event than it is the culmination (we grimly hope – it could get worse yet) of a thirty year grand national downsizing project, and because it is less an economic recession than it is a wholesale and permanent restructuring. No economist I’ve heard of sees any shred of economic recovery anywhere on the horizon throughout all of 2011, and neither do I. In fact, there are good reasons to think it gets worse from here. And that means Obama and his party are toast, not just in this election cycle, but the next one as well.

Having thus irrevocably alienated aliens on the right in addition to the just-gimme-some-results voters in the middle, Obama is producing some of the same effect on progressives as well. It was a very bad idea to speak in bold, Lincolnesque strokes as a candidate if you intended to govern like a small town city manager, and a feeble one at that. Lots of young folks, especially, who flocked to the banner of hope and change are now feeling burned, and well they should. For many others – including the dude I see in my bathroom mirror every morning – this is more like the last straw, the final frontier. Having spent decades holding our noses and voting for Democrats just because the Republicans were so goddam destructive, many of us are now done, possibly forever. Not only is it unimaginable to me that I would vote for Obama in 2012 – no matter who is his Republican opponent – I refuse, with rare possible exception, to vote for any Democrat ever again, until the party can at least get back in the ballpark of progressive politics.

And so it is Obama and his co-conspirators in Congress have lost the right and the center, and at least the enthusiasm if not the votes of the left. But, more importantly, they have done so in ways that are mostly permanent, ways that mostly preclude any possible recovery of these voters’ support. This is precisely the reason that Democratic pundits and functionaries are even more self-destructively stupid now than they have been for thirty years, rejoicing in tea party primary victories, thinking that those represent good news for their party.

Consider the appropriately-named Bob Shrum as one example, he whose great wisdom has produced an astonishing zero-for-eight record as a top presidential campaign staffer over the decades (in a hissy fit after nine days on board, he actually quit the Jimmy Carter campaign, the only successful one he was ever involved with). Looking ahead to the presidential prospects of 2012 given the surge of the tea party, he surveys the Republican field, noting that, “The GOP’s 1964 tragedy of Goldwater, who was at least a serious figure, could be repeated in the farce of Palin. ... Newt Gingrich is positioning himself as Palin with a brain. Gingrich has now become a font of smears and off-the-rail ideas – from privatizing Social Security to the transparently racist charge that Obama channels the Kenyan anti-colonialism of the father he barely knew. With his pandering to both prejudice and extremism, Gingrich could be the 2012 nominee. He would be unelectable. ... So would Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who’s proposed scrapping the progressive income tax, the sinister idea championed by that great socialist Republican Theodore Roosevelt. ... In desperation, Republican strategists are thinking of Mississippi Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who would also compete with an appeal to the birthers, the resentful, and the backlash base. But Barbour was a legendary D.C. lobbyist for the most powerful vested interests, from tobacco to oil. Perhaps he could run on the slogan: ‘Remove the Middleman.’ For Republicans, payback could come as early as November, with Democrats keeping the Senate – maybe even the House. But 2012, I believe, will provide the ultimate irony: The people who most revile President Obama – and the Republican leaders who enlisted them only to see their party hijacked by them – may assure an Obama re-election.”

To say that this analysis displays astonishing naivete would be an unfair and unkind cut on simpletons the world over. This is pure lunacy, and it shows both the self-interested narrowness and the analytical imbecility of Democratic strategists (to abuse a term) and pundits. Maybe these folks haven’t noticed lately, but in American politics “pandering to both prejudice and extremism” is not exactly a losing strategy. Maybe these people (and there’s a lot more of them than just Shrum) aren’t paying real close attention, but most American voters don’t even have a clue who Teddy Roosevelt was or what he did. And they don’t exactly shrink from the idea of slashing taxes just because some dude had a different approach a hundred years ago. Or was it a thousand?

Most importantly, Shrum’s assumption of rationality amongst voters leads him to conclude that the nomination of Palin in 2012 would result in the “ironic” “farce” of her Goldwater-like crushing defeat at the polls. It is no surprise this guy keeps booting presidential campaigns. The twin wonders are why anyone continues to hire him, and why anyone publishes his analysis of politics. For all I know, he could be a world-class expert at philately or the intricacies nineteenth century cricket, but, meanwhile, opinion journal publishers might want to take note of the increasingly inconvenient fact that the guy clearly knows nothing about politics.

Here’s the deal, Bob (et al.), and feel free to take notes: This is not 1964. The country is not flush. The middle class is not robust, thriving and expanding. The incumbent party is not riding a wave of peace and prosperity, nor is it benefitting from public sympathy for the young, handsome, witty and beloved leader just recently tragically cut down in his prime. Okay? Which means that, unlike Lyndon Johnson and crew, Democrats are not gonna get a lot of votes from people happy with the magic of our moment, and therefore especially uninterested in a taking a gamble on a self-described extremist like Barry Goldwater. Indeed, precisely the opposite logic applies here, which will produce precisely the opposite outcome. Democrats should be familiar with this – it’s exactly the reverse of what transpired not even two years ago: Very unhappy voters in 2012 will choose the candidate of the party not in the White House, because those voters will desperately crave change. You remember “change”, don’t you, Bob? Thus, the real race will be for the Republican nomination – decided exclusively by Republican primary voters, who are merely certifiably insane on a good day – not the general election, which will be a sure thing for the GOP. And thus the next president of the United States will be Sarah Palin.

It would be nice if that were the bad part. But, sadly, as ugly as that prospect is, it’s only the warm-up act for the real fun. Republicans – tea party variant or not (and, ideologically, there ain’t much difference between the two) – have absolutely zero solutions for the crises the country faces (not to mention the irony of them being responsible for creating those crises, of course). Their only plan for economic recovery is more tax cuts for the rich. That will do nothing for the economy, of course, other than plunging the country deeper into debt and exacerbating already dramatic disparities in the country’s distribution of wealth. Their plan for health care is to repeal Obama’s. Their plan for global warming is to pretend it doesn’t exist and support fossil fuel related industries such that the problem gets worse. Their foreign policy is war. Their plan for Middle East peace is to support Israel no matter what it does, thus guaranteeing no peace agreement. Their plan for the financial crisis is to slash any restrictions that might meaningfully control the behavior of Wall Street predators. And so on. They have no solutions, and can only succeed in making the bad situation they created worse.

And now here is where it starts to get really scary. Imagine us in 2014, the same distance into a Republican government (on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue) that we are today into a Democratic one. Except that there are two big differences. The first is that the public has had four more years – four years! – of decline, demoralization and economic terrorism under their belts by this time, with no solutions remotely in sight. What is their likely disposition? They will be turning on Republicans and showing their canines in a way that makes 2010 look like a friendly game of Scrabble by comparison.

The second difference will be in the nature of those inhabiting a government which at that point will be firmly backed up against the wall. About the only positive thing I can say regarding Democrats is that they have some limitations on what they are willing to do out of self-interest. Not much, but some. Not so the animals of the GOP, least of all the tea party sociopathic freaks. These people are not going to go down lightly. These people will be faced with a choice between humiliation and destruction on the one hand, and generating a diversionary, and probably jingoistic feel-good, catastrophe on the other. They would not be the first failing government in history to choose the annihilation of others in order to sustain a bit longer the unsustainable. They would not even be the first to take out tens of millions in such a quest. Scary only begins to describe where this is all going.

People often scoff at me when I tell them that I think Sarah Palin is likely to be the next American president. Or they think I wax a bit apocalyptic when I start talking about outcomes that smell all too much like Germany in the 1930s. So let me review the bidding in summary form to explain why we should be very afraid. Jump in anywhere you see a chink in the chain of logic.

The first question is, Will Barack Obama preside over economic recovery substantial and early enough to be reelected in 2012? Perhaps, of course. But not likely as things look now. Second, will voters conform with nearly universal past practice and choose to go with the alternative to the status quo under conditions of economic (and other) duress? Highly likely. Third, will they be willing to elect somebody whose ideas are extreme and who quite recently was widely portrayed in the media as a dummy and a clown, if that is their only realistic alternative to the failed sitting president and his party? I dunno – can you say “Ronald Reagan in 1980”? Fourth, given the composition of Republican primary voters who are already choosing candidates so extreme that even Karl Rove is describing them as “nutty”, and given what we saw from these people in 2008, who is most likely to be the 2012 GOP nominee, and therefore shoe-in winner of the general election in November of that year? You know her name. Fifth, will a Republican program of tax cuts for the rich, reduced standard of living for everyone else, increased economic insecurity, more war, environmental wreckage, a Wall Street bacchanal and unfettered corporate pillage give Americans in 2013 and 2014 the solutions they were looking for when they desperately voted out the incumbent in 2012? Of course not. And, finally, and most grimly of all, Would a Sarah Palin administration or its equivalent stand by and watch itself go down in flames of complete destruction – sorta like what Barack Obama is now doing – when it had at its disposal a way to instead change the channel of public dissatisfaction?

I think we all know the answer to that one too. Each of these questions has more than one possible answer, and I am far from claiming any outcome as inevitable. However, I will say that I think the sequence of events I’ve outlined above – not just individually, but the more daunting probability of all these things happening – is more likely than not. I have a hard time seeing this country recover in two years time. I have a hard time seeing Obama winning reelection. I not only cannot imagine a non-radical GOP nominee in 2012, I can’t even name one such person in the party considering a presidential bid. I know for sure that their ‘solutions’ don’t work – indeed, I, like you, am living the consequences of those very policies as we speak. And, finally, I also know that the people who did Iraq and debt hemorrhaging tax cuts and Katrina and torture and the rest are capable of anything. Anything. And these weren’t even the tea partiers, who are even sicker than the Bushes and Roves out there.

People like Bob Shrum or perhaps Barack Obama and the strategists around him would merely be insane to applaud tea party successes this year, if all that was at stake was their own worthless careers. (And it is, of course, a measure of their utter failure as politicians that the best thing they have going in this election cycle is the hope that their opponents will choose lunatics as candidates.) Yes, yes, Bob and Barack and Rahm and David and David, this may be good news six weeks from now for a Democratic Party that is so pathetic it depends on the GOP to implode in order to only get partially devastated in the coming election. But even that won’t stop scads of tea baggers from winning seats in the United States Congress this year. And – far more importantly – it won’t stop the rise of this movement that is so disastrous for the country going forward.

Far, far more is at stake here than one failed president’s second term, or the careers of a bunch of party hacks and media retreads.

The truth is, we stand now on the edge of a precipice. And it is a very long way down to the bottom.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (mailto:dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website,www.regressiveantidote.net.

Wisdom from Fannin County, Texas

I used to live in Fannin County, pop. 17,000. It's an agricultural area and the biggest town is around 9000. I still keep up with some of what goes on there even though I live in the big city (pop 26,000) of Greenville. Gene Marshall of Bonham publishes a monthly newsletter and I unashamedly reproduce part of his latest here. Read on.

Drilling for Crude in Your Pantry

Gene Marshall
Bonham Citizen

Messing with black gunk where you store your supper is a gross idea, but this is what we are doing in the Gulf of Mexico. This is one of our pantries, a huge source of food. Even New England tuna fishing is effected by any damage to tuna spawning in the Gulf. We have been risking the destruction of this food pantry with poorly regulated oil companies drilling in deep water without safety nets for their exceedingly complex and risky ventures.

Why can’t we just say “NO” to such practices? Because we are oil addicts, and oil addicts share similar qualities with drug addicts. U.S. drug addicts have turned Mexico in to a war zone financed by U.S. drug purchases.

Our oil addiction is also creating horrific tragedies. Oil spills are only one, but a big one. All the oil so far spewed into the Gulf of Mexico is, I hear, close to the amount that the U.S. burns in one day (maybe we are up to two days now, since we are unsure how much oil is spewing.) Our oil addiction is so vast we have nothing to compare it with. We might compare it to smoking three cigarettes at a time, ten hours a day. If such a lung pollution is unthinkable, let us also notice how unthinkable is the extent of our carbon dioxide pollution of the atmosphere. Whole islands are being drowned. Hurricanes are becoming more intense. Ecosystems are being destroyed. Fresh water is being reduced. People keep saying that when the situation gets bad enough, we will do something. THE SITUATION IS BAD ENOUGH!

Some oil companies are trying to sound responsible by saying that they want to invest in alternative energy, that we need to increase ALL energy sources. But that is not so. We need to decrease SOME energy sources, namely oil and coal as well as natural gas. But try asking an oil company how much they are going to reduce their oil sales this year. You would surely receive a blank look to such a question. “We can’t quit oil production right away,” they might say. Then you might say, “True, but when do you intend to start reducing oil production and where do you intend to start reducing it?” When no answer comes back, you might continue, “What about reducing drilling for oil in our Gulf of Mexico Food Pantry?”

Such conversations would quickly teach you that the narrow, perpetual-growth thinking of these “Drill Baby Drill” companies does not deal with the real solutions to our energy crisis, but only with market share, profits, and benefits for arrogant and deluded oil company executives. In spite of what these false optimists tell us, we do not know for sure if we will ever be able to shut down this wound in the bottom of the Gulf. We may have a permanent leak. We have wounded our planet and it is bleeding. Perhaps we will get by with it this time. But next time? Whatever they say, there will be a next time. We not only need a moratorium on deep-water drilling until we figure this out, we need a permanent moratorium on all types off-shore drilling. Sooner of later, Gulf oil workers will need to look for other work. Perhaps we need a jobs program to help them with this, but “change” means CHANGE! We can’t get sentimental about it.

Oil companies, like all corporations, are dangerous organizations -- only because they are doing what they were invented to do -- making returns for their investors. How can these dangerous organizations be disciplined to actually serve the public in a manner that the public needs to be served? Your democratic government is the only force in existence with clout enough to force this to happen.

But as we all know, our governments (national, state, and local) are not truly democratic organizations . They have become house pets of the corporations. Governments no longer sternly restrain corporations; governments coddle them, deregulate them, and collude with them for accruing short-term economic benefits and political power. The long-term solutions to our onrushing crises are neglected.

So what is the answer? Citizen responsibility! It is not enough to write letters and complain. We need clout. When Fannin County citizens vote for Republicans they are voting for oil companies, for the oil addiction, and for go-slow changes in our energy patterns. Democrats are considerably better on this issue. So, let’s get out a big Democratic Party vote in Fannin County this November. Let’s begin now putting together the organization that can do that. Yes, it is true that some Democrats, even the best of them, can also be slow footed. But Republican Congress members are going backwards; they cannot be counted on at all on this topic and many other topics.

Do you want to do more? Talk to your friends and acquaintances, Republican and Democratic, in language that makes sense to them. Take a few risks at becoming a controversial person. Along with Jesus, Buddha, and Superman say what is true, do what is needed, and smile at the scorn of those who don’t want to face reality. This might be fun. Do you want to avoid scorn? Get over it.

P.S. Please listen to this speech that Rachel Maddow wishes that Obama had made on this topic.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/center/articles/2010/washington-post-06-17-2010.html

Defenders of the Constitution, ARISE!

Here's the latest from the Independent Republic of Arizona, which should curdle the blood of all defenders of the Constitution of the United States of America

This from Time.com

Buoyed by recent public opinion polls suggesting they're on the right track with illegal immigration, Arizona Republicans will likely introduce legislation this fall that would deny birth certificates to children born in Arizona - and thus American citizens according to the U.S. Constitution - to parents who are not legal U.S. citizens.

The question is whether that would violate the U.S. Constitution. The 14th Amendment states that "all persons, born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." It was intended to provide citizenship for freed slaves and served as a final answer to the Dred Scott case, cementing the federal government's control over citizenship.

An Obama Democrat

Note: This is not original. I copied it from an email so that I could share it on Facebook. A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude. "She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be an Obama Democrat." "I am," replied the man. "How did you know?" "Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me." The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican." "I am," replied the balloonist.. "How did you know?" "Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault.

What I don't believe

1. That voting was compromised in New Hampshire or that the election was stolen. Can we stop ourselves from becomming a totally paranoid nation?
2. That the nuclear warheads carried from Minot ND to Louisianna were intended for Iran.
3. That I have much more to say at this time.