A brief poem from the Women of the Weather Underground, circa 1974:

They call it terror

if you are few and have no B-52s


if you are not a head of state


with an army and police


if you have neither napalm


nor tanks nor electronic battlefields


terror is if you are dispossessed


and have only your own two hands


each other


and your rage


It is not terror


if you are New York’s Finest


and you shoot a ten-year old Black child in the back


because you think Black people


all look like


they’ve just committed a robbery


It is not terror if you are ITT


and buy the men


who line Chilean doctors up in their hospital


corridors


and shoot them for supporting the late


democratic government of their country


It is not terror but heroism


if you were captured by the Vietnamese


for dropping fragmentation bombs


on their schools and hospitals


Only those who have nothing


can be terrorists

Wow...

I was researching the Weathermen and learned that Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn helped found Prairie Fire after splitting formally from the Weathermen in the late 1970s. If anyone has a copy of the 1974 book (or complete text of) "Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism", I'd be very interested in reading it. It would be highly educational to read their words from that time, and to try to relate their ideas and emotions into today's terms, in today's world.

My brief thoughts on the Weathermen are that they were young, energetic, and motivated people seeking to change this country and this world for the better, but they were wholly unsure of how to do that. When you're frustrated with the enormity of fighting an entire government and all it's institutions, it's easy to lash out. I've been there myself, although to a much lessor degree. This government does need change, although in the words of the Pairie Fire Organizing Committee:

"This
system cannot be reformed or voted out of office because reforms and
elections do not challenge the fundamental causes of injustice."

This is an incredibly obvious truth to me, and one at the heart of my mistrust for the honesty of the "change" so many hope Obama can bring. It's tough to change a system from the inside unless you have a lot of help, and even more courage and strength to do so.

I can so easily identify with the incredible rage felt by these people. I've been in the streets protesting the Iraq war. I've carried the signs and sung the songs, but nothing changed. It's just not that easy to change the course of a nation, but the very strong sense of wanting to do something fueled the actions of the Weathermen as surely as the ultimate realization that they were powerless to affect the change they so fervently believed in led to their retirement. Abject frustration is a powerful demotivator.

Not shockingly, the US has launched more missiles from drone planes in Pakistan. Pakistan says the strikes violate its sovereignty. They are right, it does. But the US knows it's the biggest, baddest bully on the block and does what it wants. We're right, they're wrong, that's the US government mantra.

Of course if Mexico were to start lobbing artillery shells over the border because they didn't think the US was doing a good enough job for anything they thought was important, Mexico City would be turned into a smoldering wasteland. You just don't mess with the US.

The US claims, naturally, that such strikes are justified because Pakistan  isn't doing enough to crack down on terrorists using the area as a safe haven. You know what? It doesn't matter. It's their country, not ours, and they can do whatever they damn well please with policing their own land. It's their right.

I certainly hope that once Obama is president, crap like this stops, but I suspect highly that it won't. It's not the US people that elect a president, after all, it's not that simple. No one can be in a position to be elected without knowing how the game is played, and who must be catered to. After all, Obama has said that bin Laden must be killed, and that he's likely in Pakistan. I'm sure he'll make some high profile visits to the leadership of Pakistan to discuss what should be done, and that's certainly a fine place to start. But it's their country, and if any US president doesn't respect a nation's right to rule itself within international law, then that president should be impeached.

Too bad it hasn't happened yet, and that it never would. As I often say, if Nixon were president today, he would not have been impeached. Bush has done so much worse than Nixon it's shocking, but impeachment has never been seriously on the table, it's a shame. Would McCain be better? Hell no. Would Obama? I think not better enough.

This last Friday was the last day to register to vote in Nebraska, and Melanie and I waited in line with Nick so he could register. All of Douglas county only had one registration office open for this last day, and the line was long. We waited in line for about three hours, and if it weren't for the great people we happened to be near in line, it would have seemed to be an eternity.

The gentlemen right in front of us in line was a tall, quiet fellow dressed in his UPS uniform. We didn't talk much, he just kept to himself while we made friends with others near us in the line. After nearly an hour of waiting, he went to talk to one of the people who worked at the county office, and from what I could hear of their conversation he was needing to get back to work soon and wanted to know if he could jump ahead. Of course he was denied, and he soon left the line.

The one bit of conversation we did have together earlier convinced me of how he was going to vote. Given my position as a skeptic and cynic of all politicians, I seldom vote for a mainstream candidate. But since "Joe" the UPS guy won't get the chance, I'm going to cast my vote in his place.

I won't tell you who I think he was going to vote for, and I won't divulge his age or ethnicity either. But he was in that line and going out of his way at the last minute so that he could vote, for what he believes in. I can't just let that pass by, and come November 4th, "Joe" the UPS guy will have his vote counted.

Cuba just reported finding 20 billion barrels of oil in their waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Somewhere in the shadowed halls of the US government there are talks going on of our options - invasion or extreme-slant drilling....

 Nebraska initiative 424 is coming up for a vote next month. It's called, ironically and deceptively, the "civil rights initiative". What it is really, however, is the means to end affirmative action in the guise of "ending" reverse discrimination. I guess the point is that enslaving blacks for a couple hundred years is now made up for by the 40 years of the progress made by the real civil rights movement.

I don't buy it. When you were a free man in Africa in 1700, that came to an abrupt end when you were captured and sold into slavery. No such sudden reversal has ever happened, not now, not in the 1960, and not even when Lincoln "freed" U.S. slaves. It's a lot more complicated than just "Ok, now you're free, and there is nothing in your way to success." I say that if we enslaved a race for 200+ years, then concrete measures like affirmative action should stay in place just as long.

I discovered the following piece by Tim Wise posted as a comment on an article about the hatred of the mobs against Obama at McCain rallies.

White privilege needs to be replaced with Human privilege.

THIS IS YOUR NATION ON WHITE PRIVILEGE

By Tim Wise

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light" burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain…

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

With all the rampant vitriol being spewed at recent McCain rallies, we have to face the very real possibility that Obama will be assassinated prior to the election. Audience members shout out that Obama is a terrorist, that he is treasonous, and in some cases even that he should be killed. The ludicrousness of all these viewpoints is disheartening for the future of our country, to say the least, outright frightening to say a bit more.

Obama is not the terrorist - after all, war is just terrorism with a bigger budget, making our current government and George W. Bush the real terrorists.

If Obama manages to make it to election day without assassination and then gets elected, I would think he's safe. He's not the candidate of change so many wish him to be, and once that is demonstrated then his chance of survival improves greatly.

I weep for the future of this country, when in 2008 so many people can hate a man for something as meaningless as his name. Have we learned so little as a nation from our dark past that we are condemned to repeat it?

I've been reading a lot on the bailout lately, and it still amazes me how off the mark all the pundits seem to be - on both sides of the political divide. Those on the left say the mortgage lenders have to "take a haircut" and write down the principal. Some on the right - McCain in the forefront - just want the government to buy up the loans at 100% value, on the premise that the mortgage companies are in bad enough shape as it is.

Let's examine the amount of this supposed "haircut". Assume that the bulk of these bad loans have had only 2 years of payments on them before they went bad - that seems like a reasonable guess given how long this crisis has been in the making. Assume further that the average of these mortgages is $85,000 for 30 years at 8.5% yielding a monthly payment of $654. In the first 2 years of a mortgage, especially a higher interest rate one like most of the ones that are in default, about 98% of the payment is interest, that's $641/month of that $654. Multiply that by 24 months and you get $15,384 of pure interest payments.

The bailout bill analysts say that mortgage companies should write down the principals to about 90% of their value. For our example $85,000 loan, that writes down the principal to about $76,500, a reduction of $8,500. THE MORTAGE COMPANIES HAVE ALREADY MADE MORE THAN THAT!

So where exactly is this economy-ending financial haircut McCain is so afraid of?

I'm watching the debate - these town hall formats are great, except for the fact that the candidates don't answer the questions. Here's an idea - after the candidates speak, the person that asked the question then points out if the candidate actually addressed the question, and the candidates then have to try again. Of course they'd likely not even get through two questions, but it's better than the charade I'm watching.

The house just joined the senate is passing the $700 billion bailout bill, as I predicted they would after failing to earlier this week. This shouldn't surprise anyone because we don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic. In a republic, the government doesn't think the people should elect the highest office in the land directly, but rather indirectly. The reason is that people are just too gullible, too stupid. Given the election of Bush 1 1/2 times, I'd have to agree.

So the house members get calls 100 to 1 telling them not to pass it, and shockingly they don't pass it. But then some meaningless changes get shoved in, and they do pass it. After all, they know better than we do - they get paid to know better, not by their salaries but by lobbyists, once again proving that all is right in the great republic we live in.

I'm just so glad we don't have this sort of power directly, just being the stupid tax-payers that we are. We just have to pay for it, that's all. As I recall, once upon a time some people in the country didn't like the fact that they were being forced to pay for something without representation. Did the house members suddenly get calls 100 to 1 telling them they should vote for this bill? Not that I can tell, so they just did it anyway despite what their constituents were telling them.

Anyone in Boston have some excess tea they aren't using?

It is just me, or is it incredibly ironic that the government's proffered "solution" to the self-created crisis in the credit business is to borrow 3/4 of a trillion dollars?

No, the title is not an careless error - I make enough of those, however, that the potential question needed to be addressed right up front. It's just that I have come to see a tremendous similarity between the recent $700 billion bailout of the US financial backbone and that of the institution of slavery in this country in the late 1700s.

During my Unitarian church service today, my minister was talking about Thomas Jefferson - you know the guy, founding father, US president, unitarian, and huge slave owner. Yup, he held more slaves than anyone else in all of Virginia, and there were a lot of slave holders in Virginia. How could one of our most famous founding fathers, author of the bulk of the US Constitution, declarer that all men are created equal, also be a slave holder? After all, there were a number of prominent and vocal abolitionists at that time so it wouldn't have been without precedent, people including George Washington, John Adams,  and Thomas Jefferson. No, that's not an error, Jefferson was both an abolitionist and a slave holder (as was Washington). Why? The answer to this seeming paradox is simple: economics.

Jefferson was a leader in the abolitionist movement before the mid 1780s. It was then that he realized the huge economic cost he - indeed, the entire US economy - would incur should slavery be suddenly abolished. This is why he couldn't simply free his slaves even after the Virginia legislature passed a bill allowing slave holders to voluntarily free their slaves if they chose to. He simply couldn't afford it. As Howard Zinn wrote in a People's History of the United States, "Jefferson tried his best, as an enlightened, thoughtful individual might.  But the structure of American society, the power of the cotton, the slave trade, the politics of unity between northern and southern elites, and the long culture of race prejudice in the colonies, as well as his own weaknesses- that combination of practical need and idealogical fixation- kept Jefferson a slaveowner throughout his life."

Which brings us to the connection between slavery and the bailout of Wall Street. Congress - and both McCain and Obama - know quite well that they have no choice but to "save" the greedy, allegedly capitalistic institutions from their own malfeasance. Have to. Just as Jefferson realized that the economy of the still-young US could not survive the abolition of slavery during his lifetime, congress knows now what drives the US economy - the stock market. It's the modern-day equivalent of slavery, in a very obtuse way. It's something that they believe must be kept going at all costs ($700 billion for starters in this case) regardless of any other considerations. Just like the plantations had to be kept operating. Had to.

For the slave, unfortunately, it was a basically moot point, as it is for the average US citizen today. If the South stayed in the Union, he was still going to be a slave. If the South left the Union over the issue of slavery, he was still going to be a slave, but without the influence of the Northern abolitionists. Slavery was going to continue in the South anyway. $700 billion bailout or not, we're all similarly screwed. Where do you think that $700 billion is coming from? Same place as all the billions for the war, it's being borrowed. But as the world economy depending on exhaustible resources like oil starts to go down the drain, those debts will be called in. And then the @#%$ will really hit the fan. But our government - and capitalism in general - doesn't care about that. It only cares about today. What will happen when the mortgage of the entire country represented by this debt goes bad?

Revolution, I hope. It's about time for another one, to throw off the shackles of the government we've allowed and to find new guardians for our future security.

With both the right and the left proclaiming widespread media bias against them, especially in an election year, who can you trust? Certainly not the venerable AP, as this story illustrates.

This article reports on a web site that shows you what you 'would' pay in taxes under either a McCain presidency or an Obama one. As you read this article, notice the use of the word 'would' when 'could' is the far more appropriate term. Connotation is everything, and even this simple, unimportant article can't resist it's own spin.

What happened to real reporting?

The SEC moved yesterday to ban the short-selling of 799 financial stocks. I have mixed feelings about this, because I think that the entire market should be disbanded and made illegal. If you examine all the major scandals and failures of big companies like Enron and now AIG, Lehman, et al, their problems can all be traced back to corporate greed fueled by the stock market. It's because the top execs are all worth far more  with their stocks than with their exaggerated salaries, and the mantra is to keep that price going up. How do you do that when your expansion hits a wall? You lobby to relax the rules so you can keep that annual percentage increase rising.

The money quote for me in this article is this:

 But a recent wave of the maneuvers — profiting by selling unowned shares of companies in the anticipation their prices will drop — has been blamed in part for the demise of venerable investment firm Lehman Brothers and other big financial companies.

 How outrageous it is that some unscrupulous traders would want to sell stock when they think the market is about to take a down-turn! What do they think this is, a free market, Capitalism?! What the market wants - what it loves - is that continuous influx of 401k money, no questions asked, and it's there for the long term. But all this "profit-taking" just must be stopped, that's only reserved for Big Oil.

I found this great editorial by Steven Brant that echos so many sentiments I've expressed for years, but a whole lot articulater. Brant makes the point that not only are all the government (and since they use our money, it's us really) bailouts of big (and supposedly private) business means that Capitalism in this country is dead. This passage is priceless:

They should have let A.I.G. fail, because -- if that had brought about
the collapse of the global economic system -- that would have just sped
up our journey to a point of systemic collapse we are destined to reach
anyway. I say destined to reach not because it's God's will but because
no system can continue to function when its fundamental design is
flawed. You see, the current global economic system is based on a
fundamental assumption that -- while it was true when the system was
first set up -- is no longer true today.

 Exactly! Let them fail - if they can't run a business, then economic Darwinism says let them die and be replaced with a smarter business than can do it better. And by the way, same damn thing goes for the airlines. If they can't figure out how much to charge for a ticket, then let them all go under. It's not harsh, it's Capitalism. Or is it?

Brant continues with another great point:

The funny thing is, I've known that a significant portion of the US
economy is Socialistic for years. "What are you talking about?", you
ask? "The Military Industrial Complex," I answer.

You do know that all military weapons are purchased using "cost
plus" contracts, in which businesses are guaranteed a profit, don't
you? And that literally every weapons system comes in over its original
budget... and that those cost overruns are absorbed by the government,
not the arms manufacturer? There is no Capitalism in the Military
Industrial Complex. It's all Socialism, justified by the concept that
these weapons are so important to American security that the companies
that manufacture them have to be guaranteed a profit, so they don't
accidentally go out of business.

 This is the same argument for bailing out airlines - they're so vital to the US economy that they just have to be kept going. If that is our truth, then fine - but make them publicly owned and controlled (Socialist) businesses not allegedly private (Capitalist) ones where the CEOs make scores of millions of dollars at eventual taxpayer expense.

And then there is this bit of neo-Marxism in Brant's piece:

And that's why Capitalism has died. Because it is a system that is
compelled to try and make more and more money based on Darwinian
principles that are no longer true. They were true when Capitalism was
created, but they are obsolete now. This death was inevitable, because
the mismatch between the world Wall Street thinks exists and the world
that really exists is so fundamental... the methods needed to continue
making money in a world of the past had become so complicated... that
self destruction was only a matter of time.

 Marx said that Capitalism is just one stage of economic evolution, not the end-all-be-all of economic evolution that most Americans think. So as Brant says, don't be sad at Capitalism's passing. It's natural selection in action.

But then Brant totally drops the ball right before crossing the goal line:

And with the choice of Barack Obama -- a man who knows cross-cultural,
systemic, and bi-partisan issues and who does not see the world through
warrior eyes as John McCain does - we have the opportunity to take a huge step (politically) in the direction of making this change.

 Missed it by that much. Brant just doesn't seem to understand that Obama isn't the Maverick that McCain claims to be, either. If Obama gets elected, nothing significant will change, that's what political history illustrates. The trouble is timing - the economic collapse that I've been waiting, indeed hoping for, just isn't quite here yet. The real candidate for change can only emerge when we are in it's throes, not before. Again, this is a lesson from history. Hitler rose to power because the climate in Germany at that time allowed him to - indeed, needed him to. FD Roosevelt was a key president for the US at a key time in our history, a couple of key times actually, whether you agree with his policies and actions or not. These two simple examples also serve as a great warning for us - when the collapse comes, it may not be a savior that rises to lead this country to a new future, it could be a great villain.

As the wand maker Ollivander says in Harry Potter, "He (Voldimort) did great things - terrible, yes, but great."