All posts by Joseph

Political Rants

Win for losing.

Just a few short shots today. Hopefully one of them will approach some acceptable level of accuracy.

Out of work / luck. The House failed to reach the 2/3 majority it needed this week to approve extending unemployment benefits to the millions out of work for an exceedingly long period of time – about 9.6 percent of us, if you count every part-time burger flipper as “employed” (and don’t even count those unemployed but no longer looking for work). Once again, our great lawmakers are playing ducks and drakes with people’s lives, blaming the victim, punishing those who have paid for their bad decisions. Got the number of your congressman/woman? Get on the phone to them and tell them to vote for this sucker, even if it adds to the freaking deficit. This is a question of survival for millions of American families – what’s more important than that?

Gitmo conviction. Justice Department prosecutors have won the case against a Gitmo detainee Ahmed Ghailani, but are losing the propaganda war with respect to civilian trials for terror defendants. I heard ex-governor Pataki on television this week joining the chorus of ersatz conservatives who think evidence obtained under torture is somehow legitimate. Oh, how they value our traditions!

Non-starter. John McCain’s Arizona colleague appears intent on blocking an arms control treaty that any Republican would have been proud of two decades ago. So our agreement with the Russians is dangling by a thread. What sense does this make? Don’t know. What sense does it make to have NATO members sign on enthusiastically to a new “missile defense” regime – i.e., one that the Russians are not intimidated by? I suppose we should follow the money. Missile defense is as close as this or any administration will come to an industrial policy. Military Keynesianism still rocks down in D.C.

That’s all I’ve got, folks.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Find a seat and…


There’s a lot I could say at this juncture, Mitch. A whole lot… but I think I’ll just hold my tongue. Don’t want to spend time in a Kaztropharian jail if you don’t have to.

Oh, hi…. We’ve found our way to planet Kaztropharius 137b with both hands, as you might divine from that last bit of dialogue – the latest venue on our ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE tour of the galaxy. How do you tour a whole galaxy exactly? Quite simple – just jump on the ship before we take off… next time. Right now we’re deep in the middle of nowhere, anchored to a planet that seems to like our music (something in the air, I think, makes it sound better up here… perhaps a hallucinogenic quality).  Kaztropharius 137b (I think I’ve got that spelling correct) is a solid little globe with a nickel core. Molten nickel, I’m told – I can’t say for certain, since I’ve never been there, but it seems a reasonable assumption.  

Our first couple of performances here were well received. The third, well… a little less enthusiastic. Okay, so now we’re borderline in trouble with the law on Kaztropharius 137b, and I’m not entirely sure why. It may have something to do with Mitch’s extracurricular activities while we’re busy on stage entertaining the natives. He and the two Lincolns tend to find their own entertainment, whereas Marvin (my personal robot assistant) keeps close to the band, ready to jump in when we forget a chord, or a lyric, or an entire song, perhaps. (He’s got this teleprompter screen he hangs around his neck for handy messaging… though just lately he seems to be running infomercials on the sucker.)

I don’t know – we probably just wore out our welcome. The Kaztropharians have always been fairly hospitable, even when Mitch made the mistake of sending us back through a time vortex to their Pleistocene era back when we visited here in September 2003. (Or was that their “plastocene” era? Not sure.) They didn’t get particularly sore at us, even if we inadvertently changes a few things about their remote history, like the evolution of certain essential plants and animals. (Hey… somebody should have labeled them. How the hell was I supposed to know?) Now Lincoln, Mitch, and company apparently have found another way to cheese them off.  

Anywho, they want us gone, and who can blame them. Three nights worth of Big Green tunes and pretty much any of you would feel the same way. (Don’t all contradict me at once out there. Come on – throw me a freaking bone!)

Political Rants

Payback time.

The election is barely past us and corporate America is already knocking on our door for the rent.

Speaking of timing, former Sen. Alan Simpson and former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of the president’s commission on deficit reduction, have agreed we should gut Social Security, Medicare. Well, there’s a surprise – both have an execrable history of animosity towards these quite successful social programs. (Simpson’s contempt for elderly people is palpable and disgusting, and he never misses an opportunity to toss a rhetorical brick at them.) Of course, their proposal also calls for tax cuts for the rich and for corporations. Again, no surprises there.

This is just the latest chapter in the attack against the poor, working class, elderly, and infirm that has been underway for decades in this country. Time and time again they have sought to undermine Social Security, to loot its trust fund, and to convert it into something it was never intended to be – an instrument for the creation of private wealth. Social Security is a supplemental guaranteed retirement program and, as such, an extremely successful one. It has kept elderly people (at least the ones who did not retire on a mountain of money, like Simpson) out of poverty for seven decades. Likewise, Medicare has not only made the elderly more financially secure, but it has also improved their quality of life in demonstrable ways. Not for nothing that these are the most popular social programs in America.

It may mean little to Simpson, Bowles, and many who share their views that people they don’t know will have to work until 68 or 70 and do without adequate cost of living adjustments in their old age. It sure as hell matters to me, and I imagine to many others as well. Social Security is not on the brink of bankruptcy – far from it. They just want to use its revenues to cover our government’s bad decisions with regard to financial regulation and foreign policy – decisions that have cost trillions of dollars over the last decade alone. Now we are being asked to pay for those criminal actions. There can be only one answer to that.

Don’t know, but we may have to take a page out of France’s book. If it takes standing in the street to protect the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people, it’s goddamned worth it.

luv u,

jp