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February 8, 2010
 It's not that my opinions are of critical import, but I am energized by the recent upsurge in articulate written concerns about the rapid and worrisome growth in the militarization of the United States. A former diplomat with two wartime tours of active duty with the paratroops, I am honored to lecture at DOD schools, working with men and women who are part of the nation's defense, but not responsible for its huge costs, in terms of money as well as international standing.
At a recent presentation, I told them of my reaction to the 2/8/09 color photo in the Post (M-13) of the U.S. Marine Band. In uniforms reminiscent of a production of The Student Prince, there were 122 musicians! Memory tells me that John Phillips Sousa got along famously with only 26 when he led it.
Continue reading "A Former U.S. Ambassador Writes:"...
February 7, 2010
 In our headlong rush to secure air travel from terrorists we may pay the ultimate price: random corruption of our DNA. The manufacturers of mega-million dollar body scanners assure the public that they are safe. Craven government officials benefit from the money, or the fear, or both. Who will apply the brakes? Since 9/11 I've only flown once — as a matter of principle I refuse to be treated like a prisoner unless the trip is absolutely necessary — now I'm not so sure I'll ever want to fly again...
[This may not be new news, but for some reason the item showed up a couple days ago on my RSS news reader and I believe it's still worth thinking about.]
February 6, 2010
By Richard Greener
 Nearly 100 years ago President Woodrow Wilson pegged the Senate filibuster for exactly what it was. Wilson asserted that the filibuster served only to enable "a little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own," to debase the Senate and turn it into "the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action."
Continue reading "We Have A Crisis, Mr. Vice-President"...
February 5, 2010
 A near miss this morning for the podcast: my Verizon DSL connection is sputtering. On/off, on/off, every couple minutes. Which made it difficult both to upload the .mp3 file and to operate the blog interface. The trouble started yesterday afternoon — I've made two calls to Verizon's technical support — but I doubt that (due to snow) I'll see a service truck anytime before the middle of next week. Hopefully by next Friday everything will be fixed!
Continue reading "DSL Woes"...
February 2, 2010
 On Saturday, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker won best direction award from the Directors Guild of America. This morning it got nine Oscar nominations. Kathryn Bigelow is an imaginative, extraordinarily talented director and she deserves the recognition. I haven't seen The Hurt Locker (yet), but I've been a fan of hers ever since her film Near Dark, released in 1987, which I saw at the time in a theater, in Hyde Park, in Chicago.
Continue reading "In Praise of Kathryn Bigelow"...
February 1, 2010
 Another example of Mr. Obama's catastrophically flawed priorities: Wind power. I saw the news the other day that China was leapfrogging other nations to become a leader in the development of wind turbine technology, but almost missed Nancy Jackson's excellent comment at the Huffington Post re wind power in the budget. More specifically, how it's not noticeably funded in the budget. Worth reading! (The amount of money to be given over to subsidizing nuclear power is another huge outrage, but that's a story for another day.)
 Interesting news today that our closest stellar neighbor, the binary star system of Alpha Centauri, may host earth sized planets. If it does, and if they were habitable, they might be make a good refuge once we've irreversibly wrecked this world. Except, of course, first we'd have to be able to get from here to there.
Continue reading "One Giant Leap Backwards"...
January 28, 2010
 Doing a word search of today's announcement regarding $8 billion of funding (.pdf) for high speed rail projects, one finds only two, with a total value of $74 million, that explicitly mention Amtrak. Once again, the U.S. government wants to spend more for less, on the assumption that unlike in every advanced industrial country Amtrak should pay its own way. One also notes that $1.25 billion is to be spent on a train between Tampa and Orlando, a train that, according to expert James McCommons, Florida completely failed to develop. Obviously, Florida got pork-barrel spending for 2012. In contrast, the Boston-New York-Washington DC corridor, one of the nation's busiest, got a measly $112 million. Some of these spending priorities (California; Washington/Oregon; Illinois/Wisconsin) make sense but even a casual look shows a great deal of waste as well as many missed opportunities. Score it a "D-plus," which, nevertheless, is one of Mr. Obama's very best efforts.
 So I know the anxieties that are out there right now. They're not new. These struggles are the reason I ran for President. [A true statement. Struggles are grist — but only grist — for Mr. Obama's rhetorical mill.]
It is because of this spirit — this great decency and great strength — that I have never been more hopeful about America's future than I am tonight. ['Never been more hopeful that what worked on the campaign trail can work again and again and again. Besides, I don't know any other way to relate to people than by being a huckster.']
Continue reading "The Speech, Selectively Annotated"...
January 27, 2010
 What moist, glistening eyes. What an inviting smile. What white teeth. The message: you're lunch! Mark Shields, the Newshour's designated "liberal," gushingly called the speech "Reaganesque." Despite Reagan being passé that pretty well sums it up. My own reaction was to wonder just how out of touch with reality American politics can become and, secondly, whether Mr. Obama might be the first President to switch parties while in office. Senators do it from time to time (twenty one times since 1890, according to the Senate's website), while Representatives do it fairly frequently. Having a President switch, however, would be a novelty. It might spice things up. The main political question, of course, being who scavenges the best...
January 24, 2010
 I like reading Simon Johnson, even if he did twice pass up a chance to be a guest on the EP podcast. But Simon is better at the economics than the politics and I was most unhappy to read his first take on Mr. Obama's obviously insincere feints at Wall Street. Simon, nevertheless, is smart enough to recover and in his follow-up he gets it. His fast footwork is worth noting as an example of how one should assess Mr. Obama's false and dishonest lectures, because all too many of those who voted for him are all too anxious to believe in whatever meager scraps he pretends to toss them. Bank reform? Ha! Hell will freeze over first. And on the extreme off-chance that Congress produces any financial "reform" legislation you can bet that it'll be as much a give-away to the banks as Congress' proposed health care "reform" is to the medical services sector.
 Samuel Smith brewery, of Tadcaster, UK, produces a wide range of outstanding, artisanal beers. I'm particularly partial to their organic lager which I've purchased from time to time for many years. Recently, to my delight, I discovered Sam Smith's organic apple cider after my local grocery began stocking it in the produce section. Initially I bought it to use in cooking a pork roast (the roast on a rack, cooked long and slow, cider in a pan beneath adds moisture and flavor) but, since the cider comes in a 18.7 ounce "Victorian Pint" bottle, there was a short glass left over. The stuff drinks very nicely. Now I'm starting to keep a couple bottles always cold in the fridge. I'm not entirely sure but I think I might prefer this cider to regular beer and the portion size of one bottle seems about right. Highly recommended!
 In this morning's Washington Post, Mr. Obama's 2008 campaign manager, the non-college graduate but brilliant brownnose David Plouffe, offers op-ed advice to Democratic Party candidates running in this year's election. Plouffe sez: "no bed-wetting." Plouffe — and probably every hack who Mr. Obama surrounds himself with — seems to think campaign strategists deserve the credit for 2008's victories without understanding that white-hot anger drove most voters to the polls. Plouffe's advice for 2010 is not only trivial, but dangerous.
Continue reading "Clueless"...
January 23, 2010
 As Keith Olbermann pointed out the other night, the logic of the Supreme Court's decision means that eventually all politicians will be overtly purchased and thus it will become impossible to overthrow the corporatist state. Olbermann is right — logically — except that before then things will surely happen that upset the applecart.
Corporations will take their time to really begin to weigh in using their newfound First Amendment rights. They'll want to test the waters; none of them wants to become a sacrificial lamb, or scapegoat; and all of them are very much aware that hasty action risks galvanizing determined opposition. Moreover, nobody can foresee all the nasty unintended consequences of this revolutionary ruling. For an immortal entity, especially, it makes sense to take things slowly. Most likely they'll tinker in 2010; they'll put their thumbs ever so carefully on the scales in 2012; they'll be prepared to pursue some serious gambits by 2014; but, assuming everything else stays much the same, they won't fully open the money sluice before the end of the decade, if not later. Such corporate political calculations work two ways: the public probably gains plenty of time to mobilize but that same delay will lull people into complacency.
Continue reading "What To Do About Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission?"...
January 22, 2010
By Werther*
 The Supreme Court's wholesale rejection of a century of statutes regulating corporate contributions to political campaigns is a breath of fresh air in a hypocrisy-ridden political process. It certainly ought to sweep away the tendency of timid rationalizers to deny the existence of corporate domination and control of every aspect of governance in the United States — a fact which should have already been made abundantly clear by the terms of the bank bailout and the health care travesty.
Continue reading "High Court Decrees Existence of Corporate Übermensch "...
January 21, 2010
 Without knowing for certain, it's a safe bet that no other advanced industrial country allows an unlimited, unregulated amount of money into politics. At least not overtly (Italy being somewhat problematic). As in so many comparative areas, internationally we are an extreme political outlier. Barely a democracy. But within the context of American life today's Supreme Court decision makes perfect sense: corporations effectively run the country so why impose any constraints on them?
Continue reading "American "Democracy" For Sale"...
January 20, 2010
 One can hear Mr. Obama's sigh of relief: Now that the Republicans have a 41 seat majority in the Senate the Democrats can blame them for obstructing every bill that the Democrats fail to pass. Better yet, on health care the president has every excuse to move further towards the "center" in order to gain "bipartisan support" for comprehensive "reform" from one or more Republican Senators. A corporatist overhaul of the U.S. medical services sector thus remains very much in the cards.
Continue reading "The Beginning of the End of Barry's Great Adventure"...
January 19, 2010
 A lot of people will spin Massachusetts a lot of ways, but what today's vote really means is that independents turned out in record numbers to tell the Democrats: ENOUGH! Trying to make every sort of policy on the basis of what one or two or three "moderates" want, when everybody knows that "moderates" is a code word for corporate interests, is just plain stupid. The only sensible option was to throw the Democratic supermajority out. Their vote doesn't mean that people in Massachusetts want a Republican Senator so much as that they've made a strategic point. It's a shame, but Washington almost surely won't listen. It'll take another election later this year to hammer the point home...
Continue reading "Screw the Democrats"...
January 16, 2010
 Next Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts, for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, will be a referendum on the Democratic Party. Its prospects don't look good. The problem is, the lackluster Martha Coakley is a pawn of special interests and people in Massachusetts know it. And though few commentators want to point out the obvious, Massachusetts already has "health care reform" that panders to corporations — but folk up there haven't enjoyed any benefits. Moreover, a lot of Democrats are sick of Mr. Obama, they feel they've been hoodwinked yet again, and they're itching to send a message. Not to say a single good word about Scott Brown, it would be a rich comeuppance for the Democrats if he wins.
Continue reading "A Wild Hair in the Bay State"...
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February 5, 2010
 Although the Most Serene Republic of San Marino has an older, written, working constitution, among countries of any significance the United States of America has the oldest. By far. Unfortunately, it hasn't aged gracefully. We're driving a Model T but telling ourselves it's a Ferrari. We're delusional. And until we figure out that the system's rules deliver lousy results — that our political backwardness is not so much the fault of a deficient culture — we're stuck. To talk about this problem logically I turned to the brilliant Chicago labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan. It was a rare pleasure to get into the structural nitty-gritty and I hope someday we'll see Tom in Congress. Total runtime forty seven minutes. Optimism favors the wise.
January 29, 2010
 Come visit Yemen, where for a modest fee authorized security operatives can observe terrorists in their native habitat and — at special à la carte pricing — if desired, kill them. Trophies available. Limited to parties of six or fewer; no boots on the ground; some other restrictions apply. Well, nobody in officialdom would be quite so louche to say so but that's pretty much what it amounts to... For a look at Yemen from the back of a pickup truck I turned to the former UK infantry officer James Spencer. A pleasure and an honor! Total runtime an hour and fifteen minutes. Listen & learn.
January 22, 2010
 To ward off the Black Death, physicians in Europe donned bird masks fitted with red tinted lenses. Six hundred and seventy years later, when it comes to general-purpose health care in modern day America we prefer to deploy incense made out of money. The results are just about as good and the mentality is not much changed, either. To explore some of the pernicious superstition at the heart of our pending health care legislation I turned to Richard "R.J." Eskow, an expert who blogs frequently at the Huffington Post and who, I hasten to add, thinks the Senate bill could be made palatable. This conversation was slightly overtaken by Tuesday's vote in Massachusetts; nevertheless, it still sheds light on the choices before Congress. I very much enjoyed talking with Richard and I hope we can do it again. Total runtime an hour and five minutes. ℞
January 15, 2010
 It's got to be the biggest detective story in the world: what are our human origins? And if we're continuing to evolve at an ever faster rate, as Dr. Henry C. Harpending suggests in The 10,000 Year Explosion , how differently, then, might we identify with the earliest historians, or even relatively recent ones? A lot to consider. Not directly related to politics (perhaps), but the ideas profoundly influence how we talk about it. Total runtime an hour and nine minutes. Caution! Contains politically incorrect content.
January 8, 2010
 On the one hand, Muslims have every reason to feel aggrieved over U.S. military interventions around the world. On the other, many Muslim cultural practices run up against Western norms and don't — in my view — under the banner of religion deserve any special protections. Indeed, a danger exists the other way around when ecumenical tolerance, a bedrock liberal concept, gets circumscribed though undue deference to a fundamentalist world view. To explore some of these issues I turned to Dr. Jytte Klausen, author of the recently published (and partly censored by Yale University Press) The Cartoons That Shook the World. I don't entirely share Jytte's reasoning but I learned a great deal and am very grateful to her for talking candidly about her experience with her book. Total runtime one hour. Let secularism rule!
December 18, 2009
 If we're being visited by aliens — and I absolutely believe that we are — it shouldn't seem all that surprising if some of them abduct humans. Why they might do it and the extent to which it may be happening, however, remain murky. To talk about such strangeness I turned to the celebrated artist Budd Hopkins, whose just published memoir ART, LIFE and UFOs has got to be one of the most unusual ever written. It was great fun exploring different ideas with Budd and I'll give him this: his heart's in the right place. Total runtime an hour and four minutes. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year's and I wish you all a very joyous holiday season! ☃
December 11, 2009
 Industry pays many Americans not to believe in anthropogenic climate change. Other skeptics, however, have an innate, almost theological aversion to "theory," to the point where they have a great deal of trouble understanding the difference between theory and facts. In the context of our American debate it's critical, therefore, to emphasize the facts, and so to consider some high-priority ones I turned to Orrin Pilkey, a leading expert on coastal environments. Orrin's most recent book, co-authored with Rob Young, is The Rising Sea, an honest assessment of what will get washed away. I really enjoyed talking with Orrin and I wish his plain common sense were more widely shared... Total runtime an hour and two minutes. Seize the high ground!
December 4, 2009
 Passenger trains. We're going to have to have more of them. But it would be folly to wait for the market to provide for our needs, because it won't. Passenger rail isn't profitable, anywhere. Let's be frank: it's socialized transportation. To talk about the virtues of train travel, and its politics, I turned to James McCommons, author of the most excellent and just published Waiting on a Train. Jim spent most of 2008 riding around on Amtrak and interviewing top people in the railroad industry, the book being a fun mix of travel writing, reporting and editorializing. It was a great pleasure to talk with Jim and I hope his message gets heard. Total runtime an hour and eleven minutes. Take the train!
November 27, 2009
 It's a truism — but no less true for that — we often can't get to reality except through literature. Or poetry. Or, in the case of Don Marquis, whatever it was, format-wise, that he wrote in his newspaper columns featuring Archy, the vers-libre poet reincarnated as a cockroach, and Mehitabel, the alley cat who fancied herself the reincarnation of Cleopatra. As Archy put it: "i see things from the under side now" and somehow he manages to explain the meaning of that perspective to us. To talk about this extraordinary work and other literary matters I turned to Michael Sims, editor of The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel and author and editor of several other books. It was a rare delight to talk with Michael; I hope you enjoy hearing from him as much as I did. Total runtime an hour and twelve minutes. Happy Thanksgiving! ♫
November 20, 2009
 In America, giant pharmaceutical corporations run roughshod over the public. They price gouge, charging 50% more than in civilized countries. They foist useless, often harmful — even deadly — drugs on the market. They profoundly corrupt the medical profession. Adding insult to injury, they pay unimaginable sums of money to get whatever they want from Congress. It's an outrageous situation. To learn the details of what's really going on I turned to Melody Petersen, who's been writing and reporting on Big Pharma for over ten years and whose latest book, Our Daily Meds, is a must-read. Despite the horror stories it was great to talk with Melody and I have the highest regard for her work. Total runtime an hour and eighteen minutes. No blind trust allowed.
November 13, 2009
 Forget Afghanistan for a moment. A lot of us, including me, have been worrying that the U.S. may be stuck in Iraq indefinitely. Quil Lawrence, however, says that that may not be the case. Quil, NPR's Baghdad bureau chief, has spent many recent years in Iraq, knows a great deal, has excellent judgment, and his reports must be taken seriously. Since I'm not there and he is, I defer to him despite my intellectual skepticism. I certainly hope he's right. It was great to talk again with Quil and I thank NPR for helping make it possible. Total runtime forty four minutes. Enjoy!
November 6, 2009
 It's crazy-making to watch the world's indifference to Israel's grinding destruction of the Palestinians. There isn't really even a word for it — either the indifference or the criminal assault, and particularly the latter. But like it or not, admit it or not, Israel has thoroughly implicated America. To talk about all this I turned to a former CIA analyst, Kathleen Christison, whose recent book Palestine in Pieces (with co-author husband Bill Christison) gets pretty much everything right. An inhuman problem, but a joy to realize that some of us are aware. Total runtime an hour and seventeen minutes. Take a stand!
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