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File this one under "You knew it was happening, but it's still shocking to see them admit it": Gas and oil companies are hiring military psy-op specialists to persuade the public to take on a fracking-friendly attitude:

In the following recording, given to CNBC, one presenter tells the crowd to download a copy of the Army's counterinsurgency manual. "Because," he said, the movement opposing the industry is an "insurgency."

In this next recording (also given to CNBC) the speaker tells listeners that his organization maintains several military veterans who served as psychological warfare specialists. These former "psy ops" soldiers, he explains, are using their skills in Pennsylvania.

In his forum called “Designing a Media Relations Strategy To Overcome Concerns Surrounding Hydraulic Fracturing,” Range Resources communications director Matt Pitzarella explains how to "overcome stakeholder concerns" surrounding fracking.

“We have several former psy ops folks that work for us at Range because they’re very comfortable in dealing with localized issues and local governments,” Pitzarella said. “Really all they do is spend most of their time helping folks develop local ordinances and things like that. But very much having that understanding of psy ops in the Army and in the Middle East has applied very helpfully here for us in Pennsylvania.”

It was during Anadarko Petroleum's manager of external affairs, Matt Carmichael's, session on “Understanding How Unconventional Oil & Gas Operators are Developing a Comprehensive Media Relations Strategy to Engage Stakeholders and Educate the Public" that he suggested his colleagues:

“Download the U.S. Army-slash-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual, because we are dealing with an insurgency,” Carmichael said. “There’s a lot of good lessons in there and coming from a military background, I found the insight in that extremely remarkable.”

The paranoia of these people...! Anyone who disagrees is labeled an "insurgent." Anyone doesn't want to do what a corporation demands is labeled an "insurgent."

Y'know what that kind of attitude may one day create? A real insurgency. God forbid -- still, sometimes I think that these right-wing corporatist maniacs won't be happy until there's actual civil war in this country. Permalink

Fortunately, my life should soon get back to normal, and I will resume my usual posting schedule. In the meantime, I thought I would bring to your attention a passage from Bill Clinton's new book Back to Work, which is, on the whole, one the more sensible volumes you are likely to see this year. Some of my readers will not forgive his soft attitude toward the Obama administration, but, to me, that part is understandable. (And I refuse to make opposition to Obama the polar star of my existence, as some of my readers do.)

I've seen the following passage discussed in various web forums, but always in garbled form. In the original, Clinton is as clear as a bell.

Clinton discusses Glass-Steagall here. Oddly, he doesn't mention that the reform bill passed by a veto-proof majority, or that the original version threatened CRA. The text after the asterisks is his...


I made some mistakes too, though not the ones I’ve been most widely criticized for: aggressively enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and signing the bill repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law requiring commercial and investment banking to be done by separate institutions.

Conservatives blame the CRA, which requires banks to make loans in the communities from which they take deposits, for forcing banks to make risky mortgage loans they wouldn’t have made otherwise. It’s true that my administration vigorously enforced the CRA requirement and that by the time I left office, more than 95 percent of the CRA loans made since the law was passed in the 1970s, more than $800 billion worth, had been made in the eight years I served. Of course, not all the CRA loans were for mortgages. Some were small-business loans, which are in short supply again today. And making mortgages available to people in the community didn’t cause the meltdown. One study found that CRA–compliant banks were actually less likely to fail during the financial crisis than banks that shipped more of their deposits out of the community in hopes of getting higher returns elsewhere.

Many progressives believe the mortgage crisis was hastened and enlarged by the end of the division between commercial and investment banks. I’ve seen this argument in print dozens of times without supporting examples, as if it were self-evident. It isn’t. Many purely commercial banks made bad mortgage loans and failed. The first bailouts went to an insurance comp any, AIG, and Bear Stearns, an investment bank with no commercial operations.

By the time Glass-Steagall was repealed, Federal Reserve rulings, beginning in the late 1980s, had already eliminated restraints on big banks’ ability to engage in both commercial and investment banking activities, except for restrictions on underwriting insurance. The real problem was that both before and after I signed the bill, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which oversees investment banks, lacked the authority to require them to set aside more cash to cover high-risk investments (though there were other steps a vigorous SEC commissioner could have taken to reduce the risks of a crash), and the bank regulators didn’t do enough to limit commercial banks’ risky loans.

At any rate, now federal regulators do have the authority to limit leverage under the financial reform bill, and two big investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have decided to become bank holding companies, and therefore subject to cash reserve requirements.

The best argument against repealing Glass-Steagall is that it may have accelerated the speed of bank consolidations, which were already well under way, encouraging banks to get bigger, faster. Some believe that big banks are less inclined to make small-business loans than community banks.

I do think I can be fairly criticized for not making a bigger public issue out of the need to regulate financial derivatives. I couldn’t have done anything about it, because the Republican Congress was hostile to all regulations, going so far as to threaten to leave the SEC with no budget because the commissioner, Arthur Levitt, was vigilant in doing his job. But I should have spoken out more, especially after Congress included a measure barring financial derivatives from being regulated as securities or commodities in an appropriations bill that passed by a veto-proof majority. In not doing so, I ignored one of my own rules: even when you can’t win, it’s best to get caught trying. Permalink

Although I am STILL having crippling tech issues, I just had to pop in to say three words I thought I'd never say:

I'll miss Perry.

It's almost too bad. If this guy were the nominee, I'd have no problem voting for him. He would be the end the Republican party. My god, he really does make Dubya look brilliant.

Perry wants to get rid of the Education department. He may have something there. If you want proof positive that the educational system in this country has utterly failed, you need only take a look at...guess who!

ADDED NOTE (From the "credit where due" dept.): A Salon commenter had this to say about Perry's debate performance.

I'll bet Perry wishes he had Rove whispering in his ear now.

Yeah, what was the deal with the magic box? That feels like one of those stories that someone should leak in about 30 years after everyone is dead.
"Oh yeah we had Karen Hughes on the other end but she was too annoying so we had Rove on in later debates. I can't believe we got away with it. The only publication that ran the story was some low end liberal blog, I think it's name was Saloon or Salad or something. Man, they had the story of the decade, but nobody believed them. Ha! Too late now!"

The reference goes back to the tale of the "Bush bulge," the 2004 story that pretty much made this blog. For weeks, Cannonfire (previously an unknown site) received massive amounts of pageloads each day. (The stats are down to a far more manageable level now.)

But the story of "Promptergate," as I called it, began right here -- actually, with my ladyfriend, who asked "What's that thing on Bush's back?" while we were watching a rebroadcast of the first Bush-Kerry debate.

A couple of days after I wrote that first piece, I was contacted by Farhad Manjoo of Salon, who wrote an article that (if I recall correctly) did not really include much information beyond the details and speculations that had appeared here.

I never took the bulge story all that seriously. Nevertheless, I wrote about it in minute detail because...well, because it was fun, dammit, and the audience seemed to groove on what I was handing them.

I presume that there is nothing on Perry's back but copious amounts of simian hair. And if you carefully examine his ear canal, all you'll see is that tiny hint of daylight peeping through from the other side. Permalink

Ron Paul accuses Elizabeth Warren of being a socialist. I've never once seen Warren advocate direct government control of the means of production. Apparently, the word "socialist" means something different in Paul-speak.

Not to be outdone, Michele Bachmann accused most of her fellow Republicans of being "frugal socialists."

"Socialism means failure and socialism kills a growing economy. ... Because socialism is a principle that I will reject, and I will work to eradicate socialism all across the United States government. Unfortunately for too many Republicans, they also aspire to be frugal socialists. ... We can't preserve liberty if the choice a year from now is between a frugal socialist and an out-of-control socialist."

Is anyone still frightened by this bogeyman?

Through overuse, the word "socialist" no longer has any meaning, at least not in American political discourse. It's simply a term for anything you don't like. If the dog soils your carpet, you can yell "Bad dog!" or you can yell "Socialist dog!" Same thing. Permalink

I'm still too busy with personal affairs to offer a proper blog post. But I'd like to offer some rambling thoughts about the intersection of religion and politics.

Just now, Reuters carried a story about some catty remarks made by Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy -- ad libbed, and apparently spoken without the knowledge that a nearby microphone was "hot" -- about Binjamin Netanyahu:

As the two leaders discussion turns to Israel and the Palestinians, Sarkozy is first to express his distaste for the conservative Israeli Prime Minister.

"I cannot bear Netanyahu, he's a liar," the French president was heard to say.

In response, according to the account by Arret Sur Images, Mr. Obama sympathizes with Sarkozy's frustration, saying, "you're fed up, but I have to deal with him every day."

Obviously, this will do a great deal of harm to Obama, who will no doubt be forced to scrape and bow and perform astounding feats of acrobatic apologetics. The right wing -- and many Jews, right and left -- will probably profess to be appalled at the President's "anti-Semitism" -- even though neither he nor Sarkozy said one anti-Semitic word.

During the Camp David discussions between Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, it became very clear that Carter disliked Begin on a personal level. As I recall, one of the major news magazines -- Time or Newsweek, I forget which -- said so directly. Yet nobody scored Carter for "anti-Semitism"; nobody presumed that he was anything but an honest broker in the peace negotiations.

Frankly, Begin didn't make a good impression on most Americans: He was rude and arrogant and easy to dislike. He had also been a terrorist -- a fact often acknowledged freely in newspaper editorials in the 1970s. You can't mention that history nowadays without being called an anti-Semite.

What a change has occurred since then. Israel is now beyond criticism. It was acceptable for a president to dislike Begin three decades ago, but Obama's mild expression of exasperation toward Netanyahu will be probably give rise to all sorts of hysteria and paranoia.

Parallels. I'm reading a book called Paris, Capital of Modernity by David Harvey, a leftish retelling of the various recurrent rebellions that beset that city throughout the 19th century, and of the conditions that gave rise to those rebellions. Much of that book has a bearing on the OWS movement.

Religion was the key factor in that history.

Between 1789 and 1871, the Parisian rebels were often led by men who detested religion. Whenever they got the chance, they would shoot archbishops or guillotine nuns or commit some similar outrage. This anti-religious frenzy had the very predictable effect of turning the rural areas of France against the "reds" of Paris; peasants and workers acted against their own interests, aligning themselves with royalists in order to defend their faith. Whenever the rebels tried to do injury to the Church, the Church became stronger. Reactionary, paranoid, and strong.

A very similar series of events took place during the Spanish Civil War. Anticlerical anarchists, fueled by their inchoate hatred of all religion, committed supremely foolish acts, such as digging up dead nuns and displaying their skeletons for the movie cameras. That footage became a potent recruiting tool for Franco.

Today, in America, the Southern Baptists and evangelicals hold enormous power. Fundamentalist Protestantism is the single most important force which drives so many working class Americans to act against their interests. As a result, we have a "new atheism" movement -- which, of course, is only going to strengthen the fundamentalists.

Not let's bring it all back to Obama and Netanyahu.

I am convinced that peace in the middle east is possible. The most direct route to peace would require the American president to take a stern stance toward Israel: "We're not asking you to do this; we're telling you." Alas, no president would dare to adopt such an attitude, because the result would be a political typhoon on the domestic front.

Don't blame American Jews; the problem rests entirely with Christian Zionism.

Today, as in the 19th century, the greatest obstacle to political progress is religion -- not all religion, but religion in its most reactionary, most paranoid forms. Yet if you confront the religious right directly, you'll only make it stronger. Opposition will be seen as confirmation of their fears.

How can one deal with such a foe? Permalink

As you know, I despise the "controlled demolition" freakazoids. If you look at the history of this, the most inane of all conspiracy theories, you'll see that it originated not on the left but on the libertarian (or neo-Nazi) right.

It began with people like Alex Jones, Eric Hufschmid, Jared Israel, Carol Valentine and like-minded individuals. None of them are friends to the left. (Most of them would proclaim themselves to be "beyond" the traditional categories of left and right. Translation: They're right-wingers in disguise.)

In short and in sum, the "controlled demolition" theory was a classic example of the right infiltrating the left -- and a lot of young and very naive lefties fell for it, especially during the 2004-2007 period. In my opinion, this extremely well-funded propaganda effort was a deliberate ratfucking operation designed to decredibilize any inquiry into the real questions surrounding the events of 9/11, such as the involvement of the Saudis and the links between Osama Bin Laden and American (and Pakistani) intelligence. (Spooks are heavily tied into the world of drug trafficking, and Osama was a man with a lot of heroin for sale.)

Now the CDers are trying to ratfuck the Occupy Wall Street movement. They call their hijacking efforts Occupy Building 7.

As we've seen with previous anti-OWS efforts, this devious scheme is being promoted via an elaborate, impressive-looking website that obviously cost a fair amount money -- yet the people behind it give no indication as to their identities. The lack of signatures is all the clue you need. Invisible men are trying to manipulate the minds of millions.

Classic ratfucking. Classic.

The "Occupy Building 7" site is filled with long-debunked misinformation. The key piece of evidence offered by these twerps is Larry Silverstein's "pull it" remark, which he made on TV.

"I remember getting a call from the Fire Department commander, telling me they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, you know, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is just pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse."

As I've noted ad infinitum, he didn't say that they should "pull" the building right then and there -- seen in context, his words obviously indicate that he simply did not want firefighters to continue to risk their lives trying to save a building best given up for lost. Silverstein also said that the decision was made by the fire chief of New York; I guess the conspiracy nuts must think that he too was party to the Grand Conspiracy.

If we posit a conspiracy, then his statement makes no sense. If he knew that the joint had been surreptitiously wired for controlled demolition (as if such a thing were possible!), he would not be saying "All right, let's pull it" as though making a spur-of-the-moment decision.

The key piece of evidence cited by the "Occupy Building 7" disinformationists turns out to proof that the CD theory is nonsense. If you can't see that obvious fact, then re-read Silverstein's statement until the truth hits you.

The structure was already swaying by the time the firefighters were told to leave -- in fact, the decaying structural integrity is the reason why they were ordered to vacate. There is no mystery as to what destroyed Building 7 -- the joint contained lots of flammable material, including several massive tanks filled with explosive fuels. Those who try to convince you that there was a controlled demolition never show you the raging inferno visible in photos taken from the other side of the building.

Just look at the accompanying photo to your right -- a photo which the conspiracy theorists continually try to hide from the public. In a massive blaze like that, any planted bombs surely would have gone off long before that shot was taken -- and in irregular order.

No, you will not be allowed to debate the point with me. I used to allow that privilege, but the CDers proved themselves to be so obnoxious and stupid that I banished them from my site. I have learned a long time ago that CD maniacs are like religious zealots who try to "witness" to you in public places: You cannot allow them to say one word; you must simply tell them "GO AWAY" in the harshest tone of voice. They are the Borg; they are beyond reason and incapable of debate.

(Nevertheless, I can guarantee that several of these dimwits will try to comment on this post, despite this warning that their words will go unpublished. That's how stupid they are.)

Will the kids protesting Wall Street in nearby Zuccotti Park fall for this nonsense? I fear so. Many of them are ill-educated and easily gulled. As noted in an earlier post, more OWS marchers favor Rick Perry's flat tax proposal than favor the idea of radically restructuring the economy in a liberal direction. These kids mean well, but young eyes gather much wool.

This new effort may be the OWS-killer.

(In case anyone's interested: I put off my system rebuild because I decided to give Windows 8 a try. For some reason, the three-hour download keeps getting interrupted in medias res.)

PS: Well, it took nearly a full day, but a CD nut finally tried to sneak in a comment. This, despite my clear warning that they have no voice here. Proof, once again, that CD-ers are COMPLETE idiots.

Then again, I'm not feeling like a genius myself. This damned reinstall is taking forever. Permalink

Well, I've been struggling for days with a tech problem. A series of very weird system freeze-ups have afflicted this particular 'puter. Even though the gauges show low CPU usage and perfectly normal memory usage, even though every anti-virus and anti-spyware scan comes up clean, and even though the hard drive seems fine, everything will lock up while using Photoshop or even Firefox -- sometimes even when moving largish files.

In Task Manager/Resource Monitor, the green lines show that everything is cool with the CPU -- yet the blue line depicting the CPU's "maximum frequency" is freaking out. Googling reveals that lots of others have had this issue, but nobody seems to understand why it happens. There's nothing for it but to re-install. Everything.

Sometimes this process is a breeze. Sometimes not. If I'm absent for a while, you'll know why.

In the meantime, check out:

1. Eliot Spitzer on what OWS should do now. His is the wisest, most bullshit-free list of desiderata yet offered. Nothing here about being kind to animals or respecting mother nature or marijuana legalization or gay marriage or ending the federal reserve. This isn't a laundry list; Spitzer gives us ECONOMICS ECONOMICS ECONOMICS. (Also publicity, publicity, publicity, which is, alas, a necessary part of the deal.)

Schedule OWS rallies and events at the various State of the State addresses delivered by governors in the first week of the new year. Use the fact that most state media congregate to hear what is usually a rather plebian speech. Create another story for them to cover that day from the capitol.

Call for a full rollback of the Bush tax cuts for all those above $1 million in annual income.

Start a petition drive in every state demanding that the state municipal governments stop using Goldman Sachs for advice and underwriting until Goldman Sachs returns the $12.9 billion dollars it received, from the taxpayers, as a part of the AIG bailout.

Better idea: Let's not call for Goldman disinvestment as part of a we-want-our-money-back deal. That's too limiting. Let's call for Goldman disinvestment for the same reason a previous generation called for disinvestment from South Africa. Evil is evil.

2. OWS does so have leaders. Remember when I told you that the leaderless movement actually had hidden movers-n-shakers? I was right. The concerns here are legitimate but can, I think, be addressed and rectified.

3. The (or at least some) truth about Occupy Oakland. (Via Skydancing, which has had lots of good stuff lately.)

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Instead of spending billions and billions of dollars trying to make the "invisible hand" do its thing, could we solve the economic crisis via a more direct approach? A friend to this blog sent the following...

The Business Section of the St. Petersburg ( Florida ) Times asked readers for ideas on "How Would You Fix The Economy?" A senior citizen around 80 yrs. of age nailed it! Here is what he wrote:

Dear Mr. President, Please find below my suggestion for fixing America 's economy. Instead of giving billions of dollars to companies that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan. You can call it the "Patriotic Retirement Plan": There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire. Forty million job openings - Unemployment fixed!

2) They MUST buy a new AMERICAN Car. Forty million cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed!

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed! It can't get any easier than that!! P.S. If more money is needed, have all members in Congress pay their taxes.. Mr. President, while you're at it, make Congress retire on Social Security and Medicare. I'll bet both programs would be fixed pronto!

This suggestion is floating around as a piece of instant email folklore. Most people reading it presume that the total cost of the program would be $40 million. (Admit it. That was your initial impression, right?)

In fact, distributing one million bucks apiece to $40 million people would cost $40,000,000,000,000 -- forty trillion dollars.

Nevertheless, I say do it. Just print up the money and hand it out. Inflation's low right now, so what the hell. If those who received the million bucks were asked to forgo their Social Security payments, then that program would be in the clear for a long, long, long time to come.

So I still like this idea, even though I know the real sum involved. I doubt, however, that many will agree with me.

PS. One further point: If the retirees live to the age of 80, they'll have $33,333 a year to live on. So I'm not so sure about that car and that house. I'm too tired right now to work out the interest rate if the money is put into a CD... Permalink

Almost everything wrong with American religion can be found in this story.

An email sent out to members of the Crystal Cathedral congregation requesting meals for founder Robert H. Schuller's wife Arvella, who is ill with pneumonia, is creating mixed feelings of sadness and outrage among members.

According to longtime member Jim McDonald, an email was sent out by administrators to Bible study groups as well as church elders, asking that meals for the reverend's wife be dropped off at the cathedral's Tower of Hope where the Schullers' limo drivers will be waiting to pick them up at the designated time.

Member Bob Canfield says he was outraged when he got the message.

"These are millionaires who have limos and chauffeurs," he said. "Why in God's name would they want the congregants to deliver meals? It's ludicrous."

The email states that the Schullers do not want get-well cards sent because they would like to "keep her situation under the radar."

"However, they would appreciate meals over the next three to four weeks," the email states. "They are to be sent to the church in order to be transported to Arvella. The limo drivers could pick up the dinners or meet in the Tower Lobby around 4:30 p.m."

The message also requests that the meals be low in sodium and include items such as fruit, meats, soup and egg dishes such as quiches.

Well, I'm a lot more downscale that Robert Schuller. I'll take pasta and tomato sauce, some onions and maybe a few of those $1 chubs of ground turkey for the dog. We'll pick it up in our old Ford minivan that we bought from the post office.

By the way, Schuller's Crystal Cathedral is bankrupt, due (in part) to the the pastor's swankpot lifestyle.

The appeal comes weeks after a lawsuit charged that the founder of the Crystal Cathedral house of worship, Rev. Robert Schuller, and his family had been paying themselves lavish salaries and other benefits while the church was in financial straits.

There's another side to the story. Part of the reason for the drop in church membership has been the takeover by Schuller's daughters, who have switched over to a Gospel music format. (The Crystal Cathedral, located in Orange County, used to offer the aural equivalent of Wonder Bread.) The choir members are required to sign a stupid document decrying gay marriage, as though that has anything to do with singing. This ultraconservative stance annoyed paterfamilias Robert Schuller (now 84), who actually seems to be rather gay friendly: He hired an openly gay architect to build his cathedral.

Schuller was probably the least obnoxious of the televangelists who came to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. Still, he should have heeded the observation of St. John Chrysostom, printed here just a couple of days ago:

Do you pay such honor to your excrements as to receive them into a silver chamber-pot when another man made in the image of God is perishing in the cold?

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I'm no great fan of Hillary Clinton these days. But our friend Brent Budowsky makes a good case. The words below the asterisks are his...

* * *

The true political state of the union is best revealed in a recent poll in Time magazine that found that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would win an epic and possibly realigning landslide in a presidential election against any Republican candidate.

First, the numbers. Then, the reasons.

In the Time poll, Clinton would defeat Mitt Romney by a whopping 55 percent to 38 percent. She would defeat Rick Perry by an even more devastating 58 percent to 32 percent.

These are realigning numbers. In this hypothetical match-up, the Clinton landslide would be so huge, and the Republican defeat so catastrophic, that Democrats would almost certainly regain control of the House and maintain control of the Senate.

In the Time poll, President Obama also defeats any candidate in the Republican field, though by far smaller margins than Clinton. Anyone who suggests that “Obama is toast” should not be taken seriously.

I believe the president, whom I support, would be a slight favorite in a close election against Romney, and could win a landslide against other Republicans, who have not come close to crossing the threshold of being serious contenders for commander in chief.

The lesson of the Time poll, which I believe would be replicated in other polls, though possibly not as dramatically, is this:

The next great realignment in American politics is very likely to be a Democratic realignment. It cannot be a Republican realignment, because the GOP has moved so far to the extreme right that it is now far outside the mainstream of American opinion.

While it is true that Hillary Clinton’s huge popularity is partly due to her being removed from partisan politics as secretary of State, there are other powerful messages for both parties in her soaring popularity.

Hillary Clinton represents the brand of the Democratic Party embodied by traditional Democratic presidents in hard economic times. She is identified with the great prosperity of the Bill Clinton presidency. But there are other powerful forces at work:

Hillary Clinton is part of what I once called “The Female Century.” Throughout the nation and around the world there is an epochal movement toward true equality for women.

By contrast, some Republicans slander Planned Parenthood. Many Republicans aggressively oppose pay equity for women. Congressional Republicans launch hostile attacks on countless programs that benefit women.

I have written before, and will write again, that a tidal wave of support from female voters will be a powerful factor helping the president and Democrats in 2012.

This “woman power” that benefits Hillary Clinton with women now benefits her with many men as well. In an economy where many view the 1 percent as unfairly gaining at the expense of the other 99 percent, Hillary Clinton is seen as a fighter. She never gives up. She is a voice for those who feel disempowered, including white male blue-collar workers, blacks who feel trapped in joblessness and injustice, Hispanics who are told their dreams can no longer come true and seniors who trust Hillary Clinton as their protector.

Hillary Clinton will not run for president in 2012. She will be one of the greatest assets of President Obama, who had the good judgment to name her secretary of State.

Hillary Clinton disproves the notion that America is a rightist nation. If the 2016 election were held today, America would not turn to the right, it would turn to Clinton.

In the eyes of voters, Hillary Clinton is the North Star of an America where Democrats act like Democrats and where every woman deserves equal pay, every worker deserves a job and nobody should be left behind.

The great source of Clinton’s strength is that the dreams of women are the dreams for all. Dorothy Rodham was one great mom who raised one great daughter. If Democrats remember why, they will do just fine in 2012.

* * *

Cannon here: A few posts down, we described how a reader of this blog contacted the Obama campaign in order to find out his stance on further cuts to Medicare. The staffers replied that he doesn't have a stance. Not yet.

I still can't get my mind around that response. A Democratic president who doesn't have a position on such a clearly Democratic issue: Is such a thing possible?

Say what you will about Hillary: She would have had an answer to that question.

I don't dislike Obama as thoroughly as I used to, if only because he has been doing a few of the right things lately. But his is still -- and always will be -- a failed presidency. The best thing that Obama can do for his country right now is quit. Permalink

St. John Chrysostom:

It is not possible for one to be wealthy and just at the same time.
Do you pay such honor to your excrements as to receive them into a silver chamber-pot when another man made in the image of God is perishing in the cold?

Now look here.

Which one is the Christian? Can't be both. Permalink

I'm a little late, but Matt Taibbi wrote a terrific piece advocating pulling your money out of Bank of America. As an OWS-related strategy, this could do much more good than camping out in a park, because

...when it comes to commercial banking, Bank of America is as bad as it gets.

The markets, of course, have lately come to agree, as B of A has lately been downgraded again to just above junk status. The only reason the bank is not rated even lower than that is that it is Too Big To Fail. The whole world knows that if Bank of America implodes – whether because of the vast number of fraud suits it faces for mortgage securitization practices, or because of the time bomb of toxic assets on its balance sheets – the U.S. government will probably step in to one degree or another and save it.

The government’s patronage of the bank was never clearer than in recent weeks, when B of A quietly decided to move trillions of dollars (trillions, not billions) in risky Merrill Lynch derivatives contracts off Merrill’s books and onto the books of the parent/retail arm, Bank of America.

Taibbi's link goes to Zero Hedge, which brings in a truly astounding number:

Bank of America, which today reported a big bottom line loss net of one-time beneficial items, did something quite tricky and extremely devious last month: it shifted anywhere up to the total of $53 trillion of the total derivatives it held as of June 30 (as Zero Hedge previously reported) on its books at Q2 from the Holding Company, which was downgraded last by Moody's from A2 to Baa1 (the third-lowest investment grade rating) to its retail bank, which was downgraded to the far more palatable A2 (from Aa3). The reason for the transfer? Bank customers who were uneasy with the fact that suddenly the collateral backstoping the operating entity handling their counterparty risk was downgraded to just above junk, demanded that said counterparty risk be mitigated by the bank's $1 trillon in deposits. In other words, as Bloomberg first reported when it broke this story, anywhere up to the full $53 trillion (we don't know for sure how much so we assume the worst case) is now fully and effectively backstopped explicitly by the bank's $1,041 trillion (as of September 30) deposits. Pardon, we meant the people's deposits: the same deposits which caused the bank's website to be inoperative for several days in a row after it was rumored that there was an electronic run on the bank.

Your eyes may have watered reading some of that, but you probably got the gist: B of A is dying. In a sense, it died some time ago; it walks among us because it is undead. If B of A goes, the rest of the Wall Street vampires might also face stakes and crosses.

As I've said before: We need to stop visualizing the economy in terms of capitalism and socialism. We need to think of it in terms of finance capitalism versus industrial capitalism. Over the course of thirty years, the financiers have run the show -- and look what they did to the nation. I am of the opinion that the only thing which can revive industrial capitalism in this country is the socialization of finance capitalism.

The destruction of B of A is just the sort of shock that could bring true reform to the system. Even Obama, wretch that he is, might understand the need for bold action. OWS (if it can maintain its current popularity) could provide political cover, or an impetus, for such a move.

Besides, it's not as though the Wall Streeters have been giving the president much love lately.

Why shouldn't we socialize Bank of America outright? Taxpayers have already taken on the risk. Taibbi:

This decision was done at the behest of counterparties to those transactions, who wanted those contracts placed under the aegis of Bank of America, whose deposits are insured by the FDIC. The move was made, according to reports, so that Bank of America could avoid posting $3.3 billion in collateral to satisfy the company’s creditors. In other words, Bank of America just got You the Taxpayer to co-sign as much as $53 trillion worth of dicey derivative contracts.

So the primary regulator of the banking industry is encouraging a functionally insolvent megabank to respond to a credit downgrade by pushing its most explosively risky holdings onto the laps of the taxpayer. This is lunacy…. Remember that story about the Chinese man who had a world-record 33-pound tumor removed from his face? This would be like treating that patient by removing the tumor and surgically attaching it to the face of a new patient, in this case the U.S. taxpayer

I would advise the OWSers to carry signs telling the populace to pull out of B of A and deposit their money in a smaller bank. That's a start.

By the way: That coronary-inducing figure of $53 trillion demonstrates the true absurdity of Wall Street's position. Nobody's quite sure how much money there is in all the world, but every estimate I've seen puts the figure below $53 trillion. In an earlier post, I cited a source -- the CIA, actually -- which gave a figure of $44 trillion in the year 2000.

That figures should give the lie to those right-wingers who still insist that the crisis was caused by Fanni and Freddie giving loans to unqualified people of color. If you were to buy all of the houses purchased via subprime loans, you'd spend only a tiny fraction of $53 trillion. Those loans were used as the basis for funky financial instruments which were used as chips in the most surreal casino of all time. Permalink

I probably shouldn't write about Rick Perry, since his campaign is toast. Still, there's no freude like schadenfreude, and I can't help taking an interest in the debate over the Texas governor's instantly-infamous New Hampshire speech. Was he high? Or is this man simply a born buffoon?

This blogger (previously unknown to me) votes for "buffoon":

But Rick Perry wasn’t on drugs, he’s just that dumb. For years, he’s hidden his intellectual inadequacies behind a blustery bravado that blinded us to his stupidity. As I watched him physically intimidate Ron Paul and shout over Mitt Romney during the debates, I assumed Perry’s chief ignorance was his belief in bullying as a campaign strategy. But I missed the point: Rick Perry’s chief ignorance is his ignorance – he’s an idiot.

On the other hand...

I live in Texas--Perry has been governor forever, and I've never seen him like that. He is usually very packaged and controlled and typically comes across more as a seething bully/slithery politician than the drunken Aggie who was in those clips. Then again, most of the soundbites that appear in the Texas media are things he wanted us to see.

Rachel Maddow interviewed a reporter that has followed Perry for 20ish years. He stated he has only seen Perry act like that once before and that was this year at CPAC in Feb. Absolutely every other time he's spoken it was as you describe it. The feb instance tends to rule out the June back surgery angle. This suggests either new meds with unexpected side effects or missing the meds that keep him grounded the rest of the time. If either of these, the next question is what are the meds for specifically?

Apparently, he had not been drinking before the speech...

"I can tell you unequivocally he wasn't drinking at the event and he hadn't been drinking prior to the event," said Kevin Smith, executive director of conservative group Cornerstone Action, which organized the event, told The Hill. "I was sitting with him, and I found him to be very engaging with all of the people he was talking with, he was very articulate."

According to Smith, Perry drank "only water" in the period leading up to his address. He also said that the general reaction by the Granite State audience had been, "wow, he hit it out of the park" with the speech.

Is it possible that the folks in NH actually liked what they heard? Gawker certainly has it wrong:

The only qualities Perry exhibited that evening were those of someone "articulate, animated and loose" — kind of like vintage Charles Nelson Reilly on a particularly engaging episode of Match Game.

That -- and I'm not making a joke here -- is deeply insulting to the memory of Charles Nelson Reilly. I presume those calling Perry "articulate" do so in the same sense one might nickname a seven-foot bruiser "Tiny."

The most persuasive diagonosis I've seen is this one:

I’m not a psychologist, but I’m the child of someone who’s bipolar — and I know bipolar people well — and this has the *exact* qualities of mania. It’s possible to experience manic episodes from a handful of medical (or chemical) conditions, but as someone who grew up around a LOT of mania, I’d bet money that Governor Perry is expressing it here. Look up ‘mania’ on wikipedia to learn more.

Maybe the answer is simpler. I posit that Perry's handlers have continually told him that his debate performances were too stiff, so he psyched himself into a "loose as a goose" state of mind. Or mindlessness. "Just be yourself," they told him -- and ohmygod, that's who he really is. Permalink

I haven't written about the sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain because I don't have much to say, and what little I do have to say will probably annoy many readers.

I see no hard evidence that the man has done anything wrong. I do not like and do not trust allegations made by invisible, nameless accusers. Even if the accuser were to come forward, "sexual harassment" has become such a ridiculously ill-defined category that I would become perturbed only if the alleged infraction were genuinely outrageous.

Since money apparently changed hands in the Cain case, we have every reason to believe that money motivated the accusation in the first place. As long-time readers know, I am not among those people who view women as holy beings who are incapable of telling fibs for cash. And I can understand why a successful CEO might write a check just to make a problem go away quickly.

Above and beyond all other considerations: I hate seeing elections turn on below-the-waist issues. We cannot expect politicians to be free of human frailty. Allegations of sexual impropriety simply don't matter to me, at least not as much as they matter to many others.

True, such allegations often amuse me, especially when large doses of hypocrisy are involved. And who can resist the opportunity to make a good dirty joke? I sure can't.

But fun is fun, and serious is serious. Political careers -- even the careers of people I don't like -- should not end as a result of this sort of nonsense. Permalink

A few posts down, we discussed the heroic efforts of Progressives United (Russ Feingold's organization) to make sure Medicare and Social Security don't face the chopping block -- again. I suggested calling the Obama campaign and telling them "Not one dime unless the president pledges to save Medicare and Social Security." One reader did just that.

I called the Obama campaign. They said they couldn't find the President's position on that. I told them, politely, that until they made clear an unequivocal stand that any cuts in Medicare and SS benefits would be vetoed by the President, I couldn't open up my wallet the way I did in 2008. They said they'd work on getting a position up. I'm not holding my breath.

He doesn't have a position on that?

He doesn't have a freakin' position on Medicare and Social Security?

Is it too much to ask that a Democratic president take a position on such a fundamentally Democratic issue? Does Obama want his spinelessness to become an issue in 2012? Permalink

Remember when the propagandists were trying to tell you that Occupy Wall Street was violent and that the teabagger extremists are just a bunch of sweet old puddytats? Well, look at this. (The court documents are here.) Right-wing paranoia led a group of aging would-be mass-murderers to plan their own politicized version of Columbine...

Federal agents charged four Georgia men they say are part of a fringe militia group with plotting to attack government officials with explosives and the biotoxin ricin, prosecutors in Atlanta announced Tuesday.

"When it comes time to saving the Constitution, that means some people gotta die," an arrest affidavit quotes one of the defendants, 67-year-old Dan Roberts, as saying during one recorded conversation.

According to arrest affidavits filed in the case, Roberts and 73-year-old Frederick Thomas agreed to buy a silencer, a bomb and parts to convert a semi-automatic rifle to a fully automatic machine gun from an undercover agent. Meanwhile, 65-year-old Ray Adams and 68-year-old Samuel Crump worked to obtain castor beans and produce ricin, an FBI agent states in the documents.

And during an April meeting at his home, Thomas told participants he had a "bucket list" of politicians, government officials, corporate leaders and media figures he said should be targeted to "make the country right again."

"I could shoot ATF and IRS all day long. All the judges and the DOJ and the attorneys and prosecutors," the affidavit quotes Thomas as saying.

The court papers include some snippets from covertly recorded chats with these guys. There are some lovely details not included in any news account known to me...

21. CRUMP also made the following comments regarding dispersing ricin:

a. "You take a poind of that (unintelligible), get upwind, up around Washington, DC, get about 20,000 feet (in an airplane), and turn that shit loose, it'd cover the whole (unintelligible) of Washington."

Since I now live not far from the whole (unintelligible) of Washington, this threat attracted my respectful attention. So did this reference to a toxic substance other than ricin:

14. CRUMP also told CHS1 about another substance even deadlier, stating "That other kind, 1 pound can kill 30 million people. CRUMP then stated, "We need somebody to back us with some damn money so we can make that other shit, which he then described as, "This is worse than anthrax." CRUMP added, "That shit's deadly! There ain't no damn, there ain't no cure it either. And it works, I think within 2 hours."

Very intriguing, and very frightening. Just what is this substance? In a later conversation, Crump referenced botulism, which can be weaponized in an aerosol form. (Also see here.)

I'd also like to know just what source of money these guys had in mind.

Oddly, the FBI investigator is careful not to list the militia linked to these individuals. The Georgia Constitutional Militia does not seem to have updated its website in fifteen years. Wikipedia says that there are two (competing?) groups in that state, the Georgia Militia and the Militia of Georgia. The latter seems likely, since it is located in the northern part of the state, which is where our four "patriots" were located. Their bulletin board doesn't look very active. This thread indicates that they think Glenn Beck is soft of communism and the Tea Party was co-opted by "moderate Republicans."

Should we dismiss the threat posed by the four arrested militia members simply because they are senior citizens? I wouldn't. Permalink

Seriously, this guy makes Dubya seem like Einstein. A Perry presidency could insure the end of the Republican party.

By the way: If you go to Democrats.org, it's quite clear that the party is already running against Romney. Permalink

What's unnerving is that, in this story, some Dems are the villains (or the villain-enablers) while others are trying to rescue the situation. The following comes from Russ Feingold, speaking as head of Progressives United:

* * *

Tell the super committee: No cuts to Medicare and Social Security, or no deal.

It's a disaster in the making: Late last week, Democrats on the deficit "super committee" proposed making huge cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits, two of the most effective social programs in our nation's history and something millions of us depend on for our health care.

It's a misguided attempt to get Republicans to agree to a deal, but it's a deal that's not worth making.

Tens of thousands of progressives have told the super committee Democrats to walk away from any deal that includes cuts to Medicare or Social Security benefits.

But it's clear that we need to step up the pressure.

Click here to sign our petition to super committee Democrats: Walk away from any deal that includes Social Security and Medicare benefit cuts!

The super committee has until November 23 to recommend $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade, and that means the pressure from corporate lobbyists, the administration, and more is only going to grow.

We need to make sure Democrats on the super committee feel the pressure only progressives can bring. We need to urge them to stand by our progressive principles:

1. Ensure millionaires, billionaires, and big corporations pay their fair share of debt reduction,

2. No cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits,

3. No giveaways to corporate interests,

4. Or no deal.

Sign our petition to super committee Democrats now. Tell them to stick to our principles and take Social Security and Medicare benefit cuts off the table -- or no deal.

Super committee Democrats need us to remind them, and they need us in force. That's why we're partnering with the progressives at Social Security Works on this action -- and why I hope you can step up today.

* * *

Cannon here. There is another (arguably more effective) measure you can take. Contact the Obama 2012 campaign (312-698-3670) and tell them you won't give one dime or one vote unless Obama pledges to veto any measure that hits Medicare and Social Security. You say you didn't plan to donate anyways? Hey, you don't have to tell that to them. Permalink

While traversing through several right-wing anti-OWS sites, I found one consistent reference point: The Terror. For the teabaggers, Citizen Robespierre remains a topic of keen and current interest; he is, in a sense, still alive and still a threat. See, for example, here and here and here.

I do not admire him. The best one can say about Robespierre is that, although he may have meant well at first, he eventually went mad and thus had to be put down like a foamy-mouthed dog.

That said, I want to draw a comparison to another event in French history -- one which may also be relevant to our current debate over the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Eighty years after Robespierre's death, in 1871, General Mac-Mahon (who, appropos de rien, was related to Johnny Carson's sidekick), suppressed the Paris Commune. Mac-Mahon's soldiers went on a barbaric, wholly unnecessary orgy of vengeance and violence. They killed women, children and elderly. They killed those trying to surrender. They killed everyone lying in bed in the military hospitals. They killed any man or woman who was caught carrying a match, on the grounds that such a person might be an arsonist.

They killed patriots who had bravely continued the fight against the Prussians well after Mac-Mahon had (through his indecision and stupidity) lost the key battle of Sedan. In fact, Mac-Mahon joined forces with the hated German invaders to murder the communards.

Here's the key point I want you to take away from this short essay:

When all the bodies were counted, Mac-Mahon's victims came to a number four times larger than the number of those who died in the Terror. The reactionaries did their bloody work in just a few days. The Terror occurred over the course of nine months.

Yet the victims of Mac-Mahon's troops are largely forgotten.

You never read about them in school, and you've never seen a movie about them. They were poor. They are the invisibles of history.

The victims of the Terror were aristocrats -- and therefore, they will be remembered forever. Today's conservatives hail them as something akin to saints.

Why is our memory of history so selective?

And why do so many Americans think that class warfare goes in but one direction? Permalink

In our household, Halloween is the favored holiday -- yet nearly every year, some crisis impairs our festivities. This year was no exception. We were going to spend the night driving around to check out Maryland's spooky spots, of which there are many. In particular, we wanted to seek out the state's fabled paranormal superstar, Goatman.

If you don't know Goatman, think of the Celtic god Cernunnos. Or maybe Pan. Now put a freakin' ax in his hand.

Alas, a financial crisis hit, and we can spend not one dime on frivolity. So now we will stay home, hand out corn sugar confections to rugrats, and laugh at paranormal documentaries.

We especially like the ones where the team of ghostbusters goes out to investigate some scary historic spot -- and never, ever find anything supernatural. Ever. And the folks at home spend the entire show trying to figure who is sleeping with whom on the ghostbusting team.

I was also going to post an arty video of graveyard markers in Baltimore. We have some very elaborate tombstones out here. You'll see the video when it's done. Permalink

The folks at Salon finally came up with a 99 percenter manifesto, and it's really good stuff.

I have some problems with it -- for one thing, I'm annoyed that the focus is not entirely on ECONOMICS ECONOMICS ECONOMICS. It really is the economy stupid. This is not the time to start talking about gay issues or climate change. It's not that I disagree with Salon's positions, but non-economic statements have no place in a declaration on money and class. Those tumblr photos in which the 99 percenters relate their tales should give us a guide as to what to talk about and what not to talk about.

When it comes to the issue of gay marriage, those within the one percent are probably more tolerant than those within the 99 percent. Therefore, switching the discussion from economics to gays will do nothing to highlight the abuses caused by the one percenters. Talking about gay issues will simply alienate proles who have every financial reason to be on our side. I don't much like that situation, but it is what it is.

Same thing with marijuana legalization: For some absurd reason, polls indicate that, even in liberal California, the majority of the populace prefers to keep weed illegal. Don't ask me why; frankly, I don't care one way or the other. (I do not partake, so this is not really my issue.) Yeah, you can argue that marijuana legalization would have dramatic economic benefits: We could tax the dope and release a whole bunch of prisoners. That'd be fine with me. But apparently it's not fine with the majority of my fellow citizens.

Why alienate potential allies by taking unpopular stances on non-economic issues?

Update: According to the most recent poll, 46% of the nation favors legalization and 50% favors prohibition. Flip those numbers and marijuana becomes a good issue for OWS. Permalink