(Some) Brits up in arms that the PM was called a lizard

Charlie Brooker is a columnist, blogger, TV presenter and indefatigable tweeter (@charltonbrooker) whose writing is the purest essence of sarcastic English schoolboy. I love him unabashedly. In his column in today's Guardian he spends several paragraphs making bizarre allegations about the Prime Minister including:

It was a pleasant yet unremarkable evening for Cameron; bathed in the warm light of glowing book embers, he had already shed that day's temporary humanlike epidermis as part of his nightly skin-sloughing ritual, and was preparing to dislocate his lower jaw, all the better to ingest the live sacrificial foal the terrified local farmers had left tied outside his cave in a desperate bid to stop him preying on their herds at night.

Like a great caricaturist, Brooker produces a monstrous picture of the Prime Minister but one which somehow, on a subliminal level, rings true.

This caused Graeme Archer, this year's winner of the George Orwell Prize for political blogging, to have a sense of humour failure of truly gargantuan proportions. Producing a piece on the Daily Telegraph's website entitled: "Charlie Brooker and tragedy of the modern left" Archer takes Brooker to task:

Overlooking the quite repellent imagery, deliberately deployed in order to de-humanise a perfectly reasonable Conservative with whom he happens, in general, to disagree, I think we see not only of the tragedy of the modern Left; but more, intriguingly, a sign of cognitive dissonance. For all that imagery about blood sacrifices and lizards masquerading as humans is a preamble to a piece which calls for… cuts in BBC expenditure. It’s OK to favour cuts in some forms of spending, apparently, so long as you’re not a lizard-person.

Archer's objections have been taken as a challenge by Brooker's followers to invent increasingly bizarre allegations to fling at the PM.

If your evening is dragging, I can warmly recommend the comments section of Archer's article or @charltonbrooker's twitter stream for winningly original suggestions. My current favourite (from @KDDoran) is: "I heard Cameron is actually C3P0 covered in wafer thin ham".

NOTE FROM JOHN: You gotta love that in Britain it's considered heinous to simply call a political leader a lizard.  Oh the good old days... Read the rest of this post...

Major investor advisory firm recommends ouster of Murdoch and sons from News Corp

Delicious. From the NYT's DealBook.

A major investor advisory firm recommended Monday that shareholders of the News Corporation vote against the re-election of a vast majority of the media conglomerate’s board, including Rupert Murdoch and his sons, who control the company.

The firm, Institutional Shareholder Services, wrote in a report that the News Corporation’s incumbent directors, 13 out of 15 board members, failed to prevent the company from stumbling into a morass of corporate troubles.

Read the rest of this post...

Obama the loner. Fascinating, and spot-on, analysis of what makes POTUS tick

A spot on analysis of the President from Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post.  This echoes a number of things that we've written about, and that I've heard from others.  I'm going to trying to excerpt a little, but you really should just read the entire piece.  It's not that long, and is quite good.

For example, this is something I've felt from the time of the campaign, and have heard a number of times, from foreign diplomats to people who would be on a short list for cabinet secretary:

At the heart of that ill will is a belief that Obama has been a fair-weather friend to congressional Democrats (and most of the party’s elected officials), using them when necessary (like now) and ignoring them the rest of the time.

I've often said that the Obama campaign, and now administration (other than a few people we like who are different), remind me of that "friend" who only calls when they need something. The rest of the time, to mix metaphors, they walk by you in the high school hallway as if they don't even know you, or at best look down on you with disdain ("professional left," "Internet left fringe," and "f'g r-tards" comes to mind).

And look at the various core Democratic constituencies.  Which ones don't now feel slighted?  Maybe the black community, though as recent polls have shown his numbers are dropping there.  And maybe the gays - and that's a maybe - and that's only because we acted up so loudly that the President had no choice but to keep some of his promises, which brought a lot of gays back into the fold.

We've also heard this a lot:

The lesson Obama and his campaign team learned? That courting the establishment was of marginal value since they were the sort of bend-like-a-reed-in-wind sorts that would be with him if he won big policy fights anyway.

Team Obama likes to remind people that they won the election in 2008 when no one believed they could, so it's proof that nobody's opinion - and really, I mean no-body - matters except theirs.

And now, as Cillizza points out, the President is stuck with the unenviable task of convincing people, who no longer like him, to like him all over again.

Once you're disillusioned with someone, it's awfully hard to change your mind unless you're 100% convinced that they've changed at a basic level.  And can anyone really say that about the President - that his actions the last month, in finally standing up to the Republicans and in defense of Democratic values, laudable as they are, are a sign of fundamental change in who the President is, rather than a temporary tactical detour simply to win re-election?

Once he starts his second term, I fear we're all back to where started - invisible.  And while no one wants a Romney presidency, looking forward to four more years of disdain and disrespect is hardly a great motivator. Read the rest of this post...

Another #OccupyWallStreet double standard: GOP mobs with guns are a-ok

Number two House Republican Eric Cantor is getting really worried that #OccupyWallStreet might be a dangerous mob:

I'm increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and other cities around the country. … Believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against other Americans

Funny that Cantor never seemed to find it scary when Sarah Palin's supporters were openly carrying automatic weapons. Read the rest of this post...

Cell phone companies charge a 4000% markup for text messaging

Because they can. NYT:

Professor Keshav estimates it costs the carriers about a third of a penny to send text messages. Considering that the major carriers charge 10 to 20 cents to send and receive them, “it’s something like a 4,090 percent markup,” he said.

At 20 cents and 160 characters per message, wireless customers are paying roughly $1,500 to send a megabyte of text traffic over the cell network. By comparison, the cost to send that same amount of data using a $25-a-month, two-gigabyte data plan works out to 1.25 cents.

Interestingly, Apple will be releasing a messaging software that lets you send text, video and photos via your data line or wi-fi for free.  Should be interesting to see if the phone company is able/willing to block it somehow. Read the rest of this post...

Krugman on the panic of the plutocrats — "The real extremists are America’s oligarchs"

Krugman is letting the .01%-ers and their minions have both barrels. Plutocrats, he calls them; oligarchs. Nice.

(By the way, we need American words for these people, and 21st century ones as well. "Our Betters"? "New Barons"? I try, but these just don't sound rapacious enough. Maybe "the Beast who wants only Money" will work. Your thoughts always appreciated.)

The Professor starts by noting the panic of the Beast and its paid retainers (he's looking at you, George Will). Krugman (my emphasis everywhere):

[T]he [Occupy Wall Street] protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

Then after numerous examples (here's where George Will comes in) he asks, "What's going on here?"

The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

There's a nice middle section in which he details the various rightwing twists on their outrage. My favorite is Rand Paul's worry about the protester's war on the iPads of the wealthy (as if), but read the whole thing to see the full menagerie. Hitler's invasion of Poland? Really?

His close:

So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs[.]

Nothing you don't know, of course, but words we're glad to see in his precious column inches. Thanks to him for adding his voice.

Now if he would just figure out that many in his own profession are paid retainers as well, he'd be all the way there.

GP Read the rest of this post...

#OccupyWallStreet is not the London riots

The second issue of the Occupied Wall Street Journal makes for exhilarating reading. But sitting here in England, one passage caused me to spit the fine tea I wasn't drinking over the English muffin that I wasn't eating. The paragraph appears in a graphic that seems to be intended to demonstrate that the Occupy Movement is part of a continuum of international protest:

Young people, first in working class London neighborhoods and then in cities throughout the country, rebel days after police shoot and kill 29-year-old Mark Duggan. Spurred by police violence, racism and alienation, it is the largest uprising in recent English history. Five people die, at least 16 are injured and more than 3,000 get arrested.

That passage leaves a number of important things unstated. The most important is that the casualties were not the responsibility of homicidal security forces suppressing brave rebels. It was the "rebels" that were doing a good part of the killing:

On 10 August, in Winson Green, Birmingham, three men – Haroon Jahan, 21 and brothers Shahzad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31 – were killed in a hit-and-run incident while attempting to protect their neighbourhood from rioters and looters. A 26 year old man, a 23 year old man and a 17 year old youth appeared in court charged with murder and were remanded in custody.

A 68-year-old man, Richard Mannington Bowes, died on 11 August after he was attacked while attempting to stamp out a litter-bin fire in Ealing on the evening of 8 August.

Bowes was attacked by members of a mob on 8 August 2011, while attempting to extinguish a fire that had been deliberately started in industrial bins on Spring Bridge Road. The attack inflicted severe head injuries which resulted in a coma. The assault was caught on CCTV and reportedly filmed on mobile phones by associates of the alleged assailant. The attack on Bowes was witnessed by several police officers, but due to the number of rioters they were unable to come to his aid until riot squad officers pushed back the rioters while being attacked in order to reach Bowes. A line of officers then held back the rioters as paramedics arrived. Bowes's wallet and phone had been stolen, and police faced difficulty in identifying him. He died of his injuries in St Mary's Hospital on 11 August 2011 after being removed from life support.

I think to say they were involved in part of the killing is an understatement. The OWSJ cites 5 deaths. Those 5 deaths were all committed by rioters. Mark Duggan was killed by the Police but that was, of course, before the riots began.

The "rebels" also were involved in robbing the injured.

The grassroots response among the population was not, on the whole, favourable to the rioters.

There is a case to be made that the original Tottenham riots were political in the broadest sense. For the other riots the case is feeble. Opinion is divided between those who take the position that to explain the riotous behaviour is not to excuse it, and those who say that the explanations all seem to take the form of excuses. The explanations have not shied away from the looting and the violence, but have taken the position that we can expect no better of a youth raised in a relentlessly materialistic society, and that breaking into a shop and stealing a flat screen television is not morally distinguishable from having the government bail your bank out.

Whatever side of the debate you might find yourself on, describing the riots in the terms that the OWSJ does would mean you held a view 1% rather than 99% of British people would be likely to adhere to.

America should embrace the Occupy Wall Street for what it is. If it is unique then it is not thereby diminished. What would diminish it would be to associate it with the London Riots.

PS I suspect some may accuse me of being right wing (it's a new and refreshing experience for me).  I took part in the riot cleanup campaign and turned out with a diverse community of others to sweep up. We were denounced as "fascists" on some blogs for our efforts. Read the rest of this post...

#OccupyWallStreet is a lesson on listening

Adrienne Marie Brown is the former executive director of the Ruckus Society and a person who knows a thing or two about non-violent protest against powerful forces. She recently visited Liberty Plaza and #OccupyWallStreet. Part of her the goal of her trip was to find answers about how the political ecosystem in the occupation is working, particularly in terms of who is there, who isn't there, and whose voices are dominating the conversation. There have been a number of thoughtful and serious critiques of #OccupyWallStreet as being dominated by white men and not a welcoming environment for people of color. While Brown does find an overly white crowd, she also is heartened by its diversity and the openness in the movement. Her writing on these dynamics alone make the post worth reading.

But as it has been a frequent subject on this blog, I think her comments on #OccupyWallStreet's demands or lack there of are important:

the major critique I have heard of this effort is the lack of demands, and multitude of messages.

my thought so far is, humans have a multitude of cares, of passions…trying to lockstep us into one predictable way of being is the essential desire of corporations, because if you can predict what people will want and do, then you can profit off of coming up with appropriate products and activities for them. this movement is instead making it as easy as possible to enter, no matter what passion brought you to the square.

and in terms of the demands, it seems the central demand is to build and expand a conversation that is long overdue in this country, a conversation which doesn’t have simple cut and dry demands. we are realizing that we must become the systems we need – no government, political party or corporation is going to care for us, so we have to remember how to care for each other.

and that will take time, and commitment, a willingness to step outside of the comfort of the current and lean into the unknown, together. to listen to each other across all real and perceived divides.

I think this is a great encapsulation not only of what #OccupyWallStreet is but how it has the power to ignite real change across America. It sounds so simple, but listening to each other and listening to what this movement is saying is critically important. The objections people have are not radical, they're pure and heartfelt. As Mike Konczal noted in his analysis of the We Are 99% tumblr, people are asking "free us from the bondage of our debts and give us a basic ability to survive." The requests are basic, but stem from a similar, brutal experience of life in America in the twenty-first century. When Brown is writing about us becoming the systems we need, she is tapping into this sentiment and the ways in which the community that is #OccupyWallStreet is already seeking to be the answer to its own question.

There will undoubtedly be many more discussions on who #OccupyWallStreet represents and what the people participating in it are seeking to achieve. The occupation has entered its fourth week and is in hundreds of cities around America. It has achieved a standing as a cultural and political movement that I know that I personally did not expect was possible. For me, the success and the passion of the people taking part in this has fundamentally challenged my pessimism about the prospects for a popular movement around economic injustice in America. This is, in my view, largely because the willingness of the people involved to listen to each other and to come together in solidarity with each others' difficult experiences as part of the other 99% of America without any real political power or economic security. Read the rest of this post...

American Spectator editor admits being Agent Provocateur at D.C. protest pepper-spray incident

Agent Provocateur — a person "employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act."

In the U.S. anti-labor forces used agent provocateurs (better, but very French plural: agents provocateurs). In the anti-hippie 60s — you remember don't you? That horrifying period that brought you litter-free America and sex without shame — the FBI used agents provocateurs extensively in the COINTELPRO program. (Click the link; for you police defenders, this is why people don't trust cops. Here's another reason.)

So you may have heard that there was a protest at the Washington D.C. Air and Space Museum, and people got pepper-sprayed because some of them charged the building (while many others did not).

Why this museum? Because it was an anti-war, anti-drone protest, and the Air and Space Museum was "celebrating the use of drones" through an exhibit made possible by the "generosity of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc." Nice tie-in, by the way; care for a Coke^® with that?

The story, from the AP (my emphasis):

The National Air and Space Museum in Washington was closed Saturday after anti-war demonstrators swarmed the building to protest a drone exhibit and security guards used pepper spray to repel them, sickening a number of protesters.

Smithsonian spokesman John Gibbons said a large group of demonstrators, estimated at 100 to 200 people, arrived at about 3 p.m. and tried to enter the National Mall museum. When a security guard stopped group members from entering, saying they could not bring in signs, he was apparently held by demonstrators, Gibbons said. A second guard who arrived used pepper spray on at least one person and the crowd dispersed, he added. ...

David Swanson, 41, of Charlottesville, Va. ... who says he has been part of the Freedom Plaza protest, says protesters were not looking to shut down the museum but to make a point about the massive military spending and the use of deadly drones. He said the security officers got aggressive after some protesters unfurled a protest banner inside.

David Swanson is the After Downing Street guy, by the way.

Now there's credible evidence (as in, photos and an admission) that at least one of the protesters entering the building was Patrick Howley, an assistant editor at the rightwing publication (and rag) The American Spectator.

Great catch by Charlie Grapski at FDL:

The following photograph taken by opednews.com shows a confrontation in the lobby of the National Air and Space Museum between two individuals and an officer shortly before video shows officers with the Museum’s security forces rush outside indiscriminately pepper-spraying numerous individuals. ... It appears that one of the two in the confrontation with the security officer is Patrick Howley, Assistant Editor of The American Spectator. [See the following photograph in which Howley's Facebook Profile Photo is side-by-side with the person pictured at the Air and Space Museum]

Crapski's article also quotes Howley's admission. Click here to see both the photos and the Howley quotes.

It's clear from Swanson's story that more than just Howley wanted to enter the building. It's clear from Howley's story that he was among the most confrontational:

According to Howley’s story he joined the group in its march toward the Air and Space Museum but the protesters on the march were unwilling to be confrontational. He states “they lack the nerve to confront authority.

As Raw Story points out, "unclear if Howley actually incited the clash with security guards." True enough. But the intent was there in Howley's printed admission.

So a word to the wise; the [insert reference to rodents here] has begun. And I wouldn't be surprised if those patriotic police didn't find a way to join forces with every patriotic junior G-man American to screw up Occupy Wall Street as well.

Be warned. Half the rightwing crazies are James O'Keefe wannabes; and this is always the way it works.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Peter King (R-NY) on Occupy Wall Street: We can't "allow this to get any legitimacy" — it could end up "shaping policy"

Smart comment — he's right.

Here's the quote from PolitickerNY (h/t reddit blogger cos):

Long Island Republican Congressman Peter King blasted the Occupy Wall Street protesters as anti-American today on a right-wing talk show.

“The fact is these people are anarchists. They have no idea what they’re doing out there,” King told host Laura Ingraham. “They have no sense of purpose other than a basically anti-American tone and anti-capitalist. It’s a ragtag mob basically.”

Note the use of anti-hippie code words. All that's missing is a reference to the devil's weed. (Man, talk about arrested development; not in him, in the people this language is manipulating. Were they all born in 1930?)

But that stuff is just for the rubes. The real message is for the media and the policy-makers, people with power (like the current weed-hating administration):

“We have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy,” he said, adding “I’m taking this seriously in that I’m old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can’t allow that to happen.”

"Legitimacy" — remember that word. He's not referencing the protest; he's referencing the complaint.

If the #OWS anti-banker, pro-Constitution grievance ever gets legitimized, our Billionaire Owners and their millionaire retainers (Peter King included) will be playing on defense for the next few years. King thinks that would be bad; he also thinks it's a possibility.

Playing to win; making the other team play defense while you march down the field. Want to see what that feels like? All it takes is persistence.

You could even help the Occupy Wall Street protesters persist, by joining them.

GP Read the rest of this post...

NYT: Household income keeps dropping two years after recession over

Get used to it, this is the new normal.  The sad part is that it was predicted by both Krugman and Stiglitz, but the big boys and girls in Washington, DC wouldn't listen. And now we're stuck in one big economic malaise for potentially years to come.

NYT:

In a grim sign of the enduring nature of the economic slump, household income declined more in the two years after the recession ended than it did during the recession itself, new research has found.

Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7 percent, to $49,909, according to a study by two former Census Bureau officials. During the recession — from December 2007 to June 2009 — household income fell 3.2 percent.

The finding helps explain why Americans’ attitudes toward the economy, the country’s direction and its political leaders have continued to sour even as the economy has been growing.

Read the rest of this post...

Latest #OccupyWallStreet news

OccupyWallStreet settles for the long haul.

Democrats increasingly feel that the OWS movement is worth tapping into.

OWS now in 25 cities.

OWS style protests spread to Britain.

GOP prez candidate Herman Cain, who doesn't have a prayer of getting chosen by the far-right GOP primary electorate, says the OWS protesters are playing the victim card. Right, because Americans aren't suffering at all right now, and everyone is really really happy that at least everyone on Wall Street is making buckets of money after we bailed them out and none of us saw a dime of it. Read the rest of this post...

Monday morning open thread

It was a balmy 80 degrees in DC yesterday, and another 80 expected today, and I was all ready to go walk the dog when CNN called and wanted me to go on and talk about #OccupyWallStreet and Mitt Romney's Mormonism, all in the space of 4 minutes. So, Sasha got to hang out in the bathroom (aka, her den) a few hours, and I got to argue the finer points of two entirely different subjects with a right-wing blogger in too short a time period.

I really am fascinated by what's happening with the OWS movement. It'll be very interesting to see whether it has staying power, whether it keeps growing, and to what degree people feel the movement represents people like them. I'm still trying to get a sense of who the people are going to the protests, I haven't heard of anyone I know going, so it will be interesting to see where all of this is heading. At CNN they were interested in whether this would be an issue for next year's elections, and it already has become one - Obama, Pelosi, Romney and Cantor (and Cain, but whatever) have all commented on it. If this movement is a sincere expression of the frustration, fear and anger that a lot of Americans are feeling right now about our economy and our future, then it could change the electoral map next year. Maybe.

As for Romney, I hadn't realized, until I did a little Googling before my CNN appearance, that he had criticized Obama seeking religious guidance form Rev. Wright. So Romney isn't on very good ground to claim that his religion, Mormonism, which many people don't feel is a religion at all, is somehow now off-limits. And Romney has another problem - the Republican party. A lot of the evangelicals who now run the GOP, and who make up a big chunk of Republican primary voters, don't think Catholics are Christian. Imagine how they feel about Mormons.

Romney has been happy to play the religion card when it suited him, and the GOP loves talking about God - well, at least the white male evangelical version of the Lord who seems to have a distinct disdain for an awful lot of people. At some point, the GOP's love affair with a single somewhat extreme segment of Christianity, at the expense of all the other Christians, believers, and nonbelievers alike who also live in this country, is going to come home to roost. And for Mitt Romney, that day may have arrived. Read the rest of this post...

NYT editorial spells out what #OccupyWallStreet wants

NYT editorial on #OccupyWallStreet:

As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions. The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.

It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge.

Read the rest of this post...