An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Tom Ricks has come up with that rare thing: a proposal that has something for everyone across the US political spectrum.

Hedge Fund Republic

The wealth disparities to be found between rich and poor in Latin America's banana republics no longer have anything on the extreme inequality to be found in the United States, according to this disturbing article by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times. Wake up, America!

Anyone Want to Bet Against This Guy Winning In 2012?

The Onion was, if anything, ahead of its time with this astonishing piece back in 2008.

Bush/Cheney III?

Pretty much.

Attention U.S. Voters...

Does anyone anywhere still think this is "Change you can believe in"?

Chilling, But Unsurprising

Maria Allwine writes a first-hand account for Buzzflash on the surge of hatred on the streets that signals a rising tide of fascism amongst right-wing anti-healthcare protesters in the US.

The Fix Is Indeed In

Frank Rich of the New York Times gets what this author has been saying since before the election. A change of style has, undoubtedly, taken place with the new administration but there's been very little change in substance that this blogger can see or believe in so far.

Mr. Biafra Writes to Washington

Punk rock rabble-rouser and astute political activist Jello Biafra has submitted a plethora of timely and sensible policy proposals to our incoming president and soon-to-be disappointment-in-chief in an Open Letter to Barack Obama.

For example, on drug policy reform:

Prohibition is as absurd and fruitless today as it was when Eliot Ness ran around shooting up Chicago trying to stamp out illegal beer.

Well worth reading, although it seems doubtful as to whether the President-Elect and his team will be seriously considering any of the suggestions, much less adopting them as policy, under the new administration. Which is a shame and a measure of how disappointing the Obama presidency is likely to feel just a short time from now.

Vive la revolution!

A nice editorial over at BuzzFlash to mark US Independence Day, and a worthwhile reminder of what the Spirit of 1776 is all about.

House of Cards?

Buzzflash are certainly on a roll these days in terms of quality interviews. One of the best can be found here, an interview with investigative author Craig Unger on his latest book, The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future. Check it out!

Fascism American-style and the Death of US Constitutional Democracy

Naomi Wolf's disturbing-yet-excellent The End Of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot will be discussed in more detail in future posts. In the meantime, here is an excellent-yet-disturbing (spot the trend?) interview with Ms. Wolf that really lays out just how serious and imminent the threat of real - not rhetorical, but genuine - fascism is to US Constitutional democracy.

The hour is late: stand up against Bush, Cheney, the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Fox News and the Democratic appeasers in Congress before the flame of liberty is extinguished forever.

Or, as an increasingly-obscure early-to-mid-'80s Californian right-wing (oh, the irony!) New Wave band once said: "WAKE UP! IT'S NINETEEN-EIGHTY-FOUR!"

Sieg Howdy!

The latest outrageous right-wing jingoistic hate-mongering campaign to hit the USA has begun, led by the usual suspects (Fox News, Coulter, Hannity, Horowitz, et al.). Happy Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, readers!

The corporate takeover marches on

Not content with having privatized and outsourced much of the military, police and penal responsibilities previously the remit of the public sector, it seems that our right-wing, market fundamentalist overlords in the White House and Congress are now handing over significant amounts of responsibility for intelligence and national security to "private contractors" as well. Lo and behold, the public is only discovering the extent of this by accident.

Ironically, one of the touchstone issues that initiated the rise of conservatism to its dominant, mainstream position in US politics during the 1980s and '90s was, of course, the notion that "liberals" had not just allowed but actively encouraged a number of reckless entitlements, allowing "special interests" to "feed at the public trough" at the expense of hard-working taxpayer/citizens. Ronald Reagan once, (in)famously, told audiences on the campaign trail an apocryphal tale about an inner-city "welfare queen" in order to illustrate the incompetence and injustice fostered by "big government". That one wasn't even true, whereas the corporate sector's increasingly-extravagent free breakfasts, lunches and dinners at the public's expense are now (unwittingly, in the case of the Director of National Intellgence's PowerPoint presentation) a matter of public record.

So when does the left - or what passes for the left in the US - start hammering away at this as relentlessly as the cranky old conservatives did during their rise to power? And will the message be heard as loudly and as often this time, considering that pretty much next to every media outlet is controlled by corporate interests these days?

The best democracy...

As part of my obsession with the US presidential primaries and general work-avoidance I've been looking around OpenSecrets. The funding data was particularly interesting. I never knew, for example, that the pro-Israel lobby gives so much more to the Dems than the Repubs so consistently. Enjoy.