Of Many Things

Jon Stewart Goes At It With Bill O'Reilly On Bill-O's Own Show on Fox News Network; Quite A Show Indeed. Watch.

2011-12-25T02:27:00.002-07:00

Jon Stewart attacked Bill O'Reilly about his objections towards rapper Common's visit to the White House, being that he wrote a song about a woman who killed a NJ state trooper.

Stewart tells O'Reilly that even Bono wrote a song about Leonard Peltier, convicted of killing two FBI agents.

Now, that subject gets Bill a little heated.
Hurricane
Fox News' Bill O'Reilly recently tried explaining that the movements of the tides were unexplainable and therefore proof of divine intervention. It was like ICP's Magnets all over again.
Found on O'Reilly's website:
The word Blooter proceeding forth from Bill's mouth is defined as:
Blooter: (Noun) A babbler, a bumbling idiot, a fool.

Peltier is incarcerated at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex, Florida.

His projected release date is October 11, 2040. His last parole hearing was in July 2009; his request for parole was denied. Peltier's next scheduled hearing will be in July 2024.

Carter now lives in Toronto, Ontario, and was executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) from 1993 until 2005.

Carter resigned when the AIDWYC declined to support Carter's protest of the appointment (to a judgeship) of the prosecutor of Canadian Guy Paul Morin
In 1996 Carter, then 59, was arrested when Toronto police mistakenly identified him as a suspect in his thirties believed to have sold drugs to an undercover officer. He was released after the police realized their error.
Carter often serves as a motivational speaker. On October 14, 2005, he received two honorary Doctorates of Law, one from York University (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) and one from Griffith University (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia), in recognition of his work with AIDWYC and the Innocence Project.

Carter received the Abolition Award from Death Penalty Focus in 1996.

Guest Entry: All the G.O.P.’s Gekkos By PAUL KRUGMAN December 8, 2011

2011-12-09T03:24:00.001-07:00

December 8, 2011

All the G.O.P.’s Gekkos

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Almost a quarter of a century has passed since the release of the movie “Wall Street,” and the film seems more relevant than ever. The self-righteous screeds of financial tycoons denouncing President Obama all read like variations on Gordon Gekko’s famous “greed is good” speech, while the complaints of Occupy Wall Street sound just like what Gekko says in private: “I create nothing. I own,” he declares at one point; at another, he asks his protégé, “Now you’re not naïve enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you, buddy?”

Yet, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the movie went a little off at the end. It closes with Gekko getting his comeuppance, and justice served thanks to the diligence of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In reality, the financial industry just kept getting more and more powerful, and the regulators were neutered.

And, according to the prediction market Intrade, there’s a 45 percent chance that a real-life Gordon Gekko will be the next Republican presidential nominee.

I am not, of course, the first person to notice the similarity between Mitt Romney’s business career and the fictional exploits of Oliver Stone’s antihero. In fact, the labor-backed group Americans United for Change is using “Romney-Gekko” as the basis for an ad campaign. But there’s an issue here that runs deeper than potshots against Mr. Romney.

For the current orthodoxy among Republicans is that we mustn’t even criticize the wealthy, let alone demand that they pay higher taxes, because they’re “job creators.” Yet the fact is that quite a few of today’s wealthy got that way by destroying jobs rather than creating them. And Mr. Romney’s business history offers a very good illustration of that fact.

The Los Angeles Times recently surveyed the record of Bain Capital, the private equity firm that Mr. Romney ran from 1984 to 1999. As the report notes, Mr. Romney made a lot of money over those years, both for himself and for his investors. But he did so in ways that often hurt ordinary workers.

Bain specialized in leveraged buyouts, buying control of companies with borrowed money, pledged against those companies’ earnings or assets. The idea was to increase the acquired companies’ profits, then resell them.

But how were profits to be increased? The popular image — shaped in part by Oliver Stone — is that buyouts were followed by ruthless cost-cutting, largely at the expense of workers who either lost their jobs or found their wages and benefits cut. And while reality is more complex than this image — some companies have expanded and added workers after a leveraged buyout — it contains more than a grain of truth. One recent analysis of “private equity transactions” — the kind of buyouts and takeovers Bain specialized in — noted that business in general is always both creating and destroying jobs, and that this is also true of companies that were buyout or takeover targets. However, job creation at the target firms is no greater than in similar firms that aren’t targets, while “gross job destruction is substantially higher.”

So Mr. Romney made his fortune in a business that is, on balance, about job destruction rather than job creation. And because job destruction hurts workers even as it increases profits and the incomes of top executives, leveraged buyout firms have contributed to the combination of stagnant wages and soaring incomes at the top that has characterized America since 1980.

Now I’ve just said that the leveraged buyout industry as a whole has been a job destroyer, but what about Bain in particular? Well, by at least one criterion, Bain during the Romney years seems to have been especially hard on workers, since four of its top 10 targets by dollar value ended up going bankrupt. (Bain, nonetheless, made money on three of those deals.) That’s a much higher rate of failure than is typical even of companies going through leveraged buyouts — and when the companies went under, many workers ended up losing their jobs, their pensions, or both.

So what do we learn from this story? Not that Mitt Romney the businessman was a villain. Contrary to conservative claims, liberals aren’t out to demonize or punish the rich. But they do object to the attempts of the right to do the opposite, to canonize the wealthy and exempt them from the sacrifices everyone else is expected to make because of the wonderful things they supposedly do for the rest of us.

The truth is that what’s good for the 1 percent, or even better the 0.1 percent, isn’t necessarily good for the rest of America — and Mr. Romney’s career illustrates that point perfectly. There’s no need, and no reason, to hate Mr. Romney and others like him. We do, however, need to get such people paying more in taxes — and we shouldn’t let myths about “job creators” get in the way.

Guest Entry: Things to Tax By PAUL KRUGMAN November 27, 2011

2011-11-28T12:25:00.001-07:00

November 27, 2011

Things to Tax

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The supercommittee was a superdud — and we should be glad. Nonetheless, at some point we’ll have to rein in budget deficits. And when we do, here’s a thought: How about making increased revenue an important part of the deal?

And I don’t just mean a return to Clinton-era tax rates. Why should 1990s taxes be considered the outer limit of revenue collection? Think about it: The long-run budget outlook has darkened, which means that some hard choices must be made. Why should those choices only involve spending cuts? Why not also push some taxes above their levels in the 1990s?

Let me suggest two areas in which it would make a lot of sense to raise taxes in earnest, not just return them to pre-Bush levels: taxes on very high incomes and taxes on financial transactions.

About those high incomes: In my last column I suggested that the very rich, who have had huge income gains over the last 30 years, should pay more in taxes. I got many responses from readers, with a common theme being that this was silly, that even confiscatory taxes on the wealthy couldn’t possibly raise enough money to matter.

Folks, you’re living in the past. Once upon a time America was a middle-class nation, in which the super-elite’s income was no big deal. But that was another country.

The I.R.S. reports that in 2007, that is, before the economic crisis, the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers — roughly speaking, people with annual incomes over $2 million — had a combined income of more than a trillion dollars. That’s a lot of money, and it wouldn’t be hard to devise taxes that would raise a significant amount of revenue from those super-high-income individuals.

For example, a recent report by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center points out that before 1980 very-high-income individuals fell into tax brackets well above the 35 percent top rate that applies today. According to the center’s analysis, restoring those high-income brackets would have raised $78 billion in 2007, or more than half a percent of G.D.P. I’ve extrapolated that number using Congressional Budget Office projections, and what I get for the next decade is that high-income taxation could shave more than $1 trillion off the deficit.

It’s instructive to compare that estimate with the savings from the kinds of proposals that are actually circulating in Washington these days. Consider, for example, proposals to raise the age of Medicare eligibility to 67, dealing a major blow to millions of Americans. How much money would that save?

Well, none from the point of view of the nation as a whole, since we would be pushing seniors out of Medicare and into private insurance, which has substantially higher costs. True, it would reduce federal spending — but not by much. The budget office estimates that outlays would fall by only $125 billion over the next decade, as the age increase phased in. And even when fully phased in, this partial dismantling of Medicare would reduce the deficit only about a third as much as could be achieved with higher taxes on the very rich.

So raising taxes on the very rich could make a serious contribution to deficit reduction. Don’t believe anyone who claims otherwise.

And then there’s the idea of taxing financial transactions, which have exploded in recent decades. The economic value of all this trading is dubious at best. In fact, there’s considerable evidence suggesting that too much trading is going on. Still, nobody is proposing a punitive tax. On the table, instead, are proposals like the one recently made by Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Peter DeFazio for a tiny fee on financial transactions.

And here’s the thing: Because there are so many transactions, such a fee could yield several hundred billion dollars in revenue over the next decade. Again, this compares favorably with the savings from many of the harsh spending cuts being proposed in the name of fiscal responsibility.

But wouldn’t such a tax hurt economic growth? As I said, the evidence suggests not — if anything, it suggests that to the extent that taxing financial transactions reduces the volume of wheeling and dealing, that would be a good thing.

And it’s instructive, too, to note that some countries already have financial transactions taxes — and that among those who do are Hong Kong and Singapore. If some conservative starts claiming that such taxes are an unwarranted government intrusion, you might want to ask him why such taxes are imposed by the two countries that score highest on the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom.

Now, the tax ideas I’ve just mentioned wouldn’t be enough, by themselves, to fix our deficit. But the same is true of proposals for spending cuts. The point I’m making here isn’t that taxes are all we need; it is that they could and should be a significant part of the solution.

Last Year's Man/ Joan Of Arc

2011-11-05T23:06:00.000-06:00

This video of mine has been so apparently popular on this blog that I decided to repost it now.

Thanks to all my followers! Greatly appreciated.

I do recommend viewing it in full-screen mode.

Ron

Last Year's Man/ Joan Of Arc from Ron Talley on Vimeo.

Guest Entry: Iraq War Vet Hospitalized with Fractured Skull After Being Shot by Police at Occupy Oakland Protest

2011-10-27T18:34:00.001-06:00

Iraq War Vet Hospitalized with Fractured Skull After Being Shot by Police at Occupy Oakland Protest

Occupy Oakland, October 25, 2011

Incredible footage emerged from downtown Oakland last night - not of basic law enforcement efforts to maintain public "health and safety" as the police have been claiming - but of a war zone in which police shot tear gas, bean bags, wooden dowels, flash grenades, and rubber bullets at protesters.

POLICE VIOLENCE: Scott Olsen, member of Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War and a Marine Corps veteran of two tours in Iraq, who was shot in the head last night by Oakland police, is in critical condition with a skull fracture and swelling of the brain. Meanwhile, outrage against police violence and Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, already facing a recall election, is growing.(AFP) Rather than using the weaponry once in a final effort to subdue the crowd, officers reportedly used them over and over again in what @OccupyOakland describes as a "relentless" assault on the thousands of activists gathered near City Hall.

Thousands of people reclaimed the Occupy Oakland encampment in front of City Hall Wednesday after police dispersed them twice on Tuesday — first in a pre-dawn raid on the camp and 12 hours later at night when protesters attempted to retake the park — using beanbag projectiles and tear gas. Many protesters expressed outrage over of the injury of Oakland protester Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old Iraq War veteran whose skull was fractured by a projectile fired by police Tuesday night. He is hospitalized in critical condition and is reportedly under sedation by doctors monitoring his injury. We speak to Jesse Palmer, an Occupy Oakland protester who helped move Olsen to safety, and to Aaron Hinde, a close friend of Scott Olsen and a fellow member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. One of Olsen’s other friends, Adele Carpenter, told Reuters, "The irony is not lost on anyone here that this is someone who survived two tours in Iraq and is now seriously injured by the Oakland police force." Aaron Hinde talked about why Olsen joined the Occupy Oakland movement: "He was a very motivated and dedicated individual. And he believed in the Occupy movement, because it’s very obvious what’s happening in this country, especially as veterans. We’ve had our eyes opened by serving and going to war overseas." [includes rush transcript]

Bob Dylan, "Visions of Johanna" video: Ron Talley

2011-10-15T16:39:00.001-06:00

Over a few days' time I created this video. Hope you enjoy it. It's the best-edited video I've ever made in my humble opinion.

It's from Bob Dylan's album Blonde On Blonde of course. One of his best I think.

It says "Untitled" but I did indeed title it, 'Bob Dylan, "Visions of Johanna"', which is its title on the album of course.

Guest Entry: Bob Dylan at Newport 1962-1966

2011-10-13T23:15:00.000-06:00

This film is well worth watching all the way through. I'd personally never seen it before.

Ron

Bob Dylan at Newport 1962-1966 from José Maria Arruda & Elina Lima on Vimeo.

From "Death of the Liberal Class" by Chris Hedges

2011-09-30T18:33:00.001-06:00

Chris Hedges

"Hope will come with the return of the language of class conflict and rebellion, language that has been purged from the lexicon of the liberal class. This does not mean that we have to agree with Karl Marx, who advocated violence and whose worship of the state as a utopian mechanism led to another form of working class enslavement, but we have to learn again to speak in the vocabulary Marx employed. We have to grasp, as Marx and Adam Smith did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good. They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill, and lie to make money. They throw poor families out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars to make profits, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy, plunder the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women. They worship money and power. And, as Marx knew, unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the perfect metaphor for the corporate state. It is part of the same nightmare experienced in postindustrial pockets, in the old mill towns of New England and the abandoned steel mills in Ohio. It is a nightmare that Iraqis, Pakistanis, and Afghans, mourning their dead, live each day."--Chris Hedges in Death of the Liberal Class

Guest Entry: The New McCarthyism: Oregon Tea Partiers invade quiet MoveOn picnic, break it up with threats -- and boast about it

2011-09-24T16:46:00.003-06:00

The New McCarthyism: Oregon Tea Partiers invade quiet MoveOn picnic, break it up with threats -- and boast about it

By David Neiwert

Probably the most disturbing aspect of the multifarious effects of Fox News' right-wing propaganda machine and its Tea Party offspring is the way it has utterly taken over the lives of so many senior citizens, who lap up every word as the gospel truth and have become increasingly radicalized by talking heads like Glenn Beck.
Even as they project their own intentions onto the likes of the unions, the Fox acolytes and the Tea Partiers have effectively become a brownshirt corps of mean-spirited, vicious thugs. It's deeply disturbing to watch people in our parents' generation viciously attacking liberals with increasing venom and violence.
The latest example took place last weekend in the quiet little retirement town of Roseburg, Oregon. It's a pretty little burg on the I-5 corridor in western Oregon that is mostly populated with senior citizens of various stripes. Via Carla at Blue Oregon, we happened upon this story in the local paper:

A small political gathering of about 18 liberal thinkers at River Forks Park Sunday afternoon erupted in conflict when about 35 members of the conservative tea party intruded upon the meeting, waving flags and holding signs accusing the rival group of being communists, Marxists and socialists.
The liberal group — organized by MoveOn.org — decided to leave the park and move its potluck to a nearby home. Members of the conservative group followed, parking at the entrance of a private lane leading to the home to continue their protest.
Roseburg Democrats Dean and Sara Byers said Monday they told tea party members who followed that they were not welcome to drive down the lane to their home.
The Byerses said they got out of their car to stop vehicles from entering the driveway and one tea party member almost ran them over.
Sara Byers said she was so shaken she called 911. She said a Douglas County deputy called about an hour and a half later and said he had been unable to respond because of other incidents. Byers said she was still considering filing a criminal complaint against members of the tea party for harassment.
A leader of the tea party group, Rich Raynor of Roseburg, disputed the liberal group's version of events.
“They are liars,” said Raynor, director of Douglas County Americans for Prosperity. “That is what communists do.”

The latter confrontations were not videotaped, but the Tea Partiers themselves proudly posted the video of their invasion of the MoveOn picnic. Moreover, it clearly documents how they effectively broke it up -- by threatening the attendees with intimidating speech and making it clear they wanted the group to clear out. What it doesn't show, of course, is that they followed these folks to someone's private home and tried to invade the gathering on private property as well.
Here's the script the proud authors of the video provided:

Self professed communist Van Jones teams up with MoveOn.org to promote the American Dream Project, aka I want what you have worked for. Promoted here by the Douglas County Democratic Central Committee members. Challenged by Americans who love freedom!
I have an idea. Let's end class warfare. If you want more, get up earlier and work harder. It works wonders for your self-respect.
We had to disable comments. They were vile, vulgar, threatening...typical Chicago thuggery stuff.

One thing that's clear from both the script and from the video is that what has the Tea Partiers especially exercised about MoveOn is the fact that Van Jones is now working with them to promote his Rebuild the Dream project. The Tea Partiers kept repeating "Van Jones!" "Van Jones!" almost mantra-like, and then calling MoveOn a bunch of "communists."
This is the New McCartyhyism at work, thanks in no small part to the effective work of Glenn Beck during his misbegotten tenure at Fox News -- the apotheosis of which was his successful attacks on Van Jones.
We discussed this at length with Jones himself recently. And while he's right that we can't let these kinds of smears deflect or distract us from what we're trying to achieve, there's no doubt he also understands that they need to be knocked down fiercely and effectively.
And the claim that Van Jones is a Communist is simply a baldfaced lie. Maybe every MoveOn member is now going to have to equip themselves with the words of Jones' attorneys, in their letter to Fox News, on this matter:

Mr. Jones is not a member of any Communist Party or Marxist organization whatsoever, and has not expressed any support for any form of Communist or Marxist ideology for many years. In the same 2005 article in which he Mr. Jones discussed having had such notions as a young man, he also talked about his growth away from those views.
Mr. Jones has repeatedly clarified that his economic views are firmly pro-market, in numerous speeches, televised interviews and in the Huffington Post. In fact, Mr. Jones is known as a leading champion of free-market solutions to current environmental problems. His best-selling book, The Green Collar Economy (2009), advocates government policies to promote private-sector innovation. The World Economic Forum itself has repeatedly honored Mr. Jones' work. He has been called the "Green" Jack Kemp, because he shares that GOP leader's commitment to entrepreneurship as a cure for poverty.
The allegations that Mr. Jones is an "unrepentant Communist," "is a Communist," "is a Communist guy," and "is a revolutionary" are thus demonstrably and unequivocally false. Clearly these statements were calculated to, and do, injure Mr. Jones in his professional and community standing and lower him in the estimation of the American public. They are actionable as a matter of law.

Liberal organizers have taken for granted far too long the toxic effects of these kinds of lies and smears -- because they are exactly the kinds of smears that have always provided the bedrock of right-wing extremism and xenophobic scapegoating. And it's especially remarkable that we're seeing it happen with so many supposedly "conservative" mainstream and often elderly people lapping up the lies.
This was clear from the report on the confrontation:

Roseburg resident Lillen Fifield, 70, called the group's actions an “act of domestic terrorism” and said she was appalled that a peaceful gathering — mostly of women older than 65 — was interrupted.
“It is not OK to go around and intimidate and threaten people. That is not acceptable in a polite society,” Fifield said.
Conservative organizers defended their actions and said they will continue to protest similar gatherings.
“We were there to find out what they had to say and to bring a notice to the public that this kind of thing was going on. Quite honestly, if they have it again, then we are really going to make it well known,” Raynor said.
Raynor said the group believes MoveOn.org is a communist front and said he would not stand for America becoming a fascist nation.

It's unsurprising that these Tea Partiers thus replicate Jonah Goldberg's fraudulent scrambling of the meanings of "fascism" and "communism", something that was avidly promoted on Fox by Beck and others as well.
Likewise, it's unsurprising that this obliteration-of-meaning-by-Newspeak would result in thuggish behavior remarkably like that deployed by brownshirts historically. The only strange thing was that it involved a bunch of senior citizens and middle-aged folks. It was obvious, for instance, that these people were hoping to provoke an angry response resulting in violence that they could then trot out as proof of liberal "thuggishness." (That's an old brownshirt tactic.)
Fortunately, this particular gathering of progressives was smart enough to avoid that trap. As we see more of these attempts to provoke violence, though, I'm not so sure that's going to continue happening.
It's all very disturbing. As Carla puts it:

Clearly the fine details of what took place are in dispute. What isn't, however, are the overt attempts at intimidation and bullying perpetuated by Raynor and the others that showed up to shut down a tiny, peaceful group who chose to meet to talk. Last I checked, that's still allowed in the US. And while MoveOn is decidedly NOT communist, socialist or Marxist--it shouldn't matter if they are. People in the United States are allowed to discuss and promote those ideas if that's what they really believe.
Why are Raynor and his ilk so desperately frightened? Are their own ideas and beliefs so weak that they can't stand up to a miniscule group even having an opposition discussion about them?

Art in the Twentieth Century: An Interview with Katherine Kuh

2011-09-16T16:21:00.001-06:00

Katherine Kuh, 89 years old at the time of this interview with Studs Terkel, was the first curator of modern art at Chicago's Art Institute. In her life she has also been the art critic of the Saturday Review of Literature. She is an art collector and she was writing a book on art in the twentieth century.

Studs interviewed her in her home in Chicago for his book, Coming Of Age.

She said, "The pain I feel is so terribly severe, but I've made up my mind not to take pain killers. My mind is dulled by them, and I'd like to think clearly to finish the book. When I'm lying down, breathing is fine. [Laughs.] I've written every word longhand, lying down with a board on my knees. The only thing I find difficulty with is remembering names. It's so frustrating."

"I had no idea I was going to live this long. My main preoccupation, my delight, my life had revolved around the visual arts. Before I die, I'm trying to finish a book about this subject: What happened in my century? What have I seen? How has it changed?"

"The two enormous catastrophes of our century, the two world wars, totally changed art. The two creative personalities who changed art, though they had nothing specifically with art, were Freud and Einstein. Surrealism came out of Freud. From Einstein came the whole idea of time. Without hm, there would have been no cubism."

"I've been thinking about this for months: What made the first half of the twentieth century so rich, so innovative, so creative, and the art of the second half so sterile? It isn't just because I'm older. I think it has to do with the two wars."

                             Dadaist painting: Meidner, "The Burning City" 1913

"We were in Europe when the First World War broke out. My father was a silk importer. I was a child of ten, at which point I developed polio, from which I've been lame ever since. This is a disease that is now killing me, 'cause I have a thing called post-polio syndrome. I'm very crooked because all the original paralysis comes back. The muscles and all the other parts of your body give out. All the bones are in the wrong place, driving into my lungs and preventing me from breathing. It should have killed me years ago. [Laughs.] It hasn't. I can hardly walk, but I'm still getting along."

"One of my earliest polo memories was sitting propped up at the window of a Paris hotel, watching the troops from the Battle of the Marne being brought back in taxicabs, all wounded and bloody. The front was almost at Paris. You could hear the shelling. It's a sight you'd never forget."

"We believed it was the war to end all wars. We believed that out of this horror wold come something new and fresh and good. That's what people believed, and the art shows it."

"At first, you had the art of negation: dadaism. It was a denial of everything rational, because we were not accustomed to that scale of killing. Yet out of that chaos came the great innovative movements of the twentieth century. It grew right out of the life of our times. I don't think you can divide art and history. Without knowing about history, you might as well forget art."

"Cubism bows to any form of simultaneity. You see everything at once. It was a taking things apart and then putting them together. You see a man on all sides broken up. You see a still life, and then it's put together in a new way. It had a lot to do with the idea of time, space, and immediacy. Thanks to Einstein, the artists began to see things almost clairvoyantly, in advance of their time."

"I think it had to do with the war, too. When World War II ended, we almost had to close our minds to the impossible behavior of human beings. It was nearly unbearable. We began to accept the fact that human beings killing other human beings, hating others irrationally, a brutality we never before conceived of, will always be with us. Out of it came a quite sterile era in the arts--the last half of the century. Our hopelessness bred it."

"One man, Picasso, with his tremendous creativity, dominated the first half of the century. The second half was dominated by a man I knew quite well, Marcel Duchamps. I admired him enormously. But he was a nihilist, especially in regard to painting."

Picasso, "Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table" 1909

"Let's face it, Duchamps, a man of profound wit and intellect, was tremendously famous or infamous [Laughs] by the time he was in his mid-twenties, when he decided to stop painting forever. He felt it was useless. He stopped not in midstream, but very, very early. He simply reacted against and stopped working. By the very sterility of this thinking, he has now been rediscovered, has an enormous following. Duchamps, despite this, always kept his memory golden, don't forget that. He knew what it was all about. He knew the past. But he hated the whole idea of emotions. He wanted it all to be cerebral. And minimal. That's what we've got now. That's what art is today."

"Though Duchamps preceded World War II, his influence did not affect us till later. After World War I, even though nihilism was setting in, we began to think the world could improve. Then came Hitler."

"With the Second World War, American art became important. A large group of highly creative and innovative artists escaped from Europe and came here, especially men like Max Ernst and Ferdinand Leger. Their surrealism had enormous influence on young American artists, who eventually became abstract expressionists. Of these, Jackson Pollock was the one who most challenged our thinking."

Jackson Pollock, "Convergence"

Max Ernst, "Europe After the Rain"
"I'm on a foundation that gives out fellowships to artists. I judged a show yesterday, from one until nine. I was shocked by the brutality of the work. This was so frightening. The artists were mostly untrained and were totally unable to draw a line. They just schmeer around. Some were obviously furious, technically all right, but so explicit it was painful. It had nothing to do with art but anger. I think it's going to change art, too. Out of this mess may come something, I know not what. It's kind of scary."

"There is a show at a California modern museum of some sort, exclusively of conceptual art, whatever that is. The curator is very proud of it. One of her artists, the star of the show, wrote her a letter stipulating that his work is never to be seen on any wall, never to be shown. It's only to be described in the catalog. That's cerebral art. Never mind emotion."

[Note: This is from Wikipedia: "Conceptual art is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions.^[1] This method was fundamental to LeWitt's definition of Conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print:

“	In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.	”
—Sol LeWitt

Conceptual art: Miller, "The Self-Made Man"

"The abstract expressionists were the opposite. They were interested in expressing their own selves at the moment of painting. Pollock was innovative in an American way. I think the abstract expressionists were among the most emotional painters of this half-century. They were representing our freshness, our newness, America's feeling that anything was possible. They were highly personal. They were reflecting themselves as they worked, the immediacy of life."

"Some of the European artists detested their work. Because they were highly planned in their approach, they considered this American art to be a disgusting self-indulgence. I happen to be very eclectic in taste. I loved some of the European artists. They all influenced me. I've given a lot of stuff away--to Oberlin, teh Whitney, and before it got so terrible, to the Guggenheim, to the Museum of Modern Art, and the Art Institute. Duchamps had given me a lot of Man Ray paintings. You must visit my apartment and see some of these works before I die."

Man Ray, "La Fortune"

"Ironically, even though he influenced them, Duchamps felt contempt for what they did. He told me when he was here that he couldn't stand them. With his Old World wisdom and his sense of humor, he had little patience for the abstract expressionists. It's true, they're not very humorous. I never detected any laughs in them. They were hell-bent on what they were doing."

Jackson Pollock, "Me"

"I think they were wonderful artists. I don't think it matters if they were self-indulgent. If you can do it, that's all that counts."

"You know the only kind of art that bores me? Art that is so technically infirm, it's not worth looking at. And art that is regimented. I'm really interested in the pioneers, the innovators. The abstract impressionists were pioneers. I'm not disturbed by the stuff I see today. I wish I were disturbed. I'm bored to death."

"I believe these last forty, fifty years are a period of rest. I have no idea what will emerge. I won't be around long enough to know. There is always change. Right now, I'm anti what passes for art today. We had a hundred years of creative art: the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. Picasso, of course, was the quintessential spirit. That's why I'm trying like the dickens to finish this book as we enter a new century."

"I graduated from Vassar in 1925. It was quite anti-Semitic and narrow in those days. I got my master's in art history at the University of Chicago. I married a Chicago businessman with whom I didn't stay very long. [Laughs.] I never married again because I couldn't have children. So I decide to live the way I wanted, have a professional life. The reason I don't regret dying is because I've really had a good time."

"I left Chicago in 1959. My career there was a roller coaster, beginning with my gallery in 1935. I showed all the unpopular pioneers: Mondrian, Klee, Kandinsky, Leger, Picasso. I bought a Kandinsky for five dollars, at an auction long, long ago. I supported the gallery by teaching art history."

Paul Klee, "Southern Gardens"

"The Chicago critics hated my gallery, the Tribune in particular. Actually, people came and smashed my plate-glass windows with a brick, so furious were they with Klee and Miro. It was done at night. They called me a Red."

"After I gave up the gallery--it was definitely not in fashion--I got a state job, dealing with venereal disease. I found the prostitutes tremendously interesting people. I'd never met one before. They got quite fond of me because I would sit and listen to them and listen to their stories. Of course, I was fired. So I went back to art."

"Daniel Caton Rich, the director of the Art Institute, knew all about my interests, and made me its first curator of modern art. When I acquired a de Kooning and a Jackson Pollock, after a very tough time raising the money, the Tribune's art column bore the headline KUH-KUH MUST GO. While I was there, you might say that I pioneered. That's why I don't get along with the Lake Forest trustees. These Respectables were far more dangerous than any street gang. After Dan left, I had no one to back me, so I skiddooed."

"I moved to New York and became the art critic of the Saturday Review of Literature. I forget how long I was there--many, many years. When Norman Cousins sold it, I resigned. After I'd been there six months, the Chicago Tribune suggested that a [sic] write a monthly column, a roundup of art in New York. I found the old clipping and sent it back to them, with a one-sentence note: 'Kuh-Kuh cannot come to your aid.'"

"While in New York, I worked for eleven years, building up the art collection of the First National Bank of Chicago. I traveled all over the world for them. At first, I couldn't see myself working for a bank. I didn't like bankers. [Laughs.] But Gaylord Freeman, the president, was wonderful. He gave me absolute freedom."

Here Studs asks her, "What about the Great Depression and American art? You lived through that time."

She replies, "The WPA arts project was terrific. It brought millions of people to art. I think a lot of it was poor and some of it was wonderful. The idea of keeping those poor devils alive was essential. In the end, America was the richer for it."

"I think museums today need a whole rethinking of their education departments. I had some idea, and a museum director said to me, 'You're just as revolutionary as ever.' [Laughs.] I said, 'You'd better be, or you decay and die.' A new millennium is approaching. You'd think we'd be on the verge of something great. Yet we're in this crazy moment, aren't we? I'm losing my optimism. I still fight if something is happening that enrages me."

"The whole art world is so crooked now. It wasn't that crooked in my day. If I went to India or Latin America for a work, I'd always find people who talked the same language. You talked about creativity. That's not true anymore. Art has become a commodity, like stocks and bonds."

"About eight years ago, a man called me and asked if I'd become an adviser to a group of businessmen. They bought art, put it in vaults, and let it increase in value. They wanted me to do the buying. I said no. I'd never deal with art in that way. He said, 'We're prepared to put up large sums of money if you can buy a fine Rousseau. We'll keep it in the vault for twenty years, and when we take it out, it will be worth ten times what you paid for it, or maybe a hundred times.' That's the way it's done these days. It's crazy and disgusting. But you can't fight big business, can you?"

"I lose my temper and I think, This is ridiculous because they're going to do it anyway. I fight very hard, but I know I won't win. [Laughs.] So I've learned to say it's hopeless. This is a step down for me."

"I've fought my whole life through. Listen, I'm still a fighter about my health. From the age of nine until I was twenty, I wore a five-pound plaster cast. It had to be changed regularly to keep me from becoming a humpback. I had a wonderful mother who said, 'You can do it.' 'I can't.' 'Yes, you can. You'll do it.' I went to college at seventeen, wearing that brace. The doctors insisted that I wear it, but somehow I threw it off and I began to have a really exciting life."

"I don't have many years left. No, no, no, I pray I never live to see the year 2000."

Katherine Kuh died January 10, 1994.

Note: Scroll down to view my video on Magritte below. Thank you.

Ron

Magritte from Ron Talley on Vimeo.

"private affluence and public squalor" John Kenneth Galbraith

2011-08-12T00:46:00.002-06:00

John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith, perhaps the most famous economist, with John Maynard Keynes, of the twentieth century and author of, among dozens of other books and hundreds of papers and articles, The Affluent Society, was interviewed by Studs Terkel for his own book, Coming Of Age. At the time of the interview Professor Galbraith was 85 and living in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, Kitty.

He was ambassador to India from 1961 to 1963. He served under presidents of the United States from Franklin Roosevelt to Johnson.

He told Studs, "I've made one concession to great age: to know there are some things I can ignore. I'll leave Cambodia to somebody else." He went on to say, "I feel obligated to know what's happening to the economy of the United States. I feel deeply associated with the problems of Europe, Japan. I still have a strong commitment to India and the poor countries of the world." He says, "The Affluent Society is the book that rescued me from obscurity, in 1958."

"This is something that still impresses me. We have a comfortable number of Americans with a fairly high standard of private living and yet we have this ferocious resistance to things that would improve out public standard of living. As you travel around, it is this contrast that catches your attention."

"We just came back this morning from Washington. It's a city of wonderful public design and public monument. And expensive shops. Yet we can't mis the squalor with which the other halff of the city lives."

"We have these enormously expensive television programs--nobody in the world can compete with us economically in immorally depraved TV--yet we are reluctant to spend money on public schools. What I identified in 1958 as private affluence and public squalor is unfortunately true today."

He goes on, "I'm deeply accustomed to giving advice that is not heard. That shouldn't keep anybody from doing it, because even unwelcome advice can cause a certain amount of public annoyance. Even if you don't succeed in reform, you do succeed in making enough people angry to make it worthwhile. Even if I don't expect that identifying something wrong, something insane, is a solution, I'm prepared to irritate for its own sake."

Then Professor Galbraith spoke to Studs, and into his ever-present tape recorder of course, of his opposition to the war in Vietnam.

"I put in ten years of my life in organizing opposition to the Vietnam War. At first, on the inside, and then, on the outside. I first became concerned with our Indochina involvement when I was in the State Department." [In 1946 he was the director of the Office of Economic Security.]

"It wasn't until years later that I stepped out. It was an issue so large, one had to reflect on the people who, for no good purpose, were getting killed."

"In 1961 Kennedy sent me to Vietnam to report on the situation there. He knew that I didn't have an open mind in this matter, that I was already against it. The Pentagon Papers tells of my effort in this regard. I carried on an inside effort through the Kennedy years and into the Jonson years. In the mid-'60s, I, along with some others, realizing we weren't getting anywhere inside the administration, decided to step out and take it to the public. That broke off a lifelong friendship I had with Lyndon Johnson. He had expected his old friends to stay with him, but we felt there was a larger issue here. It's lovely to seem to be working from the inside, but when you're not getting anywhere, it's no longer time to simply be annoying and amusing. [His voice assumes a sudden fervor, a tone of indignation.] I still feel very strongly about that issue."

He said he felt the same way about "the great myth in World War II: the effectiveness of strategic bombing." He went on a survey in Europe with George Ball, "the day after Roosevelt died."

"Many lives were devoted and lost to the bombing of German industry. But the war was still won on the ground and by tactical air forces. This came as a mjoor shock to the air forces. I enjoyed every moment of it."

He points out that it happened in Korea as well, that the war had to be fought and won on the ground. And in Vietnam, "we still lost it on the ground." "You were challenging an accepted doctrine, and the responding anger, I must confess, I found delightful."

"There is something personally satisfying about being disagreeable by advancing the truth."

"One of the advantages of old age is that you can't be dismissed as a young squirt. You can be dismissed as well by being called a nice old boy, but you can't be dismissed when you're regarded as a nasty old boy."

The conversation then turned again to politics, governance, and taxation.

"My old friend Ronald Reagan and I were fellow founders of Americans for Democratic Action, an undeniably liberal bunch. He became the greatest proponent of big government that we ever had. He oversaw the enormous expansion of the peacetime military establishment, which for some reason is exempt from the charge of being governmental. 'Big government' is anything--except the military. In those years, I enjoyed attacking big government by pointing out that the military had become our leading example of it."

"The common charge of 'big government' comes largely from people who are looking for a moral reason to avoid taxes."

"There's an irony to all this. One of the reasons that liberals in our time have been redduced in power and, in some degree, marginalized, is that government,through soial security, through public services, through one benefit or another, has made a very large number of people comfortable, happy, and conservative. When we look at the great authority, the great power of conservatives in our day, those of us who still call ourselves liberal must say we did it to ourselves. "

"Senator Robert Dole, a charming and intelligent man, is conducting a crusade against big government. Bob Dole of Kansas would not be in office today if it weren't for our farm program and agricultural price supports. Whenever he attacks government, perhaps someone should suggest he further his case by enthusiastically opposing support prices for wheat. Reagan's hometown, Dixon, Illinois, was saved by the New Deal. More people should know about our history."

He goes on to say, "My generation was the first to get the picture of the affirmative role of government."

"In the autumn of 1934, I was moving from Berkeley to Harvard. I stopped off in Washington. It was a wonderful moment in history. Because I was an economist, and there was a great shortage of us, I was put on the payroll the next day. In those easygoing days, nobody asked if I was a citizen. I wasn't. I was a Canadian. I wasn't even a voter, but they felt I, along with many other young people, could be of some use."

"These were the most depressing times economically. . . total despair, a devastated South, . . . Even the conservative American Farm Bureau Federation said the farmers were on the verge of revolt."

The government stepped in. . . Ever since then, I've had no doubts that government can play a strongly affirmative role in our lives."

Studs asks a question.

"Would this work today? With the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union dissolved, aren't the free market advocates triumphant? "

"I don't think so. I don't see the free market evangelists as dominant in our time. It is simply headline stuff with a certain simple appeal. What we will be seeing is the triumph of a mixed economy. It is neither a free economy nor socialism; it is a fusion of the state and the market. There is a large affirmative role for the state as opposed to the luxurious levels of private consumption."

"I see these countries that once had comprehensive socialism making their way back to a mixed economy, not to capitalism. Nobody doubts that the market can produce good restaurants and good clothing and good entertainment, but where is the role for social welfare? For housing? For education?"

He states emphatically, "To talk of a free market without restraint is nonsense."

"There is an easy, short-run view taken by a large part of our community, a dim view of the urgency of those who depend on the public sector. You find enormous newspaper lineage devoted to crime in the cities. If you're comfortably well-off, you can have security guards, who now outnumber policemen in the aggregate."

"So it is possible for the comfortable to contract out of the social order."

"The rest of us, I hope, are left with a strong desire to see a better balance between our social responsibility and our private consumption."

"In a democratic society, there's no alternative to public persuasion. Even if you don't persuade, you can at least annoy."

Studs asked his wife, Kitty, "How long will your husband continue in this spirit?" She simply answered, "Indefinitely." And she laughed.

There is an excellent book by Professor Galbraith, a recent work, published in the 1990s, titled The Culture of Contentment. In this relatively small book he states at the outset that he is not optimistic about the fate, in the short term or ultimately, of our civilization. But I recommend it highly. If it will not persuade it will at least annoy some.

John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith was born on October 15, 1908. He died on April 29,2006.

John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith

Scott Walker Blues

2011-08-05T16:42:00.000-06:00

Scott Walker Blues from Bonobo Secret Handshake on Vimeo.

Obama Has Got Them Whupped

2011-07-22T21:11:00.002-06:00

If the field of Republican contenders remains as is until the election of 2012 Obama will have no trouble at all whupping each and every one of these bozos.

Bachmann is a nut case and Santorum doesn't have a chance. In fact, the Republicans who have come forth so far to declare or are considering declaring their candidacies are mostly dead in the water from the get-go. That's the way I read it anyway.

And Obama is already ahead in the polls. If this is the best the Tea Party-dominate GOP can come up with they don't stand the chance of a snowball in Hades.

Well, it's for the best.

Guest Entry: What Obama Wants By PAUL KRUGMAN

2011-07-08T21:32:00.000-06:00

July 7, 2011

What Obama Wants

By PAUL KRUGMAN

On Thursday, President Obama met with Republicans to discuss a debt deal. We don’t know exactly what was proposed, but news reports before the meeting suggested that Mr. Obama is offering huge spending cuts, possibly including cuts to Social Security and an end to Medicare’s status as a program available in full to all Americans, regardless of income.

Obviously, the details matter a lot, but progressives, and Democrats in general, are understandably very worried. Should they be? In a word, yes.

Now, this might just be theater: Mr. Obama may be pulling an anti-Corleone, making Republicans an offer they can’t accept. The reports say that the Obama plan also involves significant new revenues, a notion that remains anathema to the Republican base. So the goal may be to paint the G.O.P. into a corner, making Republicans look like intransigent extremists — which they are.

But let’s be frank. It’s getting harder and harder to trust Mr. Obama’s motives in the budget fight, given the way his economic rhetoric has veered to the right. In fact, if all you did was listen to his speeches, you might conclude that he basically shares the G.O.P.’s diagnosis of what ails our economy and what should be done to fix it. And maybe that’s not a false impression; maybe it’s the simple truth.

One striking example of this rightward shift came in last weekend’s presidential address, in which Mr. Obama had this to say about the economics of the budget: “Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.”

That’s three of the right’s favorite economic fallacies in just two sentences. No, the government shouldn’t budget the way families do; on the contrary, trying to balance the budget in times of economic distress is a recipe for deepening the slump. Spending cuts right now wouldn’t “put the economy on sounder footing.” They would reduce growth and raise unemployment. And last but not least, businesses aren’t holding back because they lack confidence in government policies; they’re holding back because they don’t have enough customers — a problem that would be made worse, not better, by short-term spending cuts.

In his brief remarks after Thursday’s meeting, by the way, Mr. Obama seemed to reiterate the Herbert Hooveresque view that deficit reduction is what we need to “grow the economy.”

People have asked me why the president’s economic advisers aren’t telling him not to believe in the confidence fairy — that is, not to believe the assertion, popular on the right but overwhelmingly refuted by the evidence, that slashing spending in the face of a depressed economy will magically create jobs. My answer is, what economic advisers? Almost all the high-profile economists who joined the Obama administration early on have either left or are leaving.

Nor have they been replaced. As The Wall Street Journal recently noted, there are a “stunning” number of vacancies in important economic posts. So who’s defining the administration’s economic views?

Some of what we’re hearing is presumably coming from the political team, whose members seem to believe that a move toward Republican positions, reminiscent of former President Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” in the 1990s, is the key to Mr. Obama’s re-election. And Mr. Clinton did, indeed, rebound from a big defeat in the 1994 midterms to win big two years later. But some of us think that the rebound had less to do with his rhetorical move to the center than with the five million jobs the economy added over those two years — an achievement not likely to be repeated this time, especially not in the face of harsh spending cuts.

Anyway, I don’t believe that it’s all political calculation. Watching Mr. Obama and listening to his recent statements, it’s hard not to get the impression that he is now turning for advice to people who really believe that the deficit, not unemployment, is the top issue facing America right now, and who also believe that the great bulk of deficit reduction should come from spending cuts. It’s worth noting that even Republicans weren’t suggesting cuts to Social Security; this is something Mr. Obama and those he listens to apparently want for its own sake.

Which raises the big question: If a debt deal does emerge, and it overwhelmingly reflects conservative priorities and ideology, should Democrats in Congress vote for it?

Mr. Obama’s people will no doubt argue that their fellow party members should trust him, that whatever deal emerges was the best he could get. But it’s hard to see why a president who has gone out of his way to echo Republican rhetoric and endorse false conservative views deserves that kind of trust.

Seeing Ourselves As Others See Us by Paul Krugman

2011-06-15T16:43:00.001-06:00

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/to-see-ourselves-as-others-see-us/

Ask a Briton to describe “American-style” healthcare, and you’ll hear a catalog of horrors that include grossly expensive and unnecessary medical procedures and a privatized system that favors the rich. For a people accustomed to free healthcare for all, regardless of income, the fact that millions of their cousins across the Atlantic have no insurance and can’t afford decent treatment is a farce as well as a tragedy.

But critics here warn that a similarly bleak future may await Britain if a government plan to put more power in the hands of doctors and introduce more competition into the NHS succeeds — privatization by stealth, they say.

So frightening is the Yankee example that any British politician who values his job has to explicitly disavow it as a possible outcome. Twice.

“We will not be selling off the NHS, we will not be moving towards an insurance scheme, we will not introduce an American-style private system,” Prime Minister David Cameron emphatically told a group of healthcare workers in a nationally televised address last week.

In case they didn’t hear it the first time, Cameron repeated the dreaded “A”-word in a list of five guarantees he offered the British people at the end of his speech.

Colbert calls B.S. on claim that Romney is a job creator

2011-06-11T21:37:00.000-06:00

The Colbert Report
Tags: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Reading "Caritas In Veritate," "Charity In Truth" y Pope Benedict XVI part six

2011-01-27T16:52:00.001-07:00

The Pope speaks out for the rights of workers in the tradition of the Church's Social Teaching. The views expressed in the Social doctrine are by no means popular in today's political atmosphere. But the Teachings have never been popular, especially with extreme free-market advocates.

Beneddict writes:

"It is good for people to realize that purchasing is a moral--and not merely economic--act. Hence the consumer has* a specific social responsibility, which goes hand in hand with the social responsibility of he enterprise.

Reading "Caritas In Veritate," "Charity In Truth" by Pope Benedict XVI part five

2011-01-26T18:07:00.000-07:00

Benedict speaks of the complications that have come with globalization in our time. Certainly these difficulties have been obvious for some time to the majority of people. But the Pope brings the perspective of the Catholic Church with Her Social Teaching to bear on the problems presented by the phenomenon of globalization.

"Love in truth--caritas in veritate--is a great challenge for the Church in a world that is becoming progressively and pervasively globalized. The risk for our time is that the de facto interdependence of peoples and nations is not matched by ethical interactions of consciences and minds that would give rise to truly human development. Only in *charity, illumined by the light of reason and faith is i possible to pursue development goals that possess a more humane and humanizing value. The sharing of goods and resources, from which authentic development proceeds, is not guaranteed by merely technical progress and relationships of utility but of the potential of love which overcomes evil with good(Cf. Rom 12:21) opening up the path of reciprocity of consciences and liberties."

Continued

*Passages in italics are printed so in the original text.

Reading "Caritas In Veritate," "Charity In Truth" by Pope Benedict XVI part five

2011-01-26T05:00:00.001-07:00

Reading "Caritas In Veritate," "Charity In Truth" by Pope Benedict XVI part four

2011-01-26T03:45:00.001-07:00

In the chapter, Chapter Five, "The CooperaTation of the Human Family," Benedict reminds us that faith and reason working together, hand in hand, will bring the human community to its desired goal, the common good of all members of humanity.

" A metaphysical understanding of the relations between persons is therefore of great benefit for their development in this regard, reason finds inspiration and direction in Christian revelation, according to which the human community does not absorb the individual, annihilating his autonomy, as happens in the various forms of totalitarianism, but rather values him all the more because the relation between individual and community is a relation between one totality and another."

Further on in the chapter Benedict speaks of the criteria which must delineate the culture of the common good based on charity and truth.

"Since the development of persons and of peoples is at stake , this discernment will have to take account of the need for emancipation and exclusivity , in the context of a truly universal human community. The whole man and all men is also the criterion for evaluating cultures and religions. Christianity, the religion of the "God who has a human face," already contains this criterion within itself."

Continued

*Passages in italics are printed so in the original text.

Reading "Caritas In Veritate", "Charity In Truth" by Pope Benedict XVI part three

2011-01-11T07:09:00.000-07:00

The Pope states:

"Many areas of the globe today have evolved considerably, albeit in problematic and disparate ways, thereby taking their place among the grest powers destined to play important roles in the future. Yet it should be stressed that progress of a merely economic and technological kind is insufficient*. Development needs above all to be true and integral."

Benedict reminds us that Pope John Paul II called for a reevaluation of the status of the former satellites of the Soviet Union once it had collapsed. This was only partially accomplished. The economies of those countries are still in a state of disarray, inadequate to the challenges of the modern world.

continued

* Passages in italics are printed so in the original text.

Reading "Caritas In Veritate", "Charity In Truth" by Pope Benedict XVI part two

2011-01-10T20:32:00.001-07:00

The Pope's concern, first and foremost, is of course the common good. Thus concern for the profit motive, free market concerns, always take a secondary place where consideration of public policy is concerned.

The Pope writes:

". . .the unregulated exploitation of the earth's resources. . . leads. . . us to reflect on the measures that would be necessary to provide a solution to problems that are not only new in comparison to those addressed by Pope Paul VI, but also, and above all, of decicive impact upon the present and future good of humanity."

Benedict goes on to state that what is needed is a "new vision for the future." This implies a new attitude toward humanity, nothing less than this. The unrestricted dominance of free-market Capitalism, unfettered Capitalistic gain at all costs, will have to be replaced with a moderated form of free-market Capitalism which takes into consideration the common good.

"The world's wealth is growing in absolute terms but inequalities are on the increase*."

Benedict continues:

'In poorer areas some groups enjoy a sort of "superdevelopment" of a wasteful and consumerist kind which forms an unacceptable contrast with the ongoing situations of dehumanizing deprivation."

He continues to say:

"On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property especially in the field of health care."

He also asserts that ". . . in some poor countries, cultural models and social norms of behavior persist which hinder the process of development."

continued

*All passages in italics are printed so in the original text.

Reading "Caritas In Veritate", "Charity In Truth" by Pope Benedict XVI Part One

2011-01-08T16:57:00.001-07:00

The Pope's latest encyclical to the clergy and to "ALL PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL ON THE INTEGRAL DEVELOPMENT OF PEOPLES IN CHARITY AND TRUTH" has stirred a furor on the Right of the political spectrum in the United States and abroad. In it he calls for a radical revision of the way the people of the world, especially those who are marginalized, are treated. His reference, not surprisingly, is the Bible, Holy Scripture and the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church.

He writes: "Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine. Every responsibility and every commitment spelled out by that doctrine is derived from charity which, according to the teaching of Jesus, is the synthesis of the entire Law. (Cf Mt.22: 36-40)"

In the Gospel of Matthew we read:

^'36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^[a] ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^[b] ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”'

The Pope continues, "it is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members and within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones.)"

Throughout the encyclical letter the Pope calls for "gratuitous" charity toward the weakest among us, the marginalized, the weak, those abandoned by modern society, by those fortunate nations, those wealthy entities which are organized for the benefit of their members but with little regard for man's primary duty--to care fr his neighbor, to "love [our] neighbor as [we] love [ourselves.]"

He continues, with reference to modern man's preoccupation with himself, "I am aware of the way charity has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted, detached from ethical living, and in any event undervalued."

He goes on to say, "In the social, juridical, cultural, political and economic fields--the contexts, in other words, that are most exposed to this danger--it is easily dismissed as irrelevant for interpreting and giving direction to moral responsibility."

Then he notes, "The sharing of goods and resources, from which authentic development proceeds, is not guaranteed by meerely techinical progress and relationships of utility, but by the potential of love which overcomes evil with good. (Cf. Rom. 12: 21)"

^{And turning to the letter of St. Paul to the Romans we read, 21} Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

The Pope continues to affirm the unity of all peoples. This has made his encyclical letter unpopular with the Right political wing of parties in the United States as well as other countries. But then it is not the intention of the Church, nor is it Her obligation, to be popular. Her mission is to speak the truth. To this end the Pope seeks to bring "charity in truth"

Continued

* All passages in italics are printed so in the original text.

Guest Entry: When Fox News Wins Democracy Loses

2010-12-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

Glenn Beck and Fox News have had a toxic effect on the political process, and they're only going to push harder now.

Over the past two years, Fox has gone from a conservative-leaning news source to an active player in politics -- and things have taken an even darker turn as Beck's nightly show on Fox has brought right-wing extremism into the mainstream. Beck routinely launches outlandish attacks painting his progressive targets as part of a sinister conspiracy to intentionally destroy the country.

When advertisers sponsor Fox News, they're not just buying commercial airtime. They're making an affirmative investment in a political game -- one that puts dishonest smears, fearmongering, and vicious attacks ahead of accuracy. Money that goes to Fox funds Beck's conspiracy theories, baseless political attacks, and outright promotion of right-wing candidates for office.

Companies that are considering advertising on Fox need to keep that in mind, and they need to hear from you.

Give your tax-deductible donation today to help us fight Fox, Beck and conservative misinformation.

Every day, we at Media Matters for America monitor Fox News and its allies in the conservative media, researching claims, exposing violent rhetoric, debunking misinformation and preventing falsehoods from spreading unchallenged.

We've had success in making sure others in the press know that Fox is a player in politics, not an observer. We need your help to keep up that fight and get the message out to potential Fox advertisers. Unless it hits them right in the bottom line, Fox News has made it clear it won't rein in Beck and other serial misinformers.

You can be part of that fight.

Give your tax-deductible donation today to help us fight Fox, Beck and conservative misinformation.

Thank you for your support.

David Brock
Founder and CEO
Media Matters for America

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Guest Entry: The Fox News divide that never was

2010-12-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

Media Matters: The Fox News divide that never was

The internal divisions at Fox News are notorious. There is the Fox News primary, in which no fewer than five potential Republican presidential candidates and their varied supporters and detractors -- all on the Fox News payroll -- duke it out on a near-daily basis.

There are typical ego-driven competitions between on-air personalities, and an increasingly public divide at the network over dangerously unhinged host Glenn Beck.

But there is one divide that -- contrary to the insistence of Fox News executives -- simply does not exist: the one between its "news" and "opinion" shows.

Last year, The New York Times reported, "Fox argues that its news hours -- 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays -- are objective," and quoted Michael Clemente, the channel's senior vice president for news, as saying: "The average consumer certainly knows the difference between the A section of the newspaper and the editorial page."

This is apparently an argument that works only on the very gullible, and on advertisers who want to pretend that by confining their ad buys to the channel's "news hours" they are not financially supporting very damaging conservative lies and smears.

How telling it will be to see who attempts to maintain this charade, now that Media Matters has published internal emails from Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon to his news staff directing them to call into question indisputable scientific facts in Fox's climate change reporting, and eschew "public option" for variations of "government option" in Fox's health care reform reporting, echoing advice from a prominent Republican pollster on how to help turn the public against reform.

The recently-released emails confirm what sources told Media Matters months ago: Pressure on Fox News journalists to "distort" straight reporting comes right from the top.

In October, one source with knowledge of the situation explained: "[There is] more pressure from Sammon to slant news to the right or to tell people how to report news, doing it in a more brutish way. A lot of the reporters are conservative and are glad to pick up news. But there is a point at which it is no longer reporting, but distorting things. ... [I]f you come in to say, 'ignore points of view and ignore facts,' then you are straying away from being a legitimate news reporter."

The problem, of course, is not just that the reporting on Fox News is wildly dishonest -- after all, a supermarket tabloid can be wildly dishonest, too -- it's that the lies and smears on Fox News have very real policy implications.

For example, following the release of Sammon's email ordering his news staff to cast doubt on climate science, Zoe Tcholak-Antitch, vice-president of the Carbon Disclosure Project, told Media Matters: "It is very disturbing to hear of this e-mail because it just goes further to sow seeds of doubt among the American population then makes it more difficult for the politicians to stand up for any type of legislation on climate change if they want to get elected."

Tcholak-Antitch added: "It obviously does have an impact on the American public. We are facing an issue that needs to be dealt with in a timely fashion. The danger is that this delays action. While it exists, it delays action and it hinders politicians from passing laws and regulations that will help a clean energy economy and create jobs for American people."

The irony is that News Corp. -- Fox News' parent company and (the blind eye it turns towards Fox notwithstanding) a recognized corporate leader in raising climate change awareness -- cites Tcholak-Antitch's Carbon Disclosure Project as an expert resource on the issue.

New York Congressman John Hall -- a Democratic member of the House global warming committee -- called Sammon's email "regrettable" and warned about the effects this sort of "slanted" coverage has on legislation:

The window of time we have left for action to prevent the worst case scenario may still be closing. ... We can't afford to waste two years if the changes are already happening. It is really important that the public gets educated. I do think Congress responds to public pressure. If the public is being misinformed, we have very little chance of reversing the trend.

Similarly, after Media Matters released Sammon's "government option" email, health care reform advocate Health Care for America Now issued a statement saying: "At a time when right-wing extremists were trying to make the case that the health care reform bill was a government takeover plot, Fox News incorporated politically charged language into its day-to-day reporting to mislead its audience into thinking the public option was something that it wasn't."

Indeed, the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact announced this week that its "Lie of the Year" is the false claim that the health care reform law is "a government takeover of health care." And yet, Fox News' "objective" reporters were ordered to play directly into that damaging narrative.

To be sure, many advertisers have taken a step in the right direction by refusing to support some of Fox News' deplorable "opinion" and "entertainment" shows -- after all, who wants to drag a hard-earned (and valuable) brand identity through the mud by associating it with people who call the president racist, or repeatedly claim "all terrorists are Muslim," or promote anti-Semites, or engage in bizarre conspiracy theories?

In fact, just this week, Omaha Steaks pulled its ads from Beck's show, joining a growing list of over 100 advertisers that have done the same.

But while that may mean that Fox is forced to air "Foundation for a Better Life" commercials -- courtesy of conservative Phillip Anschutz -- five times in a row during Beck's show, it doesn't stop advertisers from subsidizing the lies on dozens of other Fox programs.

When asked several months ago about the Beck advertising boycott, Rupert Murdoch claimed, "We have not lost any business at all; some [advertisers] may have moved to other programs," but "it has not affected the total revenues or the profits."

Last year, Paul Rittenberg, a Fox advertising executive, made the same point to the Times. The Beck boycott "caus[ed] headaches" for Rittenberg's team, the Times reported, but "he said Fox 'hasn't lost a dime' because the ads were moved to different hours" -- presumably hours filled with so-called "objective" news reports that skittish advertisers thought were safely non-controversial.

A year ago, these advertisers may have been able to take false comfort in the Fox News canard that there exists any sort of division between Fox news and Fox opinion programming, but with the release of the Sammon emails, how long will they keep kidding themselves?