Democracy In Distress

Code Speak: Politics, bigotry, & the problem with Santorum

2012-02-19T15:08:00.001-08:00

Before the Florida primary, I mistakenly believed that Rick Santorum was done.

Can’t we just be done with him? Please?

The Anyone But Romney camp has got them selves into a pickle… They have to decide between the walking contradiction of Newt Gingrich and Santorum, whose issues as a general election candidate may be just as awkward, but in a very different way...

Republicans and the Culture Wars: Why It Won't Work This Year - The Daily Beast:
Then there’s Rick Santorum, who, by all rights, should dominate the values battlefield. He’s got the loving wife, the passel of kids, the goofy-dad vibe. And, let’s face it, the man has never met a policy issue he didn’t see through the prism of family values. Tax reform? Regulatory reform? Deficit spending? As Rick tells it, the first step toward addressing any of these problems is to reinstate the ban on sodomy.

On pure piety points, no one can beat Rick. We’re talking here about a guy who has said he would use the presidential bully pulpit to warn of how contraception tempts even married couples to get busy in ways contrary to God’s will. This, of course, is part of the problem. Opposing abortion is one thing. Opposing contraception even among married folks doesn’t make Rick seem like a paragon of moral virtue so much as a refugee from the 16th century.

This excerpt touches on the real problem with Santorum without actually landing on it. It is not Santorum’s beliefs that are necessarily troubling to the far right, it is the way he communicates them. He either has made a decision at some point in his career to ignore the generally accepted code speak of the conservative social agenda, or he just doesn’t understand it.

If the former, then this is, perhaps, a bold though politically difficult approach to campaigning for him. If the latter, then he may be too stupid to be president. Not that that has stopped voters before.

What do I mean by code speak? Well, on gay rights, instead of calling them “special rights,” he focuses instead on the idea that homosexuality is a sin. Sure, a lot of non-politicians focus on the Biblical rather than the political points of this issue, but usually those are not people running in statewide elections, let alone wanting to run in a national general election.

Likewise, the new contraception debate (really, have we drifted that far to the right?)…

Instead of talking about the economics of health care, or even the questionable argument about religious freedom for faith-based organizations, Santorum, in the past, hit a straight moral line drive with the argument that contraception was bad for families. Of course, this was before the debate raised like an oily sludge to the surface of the election cycle, and at the time he said that he was not in favor of legislating this brand of morality, but times and political climates can and do change…

This sort of right wing code speak becomes very troubling to me when the President is being discussed. I know the issues that most on the right have with Obama have nothing to do with his race, but… All the claims about the President being a Muslim, a non-native citizen, and even a socialist… In a different day and age, how many of the people making so much noise about these non-issues wouldn’t bother? Instead, thirty plus years ago, they would just be making noise about getting the black man out of the White House.

Not everyone, don’t get me wrong. But I am sure that some percentage of those making these sorts of arguments about the President are just using these non-issues as code speak about his race.

While I disagree with Santorum at a fundamental level on just about every issue and take exception to almost every word that comes out of his mouth, at least he is not that kind of slime. I have no doubt that his issues with Obama have a lot more to do with wanting his job than with the color of the President’s skin.

The bigoted, racist kind of slime out there who do have that problem should be worried, though, because Santorum does not play their game and, in the unlikely event that he secures the GOP nomination, his inability to use proper conservative code speak will slay any chances at victory in November.

Only by using code speak to portray religious and moral beliefs as legitimate political issues can one who seems to believe that birth control is a refuge for loose women with low morals succeed in gaining acceptance outside of the far right conservative primaries.

Of course, Santorum’s failure to grasp the necessity of right wing code speak is not his only problem, beyond failing to understand how to discuss social issues, he really doesn’t seem to understand which aspects of these issues really engage people in the first place:

But it’s not just that the senator’s positions are out of touch with the mainstream electorate (a mere 8 percent of Americans think birth control is immoral; 84 percent of U.S. Catholics think you can use it and still be a good Catholic). It’s that the guy is simultaneously too pious and too pathetic.

Take his views on gay rights. Plenty of people object to gay marriage, but Santorum has long come across as a bit of a clown on the entire subject of homosexuality. It’s some combination of his whiny manner and his slightly-too-colorful blatherings about how “sodomy” is kinda like polygamy or incest but not quite so bad as man-on-dog action. With that kind of commentary, small wonder Dan Savage decided to execute his devastating lexical takedown of the senator.

Perhaps saddest of all, when things get uncomfortable, Santorum crumbles. Pressed recently about a section of his 2005 book, It Takes a Family, that laments “radical feminists” undermining the family by pushing women to work outside the home, the senator pleaded ignorance and claimed the bit had been written by his wife.

To be sure, this whole Serious Candidate business is new to Santorum.

Here’s to crumbling and blaming it on your wife. That sells really well in the heartland.

The problem the rest of us will have if Santorum became president should resolve itself any time now. I am just surprised he’s made it this far.

But not really. I still am not convinced that the GOP can bring itself to nominate a Mormon, er… I mean someone who flip flops on all the issues they hold dear while being responsible for the rough draft of the “anti-American” and “Socialist” Obama death panel plan.

Unfortunately, the only other sane choice they had this year was another, lesser known Mormon, er… I mean someone who endorsed the President’s anti-Amercian, Nazi Communist agenda by actually working for the guy. Ambassador to China or closet communist?

Huntsman's failure to launch and the Anyone But Romney crusade, it surely couldn’t have anything to do with faith, could it? I am sure that for most primary voters, the politics do come first. Unfortunately, I am sure that there are a few out there who obscure their true feelings with political code phrases.

A skill Santorum seems to lack.

from tag Newt

Democracy In Distress: Newt, NASA, & the Moon

from tag Conservatives

Democracy In Distress: What do Republicans have against science anyway?

from tag Tea

from tag Health

from tag Santorum

Conservative voters: Poorly informed with low IQs & voting against their own best interests?

2012-02-12T11:23:00.001-08:00

I was just going to throw this link up onto Snip.it & Pinterest, but I really felt some words were necessary here.

First of all, I have known some very intelligent people who have conservative political views. Not only are they smart, but their political views are smart as well. Their arguments are usually well developed, informed, and are very intelligent, based on legitimate facts, figures and historical interpretations.

Quite often I disagree with them, but this is because we subscribe to some different historical and philosophical interpretations. However, when we debate, I hope both of us walk away better informed than when we started.

These debates usually change no minds, but they can actually make each of our arguments stronger, because through a well-informed conversation on an issue, we both learn some new facts and figures, holes are punched in our weaker arguments, and we have to find support for fuzzy truths we may have thrown out in haste or drop those imperfect arguments from our repertoire. In the end, each side can make a better informed decision on the point being discussed and, hopefully, takes away stronger arguments in defense of our views.

But what about right and wrong? What about winning? Well, in intelligent debates, we are usually arguing sane problems and issues that have multiple, legitimate, intelligent solutions. There usually is not a right answer or a wrong answer. Or they are very complex problems that require the best ideas from both the right and the left to be adequately resolved.

Of course, I am not talking about racism, prejudice, discrimination, or science. I usually find that intelligent conservatives and I pretty much share the same views here. Because we are not stupid or ignorant.

Which brings us to this…

Conservatism Thrives on Low Intelligence and Poor Information | | AlterNet:

…Canadian study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence. Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail that brought it to the attention of British readers last week. It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.

It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly "different" others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.

But, drawing on a sample size of several thousand, correcting for both education and socioeconomic status, the new study looks embarrassingly robust. Importantly, it shows that prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn. Conservative ideology is the "critical pathway" from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to "rightwing ideologies that promote coherence and order" and "emphasise the maintenance of the status quo".

Pausing for a second… I do not equate conservative ideology with intolerance, necessarily. Social conservatism, perhaps, but not conservatism in general.

It seems as if a narrow path is being walked here, almost but not quite defining conservatism as racist and intolerant. That may be problematic. Further, if these sorts are drawn to the conservative ideology, does that mean conservative ideology is intolerant? Or does it become intolerant because of the influx of these intolerant people with low IQs? In the end, does it matter even matter where the causes and effects lay? Or has it become a self-perpetuating cycle with the chickens shitting all over the eggs they are laying, beyond any identification of cause and effect?

Blah. From here the article climbs up onto more solid ground… The problem lies not with a lack of intelligent conservatives, but with the way the intelligent conservatives have been pandering to their side’s “basest, stupidest impulses.”

This is not to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. There are some very clever people in government, advising politicians, running thinktanks and writing for newspapers, who have acquired power and influence by promoting rightwing ideologies.
But what we now see among their parties – however intelligent their guiding spirits may be – is the abandonment of any pretence of high-minded conservatism. On both sides of the Atlantic, conservative strategists have discovered that there is no pool so shallow that several million people won't drown in it. Whether they are promoting the idea that Barack Obama was not born in the US, that man-made climate change is an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy, or that the deficit results from the greed of the poor, they now appeal to the basest, stupidest impulses, and find that it does them no harm in the polls.
…
…"the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital centre today". The Republican party, with its "prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science" is appealing to what he calls the "low-information voter", or the "misinformation voter". While most office holders probably don't believe the "reactionary and paranoid claptrap" they peddle, "they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base".

This is troubling in so many ways. But this is why so many poor Americans are fervent Republicans while many of the policies and practices of the GOP act against their own best interests at worst, or have little to do with any issues really effecting the poor at best.

Even more troubling:

In the UK, “the Guardian reported that recipients of disability benefits, scapegoated by the government as scroungers, blamed for the deficit, now find themselves subject to a new level of hostility and threats from other people.”

And even worse, and heading towards my real point here:

These are the perfect conditions for a billionaires' feeding frenzy. Any party elected by misinformed, suggestible voters becomes a vehicle for undisclosed interests. A tax break for the 1% is dressed up as freedom for the 99%. The regulation that prevents big banks and corporations exploiting us becomes an assault on the working man and woman. Those of us who discuss man-made climate change are cast as elitists by people who happily embrace the claims of Lord Monckton, Lord Lawson or thinktanks funded by ExxonMobil or the Koch brothers: now the authentic voices of the working class.

Many of the policies that benefit corporations are acutely harmful to the poor. Tax policy? Maybe, maybe not, but the minimum wage? Expensive workplace safety regulations? Even more costly environmental protection regulations?

The people arguing for deregulation will never live where the water supply has been poisoned by carcinogens, so why should they worry? Guess who gets to live there? The people voting for the conservative candidates who argue that such regulations kill jobs.

The real issue is not the IQ of the voters. I know for a fact that many of the loudest voices on the left should be locked in small rooms and only allowed to talk to rocks. Both sides have these people.

But what is so disturbing to me is how so many on the right so callously prey upon the ignorance of many in their voting base.

Perhaps this is my own prejudice, but what I see so often is the left saying, vote for us and we’ll keep the plant next door to your house from killing you while the right says, vote for us, and we’ll keep the left from putting job killing regulations on the plant next door to you and who really believes in all that science stuff, anyway, that says arsenic is bad for you? Jobs and superbabies! You can have it all!

I used the photo of the class warfare sign at the top of this post because I feel that this really is class warfare. It is an act of class warfare for the right to use these tactics on their own supporters.

The right says we cannot have a discussion about income inequality, because that is class warfare and an attack on the capitalist principles of the American Dream. Those on the right who would actually benefit from having this discussion, those who desperately feel the worsening ache of the dying American Dream every day, turn angry, fearful eyes towards those on the left who are fighting for them, away from those on the right who are actually stealing access to the American Dream from the vast majority of the country’s citizens in the first place.

And that, beyond being reprehensible, is just plain frightening.

from tag Conservatives

Democracy In Distress: What do Republicans have against science anyway?

from tag Ugly

Democracy In Distress: A dysfunctional system goes Super… And fails.

from tag Climate

Democracy In Distress: Climate Change

from tag Fear

from tag Ignorance

from tag Rights

from tag Incompetence

from tag Warfare

Santorum & Obama: Which is worse for religion?

2012-02-10T01:27:00.001-08:00

Some good points in this video…

What I want to know, if we are not supposed to be funding birth control with our tax dollars, we are also not funding erectile dysfunction treatments with our tax dollars, right?

That would just be crazy and hypocritical for insurance to cover one and not the other.

What? Really? One is a health issue and one is a moral issue?

Someone needs to explain that one to me.

The crazy right is always going off about how Obama is dangerous to religious freedom. I forget which one of the GOP candidates it was, they are blurring together a bit, was saying that one of his first acts upon taking office would be to overturn by executive order all of the anti-Christian acts put into place by the Obama Administration.

For the life of me, I can’t think of a single anti-religious executive order or bill signed by Obama, but maybe I am just getting my news from the wrong sources.

Watching this video, I realized they might be talking about women’s health issues. I forget that pro-woman’s health is often considered anti-Christian.

But, at least, if the GOP gains the Presidency, we can all rest assured that Islamic Sharia Laws will not be enacted in the United States. But who will protect us from these psychos wanting to write Leviticus into the U.S. Code and into the Constitution?

Well, if they do, we can rest assured that many of them will quickly be out of office, stoned to death for their sins…

Right?

To my way of thinking, these people harm religion more than Obama every would in a millions terms in office.

I suppose we do have to feel some sympathy since Christians are such a persecuted minority in this country.

ABCNEWS.com : Poll: Most Americans Say They're Christian:

Eighty-three percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. Most of the rest, 13 percent, have no religion. That leaves just 4 percent as adherents of all non-Christian religions combined — Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and a smattering of individual mentions.

Oh, there I go again. Listening to their words instead of checking their facts. Better quit while I am ahead.

Fortunately, I do believe that these far right nut jobs are a minority, and if they feel persecuted, it is only because being surrounded by sane people must be very frustrating for them. That does give me hope and faith in my fellow Americans.

I am also pleased if, as Uygur argues, this turn back to the crazy social agenda by the GOP candidates means that they are losing confidence on running on economic issues. I agree the figures are on Obama’s side when it comes to the economy.

And the GOP loses when they run from so far to the right on the social issues.

from tag Islam

Democracy In Distress: Suburban Eschatology Part Two - September 12th, 2010: 30 Mosques, 30 Days

from tag Health

from tag Christianity

from tag Santorum

From The Daily Show… All three parts of the interview with Jonathan Macey

2012-02-01T10:22:00.001-08:00

This was really choppy on the show last night. Considering the length, I now understand why. But I thought it was a really worthwhile conversation. The clip at the end illustrates why the issues discussed matter.

Exclusive - Jonathan Macey Extended Interview Pt. 1

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Exclusive - Jonathan Macey Extended Interview Pt. 2

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Exclusive - Jonathan Macey Extended Interview Pt. 3

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Indecision 2012 - Bain Man

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

from tag Mortgage

Democracy In Distress: Bank Consolidation Chart

from tag Economy

from tag Corporations

from tag Recession

from tag Romney

Democracy In Distress: GOP & 2012: A grab bag of headlines from everyone's favorite dysfunctional family

from tag 2012

Florida… (yawn)

2012-01-31T16:20:00.001-08:00

There’s this…

Florida Primary 2012 Results: Election Reporting By County (MAP, REAL-TIME DATA):

According to the latest polls going into election day, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney held a commanding lead, with 42.3 percent of the vote. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, who won in South Carolina just over a week ago, had 29 percent of the vote heading into Tuesday, while former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul trailed with roughly 11 percent of the vote each.

Still, by the end of tonight's race, only 5 percent of the delegates will have been rewarded.

Or this…

Personally, I’d go with the Modest Mouse. I don’t think Florida will decide anything. But we are getting closer…

Of course, this will be Santorum’s coffin nail.

from tag Florida

Democracy In Distress: Newt, NASA, & the Moon

from tag Music

from tag 2012

Kermit the Frog & Miss Piggy hit back at Fox News

2012-01-31T08:28:00.001-08:00

"Boy, that is going to be all over the internet!" Yep. Just doing my part.

from tag humor

from tag Humor

What do I believe in? The political world according to A. F. Litt

2012-01-30T01:23:00.000-08:00

Prelude

On my personal website I have been building a library of my academic papers from my school days. Tonight, I found one that I thought I would share here.

It was a quick response paper for a cultural anthropology class at Seattle Central Community College some sixteen years ago. Not my best writing ever, for a class or otherwise, but, clunky writing aside, in many ways I think this little piece sums up my political views better than anything I’ve written before or since.

It does not detail where I am on the left or right spectrum, conservative or liberal. On that scale, I am far from static and can usually manage to upset people on both sides of that particular divide. It does, however, explain my opinion on how the American political system operates.

After the massive political failures in Washington D.C. over the last decade, I suspect that more and more people have come around to seeing things from my perspective. Back in 1996, though, my ideas on government and the media were dismissed as naive by many from both the right and the left.

The popular view was that great, unseen political machinations were pulling the strings of power. Everything was a borderline conspiracy, or an actual conspiracy.

After watching both parties shattering like glass against the rocks of their own incompetency the last few years, however, I feel that my views on the system are a bit more mainstream now. Reading this essay for the first time in about 12 years today, it actually felt fresher than it did in the days of the Clinton Impeachment Trial and the WTO controversies, before the 2000 Election, eight years of George W. Bush, endless wars in the Mid-East, Hurricane Katrina, the Great Recession, and whatever sort of tragicomic train wreck the last six plus years of Congress will be labeled as by future historians.

Enough from me today, onwards to me from years past… This is warts and all, copied and pasted from the original Word document.

ANT 202, Fall 1996, Seattle Central Community College

Until recently, I had never read anything by Noam Chomsky, or heard him speak before, but I have run into many people who have and are rather worked up by his ideas. Many of these people, however, tended to have a very paranoid streak in them, and have used Chomksy’s words to confirm their own fears and suspicions about conspiracies and such. They use his ideas as proof that their fears about direct manipulations between corporations, government officials and agencies, the media, and the financial institutions are true. Instead of understanding the subtle and indirect influences these institutions, by nature, have upon one another; they just take these concepts in their bluntest, broadest forms, picturing some sort of wild X-Files type of conspiracy. They believe, in a very literal way, that all politics are nothing but a sham, that the corporations directly control everything, making phone calls and e-mails, ruling directly a puppet government, themselves taking their orders from the global financial institutions. I always ask them where the aliens fit into these schemes, and not all of them realize that I am joking. Because of these people, I have always been a bit weary of Chomsky, but knowing these people’s mind sets, I figured they were just laying their own fears over his ideas, and I’ve always wanted to find out if I was right.

My own view of government and its relationship with the private power structures has always been more of a chaos theory, rather than a conspiracy theory, seeing each individual and group being too caught up in their own special interests, and too busy covering their own asses, to ever work together at a level that such a complex conspiracy would require. There are just too many egos involved. My own view, it turns out, seems very similar to Chomsky’s. So, when listening to the conspiracy theorists talking about the power structures, about the relationships between industry, government, and the media, I’ve never been able to totally disagree. I’ve always ended up with sort of a “Yes, but…” and a “Well, I wouldn’t necessarily go that far” response. I can’t follow them all the way into the conspiracies. For these to actually be occurring, the politicians, CEOs, and journalists would all have to be a lot less self serving, and a hell of a lot smarter, than they ever seemed to be, to me, at least. In 1991, while attending a National Press Club conference in D.C., for example, I had an opportunity to meet briefly with former Rep. Rod Chandler and former Sen. Brock Adams. To be honest, these two were so preoccupied with themselves and with their own personal career goals (Adams, understandable, more so at this point – still vowing to run again, still certain that he could win), that I don’t see them plotting anything with anyone, unless they got to be in charge. When talking about legislation, bills they sponsored, bills where they offered up key support, they never talked with enthusiasm about the laws they were making, or about how they were good for their constituencies, but they were very jazzed up about how powerful they were personally, being able to make that big of a splash on the national issues. Chandler, being groggy from getting back from a fact finding mission to Kuwait, came across as a complete fool and managing to drop in a couple of racist comments, thinking that he’d made a funny, certainly didn’t help his case any. If this guy was ever involved in anything serious, I’d be willing to bet that he’d accidentally expose it. Of course, my paranoid friends all reassure me that these cases were all just acts, that they were ploys to lower our expectations of elected officials, and to lower our defenses.

Still, I feel that these politicians do try to do their best to stand up for and to fight for what they feel needs to be done, but it is no mystery to me how things like aid to the Guatemalan military gets passed by these people, as well. They see the word communist in the early 1980s, and communists are bad. If they don’t vote against the communists, they will endanger their re-election. In these circumstances, why should they even worry if the guerillas are even really communist insurgents or not, why should they waste any effort trying to dig deeper into this issue? It would just be a bother because they already know how they must vote, and so they probably never realize that they were aiding in the suppression of the Guatemalan public, and not in the suppression of the “Evil Empire’s” backing of Soviet-style communism in the Americas.

Likewise, the media. Journalists, like politicians, feel that they and not their possible replacements are the best for their jobs, that they will fight the good fight in a way that they are uniquely qualified for, in a way that their potential successors are not. On top of this, or in place of this, let’s face it: unemployment sucks. In the media, votes count as much towards job security as they do in politics. Here, however, the votes are cast through ratings and circulation figures instead of elections. Using the Guatemalan example again, in the early 80’s the American public was largely uninterested in Central American political struggles, just writing it all off as those damn Cubans working with the Soviets to expand communism closer to the States, and being bored with anything deeper than that. A minute or two here, a few column inches there. The sort of publicity needed to truly educate the public about these freedom fighters, the time and attention needed to explain that these repressed Indians were not really communists, and definitely not backed by any communist nations, would have sent, let’s say, the evening news ratings into the trash. Maybe some journalists knew about the situation down there, and they felt strongly about the need to bring the details to the public’s attention, but often they will sacrifice that story for another one they also feel strongly about, one that the public is more interested in, one with a higher ratings potential. The instinct for self-survival wins again.

This is how I see these two institutions working. It’s not that they are working together, it’s that the very nature of our society forces them both to work in ways that, in this case, serve each other well. Real issues become fuzzy sound bites that end up largely dictating American policies. And it is definitely not Sen. Doe calling up Jack Blowdry, having the network nix the story so Congress can get away with something. Most journalists I’ve met would run screaming to the showers seeking purification at just hearing such a suggestion.

So, getting back to the Chomsky interview, it was very refreshing to hear him say pretty much these same things, confirming my suspicions that he wasn’t a conspiracy theorist, and in fact, hearing him bluntly deny it. My paranoid friends, it seems, weren’t only misunderstanding his message, but completely missing the most important part of it all, that we do live in a free society, and that these institutions don’t have the strength that they would have if such a conspiracy was taking place. (Totalitarianism, anyone?) It’s the capitalistic democracy we live in that creates the appearances of a conspiracy, but it’s also this system that gives the public’s opinions so much strength. It’s the public’s voice, expressed through votes, and sales, and ratings, and such that fuels this system. It’s the fear of a negative opinion that brings out the negative aspects of this system. The idea, as Chomsky put it, that while in a totalitarian system, backed by violence and fear tactics, it doesn’t matter what the public thinks, only what it does, and that the powerful don’t need the support of the public when they decide policy, but in a capitalistic democracy the thoughts of the public are very powerful and potentially dangerous to those in charge while being the hardest part of the system to control, and the support, or ignorance, of the public mandates the policies of the powerful. Therefore, the fear of a negative opinion, of being perceived as another Mondale instead of another Reagan, of selling Pintos instead of Cadillacs, creates a situation where the truth is something to be feared in case it is taken wrong by the consumers. Image become more important than reality, and the truth, or at least the details of the truth, are avoided when possible by anyone selling themselves to the public. The truth is only investigated and reported by the media if it is exciting, importance or relevance becoming only a secondary consideration.

For example, when the Watergate scandal was being uncovered by the Washington Post, the idea of corruption on that level in the executive branch was big news, but after Nixon and 12 years of Regan/Bush, it’s going to take Clinton being caught at something a lot more clear-cut and scandalous than Whitewater to capture the public’s attention in the way it was by his predecessor’s misdeeds, 23 years ago. [I will interject here in order to point out that this essay was written before Monica Lewinski and the Impeachment] These days, however, O. J. Simpson managed to catch the public’s attention quite nicely in a way that Whitewater hasn’t been able to in post Watergate times.

So Chomsky’s most important message is that if we educate ourselves about how the system works, and why, if we can rekindle our interest in politics and government, we can make our voices even louder, and we will be able to more adroitly wield the power over the system that too many people believe we currently lack. Then we can make the interest of the public more important than just its opinion. It’s hard to inspire interest in the system, though, when 99% of what happens in D.C. does not effect our day-to-day lives, when the practices and attitudes of corporations do not affect us, as long as their products fulfill the use promised, and as long as the news media acts primarily as a form of entertainment, not education. How do the O. J. Simpson trials affect us at all? Even in times of war, the choices are made, or at least ratified, by our pre-elected representatives, and the only news that usually affects the public directly is delivered via mail in the form of selective service notices, notes from friends and loved ones at the front, and letters of consolation. So interest in these institutions is understandably low, but still, it is very necessary. Just because we are not directly affected by them most of the time doesn’t mean that we can’t be.

We need to be vigilant for the times when our lives could be very much changed by these institutions. It is important for the public to remain vigilant, and the power we have over the system needs to be maintained, or it could be lost, whittled away slowly with the public not even realizing that it has been lost, or that they ever even had it at all.

from tag Congress

from tag History

Newt, NASA, & the Moon (Updated January 30, 2012)

2012-01-28T21:39:00.001-08:00

On Newt Gingrich on the Moon | Vintage Space:

Last week, Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich made a bold claim: “By the end of my second term [2020], we will have the first permanent base on the Moon and it will be American.” On the surface, it’s an intriguing and even exciting prospect to space enthusiasts. A base on the Moon would extend human presence in the Solar System and act as a stepping stone on the way to Mars. Or, it could bankrupt NASA and prove to be little more than an ill-thought out, dead-end program. (Gingrich proposed a lunar base by 2020 in Florida on January 25, 2012.)

Gingrich promises moon base that could become 51st state | The Raw Story:

“By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American,” the candidate insisted. “We will have commercial near-Earth activities that included science, tourism and manufacturing.”

“I accept the charge that I am an American and Americans are instinctively grandiose because we believe in a bigger future!” he exclaimed. “I want you to help me both in Florida and across the country so that you can someday say you were here the day it was announce that of course we’d have commercial space and near space. Of course we’d have a man colony on the moon that flew an American flag.”

Do we need a manned space program? Yes we do.

Does NASA need to get out of low Earth orbit? Yes.

Will the private sector get us there? Probably not.

Is Newt the leader we’ve been waiting for to get us re-focused on space? Highly unlikely.

Is Newt the second coming of JFK? Only in his own mind.

UPDATE: January 30, 2012

Phil Plait always has some good thoughts on these subjects.

The Newt-onian Mechanics of Building a Permanent Moon Base | The Crux | Discover Magazine:

I’m also not comfortable with raising the specter of another space race. Any attempts to get political motivation for exploring or exploiting space will inevitably bring to mind the idea of the Chinese. Have no doubts: the Chinese space program efforts are solid, and accelerating. When they say they want to have a moonbase by the 2020s, this is not bluster. They may very well be able to do it. But getting into a second space race with China would be suicide for our space program. Obviously, they have far more money than we do for such an endeavor. But more than that; what is the goal of a race?

Answer: to win. And what happens after you win? Look to Apollo for that. The goal of the first space race in the 1950s and 60s was to beat the Soviets. We did: America got to the Moon first. But after that, enthusiasm for Apollo died rapidly, and Apollos 18–20 were canceled about a year after Armstrong first stepped foot on the Moon. After all, once you’ve won, why keep running?
The point is, if we want to have a sustainable, permanent base on the Moon, then it has to live or die on its merits. As soon as we make it an “us versus them” scenario, the chances of long-term thinking drop precipitously.
…
Now, don’t get me wrong. When it comes to space exploration, in many ways I’m a starry-eyed optimist, but I’ve learned to temper that optimism with cold, hard, reality. And history shows that building a moonbase by 2020 according to Gingrich’s ideas not only won’t work, but would be a disaster for NASA.
NASA simply can’t do it in that timeframe; there’s no place in the budget for that sort of mission, and it’s unlikely in the extreme they’ll get extra funding for this. Perhaps because of that, Gingrich proposed taking 10% of NASA’s budget—some 1-2 billion dollars—and creating a new X Prize to motivate private industry to be involved. This has worked in the past as a catalyst for companies to work on difficult goals, like launching a piloted vehicle into space. However, going to the Moon and building a base would cost more than 1000 times as much as launching that sub-orbital rocket did, so it’s not at all clear an X Prize like this would work.
Add to that the money needed to keep the base running—an estimated $7.4 billion per year. That’s a lot of cash for a fledgling corporation. Or even a government. It’s more than third of NASA’s annual budget.
…
A lot of the media have made fun of Gingrich for this plan. The irony is they’re doing it for the wrong reason. A Moon base is being likened to science fiction, just some silly fluff. But that’s grossly unfair.
Space exploration is an issue that’s important. It’s vital to our nation for a host of reasons, but it is also costly in every sense of the word. If we go, we should go for the right reasons, and we should do it the right way. If we go, we must go to stay. The budget for this can’t be set up on political election cycles, it must be based on the real constraints of engineering and technology, and far more importantly it must be based on a commitment to the future. If we do this, we must invest in the long haul.
Gingrich’s plan does not encompass that idea. Ineptly aimed media ridicule aside, what’s clear is that Gingrich’s speech was long on rhetoric but short on actual substance…
The Gingrich Who Stole The News Cycle | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine:
In the post for The Crux I was blunt, but held back my tongue a bit because that isn’t necessarily the venue for me to do otherwise. But here, on my blog, I’ll say this: Gingrich’s words were both transparent and hollow. I knew right away what he was claiming was simply not possible, either financially, technologically, or politically. Take your pick. And it was also clear to me that no matter how you slice it, NASA would get screwed royally if his Moon base plan were implemented, since it would mean billions of dollars moved away from NASA projects to finance this. I started digging deeper to see if my first reaction was wrong, and all I found showed I was righter than I first thought. Every way you try to do it, his plan would destroy NASA. And I’m not exaggerating; the amount of money we’re talking about taking away from NASA projects to fund a base his way would leave everything else in NASA facing cancellation. It’s really that simple.

Also see…

Amen! "I bet we could go explore the galaxy if..."

Armstrong to NASA: You're Embarrassing : Discovery News

Story Musgrave kicks ass: Thoughts on NASA's lack of vision

One small step for China, one impossible step for America: Falling behind in space

Final shuttle flight...

NASA's failure to launch: Being right in so many wrong ways...

50 years after the first manned spaceflight... Is human space exploration to become a footnote in history?

Very Cool: Response from Rep. Earl Blumenauer on SOPA

2012-01-27T09:58:00.001-08:00

Dear Mr. Litt:

Thank you for contacting me in support of Internet freedom. My apologies if you tried to access my website on Wednesday January 18, 2012--it was blacked out in solidarity with Oregonians like you who believe in Internet freedom and entrepreneurship.

I could not agree with you more regarding this flawed legislation. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is intended to protect the intellectual property of United States businesses by shutting down websites that traffick pirated material. There is widespread agreement that online piracy and the problem of "rogue" foreign sites can threaten the economic security of U.S. businesses. There is also widespread agreement that the Internet has revolutionized the way the world learns, interacts, and does business.

Well intentioned though it may be, I have very strong concerns that SOPA would infringe on Internet freedom, stifle the innovation critical for Oregon's startup culture, and threaten Internet security.

Congress must be careful to protect intellectual property rights without jeopardizing what has made the Internet one of the biggest drivers of the economy. SOPA does not strike this balance and needs to go back to the drawing board.

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts with me. I will continue working to protect the integrity of the Internet.

Sincerely,

Earl Blumenauer
Member of Congress

from tag Congress

from tag Interwebs

I am pretty sure I worked for this company before…

2012-01-27T03:57:00.001-08:00

Note: Cross posted from Suburban Eschatology Part Two.

Permalink

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: New Hire Form Letter For the Modern American Worker.:

Our staff consists of many talented former professionals who were unfortunately laid-off without warning during the financial collapse: surgeons, engineers, educators, pilots, medical technicians. We understand that you might consider this new position somewhat of a “downgrade,” both financially and mentally; that screwing metal pieces together is “mindless labor.” But we think your skills will prove invaluable considering the number of hands accidentally severed off in our factory. Perhaps you could invent new prosthetic limbs or concoct an amazing super drug that prevents workers from ever falling asleep. Who knows? Don’t be shy. Be creative! IMPORTANT NOTE: Please know we cannot offer additional compensation for these services. You wouldn’t pay an office’s designated Fire Marshall for his or her volunteer work, would you?

…

We encourage growth and career advancement through our “Spread Your Wings”™ program. Many of the upstanding gentlemen carrying whips and prodding tired laborers awake started at this company in the same position as you find yourself today. With a bit of hard work and offering turn-coat information about secretive organized revolts, you too can work your way to the top of the food chain.

from tag Randomness

from tag Humor

Republicans too liberal for today’s GOP… These guys!

2012-01-26T22:19:00.001-08:00

WATCH: Obama's "Socialist" Ideas Aren't So Different From the GOP's [Fiore Cartoon] | Mother Jones:

Lefties | Mark Fiore's Animated Cartoon Site: Lefites (01/25/12)

Neat video. Unfortunately I cannot get it to embed right now, but it is worth following one of these links to see it.

from tag Comic

from tag humor

Eisenhower warning about the Military-Industrial Complex (including the complete Farewell Address)

2012-01-26T16:46:00.001-08:00

I cannot remember if I have posted this before. If I haven’t, then the oversight is corrected. If I have, well… It’s worth putting up again.

The full farewell address…

from tag History

from tag video

Rubble: RAMA Arrives... What's that mysterious object near Mercury?

Expressing a build up of viral material: Recent viral images…

2012-01-26T15:06:00.001-08:00

A collection of recent viral images that made me laugh, think, or scream... Because sometimes it is hard to type with fists.

Only in order of how they landed on my Facebook wall...

from tag Comic

from tag Chart

Protest SOPA… Do it for the jet skis!

2012-01-18T17:14:00.001-08:00

Note: Cross posted from Rubble.

Permalink

TheOatmeal.com blacked out in protest of SOPA / PIPA - The Oatmeal:

For the next 24 hours I am blacking out TheOatmeal.com in protest of SOPA and PIPA. If one of these bills were to pass, this page is what many sites on the internet would look like.

As someone who creates content for the web, earns a living from it, and has had his content pirated, I do feel that we need better legislation against online piracy.

I do not, however, think that SOPA or PIPA are the legislation we need.

Want to help in the fight against SOPA / PIPA? First, go learn about the bills. After that go contact your elected officials. Wikipedia has a handy-dandy page set up which allows you to locate your state representative.

Hugs and jet skis,
-The Oatmeal

P.S. Please pirate the shit out of this animated GIF.

Done.

Now go check out the link below…

2012 Apocalypse Grab Bag

2012-01-05T09:06:00.001-08:00

Note: Cross posted from Rubble.

Permalink

From 2011-11 (Nov)

2012 Apocalypse FAQ: Why the World Won't End | 2012 Doomsday Theories & End of the World | Dec. 21, 2012 | Space.com:

Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then — just as your calendar begins again on January 1 — another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.

10 Failed Doomsday Predictions | End of the World & Apocalypse | LiveScience:
Most prophets of doom come from a religious perspective, though the secular crowd has caused its share of scares as well. One thing the doomsday scenarios tend to share in common: They don't come to pass.
Here are 10 that didn't pan out, so far:

End of the World? Top Doomsday Fears | May 21 Doomsday, 2012 Doomsday | Apocalypse Scenarios | LiveScience:

With more and more technologies able to wreak mass destruction, a greater knowledge of what cosmic threats our planet faces, and more forms of media capable of trumpeting Armageddon, it seems as if there is more hype than ever about one supposedly impending apocalypse or another in 2012, despite all the failed doomsday predictions over the years.

Here are 10 apocalyptic scenarios that have raised fears about the end of civilization, in alphabetical order.

The Draw of Doomsday: Why People Look Forward to the End | Apocalypse & Armageddon | May 21 Judgment Day & 2012 Doomsday Hype | LiveScience:

According to DiTommaso, the apocalyptic worldview isn't uncommon. At the extreme end are people like Camping or Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese doomsday cult that carried out sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1995. But doomsday appeals to the secular and well-adjusted as well, through books such as Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (Knopf, 2006) and movies like "The Terminator" (1984). Meanwhile, economic hard times and crises like Japan's earthquake and tsunami have spiked interested in survivalism and "prepping," or stashing food and supplies in preparation for a coming collapse.

Apocalpytic beliefs have been on rise for the past 40 to 50 years, said DiTommaso, who has been researching doomsday believers for an upcoming book, "The Architecture of Apocalypticism." What ties these disparate groups together is a sense that the world's problems are too big to solve, DiTommaso said."

Source:LiveScience

from tag science

from tag volcano

from tag other

from tag video

Is the GOP really this anti-Romney? Now they’ve got a little Santorum on their shoes…

2012-01-04T12:27:00.001-08:00

Yep. It’s Rick’s turn…

Here is a scary one. Unfortunately, embedding is disabled: Rick Santorum Argues With Student Over Gay Marriage http://youtu.be/PzzDrOR30U8

Source: youtu.be via Aaron on Pinterest

Urban Dictionary: santorum

from tag Incompetency

from tag Republicans

Another one bites the dust: Bachmann Out

2012-01-04T11:46:00.001-08:00

Another bullet dodged, several more to go... Sanatorum? Really?

There’s Something About Michele | TPM2012:

Now that Michele Bachmann has dropped out of the presidential race, TPM took a look back at a memorable candidacy and compiled our favorite moments:

Some more winning moments...

from tag Incompetency

Obama Mail: Today’s Republican Talking Points

2012-01-03T14:05:00.001-08:00

Just a quick cut and paste job on my end here…

Friend --
The Republican National Committee just unrolled their new strategy for beating President Obama this fall. They're calling it "Obama vs. Obama," and the idea is to say President Obama hasn't made good on his campaign promises.

But there's a hitch in their talking points: They're (prepare to be shocked!) not true.

For every day they try to weave a false tale about the President, we'll fight back with the facts about his record.

Check out our first piece: a video showing President Obama's victory speech in Iowa from four years ago today, along with a rundown of the promises he's kept. Take a look -- and then make sure you share it with your friends.

The bottom line here is simple: This is a President who does what he says he's going to do.

Other presidents and lawmakers tried for 70 years to pass health reform -- but this president took on the insurance industry and got it done. When President Obama took office, nearly 150,000 troops were deployed in Iraq; in December, the last American troops there left. The middle class was under assault for decades, and this administration worked to make the tax code more fair and give all working families the tax cuts they deserve. And since taking office, President Obama has taken the most significant federal action ever to reduce greenhouse gases and our dependence on foreign oil -- almost doubling our fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks.
These aren't talking points. These are facts.

It's 2012. More and more people are going to start paying attention to this race, and fast. But the Republicans have apparently decided to make this easy for us -- because when the other side's strategy is to distort the record, all you need to push back with is reality.

Watch the video, get the facts, then pass it on:
http://my.barackobama.com/Iowa-Four-Years-Later

Thanks, and happy caucus day,
Stephanie
Stephanie Cutter
Deputy Campaign Manager
Obama for America

from tag Environment

Democracy In Distress: What do Republicans have against science anyway?

2012: On the end of the world…

2012-01-02T08:58:00.001-08:00

This comic sums up my thoughts on this subject perfectly.

And here is a nice essay on the subject… It wanders a bit, but has some good points.

Revelations and Revolutions « What They're Feeding Me:

For thousands of years, people have been predicting the end of the world. People in the Middle Ages were certain, 100%, that bad weather was a sign of the end times. Credit cards were the mark-of-the-beast. Rock and roll was the end of morality. Americans, a few at least, have called every President since Washington the Anti-Christ. Technocrats believed that Y2K would shut all the lights out for good.

The current apocalypse du jour involves the Mayan Calendar ending on December 21st, 2012. As Todd Armstrong puts it in his comedy routine, if the Mayans could predict the future, why couldn’t they see the Spanish coming?

from tag Comic

from tag Humor

Occupy Portland: Goals & Declaration (Including the complete draft of The Declaration of Occupy Portland)

2011-12-31T14:16:00.001-08:00

From 2011-11-17 (Occupy Portland - N17)

End of the year, crawling out of my cave for a minute to throw this up. I am not sure if this draft has been revised at all…

Blah. I cannot speak to the health and direction of the local movement. I’ve been out of the loop in self-imposed exile for a couple weeks.

One thing that pops into my mind glancing over the draft of the declaration is... Well, it is hard to put into words. But, basically, it is this... These are national level statements and demands from a local level organization.

To me, the role of a local level organization is to bring local attention and publicity to the national movement. Early on, OWS released a declaration of demands. Is Occupy Portland protesting in solidarity with OWS and the national movement, or are they trying to be a local group making a national impact?

My concerns are vague, and I understand the desire to have a specific document to point to when asked by people, "Why are you doing this?" And that is all well and fine...

To some degree, it strikes the same nerve in me that is tweaked when local city councils make resolutions concerning national and international issues. It is all fine and dandy, but what does it really mean and how is it really their business? And, bottom line, for the most part it, is just words. A city council can decry the, let's use a common example, the invasion of Iraq back in 2003, but there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.

I suppose the purpose of such a declaration as the one below is to say that we, locally, stand in support of those across the country who are upset about these issues, and that is fine. And protest at a local level is an important part of a national protest movement.

Maybe this is the plan, and from my cave I just haven't heard the plan... But the real function of a document like this, in my view, would be to, say, be the locally agreed upon platform to be worked out in some sort of national convention where a declaration for the national movement was hammered out.

Alright, I am not expressing my thoughts clearly today. Back into my cave. I hope some sense of my vague thoughts came through here...

Anyway, here is some food for thought.

Goals for Occupy Portland | Portland Occupier:
Occupy must not be captured by narrow interests and lose sight of its goals. If we are fighting for the 99%, then we must stand for principles that most of the 99%, and nearly all of us, will agree with. We cannot win a fight for democracy unless we stay focused on what we’re working for, remain unified, and have the support of the majority of the public. We must strive to avoid fractious issues and fighting battles we cannot win.
Occupy Portland needs a simple document that affirms the right of the people to govern and lays down the basic principles on which we all can stand. We can and should evaluate many specific proposals from all of our supporters and take action to support the ones that match our principles, and oppose those that conflict, whether in our city, state, or nation. Issues change; tactics change; principles remain.

The Declaration of Occupy Portland | Portland Occupier:
I have seen a vision of the end of Occupy Portland. It looks like a meeting with no actionable agenda, no notes, and no plan for a follow-up meeting. It is organized–maybe–on Facebook alone. And it will have the phrases “ninety-nine percent”, “unity”, and “positive” repeated upwards of twenty times each.

It looked a lot like the Convention for the Declaration of Occupy Portland, held at the Mission Theater on the night of Sunday, December 19th. If I thought for a second that this meeting was all there was to the Occupation, I might have been convinced that this was the end. Thankfully, I know better. But if you want to quantify the distance between this event and a consensus GA after shutting down the city on a Tuesday afternoon in October, it would be measured in miles.

Occupy Portland: "NATIONAL DECLARATION OF OCCUPY PORTLAND TO CONGRESS"
By Owen Sanders in Occupy Portland

This is the proposed draft of the national Declaration of Occupy Portland to Congress. The Declaration contains a preamble, which details our grievances, as well as our belief that conservative and liberal ideas are not naturally opposed but are actually naturally complimentary. Next come the 32 demands, which offer a bold and comprehensive set of solutions to our common problems. Then the Second Bill of Rights, as originally envisioned by FDR with some additions to reflect our 21st century needs. The final paragraph details the strategies we will use to get our demands met. Please let me know what you think, and whether you would be willing to adopt this document as our official Declaration!

Declaration of Occupy Portland to Congress

From time to time, it becomes necessary for the citizenry to exercise their first amendment rights to petition their government for a redress of grievances. We the people of Oregon, the 99%, have occupied our city for this purpose. This is our petition to the Congress of the United States of America.

Big banks, multinational corporations, and the small super-wealthy group of power elites we call the 1% have seized control of our democracy in a covert coup d’état not with guns, but with the insidious influence of lobbyists and legal bribery in the form of campaign contributions. They have used the power they have usurped from the people to wreak havoc on this great nation. They have gambled our money away on risky investments, crashed our economy, decimated our savings, stolen our pensions, eliminated our jobs, and caused the most extreme wealth stratification in American history. They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage. They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give executives exorbitant bonuses. They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right. Corporations have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility. They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regard to health insurance. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit. They have exploited indigenous peoples and stolen their land and resources. They continue to block alternative forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil. Out of greed, they have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, and faulty bookkeeping. They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas. These are just some of the crimes they have committed against the common good.

We reject the fallacy that liberal and conservative ideas are naturally opposed to each other. To the contrary, we believe they naturally complement each other. For too long the 1% have manipulated us into being divided against each other. The 1% have pit Americans against Americans in a bitter fight over so called “wedge issues”. In reality though, neither the Democrat nor the Republican party serve the people anymore. They serve corporations, big banks, big government, and the 1%. If we are to banish this insidious power from the halls of government, we must look past our differences to our commonalities. We must take off our ideological blinders, and see each other for what we are: Americans, citizens united by common grievances. If we are to protect America from the destruction of the 1%, it is imperative that we draw upon the wisdom of both schools of thought.

We believe that People of all political affiliation are united in the belief that all laws must be rooted in the moral principle of do no harm. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

We will fight for laws founded upon this essential moral principle of rightful liberty/do no harm. The following demands are a synthesis of the most urgent demands for reform from conservatives and liberals, as well as libertarians and people of many other political affiliations.

1. ELIMINATE THE CORPORATE STATE: The merger of the political system of Republican Democracy with the economic system of Capitalism has resulted in the establishment of a Corporate government of, by and for the benefit of corporations. Therefore, the American People demand an immediate ban on all private contributions of anything of value, to all politicians in or running for federal office. This ban shall extend to all individuals, corporations, "political action committees," "super political action committees," lobbyists, unions and all other private sources of money or anything of value. Private fundings of campaigns shall be replaced by the fair, equal and total public financing of all federal political campaigns. We, the American People, categorically REJECT the concepts that corporations are persons or that money is equal to free speech because if that were so, then only the wealthiest people and corporations would have a voice in our society. The complete elimination of private contributions must be enacted by law or Constitutional amendment because it has become clear that politicians in the United States cannot regulate themselves and have become the exclusive representatives of corporations, unions and the very wealthy who indirectly and directly spend vast sums of money on political campaigns to influence the candidates’ decisions when they attain office and ensure their reelection year after year. Our elected representatives spend far too much of their time fundraising for the next election rather than doing the People's business and labor under conflicts of interest that make it impossible for them to act in the best interest of the American People. The current system's propagation of legalized bribery and perpetual conflicts of interests has reduced our once great Republican Democracy to a greed driven corporatocracy run by boardroom oligarchs who represent .05 to 1% of the population but own 38% of the wealth and whose incomes have increased 275% since 1979 while most other salaries have remained virtually flat or declined.

2. ABROGATION OF THE "CITIZENS UNITED" CASE: The immediate abrogation, even if it requires a Constitutional Amendment, of the outrageous and anti-democratic holding in the "Citizens United" case proclaimed by the United States Supreme Court in 2010. This heinous decision equates the payment of money to politicians by corporations, wealthy individuals and unions with the exercise of protected free speech. We, the American People, demand that this institutional bribery and corruption never again be deemed protected free speech.

3. COMPREHENSIVE CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND ELECTION REFORM: Abolishing the Electoral College in favor of the Popular Vote in presidential elections. Subject to the above ban on all private money and gifts in politics: enactment of additional campaign finance reform requiring new FCC regulations granting free air time to all candidates; total public campaign financing to all candidates who obtain sufficient petition signatures and/or votes to get on the ballot and participate in the primaries and/or electoral process; implementation of nationwide uniform election rules applied to all voting districts requiring equal access to third parties to appear on ballots and instant runoff voting or ranked choice voting; abandoning easily hackable electronic voting machines in favor of paper ballots to ensure accuracy and provide a paper trail; shortening the campaign season to three months; allowing voting on weekends and holidays so working class people don’t have to choose between going to work and voting; issuance of free voter registration cards to all citizens who are eligible to vote so that they cannot be turned away at a polling station because they do not have a driver's license or other form of identification; and expanding the option of mail-in ballots and verifiable internet voting.

4. ELIMINATE ALL PRIVATE BENEFITS AND "PERKS" TO POLITICIANS: Prohibiting all federal public employees, officers, officials or their immediate family members from ever being employed by any corporation, individual or business that the official specifically regulated while in office; nor may any public employee, officer, official or their immediate family members own or hold any stock or shares in any corporation the official specifically regulated while in office until a full 5 years after their term is completed; a complete lifetime ban on the acceptance of all gifts, services, money or thing of value, directly or indirectly, by any elected or appointed federal official or their immediate family members, from any person, corporation, union or other entity that the public official was charged to specifically regulate while in office. The term "specifically regulate" shall mean service on a committee or sub-committee or service within any agency or department of the federal government responsible for the regulation of the person, union, corporation or entity seeking to confer a benefit. In sum, elected politicians and public employees in regulatory roles may only collect their salary, generous healthcare benefits and pension. Any person, including corporate employees, found guilty and convicted of violating these new ethics rules in a court of law by proof beyond a reasonable doubt, shall be sentenced to a term of mandatory imprisonment of no less than one year and not more than ten years.

5. TERM LIMITS: Members of the United States House of Representatives shall be limited to serving no more than four two-year terms in their lifetime. Members of the United States Senate shall be limited to serving no more than two six-year terms in their lifetime. The two-term limit for President shall remain unchanged. Serving as a member of Congress or as the President of the United States is one of the highest honors and privileges our culture can bestow. These positions of prominence in our society should be sought to serve one's country and not provide a lifetime career designed to selfishly increase personal wealth and accumulate power for the sake of vanity and hubris.

6. MAKE JUDGES ACCOUNTABLE TO THE PEOPLE: Judges shall be elected by the People. This process shall be facilitated by holding publicly funded debates and publishing judge’s records.

7. EMPLOY MILLIONS OF AMERICANS BUILDING A 21ST CENTURY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR AMERICA: We clearly need faster broadband connections, a smart electrical grid, more efficient ports and airports, high speed rail to provide safe, cheap, rapid transportation around the country, and an upgrade of our old investments in roads, bridges, rails, water and sewage systems, and levees. Therefore, millions of jobs shall be created by building America a state of the art 21st century infrastructure. An infrastructure bank shall be created to fund this effort, which foreign governments, private entities and our own government may invest in. Individual citizens will also get to invest in it by buying Build America Bonds of amounts between $100 and $1 million. The bonds will mature after ten years, at which point the $600 billion return will easily pay for the $10 billion we initially invest.

8. EMPLOY MILLIONS OF AMERICANS MEETING ALL OUR ENERGY NEEDS WITH CLEAN FUELS: The surest way to create jobs, cut costs, enhance national security, cut the trade deficit by up to 50 percent, and fight global climate change is to change the way we produce and consume energy. Winds across America carry the potential of generating 37 trillion kilowatt hours, almost ten times our existing needs. We have the technology to harness that potential. Most importantly, every billion dollars invested in wind creates 3,300 jobs. The same amount of money invested in solar, another vital clean energy source, yields 1,900 jobs. Let’s make it happen.

9. EMPLOY MILLIONS OF AMERICANS MAKING OUR BUILDINGS ENERGY EFFICIENT: Every billion dollars invested in retrofitting big buildings for energy efficiency creates 7,000 jobs; in home retrofits, 8,000 jobs. McKinsey & Company estimates that with an investment of $520 billion in efficiency improvements, we could save $1.2 trillion by 2020, cut consumption 23 percent, and create about 4 million new jobs. According to The Center for American Progress estimates that the United States could achieve 50% of the reductions required to cut our greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050 through greater efficiencies alone. For these reasons, the federal government shall launch an aggressive, fifty-state building retrofit initiative.
In many cases banks won’t give builders loans to retrofit their buildings because they’re too far in debt or are not deemed credit-worthy. To solve this problem, the government shall set up a Small Business Administration loan guarantee program to assure the banks they will be repaid. A $15 billion fund could guarantee $150 in loans and create a million jobs.

The government shall allow energy companies to pay for the retrofits themselves, since they get the extra energy capacity retrofits provide to sell to other costumers. To do that, utilities have to be permitted to “decouple” their rates from energy usage, charging slightly more per kilowatt hour on retrofitted buildings, or houses, until the cost of the retrofits are recovered. A tax incentive shall be given to companies for doing this.

Additionally, the big banks have told many school districts they can’t borrow money to do a retrofit because they’re already at their debt capacity. The government shall pass a law requiring rating agencies to exempt retrofits when calculating debt capacity for schools, because the schools don’t take on new obligations; they just keep paying their utility bills at the same dollar amount until the costs are covered.

Public-employee and labor-union pension funds shall be used to finance investments in the infrastructure bank and in energy retrofits, especially for schools, colleges, and government buildings. They offer decent returns at very low risk and, unlike many investments in their portfolios, will create millions of jobs.

The government shall launch an initiative to paint every black tar roof in every city in America white and plant rooftop gardens, which on a hot day can cut a buildings energy usage by over 30%. This will also create millions of jobs perfect for young people looking to get in on the ground level of the clean energy economic boom.
The government shall extend the tax credit for creating new green technology jobs beyond 2011, which is when they’re currently set to expire.

10. EMPLOY MILLIONS OF AMERICANS FINISHING THE SMART GRID: Finish the smart grid, with adequate transmission lines, at least enough to connect the areas where the wind blows hardest and the sun shines brightest to the population centers that use the most power. Our grid is divided 140 largely autonomous areas of varying capacity. This leads to electricity disruptions that cost the economy $100 billion a year. Fixing it entirely would cost twice as much but would provide a quick return, paying for itself within two years and becoming profitable after that. This will create millions of jobs, especially in sunny, windy rural areas that have been left behind for decades, including rural Native American reservations that are too rural to sustain casinos.

11. FILL AMERICA’S CURRENT 3 MILLION JOBS OPENINGS FASTER WITH JOB SKILLS TRAINING: The government shall set up a fund to invest in training the unemployed and underemployed in 21st century job skills so everyone can take advantage of the new jobs created by the previous proposals, as well as our current 3 million job openings. We also recommend the establishment of an online international job exchange to match employers with skilled workers or employers willing to train workers in 21st century skills.

The government shall increase the preparation and recruitment of, and incentives for, young Americans to get degrees and take jobs in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Student loans shall be forgiven in exchange for a certain number of years’ work in these areas.

12. OFFER AN X-PRIZE OR ITS EQUIVALENT FOR IDEAS THAT PROMOTE INNOVATION AND JOB CREATION: Winners shall be awarded on a sliding scale based on the number of jobs created, with a 10,000 job minimum.

13. GIVE EMPLOYERS AN INCENTIVE TO NOT LAY OFF WORKERS: One reason the German unemployment rate is 2% lower than ours is that in tough times, employers and employees can agree to reduce everyone’s hours and pay in a system called Kurzarbeit, “short work.” Our government shall legalize and encourage this practice instead of layoffs by paying the employee 60% of his or her wages. This will be cheaper than full unemployment payments, keep skilled workforces intact, and help the economy recover.

14. END OUTSOURCING: Subject to the elimination of corporate tax loopholes and exploited exemptions and deductions stated above, offering tax incentives to businesses to remain in the United States and hire our citizens rather than outsource jobs. An "outsourcing tax" should be introduced to discourage businesses from sending jobs overseas. Providing tax breaks to companies that invest in reconstructing the manufacturing capacity of the United States so that we again make everyday products in the United States rather than importing them from countries like China and India. Corporations must be incentivized to make slightly less profit by hiring American workers rather than maximizing every penny of profit to the detriment of society.
“Insourcing” efforts shall be supported and funded by the government. The number of empowerment zones shall be increased and the reach of the New Markets Initiative shall be increased. Both these initiatives which began during the Clinton administration, give businesses extra incentives to invest in areas of very high unemployment and low per capita incomes. The government shall provide free training and the cash equivalent of a ten-year property-tax holiday for investments that create more than a certain number of jobs or reopen a closed factory, an idea that was first suggested by Newt Gingrich.

15. INCREASE AMERICAN EXPORTS: For instance, negotiate long-term contracts to sell food to China, Saudi Arabia, and other nations facing food shortages. This would generate a good income for our farmers, it would hold down big destabilizing spikes in food prices, and it would buy the United States the time we need to reduce our reliance on China to buy our debt securities and on Saudi Arabia to keep imported oil flowing at affordable prices.

16. FUND AMERICA’S SMALL BUSINESSES: Expand the role and funding of the Small Business Administration. Small businesses are the heart of the American economy. Our country’s nearly thirty million small businesses have created most of America’s new jobs over the last fifteen years, generated more than half our nonfarm GDP, and paid the salaries of more than half our private-sector workers. If they were a single corporation, they would be “too big to fail”, and it’s time we started acting accordingly.
Sadly though, 60% of small business loans are rejected by the big banks. According to Gallup’s chief economist, 40% of small businesses are hiring fewer workers than they need. This is where the SBA will step in, offering loan guarantees of 50 to 85% for bank loans to small businesses with 100% guarantees for disaster loans. Banks that refuse to give loans to small businesses shall be penalized heavily with tax hikes and aggressive legal prosecution.

The government shall legalize and promote “crowd-funding”. Crowd-funding is the term used for receiving small sums of money over the Internet. It allows start-ups or small businesses that are seeking to expand to raise money directly from individuals without going through the big banks.

17. REIGN IN THE GOVERNMENT’S OUT OF CONTROL SPENDING: End corporate welfare, government subsidies, and bailouts. Subsidized businesses have an unfair advantage that allows them to remain competitive. Any business that is unable to compete in the free market shall be allowed to fail without government bailouts or subsidies. Commercial farms, for example, which have brought down the price of food and pushed small, organic farms out of business shall no longer be subsidized. Commodity prices will begin to reflect their real value and the best and most trustworthy businesses would rise to the top. The two exceptions to this are research and development tax credits, particularly for alternative fuels, and tax credits for creating jobs here in America.

In addition, it was recently revealed that the Federal Reserve lent out $12.3 trillion to foreign central banks. We want our money paid back…with interest.

18. END PERPETUAL WAR FOR PROFIT: Recalling all military personnel at all non-essential bases and refocusing national defense goals to address threats posed by the geopolitics of the 21st century, including terrorism, global climate change, and limiting the large scale deployment of military forces to instances where Congressional approval has been granted to counter the Military Industrial Complex's goal of perpetual war for profit. The annual savings created by updating our military posture will be applied to the social programs outlined herein to improve the quality of life for human beings rather than assisting corporations to make ever-increasing profits distributed to the top 1% of wealth owners.

19. END THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: An immediate withdrawal of all combat troops from Afghanistan and a substantial increase in the amount of funding for veteran job training and placement. New programs dedicated to the treatment of the emotional and physical injuries sustained by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Our veterans are committing suicide at an unprecedented rate of one person every 80 minutes and we must help now.

20. BANKING AND SECURITIES REFORM: Immediate reenactment of the Glass-Steagall Act and increased regulation of Wall Street and the financial industry by the SEC, FINRA, the Justice Department and the other financial regulators. The immediate commencement of Justice Department criminal investigations into the Securities and Banking industry practices that led to the collapse of markets, $700 billion bank bail-out ("T.A.R.P.") and financial firm failures in 2007-2008. Introduction of a small financial transaction fee to collect a "sales tax" on each and every stock trade and all other forms of financial transactions. Uniform regulations limiting what banks may charge consumers for ATM fees, the use of debit cards and other miscellaneous "fees." Ending the $4 billion a year "hedge fund loophole" which permits certain individuals engaged in financial transactions to evade graduated income tax rates by treating their income as capital gains which are taxed at a much lower tax rate (approximately 15%).

21. END THE MORTGAGE CRISIS:
Every citizen whose mortgage is worth more than their home shall have the mortgage principal written down or its term extended at a low interest rate. If over the life of the mortgage or at an earlier sale the value of the home goes up again and it is sold at a profit, the owner shall share the profit with the lender.

The borrowers who can’t make even the reduced payments shall be given the option of swapping their deed for a multiyear lease, with modest rental payments sufficient to cover taxes, insurance, and maintenance, and the option to buy the home back at market value when the lease expires, or earlier, if the borrower’s financial circumstances permit.

The government shall incentivize banks and all other mortgage holding entities public and private to get their houses into rentable shape and to charge the lowest possible rates so that the houses can be filled more quickly, which will prevent further depression of the housing market.

The houses to be rented shall be given retrofits and energy audits. The renters shall continue to pay the same rent until the savings have paid off the cost of the retrofits and audits, after which time the rent will be reduced to reflect the resulting 20% reduction in utility bills. This will have the added benefit of creating millions of jobs.
People with government-guaranteed mortgages shall be allowed to refinance at the current low interest rate.

The Federal Reserve shall incentivize banks to lend to small business owners by charging 1% interest on the money the banks leave languishing in the Fed. The interest rate shall increase to 2% for banks who make more deposits in the Fed than they give out loans.

22. STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS: Implementation of a student loan debt relief forgiveness program. Our students are $1 trillion in debt from education loans alone with few employment prospects due to a financial collapse directly caused by the unbridled and unregulated greed of Wall Street. Interest on these debts should be reduced and deferred for periods of unemployment and the principal on these loans forgiven over time by phasing in a graduated corporate tax surcharge. This surcharge will also act as reparations for Wall Street's intentional and reckless conduct leading to widespread unemployment, the economic collapse in 2007-2008, the multi-billion dollar bailout of Wall Street, current worldwide recession and turmoil in international markets. The tax code will also be amended so that employers will receive a student loan repayment tax deduction for paying off the loans of their employees.

23. END THE FED. The immediate formation of a non-partisan commission, overseen by Congress, to audit and investigate the economic risks and possibility of eliminating the privately-owned Federal Reserve Bank and transferring its functions to the United States Treasury Department.

24. END CURRENCY MANIPULATION: Implementing immediate legislation (see e.g. H.R. 639) to encourage China (which undervalues its currency by an estimated 25% to 40%) and our other trading partners to end currency manipulation and reduce the trade deficit.

25. MONETIZE AND REDUCE THE FEDERAL DEBT: Adoption of an immediate plan to reduce the national debt to a sustainable percentage of GDP by 2020. Reduction of the national debt to be achieved by fair progressive taxation, monetizing the debt, and cuts in spending to corporations engaged in perpetual war for profit, the "healthcare" industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the communications industry, the oil and gas industry, and all other sectors that currently use the federal budget as their private income stream. We agree that spending cuts are necessary but those cuts must be made to facilitate what is best for the People of the United States of America, not multinational and domestic corporations who currently have a stranglehold on all politicians in both parties.

Furthermore, the debt shall be monetized. The national debt consists of securities: bills, bonds and notes. The U.S. government shall issue new fiat currency to buy back all the securities and take them out of circulation. Because securities act as cash this would not increase the overall money supply and cause inflation. Instead it would just eliminate the debt and taxpayers would no longer have to pay interest on it.

26. A FAIR TAX CODE: A complete reformation of the United States Tax Code to require ALL citizens and corporations to pay a fair share of a progressive, graduated income tax by eliminating loopholes, unfair tax breaks, exemptions and unfair deductions, subsidies and ending all other methods of evading taxes. The one exception is that corporations shall pay no tax on money that they bring back from overseas if it’s invested to create jobs. Pass President Obama’s payroll tax cuts, which would save workers and small businesses thousands of dollars annually and incentivize employers to raise wages and create jobs. In addition, pass Obama’s proposed $4,000 tax credit for employers who hire people who’ve been out of work for more than six months, rising to $5,600 for unemployed veterans and $9,600 for disabled veterans.

The current system of taxation unjustly favors the wealthiest Americans, many of whom pay fewer taxes to the United States Treasury than citizens who earn much less and pay a much higher percentage of their incomes in taxes. Any corporation that does business in the United States and generates income from that business shall be fully taxed on that income regardless of corporate domicile or they will be barred from earning their profits in the United States so that companies that pay their taxes can take that market share.

27. HEALTHCARE FOR ALL: Medicare for all or adoption of a single-payer healthcare system. The Medicaid program will be eliminated.

28. PROTECT THE PLANET:
Publicly elect EPA officials. Let the people choose who runs the EPA. This will help keep corporate and political interests out of the EPA and hold leaders accountable.
Eliminate conflicts of interest. Businesses partnering or researching with the EPA would have to prove their actions do not harm the environment. For example, the American Chemistry Council would no longer be able to work with the EPA unless pesticide manufacturers and other harmful chemical companies were banned from their council. Get corporate influence out of politics and the politicization of scientific research in general. Eliminate any funding or lobbying from corporations toward the FDA, EPA, NSF, NEA, CDC, etc.

Enact new comprehensive regulations to give the Environmental Protection Agency expanded powers to shut down corporations, businesses or any entities that intentionally or recklessly damage the environment, and to criminally prosecute individuals who intentionally or recklessly damage the environment. Tax the pollution that can’t be prosecuted. Sufficient penalties make will make polluting prohibitive so it is phased out and the real costs of healthy goods will become apparent.

An estimated $700 billion a year of taxpayer money is spent by the world’s governments to promote environmentally destructive activities such as coal mining, overfishing, pesticide use, overpumping of aquifers, and the burning of fossil fuels. To save the environment, the government shall stop funding its destruction.
Invest heavily in the research, development, production, and consumption of clean alternative sources of energy, such as wind, solar, and geothermal. Subsidize green companies that create jobs here in America.

Convert all landfills into power generators. This technology has already been implemented in India, Brazil, and Sweden, and its benefits are enormous: closing landfills, building recycling business in plastic, metal, glass and organic fertilizer, and using excess energy to provide steam heat to power factories or provide electricity for the grid. We could create jobs, improve public health, and free land for more productive purposes. Once the cost of a solid waste plant is recovered, it’s a great source of cheap power.

Keep developing more efficient biofuels. Continue to promote biofuels, including biodiesel, by funding research to reduce conversion costs and providing tax incentives to help the ethanol plans switch to more efficient stocks when the corn subsidy dies. The sugar subsidy shall only be continued for companies that convert the majority of their sugar into biofuel.

Keep the tax credits for producing and buying electric and hybrid vehicles. Also, increase the pace at which the federal automobile fleet is being converted. We can’t afford to lose this market to the Chinese, who are forging ahead, as are other nations, with electric-vehicle production.

29. REFORM PUBLIC EDUCATION: Mandating new educational goals to train the American public to perform jobs in a 21st century economy, particularly in the areas of technology and green energy, taking into consideration the redundancy caused by technology and the inexpensive cost of labor in China, India and other developing countries. Eliminating tenure in favor of merit performance and paying our teachers a competitive salary commensurate with the salaries of employees in the private sector with similar skills because without highly-skilled teachers, there will never be a highly-skilled workforce and the United States will fall further and further behind its competitors.

30. RESTORE OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES: Repeal the Patriot Act. End so called “constitution free zones” where the 4th amendment is suspended, in which 2/3 of American citizens live. For too long we have succumbed to terror and sacrificed our liberty. As Ben Franklin said, “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

31. MAKE OUR PRISON SYSTEM JUST: As described in a 2009 publication by the Justice Policy Institute, “Federal, state and local governments are spending a combined $68 billion dollars a year on a system that does not definitively improve public safety, but, instead, destabilizes communities, harms families, and derails the lives of individuals. Research has shown that over the last 10 years, states that have increased their prison populations have not seen concurrent decreases in violent crime. At the same time, the states that have reduced their incarceration rates have seen some of the largest drops in violent crime.” Some initial steps for reform could include redirecting funds from prisons to community support services such as rehabilitation, substance abuse treatment, restorative justice programs such as victim/offender mediation, community service, and restitution. We can learn from states such as Texas, Nevada, New York, New Jersey and Georgia, who have successfully cut down their prison populations and recidivism rates.

32. STOP BIG BANKS FROM BANKRUPTING DEVELOPING NATIONS: Withdraw support from the IMF, the World Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements. This international banking trio is destroying the world. They bankrupt countries, charge astronomical interest rates, require unfair loan conditions, and create development strategies that benefit Multinational Corporations rather than the residents of the country.

Furthermore, we hold that it is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty. As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial and information economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these truths have become accepted as self-evident. The government shall ratify the following Second Bill of Rights, under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all of the 99%—regardless of station, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or creed.

(1) The right to a transparent and accountable government responsive to the will of the People and never again beholden to corporations, banks, and the power elite.

(2) The right to a share of the ownership of the commons, including air, water, and public spaces.

(3) The right to employment with a living wage to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.

(4) The right of every family and individual to a decent home.

(5) The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.

(6) The right to Social Security, to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.

(7) The right to a globally competitive, affordable education.

(8) The right to privacy. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

(9) The right to freedom from censorship of the Internet.

(10) The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad.
In order to turn the dream of a better world contained in this Declaration into a reality, we will spread our message far and wide until every American has heard the call. We will identify and work with allied lawmakers on writing bills that are faithful to this dream, on introducing them to the state legislatures and Congress, and on building bipartisan support to vote them into law. We will put pressure on lawmakers that have been bought by the 1% to vote in accordance with the will of the People with massive direct action and public awareness campaigns, and by calling on our allies in the faith, labor, and business communities. If any lawmakers continue to oppose the will of the People, we will run third party candidates of our choosing against them. And we will win.

—Occupy Portland and the 99%

Cosigned by:

Sources:
-“The 99% Declaration” by the OWS 99% Declaration Working Group.
-The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
-The EU Social Charter.
-“Back to Work” by President Bill Clinton.
-President Delano Roosevelt’s January 11, 1944 message to the Congress of the United States on the State of the Union.
-Various articles from AlterNet, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and more.

Burnout Tastes Like Burning… Welcome Solstice & Goodbye 2011

2011-12-21T20:33:00.001-08:00

Note: Cross posted from Suburban Eschatology Part Two.

Permalink

From 2011-12 (Dec)

8:15 PM
I talk about this later in the post, but I wanted to let everyone know right at the top that this will, probably, be the last post until 2012. I am taking a break. It’s been a heck of a year, and I’ll be back, fresh and ready, after Winter Break!

This includes the Photo of the Day on Rubble. One sign of my burnout is that the Photo of the Day has become the photo of every now and then. Daily posts will return in 2012.

2:30 PM
Winter Solstice today, thank the Gods! Now the days start getting longer. Happy day. It was also my birthday yesterday. These days, though, other anniversaries feel like bigger deals than just making another trip around the sun… It was a nice day, though.

The sun is out and The Big One and I are going to take the dog out for a long walk. Hopefully I can take some pictures and keep on getting to know the new camera I received for said birthday and for the upcoming holidays.

Yes. Burnout. I am very burned out. It has been a long year. The new year is not here yet, but I am a year older and the days are getting longer, so this seems as good of a time as any for a 2011 wrap up post.

This is the last task I am knocking down before stepping away from the computers for a couple weeks. No Photos of the Day (or of the every few days, as it has been going recently), no posts to any blogs, little to no activity anywhere else. Stick a fork in me, I am done. Break time.

For the next couple weeks it is about the kids, books, cameras, watching some movies and catching up with some Breaking Bad, Rescue Me, and some other badly neglected shows.

It is going to be some time to get some perspective, to get some rest, and to get ready for 2012.
This past year was a strange one and not an easy one. 2012 looks to be very different. No less easy, but definitely more stable.

2011 was a year when my life was on hold. I started in California helping my mother with several issues, and ended in Gresham helping my children through several issues. Those tasks took up the whole year.

But that leaves me in a strange place where my plans for my life in 2012 look exactly like my plans for my life in 2011. This is not to say that I did not accomplish anything in 2011, far from it. The work with my family has been tremendously productive and rewarding. But in 2012, the main goal is to resume work on my own career and to start earning some damn money.

This also not to say that the work with my family is done, of course it is not. The boys have come a long way, but there is still a long way to go, a lot of healing left. Their wounds are no longer bleeding, but they are far from being back to normal. The Big One still has a long ways to go before he is back up to speed with school. The Little One, well, he has a long way to go before he’s back up to speed with life.

However, the progress they have made since April and May is amazing. Some solid foundations are now in place and they are both further along than I would have guessed they would be at this point. They are far enough along where I am feeling pretty good about heading back to work.

There will be challenges, of course, with this transition, but I think they are part of the growing process now, challenges encouraging growth, not obstacles hindering it.

Time to get out in the sun for a few. More later.

From 2011-12 (Dec)

6:00 PM
Dog walked, boy walked, errand ran, dinner cooked and served…

Burnout.

I’ve been putting a lot of work in on the RubbleSites for the last couple months, a lot of posts, but even more time spent behind the scenes getting this and that set up. I feel, for the most part, this work is coming to a close and that, after a few small projects that will be completed after winter break when the boys are back in school, that I am at a point where I can pretty much just focus on content creation.

And that is a good thing, because once I am back to work, there is going to be little time for anything else. Posts may get shorter, and fewer and further between… I think my goal at that point will be one decent post for each blog per week, with some other, smaller “feature” type stuff thrown in here and there too.

Of course, I’ll be keeping up with my photo of the day and throwing music I like up on Retrovirus Lab, too.

So, the plan is, after the break, to take two weeks to finish the construction of these sites and to put a new portfolio together. Then my full time work and only major project will be landing a new writing contract.

One of the things that has been a little rough the last month or so is that I’ve fallen into a strange schedule with life. Since most of the uninterrupted work time I have these days is at night, after everyone is in bed, I’ve become rather nocturnal these days. I get a few chores done during the day, then the afternoon and evening has been spent working with The Big One and his homework, cooking dinner, usually more work with The Big One and his the homework (let’s face it, it has been more homeschooling than helping with homework), then getting everyone to bed.

Only then have I found the time to get the serious work done on the bigger projects I’ve been working on, like the One Day on Earth video, the Occupation photos and videos, etc. Since The Ex One gets up early, she’s been handling the mornings, getting the boys out the door to school. Through the end of November and up until the last few days, I’ve been going to bed about the same time she’s been getting up to get her and the boys’ day started.

This schedule actually worked pretty well for that period, for the most part. The Ex One was fresh for the mornings, and I was fresh for the afternoon and evenings, and the boys were spared dealing with a tired and grumpy parent!

Now that the boys are home, though, this schedule is terrible! Today we hardly got anything done. I have a few chores I need to complete before I start my break, the day is almost done and I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything. Of course, on the old schedule, my real work wouldn’t have even started yet, but I am done with the nocturnal thing.

Once I start the job hunt, I will need to be on a normal schedule. Since it would be murder on me to swing back and forth between day and night schedules every two weeks for the next month or so, I am not. I am just going to switch to a days only schedule and keep it there.

After break, my days will be compressed into what I can get done while the boys are in school. That means I will probably be a lot less productive, but there are no big projects, just a few small ones and wrapping up some big ones, so that should be fine. The challenge will be not getting sucked into any new big projects.

So, for the rest of break, I am taking some time for me. I might get caught up editing a few pictures here and there, but that is pretty much it. I have a small project, also, that I need to complete for my mother’s Christmas gift, but that is a small project. I might also finish the One Day video, but probably not until the boys are back in school.

That is the project, the One Day On Earth video, that was really burning me out, and it is still not done. I put a lot of time into that video and, at this point, I am not crazy about the results. With the limitations of the camera I shot the video well, there’s not much more I can really do with it.

I took a break from the video for the last 10 days or so, once the deadline was extended for a month, to get some distance from it and to make some decisions about it.

Pretty much, I needed to decide if it was something that I wanted to put another 40 to 80 hours in to or was it something I wanted to just wrap up and move on from. The break was good. It is time to put a few final touches on it and to move on. I was thinking about recording new music for it, nope. I was thinking about re-cutting the whole thing in Lightworks, nope.

I do need to put a couple more hours into it, but that is all. Upload it and move on. But it took several days of distance from it to realize that this was the best thing to do here.

The other big project I still need to finish is editing and posting all the Occupy Portland material. Of course, that stuff was sort of time sensitive, so the longer I go without posting it, the less relevant it becomes, the less of a priority... Still, I do want to get it up while it is still something of a current event and before it becomes history. But at this point, January is fine.

And that is about it. All that stuff, in a nutshell, was 2011. And since I am putting everything not done at this point off until 2012, that means my year is done. And I am tired. It is time for a long break and a lot of rest.

See you next year. It should be an interesting one!

from tag Rubblebase

from tag SE2

from tag Rubble

Well, that’s that… Stick a fork in the Iraq war

2011-12-18T11:35:00.001-08:00

From 2011-12 (Dec)

Well, not that it was a “war.” We haven’t fought a “war” since WWII.

But yeah, it was a war. It always seemed silly to me when I was a kid that a lot of people made a big deal about Vietnam not being a war. Sure looked like a war to me.

And the Iraq conflict, apparently, for now, has entered a new phase where we have no boots on the ground except for those tied to the embassy in Baghdad. Does that mean it is over? God knows. I suspect it is not over for the Iraqis but we can all hope for the best.

I wonder how this will go down in the win/loss/tie column? The Ba’ath Regime definitely lost. However, when you hear American military personnel talking about the logistical nightmare of pulling out the forces while still under fire from enemy combatants, it seems problematic to call it one in the win column for the United States.

Obama mail in my inbox this A.M…

Friend --

Early this morning, the last of our troops left Iraq.

As we honor and reflect on the sacrifices that millions of men and women made for this war, I wanted to make sure you heard the news.

Bringing this war to a responsible end was a cause that sparked many Americans to get involved in the political process for the first time. Today's outcome is a reminder that we all have a stake in our country's future, and a say in the direction we choose.

Thank you.

Barack

Nine years, nearly a trillion dollars later, with perhaps an additional trillion to go over the next 30 years when it comes to taking care of the veterans (figures from NPR), and, well, I just do not know….

It all just leaves me feeling pretty hollow at this point.

Last U.S. Troops Make Quiet Exit Out Of Iraq : NPR:

Gen. Lloyd Austin, who commanded all U.S. troops in Iraq, says he was also worried about roadside attacks as the troops pulled out. He flew down to COB Adder for the last casing of the colors, when the army division's flag is put into its case and sent back home to the U.S.

This war is not like other wars that have ended with the signing of treaties or an exit from friendly territory, Austin says. One American base not far from COB Adder recently had 47 rocket attacks in a single day. Pulling tens of thousands of troops out in this kind of environment is a logistical marvel, he says.

"You're reposturing while people are still trying to cause you harm," Austin says. "That means that every element that moves has to be protected. It is the most difficult undertaking in our lifetime, in our military career."

Deadly Iraq war ends with exit of last U.S. troops - CNN.com:

Early Sunday, as the sun ascended to the winter sky, the very last American convoy made its way down the main highway that connects Iraq and Kuwait.

The military called it its final "tactical road march." A series of 110 heavily armored, hulking trucks and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles carrying about 500 soldiers streamed slowly but steadily out of the combat zone.

A few minutes before 8 a.m., the metal gate behind the last MRAP closed. With it came to an end a deadly and divisive war that lasted almost nine years, its enormous cost calculated in blood and billions.

Iraq, lost in the fog of war - Opinion - Al Jazeera English:

War draws combatants, their societies and politics, into its vortex and forever changes them. It does so not just once, but over and over again, until people forget who they were before the guns started firing.

War has a tendency to generate uncertainties and ambiguities of the most fundamental kind, about who is winning, about what has happened, and about just who we are.

At a moment of supreme - if relative - world power, the US invaded Iraq in March 2003 to prevent Saddam Hussein from rising from the ashes of the sanctions regime of the 1990s. The US sought also to supplant a hostile Iraq with a friendly American client. Iraq would be a base from which to exercise US influence and a replacement for the pliant Gulf monarchies, whose stability in the face of al-Qaeda was then far from assured.

For political consumption, and for gullible idealists, these goals were packaged as the threat of WMD and the spread of democracy.

A mere three years later, the most powerful armed forces in human history were facing defeat at the hands of a many-sided ragtag insurgency. Each pinprick attack in Iraq bled popular support from the war in the US, and made the dream of a stable, democratic Iraq seem fantastical. Meanwhile, around the world, US legitimacy lay in tatters: stained with the WMD that never were, the chains of Abu Ghraib and the blood of Fallujah.

Most of all, the US' reputation as the unquestioned superpower was destroyed. The war in Iraq brought an end to the American century.

The goals shifted. Now the problem was to find some way for the US to exit Iraq "with honour". This was the same problem that the US faced in Vietnam after the Tet Offensive of 1968.

What is Anonymous? (It is not the Occupation…)

2011-12-16T15:42:00.001-08:00

Some videos going around on Facebook and other places recently originate from Anonymous, and I am sure that many believe, because of their topical relevance, that they are from people within the Occupation Movement.

While I am sure that there are many members of Anonymous that are also participating in the Occupation Movement, it is a separate entity.

Both groups, however, like to don the Guy Fawkes masks…

I spotted this first clip via Mashable.

from tag Other

Democracy In Distress: Suburban Eschatology Part Two - September 12th, 2010: 30 Mosques, 30 Days

from tag Interwebs

from tag Facebook

http://www.cafepress.com/aflitt.602161919

New Product: “Will Work For Democracy” Mug

2011-12-11T14:40:00.001-08:00

Note: Cross posted from Rubble.

"Will Work For Democracy" - Large Mug

"Will Work For Democracy" Sign shot at the Occupy Portland launch rally on October 6, 2011

$13.99

Also available in black from deviantArt.

http://www.deviantart.com/print/23272916/

from tag Products

from tag Oregon

from tag portland