Mad Dog Palin | Election 2008 | AlterNet:
It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.
Archive for September, 2008
In case you didn’t see this, I find it a wonderfully inspiring alternative to the Wall St. mess.
I never go to Fox’s Website, but due to the current Wall St. crash, I was curious to see their headlines. Lo and behold I found this. Yes, the technological mind has reached unfathomable dimensions of normalized insanity.
Graph from Political Compass. You can take the test to see where you’re at.
For a peak inside what motivates people to submit to “higher” authorities whiles simultaneously degrading others for refusing to do so, I came across this amazing article which paints a painful psychological portrait of those of the authoritarian persuasion. The article, however, doesn’t explain how people get to this point. I’m no psychologist, but as a student of human consciousness, I suspect some kind of abuse– physical, emotional or sexual– is what transforms a beautiful child into such a monstrous personality.
I offer this wisdom for the sake of compassion, because as things get tough and us weirdoes go pro, the fascists will smell blood (remember that Palin and her sudden rise is an important weathervane of where a lot of Americans are at these days). We need to watch our backs.
MyDD :: Rightwing Authoritarianism and Conservative Identity Politics (Pt 3 in the series):
* Authoritarian submission: A high degree of submission to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
* Authoritarian aggression: A general aggressiveness, directed against various persons, that is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities.
* Conventionalism: A high degree of adherence to the social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities.
Click this thumbnail for Calvin’s economics tutorial
Part of the crazy economic math of our system is to externalize costs as much as possible in order to make products affordable to us average Josephines. This means that we often do not pay the true cost of what we buy, such as the price of labor that is exploited from displaced populations, pollution on society, and most of all, the services provided by the environment, such as the energy that we freely exploit without replenishing. Oil is a million year bank account of solar energy deposits that is not easily replenished within the crash and burn cycles of the market. If we were to factor in all these “externalized” costs, our patterns of consumption would surely change.
If the current bailout goes through as planned, Wall St. will raid the US treasury, and hence your pocketbook, because the cost of the bailout is being externalized to the seventh generation, including your grandchildren’s grandchildren. What will this grandiose delusion mean for the environment? I’m not sure yet, but I’m quite certain that if you, the nobel tax paying citizen who grants these corporations the right to do business, is not off limits from the the utter greed of these voracious bankers, imagine how the “treasury” of nature will be viewed, especially considering the need to quickly raise capital to pay off abstract debt. Mow down a forest to shore up capital? No problem.
The crisis of 9-11 created an opportunity to reevaluate our lives and our relationship with the world. For some it changed their reality so as to appreciate life and family more. For others, it solidified their worldview, and further intrenched a militarized feedback system (the snowball effect of war and terrorism) so as to do the opposite of change: it intensified the status quo by intrenching the military industrial complex. Will Capital do the same? Or is the game truly over? I hope there are some sensical people out there who understand that the major theories about economics are failing the same way that the neocon philosophy of empire is crumbling one car bomb at a time.
The ethical imperative of media is to finally deal with the situation for what it is: we are living in a dying empire with all its assumptions expoloding around us. I’m doubtful the Denial Generator will do much to change course, but you can. By example you can change and influence those around you. I hope you will.
I was at this Paul Hawken talk and it remains one of the most inspiring I’ve seen. Given these troubled days, I thought it would be nice to take a breather and to remember we are the ones we have been waiting for.
It’s the core thesis of his book, Blessed Unrest.
Al Franken penned this funny media literacy bit on campaign ads.
Capitalists today are singing the praises of Bush’s socialist gift. How ironic.
The 700 billion dollar bank bailout makes me so nauseated I had to create a new category for my blog: “evil.” I don’t normally believe in such a thing, but this is really the final sign that Bush and Co. have stuck Adam Smith’s magic finger into the you-know-what of the seventh generation born after today. The good news is that tax payers will not have the money to pay off this criminal debt anyways, so say goodbye to the Empire. I mean it it. Stick a fork in it now, and then buy some futures to profit on its death.
PS Thank the Great Whatever that there are smart people like Glenn Greenwald who can articulate what is so painfully obvious. Read on and weep.
What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism — where they reap tens of millions of dollars and more every year while their reckless gambles are paying off only to then have the Government shift their losses to the citizenry at large once their schemes collapse? We’ve retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses. Watching Wall St. erupt with an orgy of celebration on Friday after it became clear the Government (i.e., you) would pay for their disaster was literally nauseating, as the very people who wreaked this havoc are now being rewarded.
More amazingly, they’re free to walk away without having to disgorge their gains; at worst, they’re just “forced” to walk away without any further stake in the gamble. How can these bailouts not at least be categorically conditioned on the disgorgement of ill-gotten gains from those who are responsible? The mere fact that shareholders might lose their stake going forward doesn’t resolve that concern; why should those who so fantastically profited from these schemes they couldn’t support walk away with their gains? This is “redistribution of wealth” and “government takeover of industry” on the grandest scale imaginable — the buzzphrases that have been thrown around for decades to represent all that is evil and bad in the world. That’s all this is; it’s not an “investment” by the Government in any real sense but just a magical transfer of losses away from those who are responsible for these losses to those who aren’t.
Greenwald goes onto point out that there is no debate in the press concerning this final kleptocratic theft on behalf of Wall St. I just want to point out the obvious: corporate media is a glorious twinkling denial machine. They are terrified to undermine their foundational reality. Poor suckers, really. I admit, I’m not feeling so compassionate at this moment. So please excuse me as I fall of the Dharma wagon right now and scream out into the universe: WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ack! And now this from the same Greenwald article:
UPDATE: Here is the current draft for the latest plan. It’s elegantly simple. The three key provisions: (1) The Treasury Secretary is authorized to buy up to $700 billion of any mortgage-related assets (so he can just transfer that amount to any corporations in exchange for their worthless or severely crippled “assets”) [Sec. 6]; (2) The ceiling on the national debt is raised to $11.3 trillion to accommodate this scheme [Sec. 10]; and (3) best of all: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency” [Sec. 8].
Put another way, this authorizes Hank Paulson to transfer $700 billion of taxpayer money to private industry in his sole discretion, and nobody has the right or ability to review or challenge any decision he makes.
Via Fondation Nicolas Hulot
Modern culture would have us worship before the altar of the thinking mind, with its endless capacity to produce ideas, fantasies, and formulas. We are taught that the thinking mind is the possessor of all wisdom, and we dedicate much of our lives to the pursuit of knowledge and information. Seeing the world and ourselves through the filter of all the information we have accumulated, we can become imprisoned by the very ideas and images we have so ardently pursued. Often we think that we know ourselves, when what we know is only what we think about ourselves. When we think we know the world around us, our static images bar us from seeing the mystery held within each changing moment.
What is an image if not just a description of the world that is bound to the past?
–Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield
Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart
(via Tricycle)
Sarah Palin’s church is apparently quite media and tech savvy. Who could imagine the apoloclypse would be made so vivid by FinalCut Pro. (You can skip the little intro bit and go straight to the church video towards the end.)
PS Please spread widely. People need to know what these people are up to.
It remains to be seen if Sarah Palin will get a free ride from the press, but judging on the latest shenanigans at MSNBC, I’m guessing she will get little scrutiny, despite her clearly extremist views.
Glenn Greenwald has an incredible succinct breakdown of my Olbermann and Matthews were removed from the anchor desk of future election coverage.
The right dictates MSNBC’s programming decisions - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:
The single dumbest claim in our political culture is that the huge corporations which own our establishment media outlets promote a “liberal” ideology. Why would General Electric ever use NBC and its other media assets to promote political liberalism? They lavishly benefit from the whole panoply of right-wing policies — from endlessly expanding defense spending to deregulation. Their multiple businesses depend upon maintaining good relations with the right-wing ideologues who run our Government. Even ignoring all of the above-documented empirical facts, the very idea that a corporation like GE — or Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC) and Time Warner (CNN) — would actively promote a left-wing agenda in its news divisions and undermine the very Government power centers on which they rely has been the most self-evidently moronic premise one can imagine.
David Suzuki is one of the most inspirational speakers I’ve ever seen. I’m truly in awe of his ability to connect science with culture and the environment. As this trailer for the documentary for his film, Suzuki Speaks, says volumes about his inspiring vision. If you have a chance, see the whole film. You can view all the documentary’s segments here.
I’m continually blown away by human creativity. Watch for exhibit A.
Via Wooster
This morning I sent the following email:
Susan Gaertner
Ramsey County AttorneyDear Ms. Gaertner,
I’m writing to express my concern regarding the arrest of reporters and demonstrators at the Republican National Convention, and their brutal treatment by the police. While the Republicans celebrated the American tradition of freedom and democracy inside, outside the environment could be confused with China. Is this what we have become? Words can only be backed by actions. If its true that our system is designed to be fair and just, than justice and freedom is the only choice regarding whether or not you choose to prosecute members of the press, whose documentation clearly demonstrates that the police behaved inappropriately. In New Mexico, where I come from, we have a saying to correct someone’s inappropriate behavior, which is, “Look how you are.” There is no louder form of communication than actions. I encourage you to look closely at the situation and see whether or not your course of action will serve the interests of peace, justice and democracy.
Sincerely,
Antonio Lopez
If you are concerned about the arrest of journalists documenting police repression, and want to know more about what happened outside the Republican National Convention, please follow this link. The page has links for email addresses that you can send letters of protest to.
I sent the following to MSNBC:
Dear editor,
On Sept. 1 Democracy Now! radio host Amy Goodman and two producers were arrested. I’m writing because I’m shocked to discover that there is no coverage of the arrest of your journalist colleagues outside the National Republican Convention on your front page. If the police in Beijing arrested a journalist covering a demonstration outside the Olympics there surely would be an outcry. But in America? How can we possibly tolerate this creeping repression of our civil rights? I have no doubt that Ms. Palin makes for far more interesting and attractive news, but democracy requires scrutiny and vigilance. Right now I’m embarrassed for America and feeling heartbroken about the lack of concern for the basic civil liberties of our citizens who are guaranteed the right to speak freely without threat or intimidation. This “men in black” theater of police attacking nonviolent protesters and journalists is screaming for attention. Does anyone care anymore?
I’m sickened to death by the news these days.
Sorry, but this is beyond acceptable in a free society.
Sincerely,
Antonio Lopez
From high tech to low tech, Scott McLoud (Understanding Comics) penned for google a fascinating comic-style tour of Chrome’s development. Damn those google guys are smart!
Technorati Tags: Chrome
I’d be curious to look more closely at ClimateCount.org’s rating system, but they’re doing and interesting job tracking corporate media’s climate change footprint. In particular I love the above graphic. Notice it’s a boot print, not a sneaker. Click here to see the campaign.
Signs of the times