I caught part of a story on NPR on the way home last night with a Captain Tucker of the national guard. He blogged while in Afghanistan and recently published a book from that material. During his interview he related a story in which his unit had received intelligence about some Taliban supposedly hiding out in a particular mountain area. He called in an airstrike but 10 minutes before the strike a government official (member of parliament) arrived to inform him that they were not Taliban but, in fact, the people he had received his information from were. He went on to express how he would have felt had that official arrived after the strike and not before, how he would have killed innocent civilians.

My open question for Captain Tucker is this: How many air strikes did you call in and did not find out later "officially" that many innocent civilians were killed? Do you honestly think this was the only mistake like this?

Oil was over $80 a barrel not that long ago, and OPEC would love to see it there again. As the OPEC leadership is fond of saying, when it comes to oil the demand sets the price. And as much as we hate to admit it, they are right. This is the real truth behind capitalism - forget all the rhetoric about how the competition in capitalism keeps prices down, that has little to do with the way it actual works in the free market. What is far closer to the truth is that the market - including the oil market driven primarily by OPEC - will find out how much people are willing to pay and that sets the price. Even at the current price of about $60 a barrel, do you know what the profit percentage is for OPEC? It's about 2,900%. It costs OPEC about $2 to produce a barrel of oil, according to 60 minutes.

So the next time you think about complaining about high gas prices at the pump, just remember that it is free-market capitalism at it's absolute finest. The cost of production means nothing, it's all about how much people will put up with paying.

I love it when I come across hard facts like this on how much wealthy people pay in taxes. It shows just one aspect of the true legacy of republicans like Bush - they talk about tax cuts but those cuts never reach very far down the ladder. The richest 400 Americans got a 33% tax cut, down to 17.2%. When was the last time you got a 33% cut? If you're an average American, the answer is never have, never will. If you're at the top of the food chain, however, it happens whenever the stalwarts of trickle down economics are in power long enough.

I can't even remember when my tax rate was 17.2%, but I can comfortably guess it was at least 15 years ago. What a government we have working for us common folk...

It was likely unavoidable - Illinois governor Blago was just impeached. However the funniest, saddest thing I've read about it was this:

"State government has come to a standstill because of lack of trust in
this administration," Sen. Bradley Burzynski, R-Clare, said before the
vote. "We now have the opportunity to move forward, to begin moving
past this era of corruption, pay-to-play politics and abuse of power."

 Uh-huh. Yup, he was the only bad apple in the whole barrel, I'm sure. Hey Sen. Burzynski - be careful on the phone, dude.

The US education system might get a big helping hand from Uncle Sam to the tune of $150 billion as part of Obama's stimulus package. Of course republicans are outraged at this sort of frivolous spending (From the article linked above):

"But Republicans strongly criticized some of the proposals as wasteful
spending and an ill-considered expansion of the federal government’s
role, traditionally centered on aid to needy students, into new realms
like local school construction."

Of course these Republicans had no trouble spending trillions on the useless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but $150 billion for US education is just way over the line!

The twisted logic runs something like this - all this money for US education isn't going to stimulate the economy, so that money is better spent. The translation of this is, not surprisingly, that US corporations don't benefit from helping out education. At least not on the scale that they are used to following those trillions spent on the wars. Which makes the following even harder to swallow:

"One provision, which was sought by the student lending
industry and went unmentioned in early Congressional summaries of the
stimulus package, would temporarily increase subsidies to banks in the
guaranteed student loan program by tying them to a new index, partly
because recent federal intervention in the credit markets has
invalidated the previous index. A spokesman for Sallie Mae,
one of the largest student lenders, said the change was needed to keep
student loan markets fluid. Critics said it represented a potential new
windfall for lenders."

Ahem. "new windfall for lenders"? If the bank bailout already in progress is solid economic policy, then how is this different? My guess is that the members of congress complaining don't have these lenders in their districts/states and so they aren't getting their typical perks for pushing through some legislation.

But don't get me wrong - I think the corporate and bank bailouts are 100% misguided. The whole alleged theory of free market capitalism is the free bit. It's sink or swim, and if you can't swim, you sink - capitalistic Darwinism at its finest. These businesses ruined themselves after paying big bucks to congress to get rules loosened so that they could take bigger gambles. Well those gambles didn't pay off, so tough luck. The government simply shouldn't reward them with bailouts. If the reasoning is that these companies going under will hurt the average citizen, then spend that money on programs to help we the people instead. But therein lies the rub.

Call your US Senator and try to make an appointment to see them. You're nobody, so good luck with that. But a big CEO can surely get one, and they (or their lobbyists) do all the time. That is how US politics/goverment works. We the people really don't count for that much, not when compared to the money spent by companies to lobby congress. So it's no surprise that the agents of our government would rather give a helping hand to business rather than to us. It's nothing personal, it's just (the) business (of government).

UPDATE: I never thought I'd see the day when a career politician actually admits the way government works:

Blagojevich told the state Senate the tapes captured something that "all of us in politics do in order to run campaigns and win elections."

He's speaking here of getting something of value in exchange for legislation. Of course he goes on to maintain that, incredibly, he did nothing wrong. Riiiiiiiiiiight

It is absolutely impossible to escape the Blagojevich circus. I haven't even tried to avoid it, I've actively read a lot about his "plight". It's quite interesting to read and watch him proclaim that he did nothing wrong. His interview with Rachel Maddow is particularly telling, I think. He says he is the "anti-Nixon" because Nixon fought to keep all of his tapes secret while Blago is fighting to make all of his public. Blago keeps up his chant that if we could all hear all of the tapes that we'd agree he did nothing wrong. But he shoots himself in the foot when he says that it was only one of Nixon's tapes that brought him down. Like Nixon, a lot of the other tapes didn't capture him breaking any laws. But he is absolutely right that it just takes the one.

Yet I still have a problem with the sinners stoning the poor, "defenseless" whore. Politics has been run for centuries by selling favors in one way or another. Blago got caught merely talking about selling the senate seat, he hadn't even actually done it yet. How many of those who will impeach him have already cashed in on their policical seats? How many other times has Blago done so without getting caught? The answer is nowhere near zero, I'm sure.

Of course the answer is not to not impeach him - he should be impeached. But so should Bush have been impeached, and I'd guess conservatively half of congress. It's like mice, or perhaps in this case rats - for each one you catch, there are plenty more you don't.

I read earlier today about Citibank's new $50 million dollar luxury, executive jet. In light of their recent $45 billion dollar bailout this is particularly outlandish. But then I realized that big companies - just like our government - lose touch with reality because they deal with such big numbers all the time. They get desensitized to what those numbers mean.

 $50 million is is only about 1/1000 of $45 billion. So this would be like me taking out a loan for $1000 and then blowing $1 on a giant Snickers bar I don't need at the checkout line. When you look at the scale, it's just not that much in comparison. But there is a factor these CEOs (and members of congress, and the president) forget. Scale works both ways.

When you're the little guy, the average Joe or Jane, you're a lot like a tiny little ant to these people. And like an ant at a picnic, those crumbs of bread or spilled bit of water left behind means nothing to the big, scary people, but could very well mean survival to the ant. What is virtually nothing to a CEO or president is almost unimaginable to us. And this is what is wrong with the numbers. When Citibank tries to play down that 1/1000 slice of a $45 billion dollar pie, it's not what it means to them that is important - it's what it means to us. This is a lesson congress and our new president should reflect carefully on.

Obama is already threatening his first veto - against a proposed resolution to block the disbursement of the next $350 billion for the corporate bailout from his own party. This is why the right wing has been so effective - they know how to stay on message, on task, and who they are fighting against (the entire McCain/Palin debacle aside). I'm not agreeing with Obama here at all - I think the corporate bailout is a massive mistake on a number of levels. As anyone who has read my blog for long knows, I welcome a total economic breakdown in this country as the only path to fixing our government and forcing the people to take back the power afforded them by our constitution.

It's like I blogged yesterday in my chess entry,  you've got to have enough people sticking together on enough of the big things to make a difference. If the left, center-left, or even the center can't do so much as that then look for another Bushish era starting in 2012. Agree with the bailout or not, but if the lefter (as Melanie likes to say) party in our country doesn't get their agenda together, and more specifically if Obama doesn't fullfill his campaign promises of doing so, real change isn't coming.

I'm not convinced that any mainstream politician, like Obama, who can get enough support from the "powers that be" to get elected president is truly capable of leading the long-established trones of power in this country in an entirely new direction. This country is the Titanic and the corporations and money that dictate the course of our ship have ensured that our rudder is too small to make sudden, drastic changes in our course. Obama can call out "hard to port" if he likes, but that doesn't change our rudder design one damn bit.

A brief poem from the Women of the Weather Underground, circa 1974:

They call it terror

if you are few and have no B-52s


if you are not a head of state


with an army and police


if you have neither napalm


nor tanks nor electronic battlefields


terror is if you are dispossessed


and have only your own two hands


each other


and your rage


It is not terror


if you are New York’s Finest


and you shoot a ten-year old Black child in the back


because you think Black people


all look like


they’ve just committed a robbery


It is not terror if you are ITT


and buy the men


who line Chilean doctors up in their hospital


corridors


and shoot them for supporting the late


democratic government of their country


It is not terror but heroism


if you were captured by the Vietnamese


for dropping fragmentation bombs


on their schools and hospitals


Only those who have nothing


can be terrorists

Wow...

I was researching the Weathermen and learned that Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn helped found Prairie Fire after splitting formally from the Weathermen in the late 1970s. If anyone has a copy of the 1974 book (or complete text of) "Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism", I'd be very interested in reading it. It would be highly educational to read their words from that time, and to try to relate their ideas and emotions into today's terms, in today's world.

My brief thoughts on the Weathermen are that they were young, energetic, and motivated people seeking to change this country and this world for the better, but they were wholly unsure of how to do that. When you're frustrated with the enormity of fighting an entire government and all it's institutions, it's easy to lash out. I've been there myself, although to a much lessor degree. This government does need change, although in the words of the Pairie Fire Organizing Committee:

"This
system cannot be reformed or voted out of office because reforms and
elections do not challenge the fundamental causes of injustice."

This is an incredibly obvious truth to me, and one at the heart of my mistrust for the honesty of the "change" so many hope Obama can bring. It's tough to change a system from the inside unless you have a lot of help, and even more courage and strength to do so.

I can so easily identify with the incredible rage felt by these people. I've been in the streets protesting the Iraq war. I've carried the signs and sung the songs, but nothing changed. It's just not that easy to change the course of a nation, but the very strong sense of wanting to do something fueled the actions of the Weathermen as surely as the ultimate realization that they were powerless to affect the change they so fervently believed in led to their retirement. Abject frustration is a powerful demotivator.

Not shockingly, the US has launched more missiles from drone planes in Pakistan. Pakistan says the strikes violate its sovereignty. They are right, it does. But the US knows it's the biggest, baddest bully on the block and does what it wants. We're right, they're wrong, that's the US government mantra.

Of course if Mexico were to start lobbing artillery shells over the border because they didn't think the US was doing a good enough job for anything they thought was important, Mexico City would be turned into a smoldering wasteland. You just don't mess with the US.

The US claims, naturally, that such strikes are justified because Pakistan  isn't doing enough to crack down on terrorists using the area as a safe haven. You know what? It doesn't matter. It's their country, not ours, and they can do whatever they damn well please with policing their own land. It's their right.

I certainly hope that once Obama is president, crap like this stops, but I suspect highly that it won't. It's not the US people that elect a president, after all, it's not that simple. No one can be in a position to be elected without knowing how the game is played, and who must be catered to. After all, Obama has said that bin Laden must be killed, and that he's likely in Pakistan. I'm sure he'll make some high profile visits to the leadership of Pakistan to discuss what should be done, and that's certainly a fine place to start. But it's their country, and if any US president doesn't respect a nation's right to rule itself within international law, then that president should be impeached.

Too bad it hasn't happened yet, and that it never would. As I often say, if Nixon were president today, he would not have been impeached. Bush has done so much worse than Nixon it's shocking, but impeachment has never been seriously on the table, it's a shame. Would McCain be better? Hell no. Would Obama? I think not better enough.

This last Friday was the last day to register to vote in Nebraska, and Melanie and I waited in line with Nick so he could register. All of Douglas county only had one registration office open for this last day, and the line was long. We waited in line for about three hours, and if it weren't for the great people we happened to be near in line, it would have seemed to be an eternity.

The gentlemen right in front of us in line was a tall, quiet fellow dressed in his UPS uniform. We didn't talk much, he just kept to himself while we made friends with others near us in the line. After nearly an hour of waiting, he went to talk to one of the people who worked at the county office, and from what I could hear of their conversation he was needing to get back to work soon and wanted to know if he could jump ahead. Of course he was denied, and he soon left the line.

The one bit of conversation we did have together earlier convinced me of how he was going to vote. Given my position as a skeptic and cynic of all politicians, I seldom vote for a mainstream candidate. But since "Joe" the UPS guy won't get the chance, I'm going to cast my vote in his place.

I won't tell you who I think he was going to vote for, and I won't divulge his age or ethnicity either. But he was in that line and going out of his way at the last minute so that he could vote, for what he believes in. I can't just let that pass by, and come November 4th, "Joe" the UPS guy will have his vote counted.

Cuba just reported finding 20 billion barrels of oil in their waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Somewhere in the shadowed halls of the US government there are talks going on of our options - invasion or extreme-slant drilling....

 Nebraska initiative 424 is coming up for a vote next month. It's called, ironically and deceptively, the "civil rights initiative". What it is really, however, is the means to end affirmative action in the guise of "ending" reverse discrimination. I guess the point is that enslaving blacks for a couple hundred years is now made up for by the 40 years of the progress made by the real civil rights movement.

I don't buy it. When you were a free man in Africa in 1700, that came to an abrupt end when you were captured and sold into slavery. No such sudden reversal has ever happened, not now, not in the 1960, and not even when Lincoln "freed" U.S. slaves. It's a lot more complicated than just "Ok, now you're free, and there is nothing in your way to success." I say that if we enslaved a race for 200+ years, then concrete measures like affirmative action should stay in place just as long.

I discovered the following piece by Tim Wise posted as a comment on an article about the hatred of the mobs against Obama at McCain rallies.

White privilege needs to be replaced with Human privilege.

THIS IS YOUR NATION ON WHITE PRIVILEGE

By Tim Wise

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light" burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain…

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

With all the rampant vitriol being spewed at recent McCain rallies, we have to face the very real possibility that Obama will be assassinated prior to the election. Audience members shout out that Obama is a terrorist, that he is treasonous, and in some cases even that he should be killed. The ludicrousness of all these viewpoints is disheartening for the future of our country, to say the least, outright frightening to say a bit more.

Obama is not the terrorist - after all, war is just terrorism with a bigger budget, making our current government and George W. Bush the real terrorists.

If Obama manages to make it to election day without assassination and then gets elected, I would think he's safe. He's not the candidate of change so many wish him to be, and once that is demonstrated then his chance of survival improves greatly.

I weep for the future of this country, when in 2008 so many people can hate a man for something as meaningless as his name. Have we learned so little as a nation from our dark past that we are condemned to repeat it?