A Two-fer Day

The other day I heard a commentator say that it was stupid to say that harsh rhetoric in the media and elsewhere in the political discourse of the Republic was "dangerous to our democracy."

She went on to say words the effect that "no one would object to the fact that political debate sometimes gets sharp and contentious."

I was in the car at the time and, although the speaker could not see me, my hand shot into the air.

I object to sharp and contentious political "debate" such as we have seen, for example, around the latest Supreme Court nomination. In fact, I object to sharp and contentious debate anywhere.

This kind of stuff locks people up, freezes them into opposition, makes it difficult if not impossible to do business with one another.

The danger, here, is that the discourse that allows people to call one another "murderers," and "traitors," and all kinds of other stuff of that ilk is so divisive that it makes the give and take of a self governing republic difficult to do.

The inability of the political parties to compromise with one another, on both the state and national levels, has created a gridlock that has left serious problems unaddressed for the better part of a decade. Who, after all, can compromise with "murderers" and "traitors" and expect good results. Who can even talk, let alone listen, to such people?

The rough and tumble of such things as "Tiller the baby killer" isn't harmless. The words matter.

And I think that some people who defend this kind of discourse, and dismiss it as "political correctness" or some such shibboleth, know full well what they are doing. There are those who are positively dis-interested in a "give and take" type of government. They want to rule as the Bush Administration did: going into power on a razor's edge (or perhaps no edge, at all) of a "mandate" they governed as though they won five votes to one.

I supported Mr. Obama because he said that wasn't a way to go about things and he has been trying to change that culture. In the end I know he will use the votes if he has them to get health care and climate change legislation--even if not one Republican supports it. But I admire his effort to compromise and bring some along some Republicans, to try to change the culture of overpowering opponents without any concern about their positions.

So, the Lily is for people like Rush Limbaugh--he is one of those who knows darned well that he is using language in a dishonest way to overcome those with whom he disagrees without any accommodation toward them, at all.

No compromise. Compromise is, apparently, now un American.

not rooting? not encouraging?

So, the idea is that Dick Cheney isn't really hoping that the United States will be attacked, again, so as to justify the illegal and inhumane treatment that the Bush Administration used to get information from people they believed had it (or, as some people would have it, to get false information about an Al Qaeda-Iraq connection out of people who could credibly be characterized to know of such a thing).

Some people believe that this is a set up: Cheney comes out and says that the Obama administration is "dismantling" the structure that "kept us safe" after the attack on September 11 in the hopes that "if it happens" it will be a boon to Republican electoral fortunes.

Does Cheney hope that will happen?

The other theory is that Cheney is selling the "we got useful information out of torture" idea as a prophylactic against indictment and conviction (of himself and those who, apparently, followed his orders) for the illegal program, or selling that idea so as to influence public opinion.

I don't know what, if any of these things, Cheney has in mind. It's entirely possible that he really believes what he is saying and he is trying to influence decision making to stop what he sees as eroding our security structure. Less likely things have, in my experience, turned out to be true.

But I do know this. If the parties were reversed, here, the entire right wing chorus would be singing in four part harmony about how comments like these were going to encourage those attacks and make them more likely to succeed in the same way disclosing blue prints of nuclear power plants would.

Cheney's remarks, made by an Al Gore, would be said to be telling the "enemy" that we are weak and vulnerable and therefore are encouraging (I believe the word the right favors in such situations is "emboldening") them to take a crack at an attack.

Remarking that a Republican administration was acting in such a way as to endanger national security would be called "treason" if it were done by a Democrat or non-partisan person.

How do I know that? It's not like I have to speculate. That's what they said, and the people who read their talking points in the media, said any time anyone objected to or ever questioned something proposed (or done in secret) by the Bush/Cheney administration.

No Lily, here.

Eight Is Enough for Court "Balance."

It's about integrity...

So, the Republicans want to give due attention to the solemn task of advising and consenting on a Supreme Court nomination and they want to spend as much time as they think it takes to review the record of Sonia Sotomayor . They say there are so many cases that it's unfair to rush the confirmation hearings. They didn't care to do that for nominees from President Bush, but a lot of things they did for President Bush are now not the right thing to do, anymore.


Do't think that's true? Well, aside from running up huge public debt there is the insistence, now, that war funding bills not carry funding for anything else as they did back in the day when it was conservative pork being carried...I digress. It's hard to focus on one example of a lack of integrity when so many others have their hands waving in the air to be recognized.

Back to the Supreme Court nomination...

Some in the media believe that the delay insisted on by Conservatives is a part of fund raising. Both sides will do it but the Conservatives need to shake down their base, at this point, more than the Progressives do. Others think that the Party of No is just dragging its feet to keep other things from getting done as they try to run out the clock til the next election when they hope, through the Fox style propaganda they are developing, they might win a few more seats and more power to frustrate change.

I wonder, though, in my own little cynical, bottom of the barrel corner of the world, if that's all there is to it.

If Justice Souter is gone and the court cranks up operation in October one justice short won't that work to the advantage of the "strict constructionalist" who also hold to the modern and radical doctrine of original intent of the founders (quite to the contrary of the intent of the founders)? It may cause a number of 4-4 ties. These in some cases will work out to the advantage of the Right, and in some may prevent them from denying things like redress of grievances for wage discrimination and the like.

I don't know for sure but if the retiring justice wasn't one of "theirs" might they not think it worth it to create an albeit small period of time in which the court can hear and make decisions in which there is one fewer justice who was not a safe vote for them, anyway.

So, there it is, in my view--a Lily Award for Senator Sessions and the gang.

Remember what Lily Tomlin, our patron saint, here, said: "No matter how cynical you get--it's hard to keep up."

One more step for Rush...a giant step backwards for us all?

"On March 27, Limbaugh stated of Obama's economic policies: "I have warned you and warned you again: If President Obama succeeds with this, our nation fails. Our nation is unalterably changed for generations."

so the man was quoted by media matters

Note in passing that "unalterably" may conflict with "for generations," and think about it from Rush's point of view, the point of view of those he epitomizes.

If President Obama's leadership takes us away from the capitalism that he holds dear--if people have value beyond their ability to make economic contribution, if liberty comes to mean something other than the ability to make as much money as one can by any means one can get away with, then, indeed, "our" "nation" fails.

If limits that used to hold the predatory materialism that Rush favors are re-instated then the "nation" of which he sings (a "nation" more in the sense of a people than a particular country--a people comprising a socio economic class--those for whom this predation works primarily because their wealth and power protects them from being its victims) will indeed fail.

I wish it so although I know that it cannot be "unalterably" held in check.

Experience tells me that what Rush fears is what the New Deal did--for generations.

But not forever.

I think Rush "gets it"--he understands how our current system works and what it actually does. The question in my mind is whether he really believes that, all things considered, it creates the greatest good for the greatest number of people, that it's the best way to set things up.

Does he really think that no one has value except in so far as they are able to create economic value?

Hard to get inside someone's head.

The quote of Rush from Media Matters is one of a compilation of quotations that portrays Obama as the worst person in the world--or the United States, at least. These portray him as the enemy of "our" way of life, out to destroy the country and what it stands for.

For all our sakes I hope nothing bad happens to the President.

For Rush's sake, I think he ought to hope so, too.

Does anybody really know what time its? Does anybody really care?

I found this and I shook my head.

"ABC News produced a heartbreaking tale of woe about harried professionals scheming to reduce their incomes to avoid higher tax brackets. A dentist told the reporter she was contemplating cutting “her income from her current $320,000 to under $250,000 by having her dental hygienist work fewer days and by treating fewer patients.”

"Neither she nor the reporter appeared to have any idea how marginal tax rates work. To wit, she’d pay the higher 36 percent rate only on income above $250,000. The current rate is 33 percent. Hence, Dr. Happy-Tooth’s brilliant plan would save her exactly $2,100 in taxes at a cost of $67,900 in foregone income.

"No wonder people like her vote Republican."

And for Democrats, I might add.

People who report and comment on the news are smart enough to figure this stuff out and at the same time it's entirely possible that they really don't get it.

Still, I wonder: ESPN would never send someone out to cover an upcoming three game series between the Yankees and the Red Sox who would say that one team or the other would sweep the series because it had a pitcher against whom the other had not had a hit in seven years. People who cover baseball know the game well enough to know that pitcher could not pitch all three games. That's not how baseball works. Pitchers rarely start games, except in the most dire of circumstances, any more frequently than once every four days.

And baseball reporters know that.

And, by the way, those who play the game know that, too.

So, in the story alluded to, above, we have someone covering the impact of taxes on earnings--and someone paying those taxes--both of whom are ignorant of how taxes work!

One of them is misleading an audience and the other is contemplating a course of action that will cause serious economic detriment to herself.

If this is ignorance or if it is a guileful attempt to mislead others it does not portend well for democracy or reflect positively on the human condition.

I think I'd rather believe that the dentist and the reporter are doing that, rather than believe that they are so ignorant about something so vital to their own well being that they are doing self destructive things as they try to maximize their well being.

I'd rather believe that someone would lie to damage the other side in the ongoing class war, on the one hand, and the war for audience, on the other. Wowsers!

I'd rather believe people are that dishonest than believe they are that stupid. I don't know that I do believe that, but I know that's what I'd rather believe.

I guess that means I get the Lily, today.

Oh, Ma...When is my bailout coming?

Congressman Eric Cantor voted for the bank bailout bill, advocated it, as Congress gave the Bush Administration permission to essentially drove its limos past the banks with Hank Paulson hanging out the window throwing money.

Now he is saying that we have a "culture of bailout" and he wonders, apparently but not really ironically, when his bailout is coming.

His wife is a managing director of a bank. That bank has been reported as changing its tax status so that it would qualify for a bailout and received one. So, his wife--his family--has already received its bail out.

I can see him in political black-face (after a verse or two or "Barack the Magic Negro?), on his knees for the big finish...

"I'd cast a million votes,
For (some of those bank) notes,
My (wife's) baiiiiiiiilllllll outttttt!"


More remarkable, however, is that the good Congressman did not tell anyone as he cast his vote for the bailouts that he would benefit from it.

OK. A Lily to the good Congressman. It has been said that he recognizes that there is a vacuum right now in Republican leadership and he intends to flow into it. Can a vacuum, however, fill a vacuum? I guess it can, in the party of "No."

"No matter how cynical I get, it's hard to keep up."

Lily Tomlin

They will take it but do the bankers need our bailout money?

An interesting comment from Secretary Paulson some months back when suggestions were made to limit the compensation of the people who run the banks. He said that if Congress did that these bankers would refuse to participate in the bailout scheme.

Would not participate?

It was "common sense" at the time that if the bailout money was not given to the banks the banks would go down and along with it the whole economy.

They would not participate?

Could it be that the people who control the banking industry don't care if there is no more bailout money for them?

Would they--wealthy far beyond our commonplace dreams of avarice--be willing to let their banks go out of business to retain the power they have over the government?

Do they care so little for the middle and bottom level employees of their banks, and for the middle bottom and lower level stockholders in the country, to destroy their lives utterly while they sit, in comfort, on their personal wealth in order to bring President Obama and the Democrats to heel?

Will they just refuse to participate in the "recovery" if the terms do not continue to please them, perfectly willing, if the terms do not continue to please them, to retreat into the compounds of wealth until the rest of the country burns down?

Richard Wolfe, a commentator, says that the banks are going to need more bailout money and, while the banks might, do the people who run them? Can they just let the current banking system go down and then move into control of the system that replaces it?

Is it true that banks come and go but there will always be the bankers?

Will they sit on their hands and hire enough Congressmen and think-tank pundits to convince enough people that their behavior is reasonable and necessary to restore prosperity, while the attempts to change "business as usual" in the financial system are misguided fantasy, socialism and, yes, "class warfare?"

These people are wealthy.

They don't need our bailout money.

We need them to need our bailout money. But they don't.

The Lily, today, to me.

bi-partisanship is a four letter word

The Republican Guru Grover Norquist was recently quoted to the effect that "bi partisanship is the equivalent of date rape."

There's an image!

I see his point, though, and I see his point of view. I don't agree with him, but I understand where he is coming from.

He sees the world as black and white, us versus them, we are right and they are wrong. Politics is a zero sum game. If someone else is in power that's unacceptable. They have no right to govern because they are wrong. He is smart, anyone who disagrees with him is not only wrong but criminal or crazy.

Makes complete sense that there can be no reconciliation or cooperation, if that's how one sees the world.

That is not, however, the way the world really is.

It is true, though, that the last eight years were dominated by a continuing "date rape" perpetrated by the Republican Party--even when the Democrats were in the majority, toward the end. A president with the slimmest margin of victory in history (if, indeed, he had any such margin) governed as though he received 80% of the vote and he got away with it.

There was no give and take, during the Bush administration. It was all take--unless you worked for a living and received wages, then you gave, and gave, and gave.

Mr. Norquist seems to be projecting, then. What his "side" did is what he thinks will be done to him because that is what he thinks reality is.

It would be nice if it could be shown that he is wrong--that compromise is possible in which everyone gives a little to get a little.

I don't know if that will happen, but there is a danger even if it does.

It is entirely possible that so many compromises can be made that what is done is ineffective and then the doer will be made to look wrong in the future when the compromise turns out to have sabotaged the mission the legislation set out to accomplish.

The income tax, for example, was so watered down by concessions made to get it implemented that it's not really progressive and there are plenty of ways that middle class tax payers have had the burden of funding government shifted to them (can you say capital gains income versus income on salaries--including social security).

And asking for compromise after compromise after compromise can become a tactic to blunt the effort and so ensure Democratic failure that Republicans can run on in two years.

Date rape. Yeah. If Norquist continues to use that phrase then, like "class warfare," those I hear use it the most will be, in my mind, the most likely to engage in it.

So, a Lily to Mr. Norquist.

a (modest) green proposal

I don't understand all I know about such things but when General Motors comes to DC looking for a bailout/infusion of capital it seems to me like a time for a sit down on a number of issues.

I'm fine with loaning them money (or buying a piece of their action) if they will agree to a couple of things.

1. there should be a target for phasing in a requirement that a certain percentage of their production is in hybrid auto technology attaining a certain mileage standard

2. there should be a target for phasing in a requirement that the rest of their fleet attain a different but significantly higher mileage and emissions standard than is now required.

3. that the recipients of this help agree to play their part in the general proposal that follows.

The federal government will also initiate a program to underwrite providing car buyers of a certain (modest middle class) income who want to trade cars of a certain profile (non-green) in for new, greener vehicles with an "augmented" trade-in value to ease the burden of increased cost of the green technology.

The car sellers would destroy the cars traded in and certify their destruction. They would get a tax credit (which perhaps would be split with the car companies) for the documented full amount of the trade in allowance they gave the buyer.

The cost of this augmented trade-in and destroy program would be in part funded by a substantial rise in the federal gas tax and a phasing out of subsidies (direct and indirect) to oil companies.

This proposal would

a. "save" the American auto industry and put it on a sustainable footing, benefiting workers and shareholders, local governments and everyone else who rely on the cash it generates.

b. "green" the auto industry, itself, and result in a gradual increase in the number of "green" automobiles on the road and decreasing the number of "ungreen" vehicles on the road with with them.

c. allow more American consumers access to such cars by increasing production and lowering the cost to them of converting

d. lessen America's demand for and reliance on foreign oil

e. spur green transportation technology

f. decrease driving (although the price per gallon increase is recouped by those who purchase higher mileage vehicles)

I could think of many more advantages, and probably can, over time, come up with ways to hook in more strategies to move forward into the post-petroleum age.

Oh, today's Lily....

Yes, the cynicism doesn't stop...

Dick Armey, a one time (and perhaps a future) member of Congress--House Republican Leader and noted conservative--analyzed the Republican loss in the way Republicans (and Democrats, now that I think about it) are apt to do: we acted too much like them and the voters punished us for not being true to our values.

The idea is that over the last eight years the Republican party left behind the small government, fiscal conservatism and individual liberty type values traditional to conservatives and, because they did the voters turned them out.

What?

Because Republicans acted too much like Democrats the voters punished the Republicans by turning them out of office and replacing them with Democrats?

"Well," said the R voters, according to Mr. Armey, "the Republicans gave up their good guy ways and started to act like the bad guys always do so we decided to kick the good guys out and replace them with a bunch of bad guys who will keep doing all the things we hate, all the things we punished the Republicans for doing."

"What?" I asked from the shower, addressing my radio, from where Mr. Armey's voice came. "Let me get this straight. You're so upset with what you claim is profligate spending, collective security and big government that you've elected a bunch of people who will give you more of those things you hate?"

"Sure," I heard Mr. Armey say, in my head. "Sure. We gotta be what we really are and stop acting like..."

Like I say, I've heard this from both R and D die hards after a serious defeat.

"Well," I said, putting even more words into Mr. Armey's mouth, "Don't look around at what going on. Just go with what you know. And good luck."

Then I remembered who I was dealing with. Mr. Armey is not stupid. He's just in a position that he has to hide what he's really trying to do, along with a lot of things he doesn't know to begin with.

So, the Lily to Mr. Armey for the cynical manipulation of the rank and file of his own party so that he can get them back under his control.

No matter how cynical I get, it's hard to keep up.
--Lily Tomlin

How am I going to know?

I could go on for a while about the election of Bark Obama--what it means and what it doesn't mean to me.

I'll sum it up.

I chose Obama over Hillary because he seemed to be saying that we need to get people together and work things out together while she seemed to be hanging on to the approach that we get things done by consolidating our power and riding down on our enemies to defeat them.

I like what I saw as the "Obama approach" because it is like (although hardly identical to) what is called "Quaker process."

I wish he would have talked about that more in the campaign but he obliquely referred to it from time to time, frequently enough to keep me going.

Now, we see.

He has won by a substantial margin and only the most partisan would claim that he does not have a "mandate" to move forward as he has talked about doing. But one of the ways he got that mandate was by trying to move beyond the red state-blue state, left-right approach--or at least claiming that's what he wanted to do.

I'll know it's what I voted for if he approaches problems in an inclusive way, listening to those with whom he disagrees and trying to fashion compromises that both get the job at hand done and that build enough support for those compromises to get them implemented.

If a man with a mandate can govern as though he just barely won he can get things done and unify the country.

We have just lived through eight years in which someone who just barely won swaggered around like he had a mandate and we are living with the aftermath.

"Look upon my works, Ye Mighty, and Despair."

what's the right answer?

When people say Obama is a Muslim we jump to say that's not right: he's a Christian.

Why don't we say "So what? A Muslim can't be President?"

Yeah, I know. The "real world" and all that.

I can say it, though, even if the campaign "can't."

But that's not such a big whoop--in fact, it's just an indication of how meshed with empire I am, how my identity in Christ is compromised by my identity with the global capital empire for which this "nation" stands, that this nation serves.

Colin Powell, on Meet the Press a couple of weeks ago, told a stirring story of a gravestone at Arlington National Cemetery. It was that under which is laid a 19 year old casualty of the the Iraq war and at the top of which is the crescent and the star.

Powell was saying that anyone can meet the "test" and that there should be no presumption based on the external indicators. If one can show one is sufficiently committed to this country and endorses the myth of redemptive violence as the means to maintain its pre-eminence in the world then one is in the club.

Most Quakers do not buy into the myth of redemptive violence, at least insofar as its implications in our own lives are clear to us. But we should recognize at the very least that integrity would require those among us who do buy into it to acknowledge that passing the "test" is not based on being part of one group or another. (Of course, integrity would require all who support a war to fight in or actively participate in it as integrity would require someone "supporting" a religion to actually practice it rather than merely tithe...I digress)

Of course, groups (as well as individuals) seek security in redemptive violence and what is "at stake" in the national/spiritual life of most Americans today is dominating one group or another to keep the "American Standard of Living," as our current leaders have sworn to do, "off of the table."

For Americans to realize that Muslims can serve the American Empire as well as Christians and Jews can is really not such a great leap forward.

I guess for me to try to point that out is not only fairly depressing as I realize what it's about but not good for my own spiritual condition. It's a bit like "favoring" gays in the military--advocating that anyone be allowed to destroy the image of Christ in themselves.

But, on the other hand, it's what separation of church and state is about, isn't it?

In school, years ago, I learned that if one is unsure of the right answer one should choose the alternative labeled "C." Having been a teacher, now, I know that's a myth.

But as I cannot help but touch the side of the airplane as I board I cannot help but say, in regard to this, the correct answer is "C."

For Christ.

that's what it's about, Joe...

Joe S said this morning that when he ran for office the first time his opponent was a man and it was ok for both of them to make fun of one another, to take shots at one another, to be mean and sarcastic to one another. The next time he ran against a woman and he wasn't able to do that. Political correctness had set in.

Can I suggest that the change between the two elections represents a step forward rather than something to be lamented?

Isn't it good that something has happened to increase civility in political campaigns?

The first year I worked in the state legislature I remember a briefing for new comers in the lobby corps that included the re-assurance that one did not have to give members sexual favors in return for support on legislation.

I wondered about that. Why did someone think it appropriate to say something like that?

Why?

Because, I now know, there was a lot of "grab ass" of various kinds going on in the legislature before I got there and that there was a change going on.

What caused the change?

The increased number of women who were members of the legislature.

Gee, was that a bad thing? The boys could not cut up and engage in horse-play like they used to.

I suppose that some of those good old boys lamented the passing of the times of whiskey bottles in the bottom drawyers and sexually harassing pretty young aids.

But I am not going to suppose that it would be great to go back to that way of operating, or that women should put up with that kind of nonsense going on around them.

Oh, Sigh

"I don't need any lessons on telling the truth to the American people..." said Senator McCain, continuing on to say that if he did he wouldn't seek counsel in that regard from a a Chicago politician.

What's the debate going to be like, tonight?

The Democratic Whatever It Is Committee (the DWIIC?) is now running an ad of the Good Senator saying that the American people are smart enough to know that people who run nothing but negative ads has no vision for the future or doesn't want to lay that out at the present time.

How weird it is that such footage can be played by the speaker's opponents with such confidence in it being perceived as irony by the public! Is McCain's credibility completely upside down?

And Palin. Palin shows they're failin'.

O'bama is "palling around with domestic terrorists" and Reverend Wright...

Maybe Governor Palin knows that her ticket is toast this time and she wants to get as much attention as she can so that in four yearts, or eight, she can come back as a re-invented figure who reads the magazines and knows Supreme Court cases, and such. Will she be the front runner for the R nomination in 2012?

Clarence Page said that Palin knew that the debates are a TV show and she played it that way. She could become very skillful in the medium.

Or will she go back to Alaska in an irretreivable disgrace, blamed for the loss or just with so much negative baggage...

But Nixon had a lot of negative baggage and back he came.

"But You, Governor Palin, are no Richard Nixon."

Oh, the Lily? McCain, of course. He has to know he's not telling the truth to the American people. O'bama is not a Chicago politician. He has not been a part of that machine. If O'bama is a Chicago politician then McCain is a Hanoi politician.

Is this never going to be over?

Could this year be the rhyme line for 1964? Is this another horrendous defeat for the Republicans such that it sets up a countering victory like Ronald Reagan's?

I should stop writing before I start to rival McCain for today's Lily.

The Tool of Mavericks

Sarah Palin has a rhetorical tool box that served her well in the debate last Friday, generating talking points interspersed with personable affectations--at least personable as seen by some people's sensibilities.

Unlike the two interviews she did, when the reporters were able to ask her to be specific about something she said and showed that she didn't really say anything, at all, in this debate she was able to skip over the surface like the flattest of flat stones. When Biden called her on things she was just able to to repeat what she said, without any supporting fact or information, and say that Biden was "wrong."

The plan, now, is to keep her away from anyone who can ask her a follow up question.

She winks, she mugs, her folksy outside the beltway style--her beauty contestant personality: she's joined the "Team of Mavericks."

No matter how cynical I get...

Famous Person...

She killed him, was the assessment of the "Famous Person" quoted on the McCain website after the Palin Performance the other night.

The "Famous Person" turns out to be Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speech writer.

What, did someone see her, recognize her as a famous person, and just could not come up with her name at the time and still couldn't get it off of the tip of his tongue before the quote had to go up on the site?

"Famous Person" attribution may have kept us all from knowing the statement was the assessment of a very biased person.

As I watched the debate I knew that Palin was "winning" in the sense that she was allowing her campaign's base to breathe, again, allowing them to say that she was good and capable without those around them spraying whatever liquid they had in their mouths.

Cute, perky and murky with one misstatement after another.

Fact is that she did kill him.

Long before last night she killed McCain's last hope to become President.

At least, that's how I think history is going to write the story.

Lily to the one who put "The Famous Person" attribution on the McCain web site.

how can she lose?

If the vice presidential debate does not end up with Sarah P. rolled up in a ball on the floor, her crisp suit sweated through and thumb in her mouth, then she will have won.

And how can Biden hope to do well? He's either going to be accused of beating up on her or patting her on the head. She pats herself on the head, of course, and she beats up on herself. Perhaps Mr. Biden should skip out on this thing and let her stand there and do it all to herself. Even, then, though, she would win. Sarah may be Palin' but she'll win by a TKO no matter what happens.

"I hereby stand by all the mistatements I have made" said Dan Quayle.

Yeah. Me, too.

Miss Congeniality.

Not hardly, but really.

So the Lily today goes to me.

How can I be anything but cynical, today?

it's just so hard to keep up.

Watching Morning Joe

More spent in three days to support the American military establishment than spent on development aid for Africa in a year.

More money has gone into CEO bonuses on Wall Street than the entire world has invested in Africa in a year.

A "Lily" For Our Time

I heard that Congress is flummoxed about what to do in the midst of the financial crisis. They don't know what to do.

It's a whole new game, they say. They don't know the rules.

That's ironic. Of course they don't know the rules. Congresses abolished a lot of the rules and that's why we are where we are. As one commentator put it, the financial world has had no grownups in charge for a while. We used to know how to put real value on financial instruments--you had third parties do it it instead of the people who used the instruments to convince other people to lend them (or give them) money based on that value.

"Well, you know, this here piece of paper is worth a lot of money--cause I say it is."

There's a good start--stop that nonsense.

Just start by going back and looking at the oversight that has been abolished.

This is not a new game. It's a very old game.

The game is called, now "privatizing profit and socializing loss."

My old Daddie used to call it "everyone wants socialism for themselves and free enterprise for everyone else."

And the Republican leadership in Congress is saying that we should all be concerned the size and the frequency of these bail outs.

Sigh. That's why the "Lily" goes, today, to Republicans in Congress. Cynicism on a stick.

When Republicans thought we were over run by crime they didn't wonder whether it was a good idea to pour all those resources into cops and prisons--they were were worried by what is was they said made all those cops and prisons "necessary:" crime.

We should, yes, be concerned about the size and frequency of these bail outs and I think the place to concentrate our concern is on how these became necessary. They became necessary because the ideology of the freedom in the market place displaced the ideology of responsibility and sound financial judgment. And that didn't happen by accident. People made a bundle on making it happen.

How could anyone possibly think that the way to financial strength was letting people make money by creating transactions between people who had money to loan and people who could never repay those loans and then make more money selling the right to collect on those bad loans to someone else?

They couldn't think that, of course. What they really thought was about the campaign contributions they would get from the people they let do that. And now that it's gone gunny-bag they want us to think that the issue is how we get out of the hole they put us in--not about the hole, how they put us in it and how we stay out of another one it the future.

I wonder who will accept the Lily on behalf the the free market ideologues? Herbert? Is Friend Hoover in the house? If not, call the McCain campaign. They have a couple of guys there who were very helpful in creating this climate of letting predators be predators and the prey be, well, prey. Prey--predators call those people "whiners."

The risk of failure was separated from the people making the transactions. I make money doing this and then sell the situation (known, technically, as a time bomb) to someone else. When the whole system goes down I may have to pay a little bit of what I made back to recover from the catastrophe but not as much as I made creating it. And the people I sold the loans to--and the people I got into the loans--will be right there with me paying more taxes to restore stability. They lost everything and they have to pay to recreate the system while I--who made a bundle on their losing--have to pay a lot less than I made to pay my "fair share" in the recovery.

My end of paying the recovery is smaller than what I made and everyone else--after losing so much, has to pay even more.

Is this a great country or what?

It's called "capitalism" and that's how it works.

Uh-oh. People might start to say I'm engaging in class warfare.

Another good question, this one from Barney Frank: how is it than in our "democracy" one person has the power to decide whether or not to loan $85 billion dollars of tax payer money to an insurance company, and to decided, in his own discretion, what the terms will be?

I don't know that it's a bad idea. But perhaps it's a warning to not let things get this way, again. What's gonna happen if someone finds out of that his brother in law runs the company he decided we should all bail out? (in a way, by the way, his brother in law does--his class brother in law).

And now that I think of it, when Congress gave the power to do that, how much was that like giving George Bush the power to go war if, in his sole discretion, he wanted to do that?

How many times can Congress be talked into giving people so much power? I guess the answer is as many times as they get scared into doing it.

And they were right to be scared, in both circumstances, because both the foreign and financial policies in which we have been engaging for a long time could not help to lead, regardless of short term gain for some of us, to long term disaster for all of us.

You can't be a Quaker and not know that. You can't be a human being with a moral compass--other than making money by exploiting others--and not know that. Which, I guess, explains why so many people don't seem to know it.

It's hard to figure out which of our testimonies is most implicated, here. It's an example of how we can use any one of them to analyze most any human plight. Start with simplicity, head into rest. Choose equality or integrity, community or peace. The lack of (respect for) any of them in our policies (and public morality) is a good way to come to understand the situation.

You cannot have KISS without SPICE.

And just remember, boys and girls, there are those who can with a straight face and a modicum of persuasiveness, tell us that the war in Iraq and the unfettered capitalism are examples of simplicity, peace, integrity, community and equality.

I will be surprised, frankly, if they don't.

As Lily said: "...it's hard to keep up."

class warfare

So, Bill O'Reilly says to Barak Obama that restoring the taxes on the top margins to the pre-Bush levels would be "tax warfare."

One of these days I'd like someone to say, in response to this "argument," that the changing of those marginal rates downward by the Bush administration was also "class warfare." The destruction of unions, the tax structure favoring the wealthy, the subsidies and tax credits handed out to people and corporations who are in that $250,000 a year + class while similar breaks and subsidies for middle income families are cut--all that amounts to redistribution of the wealth and class warfare that is waged by the "side" wearing the same colors as Mr. O.

There is no other answer that has integrity and in the end none that really make ssense.

You cannot win that argument, Barak, until you frankly say that groups are constantly vying with one another in this economy about how the income is divided and that this is a legitimate vying and that we need to acknowledge that and put it on the table where we can openly engage in some rule making to govern the process and make it fair. That would simplify all this considerably, wouldn't it?

The way it is right now it's an unregulated war and a denied war--so those waging it aren't scrutinized or held in check by concepts of fairness applied to their behavior...not exactly harmony, is it? Peace? Equality? People who have it can portray themselves as exploited by taxes and never have to explain how they exploited others by using the government to get it, in the first place.

Our incomes are not "ours" in the sense that no one else contributed to our making it. We are part of a system and we take our incomes out of a system, benefitting from the efforts and investments (especially public investments) of others. We all owe the system so as to keep it working for us and for others as it does. We are all in this together. It's an interdependent community.

Why is it so radical to propose that people who take more out of this economy--and have the power to structure it so that they do take more out than others--should not be required to pay more to keep it working for them?

Who is offended when people who sit in the best seats pay for the highest priced tickets?

Class warfare? Duh!

Say it, Barak. Own it. It's true.

And as long as we deny it then it cannot, as it is the function of the truth to do, set us free.