UKRAINE -- RIGHT WING SOLUTIONS

UKRAINE -- RIGHT WING SOLUTIONS

I am old enough to remember when Dan Quayle was the most stupid Republican I had ever seen.  In fact, I recently saw a photo of him with that precise question.  Here are a few of his quotes:

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."

"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child."

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared.'"

Today, however, we are faced with a plentitude.  A week ago or so, Obama sent Biden to Kiev.  I wondered what it would have been like if McCain had been elected and sent Sarah Palin there to straighten things up.  Here is a photo with a very recent quote:

Water-boarding, she said, is "how we baptize terrorists."

Things are stupid enough as they are and below is a discussion of that.  The fact is, we have violated every agreement we had with Russia since the wall fell and now it is surrounded by NATO.  No matter what we do, Putin will not allow NATO in Ukraine as it stands.

TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 2014

As Unrest Grows, Is Ukraine Paying the Price of U.S.-Russian Ties Stuck in Cold War Era?

The United States and the European Union have imposed new sanctions on Russia that target individuals and companies linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. The moves come as the crisis in eastern Ukraine faces continued chaos. On Monday, pro-Russian separatists seized a new town and continued to detain seven European monitors. The mayor of the Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, was shot in the back and is now in critical condition. Ukraine’s government and Western powers have accused Russia of orchestrating the unrest as a pretext for an invasion. We host a roundtable discussion with three guests: Christopher Miller, an editor at Kyiv Post, who has been based in Ukraine for four years; Jack Matlock, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991; and Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at The New School, and author of forthcoming book, "The Lost Khrushchev: Journey into the Gulag of the Russian Mind."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AARON MATÉ: The U.S. and European Union have imposed new sanctions on Russia amidst heightened tensions in eastern Ukraine. The U.S. sanctions target seven Russian government officials and 17 companies linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters the U.S. still has a, quote, "tool box of steps" it can take against Russia.

JEN PSAKI: Obviously, this morning we’ve been making clear—the United States has been making clear that it would impose additional costs if Russia—on Russia, if it failed to live up to its Geneva commitments and failed to take concrete steps to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine. Consequently, today, this morning, the United States is imposing targeted sanctions on a number of Russian individuals and entities, and restricting licenses for certain U.S. exports to Russia. Can Russia still de-escalate and take steps? Absolutely they can. Do we still have a tool box of steps we can take? Absolutely, we do. And we’re working in close consult—in close lockstep with the Europeans on this, as well.

AARON MATÉ: One day after the U.S., the European Union followed suit today with new sanctions on 15 more people suspected of having a direct link to the Ukrainian unrest. These moves come as the crisis in eastern Ukraine faces continued chaos. On Monday, pro-Russian separatists seized a new town and continued to detain seven European monitors.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Ukraine’s second-largest city is in critical condition after an attempt on his life. Kharkiv Mayor Hennadiy Kernes was shot in the back on the outskirts of the city, just 20 miles from the border with Russia. It’s unclear who was behind the attack. This is a surgeon who treated Kernes, followed by Kharkiv’s deputy mayor.

DR. VALERIY BOYKO: [translated] He is stable at the moment, but his condition is still severe, even closer to very severe, as it usually is with these types of injuries. When it comes to these types of injuries, the bleeding is usually rather strong. We’re talking about up to one-and-a-half liters of blood in total.

DEPUTY MAYOR MIKHAILO DOBKIN: [translated] If somebody thinks that this is the way to dramatically improve the situation, he is wrong. Any aggression will only increase confrontation.

AMY GOODMAN: The armed separatists in eastern Ukraine are seeking independence or annexation with Russia. Ukraine’s government and Western powers have accused Russia of orchestrating the unrest as a pretext for an invasion. All this comes as the Pentagon says Russia’s defense chief assured U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in a telephone call Monday that Russia would not invade Ukraine. Meanwhile, the country continues to prepare for its May 25th presidential election.

For more, we’re joined by three guests. We go to Kiev via Democracy Now! video stream to speak with Christopher Miller, editor at the Kyiv Post, who has been based in Ukraine for four years.

From Princeton University, Jack Matlock served as U.S. ambassador to Moscow from 1987 to 1991. He was the last ambassador to the Soviet Union, the last U.S. ambassador. He’s the author of several books, including Superpower Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray—and How to Return to Reality,Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union and Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended.

Here in New York, Nina Khrushcheva is with us, professor of international affairs at New School. She’s author of the forthcoming book, The Lost Khrushchev: Journey into the Gulag of the Russian Mind; it’s out in a few weeks.

Let’s go, though, directly to Kiev to speak with Christopher Miller. Can you explain what is happening right now in Kiev?

CHRISTOPHER MILLER: Sure. So, the unrest is continuing. Things have been relatively calm today, all things considered. Yesterday we did see the takeover of another city administration building and, of course, the apparent assassination attempt of a mayor in the second-largest city of Ukraine. People believe that the attempt on his life was meant to further destabilize the situation. Obviously there are lots of different rumors flying around as to who might be behind it. Today, the government is taking steps it believes could help the situation. They are considering holding a referendum, in line with the elections on May 25th. It hasn’t been decided yet, but we’re hearing that talks are underway. Meanwhile, the separatist groups in eastern Ukraine, in these flashpoint cities of Kharkiv and Lugansk, Donetsk and Slavyansk, are considering holding unilateral referendums in their city on May 11th, in line with May holidays and Victory Day, which is a very big celebration here in the former Soviet Union.

AARON MATÉ: And, Chris Miller, how serious is the situation in eastern Ukraine compared to what happened in Crimea? In Crimea, Russia has now at least admitted that it was their forces that were sent in. There seems to be, though, much more uncertainty around who these separatists are in eastern Ukraine. What is happening right now, and how does this compare to what we saw in Crimea?

CHRISTOPHER MILLER: Well, it’s similar to Crimea, in the sense that it is this kind of slow-moving takeover of pro-Russian forces. But the differences are Crimea was controlled by pro—or, I’m sorry, by Russian soldiers, as we know now, and they were very well disciplined and orderly. There was really a lack of violence. We saw some skirmishes, and there was at least one or two deaths, but, overall, you know, it was done with a sense of professionalism, really, whereas what we’re seeing in the east now is the seizure of buildings, the takeover of entire cities, by men that are not so well trained, who might not have a military background, some that do, that are, you know, militia forces who have taken over police stations, are now armed with with automatic weapons, RPGs. We have seen some evidence that Russians are involved, not necessarily Russians who are members of Russia’s military, but Russian citizens who are a part of militia groups over there and have come into Ukraine to help lead this separatist movement.

AMY GOODMAN: Why was the mayor of Kiev—rather, the mayor of Kharkiv, why was he targeted?

CHRISTOPHER MILLER: Well, he is what people here deemed to be a political chameleon. He has flip-flopped a number of times in the last few months. He was a supporter of the former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted on February 22nd, I believe. He fled the country overnight that night and was thrown out of office. He has since popped up in Moscow. He was also a member of the president’s political party, the Party of Regions, which is the ruling party, and now the opposition party, here. He has—well, during what was the Euromaidan revolution in December, January and February, he was a staunch critic of the revolution and spoke out against it. But once the president was ousted from office, he came out in favor of a united Ukraine. At the same time, he did speak for some of the separatist movements that had popped up, at least until the separatists lost control of the city administration building in his city. Once they were removed by police forces, he flopped again and said that he did support a united Ukraine and not necessarily separatism, but a federated state. So he’s angered people on both sides, really, making him a target by numerous groups. It’s unknown now, you know, who’s behind it. You know, I—

AMY GOODMAN: Who shot him.

CHRISTOPHER MILLER: Yeah, yeah, who shot him. You know, they believe it’s a lone sniper. A close friend and presidential candidate, Mikhailo Dobkin, actually came out today and said that he believes it was forces from Euromaidan that worked to assassinate him. But at this point, it’s not clear exactly who was behind the shooting.

AMY GOODMAN: Nina Khrushcheva, the sanctions that have been posed on Russian individuals, 17 companies, seven Russian individuals, on the oil company, the head of the oil company, but not the head of the gas company—talk about the significance of the U.S. and the European approach to dealing with Russia now.

NINA KHRUSHCHEVA: Well, the U.S. approach is much more forceful. I mean, we can say that the U.S.—I mean, there are various schools of thoughts—the U.S. didn’t go far enough because it targeted individuals, but, for example, the Rosneft company wasn’t itself targeted; Igor Sechin, the head of it, was. So there is a question how far the U.S. should have gone, and did they go far enough? On the other hand, the U.S. says that they still have a toolbox to push Russia with, and maybe that’s why they decided that, you know, for now it’s forceful enough, but not completely forceful.

The EU sanctions are not as forceful, and they’ve been the story all along, because we do know 25 to 30 percent of Russian energy goes to Europe. And there are a lot of other businesses in England. There is a lot of businesses in Germany. Trade is very, very important. Russia is a very important European partner. So they didn’t go far enough. And I found it very interesting that they actually targeted people who were directly involved in racking up those protests, the people who are—people in Donetsk, people who are security forces in Donetsk, which in some ways even more symbolic than we would like, because I think it is important to target those people. I don’t imagine that they are really shaking in their boots that they cannot go to Germany, for example, or cannot ski in the Alps. So, it is an important gesture. I don’t know how far enough it is going. I think the important person that—very important on both sides is Dmitry Kozak, the prime minister—deputy prime minister, who is allegedly responsible for the Crimean takeover, although there are other schools of thoughts, the first—in the first round of sanctions. Surkov is another person who was responsible, and he was already sanctioned. So, these are very important gestures.

I do, actually—I’m a huge fan of sanctions. I think that they go much, much further than that, because it does seem that when this—there is evidence that Russian businesses are going to suffer from the sanctions, the Russian rhetoric somewhat tones down, although, of course, now we hear that it’s we’re back to 1949, we’re back to the United States—I mean, Europe is doing American bidding and whatnot. But sanctions, I think—I think trade forces probably are the most—the most forceful measure to deal with Putin.

AARON MATÉ: It was only a few weeks ago that we had this agreement in Geneva between the U.S., EU, Russia, Ukraine. All sides were supposed to drop support for the armed groups. Has anybody tried to follow through on what they agreed to in Geneva?

NINA KHRUSHCHEVA: It doesn’t seem that on both sides, because there’s still the right sector that is still very forceful, or at least so it is presented by the Russian. They do seem to occupy buildings. I actually read the recent report that in Lviv there are even coffee shops open, a bar, with the right sector and sort of some fascist rhetoric involved. And the thing about the Russians, they use this as such a great tool of propaganda.

I actually would like to add to why I think East Ukraine is different from the Crimea story, because in Crimea there really was a lot of support. With Russian guns or not, there was a lot of support for becoming Russian. In eastern Ukraine, I think the Russians are so meddling and so forceful precisely because there are probably 20—and maybe 30, but I wouldn’t even go that far—of the population that may want to become part of Russia. So they have to—they have to push hard. And then, of course, in East Donetsk, they can continue to—Russians continue to be involved and push very hard, precisely because they, first of all, need the referendum for the 11th to make sure that there are many more people than there really they are—many poor people supposedly support the secession—and also to meddle before the elections on the 25th of May.

AMY GOODMAN: Jack Matlock, you’re the last U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, now at Princeton University. How can—

JACK MATLOCK: Not quite.

AMY GOODMAN: To the Soviet Union?

JACK MATLOCK: I’m sorry? No, Robert Strauss was the last ambassador to the Soviet Union.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, nearing the end there. How do you think the U.S. could most—

JACK MATLOCK: Yes, very close to the end.

AMY GOODMAN: How could the U.S. most effectively deal with President Putin?

JACK MATLOCK: I think that we—if we’re going to be effective, we need to take as much as we can out of the public arena and deal privately with these issues. When it has become sort of a contest between our presidents—you know, who can do what to the other—it becomes, I think, very emotional, and it tends to push things, I think, in the wrong direction. So I would hope that having done some of the sanctions that we promised, when we promised them, we have to do them. We should try, to the maximum, to go private. And in particular, I think where we can be most helpful is convincing the authorities in Kiev to come to any reasonable terms that the Russians are asking. Publicly, at least, they’re asking for a federal constitution, they’re asking for equal treatment of the Russian and Ukrainian languages, and they’re asking for a pledge of neutrality. I think all of those three demands, on the surface, are reasonable. And it seems to me that working quietly with the Ukrainians in Kiev and the Europeans is going to be more helpful than the sanctions.

AARON MATÉ: And, Ambassador, what could the Obama administration do differently than this administration and previous administrations have done in the past towards Russia?

JACK MATLOCK: I didn’t understand the question.

AARON MATÉ: What could the U.S. do differently in its approach to Russia than it has done in the past? You’ve been critical of how the U.S. has treated Putin.

JACK MATLOCK: Oh, well, the most fundamental issue here was the threat ofNATO membership eventually for Ukraine. This is something that no Russian government, no matter how democratic, is going to accept. And they will use any methods at their disposal to make sure it doesn’t happen. And that’s what we see happening now. And if this issue had never been raised, I think it would have been much easier to work out the economic issues, which are the most important ones.

But also something to remember is, throughout the 22-plus years of Ukraine’s independence, the Ukrainians have not been able to create an effective government of the entire country. They have not been able to create a sense of nationality. It is, in many respects, a failed state. And all of the parties from outside, beginning with Russia, but also including the Europeans and the United States, I think, have followed policies that have not been helpful.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back right now to Chris Miller in Kiev. What is the sense of what will be happening there now and the sense of the sanctions? The European Union clearly doesn’t want to go after the gas because they’re so—they are so reliant on it, so the U.S. is targeting oil. Is there a sense that a civil war could break out?

CHRISTOPHER MILLER: There’s not so much a sense of civil war, but rather a partisan war. There are partisan forces and militia groups that are preparing themselves for such a thing. They’re training out in places outside of Kiev. They’re training in eastern Ukraine.

You know, and what I wanted to say—actually, it was said earlier—in terms of what’s different between Crimea and the east—I think this goes with your question—is, there isn’t much support for what is happening in eastern Ukraine out in eastern Ukraine. It’s a very small minority that is, you know, seizing these buildings, holding the cities captive. You know, I think more than 75 percent of the population in the region is not in support of what is taking place there. You know, there is a significant percentage of the population that is for some independence from the central government in Kiev, but not necessarily separating from Ukraine altogether and joining Russia, or becoming altogether independent.

But this is certainly a situation that is escalating. It’s a very fluid situation. And, you know, our sources in the security services and Defense Ministry are telling us that it could get worse over the course of the May holidays in the next couple of weeks.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Ambassador Jack Matlock, President Obama’s response in the Philippines to the Fox question about his foreign policy being in disarray, and he responds by talking about why the U.S. should not be involved in a war again. You have been a critic of the U.S. getting involved militarily in Ukraine. What did you think of President Obama’s response?

JACK MATLOCK: I thought his response was excellent. And I think his general effort to keep us out of conflict and remove us from those are—I applaud. What I have criticized regarding dealing with Ukraine has been a pattern of activity, starting with the way NATO was expanded without an apparent stop at some point, and also the attempt in Kiev to get involved in local politics. I think that was unwise, and I think that has given a sort of an East-West competitive cast to what is an internal, basically, Ukrainian matter. So that, I’ve criticized. I very much applaud President Obama’s attempt to very much limit our use of force in international affairs. I think that is the way to go. And I think he expressed it very, very well in his Manila remarks.

AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap up, Nina Khrushcheva, you’re the great-granddaughter, adopted granddaughter of the late Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev. How does this period in Russian history compare to what has taken place in the past?

NINA KHRUSHCHEVA: Well, I mean, it has been compared with the Cuban missile crisis numerous times. And to a degree, it is a fair comparison, I think, because it was—we’re very close to a brink of absolute disaster. And I do think that President Putin, President Obama, the new Kiev government, they really need to—and I completely agree with Ambassador Matlock, whose—I have to proudly say, I was research assistant at one point at Princeton—that it has really—I mean, all cards are on the table. Now it has to be done quietly because, as I’ve been writing and I just wrote yesterday in a Reuters piece, is that the more we talk about—the more America scolds Putin, the more it becomes an ideological battle. And once you start an ideological battle, it’s actually very difficult to get away from the real crisis, from the boots on the ground, from affecting people who live day-to-day life and become involved in this kind of ideology while they really need to be going on about their life business.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us. Nina Khrushcheva is a professor of international affairs at New School here in New York. Her forthcoming book, coming out very soon, The Lost Khrushchev: Journey into the Gulag of the Russian Mind. We want to thank Ambassador Jack Matlock, who is a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, and Christopher Miller, who is with the Kyiv Post, speaking to us from Kiev.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the scandal that is rocking the sports world. Stay with us.

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Palin, Cops, Beer, and Healthcare

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: Sarah Palin by Hugh Ralinovsky. Actually, the paraphrase makes more sense than anything she actually said. Below is the address of a clip of William Shattner reading her farewell speech (NBC forced Youtube to take it off because of copyright violations, cheap bastards). However, in the interest of accuracy (as if that's relevent when mentioning Palin), the "poem" is really taken from statement she made on her Twitter account and read by some masochist:

www.tonightshowwithconanobrien.com/video/clips/shatner-does-palin-072709/1139665/ -

The only real disturbing thought I have about all of this is that there are millions of voters out there who adore her and would vote for her.

A lot has happened recently. Keep in mind I'm not making this up, ok?

Awhile ago, a policeman was dispatched to a home in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass. A prominent Professor was just returning from a trip to China and had trouble getting into his own home. He finally did get in, at which time the officer entered the home and asked for his identification. He produced a Harvard ID and a drivers license, proving that he was the lawful resident of the home. He then asked the officer for his badge number and name. The conversation was not the most polite, but the officer then arrested Professor Gates for Disorderly Conduct and handcuffed him, showing this black man who was the real boss.

At a press conference on healthcare, Barak Obama was answering questions when the last question was about the incident and he remarked that the police had "acted stupidly."

I pause for a definition here: A political Gaffe occurs when a politician tells the truth when it it not in his best interest to. So, Obama committed a Gaffe -- pretty unusual for him.

Now I have a friend from Chicago named Peter Verochensko, better known as Pete. Pete was usually found after work hours at the local tavern on a barstool watching sports on TV, or Aerobics when the instructor was female.

I was telling him this story to get the reactions of a real Chicagoan.

As things heated up, poor policeman attacked by the President, another black man who was the Henry Gates' friend, Obama suggested that he mispoke and that all three should meet at the White House for a beer.

I was about to tell about all the discussion of what brand of beer, the President being called Racist on the F* channel, and so on, but Pete stopped me.

"Wadda minute willya? Did ya say A beer? Singular? Wat is dat? Is he insultin dem or insultin beer? Ya wanna drink beer, get bout tree cases and sit by duh TV and DRINK BEER! I'm not votin' no more."

I pointed out that he had never voted anyway, and he said "Serves dem right fer shuttin down da bars. Usta be ya could get a few free ones if ya voted."

A major concern now is that none of them chose Samuel Adams beer, one that is owned by Americans. All the others are owned abroad. Milwaukee? Forgeddaboutit. Pete was not interested and I heard him turn on the TV.

I started to ask Pete what he thought about the Boston Cop who called either Gates or Omama a "jungle monkey," and he said "Guy gotta be an old fart. Hey! Da Sox game is startin' and it's in HD. Bye," and I knew from past experience that I wouldn't hear from him for weeks.

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Now the Health Care Legislation has been stopped for a few weeks. The well-funded agencies, paid by the insurance companies, are distributing commercials that say, for example, elderly people will no longer be eligable for life saving operations but they will have to pay for abortions, doubtless for "teenage immigrant welfare mothers on drugs."

All sort of scare tactics will be used. It is almost certain that even the American people will be influenced by them. Meanwhile, the Republicans will be in lock-step against it.

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I'm wondering if this planet is worth the effort. Perhaps global warming is a good idea as it will eradicate the Human Race and then the planet will heal itself again and some new life-form will emrege?

We can only hope.

Or, as Pete says, "Fergeddaboutit!"

One of You sent the following observations:

There was a time a few years back when doctors went on strike or some such and it turned out fewer people died during that time. Maybe we will discover a similar phenomenon with the furloughs of civil workers in government? But don't expect that to lead to permanent layoffs. For one, they'd become unemployed and at very high wages.

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Another thought I have is with fewer jobs, and diminished revenue, what balances the equation is a sudden drop in people being a drain on the downsized society. Traditioinally this is carried out through plague and war. This time they may be carefully orchestrated - a so called terrorist incident or the swine flu. Notice it affected the young and fit the most. Oh well, one can go crazy imagining conspiracies. Like imagine one where they poison all the junk food, so only health nuts survive?

CHURCH V. STATE (spellchecked0

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: One Nation Under God, ©2008, Hugh Ralinovsky

(All rights reserved, any use or redistribution of this illustration, its contents, and descriptions and accounts of it without the express, written, consent of both The Absurd Times and Hugh Ralinovsky in strictly prohibited, so don't even think about it.)

"Beware of the man whose God is in the skies" -- Jack Tanner, M.I.R.C.

The above quotation was written over a century ago by Bernard Shaw, and one would have thought that the Amerikan electorate would have improved a bit by now in that area. Another great book is titled The Eclipse of Reason, by Horkheimer (don't bother, it is too dense for the electorate -- in fact, some readers I consider intelligent have called some of my work dense, meaning "too deep") published about a half century ago and is more relevant now than it was then. Let us fact it, the Amerikan electorate is moronic, shallow, and emotional. Its politicians are also full of shit.
The people who wrote the Constitution actually were far ahead of the current situation. It is fairly well-known that those who first settled here from England were the puritans who were trying to escape church government. If fact, John Milton received angry letters from these colonies likening him to Satan because of his support of the church, but then he was Cromwell's Latin Secretary and was defending the decapitation of Charles I (who was not very popular). However, but the time the Constitution was written, Deism was more important -- the idea was that some sort of God created everything and then went on His way. These writers were very insistent on separating Church from State. In fact, to make sure nobody misunderstood, they immediately added ten amendments now called the Bill of Rights.
It was not until over a century later, in 1892, that the "Pledge of Allegiance" was written, and God was nowhere mentioned in it. It was not until the middle on the McCarthy era, 1954, that the words "Under God" were added.
Even when JFK ran for the Presidency, there was some concern over his being Catholic, but it really seemed that the issue was whether he could keep church and state separate -- we did not want the Pope meddling in our domestic politics.
In Chicago, sometimes the Catholic Church tried to get certain films banned, but they were told that if they wanted to involve themselves in civil matters, they would first have to pay property tax.
Our electorate fails to realize how much money is owned, completely untaxed, because any religious organization is exempt for any tax because of the separation of church and state.
So now, we hear the reactionary R* Party hacks insinuating that Obama is a, gasp, Muslim. We should all be grateful that Colin Powell in his announcement that he was going to vote for Obama said that Obama was not a Muslim and, more importantly, there is no reason why a Muslim could not become President.
In fact, Thomas Jefferson pledged a treaty of sorts with Muslim leaders and a congressman recently took his oath of office by swearing on a copy of the Koran that, by the way, had been owned by Jefferson.
Even more importantly -- why the hell should belief in some Monotheistic father figure be a prerequisite for any office in the United States? A polytheistic belief system at least makes more sense -- why is there war? Ares. Why do fools fall in love? Aphrodite. I'm sick. Call Apollo. To ask one guy to do it all, and to be responsible for both Good and Evil, but not evil, but bee in three parts, and transubstantiate, all at once, well -- it just isn't fair.
It's as if someone woke Him up and told him that Nietzsche said "God is Dead" and he said "Shit, someone told on me -- ok, just wait -- Tammy Fay Bakker, Jerry Falwell, George Bush, Sarah Palin, I'll teach these people to talk about me when I'm sleeping."
And if you disagree with any of these people who say that God told them this or that, how do you check on it? Dial 1-800-ASKAGOD. I tried it and the line is always busy.
As a wise man once said, prayer is when you talk to God, meditation is when you listen to him. Who was it, St. Paul, who said he prayed without stop for four days straight? I can imagine God thinking "Shut and listen, will ya?"
This God in the sky has justified everything that is wrong in the country today.
RIP

And I'm taking a holiday from this. Happy "Screw the Indians Day," and "Manger Mania."

bailout and what it means

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: Here is one view of the would-be VP. See www.whatnowtoons.com

The Absurd Times has done its best to avoid any copyright infractions. Keith has been good enough, for example, to allow us to repost his work, but we would never steal it, even though we don't make a cent with this exercise in futility. However, there are apparently some problems for artists and I'm including Keith's posting about it here. Then I will go on the the bailout:

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

I'd like to ask you to help cartoonists & Illustrators with an urgent problem. We are asking you to send an email on behalf of the cartoonists. The Senate just passed the "Orphan Works Bill," quickly, behind closed doors and without a vote, through a controversial practice known as "hotlining." The bill rewrites the copyright law in ways that are devastating to cartoonists, artists, writers, photographers and songwriters.

The two artists organizations I'm active in, the National Cartoonists Society and the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, and dozens of other trade organizations, are urging their members to write to their congressmen at this hour, because there is a risk that the House will pass the Senate version of the bill, again without debate and without a vote, by adding it to a larger budget or bailout bill at the end of the current session, in the next few hours.

The Orphan Works bill is being pushed by Google, which plans to catalogue millions of images and doesn't want to deal with the rights of copyright holders. The bill will make it easy for anyone to reprint copyrighted work, without the permission of the copyright holder, and artists will find that it is difficult or impossible to control where their work is reprinted. The bill also imposes new costs and procedures on artists, all to benefit Google.

I'd like to ask everyone who reads my blog, or subscribes to my newsletter, to do the cartoonists a favor by emailing their congressman and asking him or her to oppose the Orphan Works Bill now, by visiting this web site, which helps you to send an automatic email to your congressman. It is quick and easy to send this email, and it would be much appreciated by the desperate cartoonists.

To learn more about the Orphan Works Bill, visit here.

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I've done my best to tolerate this absurdity, honest. From what I can tell, it is just a last minute pillaging of the till by the Bushman. Some articles below are the work of people with more generosity than I have.
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Forwarded Message: Here's How to Fix the Wall Street Mess ...from Michael Moore

Here's How to Fix the Wall Street Mess ...from Michael Moore

Wednesday, October 1, 2008 3:16 PM

From:

"Michael Moore" <maillist@michaelmoore.com>

The richest 400 Americans -- that's right, just four hundred people -- own MORE than the bottom 150 million Americans combined. 400 rich Americans have got more stashed away than half the entire country! Their combined net worth is $1.6 trillion. During the eight years of the Bush Administration, their wealth has increased by nearly $700 billion -- the same amount that they are now demanding we give to them for the "bailout." Why don't they just spend the money they made under Bush to bail themselves out? They'd still have nearly a trillion dollars left over to spread amongst themselves!

Of course, they are not going to do that -- at least not voluntarily. George W. Bush was handed a $127 billion surplus when Bill Clinton left office. Because that money was OUR money and not his, he did what the rich prefer to do -- spend it and never look back. Now we have a $9.5 trillion debt. Why on earth would we even think of giving these robber barons any more of our money?

I would like to propose my own bailout plan. My suggestions, listed below, are predicated on the singular and simple belief that the rich must pull themselves up by their own platinum bootstraps. Sorry, fellows, but you drilled it into our heads one too many times: There... is... no... free... lunch. And thank you for encouraging us to hate people on welfare! So, there will be no handouts from us to you. The Senate, tonight, is going to try to rush their version of a "bailout" bill to a vote. They must be stopped. We did it on Monday with the House, and we can do it again today with the Senate.

It is clear, though, that we cannot simply keep protesting without proposing exactly what it is we think Congress should do. So, after consulting with a number of people smarter than Phil Gramm, here is my proposal, now known as "Mike's Rescue Plan." It has 10 simple, straightforward points. They are:

1. APPOINT A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO CRIMINALLY INDICT ANYONE ON WALL STREET WHO KNOWINGLY CONTRIBUTED TO THIS COLLAPSE. Before any new money is expended, Congress must commit, by resolution, to criminally prosecute anyone who had anything to do with the attempted sacking of our economy. This means that anyone who committed insider trading, securities fraud or any action that helped bring about this collapse must go to jail. This Congress must call for a Special Prosecutor who will vigorously go after everyone who created the mess, and anyone else who attempts to scam the public in the future.

2. THE RICH MUST PAY FOR THEIR OWN BAILOUT. They may have to live in 5 houses instead of 7. They may have to drive 9 cars instead of 13. The chef for their mini-terriers may have to be reassigned. But there is no way in hell, after forcing family incomes to go down more than $2,000 dollars during the Bush years, that working people and the middle class are going to fork over one dime to underwrite the next yacht purchase.

If they truly need the $700 billion they say they need, well, here is an easy way they can raise it:

a) Every couple who makes over a million dollars a year and every single taxpayer who makes over $500,000 a year will pay a 10% surcharge tax for five years. (It's the Senator Sanders plan. He's like Colonel Sanders, only he's out to fry the right chickens.) That means the rich will still be paying less income tax than when Carter was president. This will raise a total of $300 billion.

b) Like nearly every other democracy, charge a 0.25% tax on every stock transaction. This will raise more than $200 billion in a year.

c) Because every stockholder is a patriotic American, stockholders will forgo receiving a dividend check for one quarter and instead this money will go the treasury to help pay for the bailout.

d) 25% of major U.S. corporations currently pay NO federal income tax. Federal corporate tax revenues currently amount to 1.7% of the GDP compared to 5% in the 1950s. If we raise the corporate income tax back to the level of the 1950s, that gives us an extra $500 billion.

All of this combined should be enough to end the calamity. The rich will get to keep their mansions and their servants, and our United States government ("COUNTRY FIRST!") will have a little leftover to repair some roads, bridges and schools.

3. BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE LOSING THEIR HOMES, NOT THE PEOPLE WHO WILL BUILD AN EIGHTH HOME. There are 1.3 million homes in foreclosure right now. That is what is at the heart of this problem. So instead of giving the money to the banks as a gift, pay down each of these mortgages by $100,000. Force the banks to renegotiate the mortgage so the homeowner can pay on its current value. To insure that this help does no go to speculators and those who have tried to make money by flipping houses, this bailout is only for people's primary residence. And in return for the $100K paydown on the existing mortgage, the government gets to share in the holding of the mortgage so that it can get some of its money back. Thus, the total initial cost of fixing the mortgage crisis at its roots (instead of with the greedy lenders) is $150 billion, not $700 billion.

And let's set the record straight. People who have defaulted on their mortgages are not "bad risks." They are our fellow Americans, and all they wanted was what we all want and most of us still get: a home to call their own. But during the Bush years, millions of them lost the decent paying jobs they had. Six million fell into poverty. Seven million lost their health insurance. And every one of them saw their real wages go down by $2,000. Those who dare to look down on these Americans who got hit with one bad break after another should be ashamed. We are a better, stronger, safer and happier society when all of our citizens can afford to live in a home that they own.

4. IF YOUR BANK OR COMPANY GETS ANY OF OUR MONEY IN A "BAILOUT," THEN WE OWN YOU. Sorry, that's how it's done. If the bank gives me money so I can buy a house, the bank "owns" that house until I pay it all back -- with interest. Same deal for Wall Street. Whatever money you need to stay afloat, if our government considers you a safe risk -- and necessary for the good of the country -- then you can get a loan, but we will own you. If you default, we will sell you. This is how the Swedish government did it and it worked.

5. ALL REGULATIONS MUST BE RESTORED. THE REAGAN REVOLUTION IS DEAD. This catastrophe happened because we let the fox have the keys to the henhouse. In 1999, Phil Gramm authored a bill to remove all the regulations that governed Wall Street and our banking system. The bill passed and Clinton signed it. Here's what Sen. Phil Gramm, McCain's chief economic advisor, said at the bill signing:

"In the 1930s ... it was believed that government was the answer. It was believed that stability and growth came from government overriding the functioning of free markets.

"We are here today to repeal [that] because we have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition are the answers. We have learned that we promote economic growth and we promote stability by having competition and freedom.

"I am proud to be here because this is an important bill; it is a deregulatory bill. I believe that that is the wave of the future, and I am awfully proud to have been a part of making it a reality."

This bill must be repealed. Bill Clinton can help by leading the effort for the repeal of the Gramm bill and the reinstating of even tougher regulations regarding our financial institutions. And when they're done with that, they can restore the regulations for the airlines, the inspection of our food, the oil industry, OSHA, and every other entity that affects our daily lives. All oversight provisions for any "bailout" must have enforcement monies attached to them and criminal penalties for all offenders.

6. IF IT'S TOO BIG TO FAIL, THEN THAT MEANS IT'S TOO BIG TO EXIST. Allowing the creation of these mega-mergers and not enforcing the monopoly and anti-trust laws has allowed a number of financial institutions and corporations to become so large, the very thought of their collapse means an even bigger collapse across the entire economy. No one or two companies should have this kind of power. The so-called "economic Pearl Harbor" can't happen when you have hundreds -- thousands -- of institutions where people have their money. When you have a dozen auto companies, if one goes belly-up, we don't face a national disaster. If you have three separately-owned daily newspapers in your town, then one media company can't call all the shots (I know... What am I thinking?! Who reads a paper anymore? Sure glad all those mergers and buyouts left us with a strong and free press!). Laws must be enacted to prevent companies from being so large and dominant that with one slingshot to the eye, the giant falls and dies. And no institution should be allowed to set up money schemes that no one can understand. If you can't explain it in two sentences, you shouldn't be taking anyone's money.

7. NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD BE PAID MORE THAN 40 TIMES THEIR AVERAGE EMPLOYEE, AND NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD RECEIVE ANY KIND OF "PARACHUTE" OTHER THAN THE VERY GENEROUS SALARY HE OR SHE MADE WHILE WORKING FOR THE COMPANY. In 1980, the average American CEO made 45 times what their employees made. By 2003, they were making 254 times what their workers made. After 8 years of Bush, they now make over 400 times what their average employee makes. How this can happen at publicly held companies is beyond reason. In Britain, the average CEO makes 28 times what their average employee makes. In Japan, it's only 17 times! The last I heard, the CEO of Toyota was living the high life in Tokyo. How does he do it on so little money? Seriously, this is an outrage. We have created the mess we're in by letting the people at the top become bloated beyond belief with millions of dollars. This has to stop. Not only should no executive who receives help out of this mess profit from it, but any executive who was in charge of running his company into the ground should be fired before the company receives any help.

8. STRENGTHEN THE FDIC AND MAKE IT A MODEL FOR PROTECTING NOT ONLY PEOPLE'S SAVINGS, BUT ALSO THEIR PENSIONS AND THEIR HOMES. Obama was correct yesterday to propose expanding FDIC protection of people's savings in their banks to $250,000. But this same sort of government insurance must be given to our nation's pension funds. People should never have to worry about whether or not the money they've put away for their old age will be there. This will mean strict government oversight of companies who manage their employees' funds -- or perhaps it means that the companies will have to turn over those funds and their management to the government. People's private retirement funds must also be protected, but perhaps it's time to consider not having one's retirement invested in the casino known as the stock market. Our government should have a solemn duty to guarantee that no one who grows old in this country has to worry about ending up destitute.

9. EVERYBODY NEEDS TO TAKE A DEEP BREATH, CALM DOWN, AND NOT LET FEAR RULE THE DAY. Turn off the TV! We are not in the Second Great Depression. The sky is not falling. Pundits and politicians are lying to us so fast and furious it's hard not to be affected by all the fear mongering. Even I, yesterday, wrote to you and repeated what I heard on the news, that the Dow had the biggest one day drop in its history. Well, that's true in terms of points, but its 7% drop came nowhere close to Black Monday in 1987 when the stock market in one day lost 23% of its value. In the '80s, 3,000 banks closed, but America didn't go out of business. These institutions have always had their ups and downs and eventually it works out. It has to, because the rich do not like their wealth being disrupted! They have a vested interest in calming things down and getting back into the Jacuzzi.

As crazy as things are right now, tens of thousands of people got a car loan this week. Thousands went to the bank and got a mortgage to buy a home. Students just back to college found banks more than happy to put them into hock for the next 15 years with a student loan. Life has gone on. Not a single person has lost any of their money if it's in a bank or a treasury note or a CD. And the most amazing thing is that the American public hasn't bought the scare campaign. The citizens didn't blink, and instead told Congress to take that bailout and shove it. THAT was impressive. Why didn't the population succumb to the fright-filled warnings from their president and his cronies? Well, you can only say 'Saddam has da bomb' so many times before the people realize you're a lying sack of shite. After eight long years, the nation is worn out and simply can't take it any longer.

10. CREATE A NATIONAL BANK, A "PEOPLE'S BANK." If we really are itching to print up a trillion dollars, instead of giving it to a few rich people, why don't we give it to ourselves? Now that we own Freddie and Fannie, why not set up a people's bank? One that can provide low-interest loans for all sorts of people who want to own a home, start a small business, go to school, come up with the cure for cancer or create the next great invention. And now that we own AIG, the country's largest insurance company, let's take the next step and provide health insurance for everyone. Medicare for all. It will save us so much money in the long run. And we won't be 12th on the life expectancy list. We'll be able to have a longer life, enjoying our government-protected pension, and living to see the day when the corporate criminals who caused so much misery are let out of prison so that we can help reacclimate them to civilian life -- a life with one nice home and a gas-free car that was invented with help from the People's Bank.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. Call your Senators now. Here's a backup link in case we crash that site again. They are going to attempt their own version of the Looting of America tonight. And let your reps know if you agree with my 10-point plan.


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Capitalism Reaches a Crossroads

October 04, 2008 By Carl Bloice
Source: BlackCommentator.com

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'Even now, someone somewhere is penning a book with a snappy title The End of Capitalism,' columnist Philip Stephens, associate editor of the Financial Times wrote recently. Not to worry, he continued, that's not about to happen. However, eight days earlier Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator at the same paper observed that what was 'until recently, the brave new financial system is melting away before our eyes.' On the night of September 18 members of Congress were summoned to a Capitol Hill conference room where they were told that if they did not act quickly to approve a radical revamp of how the government deals with the economy, capitalism might indeed collapse. That's before President George W. Bush said, 'If money isn't loosened up, this sucker could go down.'



Not to worry, cautioned the editor of the conservative German newspaper Die Weit. 'These are all trials and crises, but they will not spell the end of America's distinctiveness.'



'The country will never convert to socialism, nor will it become a mega-state. Faced with similar circumstances, that might be the response of the pessimistic Europeans. America's culture of optimism - which all too often gets on the Europeans' nerves because they consider it to be naïve and superficial - also has the power to identify a setback as exactly that and not the end of the world,' the paper editorialized. That was a few days before the U.S. Treasury took responsibility for the well-being of distressed financial institutions all over the world.



No, the U.S. is not about to become socialist any time too soon. That alternative has not been placed before the public in a way that could be considered preferable to what we've got. Besides, a system ceases to be when it is replaced by something else. But with each passing day, as the crisis has deepened, it has become more and more obvious that 'unfettered' capitalism and 'market fundamentalism' and the neo-liberal policies they produce are discredited. Indeed, most of the world had rejected them before the current crisis began.



'The globalization agenda has been closely linked with the market fundamentalists - the ideology of free markets and financial liberalization,' economist Joseph Stiglitz told Nathan Gardels on the Huffington Post recently. 'In this crisis, we see the most market- oriented institutions in the most market-oriented economy failing and running to the government for help.' Everyone in the world will say now that this is the end of market fundamentalism.



'In this sense, the fall of Wall Street is for market fundamentalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for communism - it tells the world that this way of economic organization turns out not to be sustainable,' said Stiglitz. 'In the end, everyone says, that model doesn't work. This moment is a marker that the claims of financial market liberalization were bogus.'



Conservative commentator and political operative, Newt Gingrich, has come up with the terms 'crony capitalism' and 'bureaucratic capitalism,' both of which he says will be the outcome of the Bush Administration's bailout scheme. The former will mean 'a welfare state for rich investors,' he says, the latter 'salary caps and other government regulatory requirements which would drive the `private' out of `private enterprise'.'



There's a lot of talk out there about the bailout being 'socialism for the rich.' That's all so much seemingly clever rhetoric designed to make a political point, but of no substance. Nothing the Bush Administration is pushing (with the help of a Democratic Congress) bears any resemblance to anything that could remotely be called socialism. In fact, it looks far more like Italy under Mussolini than the USSR under Brezhnev. As truthdig.com columnist Robert Sheer noted last week, 'what is proposed is not the nationalization of private corporations but rather a corporate takeover of government. The marriage of highly concentrated corporate power with an authoritarian state that services the politico-economic elite at the expense of the people is more accurately referred to as `financial fascism'.'



The new Treasury Department fund 'will share many characteristics of the expanding government-sponsored pools known as sovereign funds,' wrote Landon Thomas, Jr. in the New York Times September 23.



'The new fund, assuming it is approved by Congress, could pull the United States deeper into a form of capitalism in which the most powerful financial entities are not risk-happy investment banks, but more cautious state-sponsored entities,' wrote Thomas. 'While not necessarily a third economic way, this general approach presumes that the government - in addition to the private sector - plays a crucial role in deciding how best to deploy a nation's investment capital.'



'This gets to the point of state capitalism and defining what the role of the government is in a free- market economy,' Douglas Rediker, a former investment banker at the New America Foundation in Washington, told Thomas.



'The result of the bailout would be that the government would virtually control many of the largest financial institutions in the country,' wrote Dan La Botz in Monthly Review online. 'The U.S. government and the banks of the country would suddenly be fused - or perhaps entangled would be a better word - into one extremely powerful political-economic entity. While the proposal does not envision state control of the economy as a long-term proposition, merely long enough to save the bankers, still the impact of the current proposals now being debated in Congress will be far-reaching. The American government and the people have suddenly found themselves at a turning point which was not foreseen and for which no one was prepared.'



'If you wanted to devise a name for this approach, you might pick the phrase economist Arnold Kling has used: Progressive Corporatism.,' wrote Times columnist David Brooks the same day. 'We're not entering a phase in which government stands back and lets the chips fall. We're not entering an era when the government pounds the powerful on behalf of the people. We're entering an era of the educated establishment, in which government acts to create a stable - and often oligarchic - framework for capitalist endeavor.'



'After a liberal era and then a conservative era, we're getting a glimpse of what comes next,' wrote Brooks



I can hardy wait.



An inevitable consequence of globalization is that many of the critical problems facing the planet today can only be solved through international cooperation and coordination. These include: climate change and other threats to the biosphere, aids and other infectious diseases, human migration and international finance.



The current economic crisis is an international one yet the recourse chosen by Washington to deal with it globally is to 'press' other countries to adopt measures similar to those adopted in the U.S. Under such circumstances the chance of a collective effort to restructure world capitalism would seem remote, if possible. But the demand for such is out there and how our country responds will go a long way in determining the contours of international affairs for decades to come. One has only to grasp the nature of the remarks at the recent opening of the United National General Assembly to appreciate the seriousness of the challenge.



Last week in New York, one after another, heads-of- state rose to the Assembly rostrum to drive home the message: the 'credit crunch' in the U.S. is much more than a crisis in U.S. banking; it reflects a problem threatening economic devastation across the globe. It requires an international cooperative effort in which diktat, posing as 'leadership', cannot be tolerated. Don't even think about handing the problem to the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. The UN itself should be the arena for countries to discuss a solution for the global financial crisis, said Brazil's President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva: 'The global nature of this crisis means that the solutions we adopt must also be global, and decided upon within legitimate, trusted multilateral forum, with no impositions.'



Arguably some of the strongest remarks to the UN came from the leaders of Latin American countries but the most fundamental challenges came from traditional U.S. allies such as France and Germany. These are capitalist countries and for the foreseeable future will remain so. But they have a strikingly different view of how the international economy should function.



German chancellor, Angela Merkel, even revealed that an attempt had been made to enlist Washington in a collective effort to head off the crisis. At last year's meeting of the major industrial powers, she said, she had - in the world of the New York Times - 'strongly urged both the United States and Britain to be more rigorous in supervising financial activities, and even offered specific proposals to be applied to banks and other institutions.' But the U.S. was unresponsive, she said, while seeming 'to express a certain exasperation that the United States was now asking Europe for help, after inflicting damage on the rest of the world that could have been avoided.'



'At the moment, I don't think Japan needs to launch a program similar to that of the United States,' Japanese Vice Finance Minister Kazuyuki Sugimoto told reporters in Tokyo, while the European Union let it be known that its members would not be putting up money to rescue banks. 'This crisis originated in the



US and is mainly hitting the US,' German Finance Minister Steinbeck said last week. In Europe and Germany, such a package would be 'neither sensible nor necessary.'



The U.S. 'has not only turned away from decades of rhetoric about the virtues of the free market and the dangers of government intervention, but it has also probably undercut future American efforts to promote such policies abroad,' wrote the New York Times' Nelson Schwartz from Paris September 18. And most of the other governments are none to happy about it. Japanese commentators were quick to note that the Treasury bailout is precisely what Washington told them not to try when that country faced an economic crisis only a few years ago. (A condition of help for South Korea when it faced an economic crisis in the 90s was that Seoul not bail out banks and other failing enterprises.)



Last Friday, editors of the center-right German newspaper Allegemeine Zeitung compared the U.S. financial crisis to 911 saying 'this time, the attack on all-American doctrines is not the work of some foreign enemy. It comes from within, from the depths of the system. Largely unobstructed by its own state controls, American capitalism has created its own suicide bomber whose explosives - derivatives - have had an even greater effect than the flying bombs of the jihadists. The whole world - and not just New York - has a new ground zero now - Wall Street.'



French political leaders immediately seized on the latest bailout moves to trumpet their own version of 'economic patriotism.' 'We're not going to accept to pay for the broken dishes of a failed regulation' and a 'corruption of capitalism,' said French Prime Minister Francois Fillon. Nicolas Sarkozy has called for a world to 'learn the lessons of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.' He proposed to 'moralize' capitalism, freeing it from speculators whom he labeled 'the new terrorists.' Last week, as President Bush went on television to admit the crisis is grave, Sarkozy stoutly defended capitalism but observed that 'A certain idea of globalization is drawing to a close with the end of a financial capitalism that had imposed its logic on the whole economy and contributed to perverting it.'



'The crisis is not a crisis of capitalism,' said Sarkozy. 'It is the crisis of a system that is far from the values of capitalism and betrayed capitalism.'



In 2006, long before there was any acknowledgement of the chaos to come (I put it that way because working people in the U.S. were already facing home foreclosures),when the world's elite gathered at Davos, Switzerland, chancellor Merkel had observed that 'What we have is a completely new balance of power in the world today.'



That too was evident in the General Assembly debate. In prior years no one would have expected Latin American governments to openly challenge Washington and Wall Street's conduct in the international economy. However, over a brief recent period, left-leaning political forces have taken power electorally in a number of countries, having in common a rejection of the exploitative policies of the World Bank and IMF, and the influence of the same 'market fundamentalists' that the Asians are repulsing and who have led the U.S., itself, into the present economic cul-de-sac.



No one was surprised that Cuban first vice-president Jose Ramon Machado Ventura would tell the UN that the drive for profits was increasing poverty and that the current crisis threatened the 'existence of mankind.' 'Fabulous fortunes cannot be wasted while millions are starving and dying of curable diseases,' he said. 'For a large part of the non-aligned nations, the situation is becoming unsustainable. Our nations have paid and will continue to pay the cost and consequences of the irrationality, wastefulness and speculation of a few countries in the...north.'



'The prevailing world order, unjust and uncontained, must be replaced,' Machado Ventura said.



'We don't want to conceive of the idea that the rescue of the dignity of the world's poor does not have the same priority or the same urgency of saving the institutions that operate the most powerful financial centre in the world,' said Dominican Republic president Leonel Fernandez. 'We need an international financial plan that is as urgent and as bold as the one to save Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and American International Group.' Fernandez added that while $700 billion is being set aside to rescue U.S. financial institutions, for something like $50 billion millions around the world could be spared a miserable existence.



'We're not going to accept to pay for the broken dishes of a failed regulation' and a 'corruption of capitalism,' said French Prime Minister Francois Fillon. Sarkozy called for a world to 'learn the lessons of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.' 'Let's create a regulated capitalism,' he said.



On September 24 in Berlin, German Finance Steinbruck repeated Merkel's charge that Washington had, last year, resisted specific calls for regulations in the financial marketplace. 'Crisis management alone will not rebuild the lost confidence,' he said. 'We must civilize financial markets, and not just through moral appeals against excess and speculation. Self-regulation is no longer sufficient.' The US belief in 'laisser- faire capitalism; the notion that markets should be as free as possible from regulation; these arguments were wrong and dangerous,' he said. 'This largely under- regulated system is collapsing today.'



Steinbeck went on to propose new regulations and said that amid the current economic crisis the US is poised to lose its role as a global financial 'superpower.' The new world will become 'multipolar' with the emergence of stronger, better capitalized centers in Asia and Europe, he said.



Meanwhile, Oskar Lafontaine, leader of Germany's fast growing and increasingly influential Left Party, said the world is confronted with more than a banking or economic crisis and - in the words of Der Spiegel - 'but rather one of the entire intellectual and moral direction of Western society.' 'We no longer have a social market economy because of the regimes of the international financial markets,' Lafontaine said the consequence of which is increased privatization of the social services and a threat to the retirement security of millions of people. Lafontaine said the Left party wants the re-creation of a Bretton Woods-style system of foreign exchange controls with fixed trading bands, controls on international capital flows and on financial products.



'We believe that financial products should be forced to get official stamps of approval just like pharmaceutical products,' Lafontaine, the former head of the country's Social Democratic Party, said. 'Because the bitter truth is that many extremely greedy bankers don't even understand themselves what they've done. These are people who started something without knowing what they were doing and it's ended in disaster.'



'When enough banks have been nationalized or gone bust, when the last reputations have been properly shredded, and when prices of Fifth Avenue apartments and Mayfair town houses have fallen finally to earth, politicians are going to have to think hard about the lessons of the financial crash of 2008,' wrote Stephens of the Financial Times. 'Even now, someone somewhere is penning The End of Capitalism. Experience tells us snappy book titles should be treated with caution. The global financial system will never be the same again. But just as history survived the collapse of communism, so the market economy will weather the demise of Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill Lynch and HBOS.'



'The credit crunch and the financial firestorm have also provided a neat metaphor for the big shift in economic power in the world,' writes Stephens. He goes on to endorse the call for 'more global governance: credible international rules.'



'Capitalism will survive these financial shocks,' said Stephens. Probably it will; in any case it's good to have faith.



On Monday, the House of Representatives voted down the final draft of the bailout plan hurriedly crafted by the Administration and Congressional leaders from the two major parties. This set the stage for what was certain to be desperate attempts to put together a compromise that could win legislative approval. This takes place against a backdrop of widespread public opposition to the original plan and ever greater turmoil in the foreign money markets and on Wall Street.



Meanwhile, the dangers and challenges over the next few weeks and months are enormous. On the world scene, the U.S. could join in an international - and more democratic - effort at reconstructing capitalism in an effort to save it, or the White House - whoever lives there - and the Congress could lead us along a path of international isolation in which the rest of the world goes about its business, leaving us in economic mire. On the home front, the policymakers could enshrine a new form of corporate and more authoritarian capitalism or enact policies bent toward greater equality, solidarity and social and economic justice (things real socialists have never ceased advocating). The latter is what we should be insisting upon.


BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union.

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Bailout Debate

October, 04 2008By Danny Schechter
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The Queston That Should Be At The Heart Of The Bailout Debate: Will The Paulson Plan Work Or Potentially Make Things Worse?

Most of the people who oppose the bailout do so for ideological reasons. Conservative Republicans fear the advance of socialism in the form of government intervention. They picture themselves as saving the Republic from collectivist marauders out to destroy the free market. And that includes Henry Paulson the former head of Goldman Sachs who came to government from Wall Street and still embodies its values.

Democrats are divided too. Some say the voting for the bill while holding their noses. Others say they have to "do something" or else, and have no alternative plan. Still others see it as rewarding the people who created the crisis.

What the media often misses are the people who argue that the measure is unlikely to restore confidence or get credit flowing again. These people are actually pragmatists and work in the financial industry. In large part because politics is polarized along partisan lines, their non-partisan assessments are not taken seriously

Others don't really analyze what's in the bill and present it in symbolic terms as a needed solution without noting that in just a week it went from just three pages to over 451.

Actually, since everyone agrees that the crisis is unlikely to go away anytime soon, we have to look at more than one bill.

As for the insiders, there's David Tice, a respected Denver investment advisor who told Investment News: "We don't believe these bailout packages will fix the Wall Street credit mechanism," he said. "Credit will be restrictive no matter what happens with the bailout package."

Tice is projecting pain, doom and gloom for the next five years. The business outlet reported, "Mr. Tice provided a litany of reasons why he believes the U.S. economy is headed toward recession, if not a full-blown depression."

The bill the Treasury Department insisted had to be simple and "clean" and could not allow the adding of provisions for bankruptcy reform ended up getting vast tax breaks tacked on as Bloomberg reported, "The U.S. Senate approved tax cuts valued at more than $100 billion, including a host of alternative energy credits and dozens of breaks for businesses and individuals, as part of its $700 billion bank rescue bill."

Websites like Naked Capitalism were filled with contributions by economists and traders pointing to technical flaws in the plan that will undermine its effectiveness.

Example: "I think it's very telling that in two days of hearings and two weeks of discussion we have yet to see *any* detailed mechanism for how Paulson's plan will increase the supply of, say, inventory loans. It's not that every economist in the world is an idiot, it's just not going to help. I think people have fallen into the fallacy that if it costs a lot it must be valuable. Paulson's plan falls into the category of very expensive way to hurt ourselves. (As for its cost, A treasury official was pressed on why they sought $700 billion: "where did that number come from, a study or data point?" No, he replied, we just wanted it to be big!")

Hmmmm..

As for the bill itself, listen to Ralph Nader's dissection, even if you think he's a hasbeen.

"The revised bailout legislation is the same $700 billion piece of burnt toast, with some window dressing, sugar coating, and $150 billion of pork tax cuts covering everything from casinos to coal.

But this isn't even the main course that Senate is serving up for Congress on Friday. The main course is on page 92 of the 451 page document:

BORROWING LIMITS TEMPORARILY LIFTED. - During the period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act and ending on December 31, 2009, the Board of Directors of the Corporation may request from the Secretary, and the Secretary shall approve, a loan or loans in an amount or amounts necessary to carry out this subsection, without regard to the limitations on such borrowing under section 14(a) and 15(c) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (12 U.S.C. 1824(a), 1825(c)).

Translation: Bush, McCain, and Obama want Congress to co-sign off on the mother of all blank checks, paving the way for a sinking dollar and higher interest rates."

So before you turn the bailout into an argument between the sensible and responsible versus the emotional and angry, look at the details, consider the costs and ask why you are persuaded it will have the effect its proponents claim. TED spread is at a new record. Bad news

On Friday morning, the economist Paul Krugman sounded like a desperado:

"Double plus ungood news on multiple fronts this morning. The credit crunch is getting worse: LIBOR jumped again, the on employment: payrolls down 159,000, average work week down, official unemployment rate flat at 6.1 percent but broad measure (U6) up from 10.7 to 11.

We are going over the edge."

China's Premier Wen Jiabao told China Daily on Friday, "I'm very concerned." He didn't seem to buy into all the fear mongering, asking: "What is the actual degree of the problem? How will develop? What will be the effect on the US and the world." His advice: "Pluck up one's courage and be confident as these are more important than gold or currency.,

Ok, I am "plucked," even as they plunder on, but we still don't know with any certainty if the ever expanding bailout will straighten a system out of wack, create jobs, restore capitalism and make it all ok again? Remember the NY Times first described the bailout as a "hail Mary play" in which you throw the football and pray. Has it come to that?

What if all of this "debate" is just more sound and fury, signifying less than meets the eye? Markets are still deeply "stressed" and its unlikely that the solution our Congress is backing will solve anything.

Danny Schechter is the author of PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo-Newsdissector.com/Plunder) and the director of IN DEBT WE TRUST the film that warned of the crisis. (indebtwetrust.com)

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