Testicular Politics: Obama Is Getting Punked By the Big Dogs of Banking. Does He Have the Balls to Do What's Right?
Tue, 05/05/2009 - 06:47 — Dave CulverWhat we are witnessing is a high-stakes melodrama of glandular politics. Will Obama roll over or fight back?
William Greider, The Nation
The big dogs of banking and finance are playing a rough game of bump-and-run with our president, trying to knock him off balance and demonstrate their dominance. The best names in Wall Street -- Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase -- pumped out happy talk about quarterly earnings, then announced that they intend to give back the government's money (more than $50 billion, if counted honestly). The crisis, they announce, is over for them. They want to be free of official meddling in their private affairs. The arrogance is breathtaking, even for Wall Street bankers.
Pandemic pandemonium
Mon, 05/04/2009 - 20:44 — Dave CulverWe can let the mere idea of a possible swine flu plague create chaos, or we can settle down and fight it with vigilance and reason.
Mary Beth Crain, Salon.com
Illustration of the Black Death from the Toggenburg Bible, 1411 Wikipedia
"Revelation," notes the historian Barbara Tuchman in her epic book "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century," "was the favorite guide to human affairs in the Middle Ages."
And the terrible predictions of Revelation seemed to have come to pass when, in 1347, a sinister, horrific malady began sweeping through Europe, cutting down nearly everyone in its ruthless path. In fact, the image of the Grim Reaper, a skeletal Death with a scythe, entered our iconography as a result of the most dreaded disease the world had ever known: the Black Plague. By the time it had done its dastardly work, the population of Europe had been so severely decimated that human life on every level, from personal and social to religious, political and economic, was forever altered.
Related:
Flu Schmlu ... Forget the Media's Hype, Cervantes, AlterNet
There are many things to fear in this world, but so far the swine flu isn't one of them.
What About the Journalists Who Sold Torture?
Mon, 05/04/2009 - 19:51 — Dave CulverHell should reserve a special place for the journalists who supported torture in exchange for access and exaltation.
Rory O'Connor, MediaChannel.org
Ever wake up in a funk, just spoiling for a fight?
Me too - and when I do (despite my best Buddhist intentions) I invariably reach for the New York Times and turn to the latest column by Tom Friedman, that Op-Ed gift that keeps on giving such deep-rooted and seemingly willful sheer wrong-headedness as to make ire rise, blood boil, and bile taste most foul. What I seek most from opinion columnists is consistency, and Friedman, consistent and persistent in his excuse making for the powerful, never disappoints in this regard.
Thus it was no surprise to find him hailing in a recent column Barack (“Split the baby”) Obama's “torturous compromise” to expose, but not prosecute, those responsible for violating our Constitution and international law by torturing in our names.
Related:
The Cowardice of American Journalism: Fear of the T-word, Norman Kelley, Salon.com
Nothing better shows the utter cowardice of American journalism than Washington Post reporters refusing to call a spade a spade. In other a word, calling "enhanced interrogation" torture.
When Fascism Came to America
Sat, 05/02/2009 - 20:02 — Dave CulverWhat concerns me in this article is ... the fact that the mass of agents and officials of the government, and the vast majority of the population, passively accepted what was done, and even today disputes whether anyone should be held accountable.
William Pfaff, TruthDig.com
In 1935, Sinclair Lewis, author of “Babbitt” and the first American writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize, published a novel entitled “It Can’t Happen Here.”
It was written to influence the 1936 presidential election. The enormously popular ex-governor of Louisiana, Sen. Huey Long, “the Kingfish,” who campaigned to “Share the Wealth” with the people, was widely thought to be a threat to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his bid for a second term.
The Lewis novel envisioned someone like Long winning the presidency and installing an American counterpart to the fascist dictatorships already in power in Italy and Germany. Lewis was much influenced by his second wife, Dorothy Thompson, who was one of the most important syndicated political columnists of the 1930s and was greatly concerned about the possibility of populist dictatorship crossing the Atlantic.
