buzz twang

If you haven’t watched Bill Moyers on Real Time with Bil Maher, it’s worth watching. The point that conservatives are simply employing a scorched earth campaign to insure that Obama fails is important, and has to be confronted. And, he covers corporatism as well.

Part 2

Part 3

From Glenn Greenwald – It’s time to embrace American royalty:

…all of the above-listed people are examples of America’s Great Meritocracy, having achieved what they have solely on the basis of their talent, skill and hard work — The American Way. By contrast, Sonia Sotomayor — who grew up in a Puerto Rican family in Bronx housing projects; whose father had a third-grade education, did not speak English and died when she was 9; whose mother worked as a telephone operator and a nurse; and who then became valedictorian of her high school, summa cum laude at Princeton, a graduate of Yale Law School, and ultimately a Supreme Court Justice — is someone who had a whole litany of unfair advantages handed to her and is the poster child for un-American, merit-less advancement.

From Motorman Mark – Why Middle America Must Be Crushed:

There are a large number of US citizens, traditionally referred to as “Middle Americans,” who are engaged in small, private industry-jobs that have an uncertain future and that live and die on the prospects of a marketplace that is unhindered by taxes and government regulation. Even if they live in a rental unit, they live in communities dominated by the concerns of low-income home owners-people who do not know how to get along with more than $500 a month spent on housing costs-to whom the yearly property tax bill is a very big deal. They can’t spend too much breath decrying the expense of the local school system, or the roads, or the courts and emergency services-each of which provides them an obvious benefit. So what do they get mad at?? “Government.” Whatever that means.

A pattern emerges. We worship an ideal which most of us will never attain and deny what we truly are in order to insure at least the fantasy that we are part of the aristocracy. An aristocracy that devours us as we cheer it on in the hope that they will let us in the door.

It’s a perspective that is enforced and propagated by advertising and marketing as well.

Something better lay ahead to be sure… Break free.

While conservatives can’t seem to govern, they know who to sling propaganda with the best of them. The current theme is twofold: right wingers are the victims, and anything bad that happens, liberals are to blame for it. A few examples plucked from the interwebs…

• Beck and Goldberg team up to claim that James von Brunn was a left-winger
• A ‘PRESCRIPTION’ FOR A MANUFACTURED CONTROVERSY….
• White “Separatist” Turns “Bad PR Lemons Into Lemonade” In TV Interviews
• Toil And Trouble…. – In case you were wondering what Glenn Beck thinks about all this right wing violence (and who doesn’t?) here it is…
• Sarah Palin’s Politics Of Grievance Are Back!
• Beck: ‘[W]e’re in the same situation here’ as in Iran.
• Bill O’Reilly Selectively Edits Joan Walsh Interview

Douglas Rushkoff on how to take back our world by seeing the current economic crisis as a great opportunity.

Life Inc. Dispatch 01: Crisis as Opportunity from Douglas Rushkoff on Vimeo.

Over the past several months, I’ve helped shoot a short film that does an excellent job of introducing the important ideas in Douglas Rushkoff’s new book Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back.  The first chapter of the book is over at Boing Boing, where Doug is guest blogging. Watch the movie!

The other day on Hardball on MSNBC, an interesting moment occurred.

Chris Matthews and guests Howard Fineman and Andrea Mitchell started out discussing Obama’s looming VP choice, the various “front runners” on the “short list” (a completely made up list by the media, since no one has a clue, but they make it sound like they do.) and then they switched to discussing McCain’s choices for VP, (which they are equally as clueless about) in particular Joe Leiberman. It went like this:

FINEMAN: Well, I don‘t know. First of all, I think a lot of conservative activists, including Rush Limbaugh, wouldn‘t take Joe Lieberman, either. They respect him. The same with Sean Hannity. But they…

MITCHELL: They wouldn‘t take him. They‘ve already said (INAUDIBLE)

FINEMAN: They said they wouldn‘t take him…

It’s an extraordinary admission that went entirely overlooked. Here are three major media players discussing how conservative media pundits have a powerful role in choosing who will be the Republican choice for VP. The equivalent simply does not exist on the Liberal side. Which Liberal media pundit has that much power? None. An important point to remember in these times.

One of the basic tenets of the modern conservative movement is a hatred for the “mainstream media”. The “conservative wisdom” is that it’s riddled with Liberals and that Liberals control it. Far from the truth obviously.

Yet, by their own logic, Limbaugh is the enemy, since he is a member of the mainstream media who literally has a role in controlling our lives and our government functions. Yet, they don’t seem to mind. It’s about ideology of course. It has nothing to do with the higher ideals of democracy and freedom of the press and everything to do with limiting the message to only those ideals they profess, limiting it to conservative ideas. It’s basic fascism and eliminationism.

And, seeing it referred to in such a blase manner on Hardball was shocking to say the least.

When I was a boy, I would read about how military and press people had control of the process of government in the Soviet Union, and it sent a cold, rippling shiver down my spine that I always remembered.

That feeling has returned.

Billmon (of Whiskey Bar fame) has been posting a little over at Daily Kos. (After a long hiatus from his own blog.)

His latest is on the conflict between Russia and Georgia and the US role in it… It’s fascinating reading…

The conflict caught many by surprise, but it’s been a “diplomatic” initiative for the Cheney Boys for awhile… These tools see all conflicts in the world as a opportunity to make money and increase US power. Nothing else matters. And, we are all pawns who will end up paying the price for their arrogance and short-sightedenss. This paragraph sums it up:

If you caught Andrew Bacevich on Bill Moyer’s show the other night, you may have noticed that his biggest complaint was not that US foreign policy is misguided and destructive (although he clearly thinks it’s both) but that it is being conducted in a democratic vacuum — despite all the florid rhetoric about promoting democracy. We may still go through the motions of a republican form of government, Bacevich says, but the fabric has gotten pretty thin: or, in the case of our national revival of the Great Game in the Caucasus, damned near invisible.

Read the entire thing. It’s where we are in the US now, and a bit of where we are going right before our eyes…

Watch the video and sign the petition.

Amazing how something forty-years old is completely relevant today. An interesting recorded interview with John Lennon made into a short film. (c/o Jenny Eliscu)

This observer has no doubt that when that great foretold moment comes when the American citizenry willfully gives up it’s basic liberties, say, o I don’t know, the Fourth Amendment, that many will sit and watch it happen on their televisions as if it was just one more entertainment event. Most won’t realize it has occurred at all. Some of us have noticed though. A sitting President has committed a felony and no one cares.

What separates the idea of a proper democracy from the rabble is one simple thing: the rule of law. The simple idea that everyone is equal and must answer to the laws of the land if they violate those laws or are accused of violating those laws. They must deal with the system and the laws whether they are guilty or innocent. The system and the people will decide. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but it is what we have. And, it’s the lynch pin of law and order in our society. It is also that which keeps the select few from attaining power that is unresponsive to the will of the people and the rule of law. It’s the lynch pin to checks and balances.

So, what happens when people refute the overriding principle that everyone must be subject to equal protection and application of those laws? We literally become that which those who established our Constitutional form of government were fleeing from and refuting. The founders were reacting specifically to the practice within a monarchy of unequal protection under the law, that is: some were able to skirt laws and oversight and the will of the people by being above the law or protected by the monarchy, who were entirely above the law.

Of course, any honest observer knows fully well that the USA has not been a proper democracy for decades and functions today as a plutocracy. We are becoming that which the founders feared.

And, it shall not stand.