I saw "Capitalism: A Love Story" today and, like all Moore films, I enjoyed it immensely. Moore views capitalism as the root of all evil. We've heard and read it all before but who, other than Moore, can turn that theme into an entertaining film?

Toward the end I thought he would cop out by portraying Barack Obama as representing the end of the system he despises. Moore celebrates Obama's victory in some lovely scenes. But he does not portray Obama as our liberator from Wall Street. .

No, that role is reserved for a President who has been dead 64 years. Moore shows an FDR speech from 1944 in which he outlined a Second Bill of Rights, an Economic Bill of Rights. The text is here.

FDR is on camera for a few minutes, talking about his vision for America after WW2 is won. I was in a packed theater. And when Roosevelt finished, the audience burst into applause.

Maybe if Obama sounded more like FDR he could not only galvanize the base and scare the Bluedogs. Maybe he could even tap into the fury that is energizing the crazy right. FDR knew how to take the anger of the working class and point it at the plutocracy. Somehow the Democrats today either can't or won't do that.

Obama needs to channel FDR. Fast. Because, people, we are not winning.

One last point. FDR is not the only hero in the film. The other is Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio who points out the utter unfairness of the system. She speaks calmly and brilliantly and yet speaks the language of economic revolution. If we had 100 like her in Congress (we don't) , we could transform that place into the people's house. She is fantastic.

In my last post, I told the story of taking my old BMW to Dave Marshall's garage in New London, New Hampshire; of the novel opportunities for entrepreneurial growth the new technologies have bestowed on him. I suggested the ways he was keeping up his end of a new social compact, and I ended the post by suggesting also that there was another side to this compact, a novel role for government--which I've nicknamed "the mentor state"--whose responsibilities to the commercial ecosystem we are just beginning to understand.

Given the often heated reaction to this post, let me hasten to reassure readers, what I took to be self-evident, that the first responsibility of any democratic government (including the one we ought now to envision) is the cultivation of citizens; obvious things like the comparatively excellent public schools in New London, or the New London hospital, which enjoys a measure of municipal support, or land conservancies that make New London beautiful. Kant once said that all things, including people, can be seen as both ends and means; that as ends we have a dignity, as means we have a price. The first role of government is to attend to our dignity.

But unless we commit to socialism in the full sense, which has its own obvious pitfalls, we resign ourselves to the ways of market economies. Governments, Smith said (and who disputes this?), also have to "facilitate commerce in general." They enforce contracts, protect property, inhibit monopolies, and build roads and bridges. How has the new economy changed, extended, the scope of government action? What will the mentor state do differently?

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Hate to say it, but it's all your fault. America is ungovernable because we are a nation of pinheads. It's not just the Loons of the Right. It's the Obamaniacs and the NutRoots too.

The sad reality is that to achieve political power in America, you have to master the delusions of the public. If people think the moon is made of green cheese, you have to explicate this better than the other guy. Barack Obama did it better, now he must govern on the basis of a catalog of canards. "WE HAVE NEVER BEEN A NATION OF RED STATES AND BLUE STATES . . . WE ARE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!" Sheesh.

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This morning's job numbers are bad enough -- 263,000 more jobs lost in September, and unemployment now at 9.8 percent -- but look behind them and the news is even grimmer. The only reason the numbers don't look worse is that 571,000 workers dropped out of the labor force. Remember, too, that the economy needs about 125,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with a growing population. So we're even further behind.

The numbers would be even worse but for the stimulus package. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the stimulus is saving or creating between 200,000 and 250,000 jobs a month. Without it, job losses in September would have been nearly twice what they actually were.

State governments, meanwhile, continue to shed employees. Here's one of the most depressing statistics I've seen (if you need any additional ones): Some 15,600 teachers didn't return to work in September. They were laid off. So our classrooms are bigger, we have fewer teachers, and our students are presumably learning less -- at the very time when they need to be learning more than ever.

Our worthiest newspapers are once again declaring the virtue of bending over so far backwards to prove they don't tilt leftward that they topple over and turn into laughingstocks.

Over at the Washington Post, according to ombudsman Andrew Alexander, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli says:

we are not well-enough informed about conservative issues. It's particularly a problem in a town so dominated by Democrats and the Democratic point of view....I challenge our reporters and editors with great frequency to look at what is going on across the political spectrum . . . at the extremes, among the rabble-rousers, as well as among policymakers.

The Executive Editor does not express himself clearly. Take a close look at the evasive phrases "conservative issues" and "what is going on." Does Marcus Brauchli believe that WP reporters and editors should closely scrutinize the right-wing campaigns that diffuse untruths (Swift boats, death panels, missing birth certificates) and absurdly distorted uproars (Acorn as hooker counseling service, Cass Sunstein as Antichrist, etc.)? That it's time to investigate the organization and funding of such attacks, the ways in which they command the attention of Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, Savage, O'Reilly & Co. and then seep from the rightosphere into the mainstream? Apparently not.

Rather, it would seem (though again, Brauchli's ambiguous wording, if accurately quoted, might be at fault) that Executive Editor Brauchli means that his editors and reporters should take these attacks seriously, let the birther-deather crowd set their agenda, let their obsessions be the Post's obsessions.

Alexander goes on to brandish the canard of canards that has thrilled wingers for some 30 years now:

The most authoritative recent research into the political leanings of newsrooms (including television, radio, magazines and wire services) shows they are considerably more liberal than the general public. At daily newspapers, those who "lean to the left still far outnumber those who lean to the right," said Indiana University journalism professor David H. Weaver, whose researchers surveyed 1,149 journalists in 2002 and recently conducted a follow-up study of 400.

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Unemployment will almost certainly in double-digits next year -- and may remain there for some time. And for every person who shows up as unemployed in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' household survey, you can bet there's another either too discouraged to look for work or working part time who'd rather have a full-time job or else taking home less pay than before (I'm in the last category, now that the University of California has instituted pay cuts). And there's yet another person who's more fearful that he or she will be next to lose a job.

In other words, ten percent unemployment really means twenty percent underemployment or anxious employment. All of which translates directly into late payments on mortgages, credit cards, auto and student loans, and loss of health insurance. It also means sleeplessness for tens of millions of Americans. And, of course, fewer purchases (more on this in a moment).

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A movie on the Honduras coup may not be the big draw that the Tom Hanks film, Charlie Wilson's War, was -- but one has to wonder whether we are seeing a remake in which a lone Member of Congress, this time a US Senator from South Carolina, drags the country into the internal affairs of another small nation.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) has announced that he is heading down to Honduras to encourage those who helped fund and supported the coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to resist American pressure to return Zelaya to office.

The US Department of State has begun to revoke the visas of wealthy supporters of the military coup.

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Every year, Congress needs to pass 12 appropriations bills by October 1st to keep the federal government up and running. If lawmakers don't meet this deadline, the government operates on temporary funding or shuts down.

And Congress rarely meets this deadline. In fact, 19 out of the last 22 years, Congress has failed to pass the VA budget on time. When the VA budget is late, the nation's largest healthcare provider is forced to wait in limbo, relying on stop-gap funding measures. VA hospitals and clinics can't plan for critical staffing and equipment needs, leading to long waits for appointments and rationed care. As a result, 6 million veterans who rely on the VA for health care pay the price for Congress' bickering and inefficiency.

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A month ago, I referred to the "spooky parallels" between the Karzai government and the terminally corrupt Diem regime we found ourselves backing in Vietnam 50 years ago. Well today Peter Galbraith, the most experienced U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan was fired from his post at the U.N. station in Kabul for exposing the complicity of the head of the U.N. mission, Kai Eide, in covering up the fraud in the Afghanistan election.

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Politico's Mike Allen has the attendance roster for President Obama's big Afghan pow-wow today:

At 3 p.m., the President will participate in a THREE-HOUR meeting with his national security team on Afghanistan in the Situation Room. . .Expected manifest for today, with those overseas participating through the secure video teleconference system (SVTS): Vice President Biden; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan; Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command; General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Commander in Afghanistan; Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence; CIA Director Leon Panetta; Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan; Anne Patterson, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan; and General James Jones, National Security Advisor.

Despite the firepower in this Principals' Meeting -- there are other approaches the Obama team should consider.

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Instead of relying on the corrupted, illegitimate, and fraying central government in Afghanistan, we should work with the ethnic forces in the various parts of Afghanistan. Although we cannot come close to achieving what we did in working with the Kurds in northern Iraq, and with the Sunnis after the Awakening, these successes point to the merit of working with mono-ethnic, local forces.

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Like my fellow American patriots, I refuse to sit by while the Nazi Marxist President sends storm troops of Dr Mengeles to pull the plug on millions of grannies. Just keep out of our persona lives. My health care is my business and it's between me myself and I(nsurance companies.) Up until yesterday, I was telling the government to stay out of my granny's Medicare, which works just fine, thank you very much. But I recently learned that Medicare is actually government provided, public-option program (they're a sly, wily and sneaky bunch of Jews, they are.) And, because I'm no hypocrite, I'm putting my money where my mouth is and un-enrolling Granny from Medicare. If Medicare spreads to younger people, I will reject all benefits. My fellow Americans who say no to government takeover of our lives and organs, won't you please join me in my boycott of government funded health insurance? Sign the NO PUBLIC OPTION pledge!

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This is from NPR's All Things Considered yesterday. Peter Kenyon talks to Efraim Inbar, Director of the Begin-Sadat Center of Strategic Studies about the ramifications of a military strike against Iran. Kenyon asks Inbar about potential blow back here. Here is Inbar's response. Note: Inbar is not an extremist but a highly respected and credentialed Israel academic and expert on military strategy.

First Inbar addresses the west's resistance to going to war.

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So the recession is over but unemployment is not falling, at least not yet. How on earth can a recovery be "jobless"? And how might this fit with the fact that, in the 1960s, about 60,000 new businesses a year got started in the US, while over a million a year were getting started in the years before the collapse? Here's a little story; bear with me:

In the summer of 2003, I drove my aging BMW over to Dave Marshall's garage, a converted two-bay service station on Pleasant Lake near my summer home in Wilmot, New Hampshire, hoping to find out from Dave--the solid son of the former Chief of Police--where in Concord or Manchester the nearest BMW dealership was. The "climate control" system was gone, a system governed (I correctly surmised) by a complex little computer module--not your change-your-oil-by-the-beach kind of problem. Dave got behind the wheel, confirmed the symptoms, shrugged, and told me he could handle it. I told him I doubted it. He smiled, not quite condescendingly. I followed him inside.

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The budget situation today looks hugely worse than it did two years ago. The reason for the deterioration is not that the country has suddenly embarked on a massive new round of social spending, undertaken another major military adventure or even emptied the coffers through tax breaks. The reason that the deficit situation looks hugely worse than it did two years ago is that the $8 trillion housing bubble that had been driving the economy finally collapsed and threw the country into the worst downturn since the Great Depression.

The tragedy in this story is that the collapse of the bubble and its devastating consequences were entirely predictable. Had policymakers recognized the housing bubble and its dangers, they could have easily taken measures to avert this disaster, preventing the surge in unemployment, the flood of foreclosures and the huge budget deficits that characterize this downturn.

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There's a rapidly growing discussion here in the US about "what to do in Afghanistan." Some of it is thoughtful, well-informed, and serious. Like this piece by Rajiv Chandrasekaran in today's WaPo, which argues that the two best options look to be "Go all-in, or fold."

(Actually, that's only one choice, since the US citizenry and budget are quite incapable of doing what would be needed to "go all-in" in that very distant and logistically intimidating country.)

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What's wrong with these two pictures? I believe there is a dangerous disconnect between the "investor class" and everyone else in the country. The S & P 500 keeps climbing and jobs keep disappearing. If this situation is not to dissolve into class warfare, our collective establishment (government and business leaders) better figure out a way to start creating jobs pretty quickly or your going to see the pitchfork brigades descend on both Washington and Wall Street. Already the signs of class tensions are high as the Pew Foundation found out last month when they asked what were the sources of conflict between social groups.

Both immigration and anger at the rich are sources of lower and middle class conflict. We don't like to use those words in America, but there is no other way to describe this. In the 1930's Depression this took two distinct paths--the Nativist/right wing vitriol of Father Coughlin and the "soak the rich" populism of Huey Long. Roosevelt had to thread the needle between fascism and socialism, but without the WPA putting people back to work, the country could have been taken over by the demagogues. God knows we have enough Father Coughlin's to staff a whole cable TV network 24-7.

Obama needs a Digital Green WPA. If we could build the Hoover Dam in 1936, we could get started now on the massive solar and wind power opportunities to put people back to work.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is a critical day in the saga of the public option. Democrats Charles Schumer (New York) and Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia) are introducing an amendment to include the public option in the bill to be reported out by the Senate Finance Committee -- the committee anointed by the White House as its favored vehicle for getting health care reform.

Before you read another word, call and email the Senate offices of Democrats Max Baucus (Montana), Tom Carper (Delaware), Robert Menendez (New Jersey), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico), John Kerry (MA), Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas), Ron Wyden (Oregon), Debbie Stabenow (Michigan), Maria Cantwell (Washington), and Bill Nelson (Florida) -- telling them you want them to vote in favor of the public option amendment. And get everyone you know in these states to do the same. Hell, you might as well phone and email Republican Olympia Snowe (Maine) and make the same pitch.

Background: Every dollar squeezed out of Big Pharma and Big Insurance is a dollar less that you'll have to pay either in healthcare costs or in taxes to cover healthcare costs. The two most direct ways to squeeze future profits are allowing Medicare to use its huge bargaining leverage to negotiate lower drug prices, and creating a public insurance option to compete with private insurers and also use its bargaining clout to get lower prices and thereby push private insurers to offer lower rates.

But last January, the White House made a Faustian bargain with Big Pharma and Big Insurance, essentially scuttling both of these profit-squeezing mechanisms in return for these industries' agreement not to oppose healthcare legislation with platoons of lobbyists and millions of dollars of TV ads, and Pharma's willingness to cut drug prices by some $80 billion over the next ten years. The White House promised these industries they'd come out way ahead -- getting tens of millions of new customers who'd be buying private health insurance policies and thereby paying for an almost endless supply of new drugs. Healthcare reform would be, in short, a bonanza.

Big Pharma and Big Insurance have so far delivered on their side of the deal. In fact, Big Pharma has shelled out $120 million in advertisements in favor of reform. Now the White House is delivering on its side.

Last Thursday, for example, the Senate Finance Committee rejected Ben Nelson's amendment to require Big Pharma to give some $160 billion in discounts to Medicare -- thereby reducing the bonanza Pharma would reap from the healthcare bill. Not surprisingly, all Republicans voted against the amendment. But it was defeated only because Dems Baucus, Carper, and Menendez voted with the Republicans.

Carper later explained to the New York Times why he voted with the Republicans. The amendment, he said, would "undermine our ability to pass" health care reform, because the White House had made a deal with Big Pharma by which the industry wouldn't oppose healthcare reform -- and White House officials had told him "a deal is a deal." The Times described the vote as a "big victory" for the White House.

Schumer voted for the amendment. He said he was "not at the table" when the White House and Big Pharma made their deal so didn't feel bound by it. But even if he had been at the table, he wouldn't be bound. No member of the Senate is bound to a deal made between industry and the White House. Congress is a separate branch of government.

Big Pharma and big insurance hate the public insurance option even more than they hate big Medicare discounts. And although the President has sounded as if he would welcome it, political operatives in the White House have quietly reassured the industries that it won't be included in the final bill. At most, the bill would allow the formation of non-profit "cooperatives" that wouldn't have the scale or authority to squeeze the profits of private industry, or a "trigger" that would allow states to form public insurance options eventually if certain goals for cost savings and coverage weren't met.

But the public option lives on, nonetheless. It's still in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension bill. It still headlines the House bills, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she's still committed to it. The latest Times/CBS poll shows 65 percent of the public in favor of it.

Now, Schumer and Rockefeller are introducing a public option amendment in the Senate Finance Committee. Carper, Menendez, Baucus, and other Dems on the Committee should vote for it, or be forced to pay a price if they don't.

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So many famous people have died lately. It's pretty depressing.

My niece wrote on her Facebook page "Enough with the dying, people."

Anyway, today it's the New York Times columnist Bill Safire.

He was a terrific writer. And he wrote two entertaining columns -- one on politics, one on language. I really enjoyed reading him, including his novels.

But my one experience with him was not great.

I had written a "Dear Colleague" letter for my boss, Carl Levin, calling on the Secretary of State to inform the Israeli prime minister that UN Resolutions 242 and 338 the land for peace resolutions) applied to the West Bank. Prime Minister Shamir had just announced that they didn't.+

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