Rutabaga Ridgepole's Blog

Information in the Age of Noise

2010-09-09T23:38:06Z

Almost three years ago Obama announced his support for FTA-Peru, after 4,000,000 Peruvian workers and farmers had gone out on general strike against it, and my previous indifference to that amiable wind-bag turned into hostility.

FTA-Peru was already a smoking-gun about the "real" Obama, but it wasn't obvious enough for most of the so-called "progressive blogosphere," as beautifully represented by DailyKos, MyDD, and many other high-traffic sites which quickly turned into cheerleaders for their inane and unprincipled TV Messiah.

Of course Obama could have turned himself around at any time between then and now, before he ran all the way off the far-right edge of the world with his repulsive Catfood Commission to cut Social Security benefits, and cuts in the food stamps program at a time when 41,000,000 Americans depend on it, and all his broken promises about FISA and $300 billion in new tax-cuts for corporations and all the rest of it.

So why didn't the progressive blogosphere unmask that repulsive con-man before he walked into the Oval Office?

All of us had access to a thousand times as much information as ever before. How many people in Peoria could read the New York Times and the Guardian and news reports from Peru and government reports on all conceivable subjects in 1952?

But in 1952 our two major parties nominated Eisenhower and Stevenson, both of them candidates whose experience and character make Obama look like less than zero.

Who was Obama in 2002?

Not much more than an undistinguished state senator from Illinois who won a student election at the Harvard Law Review once upon a time.

He had been crushed in a Democratic Congressional primary by Bobby Rush in 2000, when nobody noticed anything like charisma anywhere near him, but that was before Penny Pritzker hired Axelrod and Plouffe and their extremely expensive talents turned nothing into the illusion of...

Barack Obama!

That TV caricature was created by the unlimited wealth of Penny Pritzker, financial chairwoman of Obama's campaign and former chairwoman of Superior Bank, who had to pay a $460 million fine to keep herself out of jail, but still couldn't find another $10 million to reimburse the investors that she and her partners had diddled out of their life savings!

]]> "They still owe me $113,000," said Fran Sweet, 63, of Downers Grove, who deposited her $480,000 retirement account at Superior a month before it collapsed. "To the Pritzkers, this is nothing. They probably think, 'Why pay her back?' That's nothing. But we're all upset that someone who made these decisions could be in that position."

Judging from the record-breaking job Pritzker has done raising money for Obama's campaign, her fund-raising skills do not appear to be in question, but Sweet said it sends the wrong message.

"It sends the wrong message!"

But that message was lost in the noise of Obama's $750 million campaign.

Now here we are in 2010, with both major parties intent on ripping the last shreds of our social safety net out from under us, on the verge of yet another multi-billion dollar campaign season when the Democratic and Republican noise-machines will roar like a hundred Niagras non-stop until the polls close again, and even the possiblity of anything other than the narrow "choices" offered by both major parties will be lost in the noise.

And then all of us will look around on the morning after the next election, and the next, and the next...

...and realize that everything about us, our jobs and houses, our own future and the future of our children...

Everything about us was lost in the noise.

"TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER!"

2010-09-08T20:48:33Z

Fade in to Barack Obama at his desk in the Oval Office.

Obama: Take me to your leader!

Voice offscreen: Cut!

David Axelrod enters from left.

Axelrod: No, no, no! The space alien says "Take me to your leader!" and your line is "I am Barack Obama, Leader of the Free World!"

Okay?

Obama: Okay.

Axelrod: From the top, people!

Axelrod exits left.

Fade in to Barack Obama at his desk in the Oval Office.

Obama: Take me to your leader!

Voice offscreen: Cut!

David Axelrod enters from left.

Axelrod: What the heck is wrong with you today? First you ordered a complete withdrawal of all NATO forces from Afghanistan, and we had to use the Time-Warp Obliviator to suck it back off TV! And now you keep flubbing your lines!

And we still have to wrap the scene where you announce $300 billion in tax-cuts for corporations.

Obama: What's my motivation?

Axelrod: Your what?

Obama: Michelle signed me up for some acting classes, and we're supposed to understand the character's motivation. So what's my motivation for giving $300 billion in tax-cuts to corporations that are already sitting on a mountain of money that they won't invest? And why am I still wasting blood and treasure on that crazy war in Afghanistan, when everybody knows it's unwinnable? And how can my character authorize assassinations of American citizens?

Axelrod looks at Obama suspiciously. Muffled noises are audible under the desk.

Axelrod: Omigod! It's the President's sock-puppet Jacob Freeze again!

Axelrod seizes "Obama's" head and pulls off a mask, revealing Jacob Freeze. Secret Service agent enters from right.

Axelrod: How the heck did that idiot get in here again?

Agent: He must have used the Sub-Space Defrongulator!

Agent exits right with Freeze in handcuffs. Axelrod pulls the real Obama out from under the desk.

Axelrod: From the top, people!

Axelrod exits left.

Obama: I am Barack Obama, Leader of the Free World!

Racing to the Bottom with Phony "Two-Party" Politics

2010-09-07T09:17:47Z

If the Democratic Party stands for anything today, it stands for the remnants of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, and if a Democratic administration with majorities in both houses of Congress simultaneously attacks New Deal Programs like Social Security and Great Society programs like Food Stamps, then the Democratic Party stands for nothing, and even the name of it is just a noise.

And... surprise!

Obama and his playmates are simultaneously attacking food stamps and Social Security.

President Obama in August signed a $26 billion bill to save teaching jobs and pay for Medicare. It included a $12 billion -- or 14 percent -- reduction in food stamp funding scheduled to kick in during 2014.

This is at a time when more than 41,000,000 Americans depend on food stamps, an all-time record, and an increase of about 8,000,000 since last year.

And while Obama's "Deficit Commission" continues with its formerly secret plan to cut Social Security benefits, you may very well wonder...

How the heck do the Democrats think they can win an election with out-of-control unemployment and a platform of gutting food stamps and Social Security, and the answer as always is...

Because the Republicans are worse!

And how the heck do the Republicans think they can win an election with their legacy of extremely unpopular wars and an economic meltdown?

Because the Democrats are worse!

This never-ending "bipartisan" scam is the push-me/pull-you engine of American politics.

The Republican platform of yesterday is the Democratic platform of today, and the Republican platform of today is a previously inconceivable further reversion toward the dog-eat-dog primitivism of 19th Century robber-barons and the miserable impoverishment of almost all of us.

Republican Geese and TPM Ganders

2010-09-05T19:38:49Z

Anyone who doesn't believe in a pervasive Zeitgeist which permeates all apparent cultural and social contrasts is invited to consider the self-evident right of Josh Marshall to destroy a little community which evolved on his property!

The property rights movement has had a significant impact on the nation's environmental policies since 1980. The groups identified with the movement commonly oppose federal regulation or intrusion on land that is privately held, especially in cases where federal involvement is in the form of environmental laws that limit the owner's full or partial use of the land. The movement began with the Sagebrush Rebellion of the mid-1970s, when legislators from states in western United States sought the transfer of federal public lands to state control.

"Those fucking wetlands are on my property, and if I want to bulldoze them into oblivion, it ain't nobody's business if I do!"

"That fucking tide-pool is on my beach, and if I want build a Burger King franchise on top of it, it ain't nobody's business if I do!"

But in the realm of "intellectual property" even ultra-right-wing authorities aren't quite as absolute.

Cumulative innovation -- where first-generation inventions become inputs for second generation innovators (e.g. readers' blogs) -- substantially complicates the design of patent protection. In order to reward first-generation innovators sufficiently for inventions that may produce positive spillovers by enabling second-generation inventions (improvements, new applications, and accessories), first-generation innovators should be able to appropriate the value of second-generation innovations.
On the other hand, providing even a share of the second-generation innovators' returns to the first generation innovator reduces the incentive for second-generation innovators to pursue their research. This tension is abated to the extent that first-generation innovators are best positioned to pursue second-generation innovation or where collaboration (e.g., joint ventures) brings first- and second-generation innovation within the same profit center.

The cumulative nature of innovation unquestionably strengthens the case for allowing joint ventures, especially with respect to complementary products. In practice, however, one entity rarely is best positioned to pursue all second-generation projects.

Even Prof. William Landes and Judge Richard Posner recognize that "'depropertizing' intellectual property may sometimes be the soundest policy economically."

Depropertizing intellectual property!

And if that radical idea originates with ante-diluvian judicial reactionaries like Richard Posner, you might expect that way, way over on the other side of the political spectrum, on the intellectual property of self-proclaimed progressives and liberals like Josh Marshall, the idea of absolute property rights would be a joke!

But you would be wrong.

"I can bulldoze that tide-pool on my property, and I don't give a fuck what kind of "community" evolved in it!"

And this hard-nosed Weltanschauung is of course beautifully consistent with the prevailing Zeitgeist, as so well expressed in Obama's crusade to eviscerate Social Security and all the rest of the brutal "bipartisanship" which permeates our phony "two-party" system.

It's a beautiful dream, as Obama and his phony liberal and progressive playmates are dreaming it, along with Rush Limbaugh and his audience of tape-worms, who will all join hands on one beautiful morning and sing the only song that really matters!

"It's our money!"

"It's our property!"

"It's our world!"

The New TPMCafe Readers' Blogsite!

2010-09-04T07:03:35Z

After reading the latest senseless mumbo-jumbo about Josh Marshall's many problems with his ridiculously inefficient blogging software, and more senseless mumbo-jumbo about how incredibly difficult it would be to attach readers' blogs to his fine site in a way that didn't waste three fourths of his resources on one percent of his traffic, like his current ridiculously inefficient blogging software has done, it occurred to me that all you really need is a LINK to attach any kind of blog running any kind of blogging software (like Soapblox, for example, which supports hundreds of progressive blogs and costs essentially nothing to maintain) and PRESTO!

Readers' blogs, at minimal expense!

And just to put up something, and see what the heck would happen, I put up a simple model for The New TPMCafe Readers' Blogsite, with dozens of working links back to TPM, and of course it's rough, but...

It only took me three minutes to put it up!

$17 Million for Flood Victims, $26 Billion for War

2010-09-03T11:18:37Z

Agence France Presse, September 3, 2010...

Although the initially slow pace of aid had improved since a visit by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in mid-August, the UN said it has "almost stalled" since the beginning of last week, rising from 274 million dollars to 291 million dollars -- about two thirds of funding needs.

That's a total of $17 million in about two weeks, from the whole world, for at least 8,000,000 Pakistanis with no food at all and nothing but dirty water to drink.

And in the same two weeks the United States has spent about $26 billion on "defense," $13 billion per week, out of a military budget of $663 billion for 2010.

- Jacob Freeze
.

"Today, old adversaries are at peace..."

2010-09-01T22:29:20Z

"Today, old adversaries are at peace, and emerging democracies are potential partners." -Barack Obama, August 31, 2010

AFP/Baghdad, August 25, 2010... More than a dozen apparently co-ordinated car bombs targeting Iraqi police and other attacks blamed on Al Qaeda killed 53 people yesterday, just days before the US military ends its combat mission.

BAGHDAD, Aug 17... A suicide bomber blew himself up at a crowded army recruitment centre in Baghdad killing 61 people Tuesday, officials said, as violence coinciding with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan raged across Iraq.

And so on.

Recent US Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan

2010-08-30T11:41:25Z

Recent American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, as listed at the Washington Post.

Pfc. Bradley D. Rappuhn died at Zhari Kandahar, Afghanistan, August 8, 2010. He was 24 years old.

From the Lansing State Journal...

"He was supposed to come home in the end of July," said his mother, Roxanne Rappuhn, 53, of Grand Ledge. "But they tacked 45 more days on."
"If he were here right now, he'd be telling me to suck it up," she said.

Spec. Faith R. Hinkley died in Baghdad August 7, 2010. She was 23 years old.

From the Denver Post...

Hinkley, who had been in her high school's marching band, surprised her family after the first year of college at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs when she announced she had enlisted in the Army.
"She really couldn't tell us what she did," Orene Hinkley said. "She didn't want us to worry about her.

Lance Cpl. Kevin M. Cornelius died in Helmand province, Afghanistan, August 7, 2010. He was 20 years old.

From the Ashtabula Star-Beacon...

One of Kevin's favorite times was the bicycle trip he took in 2006, when he rode his bike from East Glacier, Mont. to Ashtabula, a distance of 1,975 miles.

Pfc. Vincent E. Gammone III died in Helmand Province, Afghanistam, August 7, 2010. He was 19 years old.

From the Murfreesboro (Tennessee) Daily News-Journal...

Gammone's father, Vincent Gammone, II, suffers from multiple sclerosis, a disease that affects the ability of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord to communicate with one another. West said when the older Gammone learned of his son's death he "didn't believe it was his son" at first. "Yesterday (Monday) it finally hit him."

Spec. Michael L. Stansbery died near Kandahar, Afghanistan, July 30, 2010. He was 21 years old.

From NewsChannel 5 in Nashville Tennessee...

His family received a letter recently dated three weeks ago. One of his friend's read parts of it to NewsChannel 5.
"Don't worry yourself so much over me because I am well. I wish I knew how I could bring peace to your mind," said John Jankovich, a longtime friend of Stansbery's as he read the letter from Michael.
He also read parts of a letter Michael had written in first grade.
"I will go to battle and have a bunch of men with me to help. I will go to the ocean and save someone from trouble," read Jankovich.

Staff Sgt. Conrad A. Mora died at Qalat, Afghanistan, July 24, 2010. He was 24 years old.

From the San Diego Union-Tribune...

Military life "was his passion," said his brother-in-law, Christian Lleva. The last time Mora's family saw him was in May, when they shared a meal at Goldilocks, a bakery and Filipino cuisine restaurant in National City.
"After dinner we came back here, and we all talked for hours and hours," Lleva said. "He would rap about anything," Lleva said. "He could make anything rhyme."

Jacob Freeze Smacks Down Arnold Schwarzenegger at the WSJ

2010-08-28T11:13:23Z

Physically, Arnold Schwarzenegger is just about the biggest, strongest Republican of them all, and even mentally, compared to the rest of those idiots, he's almost a genius. But in a battle of wits against anyone of approximately average intelligence, the Governator has about as much of a chance as Elmer Fudd against Godzilla.

For example, in Arnold's recent editorial for the Wall Street Journal, he makes several claims that even a fifth-grader could refute.

Few Californians in the private sector have $1 million in savings, but that's effectively the retirement account they guarantee to public employees who opt to retire at age 55 and are entitled to a monthly, inflation-protected check of $3,000 for the rest of their lives.

Hundreds of the Wall Street Journal's dim-witted readers accepted this silly claim with pitiful credulity, little suspecting that their all-time favorite action-hero was about to be beaten to a bloody pulp by a left-wing Terminator.

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Sand

2010-08-24T23:22:20Z

About a week ago I came across this photo among the "curiosities" that make up most of the content of high-traffic websites like the Daily Beast and Huffington Post and boingboing, and it occurred to me that the sort of progressive blogging I try to do doesn't really amount to much more than putting up a little sign in the middle of the desert.

"Sand."

Are carbon emissions from industrialized economies causing runaway global warming? After millions of pages of scientific research, how much clearer could it possibly be?

"Sand."

Is the American occupation of Afghanistan a senseless quagmire? With nothing to show for it after nine long years, except a ridiculously corrupt government "elected" after a ridiculously crooked "election" and tens of thousands of Afghans slaughtered and millions of refugees scattered all over Southwest Asia, how much clearer could the futility of all of it possibly be?

"Sand."

Is globalization a rising tide that "lifts all boats," or just a scam for enriching an international elite, demolishing rural economies all over the Third World, and driving down American wages to "compete" with slave-labor in a "competition" where we fall behind by $500 billion in trade deficits every year?

"Sand."

Flood

2010-08-22T06:10:43Z

Flood victims peer out of a Pakistan Army helicopter.

A man thrust a folded paper into a reporter's hand. "It is requested that this person is very poor, who bought a buffalo after a lot of hard labor. It has died in the flood, and it is requested you help," it read. It was signed with a thumb print, by Muhammad Amin, from the village of That Salay, in Jhok Kalay Khan. Attached with a small piece of string was a photocopy of his ID card that showed he was 32.

"For months and even years, the people of the Indus Valley will not have sufficient income for food or clothing," he concludes. "They will rebuild, if they can afford it, by inches."

US Flood Aid Equals Two Hours of Pentagon Budget

2010-08-20T01:35:14Z

Now that the United States has increased its aid for victims of the recent floods in Pakistan to $150 million, that grand total is just about exactly as much as the Pentagon spends every two hours, 24 hours every day, 365 days per year.

For the 2010 fiscal year, the president's base budget of the Department of Defense rose to $533.8 billion. Adding spending on "overseas contingency operations" brings the sum to $663.8 billion.

Divided by 365, that's about $1.8 billion per day, or $75 million per hour.

And 120 minutes of that enormous and never-ending flood of money is all we can afford for the millions of victims of one of the greatest natural disasters in modern history.

The Blimpie at Ground Zero

2010-08-19T00:54:05Z

Unlike most of my pointy-headed left-wing friends, I can totally sympathize with right-wing protests about the "Mosque at Ground Zero," because I felt exactly the same way when they built a Blimpie at 30 John Street, only two blocks away from the World Trade Center!

Blimpie! It was born in New Jersey!

Blimpie! Ray Liotta's elves eat Blimpies!

And don't even get me started about the Fusion Hair and Wig Store at Ground Zero!

The Tea-Sucker Manifesto

2010-08-18T01:24:43Z

The Wall Street Journal is currently displaying "A Tea Party Manifesto" at the top of its website, and this thing includes a declaration of war on the Republican Party.

The tea party movement is not seeking a junior partnership with the Republican Party, but a hostile takeover of it.

After that relatively bold war-whoop, most of the rest of it is just about the sort of anti-government hate-speak that you might expect.

By definition, government is the means by which citizens are forced to do that which they would not do voluntarily. Like pay high taxes. Or redistribute tax dollars to bail out the broken, bloated pension systems of state government employees. Or purchase, by federal mandate, a government-defined health-insurance plan that is unaffordable, unnecessary or unwanted.

By definition! It couldn't be more obvious! Only a fool would dispute these self-evident truths!

All of this is already familiar, and none of it differs much from the Republican platform in every election for the last 30 years.

What's more or less original about teabaggers in general and the Wall Street Journal "manifesto" in particular is a fantastic claim that all of it arose spontaneously out of the legitimate indignation of honest citizens, united from the ground up by their adherence to the American values of "individual freedom, fiscal responsibility and limited government."

The many branches of the tea party movement have created a virtual marketplace for new ideas, effective innovations and creative tactics. Best practices come from the ground up, around kitchen tables, from Facebook friends, at weekly book clubs, or on Twitter feeds.
Decentralization, not top-down hierarchy, is the best way to maximize the contributions of people and their personal knowledge.

Let the leaders be the activists who have the best knowledge of local personalities and issues.

In the real world, this is common sense. In Washington, D.C., this is considered radical.

Activists! From the ground up! Common sense! Only a fool would dispute these self-evident truths!

But unfortunately this beautiful and apparently spontaneous harmony of all honest citizens is immediately discombobulated by a screeching dissonance!

The rebellion's name derives from the glorious rant of CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who in February 2009 called for a new "tea party" from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

What?

I thought it all began "around kitchen tables" and "at weekly book clubs!"

And now you tell me it was christened on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, in a crowd of zillionaire traders, by a network TV reporter?

So it isn't exactly surprising that the "manifesto" of so many humble activists is proclaimed by a billionaire's newspaper, and proclaimed by none other than...

Richard Keith "Dick" Armey, the former Majority Leader of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives and immediately thereafter a $750,000 per annum lobbyist for DLA Piper, representing such humble clients as General Motors, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and more than 100 of the largest corporations in America!

So the next time a crowd of suckers gets together for a spontaneous demonstration they heard about on Fox News and CNBC...

They can bring along the full length version of Dick Armey's Tea Party Manifesto, from HarperCollins...

...which is also owned by Rupert Murdoch, like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News and most of the other strings that jerk the tea-suckers around like so many pitiful puppets.

Population Dynamics of Places in the News (2)

2010-08-16T22:37:49Z

Population 1960-2008

I've been watching the great HBO series Six Feet Under on DVD for about a week, and yesterday I saw the episode which ends with Ruth Fisher singing along with a tape of Joni Mitchell. I didn't even recognize the song, but a google search for the lyrics revealed it was Woodstock.

Then last night I had a dream about walking up a long hill with the same song playing in my head, but when I came to the crest and looked down, instead of mobs at a concert I saw a flood like an ocean, and millions of people washed away in it.

"And maybe it's the time of year
or maybe it's the time of man
and I don't know who I am
but you know life is for learning."

"We are stardust,
billion year-old carbon,
we are golden,
caught in the devil's bargain
and we got to get ourselves
back to the garden."