Sorry

Sorry for the lack of content.  I have been posting some syndicated content but I realize that's not what you are looking for in a blog.  The reality is being the caregiver for someone in home hospice is the hardest job I have ever had.  Each day it seems there is something new as different things shut down.  At this point the goal is to keep mother comfortable   That means increasing doses of morphine.  If I survive this perhaps I will have something to say in the future.

US Senate panel passes email privacy measure

US Senate panel passes email privacy measure (via AFP)

A US Senate panel approved a bill to boost email privacy protections in a vote Thursday that followed widespread uproar over the FBI probe that toppled CIA director David Petraeus. The measure, which if enacted would require police to obtain a warrant in most cases to access email accounts, drew immediate…

The Military Industrial Complex

Who is in control of the budget talks?  One thing that hardly anyone from either party talks about is cuts in defense (offense) spending and most of them are talking about cuts to medicare and Social Security.  As Matt Yglesias points out that not the way the American people see it.  

Defense spending reductions, meanwhile, are much less popular. There's a nontrivial bloc of congressional Democrats who favors major reductions, but that's not a stance embraced by party leadership or recent presidential candidates. But as a recentEconomist/YouGov poll confirms—key result replicated above—public opinion is pretty different. An overwhelming 71 percent of the population says it favors spending cuts to reduce the budget deficit, but cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are all unpopular. Defense cuts, by contrast, poll pretty well. The modern-day version of the guns or butter choice is guns or grandma's hospital bills, and the public clearly prefers grandma's hospital bills.

At The American Conservative Jon Basil Utley thinks that just eliminating waste at the Pentagon could do more to reduce the deficit than doing away with a few tax deductions but even that gets little but lip service from DC politicians.

Compare these with another study that breaks down all national-security costs. Those total some $1.2 trillion—far more than just the Pentagon’s costs, if one includes the CIA, veterans programs, pensions, interest on war debts, etc., but not the Afghan War, which is another hundred billion. The military establishment’s waste is so extraordinary that anyone in Washington who defends it either plans for America to start more wars (e.g., neoconservatives) or is on the take in some way—perhaps subsidized by a think tank getting money from military contractors. A good overall view of defense spending is by budget expert Winslow Wheeler, “The Defense Budget: Ignorance Is Not Bliss.” And this does not include big-ticket items like the F-35—scheduled to reach a trillion dollars for an average five hours of flying time per week over its lifetime—or a 12th aircraft carrier battle group. Would tax-paying Americans really prefer a new fighter plane, when America already dominates the world’s skies and seas, rather than have their home mortgage interest deduction?
The CIA and other intelligence agencies cost some $55 billion that we know about. In 2010 some $27 billion more was spent on military intelligence programs. Waste is incredible. The Washington Post ran a series of articles about waste and duplication of efforts at the many intelligence agencies. It pointed out among other numbers that some 50,000 intelligence reports are issued yearly. No congressman, to my knowledge, demanded an investigation. A recent interesting information tidbit was how Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has Air Force planes fly him home to California every weekend. The news came to light when he transferred to the Pentagon, which publishes such information. Earlier at the CIA he did the same, but it was a secret expense. The exploding cost of homeland security is also somewhat hidden: for example, airline passengers pay for much of the government’s costs in higher fares.

Utley links to The defense budget: Ignorance is not bliss by Winslow Wheeler which is a must read.

Polling from Pew and Gallup reveals major public misconceptions about the defense budget. Fifty-eight percent of Americans know that Pentagon spending is larger than any other nation, but almost none know it is up to seven times that of China. Most had no idea the defense budget is larger than federal spending for education, Medicare or interest on the debt.


The scurrilous in Washington promote the misimpression of an under-funded Pentagon. They imply it is smaller than during the Cold War by saying it was at 8 percent of gross domestic product in the late 1960s, but only 4 percent of GDP now. Therefore, it’s gone down and is now low, right?

Some use hyperventilated rhetoric to pressure for more defense dollars. Sadly, this category now must include Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who termed “catastrophic” the recommendations of the Obama deficit commission to merely maintain defense spending at its post-WWII high, and who deemed a “crisis” the idea of a 1 percent — $5 billion — reduction in the 2011 defense budget compared to 2010.

The defense budget is untouchable because the military industrial complex is a major contributor of reelection money.  This is nothing new.  In the early 70s those in the intelligence community knew the Soviet Union was collapsing - no, Ronald Reagan was not responsible for the collapse. 

Tolstoy would look at the assertion that Reagan brought down the Evil Empire and say: no he didn’t. The individual decisions by millions of Russians, Poles, Latvians, Georgians, Germans, etc. brought down the Evil Empire, and the relationship between those individual actions and the action of any one man is obscure – and, moreover, anything Reagan did that was significant was overwhelmingly likely to have been done by someone else in his place at that time, because those actions were forced choices, driven by necessity, even if we don’t fully understand the laws thereof.

The hype of the threat from a rapidly failing Soviet Union allowed defense spending to remain inflated.  We see the same thing today except it is even more absurd this time because the threat is not from a world power but a number of bands of outlaws.

If "everything" is on the table then that must include dramatic cuts to defense spending but don't hold your breath.

New Way To Create Electricity Out Of Sunlight Discovered, A Solar Energy Funnel

New Way To Create Electricity Out Of Sunlight Discovered, A Solar Energy Funnel (via Clean Technica)

  The discovery of a revolutionarily different way to generate electricity from sunlight has been made by researchers at MIT. The new technology, which is essentially a solar energy funnel, is able to use a much broader spectrum of sunlight’s energy than conventional solar does, by utilizing materials…

Ceasefire opens up deeper waters for Gaza's fishermen

Ceasefire opens up deeper waters for Gaza's fishermen (via The Christian Science Monitor)

For the first time in more than three years, Gaza fisherman Mushtaq Zedan took his boat out Saturday to the deeper, more abundant waters that were off limits to him under the Israeli blockade. "It was like a dream when I reached the six mile limit," says Mr. Zedan, a father of four who inherited his…

FOX - They Can't Handle The Truth

Guest on Fox News to Discuss Benghazi Attack Is Given a Quick Exit

Defense reporter Thomas Ricks was invited on FOX news to talk about Benghazi and when he said that FOX was trying to create a controversy where there wasn't one and that FOX was just an extension of the Republican Party they cut him off. Watch:

US worst-case scenario: going over fiscal cliff

US worst-case scenario: going over fiscal cliff (via AFP)

Letting the US economy go over the fiscal cliff would push the United States, and probably other countries, into a new crisis that political leaders now say they are determined to avoid. The fiscal cliff, a combination of mandated tax increases and spending cuts, will occur in January unless President…

Kill the Dept. of Homeland Security

Now I'm not really a small government guy but I agree with this.

Thankful!

Mom and her great grandson

I had a lot to be thankful for yesterday.  Mom had one of her best days in a couple of weeks.  The diuretics are working and the congestion is all but gone and the swelling in her feet and ankles is much improved.  She is no longer having trouble swallowing.  The neighbors brought over the turkey dinner plate with vegetables, mashed potatoes, dressing and turkey in addition to fruit salad and deviled eggs.  I took the plate over to mom before I sat down and she ate some mashed potatoes and about half of a deviled egg.  Her improved condition continues today.

The "Competitive" Workplace

It’s Black Friday in the U.S., which for most people means shopping deals and the “official” start of the Christmas shopping season, even if that strays a fair bit from the terms’ original meaning. In any case, before you go out and spend whatever hard-earned money you’ve managed to scrounge together for the year on gifts, there’s a couple of good articles worth reading about our “competitive” job market at the big box stores.

First up is Seth Ackerman’s excellent article on the Hostess bankruptcy and how the term “competitive” has been bastardized to mean something entirely different from its literal meaning when it comes to talking about companies being competitive. After noting that pay cuts, even in recessions, are quite rare due to employee morale issues, he then looks at the Hostess situation:

So let’s turn back to hapless Hostess. In a piece for Salon, Jake Blumgart quoted a bakery worker who had been at the company for 14 years. “In 2005, before concessions I made $48,000, last year I made $34,000…. I would make $25,000 in five years if I took their offer. It will be hard to replace the job I had, but it will be easy to replace the job they were trying to give me.”

What we have here is a situation where a company offered a wage in the marketplace and couldn’t get any workers to accept it. Consequently, it went out of business. The word “competitive” gets thrown around a lot, often with the murkiest of meanings, but in this case there can be no doubt at all that a company, Hostess, was unable to pay a competitive wage. Ninety-two percent of its workers voted to walk out on their jobs rather than accept its wage, and they stayed out even after they were told it was the company’s final offer.

By all the canons of competitiveness, it was the company that was deluded. Hey, it’s a tough labor market out there. Hostess just couldn’t compete.

But the union got blamed instead, and that points to a fascinating aporia in neoliberalism. The competitiveness ideology keeps a double set of books. On the surface, it celebrates free individuals making voluntary agreements on a footing of formal equality. But look just a little deeper and it turns out to be a musty, medieval system of morality that venerates human hierarchy and inequality. If taken literally, an accusation of insufficient “competitiveness” would refer to a failure to buy or sell on the terms objectively demanded by the dispersed actors of the marketplace. But nine times out of ten, this literal meaning is just a facade for the real underlying meaning, which is all about policing the socially accepted rules concerning who is a worthy human being and who is not. Workers at an industrial bakery are losers. They need to take a pay cut — not so much to make the numbers add up (that’s a secondary consideration for all the commentators and columnists) but as a ritual affirmation of their debased social status. The refusal to take the cut was shocking and revolting — an act of lèse-majesté. It’s in that sense that the union was uncompetitive. The workers didn’t know their place.

The part after what I’ve quoted above, where he quotes a summary of the book Belated Feudalism by Karen Orren is well worth your time as well. He ends the piece with a nod towards the worker protests to take place today at Wal-Marts across the country, and that’s where the next article comes in, Jordan Weissmann’s note that when it comes to placing blame for the labour practices of the big box retailers like Wal-Mart, the first place to look is the mirror.

Forget the stampeding shoppers, the half-priced waffle irons, or the pepper spray wielding wackos: barring a federal intervention, the main event this Black Friday could turn out to be a showdown between organized labor and its arch corporate nemesis, Wal-Mart.

. . .

It would be a mistake, however, to think of this simply as a clash over one company. Rather, it's symptomatic of forces Wal-Mart helped set in motion and now shape our economy in fundamental way. It's about big box retail's refusal to pay a decent wage. It's about the way we've stacked the deck against unions. And it's about the choices we make as consumers.

Read, as they say, the whole thing. And then enjoy your weekend as best you can.

It's that time again - THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS

Yes it's that time of year when the atheist hippies wage their war on Christmas.  Oh, but wait - it's not just the hippies, how about the Pope.

Having dealt with Christ's adult life and death in his first two books, the pope tackles the birth of the son of God and puts paid to some myths surrounding the newly born Jesus's spell in a stable with Mary and Joseph.
"In the gospels there is no mention of animals," the pope states. He says references to the ox and the donkey in other parts of the Bible may have inspired Christians to include them in their nativity scenes.
The Vatican itself has included animals in the nativity scenes it sets up each year in St Peter's Square, and Benedict concedes that the tradition is here to stay. "No nativity scene will give up its ox and donkey," he says.
Showing his scholarly approach to the Bible, Benedict also analyses the moment angels descended to tell shepherds the son of God was lying in a manger nearby. In a blow to fans of the carol Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Benedict writes: "According to the evangelist, the angels 'said' this. But Christianity has always understood that the speech of angels is actually song, in which all the glory of the great joy that they proclaim becomes tangibly present."

So even the Pope thinks your manger scene is bogus.  But it's this time of year when we hear about the the biggest myth of them all - the United States was founded as a "Christian Nation" - simply not true.

The Declaration of Independence gives us important insight into the opinions of the Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson wrote that the power of the government is derived from the governed. Up until that time, it was claimed that kings ruled nations by the authority of God. The Declaration was a radical departure from the idea that the power to rule over other people comes from god. It was a letter from the Colonies to the English King, stating their intentions to seperate themselves. The Declaration is not a governing document. It mentions "Nature's God" and "Divine Providence"-- but as you will soon see, that's the language of Deism, not Christianity.
........
None of the Founding Fathers were atheists. Most of the Founders were Deists, which is to say they thought the universe had a creator, but that he does not concern himself with the daily lives of humans, and does not directly communicate with humans, either by revelation or by sacred books. They spoke often of God, (Nature's God or the God of Nature), but this was not the God of the bible. They did not deny that there was a person called Jesus, and praised him for his benevolent teachings, but they flatly denied his divinity. Some people speculate that if Charles Darwin had lived a century earlier, the Founding Fatherswould have had a basis for accepting naturalistic origins of life, and they would have been atheists. We'll never know; but by reading their own writings, it's clear that most of them were opposed to the bible, and the teachings of Christianity in particular.

The founding fathers were for the most part men of the enlightenment. Darwin  had yet to be born and science was still in it's infancy so there was still a need for a "creator" of sorts  but there is no way historical texts justify the revisionist history of some that the United States was founded as a Christian Nation.
H/T to my friend Steve Hynd

Gaza truce holds as region steps back from brink

Gaza truce holds as region steps back from brink (via The Christian Science Monitor)

Hamas leaders in Gaza declared victory over Israel on Thursday, and thousands of flag-waving supporters rallied in celebration as the battered territory entered its first day of calm under an Egyptian-brokered truce that ended the worst cross-border fighting in four years. Eight days of punishing Israeli…

Thanksgiving Update

Me and Mom at Mt Hood

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  For me it will be like any other day - feeding my mother, who is in home hospice, applesauce with pills and Ensure.  I am thankful for this experience, the thought of mom dying in a nursing home is not a pleasant one.  I will have a caregiver here for five hours tomorrow to give me a little break and the next door neighbors are going to bring me a plate of turkey dinner.

Israel should rethink its strategy against Hamas in Gaza

Israel should rethink its strategy against Hamas in Gaza (via The Christian Science Monitor)

Since Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006 and subsequently took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Israel has dealt with the "Islamic Resistance" through a policy of non-recognition, political isolation, and military containment. The recent escalation of violence in…

Clear Channel And Bain Capitol

Portland's only progressive talk radio station just went silent and guess who is responsible? If you guessed Bain Capitol you would be correct. 

Clear Channel quietly pruning scores of staff 
Owner of Toledo’s WSPD owes billions to Bain Capital

Clear Channel, the largest radio station operator in the country, is partially owned by Bain Capital, which is the company founded and previously run by former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Debt-ridden Clear Channel, headquartered in San Antonio, has been quietly pruning its corporate structure since late 2011.
On-air talent and behind-the-scenes employees have been shown the door or programming has been eliminated in markets that include Los Angeles, Boston, Tampa, San Diego, Madison, Wis., Springfield, Mo., Oklahoma City, Nashville, and, most recently, Toledo.
“Obviously they are trying to pay down their monster debt with Bain Capital,” said Tommy Butter, who was laid off from top-40 station WRVW-FM in Nashville in March. “Obviously, they are trying to fire their way to pay that debt down.”

They have been laying off people since 2011, just a few at a time.  I suppose it would have looked bad for Romney if it became obvious that Bain Capitol was responsible for  hundreds of layoffs just before the election.
Portland's KPOJ was making money but the on air personalities and staff were let go and FOX sports radio is now broadcast instead.  But it wasn't just progressive radio but conservatives that got the ax as well.

If you live in the Portland area go to Save KPOJ.

Deforestation risks turning Somalia to desert

Deforestation risks turning Somalia to desert (via AFP)

Hassan Hussein cuts down 40 trees every month to fuel his charcoal business, fully aware of the impact his action has on the environment. But for the livestock keeper, the forests are the last remaining resource. And he is not alone. Hundreds of thousands of Somalia's traditional pastoralist herders…

China unveils new leadership with Xi at helm

China unveils new leadership with Xi at helm (via AFP)

China's all-powerful Communist Party on Thursday unveiled a new seven-man leadership council steered by Xi Jinping to take command of the world's number two economy for the next decade. After striding out in Beijing's Great Hall of the People as the party's new general-secretary, succeeding President…

The Death Of Trickle-Down Economics?

I hope Michael Tomasky is right when he says that Reaganomics died last Tuesday.

Here’s something that happened in this election that has been largely overlooked but I think is a very big deal indeed. Trickle-down economics died last Tuesday. The post-election chatter has been dominated by demographics, Latinos, women, and the culture war. But economics played a strong and even pivotal role in this election too, and Reaganomics came out a huge loser, while the Democrats have started to wrap their arms around a simple, winning alternative: the idea that government must invest in the middle class and not the rich. It’s middle-out economics instead of trickle-down, and it won last week and will keep on winning.

My only question is why did it take so long?  It always defied logic and many of not most of the people pushing it knew it was absurd but also knew it was a great scam for taking from the middle and giving it to the rich.  Business does not hire people because they get tax breaks the hire people when there is demand for their goods and services.  A healthy economy depends on a healthy middle class - it's not trickle-down  but middle-out economics.

Supply side was rejected. And in its place, voters went for an economic vision that says: don’t invest in the wealthy in the hope that they’ll decide to spread the wealth around; invest in the middle class, because it’s demand from a prosperous middle class that ultimately creates more jobs, and because doing that makes for a healthier society all the way around. Obama embraced this message late last year in his speech in Kansas, and even though I wouldn’t say he pressed it consistently for a whole year, he certainly emphasized it in the second debate and spoke regularly about it toward the end. “I believe you grow the economy from the middle out,” he said in a key October ad.
He did not originate the phrase. Writing in The New York Times in July, Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu, authors of The Gardens of Democracy, wrote: “Lasting growth doesn’t trickle down; it emerges from the middle out.”
A whole cohort of progressive economists and activists has been at work on middle-class economics since 2009. Robert Reich has been there, as have Hanauer and Liu and the Center for American Progress, especially Heather Boushey and David Madland. I’m proud to add that the journal I edit, Democracy, has been in on this crusade too. Hanauer and Liu are advisers to the journal, and in our Spring 2011 issue Madland wrote the first long piece to appear on middle-class economics.

Obama in his second term has the opportunity to kill trickle-down once and for all but it won't be an easy fight.  But it is the only way to save this economy.

James Joyner on Petraeus

As he often is James Joyner is spot on.

A Who's Who of the US military sex scandal

A Who's Who of the US military sex scandal (via AFP)

The sex scandal that downed CIA chief David Petraeus has ensnared another top US general and is becoming ever more complex as it reverberates around the corridors of power in Washington. Here is a look at the main characters and the tangled web of intrigue that links them: GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS The…

Israel concerned about US support post-election

Israel concerned about US support post-election (via GlobalPost)

Will there be a price for the perception that Netanyahu favored Romney? Abraham Rabinovich JERUSALEM — “Netanyahu gambled,” read a recent headline in the Tel Aviv daily Yediot Achronot. “We will pay.” The article by political commentator Sima Kadmon was referring to Prime Minister Benjamin…

Courts provide Obama a chance to leave his mark

Courts provide Obama a chance to leave his mark (via AFP)

As US President Barack Obama dives into his second term and looks to build his legacy, his appointments of federal judges, especially to the Supreme Court, appear certain to make a lasting impact. Over the next four years, the Democratic president will have the opportunity to pull a largely conservative…

The Cult Of Petraeus

Over at Balloon Juice Bernard Finel explains The Real Sin in the Petraeus Case.  Read the entire thing but here is a snippet:

Petraeus deliberately sought to woo a range of folks, compromising them with access, and using them in ways that blurred lines of professional integrity. Just as it isn’t clear what Broadwell was in this—a grad student? Reporter? Publicist? Officer? Public intellectual?—it isn’t clear what, say, Tom Ricks is. Well, that’s not true… we know that Ricks is an ignorant blowhard, but I mean aside from that. But this blurring of lines, this use of “reporters” and “independent analysts” to promote Petraeus personally and his policy preferences, was a key factor in both the Iraqi and Afghan “surges.”

Bernard points out that Spencer Akerman has the integrity to admit he was taken.
No matter his position or mission Petraeus always surrounded himself with a PR machine to create the cult of Petraeus.

The Romney Legacy

Gary Wills compares Romney to other men who have lost the presidency and the comparison is brutal.  What differentiates Romney from the likes of Goldwater, McGovern, Carter, Kerry and Dukakis?  They didn't sacrifice their principles and disavow earlier convictions to get the nomination.  As a result they continued to play a part on the U.S. and world scene. Unlike Romney:

None of these men engineered a wholesale repudiation of their former principles. Romney, on the contrary, did not let earlier positions grow—enriching, say, his experience of health care legislation to give his approach greater refinement or focus. He just tried to erase the whole matter from his record. He began with a promise to be to the left of Senator Kennedy on gay rights and abortion—and ended up to the right of Strom Thurmond. He decided to hire more expensive lawn care only on the principle of “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals.”

 Now I don't think that Romney actually disavowed earlier convictions because I believe he is a shallow man who had none to begin with.  Willard Mitt Romney's entire political career is a non stop Etch A Sketch moment - he is a political chameleon who took on whatever colors he thought were required at the time.  As a result he won't join the distinguished losers who continued to serve their country and the world.  Like a good sociopath he will:

What public service do we expect from Mitt Romney? He will no doubt return to augmenting his vast and hidden wealth, with no more pesky questions about where around the world it is stashed, or what taxes (if any) he paid, carefully sheltered from the rules his fellow citizens follow.

The country and the world dodged a bullet when this modern day Gordon Gecko was defeated. 

Lest We Forget

As Ron noted below, today is a day set aside to remember veterans, Remembrance Day here is Canada, and a good time to remind ourselves that it seems all too often that those who are most willing to create new veterans also seem to be the most likely to forget about them once they’ve served their purpose as props in photo ops and making the politicians who sent them out feel tough and manly.

General Petraeus affair raises deep personal and public questions

General Petraeus affair raises deep personal and public questions (via The Christian Science Monitor)

The news that shocked Washington this week – the resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus because of an extra-marital affair – leaves a string of unanswered questions. How and why was the FBI led to investigate suspicions that Gen. Petraeus’s personal e-mail account had been hacked? Did someone…

Veterans Day

Happy Veterans Day.  The photo is of my father (right) in Burma circa 1943.  He spent over 3 years in the India/Burma theater.  He won a Bronze Star for going behind enemy lines and repairing and flying out a downed aircraft.

I too am a veteran but no heroics here.  During the height of the Vietnam war I spent nearly 3 years in Munich, Germany.  The picture is of me in 1968.

Good Bye Turd Blossom

Well we won't have W. Mitt Romney to kick around anymore but is it possible that this is the end for Karl Rove as well.  His Crossroads groups spent 300 million dollars of billionaires money and have little to show for it and they are not pleased.

Karl Rove is feeling the heat. The face of the historic $1 billion plan to unseat President Barack Obama and turn the Senate Republican, Rove now finds himself the leading scapegoat for its failure. And he’s scrambling to protect his status as a top GOP money man by convincing disappointed donors to his Crossroads groups that he did the best he could with their $300 million.

Not only did Obama beat Romney 332 to 206 EVs most of the Senate candidates he supported lost.  It looks like the "genius" has lost his Midas touch.

Richard Viguerie, a pioneering direct-mail consultant, called for Republicans to purge from their ranks Rove and Ed Gillespie — who helped found Crossroads and later moved over to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign — as well as Romney advisers Stuart Stevens and Neil Newhouse. “In any logical universe,” he argued, “no one would give a dime to their ineffective super PACs, such as American Crossroads.”
Rick Tyler, a former strategist for the pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC and a top adviser to Todd Akin’s Missouri Senate campaign, called Crossroads’ efforts “a colossal failure,” and asserted, “Rove has too much control over the purse strings.”

Of course Rove is afflicted with the same disease that infected the Romney campaign - he believed his own bull shit.
Karl knows he's in trouble which may account for his meltdown:

The reality of climate change can no longer be ignored

The reality of climate change can no longer be ignored (via GlobalPost)

Commentary: US Generals explain why it is a global problem requiring global solutions. Lieutenant General Daniel Christman, USA (Ret.), Brigadier General Steve Anderson, USA (Ret.) and Brigadier General Stephen Cheney, USMC (Ret.) Last week, Hurricane Sandy put climate change back in the political…

Pro Publica -- Missing War Records

Just in time for Veterans Day.

This report frustrates me so much I can't compose a rational blog commentary about it.

Hold your nose and go read it for yourself.

The Army is required to produce records of its actions in war. Today, most units keep them on computers, and a 4,000-soldier brigade can churn out impressive volumes — roughly 500 gigabytes in a yearlong tour, or the digital equivalent of 445 books, each 200 pages long.
    Field records include reports about fighting, casualties, intelligence activities, prisoners, battle damage and more, complete with pictures and maps. They do not include personnel or medical records, which are kept separately, or "sigact" reports — short daily dispatches on significant activities, some of which were provided to news organizations by WikiLeaks in 2010.
    By mid-2007, amid alarms from historians that combat units weren't turning in records after their deployments, the Army launched an effort to collect and inventory what it could find. Army historians were dispatched on a base-by-base search worldwide. A summary of their findings shows that at least 15 brigades serving in the Iraq war at various times from 2003 to 2008 had no records on hand. The same was true for at least five brigades deployed to Afghanistan.
    Records were so scarce for another 62 units that served in Iraq and 10 in Afghanistan that they were written up as "some records, but not enough to write an adequate Army history." This group included most of the units deployed during the first four years of the Afghanistan war. 

    Military recordkeeping has been the cornerstone of the nation's war history for centuries. From the founding of the republic through the Vietnam War, recordkeeping was a disciplined part of military life, one that ensured that detailed accounts of the fighting were available to historians and veterans alike.
    The records can hold untold stories that can surface decades after a conflict.
    The massacre of civilians by U.S. forces at No Gun Ri, South Korea, in July 1950 came to full national attention only in 1999, nearly 50 years after the fact. Journalists at The Associated Press, working in part with military field records, uncovered the extent of the tragedy. Later, other reporters used the records to show that one purported witness wasn't really present.
    By the Gulf War, however, what had been a long tradition of keeping accurate, comprehensive field records had begun to erode. Old-style paper recordkeeping was giving way to computers. And Army clerks had been reduced in number, leaving officers to take care of records work.
    According to the Army's "Commander's Guide to Operational Records and Data Collection," published in 2009, the problem became evident months after the end of Desert Storm, when vets began reporting fatigue, skin disease, weight loss and other unexplained health conditions.
    "When the Army began investigating this rash of symptoms, its first thought was to try and establish a pattern of those affected: What units were they in? Where were they located? What operations were they engaged in?" the guide says. "The answers provided by investigators were: 'We don't know. We didn't keep our records.'"

I never imagined that after the Vietnam adventure our country could allow itself to do anything that was worse. I was really wrong about that. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars may have resulted in fewer body bags, but the corrosive toll they have taken on the country's character and after effects -- social, medical, economic and diplomatic -- is every bit as bad as those following the Vietnam Conflict, perhaps worse.
And even now, with Washington locked in a game of chicken over taxes and budget matters, still no one calls for the military to be audited.
How crazy is that?

Some Manager

W. Mitt Romney's main selling point was supposed to be he was a successful data driven manager.  We certainly didn't see that in his campaign.  First we have the GOTV project known as ORCA.

The Unmitigated Disaster Known As Project ORCA

Project ORCA is a massive undertaking – the Republican Party’s newest, unprecedented and most technologically advanced plan to win the 2012 presidential election.

That's the Romney campaign's description.  Ace of Spades says:

Pretty much everything in that sentence is false. The "massive undertaking" is true, however. It would take a lot of planning, training and coordination to be done successfully (oh, we'll get to that in a second). This wasn't really the GOP's effort, it was Team Romney's. And perhaps "unprecedented" would fit if we're discussing failure.

And what about that "data driven" part? The campaign may have been data driven but they selected bad data from the conservative echo chamber.

Mitt Romney's campaign got its first hint something was wrong on the afternoon of Election Day, when state campaign workers on the ground began reporting huge turnout in areas favorable to President Obama: northeastern Ohio, northern Virginia, central Florida and Miami-Dade.
Then came the early exit polls that also were favorable to the president.
But it wasn't until the polls closed that concern turned into alarm. They expected North Carolina to be called early. It wasn't. They expected Pennsylvania to be up in the air all night; it went early for the President.
After Ohio went for Mr. Obama, it was over, but senior advisers say no one could process it.
"We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory," said one senior adviser. "I don't think there was one person who saw this coming."

Not unlike the Bush administration in the lead up to the Iraq war the Romney campaign was only considering "data" that told them what they wanted to hear.  The data the labeled as "liberal bias"  turned out to be correct.
Judging from his campaign it would appear that this country dodged a bullet when Romney was defeated.

Summary of Economic Challenges

I found this list of challenges buried in a lengthy post at a blog I have followed for years. I have no idea who the writer is, but the level of insight found here is exceptional.

Some of the most serious political-economic problems of our times are:
• income inequality at the upper bound;
• high cyclical and possibly structural unemployment (and under-employment) with consequential
 • output gaps,
 • diminished consumption, and
 • ballooning counter-cyclical entitlement costs;
 • diminshed monetary velocity and consequential
 • distortionary monetary policy by central banking authorities;
 • household deleveraging;
 • decaying public infrastructure resulting from years of underinvestment; and, finally,
 • sustainable public finance represented by both primary and cumulative government deficits at or near their upper bounds.
    With the exception of the Koch Bros. and a handful of Randian-Bootstrapping others, most would not find fault in the list. What if a single initiative could positively impact all these problems AND if not be wholly mutually-agreeable then be sufficiently less divisive so as to be acceptable?

This is followed by a nearly Utopian description of a proposed remedy which could yield constructive solutions to these challenges by attracting support (real support, with investors putting their money where their principles may be) from the only sources which could afford such outlays with little or not injury to their total assets.

To break the impasse between the means and the will, I propose that we mandate that some reasonable percentage of marginal income be mandatorily "invested" in a non-political non-governmental investment company that funds/invests in infrastructure and infrastructure renewal across the entire capital structure. The resulting debt, equity, leaseholds, revenue therefrom, or claims on resulting or related revenue streams that result will accrue to the contributors. (Mandated investment might for example begin at 5% above $200,000 rising to say 20% above for example $500,000 - on a scale eventually governed by Schiller's suggestion of tying marginal rates to the GINI itself). Importantly, by design, these "investments" would have a broader mandates, longer time-horizons, lower hurdle rates of return - much lower than ludicrous PFI schemes in the UK, but which nonetheless are analysed and vetted as investments and not gifts, or transfers, resulting in an asset - be it a school, a bridge, urban subway system, housing, claims on future road or gasoline taxes, smart-grid, etc. It effectively forces recirculation without outright sequestration, while respecting accounting conventions.

I'm not an economist, but I think the GINI reference refers to the Gini Index which Investopedia defines thus:

The index is named after its developer, Corrado Gini, an Italian statistician of the early 20th century. It is typically expressed as a percentage, so a 20 coefficient would be shown as 20%.
 Don't mistake the measurement of income distribution with the measurement of wealth. A wealthy country and a poor country can have the same Gini coefficient, even if the wealthy country has a relatively equal distribution of affluent residents and the poor country has a relatively equal distribution of cash-strapped residents.

I like that clear distinction between wealth and income.  In this case the focus is on income distribution,  which is conceptually different from comparative levels of income,
"Wealth" refers to total assets or net worth.
Income refers to additional potential assets or adjustments to net worth.

There are numerous examples of individuals or families with very low, even negative net worth coupled with relatively large incomes. Those incomes, properly managed, should be used to accumulate or add to net worth. New college grads with large student loan debts, entertainers or sports figures suddenly in the spotlight and lottery winners come to mind. None of these are likely to be wealthy but their newly higher incomes should shift them into the "wealthy" category. (There is no guarantee, of course. Which gives rise to the old saying that a fool and his money are soon parted.)

I could add more, but this is enough to pique the reader's attention. Take it from here...

Israel braces for Obama 'payback' after re-election

Israel braces for Obama 'payback' after re-election (via AFP)

Israel was bracing on Thursday for chillier ties with Washington, with pundits unanimous that a re-elected President Barack Obama will seek payback for Benjamin Netanyahu's supporting Mitt Romney. "Netanyahu gambled, we will pay," said a headline in top-selling daily Yediot Aharonot, referring to the…

Israel PM turned memorial into poll speech: Hollande

Israel PM turned memorial into poll speech: Hollande (via AFP)

French President Francois Hollande has criticised Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu for transforming a memorial service for Jews slain by an Islamist gunman in southwestern France this year into a campaign meeting. "Netanyahu came to France to campaign and we knew that," Hollande told journalists…

About That "Fiscal Cliff"

Reality check from Jonathan Chait via Maggie Mahar...

Serving the New Majority While Remembering that The “Fiscal Cliff” is Imaginary 
   This is the coalition that President Obama must keep in mind as he faces questions about taxes, entitlements, and health care reform. It will be helpful if he remembers that “the fiscal cliff” is an imaginary construct. The nation will not self-destruct on January 1 if he doesn't “made a deal” with the Republicans.
   As Jonathan Chait recently wrote in New York Magazine: “Here is how it works. Starting in January, there will be a series of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that greatly improve Obama’s bargaining leverage. If those policies stay unchanged for the entire year, they would harm the economy a great deal. But if they only stay in place for a few weeks, or even a few months, the impact would be minor.”
   According to Chait, if Obama just does nothing from now until the end of the year he will have great leverage: “The Bush tax cuts will have disappeared, restoring Clinton-era tax rates and flooding government coffers with revenue to fund its current operations for years to come. The military will be facing dire budget cuts that shake the military-industrial complex to its core.
   “All this can come to pass because, while Obama has spent the last two years surrendering short-term policy concessions, he has been quietly hoarding a fortune in the equivalent of a political trust fund that comes due on the first of the year. At that point,” acccording to Chati, he will reside in a political world he finds at most mildly uncomfortable and the Republicans consider a hellish dystopia. Then he’ll be ready to make a deal.”

[Incidentally, that second link by Chait is quite lengthy. And his prediction was published October 14. It prints out to seven pages and I am still reading it.] 

Ms. Mahar is more circumspect and links to a couple of less dramatic alternatives. I believe it's too soon to know how it will all shake out, but a lot will depend on how quickly the Republican leadership (what's left of it) can get a grip on reality and do whatever arm-twisting it takes to drag the survivors of this election into some measure of reality. The old ways of getting stuff done may be the same, but the people now taking the wheel are not the same drivers. THEY DIDN'T BUILD THAT vehicle but they sure learned how to drive it. And the old ways of deciding which road to take are ovah.

The time has come for those who accused Barack Obama of being a weak leader to eat their words.  If he was not the leader who assembled the most effective political machine of our lifetime, please tell me who did?  Organizational "ground games" such as the one that got him reelected to a second term do not spring into existence by accident. That level of coordination and focus only happens deliberately, with plenty of input and feedback from boots on the ground. Some field workers were paid, but the real spade work was done by volunteers. Crafting an organizational steamroller like the one Obama drives takes a lot more leadership than whipping  a week of Olympic games into shape.

When I contrast that kind of leadership with the Orca-driven bubble which Mitt Romney tried to take with him to the White House it scares the piss out of me.  Even if European monitory and fiscal instability triggers another global financial collapse worse than that of 2007, most ordinary folks will never guess how close we just came to a real catastrophe in this country.  Even now mild-mannered Conservative apologist David Brooks speaks of  "Fiscal cliff. Gridlock. Doom. Recession. Panic. Despair. But let’s not think of that today. The election campaign stunk, but the day after should still be about hope."  Governor Romney's attraction to those, the darkest quarters of his party, is a telling commentary on his judgement and decision-making abilities. The man obviously is not in it for the money. In today's world he is either manipulatively power-hungry or just   plain stupid   naive. Either way he has no business in the Oval Office.

Always a blame game

Romney lost so let the blame game begin.  Conservatives just can't believe they are out of touch with the American people so some are blaming Romney.

Conservative leaders on Wednesday lashed out at Mitt Romney, saying his attempts to paint himself as a centrist and hide his principles cost him the presidency.
They vowed to wage a war to put the Tea Party in charge of the Republican Party by the time it nominates its next presidential candidate.
“The battle to take over the Republican Party begins today and the failed Republican leadership should resign,” said Richard Viguerie, a top activist and chairman of ConservativeHQ.com.
He said the lesson on Romney’s loss to President Obama on Tuesday is that the GOP must “never again” nominate a “a big government established conservative for president.”
Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots said Romney failed to make the kind of strong case for conservatism that would have won the election.

 Of course it's the Tea Party that probably cost the Republicans the Senate for the second election in a row.

Some are blaming Chris Christie because he was well, doing his job.  Doug Mataconis:

It was inevitable that conservative activists and advocates would find someone other than Mitt Romney and the Republican Party to blame for the fact that Mitt Romney lost the election and succeeded in winning only two of the states that Barack Obama had won in 2008. After all, we can’t admit that the Republican Party is slowly but surely losing touch with a large segment of the American public, including its fastest growing minority group. We can’t say that four years of opposing the President at every turn while failing to offer a coherent alternative contributed to the GOP’s problem. Nobody’s going to admit that the fact that GOP still hasn’t come to terms with the legacy of the Bush years, or that it spent the better part of the winter and spring of 2012 alienating women, contributed to its electoral troubles. And, surely, it can’t be because the polls were right all along and the American people actually wanted to re-elect the President. No, a scapegoat must be found and, at least in this initial 24 hours after Election Night, that scapegoat appears to be the Governor of New Jersey.

 If the Republican Party is going to survive it must come to recognize that their problem is their ideology.  It's simply not very popular.  I was watching FOX News today and Shepard Smith left the ranch again.  He was talking to some Republican hack who was talking about not increasing tax rates but eliminating deductions.  Smith went ballistic and said that everyone is in favor of eliminating deductions as long as they are not their deductions.  Once again poor Shep is telling truth to power - something Roger Ailes is not real happy about I would guess.  Republican economics is always based on unicorns and fairy dust.

In 2008 I thought that Obama would be a one term President because there was no way he could fix the economy.  What I didn't count on was the Republicans would only be able to come up with a hapless field to challenge him.  If Mitt Romney is the best the party can come up with the party is in big trouble.

Obama wins re-election, makes history again

Obama wins re-election, makes history again (via AFP)

US President Barack Obama swept to re-election Tuesday, creating history again by defying the undertow of a slow economic recovery and high unemployment to beat Republican foe Mitt Romney. Obama became only the second Democrat to win a second four-year White House term since World War II, when television…

Prediction

OK, here is my prediction:

What to watch for on US election night

What to watch for on US election night (via AFP)

As Americans troop to the polls to decide between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, here's a guide to what to watch for on election night: + POLLS CLOSE: The continental United States covers four times zones from east to west. The first polling stations close at 7:00 pm…

Election Day -- Long Reads to Pass the Time

The next several hours will seem much longer today than usual as we all await the results of the 2012 elections. I have made no secret of the fact that as a Yellow Dog Democrat and Sixties Liberal I am an enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama and look forward to his re-election. But I am posting here a few "long reads" that I hope are not too partisan for anyone wanting to get lost in some serious reading, blocking out the world of electoral politics for a while.

Thoughts on Election day

I am expecting an Obama win, though with the kinds of blatant voter suppression efforts underway in Florida and Ohio, one can never be sure. You could be sure of an overwhelming Democratic victory if the registered voters actually showed up for them instead of the just the likely voters, and it is those missing voters that have me annoyed once again this cycle. Over at LGM, Erik Loomis puts into words something I’ve been feeling for a while myself:

Scott has provided the fundamental case for Obama’s reelection, no matter how disappointed with him you might be. I want to build on that a bit by summarizing a few thoughts I’ve had about the left during the election cycle. Frankly, I’m a bit disappointed in many of those who consider themselves to be on the left. We have created some self-mythology that we are the reality-based community, the ones who have an understanding of history and government, and who take policy seriously and learn from the past and present.

This is obviously not true.

Within left politics in 2012, the big story has not been Occupy or any other social movement. It hasn’t been building on the Wisconsin protests to create long-lasting change. It’s been a discussion of this question: Has Obama been so horrible that we can’t vote for him?

I’m really disappointed in the left in this conversation.

Disappointed may not be strong enough a word in my case. Particularly in the case of Wisconsin recall efforts, or even the Chicago teachers strike, I looked to see who was banging the drums for the left to get out and take action, to raise funds, to do really anything to support the workers and fight back against the forces working to further undermine workers’ rights. I looked particularly at those whose previous complaints about Obama and the Democrats included exclamations that progressives should work on building their own independent power structures and movement to force the conversation in their direction. And what I saw was a wasteland.

No posts, no extortions to assist the efforts in Wisconsin and elsewhere, nothing at all in many cases. Their focus remained on how much a disappointment Obama has been and never mind the people fighting for their future at the state level. The only blogs and bloggers I saw doing what they could to drum up support for those efforts were from the ones derisively dismissed as ‘Obots’ by the folks who feel they’re too good to vote for Obama today.

Disappointment really doesn’t cover my feelings there.

I still hope Obama wins, and the Dems gain overall, since four more years of progressive whining beats the hell out of the horrors a Romney/Ryan/Tea Party Congress would bring, and besides, most of that whining can be discounted by the (in)actions of its authors.

If you’re interested in real change, read the rest of Erik’s post linked above, and the one he links to. The history is there. The path to real change is there. Maybe it will happen, but given what I’ve seen the last year or so, I’m not as optimistic as I once was.

Israel's Netanyahu ordered Iran strike in 2010

Israel's Netanyahu ordered Iran strike in 2010: TV (via AFP)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak in 2010 ordered the army to prepare an attack against Iranian nuclear installations, though the order was later rescinded, Israeli television said Sunday. According to private television Channel 2, the order was not implemented…

OK, it's in our gene pool

So the United States has invaded quite a few countries in it's short history.  So why do we do that?  Perhaps we need to look no further than our ancestral gene pool.

Britain has invaded all but 22 countries in the world in its long and colourful history, new research has found.

Every schoolboy used to know that at the height of the empire, almost a quarter of the atlas was coloured pink, showing the extent of British rule.
But that oft recited fact dramatically understates the remarkable global reach achieved by this country.
A new study has found that at various times the British have invaded almost 90 per cent of the countries around the globe.
The analysis of the histories of the almost 200 countries in the world found only 22 which have never experienced an invasion by the British.
Among this select group of nations are far-off destinations such as Guatemala, Tajikistan and the Marshall Islands, as well some slightly closer to home, such as Luxembourg.

So the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Ten states will decide White House race

Ten states will decide White House race (via AFP)

The White House race has narrowed to a fight over less than 10 states ahead of Tuesday's tight election between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Obama's strategy, with two days of campaigning to go, is to solidify his last line of defense in the industrial midwest, and to try to pluck away several…

Romney VS Nature

via Balloon Juice

This says it all!

How do you spell hypocrisy?  REPUBLICAN.
via Sick of the Slant  

A Bust for Hitchens?

I had a few kind things to say about Christopher Hitchens when he died, mostly in relation to how he faced the death he knew was coming, but there is little else about the man I can see worth memorializing, so it is nice to see people making an issue out of this attempt to erect a statue of some sort for the man.

LABOUR councillors are blocking plans to honour campaigning journalist Christopher Hitchens with a statue, with one of them branding the late writer as a “pro-war Islamophobe”.

A trail of emails leaked to the New Journal show a sharp exchange between the British Humanist Association (BHA), which wants the statue to be erected in Red Lion Square, Holborn, and politicians representing the ward.

I am also, as one of the councillors quoted says, unsure about Hitchens being considered one of the world’s great minds. He was good at riling people up, but particularly when it came to the Iraq War, his level of intellectual honesty dropped into the sub-basement. And while his writings about religion weren’t always that bad, they also weren’t anything I would generally recommend either. Even when I agreed with his positions, his tone and phrasing tended to repulse me, and I can’t say that he ever said anything others hadn’t said before or better. He was at best a muckraker, and I don’t think that is enough on its own to be memorialized.

Still, I can’t help but laugh at this defense of Hitchens Iraq War views by the BHA’s digital strategist:

Mr Ollington added: “Hitch wasn’t ‘pro-war’. Supporting a war doesn’t make someone pro-war.

"Many people supported WW2 but that doesn’t make them pro-war.

If ever anyone needed further proof that being an atheist doesn’t by itself lead to rational thinking in any other area, that statement can act as exhibit A. Hitchens’ full-throated cheerleading of the invasion, his venomous attacks at those who cautioned against the attack due to the possible consequences, and his continued defense of the war long past the point every other rational individual had seen that those consequences were far, far worse than the status quo had ever been makes him the very definition of “pro-war”. Anyone who says otherwise is lying, to themselves as well as everyone else.

Cool Pictures and a lot of Science

The Curiosity Mars Rover continues to do science and take pictures, even of itself.  In addition to taking pictures the science lab was busy analyzing martian rocks.

The specific sample for CheMin's first analysis was soil Curiosity scooped up at a patch of dust and sand that the team named Rocknest. The sample was processed through a sieve to exclude particles larger than 0.006 inch (150 micrometers), roughly the width of a human hair. The sample has at least two components: dust distributed globally in dust storms and fine sand originating more locally. Unlike conglomerate rocks Curiosity investigated a few weeks ago, which are several billion years old and indicative of flowing water, the soil material CheMin has analyzed is more representative of modern processes on Mars.
"Much of Mars is covered with dust, and we had an incomplete understanding of its mineralogy," said David Bish, CheMin co-investigator with Indiana University in Bloomington. "We now know it is mineralogically similar to basaltic material, with significant amounts of feldspar, pyroxene and olivine, which was not unexpected. Roughly half the soil is non-crystalline material, such as volcanic glass or products from weathering of the glass. "
Bish said, "So far, the materials Curiosity has analyzed are consistent with our initial ideas of the deposits in Gale Crater recording a transition through time from a wet to dry environment. The ancient rocks, such as the conglomerates, suggest flowing water, while the minerals in the younger soil are consistent with limited interaction with water."

They also analyzed the very thin Martian atmosphere.

A set of instruments aboard the rover has ingested and analyzed samples of the atmosphere collected near the "Rocknest" site in Gale Crater where the rover is stopped for research. Findings from the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments suggest that loss of a fraction of the atmosphere, resulting from a physical process favoring retention of heavier isotopes of certain elements, has been a significant factor in the evolution of the planet. Isotopes are variants of the same element with different atomic weights.
Initial SAM results show an increase of five percent in heavier isotopes of carbon in the atmospheric carbon dioxide compared to estimates of the isotopic ratios present when Mars formed. These enriched ratios of heavier isotopes to lighter ones suggest the top of the atmosphere may have been lost to interplanetary space. Losses at the top of the atmosphere would deplete lighter isotopes. Isotopes of argon also show enrichment of the heavy isotope, matching previous estimates of atmosphere composition derived from studies of Martian meteorites on Earth.
Scientists theorize that in Mars' distant past its environment may have been quite different, with persistent water and a thicker atmosphere. NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, mission will investigate possible losses from the upper atmosphere when it arrives at Mars in 2014.

Sandy --First Person Report from Red Hook, NYC

Via Twitter, Occupy Sandy and FB we have this on site account.

I've got some feelings right now. So this is gonna be long.
I've been trying out all kinds of volunteering and relief work since the hurricane hit. Until today, nothing I'd done felt like much of anything, except wasted time.
I spent today in Red Hook again, this time with the ever lovely Rachael. I got to see Anna and Quai and touch in with my wonderful radical social work community. I didn't do any more FEMA handouts this time, but stuck to the CBO side of things (better place for me, for sure).
We went to a community center, where there was a huge gym overflowing with donations. Tons of tables set up with supplies, canned goods, blankets, clothes, water, an overflow of everything. We connected with some strangers who became allies during the day. Rachael was so intentional about talking with them about some of the more problematic interactions we witnessed.
 Because throughout the whole day, there were way too many racial microaggressions from the predominantly white volunteers toward people of color coming from the community. The most common was the assumption that people of color from the community weren't volunteers, but trying to cut in line or sneak extra food or supplies, and an underlying tone that poor folks needed to be controlled or else total chaos would ensue. (This was a foreshadowing of the police attitude later on.)
 People were waiting in the line to get supplies and food for a long ass time. And when I say long ass time, I mean like 4+ hours. In the cold, with their kids, with their grandparents using walkers. Folks got antsy, as everyone does when waiting in a long, cold lines. Rachael and I took out water bottles for people, laughing and chatting with them in line while they waited. People were SO NICE and SO PATIENT. When we'd run out of water and tell them we'd be right back everyone was cool with it and just grateful to be getting something while they waited. And so many people in line asked how they could sign up to come back later and volunteer. People wanted to help each other.
Then we started bringing out some sandwiches and snacks for people at the same time. One guy said it was like at those fancy restaurants where they give you coffee while you wait in line. After everything folks have been through seems like they should treated like royalty. Some other volunteers started giving out stuff in the line too, we all did this for a while, and then the police showed up.
Apparently we weren't allowed to distribute ANYTHING on the street. How come? People might "get out of control." Because feeding people starts riots, apparently. Rachael tried talking to one of the officers, explaining how food and water was helping people stay chill, but orders were orders or some shit. So then we were just taking food&water out on the DL and telling people to keep it quiet, and make sure that kids and the elderly got what they needed first. And everybody shared with each other and no one ever complained when we ran out of stuff, even though each time we had to sneak stuff out around the cops so it took forever.
 Think about that. We had to SNEAK OUT DONATIONS in order to give them to people. And there was no issue of scarcity. I'm not sure it would even have been possible to run out of supplies. The Red Cross dropped off truckloads of stuff and the donations were still flowing in when we left at 4.
 What keeps running through my head is that this is how we end up recreating the same oppressive systems even when we are "helping," even when we want to do good. We don't trust people to share, we make assumptions about who is trustworthy, who has something to offer, who is valuable. It isn't just the cops doing this, since we so quickly end up policing each other without even realizing it. And today, like all days, these assumptions are tied up with race and class. It breaks my heart right open.
 So, feelings. I had a lot of them. And I'm going back tomorrow to have some more.

Hillary's Future?

Hillary Clinton: diplomat or future head of state? (via AFP)

As Hillary Clinton prepares to step down as America's top diplomat, no one quite believes she and husband Bill will disappear from the US political scene they have dominated for some two decades. Despite questions over whether the secretary of state was to blame for security lapses before September…

Assorted Links

My Twitter feed and morning email have produced more good links than I can follow. All of these caught my attention this morning and I can't bear to toss them aside and keep surfing.
They have little in common but I need to stash them some place in case they are needed later. Like Halloween candle, take what you want...