A 2nd Bill Of Rights - FDR

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

 

Among these are:

1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation
2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation
3. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living
4. The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad
5. The right of every family to a decent home
6. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health
7. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment
8. The right to a good education

From a post at Democratic Underground.

Go ahead and fix it...

...just be sure ya don't change anything.

The Wal-Mart Effect

Longer than the average attention span, but greatly informative. Stay with it.

The Prediction

Like the man said: if you eliminate what's not possible, what remains must be the truth.

The Prediction @ Yahoo! Video

Faith vs Religion

Conservative vs Liberal

A lively discussion is going on over at Balloon Juice about the 'definitions' of Conservative and Liberal as those descriptors are perceived today.

For the last several years, I've tho't things were changing rather dramatically, and that the old reliable labels were becoming inadequate.  A couple of examples:

1. If you think you have the right to own any weapon you want and to do whatever you want with it, then that's a pretty liberal interpretation of the 2nd amendment.
2. If you want to make it illegal 'to desecrate the flag', then you're in favor of greatly expanding the government's authority; and so you're not a conservative.
3. If you want to limit US involvement in armed conflict; &/or you want to limit the capacity of the government to exert deadly force then you're neither conservative nor liberal - you're just kinda normal.

Gimme some more.

Cred Check

We should remind ourselves once in a while just how stupid and wrong our crystal-gazing prognostications can look after some time has passed (and thus be a little cautious about what we're predicting will happen).   I guess what irritates me the most is that some of these guys insist we take them seriously even after they've been proven wrong time and again.

"So now we stand at an epochal moment. The debate is over. The case has gone to the jury, and the jury is history. Events will soon reveal who was right, Bush or Chirac ... But there are two nations whose destinies hang in the balance. The first, of course, is Iraq. Will Iraqis enjoy freedom, more of the same tyranny, or a new kind of tyranny? The second is the United States. If the effort to oust Saddam fails, we will be back in the 1970s. We will live in a nation crippled by self-doubt. If we succeed, we will be a nation infused with confidence. We will have done a great thing for the world, and other great things will await," -David Brooks, March 17, 2003 - from a Glenn Greenwald piece at salon.com

We've Got 'Em Surrounded

The news coming out of Pittsburgh about catching Iran redhanded; together with Obama's decision to nix the deployment of missle defense systems in Poland and Czecho (which apparently brought Russia over to our side), finally gives us a nice clear picture of movement toward some real success in foreign policy.  And I'm thinking this goes way beyond Iran.  It sure looks like we've got Iran kinda bottled up now, but there's a lot more to it.

ie: We're in Afghanistan to help stabilize Pakistan.  We need to keep Pakistan stable because we need to help India stay cool.  We need Afghanistan, Pakistan and India (along with all the Fucked-Up-istans of the old USSR), plus Georgia and Russia; plus Japan and S Korea because...wait for it...that gives us a near-perfect circle around China.

I don't really know jackshit about foreign policy, but at least I know that it's not simple and it's not very often about common sense, and it's not about this endless crap of 'My-Dick's-Bigger-n-Your-Dick'.

Isolating the bad actors can certainly present other dangers, but this all looks pretty positive.  I wonder how much credit Hillary will get for any of this.

Non-Reporting

John Amato, over at Crooks and Liars, has this interesting post.

The New Face...

...of "The War On Terrorism" - or whatever we're calling it now.

From a story in NYT:
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, senior government officials have announced dozens of terrorism cases that on closer examination seemed to diminish as legitimate threats. The accumulating evidence against a Denver airport shuttle driver suggests he may be different, with some investigators calling his case the most serious in years.
Documents filed in Brooklyn against the driver, Najibullah Zazi, contend he bought chemicals needed to build a bomb — hydrogen peroxide, acetone and hydrochloric acid — and in doing so, Mr. Zazi took a critical step made by few other terrorism suspects.
If government allegations are to be believed, Mr. Zazi, a legal immigrant from Afghanistan, had carefully prepared for a terrorist attack. He attended a Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, received training in explosives and stored in his laptop computer nine pages of instructions for making bombs from the same kind of chemicals he had bought.

And this one from Dallas Morning News:
A 19-year-old Jordanian citizen is expected to make an appearance before a federal magistrate in Dallas this morning after authorities accused him of attempting to blow up a downtown Dallas skyscraper.
Hosam Maher Husein Smadi was arrested Thursday after he parked a vehicle laden with government-supplied fake explosives in the underground parking garage of Fountain Place, a 60-story tower in the 1400 block of Ross Avenue at North Field Street, authorities said.

Without fanfare - without the breathless Jack Bauer bullshit we always got from Cheney and Ashcroft, et al - they're just out there doin' the job. They're following the leads and looking for the bad guys; and they're not using it to scare the shit outa people.

There may still be some concern over certain tactics used by law enforcement (some of it looks a lot like entrapment), but I can't help thinking we're starting to regain our composure.

Healthcare Debate

Death Panels and Rationing? That's what we have now under "the free market" system - which isn't really free-market at all, but that's a different rant. The point is that we've evolved a 3-tier system that works well for the top 8 or 10% of us; is so-so for the next 25 or 30%; and is just fuckin' awful for everybody else.

Check out this NYT piece.  It looks like more evidence that we're killing ourselves by trying to force healthcare into the Standard Business Model.

Glenn Beck - Weasel Extraordinaire

Know Your Local Hate Group

Let's be careful out there.

From the Southern Poverty Law Center: The Hate Group Map.

Nick's New Thingie

The latest addition to the family. Arrived today - ain't it purty?

Contradiction

Watch & listen closely and you'll understand why Bill O'Reilly (et al) will ultimately fail. It's about contradiction. ie: contradiction exists, but it can't prevail.

Billo insists that we must admire the two young kids for their impulse to root out corruption - because of course, corruption is against the law - but then he turns right around and dismisses the fact that the two young kids may have broken Maryland's law against recording private conversations by saying, "Who cares about Maryland's law?".

Process matters.

Glenn Beck - The Early Years

I guess some things just never change.

Cluster Fox

And this is your corporate media on drugs.  Any questions?

New Meaning

From a piece linked to by both Andrew Sullivan and Balloon Juice:


beck v. trans. beck-ing, beck-ed, to be baselessly attacked by an idiot with a megaphone, then have those accusations alter your life for the worse because it’s politically expedient for your spineless superiors to demote or fire you.

Oops

I get such a kick outa things like this post at Balloon Juice.

There's all kinds of stuff rollin' around in my head because of this ACORN kerfuffle.  It seems the public is pissed off (whether you think it's genuine or manufactured, it's still there). So politicians feel the need to beat up on somebody in response to it.  They look around for a convenient scapegoat; they put together some piece of shit Resolution or an actual Law; they push it thru without really thinking it thru; and then they get to believe they're all heroes for having solved some big problem - except that the action usually proves the Rule of Unintended Consequences, and almost always has a lot more to do with getting reelected than it does with anything else.

I dunno - I guess it's just that we've personalized and demystified government to the point where we think any average yahoo can do it - we've demanded mediocrity, so that's what we've got. 

Uh oh ("10 years of hell")

Per the good folks at Real News: hang onto your hats - it could be a bumpy ride.

I've felt for a while now that there's a couple of Real Estate shoes yet to drop.  Multi-Family Residential is one, and Commercial is another, but the really big one is that the system itself is teetering.  We have a very weak safety net of the kind that's needed to keep pumping some dollars into the economy even when people are outa work.  What makes unemployment so dangerous is that it smacks us twice: first, because people who aren't working a regular job aren't paying taxes; and second, they aren't buying anything but the bare necessities so there's less money circulating.

There's also the small matter of not fixing the problems that got us into this mess.  One of the take-aways from the video is that the big banking interests have dramatically increased their lobbying budgets.  I think we can expect long and rancorous fights over regulations - which will prob'ly shape the midterm elections next year. 

We'll see if Barney Frank and Chris Dodd manage to redeem themselves (Phil Gramm didn't do it all by himself, y'know).