"Kkkarl writes the lies. I read 'em off the telemaprompter - an' I been practicirizin!!" - GWB - from an early draft of the State of the Union address
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
UNBELIEVABLE!!
Hey Folks!!
Bush is such a scumbag!!
At my first chance I'll elaborate. I'm a little "under the weather" at the moment, but the Uke Man will bounce back.
Drive Bush out!!!!
- Uke Man
Bush is such a scumbag!!
At my first chance I'll elaborate. I'm a little "under the weather" at the moment, but the Uke Man will bounce back.
Drive Bush out!!!!
- Uke Man
TODAY/TONIGHT January 31 Drown out / Drive out the Bush Administration
Hey Folks!!
Today is a BIG day & evening!!
Tell Bush to shut up and stand down!!
Join with THE WORLD CAN'T WAIT !! and
drown Bush out!
Here’s what Gore Vidal said :
"One way that a majority of citizens can help open the road back to Crawford is by heeding the call of a group called the World Can’t Wait (see their website, worldcantwait.org).
They believe that the agenda for 2006 must not be set by the Bush gang but by the people taking independent mass political action.On Jan. 31, the night of Bush’s next State of the Union address, they have called for people in large cities and small towns all across the country to join in noisy rallies to make the demand that “Bush Step Down” the message of the day. At 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, just as Bush starts to speak, people can make a joyful noise and figuratively drown out his address. Then on the following Saturday, Feb. 4, converge in front of the White House with the same message: Please step down and take your program with you.
Here’s what’s happening locally:
BUSH LIED; BUSH SPIED;
BUSH STEP DOWN!
Columbus, OHIO will step up and participate in a nationwide protest on Tuesday, January 31st, beginning at 11:00 AM. The DAY OF ACTION will begin at the OHIO STATEHOUSE, and from there people will be encouraged to walk to various downtown locations in unison, and present a clear message to our elected officials, and the community at large.
Bring noisemakers, signs, and friends. NO WORK, NO SCHOOL, NO SHOPPING!!!
SCHEDULE FOR TUESDAY JANUARY 31, 2006:11:00AM-OHIO .STATEHOUSE (High St,) 11:45 AM- COLUMBUS DISPATCH (Third St.)
12:15 PM –THE FEDERAL BUILDING. (High and Spring Sts.) 12:45 PM - RECRUTMENT CENTER (On Long St.)1:00 PM - REPUBLICAN HEADQUARTERS (Rich St.)
2:00PM - FLYER AT THE STATEHOUSE (High St.)
Evening events will take place at Victorian's Midnight Cafe, at
251 Neil Ave. (5th and Neil). Gather together as we drowned out George Bush's State of the Union address. We encourage others to get involved in raising awareness in their own communities. STAND-UP AND FIGHT BACK!
Tuesday January 31, 2006 -The People's State of the Union Address. Join local activists, musicians, speakers, and concerned citizens, SPEAK - OUT!
The Ukulele Man,Victoria Parks, Connie Harris provide the music - Activities start at 7:00 pm.
The World Cant Wait, DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME!!!
Saturday February 4, 2006
Protest in Washington, D.C.
There are buses leaving from Cleveland. For more info contact:
http://www.worldcantwait.com/
Today is a BIG day & evening!!
Tell Bush to shut up and stand down!!
Join with THE WORLD CAN'T WAIT !! and
drown Bush out!
Here’s what Gore Vidal said :
"One way that a majority of citizens can help open the road back to Crawford is by heeding the call of a group called the World Can’t Wait (see their website, worldcantwait.org).
They believe that the agenda for 2006 must not be set by the Bush gang but by the people taking independent mass political action.On Jan. 31, the night of Bush’s next State of the Union address, they have called for people in large cities and small towns all across the country to join in noisy rallies to make the demand that “Bush Step Down” the message of the day. At 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, just as Bush starts to speak, people can make a joyful noise and figuratively drown out his address. Then on the following Saturday, Feb. 4, converge in front of the White House with the same message: Please step down and take your program with you.
Here’s what’s happening locally:
BUSH LIED; BUSH SPIED;
BUSH STEP DOWN!
Columbus, OHIO will step up and participate in a nationwide protest on Tuesday, January 31st, beginning at 11:00 AM. The DAY OF ACTION will begin at the OHIO STATEHOUSE, and from there people will be encouraged to walk to various downtown locations in unison, and present a clear message to our elected officials, and the community at large.
Bring noisemakers, signs, and friends. NO WORK, NO SCHOOL, NO SHOPPING!!!
SCHEDULE FOR TUESDAY JANUARY 31, 2006:11:00AM-OHIO .STATEHOUSE (High St,) 11:45 AM- COLUMBUS DISPATCH (Third St.)
12:15 PM –THE FEDERAL BUILDING. (High and Spring Sts.) 12:45 PM - RECRUTMENT CENTER (On Long St.)1:00 PM - REPUBLICAN HEADQUARTERS (Rich St.)
2:00PM - FLYER AT THE STATEHOUSE (High St.)
Evening events will take place at Victorian's Midnight Cafe, at
251 Neil Ave. (5th and Neil). Gather together as we drowned out George Bush's State of the Union address. We encourage others to get involved in raising awareness in their own communities. STAND-UP AND FIGHT BACK!
Tuesday January 31, 2006 -The People's State of the Union Address. Join local activists, musicians, speakers, and concerned citizens, SPEAK - OUT!
The Ukulele Man,Victoria Parks, Connie Harris provide the music - Activities start at 7:00 pm.
The World Cant Wait, DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME!!!
Saturday February 4, 2006
Protest in Washington, D.C.
There are buses leaving from Cleveland. For more info contact:
http://www.worldcantwait.com/
Monday, January 30, 2006
Yeah, the economy's great and profits are up - so fuck the worker
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE) on Monday said it would cut up to 8,000 more jobs, or 8 percent of its work force, through 2008 as the food company, hammered by higher commodity costs and sluggish sales volume, looks to save more money.
The announcement came as the maker of Oreo cookies, Jell-O gelatin and a host of other well-known brands, posted a 23 percent increase in net income.
Kraft, like many packaged food companies, has been struggling with a range of commodity cost increases in recent years and is still being pressured by high fuel and packaging costs.
The company posted a profit of $773 million, or 46 cents a share, for the fourth quarter, compared with $628 million, or 37 cents a share, a year earlier.
The announcement came as the maker of Oreo cookies, Jell-O gelatin and a host of other well-known brands, posted a 23 percent increase in net income.
Kraft, like many packaged food companies, has been struggling with a range of commodity cost increases in recent years and is still being pressured by high fuel and packaging costs.
The company posted a profit of $773 million, or 46 cents a share, for the fourth quarter, compared with $628 million, or 37 cents a share, a year earlier.
Twain
Hey Folks,
I’ve been re-reading Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court and sharing pieces of Twain’s political commentary with you here (this is the 24th entry) .
His insights remain pertinent to this day. We haven’t changed much from Twain’s day – or from King Arthur’s, for that matter.
Chapter 40 - “Three Years Later” - Having vanquished night-errantry, the Yankee steps out of hiding.
“I no longer felt obliged to work in secret. So, the very next day I exposed my hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestine factories and work-shops to an astonished world.”
He knew the knights would realize he’d been bluffing in the lists; so he repeated the challenge:
“I said, name the day, and I would take fifty assistants and stand up against the massed chivalry of the whole earth and destroy it.
I was not bluffing, this time. I meant what I said; I could do what I promised. . . this was a plain case of ‘put up or shut up.’ They were wise, and did the latter. In all the next three years they gave me no trouble worth mentioning.”
- Uke Man
I’ve been re-reading Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court and sharing pieces of Twain’s political commentary with you here (this is the 24th entry) .
His insights remain pertinent to this day. We haven’t changed much from Twain’s day – or from King Arthur’s, for that matter.
Chapter 40 - “Three Years Later” - Having vanquished night-errantry, the Yankee steps out of hiding.
“I no longer felt obliged to work in secret. So, the very next day I exposed my hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestine factories and work-shops to an astonished world.”
He knew the knights would realize he’d been bluffing in the lists; so he repeated the challenge:
“I said, name the day, and I would take fifty assistants and stand up against the massed chivalry of the whole earth and destroy it.
I was not bluffing, this time. I meant what I said; I could do what I promised. . . this was a plain case of ‘put up or shut up.’ They were wise, and did the latter. In all the next three years they gave me no trouble worth mentioning.”
- Uke Man
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Ted Lewis - the Museum's unique architecture
Hey Folks!
“Is Everybody Happy ???”
This is the 6th installment of a continuing tribute to the remarkable Ted Lewis.
The Ted Lewis Museum is housed in the one remaining building to ever stand “on the Circle.” Circleville was originally founded around a circular “Indian mound” - hence the name.
At some point, foreshadowing the provincial “wisdom” of today’s civic leaders, the town’s ginks and swells decided to “get with it” and re-built the town - its name notwithstanding - as a square. It’s been square (believe me) ever since – except for Ted Lewis and his museum – notice the distinctive, non-square angles observable from the rear of the building (the result of being oriented to a circle, which dictated "odd," pie-shaped lots).
The Ted Lewis Museum is in Circleville Ohio, at 133 W. Main St., just off State Route 23. It is open Fridays and Saturdays 1:00-5:00 P.M. and by appointment. Call 740-477-3630 for details.
- Uke Man
“Is Everybody Happy ???”
This is the 6th installment of a continuing tribute to the remarkable Ted Lewis.
The Ted Lewis Museum is housed in the one remaining building to ever stand “on the Circle.” Circleville was originally founded around a circular “Indian mound” - hence the name.
At some point, foreshadowing the provincial “wisdom” of today’s civic leaders, the town’s ginks and swells decided to “get with it” and re-built the town - its name notwithstanding - as a square. It’s been square (believe me) ever since – except for Ted Lewis and his museum – notice the distinctive, non-square angles observable from the rear of the building (the result of being oriented to a circle, which dictated "odd," pie-shaped lots).
The Ted Lewis Museum is in Circleville Ohio, at 133 W. Main St., just off State Route 23. It is open Fridays and Saturdays 1:00-5:00 P.M. and by appointment. Call 740-477-3630 for details.
- Uke Man
Faith-based bumper sticker: "Get pregnant whether you want to or not - Your grandmother did!"
Religious Groups Get Chunk of AIDS Money
By RITA BEAMISH, Associated Press (excerpts)
President Bush's $15 billion effort to fight AIDS has handed out nearly one-quarter of its grants to religious groups, and officials are aggressively pursuing new church partners that often emphasize disease prevention through abstinence and fidelity over condom use.
. . .
Conservative Christian allies of the president are pressing the U.S. foreign aid agency to give fewer dollars to groups that distribute condoms or work with prostitutes.
. . .
Among those winning grants were:
_Samaritan's Purse, which is run by [Billy] Graham's son, Franklin. It says its mission is "meeting critical needs of victims of war, poverty, famine, disease and natural disaster while sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ."
_Catholic Relief Services. It was awarded $6.2 million to teach abstinence and fidelity in three countries;
.
_World Relief, founded by the National Association of Evangelicals. It won $9.7 million for abstinence work in four countries.
* * *
Yeah!! That'll work !! Hell, if God can control who wins every football game, he ought to be able to keep a few babies out of the end zone. Don't ya think?
- Uke Man
By RITA BEAMISH, Associated Press (excerpts)
President Bush's $15 billion effort to fight AIDS has handed out nearly one-quarter of its grants to religious groups, and officials are aggressively pursuing new church partners that often emphasize disease prevention through abstinence and fidelity over condom use.
. . .
Conservative Christian allies of the president are pressing the U.S. foreign aid agency to give fewer dollars to groups that distribute condoms or work with prostitutes.
. . .
Among those winning grants were:
_Samaritan's Purse, which is run by [Billy] Graham's son, Franklin. It says its mission is "meeting critical needs of victims of war, poverty, famine, disease and natural disaster while sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ."
_Catholic Relief Services. It was awarded $6.2 million to teach abstinence and fidelity in three countries;
.
_World Relief, founded by the National Association of Evangelicals. It won $9.7 million for abstinence work in four countries.
* * *
Yeah!! That'll work !! Hell, if God can control who wins every football game, he ought to be able to keep a few babies out of the end zone. Don't ya think?
- Uke Man
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Hey Folks!!
The BEST GUY IN THE WORLD, Mr. Bob Hite
(the extraordinary key-board/accordion/slide-whistle Prodigal Son)
now owns the BEST VIDEO STORE IN THE WORLD!!
Grandview Video !!!
The BEST GUY IN THE WORLD, Mr. Bob Hite
(the extraordinary key-board/accordion/slide-whistle Prodigal Son)
now owns the BEST VIDEO STORE IN THE WORLD!!
Grandview Video !!!
It's in the strip mall - West 5th Ave. at Northwest Blvd.
Check it out!! Stop by!!! I do !!! You’ll be glad you did!!!
And tell Bob, “Uke Man” sent ya!!!
- Uke Man
Friday, January 27, 2006
Challenge Assumptions # 6
Hey Folks,
Columnist Kathleen Parker is at it again. This time she isn't as bad as usual; she does give a little hell to Wal-Mart - probably because her information comes from a book written by "a friend and former editor" (The Wal-Mart Effect - by Charles Fishman).
But she does show her ignorance or ill-advised assumptions by writing: "Fishman argues that critics are wrong when they say that Wal-Mart puts little people out of business. We (consumers) put little people out of business, he says. We vote with our wallets, and we're the ones who choose Wal-Mart over local stores. Wal-Mart, in that sense, is the ultimate model of democracy."
Well, if people who are hard-pressed by low-paying jobs, incredible medical bills, and – as W might say - “putting food and clothes on their families” feel it necessary to buy sweatshop items at Wal-Mart to save a buck, it seems like a pretty big stretch to assume they are VOTING for anything, much less for the elimination of long-standing local enterprises run by their friends or neighbors!
They are unable to vote against their situation – there are few if any candidates standing up for them; they have few options. Suggesting that folks are voting for Wal-Mart by spending their degraded resources there is like calling the company store of the Peabody Coal Co.the ultimate model of miners’ democratic choice.
Parker writes on:
“Wal-Mart not only changes the way we buy, but the way we think,” Fishman says. If Wal-Mart charges $5 per pound for salmon, then shoppers wonder why a restaurant charges $15. We expect salmon to cost only $5. Or a microwave to cost only $39. The Wal-Mart effect first changes our expectations, then changes the quality of merchandise, which is cheap, because it isn’t always well- or ethically made.
Take salmon. Wal-Mart, which buys all its salmon from Chile, sells more than anyone else in the country and undersells all other retailers by at least $2 per pound. That’s a lot of market power, which prompts Fishman to ask, "Does it matter that salmon for $4.84 a pound leaves a layer of toxic sludge on the ocean bottoms of the Pacific fjords of southern Chile? "
Salmon in Chile are raised in packed underwater pens – as many as 1 million fish per farm – and fed prophylactic antibiotics to prevent disease. Here’s a fact you’d rather not know: A million salmon produce the same amount of waste as 65,000 people. Combine that waste with unconsumed food and antibiotic residue, and you’ve got a toxic seabed.
Does it matter?
Only if consumers say it does, says Fishman. Wal-Mart listens to ‘voters.’ If shoppers say they won’t buy salmon until Wal-Mart insists on higher standards from suppliers, then Wal-Mart will make those demands. Incentive is the engine that drives the company that promises low prices – ‘always.’ “
Well, have YOU ever bought salmon? Anywhere? If so, has the place you bought it ever offered information as to what it was being offered for elsewhere, by other stores? Much less, has it offered you information as to the environmental, sociological, or any other sort of ramifications following from its price per pound?
If not, then how could you be said to be “voting” on anything? Your actions might have some clearly demonstrable effect, but indicting YOU as a result of that effect is as sensible as arresting insane people for crimes of which they are unaware.
The answer to Parker’s question is pretty simple: "No, it DOESN’T matter." No one here has heard of all that shit at the bottom of a deep sea off the coast of a country far, far away, where they speak some “stupid” language we can’t understand. And now that Parker has mentioned it, we still don’t care. That’s way too far removed from me and from my taking care of mine while working more for less to give it much thought. No, the decision is a foregone conclusion. It DOESN’T matter!!!
The people who “vote” by spending what little money they are able to earn at the place that has the lowest prices - because they screw their workers harder than anyone else in the world - are coerced into their actions. Their behavior is all that anyone could rationally expect; so when Parker asks, “What kind of country are we going to be?” it is a rhetorical question, answered before it is asked; if, indeed, Parker is correct in asserting that “It is a worthy question that consumers will have to answer. “
Officially, in a democracy VOTERS “answer.” If in reality consumers, rather than elected and informed representatives, “answer,” the result has been determined for some time. We'll get by in the short term, but in the long run, we're fucked!
Big time.
Challenge assumptions!
- Uke Man
Columnist Kathleen Parker is at it again. This time she isn't as bad as usual; she does give a little hell to Wal-Mart - probably because her information comes from a book written by "a friend and former editor" (The Wal-Mart Effect - by Charles Fishman).
But she does show her ignorance or ill-advised assumptions by writing: "Fishman argues that critics are wrong when they say that Wal-Mart puts little people out of business. We (consumers) put little people out of business, he says. We vote with our wallets, and we're the ones who choose Wal-Mart over local stores. Wal-Mart, in that sense, is the ultimate model of democracy."
Well, if people who are hard-pressed by low-paying jobs, incredible medical bills, and – as W might say - “putting food and clothes on their families” feel it necessary to buy sweatshop items at Wal-Mart to save a buck, it seems like a pretty big stretch to assume they are VOTING for anything, much less for the elimination of long-standing local enterprises run by their friends or neighbors!
They are unable to vote against their situation – there are few if any candidates standing up for them; they have few options. Suggesting that folks are voting for Wal-Mart by spending their degraded resources there is like calling the company store of the Peabody Coal Co.the ultimate model of miners’ democratic choice.
Parker writes on:
“Wal-Mart not only changes the way we buy, but the way we think,” Fishman says. If Wal-Mart charges $5 per pound for salmon, then shoppers wonder why a restaurant charges $15. We expect salmon to cost only $5. Or a microwave to cost only $39. The Wal-Mart effect first changes our expectations, then changes the quality of merchandise, which is cheap, because it isn’t always well- or ethically made.
Take salmon. Wal-Mart, which buys all its salmon from Chile, sells more than anyone else in the country and undersells all other retailers by at least $2 per pound. That’s a lot of market power, which prompts Fishman to ask, "Does it matter that salmon for $4.84 a pound leaves a layer of toxic sludge on the ocean bottoms of the Pacific fjords of southern Chile? "
Salmon in Chile are raised in packed underwater pens – as many as 1 million fish per farm – and fed prophylactic antibiotics to prevent disease. Here’s a fact you’d rather not know: A million salmon produce the same amount of waste as 65,000 people. Combine that waste with unconsumed food and antibiotic residue, and you’ve got a toxic seabed.
Does it matter?
Only if consumers say it does, says Fishman. Wal-Mart listens to ‘voters.’ If shoppers say they won’t buy salmon until Wal-Mart insists on higher standards from suppliers, then Wal-Mart will make those demands. Incentive is the engine that drives the company that promises low prices – ‘always.’ “
Well, have YOU ever bought salmon? Anywhere? If so, has the place you bought it ever offered information as to what it was being offered for elsewhere, by other stores? Much less, has it offered you information as to the environmental, sociological, or any other sort of ramifications following from its price per pound?
If not, then how could you be said to be “voting” on anything? Your actions might have some clearly demonstrable effect, but indicting YOU as a result of that effect is as sensible as arresting insane people for crimes of which they are unaware.
The answer to Parker’s question is pretty simple: "No, it DOESN’T matter." No one here has heard of all that shit at the bottom of a deep sea off the coast of a country far, far away, where they speak some “stupid” language we can’t understand. And now that Parker has mentioned it, we still don’t care. That’s way too far removed from me and from my taking care of mine while working more for less to give it much thought. No, the decision is a foregone conclusion. It DOESN’T matter!!!
The people who “vote” by spending what little money they are able to earn at the place that has the lowest prices - because they screw their workers harder than anyone else in the world - are coerced into their actions. Their behavior is all that anyone could rationally expect; so when Parker asks, “What kind of country are we going to be?” it is a rhetorical question, answered before it is asked; if, indeed, Parker is correct in asserting that “It is a worthy question that consumers will have to answer. “
Officially, in a democracy VOTERS “answer.” If in reality consumers, rather than elected and informed representatives, “answer,” the result has been determined for some time. We'll get by in the short term, but in the long run, we're fucked!
Big time.
Challenge assumptions!
- Uke Man
Gore Vidal
Listen to this man! And join us at Victorians' Midnight Cafe Tuesday, Jan. 31st to protest! Details soon!!
President Jonah - by Gore Vidal (protest in Columbus Jan. 31 at Victorians Midnight Cafe)
While contemplating the ill-starred presidency of G.W. Bush, I looked about for some sort of divine analogy. As usual, when in need of enlightenment, I fell upon the Holy Bible, authorized King James version of 1611; turning by chance to the Book of Jonah, I read that Jonah, who, like Bush, chats with God, had suffered a falling out with the Almighty and thus became a jinx dogged by luck so bad that a cruise liner, thanks to his presence aboard, was about to sink in a storm at sea. Once the crew had determined that Jonah, a passenger, was the jinx, they threw him overboard and—Lo!—the storm abated. The three days and nights he subsequently spent in the belly of a nauseous whale must have seemed like a serious jinx to the digestion-challenged whale who extruded him much as the decent opinion of mankind has done to Bush.
Originally, God wanted Jonah to give hell to Nineveh, whose people, God noted disdainfully, “cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand,” so like the people of Baghdad who cannot fathom what democracy has to do with their destruction by the Cheney-Bush cabal. But the analogy becomes eerily precise when it comes to the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico at a time when a president is not only incompetent but plainly jinxed by whatever faith he cringes before. Witness the ongoing screw-up of prescription drugs. Who knows what other disasters are in store for us thanks to the curse he is under? As the sailors fed the original Jonah to a whale, thus lifting the storm that was about to drown them, perhaps we the people can persuade President Jonah to retire to his other Eden in Crawford, Texas, taking his jinx with him. We deserve a rest. Plainly, so does he. Look at Nixon’s radiant features after his resignation! One can see former President Jonah in his sumptuous library happily catering to faith-based fans with animated scriptures rooted in “The Simpsons.”
Not since the glory days of Watergate and Nixon’s Luciferian fall has there been so much written about the dogged deceits and creative criminalities of our rulers. We have also come to a point in this dark age where there is not only no hero in view but no alternative road unblocked. We are trapped terribly in a now that few foresaw and even fewer can define despite a swarm of books and pamphlets like the vast cloud of locusts which dined on China in that ’30s movie “The Good Earth.”
I have read many of these descriptions of our fallen estate, looking for one that best describes in plain English how we got to this now and where we appear to be headed once our good Earth has been consumed and only Rapture is left to whisk aloft the Faithful. Meanwhile, the rest of us can learn quite a lot from “Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire” by Morris Berman, a professor of sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
I must confess that I have a proprietary interest in anyone who refers to the United States as an empire since I am credited with first putting forward this heretical view in the early ’70s. In fact, so disgusted with me was a book reviewer at Time magazine that as proof of my madness he wrote: “He actually refers to the United States as an empire!” It should be noted that at about the same time Henry Luce, proprietor of Time, was booming on and on about “The American Century.” What a difference a word makes!
Berman sets his scene briskly in recent history. “We were already in our twilight phase when Ronald Reagan, with all the insight of an ostrich, declared it to be ‘morning in America’; twenty-odd years later, under the ‘boy emperor’ George W. Bush (as Chalmers Johnson refers to him), we have entered the Dark Ages in earnest, pursuing a short-sighted path that can only accelerate our decline. For what we are now seeing are the obvious characteristics of the West after the fall of Rome: the triumph of religion over reason; the atrophy of education and critical thinking; the integration of religion, the state, and the apparatus of torture—a troika that was for Voltaire the central horror of the pre-Enlightenment world; and the political and economic marginalization of our culture…. The British historian Charles Freeman published an extended discussion of the transition that took place during the late Roman empire, the title of which could serve as a capsule summary of our current president: "The Closing of the Western Mind." Mr. Bush, God knows, is no Augustine; but Freeman points to the latter as the epitome of a more general process that was underway in the fourth century: namely, ‘the gradual subjection of reason to faith and authority.’ This is what we are seeing today, and it is a process that no society can undergo and still remain free. Yet it is a process of which administration officials, along with much of the American population, are aggressively proud.” In fact, close observers of this odd presidency note that Bush, like his evangelical base, believes he is on a mission from God and that faith trumps empirical evidence. Berman quotes a senior White House adviser who disdains what he calls the “reality-based” community, to which Berman sensibly responds: “If a nation is unable to perceive reality correctly, and persists in operating on the basis of faith-based delusions, its ability to hold its own in the world is pretty much foreclosed.”
Berman does a brief tour of the American horizon, revealing a cultural death valley. In secondary schools where evolution can still be taught too many teachers are afraid to bring up the subject to their so often un-evolved students. “Add to this the pervasive hostility toward science on the part of the current administration (e.g. stem-cell research) and we get a clear picture of the Enlightenment being steadily rolled back. Religion is used to explain terror attacks as part of a cosmic conflict between Good and Evil rather than in terms of political processes.... Manichaeanism rules across the United States. According to a poll taken by Time magazine fifty-nine percent of Americans believe that John’s apocalyptic prophecies in the Book of Revelation will be fulfilled, and nearly all of these believe that the faithful will be taken up into heaven in the ‘Rapture.’
“Finally, we shouldn’t be surprised at the antipathy toward democracy displayed by the Bush administration…. As already noted, fundamentalism and democracy are completely antithetical. The opposite of the Enlightenment, of course, is tribalism, groupthink; and more and more, this is the direction in which the United States is going…. Anthony Lewis who worked as a columnist for the New York Times for thirty-two years, observes that what has happened in the wake of 9/11 is not just the threatening of the rights of a few detainees, but the undermining of the very foundation of democracy. Detention without trial, denial of access to attorneys, years of interrogation in isolation—these are now standard American practice, and most Americans don’t care. Nor did they care about the revelation in July 2004 (reported in Newsweek), that for several months the White House and the Department of Justice had been discussing the feasibility of canceling the upcoming presidential election in the event of a possible terrorist attack.” I suspect that the technologically inclined prevailed against that extreme measure on the ground that the newly installed electronic ballot machines could be so calibrated that Bush would win handily no matter what (read Rep. Conyers’ report (.pdf file) on the rigging of Ohio’s vote).
Meanwhile, the indoctrination of the people merrily continues. “In a ‘State of the First Amendment Survey’ conducted by the University of Connecticut in 2003, 34 percent of Americans polled said the First Amendment ‘goes too far’; 46 percent said there was too much freedom of the press; 28 percent felt that newspapers should not be able to publish articles without prior approval of the government; 31 percent wanted public protest of a war to be outlawed during that war; and 50 percent thought the government should have the right to infringe on the religious freedom of ‘certain religious groups’ in the name of the war on terror.”
It is usual in sad reports like Professor Berman’s to stop abruptly the litany of what has gone wrong and then declare, hand on heart, that once the people have been informed of what is happening, the truth will set them free and a quarter-billion candles will be lit and the darkness will flee in the presence of so much spontaneous light. But Berman is much too serious for the easy platitude. Instead he tells us that those who might have struck at least a match can no longer do so because shared information about our situation is meager to nonexistent. Would better schools help? Of course, but, according to that joyous bearer of ill tidings, the New York Times, many school districts are now making sobriety tests a regular feature of the school day: apparently opium derivatives are the opiate of our stoned youth. Meanwhile, millions of adult Americans, presumably undrugged, have no idea who our enemies were in World War II. Many college graduates don’t know the difference between an argument and an assertion (did their teachers also fail to solve this knotty question?). A travel agent in Arizona is often asked whether or not it is cheaper to take the train rather than fly to Hawaii. Only 12% of Americans own a passport. At the time of the 2004 presidential election 42% of voters believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. One high school boy, when asked who won the Civil War, replied wearily, “I don’t know and I don’t care,” echoing a busy neocon who confessed proudly: “The American Civil War is as remote to me as the War of the Roses.”
We are assured daily by advertisers and/or politicians that we are the richest, most envied people on Earth and, apparently, that is why so many awful, ill-groomed people want to blow us up. We live in an impermeable bubble without the sort of information that people living in real countries have access to when it comes to their own reality. But we are not actually people in the eyes of the national ownership: we are simply unreliable consumers comprising an overworked, underpaid labor force not in the best of health: The World Health Organization rates our healthcare system (sic—or sick?) as 37th-best in the world, far behind even Saudi Arabia, role model for the Texans. Our infant mortality rate is satisfyingly high, precluding a First World educational system. Also, it has not gone unremarked even in our usually information-free media that despite the boost to the profits of such companies as Halliburton, Bush’s wars of aggression against small countries of no danger to us have left us well and truly broke. Our annual trade deficit is a half-trillion dollars, which means that we don’t produce much of anything the world wants except those wan reports on how popular our Entertainment is overseas. Unfortunately the foreign gross of “King Kong,” the Edsel of that assembly line, is not yet known. It is rumored that Bollywood—the Indian film business—may soon surpass us! Berman writes, “We have lost our edge in science to Europe...The US economy is being kept afloat by huge foreign loans ($4 billion a day during 2003). What do you think will happen when America’s creditors decide to pull the plug, or when OPEC members begin selling oil in euros instead of dollars?...An International Monetary Fund report of 2004 concluded that the United States was ‘careening toward insolvency.’ ” Meanwhile, China, our favorite big-time future enemy, is the number one for worldwide foreign investments, with France, the bete noire of our apish neocons, in second place.
Well, we still have Kraft cheese and, of course, the death penalty.
Berman makes the case that the Bretton-Woods agreement of 1944 institutionalized a system geared toward full employment and the maintenance of a social safety net for society’s less fortunate—the so-called welfare or interventionist state. It did this by establishing fixed but flexible exchange rates among world currencies, which were pegged to the U.S. dollar while the dollar, for its part, was pegged to gold. In a word, Bretton-Woods saved capitalism by making it more human. Nixon abandoned the agreement in 1971, which started, according to Berman, huge amounts of capital moving upward from the poor and the middle class to the rich and super-rich.
Mr. Berman spares us the happy ending, as, apparently, has history. When the admirable Tiberius (he has had an undeserved bad press), upon becoming emperor, received a message from the Senate in which the conscript fathers assured him that whatever legislation he wanted would be automatically passed by them, he sent back word that this was outrageous. “Suppose the emperor is ill or mad or incompetent?” He returned their message. They sent it again. His response: “How eager you are to be slaves.” I often think of that wise emperor when I hear Republican members of Congress extolling the wisdom of Bush. Now that he has been caught illegally wiretapping fellow citizens he has taken to snarling about his powers as “a wartime president,” and so, in his own mind, he is above each and every law of the land. Oddly, no one in Congress has pointed out that he may well be a lunatic dreaming that he is another Lincoln but whatever he is or is not he is no wartime president. There is no war with any other nation...yet. There is no state called terror, an abstract noun like liar. Certainly his illegal unilateral ravaging of Iraq may well seem like a real war for those on both sides unlucky enough to be killed or wounded, but that does not make it a war any more than the appearance of having been elected twice to the presidency does not mean that in due course the people will demand an investigation of those two irregular processes. Although he has done a number of things that under the old republic might have got him impeached, our current system protects him: incumbency-for-life seats have made it possible for a Republican majority in the House not to do its duty and impeach him for his incompetence in handling, say, the natural disaster that befell Louisiana.
The founders thought two-year terms for members of the House was as much democracy as we’d ever need. Therefore, there was no great movement to have some sort of recall legislation in the event that a president wasn’t up to his job and so had lost the people’s confidence between elections. But in time, as Ecclesiastes would say, all things shall come to pass and so, in a kindly way, a majority of the citizens must persuade him that he will be happier back in Crawford pruning Bushes of the leafy sort while the troops not killed or maimed will settle for simply being alive and in one piece. We may be slaves but we are not unreasonable.
One way that a majority of citizens can help open the road back to Crawford is by heeding the call of a group called the World Can’t Wait (see their website, worldcantwait.org). They believe that the agenda for 2006 must not be set by the Bush gang but by the people taking independent mass political action.
On Jan. 31, the night of Bush’s next State of the Union address, they have called for people in large cities and small towns all across the country to join in noisy rallies to make the demand that “Bush Step Down” the message of the day. At 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, just as Bush starts to speak, people can make a joyful noise and figuratively drown out his address. Then on the following Saturday, Feb. 4, converge in front of the White House with the same message: Please step down and take your program with you.
Originally, God wanted Jonah to give hell to Nineveh, whose people, God noted disdainfully, “cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand,” so like the people of Baghdad who cannot fathom what democracy has to do with their destruction by the Cheney-Bush cabal. But the analogy becomes eerily precise when it comes to the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico at a time when a president is not only incompetent but plainly jinxed by whatever faith he cringes before. Witness the ongoing screw-up of prescription drugs. Who knows what other disasters are in store for us thanks to the curse he is under? As the sailors fed the original Jonah to a whale, thus lifting the storm that was about to drown them, perhaps we the people can persuade President Jonah to retire to his other Eden in Crawford, Texas, taking his jinx with him. We deserve a rest. Plainly, so does he. Look at Nixon’s radiant features after his resignation! One can see former President Jonah in his sumptuous library happily catering to faith-based fans with animated scriptures rooted in “The Simpsons.”
Not since the glory days of Watergate and Nixon’s Luciferian fall has there been so much written about the dogged deceits and creative criminalities of our rulers. We have also come to a point in this dark age where there is not only no hero in view but no alternative road unblocked. We are trapped terribly in a now that few foresaw and even fewer can define despite a swarm of books and pamphlets like the vast cloud of locusts which dined on China in that ’30s movie “The Good Earth.”
I have read many of these descriptions of our fallen estate, looking for one that best describes in plain English how we got to this now and where we appear to be headed once our good Earth has been consumed and only Rapture is left to whisk aloft the Faithful. Meanwhile, the rest of us can learn quite a lot from “Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire” by Morris Berman, a professor of sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
I must confess that I have a proprietary interest in anyone who refers to the United States as an empire since I am credited with first putting forward this heretical view in the early ’70s. In fact, so disgusted with me was a book reviewer at Time magazine that as proof of my madness he wrote: “He actually refers to the United States as an empire!” It should be noted that at about the same time Henry Luce, proprietor of Time, was booming on and on about “The American Century.” What a difference a word makes!
Berman sets his scene briskly in recent history. “We were already in our twilight phase when Ronald Reagan, with all the insight of an ostrich, declared it to be ‘morning in America’; twenty-odd years later, under the ‘boy emperor’ George W. Bush (as Chalmers Johnson refers to him), we have entered the Dark Ages in earnest, pursuing a short-sighted path that can only accelerate our decline. For what we are now seeing are the obvious characteristics of the West after the fall of Rome: the triumph of religion over reason; the atrophy of education and critical thinking; the integration of religion, the state, and the apparatus of torture—a troika that was for Voltaire the central horror of the pre-Enlightenment world; and the political and economic marginalization of our culture…. The British historian Charles Freeman published an extended discussion of the transition that took place during the late Roman empire, the title of which could serve as a capsule summary of our current president: "The Closing of the Western Mind." Mr. Bush, God knows, is no Augustine; but Freeman points to the latter as the epitome of a more general process that was underway in the fourth century: namely, ‘the gradual subjection of reason to faith and authority.’ This is what we are seeing today, and it is a process that no society can undergo and still remain free. Yet it is a process of which administration officials, along with much of the American population, are aggressively proud.” In fact, close observers of this odd presidency note that Bush, like his evangelical base, believes he is on a mission from God and that faith trumps empirical evidence. Berman quotes a senior White House adviser who disdains what he calls the “reality-based” community, to which Berman sensibly responds: “If a nation is unable to perceive reality correctly, and persists in operating on the basis of faith-based delusions, its ability to hold its own in the world is pretty much foreclosed.”
Berman does a brief tour of the American horizon, revealing a cultural death valley. In secondary schools where evolution can still be taught too many teachers are afraid to bring up the subject to their so often un-evolved students. “Add to this the pervasive hostility toward science on the part of the current administration (e.g. stem-cell research) and we get a clear picture of the Enlightenment being steadily rolled back. Religion is used to explain terror attacks as part of a cosmic conflict between Good and Evil rather than in terms of political processes.... Manichaeanism rules across the United States. According to a poll taken by Time magazine fifty-nine percent of Americans believe that John’s apocalyptic prophecies in the Book of Revelation will be fulfilled, and nearly all of these believe that the faithful will be taken up into heaven in the ‘Rapture.’
“Finally, we shouldn’t be surprised at the antipathy toward democracy displayed by the Bush administration…. As already noted, fundamentalism and democracy are completely antithetical. The opposite of the Enlightenment, of course, is tribalism, groupthink; and more and more, this is the direction in which the United States is going…. Anthony Lewis who worked as a columnist for the New York Times for thirty-two years, observes that what has happened in the wake of 9/11 is not just the threatening of the rights of a few detainees, but the undermining of the very foundation of democracy. Detention without trial, denial of access to attorneys, years of interrogation in isolation—these are now standard American practice, and most Americans don’t care. Nor did they care about the revelation in July 2004 (reported in Newsweek), that for several months the White House and the Department of Justice had been discussing the feasibility of canceling the upcoming presidential election in the event of a possible terrorist attack.” I suspect that the technologically inclined prevailed against that extreme measure on the ground that the newly installed electronic ballot machines could be so calibrated that Bush would win handily no matter what (read Rep. Conyers’ report (.pdf file) on the rigging of Ohio’s vote).
Meanwhile, the indoctrination of the people merrily continues. “In a ‘State of the First Amendment Survey’ conducted by the University of Connecticut in 2003, 34 percent of Americans polled said the First Amendment ‘goes too far’; 46 percent said there was too much freedom of the press; 28 percent felt that newspapers should not be able to publish articles without prior approval of the government; 31 percent wanted public protest of a war to be outlawed during that war; and 50 percent thought the government should have the right to infringe on the religious freedom of ‘certain religious groups’ in the name of the war on terror.”
It is usual in sad reports like Professor Berman’s to stop abruptly the litany of what has gone wrong and then declare, hand on heart, that once the people have been informed of what is happening, the truth will set them free and a quarter-billion candles will be lit and the darkness will flee in the presence of so much spontaneous light. But Berman is much too serious for the easy platitude. Instead he tells us that those who might have struck at least a match can no longer do so because shared information about our situation is meager to nonexistent. Would better schools help? Of course, but, according to that joyous bearer of ill tidings, the New York Times, many school districts are now making sobriety tests a regular feature of the school day: apparently opium derivatives are the opiate of our stoned youth. Meanwhile, millions of adult Americans, presumably undrugged, have no idea who our enemies were in World War II. Many college graduates don’t know the difference between an argument and an assertion (did their teachers also fail to solve this knotty question?). A travel agent in Arizona is often asked whether or not it is cheaper to take the train rather than fly to Hawaii. Only 12% of Americans own a passport. At the time of the 2004 presidential election 42% of voters believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. One high school boy, when asked who won the Civil War, replied wearily, “I don’t know and I don’t care,” echoing a busy neocon who confessed proudly: “The American Civil War is as remote to me as the War of the Roses.”
We are assured daily by advertisers and/or politicians that we are the richest, most envied people on Earth and, apparently, that is why so many awful, ill-groomed people want to blow us up. We live in an impermeable bubble without the sort of information that people living in real countries have access to when it comes to their own reality. But we are not actually people in the eyes of the national ownership: we are simply unreliable consumers comprising an overworked, underpaid labor force not in the best of health: The World Health Organization rates our healthcare system (sic—or sick?) as 37th-best in the world, far behind even Saudi Arabia, role model for the Texans. Our infant mortality rate is satisfyingly high, precluding a First World educational system. Also, it has not gone unremarked even in our usually information-free media that despite the boost to the profits of such companies as Halliburton, Bush’s wars of aggression against small countries of no danger to us have left us well and truly broke. Our annual trade deficit is a half-trillion dollars, which means that we don’t produce much of anything the world wants except those wan reports on how popular our Entertainment is overseas. Unfortunately the foreign gross of “King Kong,” the Edsel of that assembly line, is not yet known. It is rumored that Bollywood—the Indian film business—may soon surpass us! Berman writes, “We have lost our edge in science to Europe...The US economy is being kept afloat by huge foreign loans ($4 billion a day during 2003). What do you think will happen when America’s creditors decide to pull the plug, or when OPEC members begin selling oil in euros instead of dollars?...An International Monetary Fund report of 2004 concluded that the United States was ‘careening toward insolvency.’ ” Meanwhile, China, our favorite big-time future enemy, is the number one for worldwide foreign investments, with France, the bete noire of our apish neocons, in second place.
Well, we still have Kraft cheese and, of course, the death penalty.
Berman makes the case that the Bretton-Woods agreement of 1944 institutionalized a system geared toward full employment and the maintenance of a social safety net for society’s less fortunate—the so-called welfare or interventionist state. It did this by establishing fixed but flexible exchange rates among world currencies, which were pegged to the U.S. dollar while the dollar, for its part, was pegged to gold. In a word, Bretton-Woods saved capitalism by making it more human. Nixon abandoned the agreement in 1971, which started, according to Berman, huge amounts of capital moving upward from the poor and the middle class to the rich and super-rich.
Mr. Berman spares us the happy ending, as, apparently, has history. When the admirable Tiberius (he has had an undeserved bad press), upon becoming emperor, received a message from the Senate in which the conscript fathers assured him that whatever legislation he wanted would be automatically passed by them, he sent back word that this was outrageous. “Suppose the emperor is ill or mad or incompetent?” He returned their message. They sent it again. His response: “How eager you are to be slaves.” I often think of that wise emperor when I hear Republican members of Congress extolling the wisdom of Bush. Now that he has been caught illegally wiretapping fellow citizens he has taken to snarling about his powers as “a wartime president,” and so, in his own mind, he is above each and every law of the land. Oddly, no one in Congress has pointed out that he may well be a lunatic dreaming that he is another Lincoln but whatever he is or is not he is no wartime president. There is no war with any other nation...yet. There is no state called terror, an abstract noun like liar. Certainly his illegal unilateral ravaging of Iraq may well seem like a real war for those on both sides unlucky enough to be killed or wounded, but that does not make it a war any more than the appearance of having been elected twice to the presidency does not mean that in due course the people will demand an investigation of those two irregular processes. Although he has done a number of things that under the old republic might have got him impeached, our current system protects him: incumbency-for-life seats have made it possible for a Republican majority in the House not to do its duty and impeach him for his incompetence in handling, say, the natural disaster that befell Louisiana.
The founders thought two-year terms for members of the House was as much democracy as we’d ever need. Therefore, there was no great movement to have some sort of recall legislation in the event that a president wasn’t up to his job and so had lost the people’s confidence between elections. But in time, as Ecclesiastes would say, all things shall come to pass and so, in a kindly way, a majority of the citizens must persuade him that he will be happier back in Crawford pruning Bushes of the leafy sort while the troops not killed or maimed will settle for simply being alive and in one piece. We may be slaves but we are not unreasonable.
One way that a majority of citizens can help open the road back to Crawford is by heeding the call of a group called the World Can’t Wait (see their website, worldcantwait.org). They believe that the agenda for 2006 must not be set by the Bush gang but by the people taking independent mass political action.
On Jan. 31, the night of Bush’s next State of the Union address, they have called for people in large cities and small towns all across the country to join in noisy rallies to make the demand that “Bush Step Down” the message of the day. At 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, just as Bush starts to speak, people can make a joyful noise and figuratively drown out his address. Then on the following Saturday, Feb. 4, converge in front of the White House with the same message: Please step down and take your program with you.
Challenge Assumptions # 5
Hey Folks,
Certain examples of the bullshit we are fed appear again and again, over and over, but SELECTIVELY. When it suits someone's purpose, the "wise" observation is trotted out. Otherwise it is suppressed - as explained in my letter to the Dispatch editor below.
- Uke Man
To the Editor,
Friday's front page reported, "Cardinal Health to pay SEC $35 million / Penalty considered small enough that stock price goes up."
Interesting that when a corporation is fined on the basis of fraud its stock price increases. Human beings often aren't so lucky.
In any case, as a long-time reader, I've heard the "Dispatch" say many, many times, "Corporations don't pay taxes; consumers do."
I anxiously await the forthcoming editorial explaining that "Corporations don't pay fines; consumers do."
Yours - Tom Harker
Certain examples of the bullshit we are fed appear again and again, over and over, but SELECTIVELY. When it suits someone's purpose, the "wise" observation is trotted out. Otherwise it is suppressed - as explained in my letter to the Dispatch editor below.
- Uke Man
To the Editor,
Friday's front page reported, "Cardinal Health to pay SEC $35 million / Penalty considered small enough that stock price goes up."
Interesting that when a corporation is fined on the basis of fraud its stock price increases. Human beings often aren't so lucky.
In any case, as a long-time reader, I've heard the "Dispatch" say many, many times, "Corporations don't pay taxes; consumers do."
I anxiously await the forthcoming editorial explaining that "Corporations don't pay fines; consumers do."
Yours - Tom Harker
Challenge Assumptions - Part 4
-Hey Folks,
In an earlier post I wrote:
“As long as corporations are squeezing workers and taxpayers, all is right with the world. As soon as the worm turns and profits are squeezed, the world is sliding down a dangerous slippery-slope to doom. And it doesn’t require elimination of profits to elicit hemorrhages of outrage – any reduction in profits will suffice!
The assumption, the myth we are all supposed to swallow (in order to maintain the prerogatives of the few) is that the wealthy come first, that WE depend upon THEM. They have to be afforded the lives of royalty so that we can obtain enough to subsist. And if we have to get by on even less in order that they have more, that’s just the way it is and always has been, the way god wants it. Besides, if we resist, it will cost us jobs and put us on a slippery slope.”
The local “Country Club Republican” newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, weighed in with an editorial laden with the usual assumptions. It starts with the headline:
“Unhealthy lawmaking
Maryland legislature has no business telling Wal-Mart how to manage benefit plans”
As I noted above, this myth makes the people dependent; their elected representatives – it insists - have “no business” telling Wal-Mart or any other business how to do anything.
The editorial admits that “Too many Americans have too little health insurance” and that “Wal-Mart’s health plans aren’t as generous as those offered by some other companies, but Wal-Mart is well-known for following a business model of restraining expenses in order to hold down the prices of goods.”
Yep. People need insurance and WAL-MART’s insurance is not good, but that's tough since “Wal-Mart is well-known for following a business model of restraining expenses in order to hold down the prices of goods.” If the corporation prefers low prices to workers’ health, the government should give its blessing.
This assumption, this myth, is in clear conflict with “government of, by, and for the people [not corporations].”
The Dispatch also makes the argument I’ve addressed in earlier posts: i.e. taking proper care of workers causes loss of jobs – we won’t have any WAL-MARTS or Burger Kings or Convenience Stores unless workers are abused. Right!
It also warns that the wealthy corporation “can be expected to use every legal means to challenge this mandate. Wal-Mart doesn’t want this government requirement spreading to other states.” Sure! WAL-MART is loaded, and will spend the money they could have used to benefit its workers – as much money as it takes – to get the politicians and courts it owns to return things to “normal.” And I won’t be surprised if it happens.
Just the same, the assumption that this is OK, “in the American tradition,” what god wants, the only way that can or will work, or the way it’s “sposed” to be is bullshit.
Challenge assumptions!
More on this in later posts.
- Uke Man
In an earlier post I wrote:
“As long as corporations are squeezing workers and taxpayers, all is right with the world. As soon as the worm turns and profits are squeezed, the world is sliding down a dangerous slippery-slope to doom. And it doesn’t require elimination of profits to elicit hemorrhages of outrage – any reduction in profits will suffice!
The assumption, the myth we are all supposed to swallow (in order to maintain the prerogatives of the few) is that the wealthy come first, that WE depend upon THEM. They have to be afforded the lives of royalty so that we can obtain enough to subsist. And if we have to get by on even less in order that they have more, that’s just the way it is and always has been, the way god wants it. Besides, if we resist, it will cost us jobs and put us on a slippery slope.”
The local “Country Club Republican” newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, weighed in with an editorial laden with the usual assumptions. It starts with the headline:
“Unhealthy lawmaking
Maryland legislature has no business telling Wal-Mart how to manage benefit plans”
As I noted above, this myth makes the people dependent; their elected representatives – it insists - have “no business” telling Wal-Mart or any other business how to do anything.
The editorial admits that “Too many Americans have too little health insurance” and that “Wal-Mart’s health plans aren’t as generous as those offered by some other companies, but Wal-Mart is well-known for following a business model of restraining expenses in order to hold down the prices of goods.”
Yep. People need insurance and WAL-MART’s insurance is not good, but that's tough since “Wal-Mart is well-known for following a business model of restraining expenses in order to hold down the prices of goods.” If the corporation prefers low prices to workers’ health, the government should give its blessing.
This assumption, this myth, is in clear conflict with “government of, by, and for the people [not corporations].”
The Dispatch also makes the argument I’ve addressed in earlier posts: i.e. taking proper care of workers causes loss of jobs – we won’t have any WAL-MARTS or Burger Kings or Convenience Stores unless workers are abused. Right!
It also warns that the wealthy corporation “can be expected to use every legal means to challenge this mandate. Wal-Mart doesn’t want this government requirement spreading to other states.” Sure! WAL-MART is loaded, and will spend the money they could have used to benefit its workers – as much money as it takes – to get the politicians and courts it owns to return things to “normal.” And I won’t be surprised if it happens.
Just the same, the assumption that this is OK, “in the American tradition,” what god wants, the only way that can or will work, or the way it’s “sposed” to be is bullshit.
Challenge assumptions!
More on this in later posts.
- Uke Man
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Ted's Theme Song & the title of Two Movies
Hear my solo version at:http://www.ukuleleman.net/2006/01/teds-theme-song-when-my-baby-smiles-at.html
- Uke Man
Ted Lewis - 5th Installment
Hey Folks,
Ted Lewis - as you know if you've been reading right along with this series - was quite famous in his day. So much so that he was repeatedly asked to play before presidents and kings. He was sought out by Las Vegas and Hollywood as well and appeared in many movies, including a fictionalized account of his life, “When My Baby Smiles at Me” made in 1929 and remade in 1943.
Interestingly, he played a part in the establishment of Abbott & Costello. When their first film was getting under way, the studio was nervous about the attention an unknown comedy team might arouse. So, they wrote Ted Lewis and the Andrews Sisters into the script to cement public interest. It worked, and Abbott & Costello were on their way.
Many of Ted’s movies can be seen in the screening room of the Ted Lewis Museum in Circleville, Ohio. Open Fridays and Saturdays 1:00 - 5:00 P.M. (and by appointment) in Circleville Ohio - call 740- 477
Ted Lewis - as you know if you've been reading right along with this series - was quite famous in his day. So much so that he was repeatedly asked to play before presidents and kings. He was sought out by Las Vegas and Hollywood as well and appeared in many movies, including a fictionalized account of his life, “When My Baby Smiles at Me” made in 1929 and remade in 1943.
Interestingly, he played a part in the establishment of Abbott & Costello. When their first film was getting under way, the studio was nervous about the attention an unknown comedy team might arouse. So, they wrote Ted Lewis and the Andrews Sisters into the script to cement public interest. It worked, and Abbott & Costello were on their way.
Many of Ted’s movies can be seen in the screening room of the Ted Lewis Museum in Circleville, Ohio. Open Fridays and Saturdays 1:00 - 5:00 P.M. (and by appointment) in Circleville Ohio - call 740- 477