Results of Plutocracy
America the Horrendous?
Mostly not, perhaps. But there’s no ignoring certain blatant facts that are all too clear—certainly to the rest of the world if not the ignorant, unthinking, in-denial masses blithering away their lives in America. Spiegel Online has a (typically) well-written, if depressing, article:
America, Land of Extremes: An Enigmatic Country Elects a New President
America? A horrendous country that betrays its own values every few years, thus forfeiting its moral right to lead the Western world. It elects presidents who know nothing about the world, and have no interest in learning more, which explains why they readily succumb to errors and illusions, only to reveal their utter amazement when they finally—and usually too late—admit their mistakes. Since 1945, America has been fighting wars in countries that it knows very little about, and under premises that have almost nothing to do with reality.
America is a superpower around the globe, but a Third World country at home, with an infrastructure that defies description. There are collapsing bridges, power failures along the entire East Coast, and homes in places like Florida, North Carolina and Texas are regularly destroyed every year by hurricanes that flatten houses as if they were beach bungalows in Haiti.
There is also the obscene contrast between rich and poor, which has hardy interested or shocked any administration since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. What is even more obscene is the ignorance of a government that allows millions of people, in the richest country in the world, to live without health insurance. This is a government that stands by idly as the (primarily black) city of New Orleans disappears under floodwaters. Yes, the most obscene aspect of all remains the unacknowledged racism in this country of pragmatic enlightenment—the ongoing prejudices of whites against blacks.
America is an extreme country, and no one feels indifferent about it.
David Sedaris on Presidential Elections
David Sedaris offers this analogy to help us understand undecided voters:
I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?” To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
You Should be Scared
H. Bruce Franklin writes in truthout:
Some people are making fun of how Sarah Palin pronounces “nuclear.” That’s a mistake. Instead they should listen to how she used the word - because that displayed a truly terrifying ignorance.
“Now, a leader like Ahmadinejad,” she said, “is not one whom we can allow to acquire nuclear energy, nuclear weapons.” Her mindless merging of nuclear energy with nuclear weapons threatens the entire structure of the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the only legal obstacle to a planet where dozens of nations confront each other with nuclear bombs and missiles. The NPT is also the only legal obstacle to a nuclear-armed Iran.
The NPT depends on its assurance that all non-nuclear armed states have an “inalienable right” to develop “nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.” The treaty even obligates nuclear-armed states to assist this development. To insure that this nuclear energy is being developed for peaceful purposes, the NPT provides for international inspection. That is the legal basis for the inspection being conducted in Iran. Denying Iran’s right to nuclear energy would push it into withdrawing from the NPT, thus ending all inspection and actually legitimizing a nuclear-armed Iran.
So was this just a slip by Palin? Or was it just her own ignorance? I’m afraid the answer is much scarier. Palin was attempting (in her garbled way) to express the long-held position of John McCain, which was also the policy that George W. Bush actually implemented, the policy that led to North Korea testing a nuclear bomb in 2006 and moving toward a nuclear arsenal.
Back in 1994, President Bill Clinton halted North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons (which had begun during President George H. W. Bush’s administration) by negotiating what is known as the “Agreed Framework.” Under the Agreed Framework, North Korea’s secretly produced plutonium was locked up and placed under strict international supervision, with teams of international inspectors sent to live in North Korea, where they maintained continual surveillance of any possible nuclear activities. In return, the United States agreed to help North Korea meet its energy needs by providing an ample supply of fuel oil and two light-water nuclear reactors, just as envisioned in the NPT.
Washington, however, did not abide by several parts of its side of the agreement, including its promise to help build the light-water reactors. Nevertheless, on and off negotiations continued, and for the next eight years North Korea engaged in no significant development of nuclear weapons.
But then in December 2002, after denouncing Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the “axis of evil” and while deploying forces to invade Iraq under the spurious argument that Iraq possessed an arsenal of “weapons of mass destruction,” President Bush announced that the United States was unilaterally withdrawing from the Agreed Framework. When the United States actually invaded the only one of these three nations that did not have any active nuclear program, North Korea predictably decided to go hell-bent for a nuclear deterrent. So in 2003, North Korea withdrew from the NPT. Thus, the international inspectors no longer had any right to be there and Pyongyang was free to rush into the nuclear arms race. On October 8, 2006, North Korea conducted its first test of a nuclear bomb.
Three days later, Sen. John McCain went on NBC’s “Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” to blame North Korea’s bomb on President Clinton and the Agreed Framework. To advance his position, McCain blatantly rewrote history, ignoring the basic fact that the Agreed Framework had stopped North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons for eight years. Later that week, a number of analysts called this the beginning of a campaign by McCain to win the White House in 2008.
McCain’s position on nuclear proliferation two years ago is still his position today. Forget meaningful negotiations, ignore the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and rely on threats and force to keep nations such as Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. So it’s not hard to understand how Sarah Palin, after her pre-debate crash course in talking points, could end up saying that Iran should not be allowed to have nuclear energy.
That’s scary. What’s even scarier is that so few Americans know enough to be scared by the words coming out of the mouth of someone who could easily become president of the United States sometime in the next four years.
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A former navigator and intelligence officer in the Strategic Air Command, H. Bruce Franklin is the author of 19 books, including “War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination.” He is currently the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark.
Messenger Photo of Mercury
As reported in Sky & Tel, Messenger made a flyby of Mercury on Monday. Here’s an amazing photo from 27,000 km out. (The flyby got to within 200 km.)
Candidates’ Issues Pages
Thanks to Mahablog:
If you want details, don’t wait for details to be spoon fed to you through mass media. The candidates’ websites have the details. All you have to do is click and read.
[W]hen you get beneath the interface, some of McCain’s content is a bit dated. His “Relief for American Families” section still promotes a summer gas tax holiday, for example. And much of the content is vague. You read that John McCain is going to act decisively to achieve this or that goal, but often the “how” is missing.
On Obama’s site you get how up the wazoo.
- He has bulleted lists.
- He has lots of bulleted lists.
- His bulleted lists have bulleted lists.
Dear Wall St., do us all a huge favor: Jump!
Yeah, this seems about right:
Interrupting the negotiations to save his campaign
Origins of the Financial Crisis Explained
The best explanation I’ve seen:
Joe goes to the track and bets $2 on a horse.
Two guys standing nearby get into a discussion and Fred says to Sam, “I’ll bet you $5 that Joe wins his bet.”
Next to them are Bill and Bob. Bill says: “I’ll bet you $10 that Fred welshes on his bet if he loses.”
Next to them is Sally. Sally says: “For $3 I’ll guarantee to Bill that if Bob fails to pay off, I’ll make good on the bet.”
Sally then goes to Mary and borrows the $7 needed in case she has to ever pay off and promises to pay back $8. She doesn’t expect to every have to pay since she believes Bob will always make good. So she expects to net $2 no matter what happens to Joe.
A quick calculation indicates that there is now 2+5+10+3+7 = $27 riding on the outcome of the horse race.
Question how much has been “invested” in the horse race?
Wait for it:
Answer:
$50,000 by the owner of the horse who is expecting to recoup his investment from the winnings of the horse and other future deals. Everyone else is gambling, not investing
Dems vs. Thugs on Job Creation
from Dwight Meredith, we have the ranking of the last 13 occupants of the Oval Office by job creation (only through 2002, so the number for the Pissant is inaccurate and more likely in the neighborhood of +0.5%). Keep in mind that a job creation rate that does not keep pace with the rate of population increase is in fact a negative job growth. For reference, the U.S. population growth rate averaged 1.3 percent per year during the 20th century.
1) Roosevelt (1933-45): +5.3%
2) Johnson (1963-69): +3.8%
3) Carter (1977-81): +3.1%
4) Truman: (1945-53): +2.5%
5) Kennedy (1961-63): +2.5%
6) Clinton (1993-2001): +2.4%
7) Nixon (1969-75): +2.2%
8) Reagan (1981-89): +2.1%
9) Ford (1975-77): +1.1%
10) Eisenhower (1953-61): +0.9%
11) Bush (1989-93): +0.6%
12) Bush (2001-present): -0.7%
13) Hoover (1929-33): -9.0%
McLiar/Palin Contempt for Rule of Law (and Democracy)
Glenn Greenwald writes:
[W]ith the heavy involvement of the McCain campaign, Gov. Palin has embraced core GOP “principles”—political officials can unilaterally exempt themselves from the rule of law and the people, through their elected representatives in the legislature, are powerless to learn what their political leaders have done. That, of course, has been the guiding principle of the Bush administration—as one Bush official after the next has simply refused to comply with Congressional subpoenas as part of investigations into serious allegations of lawbreaking and other wrongdoing—and the McCain campaign and the Palins are leaving no doubt that they are full-fledged believers in these corrupt and lawless prerogatives.
This sort of lawless arrogance doesn’t merely insulate political officials from any accountability, though it does do that. It also destroys the crux of representative democracy.
More Fallout from Pissant Bush Misadministration
From Adam Liptak in the NTY:
Judges around the world have long looked to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court for guidance, citing and often following them in hundreds of their own rulings since the Second World War.
But now American legal influence is waning. Even as a debate continues in the court over whether its decisions should ever cite foreign law, a diminishing number of foreign courts seem to pay attention to the writings of American justices.
"One of our great exports used to be constitutional law,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. “We are losing one of the greatest bully pulpits we have ever had.”
From 1990 through 2002, for instance, the Canadian Supreme Court cited decisions of the United States Supreme Court about a dozen times a year, an analysis by The New York Times found. In the six years since, the annual citation rate has fallen by half, to about six.
Australian state supreme courts cited American decisions 208 times in 1995, according to a recent study by Russell Smyth, an Australian economist. By 2005, the number had fallen to 72.
The story is similar around the globe, legal experts say, particularly in cases involving human rights. These days, foreign courts in developed democracies often cite the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in cases concerning equality, liberty and prohibitions against cruel treatment, said Harold Hongju Koh, the dean of the Yale Law School. In those areas, Dean Koh said, “they tend not to look to the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.”
The rise of new and sophisticated constitutional courts elsewhere is one reason for the Supreme Court’s fading influence, legal experts said. The new courts are, moreover, generally more liberal tha[n] the Rehnquist and Roberts courts and for that reason more inclined to cite one another.
Another reason is the diminished reputation of the United States in some parts of the world, which experts here and abroad said is in part a consequence of the Bush administration’s unpopularity around the world. Foreign courts are less apt to justify their decisions with citations to cases from a nation unpopular with their domestic audience.
[...]
Partly as a consequence, Chief Justice Barak wrote, the United States Supreme Court “is losing the central role it once had among courts in modern democracies.”
Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia said ... ”America is in danger of becoming something of a legal backwater.”
[...]
The trend abroad, moreover, is toward decisions of a distinctly liberal sort in areas like the death penalty and gay rights. “What we have had in the last 20 or 30 years,” Professor Fried said, “is an enormous coup d’état on the part of judiciaries everywhere - the European Court of Human Rights, Canada, South Africa, Israel.” In terms of judicial activism, he said, “they’ve lapped us.”
The rightward shift of the Supreme Court may partly account for its diminished influence. Twenty years ago, said Anthony Lester, a British barrister, the landmark decisions of the court were “studied with as much attention in New Delhi or Strasbourg as they are in Washington, D.C.”
[...]
Many legal scholars singled out the Canadian Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court of South Africa as increasingly influential.
"In part, their influence may spring from the simple fact they are not American,” Dean Slaughter wrote in a 2005 essay, “which renders their reasoning more politically palatable to domestic audience in an era of extraordinary U.S. military, political, economic and cultural power [i.e., abuse] and accompanying resentments.”
Frederick Schauer, a law professor at the University of Virginia, wrote in a 2000 essay that the Canadian Supreme Court had been particularly influential because “Canada, unlike the United States, is seen as reflecting an emerging international consensus rather than existing as an outlier.”
[...]
American precedents were cited about half as often as Canadian ones. “It is surprising,” the authors wrote, “that American cases are not cited more often, since the United States Bill of Rights precedents can be found on just about any rights issue that comes up.”
American popular attitudes toward the citation of foreign law, by contrast, Mark C. Rahdert wrote in the American University Law Review last year, “tap into a longstanding tradition of exceptionalism.”
That tradition is rooted in a popular devotion to the Constitution unknown in the rest of the world. It is supported by aspects of the American character that were formed by the nation’s initial geographic isolation and pioneer spirit, which emphasized freedom, private property and individual responsibility. That has led, for instance, to a near-absolute commitment to free speech and a particularly tough approach to crime.
In “ ‘A Shining City on a Hill’: American Exceptionalism and the Supreme Court’s Practice of Relying on Foreign Law,” a 2006 article in the Boston University Law Review, Professor Calabresi concluded that the Supreme Court should be wary of citing foreign law in most constitutional cases precisely because the United States is exceptional.
"Like it or not,” he wrote, “Americans really are a special people with a special ideology that sets us apart from all the other peoples.”