In case you're wondering....

I'm still here, but without anything to say. Anything worth blogging about, that is. Maybe that will change and if so, I'll let you know.

On language

Here's an interesting piece on the difference between English words that are French/Latin based and those that are German based. I've always wondered why my lawyer-talk never got me laid.

Galbraith rocks

And he's from a university in Texas, of all places.

Talk about prescience

He was twenty-four years early, but Orwell was spot on.

Do you want to see genius at work?

Check out the pdf. file of Franklin Roosevelt's interlineations on the first draft of his address to Congress on December 8 seeking its declaration of war against Japan. Not just his inclusion of "infamy" in place of "history" in the first sentence--a history-changing alteration--but the revisions of tenor and insertions of urgency throughout.

Amazing skills, both political and oratorical, sixty-nine years ago today.

Letter to the editor

Here's the text of a letter to the editor of the SB NewsPress that I sent today. I'll update this post with the publication date if it's published.

Update: The letter was published on December 9, 2010.

The first amendment to the United States Constitution grants the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” In view of this fundamental right, one wonders why Americans remain silent while their leaders wreck their nation. Our workforce is demolished, ruined by decades of corporate-friendly legislation that has destroyed unions and fostered off-shore profiteering. Our economy is mired in debt, drained by militaristic adventurism and state-sanctioned financial greed. Our fiscal future has been sold to foreign creditors while our assets—homes, savings, pensions—decline in value as money-lenders’ bonuses spiral upward, fed by government largess.

“The opiate of the masses” may, in Karl Marx’s time, have been religion, but in today’s America the opiate is a toxic mix of complacency and insecurity. We are lulled into dormancy by a barrage of flaccid entertainment, and we shrink from protest because we fear loss of our jobs and homes. We are ensnared in a web of avoidance and constant striving, too busy keeping our families fed and housed to resist the steady dismantling of a shared and sound America. We don’t have the energy or inclination to resist because the corporations that feed our leaders and their enablers, the “mainstream media,” keep us distracted and cowed.

So why are there no “bread riots”—not even bake sales—in protest of the continued destruction of the American Dream? Because we’re too busy, too frightened and too conditioned to care.

Ya know, there are some civil rights issues I just can't get fired up about

and this is one.

Action, or futility?

Leftist activists--including Chris Hedges--are going to chain themselves to the fence at the White House on December 16 to protest the ongoing wars and occupations of the US. Effective? Meaningless? An act simply to vent the frustrating hopelessness of protest? A bit of each of the above?

At what point does one's blood boil?

Perhaps upon reading this article in the NYT?

Here are two related hypotheses about Obama's maltreatment of progressives

Related: We're in denial about Obama's true position because we can't face that he's not now and never has been progressive; and/or what he says is subject to the McGurk Effect, so that during his campaign his transformative image caused us to receive from his lips the message we wanted to hear rather than the meaning he spoke.

Economic analysis

Look, I nearly flunked Econ I at Stanford but I nevertheless feel I have good instincts about the subject. However, that's all I claim: instinct. And although I've long thought of myself as a "liberal," I've recently felt misgivings about a central tenet of Paul Krugman's solution to the present stagnated American economy, chief among them is his strong reliance on increased "consumption" as our path to recovery. While I agree that it's an important component of America's economy, it's also true that our reliance on it so strongly is what led us to the present mess.

I'm more in accord with this analysis, which views a sound economy as one which balances consumption with a sound presence on the planet. I mean, what's the matter with sustainability, with merely existence and not, always and forever, growth?

A choice, not an Obama

Here's a letter to the editor of the SB NewsPress that I sent today. I'll update this post when/if it's published.

Update: The letter was published in the NewsPress on Saturday, November 13, 2010.

Obama will be a one-term president. Oh, he’ll survive incessant nagging from the Right for the next two years, but in 2012 he’ll be “one and done,” no question. And as a progressive who worked mightily for his election in 2008, I say, Good riddance. Obama’s the worst thing that’s happened to American politics since…forever: He’s trodden on the hopes and dreams that he exploited to gain the presidency, making cynics of young voters, turning them against politics as a vehicle for positive change—as recently evidenced by their abandonment of polling places in the mid-term elections.

There arises, therefore, this question about the Democrats’ prospects in 2012: Will some (yet unnamed) progressive run against Obama in the primaries, a la Ted Kennedy against Jimmy Carter in 1980? The argument against this development will likely be that a schism among Democrats will hand the presidency to the Republican nominee, as happened in 1980 in Reagan’s favor. But the obvious rejoinder is that Obama won’t be re-elected in any event. He’s lost both his base and the center by his obsequious cow-towing to Wall Street, the insurance industry and the military; and he’s already indicated he’ll drift further Rightward hereafter.

So, what’s it to be progressives? Shall we remain inert and hold our collective nose in 2012 while voting for Obama, a sure loser? Or shall we act decisively to support a candidate who will truly—not just in rhetoric, but in deed—bring to America change we can believe in?

Too good to be true

Doesn't this news item from the Guardian appear to be from the Onion instead?

The Real News

A worthwhile site, source of this incisive video in which the Democrats and Obama squandered the mandate they carried into 2009.

I'm not sure why, but for some reason

(and I think it's perverse) this bit of news made me LOL. Maybe I was imagining how some folks would react if it happened in the US.

Well, whaddaya know...

The law of the land even applies in Arizona. (Note who--an Arizonan, former US Supreme Court Justice--voted with the majority.)

Out of Afghanistan in my lifetime?

Fuggedaboudit. Check out the construction of military installations throughout that country, presently underway and proposed. Incompatible with our withdrawal from Afghanistan anytime soon? Ubetcha. Obama, aren't you commander in chief of the armed forces?

I take it all back.

This video alone justifies the existence of the personal computer, the Internet, YouTube and all such devices.

P.S. You don't have to be a Gilbert and Sullivan fan to enjoy this.

So much for moving to Sweden

What a revoltin' development this is.

An exquisite example of the adage, What you don't know won't hurt you.

Lisinopril, the generic name of a drug of which I am prescribed--and which I for years have taken--a daily dose of 20 mg. to lower my blood pressure, is, I learned during this early, early morning spurt of web-surfing, derived from the venom of the jararaca, a Brazillian pit viper.