And Just In Case You Missed It

Viva La Huelga!
Complete list of winners of the 65th annual Golden Globes announced Sunday at a news conference held by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in Beverly Hills, Calif.:

“Oh %$*@!”

This is one of the photographs that randomly appears on my Mac from time to time and many people have commented on it when it shows up as my desktop background. I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that it’s “the most compelling photograph [I've] ever seen”, but it is a pretty amazing shot.

And now we know the story behind it.

(h/t AvWeb)

Update: I had a bit of a scary moment yesterday while practicing crosswind landings. I was flying a Piper Arrow and had just broken ground on my takeoff roll when a large flock of crows, and when I say large I mean like a hundred of them, decided to all take flight at once from the end of the runway. My airplane cleared the top of the flock by about fifty feet, but I definitely had an “Oh %$*@!, this could be bad.” moment there.

RESCISSION

by Stephen Fleischman

No, this is not about the Equal Rights Amendment and its failure because of rescission by some states. It’s about the coming recession and how to ward off a potential economic collapse before the crash. Most economists agree we’re heading into one.

“Firms will go to great lengths to hide or delay reporting losses,” Paul Ashworth of Capital Economics told The New York Times (1/13/08), “What we know now therefore might only be the tip of the iceberg.” We’d better know the whole truth now and start doing something about it.

Let’s start off by rescinding the Bush tax cuts, end the wasteful war in Iraq and soak the rich. Pour the money gained into massive public works, repairing the nation’s neglected infrastructure and rebuild cities blown apart by natural disasters such as Katrina. That will create more jobs than the “trickle down” system, highly touted by corporate interests that want tax cuts for themselves and their enterprises.

Another positive step would be National Health Insurance via single payer, the payer being the government; a system successfully used by industrialized nations in Europe and around the world. It would save billions in private health insurer profits and overlapping administrative costs. Opponents call it “socialized medicine”. So be it. Health care, like education, should be a right and not a privilege.

The tactics of the opposition is to demonize government. They harangue the public about the evils of “big government” as though it were some kind of bogeyman. What’s wrong with government? It’s the instrument of “We, the People…”. The only thing we have to be careful about is electing politicians that will serve our interests.

The rich would like a nice, small government that would cut entitlements for the people and allow them the giant tax cuts that they have been taking. As for military spending, the sky’s the limit.

The oligarchy—that interlocking and overlapping group of corporate executives, their foundations, their think-tanks, and their political organizations and parties—runs this country. They have their hangers-on in academia and the mainstream media; otherwise known as the running dogs of capitalism.

Through their corporate eyes, the oligarchy sees the handwriting on the wall it is up against. When the economy sours and times get tough, people look around and see what’s happened to them while they weren’t paying attention. Resistance begins to build. It’s happened many times before. It will happen again.

This time, the situation is quite different. The labor movement has been expunged. With new technology and new weapons of governance, the oligarchy has been flexing its muscles. It has learned how to induce fear in the populace, perhaps from a well-trained practitioner.

“The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don’t ask for their love; only for their fear,” said Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS in Nazi Germany.

At the risk of drawing parallels, is that where Bush got the idea for his “war on terror”? The 911 “events” happened right on time. Americans are fearful of more terrorist attacks.

That gives the Bush Administration its raison d’être. First you look for foreign terrorists—then you look for them at home. You prepare the ground with a Patriot Act and then surveillance without a court order. Get rid of Habeas Corpus in the meantime; and maybe prepare some local Guantanamos for American residents.

Are we going to allow fascism to creep into this country on little cats’ feet? Americans are too smart for that. Corporate greed will crash the economy. You can count on that. And when it does, you will see change. Docility out. Militancy in.

Change. It seems to have become the buzz word in the presidential campaign. All the Democrats are talking about it, even some Republicans. What kind of change are they talking about? That’s the chippie.

Right now, some of the Democratic candidates are talking about ending the war in Iraq, but each has a different time-table for doing it. Some talk about health care plans but none mention that dreaded term, “single payer”. And there’s a good reason why—campaign contributions from the health insurance industry. Some talk about tax cuts; oh yes, for the middle class.

So who do you vote for? It’s like playing Russian roulette. You mark your ballot and you take your chances. It’s that “lesser of two evils” choice again. You can’t get away from it. Let Mike Bloomberg run as a one-man third party. At least it will give you a choice. Some choice!

“Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty”. No, it wasn’t Thomas Jefferson who said that, though often attributed to him. It was Wendell Phillips, a Boston lawyer, abolitionist and advocate for Native Americans, in a speech before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1852.

He also said, “The hand entrusted with power becomes … the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.”