Mourning For Trees

We take trees for granted, don’t we?

This was our Japanese Red Maple. It’s been the centerpiece of the front yard of our house since we moved here in the Fall of 1982. Our children climbed it, our cats all climbed it. It was spectacular in the Spring and we saw it turn beautifully bright red every Fall. It was home for hundreds of birds, and countless squirrels, not to mention the 17-year Cicadas that molted all over it back in the mid-90′s.

It died last summer. Yesterday we had to have it removed. It had a sister on the other side of our front yard which died two summers ago. There’s evidently been a blight on Japanese Maples. Ours was the last one we could find in town. There are none left.

We also had to remove a cedar tree which has grown outside our daughter’s bedroom window for the past 30 years. It was blown over in high winds in a storm 10 days ago and was hanging over the main power feed into the house. We had to cut it down. And last week a friend from upstate called to tell me that the one of the two Sugar Maples that have grown in front of our house in Palenville since I was a small child was cracked and split in the same wind storm that took the cedar. It’s the one just to the left of the three skylights in the picture below. It too had to be taken down to protect the house.

So we’re in mourning this week. These trees have been with us most of our lives, and now they’re just gone. They are memories.

We will plant a new tree where our Japanese Maple was, and it will grow and hopefully it will outlast us. But I don’t take trees for granted anymore. They never move and they may seem like they will be there forever, but they won’t. I’m hunkered down today in the second major snowstorm of this week praying that this storm doesn’t take any more old friends. If you have a familiar tree, one that you see every day, even if it’s the one on the sidewalk outside of your apartment building, take note of it. Don’t just take it for granted.

This is no longer about Democrats vs Republicans.

It is no longer about right versus left. This is about corporate power versus ordinary people.

It’s about capitalism and corporate power. It is now perfectly clear that BOTH parties, all three branches of government, and the fourth estate are controlled by corporate power.

Corporate power versus ordinary people. For my generation it began with the Kennedy and King assassinations and the Vietnam War. We gained some ground for a few years in the 1970′s with the impeachment of Nixon, but Carter failed in spite of his good intentions and it went viral in the 1980′s with the election of Ronald Reagan. Since then our entire culture has been hollowed out by it. We now have two generations that have been educated under the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush corporatist educational philosophy. Civics, Good Government, and the history of the Labor Movement has slowly but surely disappeared from school curricula. Reading by phonics went away suddenly in the mid eighties and was replaced by Whole Language, a dismal failure, that left a decade of classes of 1980′s and 1990′s school children behind the curve on reading and writing. And with G.W. Bush, “No Child Left Behind” put the failure of our educational system on steroids. I’m a baby-boomer. I was in the high school class of ’69 (the best class;). We were taught that Government is good. Our kids, and their kids, have been taught that Government is bad. We learned about the Red Scares, the Palmer Raids, the Army/McCarthy Hearings, and the Haymarket Riot. We learned who Joe Hill, and Paul Robeson, and Thurgood Marshall were. Our kids and grandkids have not been taught about those things in school. Thirty years have gone by. The me-first, sink-or-swim, liberalism-is-bad, Government-is-bad, greed-is-good thinking has now been instilled in a majority of our population. It’s assumed to be the norm by two generations who don’t remember the world without computers, internet, and cable TeeVee.

Our manufacturing sectors no longer exist. We’ve gone from the largest importer of raw material and the largest exporter of finished goods in the 1950′s, 60′s and 70′s, to the largest exporter of raw materials and the largest importer of finished goods today. The American middle class experienced 40 years of growth after World War Two. Since the mid 1980′s, wages have declined in spite of the vastly increased productivity of the workforce brought about by the digital revolution, and the stability of the middle class is gone. Seventy-five years of labor protections brought to us by the blood, sweat, and tears of generations of union organizers and labor activists have been broken. Our bread-and-butter jobs are gone and won’t be coming back if the corporatists have anything to say about it.

Why do corporatists worship the memory of Ronald Reagan? Among other things it’s because Reagan and his followers revolutionized the way politicians communicate with voters. Cable TeeVee became widespead and began to replace broadcast. The Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to broadcast content in the public interest was abolished. Electronic media, which was then nascent, was conglomerated and brought under tight corporate control. The News Divisions of the large broadcast networks were taken out from behind the firewall of the Fairness Doctrine and put under the umbrella of the Entertainment Divisions. Roone Arledge, a sports broadcast producer, took control of ABC News. When “Cable News” became popular in the late 1980′s all bets were off. The news was officially canceled and has for the past 15 years been replaced by “info-tainment”, which was once called “bread-and-circuses”. The motion picture “Network”, produced in 1979, was eerily prescient. Our entire population has been dumbed down to the point where they will now seem to swallow any crap that comes out of their corporate TeeVee, including the myth of Barack Obama, who has shown himself to be just another player in the corporate game.

Nothing will change unless there is honest campaign finance reform and corporate money is taken out of politics. But the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are persons and that for corporations, money equals speech. Corporations have been deemed to be persons and granted protections under the First Amendment, but somehow they can still buy and sell other corporations. I don’t get that. Where I come from they call that slavery. But overturning corporate personhood will require a constitutional amendment and/or the overturn of at least two Supreme Court decisions, and I don’t see it happening anytime soon. Our entire government is now under tight corporate control. And don’t get me started on the environment, the climate, the wars, the torture, the militarized police, and all that other stuff.

Capitalism is a great system when proper tax and trade policies are enacted and the marketplace is properly regulated. We know this from our history. Karl Marx may have been wrong about the scalability of Communism, but he was dead right when he described Capitalism as an unsustainable system when left unchecked. If left on it’s own it will grow like a cancer. We are now in the cancer stage of Capitalism. Our economic and political systems are strangled by it and it is killing itself. It is eating itself from the inside and it will eventually collapse if Government does not take control and make it work.

Hopefully our species will survive to see that happen.

(crosposted at Daily Kos)

R.I.P. – Mitch Mitchell

I just heard the very sad news of the passing of Mitch Mitchell, the drummer that held The Jimi Hendrix Experience together.

Another one gone.

Update forthcoming….

Dancin’ In The Streets

I know I’m a few days late with this, but it’s been a busy and hectic week for me. Lot’s of stress and worry on Monday and Tuesday, then the day or so of pinching myself, shedding uncontrollable tears of joy, experiencing delicious Schedenfreude while watching Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchannan whine, an airline experience from hell, and I find myself here on Saturday morning in Chicago and I realize that we really did it. 

Yes we did! Congratulations! Yay us!

Now the hard part begins. The people on the right will not be going away, as much as we all wish they would. They are not the type to say, “Oh, our ideas must have been wrong”. No they will be back. The hate, the fear, and the racism has not been vanquished, yet. We can’t sit back the way we did in the early 1990′s and let them shred President-elect Barack Obama (man, I like the sound of that!) the way they did Bill Clinton. But the Republican Party has been gravely wounded and it will be interesting to watch how they deal with this ass whupping. My popcorn popper is ready.

I am optimistic. A lot has changed since 1993, the last time a new Democratic President took office after a Republican Administration. We have the netroots, which has turned out to be more powerful than any of us could have imagined even four years ago, and we have a Democratic Party that has been re-energized with the leadership of Howard Dean and President-elect Obama. We have an enormous and enthusiastic base of new, young voters who know how to use a computer. We have a flock of new Progressive Representatives and Senators. If We The People stay active and keep pushing hard for Progressive principles we will be able to beat back the right-wing attack that is sure to come soon.

(Video h/t Jesus’ General)

“Who Could Have Anticipated That Banks Wouldn’t Regulate Themselves?”

Alan Greenspan had the gall to sit before Congress today and claim that he was in “a state of shocked disbelief” when confronted with the undeniable evidence that every idea he ever had is wrong. His whole world has just crumbled before his eyes and he has been forced to watch as his castles made of sand slip into the sea.

From the “librul” New York Times:

Facing a firing line of questions from Washington lawmakers, Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman once considered the infallible maestro of the financial system, admitted on Thursday that he “made a mistake” in trusting that free markets could regulate themselves without government oversight.
A fervent proponent of deregulation during his 18-year tenure at the Fed’s helm, Mr. Greenspan has faced mounting criticism this year for having refused to consider cracking down on credit derivatives, an unchecked market whose excesses partly led to the current financial crisis.

We are watching the invalidation of the main tenets of conservative economic philosophy and if it wasn’t so tragic and offensive I’d be tempted to have me a big ole’ slice of that yummy, yummy Schadenfreude Pie. But this is no joke, and the damage will be too severe to joke about this anymore.

But in a tense exchange with Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the committee, Mr. Greenspan conceded a more serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root of a superior economy.

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” Mr. Greenspan said.

Referring to his free-market ideology, Mr. Greenspan added: “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”

Mr. Waxman pressed the former Fed chair to clarify his words. “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Mr. Waxman said.

“Absolutely, precisely,” Mr. Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

[...]

In his prepared remarks, Mr. Greenspan said he was in “a state of shocked disbelief” about the breakdown in the ability of banks to regulate themselves. He also warned about the economic consequences of the crisis, saying that he “cannot see how we will avoid a significant rise in layoffs and unemployment.” Consumer spending will decline, too, he said, adding that a stabilization of home prices would be necessary to bring the crisis to its end.

I find it interesting that every time there is a major crisis on the Republican watch, it’s rooted in something that we “could never have anticipated”. 9/11, Katrina, and now we can add financial malfeasance, greed, and corruption to that list.

Now that’s what my Russian grandma would have called “chutzpah”.

Yes We Carve

On Boy! Something to look forward to for Halloween.

Go here for pumkin stencils and lot’s of pumpkin pictures.

Late Night Music: Respondele a Obama!

h/t Daily Kos

What Is Our Plan B?

I had a bad feeling yesterday, and I need to write about it. I see the video above, and I worry about election day. I think we all know that there have already been massive attempts to suppress the vote by the Republican Party. And this morning The New York Times has a story about registration irregularities in the swing states.

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run.

Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately. The screening or trimming of voter registration lists in the six states — Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina — could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers.

The Republicans have already said that they will be challenging voters. I expect that there will also be attempts to intimidate canvassers and GOTV community organizers. And after watching the video I wouldn’t count out the possibility of mob violence at the polls, especially if McPalin keeps whipping up the racist frenzy. And if I really let my paranoid fantasies get the better of me I see mob violence leading to the shutdown of the election, Martial Law, the end of America. Now that’s just MY paranoid fantasy, but remember that you heard it here first.

Now, there’s another thing. We all know that the Republicans are going to try to steal this election. And I remember all too clearly the anger, hurt and frustration I felt in 2000 and 2004 when those elections were stolen, and I do not relish feeling those feelings again, but I have to consider this possibility and how I will react to it. So here is the question:

If we wake up on November 5th to find out that this election has been stolen from us, what are we going to do?

When I asked this question yesterday in a comment at dKos I was chastised for “hanging out the crepe”. I guess that means that that particular commenter thought I was being negative with my question, but I haven’t seen any plan of action for this eventuality. I think that this is something we should all be thinking about. What will we do? Will we sit at home and watch on TeeVee as another election is stolen? Or will we take to the streets the way the Ukranians did during the Orange Revolution?

In our excitement and joy at the implosion of the McCain Campaign and the prospect of a new progressive era being born with the presidency of Barack Obama, we need to also have a Plan B. And if, as I really expect, Barack is indeed elected and everything turns out all right on election day, then we can then turn it into a really big block party.

h/t: Blogger Interrupted for the video

UPDATE: From a commeter at dKos, where I cross posted this:

it wont be stolen

let me ask you a frank question: are you working in your area with the Obama campaign at all? I ask b/c i find that working closely with them gives me insight into just how together they are. They are anticipating all angles but you would’nt know it if you’re not working with them. I live in FL, BTW.

Examples:

1. when we register voters, we bring the registration forms FIRST to the campaign office. They log them into their OWN system before taking them BY HAND to the SOE office.

2. we just spend a week calling every single person in our county who registered on VoteForChange.com to remind them to send in their registration form. We logged if they said they already did.

3. we spent another week calling every single 18+ voter in my county who was NOT registered to vote. I have NO idea where the campaign got this info but it turns out that it generated a lot of new voters, once they were prodded.

4. behind the scenes Obama’s legal staff has gotten FL’s election office to publicly state that the driver license address no longer has to match the voter card address as long as the person is at the right precinct that is on the voter card. This ruling came down about 17 days ago and is a victory for us herein FL.

This is just a very small example of how tightly this ship is being run. I could easily give you many many more.

Obama has been very on it right from the start. What you’re feeling is the jitters. Its like preparing for the Boston marathon and suddenly ts TIME.

Relax.

And to make you really understand the position we’re in right now, here this from Lambros otherwise laughable article today:

As of this week, the freshman liberal senator led or held the edge in Iowa, Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico and Colorado – eight states that can deliver 111 electoral votes to the winner.

President Bush previously won all these states along with a bunch of others that gave him 286 electoral votes to John Kerry’s 251. Mr. McCain can’t afford to lose any of these Red states, unless he can offset his losses by picking off a number of Democratic Blue states and that seems rather problematic right now (though polls show the race tightening in Minnesota and Wisconsin).

But with a little more than four weeks remaining in the presidential race in a brutal economic environment, the grim reality facing Mr. McCain is that his rival leads in more than a half-dozen Red states, while he cannot point to a single Blue state where he is ahead.

OBee-JoeBee ’08

Whew! That helps, but I still won’t really relax until Barack Obama is sworn in on 1/20/09.

Landslide

A landslide will bring you down.

1000 Words

There is nothing more to say.

Update 1: DARN! The original photo was removed. Oh well. It was nice.

Update 2: Although the original photo that I had here has disappeared, this new one is almost as good.

In case you missed it, the original photo was also very moving. It was a picture of a 60-something white woman hugging Barack Obama at a rally in Pennsylvania. She was moved to tears as she hugged him, and all the camera saw was the side of his shoulder and the back of his head. It was all in the woman’s expression. It was the perfect picture of hope.

This new photo that I found today has many of the same qualities as the original. The woman is African-American, but the expression of hope is the same.