Touchy Subjects

Obama and his Critics // The militarization of our Police

If Dad drinks and gambles his wages away over the weekend, the wife and kids might object. They might object and try to get Dad to stop ruining his life and the lives of his family. But, if Dad ignores what his wife and kids tell him, he might be able to force them to go along with his ways for awhile. They object, but he just refuses to pay any attention to their cautions and pleadings.

Obama as head of state is this Dad, drinking and spending our money on frivolities and cheap entertainments. His family is begging and pleading with him to stop.

“Please stop drinking, Daddy,” say his kids, “Pay some attention to us, for a change.”

Instead of listening and trying to mend his ways, he has militarized the police so that the family can more easily be shushed and ignored.

http://addiction.narcononrehab.com/alcohol-addiction-stories/growing-alcoholics-true-story/

Obama may have only recently become our Daddy, but he’s still now officially ignoring his family’s right to be heard, and to make the case that his policies are endangering the family’s health and future. He may say that what he’s doing is in the country’s/family’s interest, but the case that he’s right about that is made through argument, not the barrels of some SWAT/Riot  team’s guns.

Isn’t Obama, no less than Bush before him, just protecting the prerogatives of the powerful against the interests of the weak? He’s choosing the drunk Daddy over the hungry family.

Obama and his Critics // Aren’t the Wars Betraying the Troops?

Besides the issue of whether or not we should be fighting the families of Iraq or Afghanistan, there is the question of what our involvement in these wars is doing to the troops we send over there. I hear we don’t treat them well.

Dahr Jamail writes about this topic and was interviewed about the experience of U.S. troops here,

If there’s no good reason to be fighting the people of Afghanistan, if we are there because of the lie that their country supported the murders of 9-11,  if we are now just terrorizing Afghanis, and by asking our  troops to carry on this combat we are ruining them – our own,  then shouldn’t this count against Obama and the Democrats who continue to promote this war?

Obama and his Critics // Wasn’t the Democratic Party based on the Rejection of an American Central Bank, and hasn’t Obama betrayed that principle?

If the Republican Party would reject the principles that Lincoln came to represent, …what might those be, oh,…maintaining the Union and Emancipation of American slaves, we’d think their Party would have gone seriously astray. Many now think that conservatives are no longer providing a serious argument about how to run the country. That’s because it seems their Party no longer bases their argument on basic principles.

The Democratic Party seems to be in a similar predicament. Yes, the Party has a lot of power in Washington. But, does it stand for anything? Can you count on it to support any principles worth defending?

The Democratic Party at one time supported slavery. A bad thing.  For much of the past 50 years it has supported wars of conquest all over the world. Also a bad thing.

In the past, way in the past, the Democrats fought against there being a Central Bank in this country. What was that all about?

What are the first things to be said about a “Farruca”?

After having started to learn about bulerias and alegrias, my teacher suggested I learn a farruca. It’s something  flamenco. It’s in 4/4 or 2/4. It’s mostly a dance, but there’s a song, or cante, all  in a minor key.

Here is the baile, or dance, the cante,  song,  and guitar,

Obama and his Critics // Cost is not the only criteria of a Good Health Care System

I thought this had a good point. There are many factors that make a country’s health care superior, or not.

Obama and his Critics // Housing Foreclosures to swamp more Families

See this report about another wave of foreclosures, a prediction based on evidence other variable rate mortgages will start demanding higher monthly payments.

The implication is that cities that up till now have escaped injury because of low percentages of sub-prime loans,  could be at risk from other similar loans in the coming year.

Krauthammer and Sept. 11th // What is the issue?

As far as I can tell, Charles Krauthammer doesn’t make much sense when he talks about the murders of September 11, 2001. I’m not saying I don’t understand how he could be emotional about them, or that I don’t understand how that emotional reaction could drive him to support wars of revenge all over Central Asia. It’s just, I thought we were supposed to leave our emotional reactions behind us and reason together to figure out what to do in this world. It’s only by reason, and specifically, the reasoning together in argumentation, that we can come to sensible policies out of complex disputes.

So, if that is the case, then emotional outbursts, indignation, the practice of carrying grudges, the making of threats, and so forth, should be failings we’d try to root out and avoid. Especially, we’d want to be reasonable in a situation where thousands of Americans died and millions of people in other countries stand to lose their lives and futures.

Obama and his Critics // Corruption in Housing Finance

I live in Portland Oregon.  I have not seen houses boarded up in whole neighborhoods in my city. I’ve seen several business store-fronts vacant. There are many “For Lease” signs in their windows. If you drive or walk down many streets, you can find several “For Sale” signs in the front yards of homes. I  think there’s some number of vacant houses,  those  having been for sale, that are being concealed  as really vacant. They have cars in their driveways, but no one lives in the buildings.

This is different than some of the scenes I’ve seen on the You Tubes showing vacant neighborhoods, houses and businesses boarded up, and a lot of devastation.

What happened? Why is there this housing crisis involving people unable to pay their mortgages?

I’d first say, the problem involves the fact that there are so few good paying jobs,  and second, the price of housing is just so out of whack.  Just about everything is too expensive, too over-priced, way too unaffordable.

A documentary has come out recently, called  American Casino, which attempts to explain what happened and answer some of my questions. Alternet carried the following piece on this film involving an interview with its creators Andrew and Leslie Cockburn. In addition to this interview, the same people were interviewed on Grit TV, and I present that interview too. Then, there are some additional videos on related issues.

Yes, I will add, Obama was not in a position to prevent the corruption in housing finance, but he can be blamed for not fixing it. The first thing to do in treating the sick, is figure out what their problem might be, how did it come about, and what all are its symptoms and effects. Then, when the disease is understood, one can try to cure the patient. This film goes to explain what happened.

'American Casino': How Our Nation's Financial Sector Became a Massive and Unregulated Gambling Operation

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted September 5, 2009.

A Defense of Mike Whitney’s metaphors, and my own.

I have been talking about several metaphors as similar ways of  explaining reality. Socrates argued that our lives were like the lives of the cave people in his Allegory of the Cave. I want to say, in pursuing the same argument, that our lives are like the lives of kids who live on a playground run by a bully.

I first thought about the aptness of this metaphor in thinking about how to talk about the influence of corporations in these United States on our lives. I thought we could be thought of as the kids, and the corporations would be the bully, or bullies. The metaphor stated the idea that it seems we are forced to do things by these corporations, forced to give up our valuables when we don’t want to, just like bullies force us to give up our lunch money when we don’t want to.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-490250/Coping-bullies-growing-says-child-expert.html

The point of the metaphor is to highlight the fact that our lives are not what we would want. We want to have our choices laid out for us, where we have a chance to understand what making each choice meant for us, and then could choose freely, and not by being coerced, amongst the many options. The metaphor tells us that reality is not like that. We don’t get to choose what to do with our lunch money, as we would like. Instead, the bully tells us that we must give him our lunch money or he will  hurt us.

I want to talk about a recent article by Mike Whitney, who wrote “How Bad Will it Get?” which appears in Counterpunch. I want to talk about Whitney’s piece because he points out several issues which support my contention that we do think that our lives are like the kids in my metaphor. These issues support the truth of my contention.

Obama and his Critics // Wall Street Corruption

Economics and Finance and the process of making a lot of money is not something I know that much about. I suspect most people in the country are similarly uninformed.

However, because ethics and the idea of what’s right and moral is so off the table, it has been capitalism and the accumulation of wealth that has been center stage in our discourse. It has been about making wealth, and survival using money, that has been the issue, instead of ethics and morality and considerations of what would be fair,  humane, or principled.

Matt Taibbi has written about corruption on Wall Street for Rolling Stone. How come Obama has not been making cleaning up this mess?