Why Americans are mad

I've always appreciated Senator Bernie Sanders' perspective, an Independent and admitted democratic socialist. The latter political orientation focuses on things like economic democracy, i.e., extending democracy to business which typically have lagged behind the democratic movement in that they are still feudal aristrocracies that empower capital owners instead of the workers. Which of course is not at all like the evil State socialism that paranoid conservatives always equate with the term "socialism," since it is a democratic people's movement, empowering the worker whereas currently they have little to none, unions having long been denuded. But even without the evil State running the show conservatives cannot abide power to the people, since that would upset the imbalance of power in the hands of the wealthy few, their primary financial overlords.

Closet socialists

Last night on Real Time Bill Maher highlighted the hypocricy of closet socialists that rail against government handouts. In his “new rules” segment (starting around 1:40) we see those who favor many favor social security, Medicare, unemployment benefits, Freddie May and Fanny Mac, corporate welfare, bailouts and farm subsidies. And what are these programs but socialism in action? And yet those same people want smaller government with fewer services. For example, 40% of people on Medicare believe they have not received any government assistance. Another example is Michelle Bachman, Republican candidate for President of the US. She denounces government hand outs for everyone else and yet her farm takes government subsidies, her counseling clinic takes Medicaid, and her mortgage was underwritten by Freddie Mac.

Financial reform bill hit by truck, life support failing

In this clip Jon Stewart makes fun of the Dodd-Frank Act, the financial reform bill that passed in Congress about a year ago. The bill is intended to remedy some of the problems that led to the financial meltdown of 2008 while protecting consumers from the types of predatory lending inherent to that fiasco. Unfortunately in the year since its passage it has been continually attacked and defunded to the point it appears to have been run over by a truck, the imagery used in this humorous satire.

There is no budget crisis

There is no Budget Crisis according to Robert Reich. It is a carefully concocted conservative lie to frame the debate in a way to get their insidious budget cuts. They have everyone believing that if we pass the debt ceiling deadline we won’t be able to meet our financial obligations. Even Obama and the Dems have fallen for this and are therefore tacitly playing into the conservative game plan. They did this by linking the budget deficit to the debt limit when they have no relationship according to Reich.

Reich grants that the percentage of debt to the overall economy is high but the remedy for this is not cutting spending on government programs but the reverse: investing in creating jobs by doing the following, for example: “exempting the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes this year and next, recreating a WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps, creating an infrastructure bank, providing tax incentives for small businesses to hire, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.”

The experience of the impossible

I will provide some more quotes from John Caputo that began with this prior post, specifically related to what he calls experience. It can in some ways be correlated to what those in the transpersonal movement call consciousness, but without the metaphysical accoutrement usually associated with the latter term. Here are some excerpts from the IPS thread referenced in my prior post on Caputo's article and again Caputo is not kind to Meillassoux:

Recall how I showed the difference between différance and Kennilingam's consciousness per se in this thread. Which might indeed be the difference between deconstrucive experience (awareness in Tom's sense?) and absolute consciousness.

WI conservatives are anti-democracy

Earlier this year the Governor of WI signed a bill requiring photo ID to vote. This requirement is especially difficult on the elderly, students, minorities and low-income voters, a voting block incidentally that typically vote for Democrats. The reason for the measure was to prevent voter fraud, and yet the Brennan Center for Justice found the voter fraud actually makes up about 44 one-millionth of 1 percent of votes cast. Nevertheless, I'm not opposed to requiring State ID to vote as long as 1) a driver's license is not required, since many cannot or do not drive, and 2) such State ID is easily obtained with proof of identity.

The People speak on the debt

Monday night President Obama gave a short speech asking the American people to contact their legislators if they wanted them to work out the debt ceiling crisis, for to not do so would lead to another economic meltdown. And contact we did. Monday evening into today Congressional phone lines were jammed and several websites crashed from the traffic. Yet again we're seeing the American people motivated to get involved n the political process, something unheard of until the mass demonstrations in Wisconsin, as well as in the world, took off earlier this year. The People's movement is afoot, we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.

Sucker Punch

In another IPS discussion Andrew referenced the movie Sucker Punch with this link to a review. The review is excellent. When I first saw the movie, not being aware of the symbolism described, I had the same gut reaction, that it was more a film about escape into fantasy in the wake of horrific abuse than about gaining freedom from said abuse. That the fantasies were about "freedom" only highlighted even more the manipulation and abuse of master/slave economic conditions, much like Americans are sold the purposely created illusion of personal freedom while being manipulated to break their backs and souls each day in their denigrating jobs for the enrichment of the owners.

The review then leads us down the rabbit hole of Monarch mind control where we get into CIA and Illuminati conspiracy theories.

From radical atheism to radical theology

John Caputo has a lengthy (93 pages!) new article in the Spring 2011 issue of JCRT (11.2) called "The return of anti-religion: from radical atheism to radical theology." Some of you Meillassoux fans might be a bit insulted! From the intro:

"Postmodern theology has come of age. It now has its own counter-movement, a new generation of philosophers marching under the flag of materialism, realism, and anti-religion who complain that the theologians are back at their old trick of appropriating attempts to kill off religion in order to make religion stronger.

Ohio citizens fight back too

Back in March the Ohio governor and his conservative legislative majority enacted a union-stripping bill more insidious than that of Wisconsin. More than 350,000 public workers can no longer bargain for health care, sick time or pension benefits. But since then a grassroots people's movement went to work garnering signatures to bring the issue to a referendum vote. Today 915,000 signatures were certified and only 231,000 were necessary.