What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
Frank Rich could be considered one of the sharpest policy commentators writing for a major media outlet, but that would reflect more poorly on the state of journalism than brilliant political insight and honesty on the part of Frank Rich. Though Frank Rich’s analysis is thought provoking and at times crystalline, he falls prey to a similar paranoia and one-mindedness that he condemns others for. Rich focuses too much on ideology and culture, while his relative lack of policy knowledge contributes to his lackluster brilliance. Indeed, he quips “culture is politics,” but Rich’s focus on the soft power politics of culture many times causes him to miss (perhaps intentionally) the hard power politics of wealth and force. While he regularly addresses relevant issues and exposes many absurdities in our political system, he ultimately succumbs to a false consciousness himself.
 I learned that Washington never told a lie.
I learned that soldiers seldom die.
I learned that everybody’s free.
And that’s what the teacher said to me.
Frank Rich insists that the prototypical American white-male (straight, simple, and easily incensed) fears his eminent decline from power as the nation becomes increasingly queer and brown people friendly. However, Rich seems equally as terrified of potent libertarianism or card carrying members of the NRA.  Indeed, Rich is terrified of force whether it is from patriotic alarmists or Islamic fundamentalists, often spilling ink to worry about terrorists. Many of his columns lately have been focused on scolding irresponsible Republicans for their encouraging gun-toting activists and their simple no-more-government organizing. Rich’s criticisms are helpful for any Republicans who do not wish to accidentally incite riots. It seems obvious that politicians shouldn’t be encouraging extremes as it might end up undoing of the current order, but the Republicans may have little choice.
If they want to take back congress they must try to co-opt the tea party movement, whose members are used to identifying republican and obviously politically active. Though I’m not sure how “ham-handed” their attempts have been considering Palin’s keynote address at the Tea Party Convention. Though there was bickering between [...continue reading]

*link in this post contains disturbing photos that you look at as to remember not everyone gets to go to work a decent job everyday, buy useless shit, get fat, and watch TV with their families in peace.
The metaphor that casts our leaders as “actors” on the “world stage” makes me cringe. Could there be a more misleading and romantic metaphor for international politics? Granted it is a great way to attract the avaricious and vain to the leadership.  Tell them they will be like Marlon Brando or Audry Hepburn , a  great star in the great unfolding drama of history.  Frighteningly enough, this is exactly how poli-sly students are taught to think about international politics.
Sure as Shakespeare noted,
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
But the so called actors on the world stage tend to determine other peoples “exists” and might even prevent some people from entering in the first place. This is exactly the problem. An actor works in the realm of fiction. Our politicians clearly don’t need the encouragement to dabble in fiction. The result can be very embarrassing.  Not to mention deadly. And even white lies* can have damning and terrible consequences.
This metaphor clearly contributes to the lemons problem (as we say in ickonomics) that we face when it comes to “leadership.”  All the nice people don’t really care about bossing other people around. The quintessential “A-hole”, however, thrives on power, and naturally takes advantage of any chance to tell people what to do. Its an ironic maladjustment inherent to hierarchy. The people at the top must step on other people to get there and naturally the ones who rise to the top also tend to be the most ruthless.  Which leads us to our next old as dirt smart dude quote, Niccolo Machiavelli, “If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud.”
The powerful and ambitious must one-up one another in ruthlessness to obtain power. They must be willing [...continue reading]

It’s that time of year again. Love, lust and bitter disappointment are in the air. For so many hopeful singles Valentines day is another kick in the groin in the arduous task of finding a mate.  For today’s young girls and guys love is a dangerous game. We’ve grown to believe in the best of both worlds, that we can be completely secure in our own identities and still get the object of our desires when we so choose.  We distrust long term relationships, probably because most of our parents are divorced, and pretend like the single life is just as gratifying. However, when it comes down to it we all want somebody to love or more specifically, to love us.
That is the ironic thing about love. Something that is supposed to be unselfish devotion is rooted in the desire to have that one person who can’t live without us.  Which of course is bullshit. If a piano were to drop on you’re main squeeze’s head and squash them to death of course you could go on living. It would be hard, but you’d survive. Although there are some instances where people are motivated enough to end their own life after they lose their lover, they are generally the exception that proves the rule. While I don’t like to jump to conclusions, unless of course if we are playing the Office Space inspired board game, I generally characterize  suicides, no matter what the circumstances, as completely irrational bordering on bat-shit-crazy.  Of course I am being cold and cynical, but that is what I do here.
The most epic tech-innovation for judging someones level of dissatisfaction with the holiday is facebook. While I’m sure people have posted even more pathetic things on myspace, I don’t cut myself to relieve stress and  have only thought about dying my hair jet black in passing. So I stick to facebook.  Everyone seems to have a witty or not so witty Valentines Day facebook status.  “Happy Valentines Day <3 ” is a stock status for single girls. As far as I can tell this means, “please, [...continue reading]

Just what are we to do with you? It recently came out that Goldman Sachs has helped Greece conceal large portions of it national debt. Thus allowing them the Greeks an extra $1 billion in credit. The rainmakers at Goldman used fancy derivatives to hide that the Greek government was getting exchange rates better than the going market rates on Euros when it financed new debt. The debt was taken out in different currencies than the Euro, but was for Euros.
This is the great scam of international finance, especially for less established nations. We will loan you plenty of Euros, but we want it paid back in Dollars. This is can be devastating for developing nations. If they try to print their own currency foreign companies refuse it as payment.  No one will take it, it isn’t real. Its only real if they borrow it from someone else in a currency currently accepted. When they are unable to pay back their loans countries like Haiti are cut off from credit, “It must be right that a nation buried in rubble must not also be buried in debt.”  We will only bury nations in debt free of ruble. Its only logical, how will they pay off the loans if the country is buried in ruble?
Goldman seams to be rearing its head everywhere these days.  The bank also made new by suggesting that American investors need to be more “worldly.”  Which is euphemism for move your money over seas where the getting is good because there is no money to be made here in the U.S.
The “bank holding company” is also in the news haggling with AIG saying the insurer ows it more money on insured assetts that went south. AIG is claiming just the opposite that Goldman overstated its losses and that Goldman needs to pay back some of the money. While the two mega-finance corporations squabble over the easy government money. This year has not been spectacular for AIG, for Goldman however 2009 has been a year of record profits.
Re-capitalized by the government Goldman did what it does best in 2009, capitalize.  Since the other American premier investment houses Bear Stearns and Lehman either were [...continue reading]

A recent phenomenon that has sweeping the nation has been the Tea Parties.  These direct actions have no translated into a “movement,” according to most  new-sources. This movement, as it apparently has called, just had its first National Convention, with Sarah Palin as the key note speaker. In case you haven’t been paying attention Palin lauded the Tea Party Phenomenon as beautiful.  She also took the chance to take some simple-minded pot shots at president Obama. She chided, “how’s the hope-y and change-y stuff working out for you?” The difference between Palin beating this line to death and all the other dumb-ass right wingers out there using it,  is that Palin was given $100,000 to offer such insight. Nevermind that “hope” and “change” were vague and ephemeral campaign slogans that proved to be successful in getting the man elected.
However I must say, the tea partiers are the equivalent of the democrats who thought electing Obama was the a “movement”. Unfortunately electing mainstream politicians or campaigning for them (basically what the tea party is doing by forming PAC’s and providing grass roots conservative organizing) , isn’t exactly Radical.   Just because the man is half black, which makes him all black in the U.S., doesn’t mean he is going to turn the system on its head.Though that is what most seem to think.
So the U.S. manages to be just as racist as before. The fist Black President has the republican-idiocracy turning out for spontaneous mass demos and has the democratic-lackeys thinking all their problems have been solved for them. Really though it’s sad that the first Black President is elected and white people just start having meetings in Pizza Huts to figure out what to do next.  Though a lot of the tea party propaganda evokes the cold war a fair amount is overtly racist. Similarly the best thing to ever happen to Klan membership was the civil rights movement.
Both sides think a radical has been elected just because he is brown, when in truth the man is moderate as vanilla ice-cream. The most revolutionary policy he has attempted has been instituting [...continue reading]

Many of the old-timers I’ve met, Anyone over 40 or 45, have commented on my generation’s taste for brevity.* They bitch about text messages and instant messaging, “What ever happened to writing a letter? No one writes letters anymore!” Email, okay. Email, that’s what happened.
It is true the allure of instant gratification has spread to our kitchens to our communications. Twitter and text messaging is the informational equivalent of frozen food and the microwave. Papers like the free Red Eye here in Chicago boil down the news to ultra short-form journalism. They “nuggetize it.” Doesn’t matter if its chicken or media, process the shit out of it and they will swallow it whole. What used to take a full paragraph now takes a sentence-and-a-half.  Now sure all you old-timers can wine about the deteriorating effects of our watered down correspondences, I do all the time, but what about the possible positive aspects? I think laconic discourse can be good or bad, but either way its inevitable.
In an information age there is too much damn information! How else is my generation supposed to deal with the massive amounts of info available for us. Sure thanks to deregulation of the telecoms sector in the nineties mass media is dominated by ten companies.  That’s why mass media sucks, but the Internet changed the game.  Wikipedia alone has claimed months of my life. We need something to strain that information so we don’t go absolutely crazy. We are all half-crazy. In the post-post-modern age if you don’t agree you’re little crazy, you need to be locked up. Because trust me you are crazy and potentially dangerous.  Know anyone who thinks they have it all under control? Run. Run before you see just how in control they think they are.
I admit, the increasing appeal of brevity of the information age has spawned the nefarious  institution of  internet speak.  Thankfully I think this blog is a little to high-brow to get an “OMG! Lolz ur blog like  ToTaLlY made me LMFAO!!!! : O” comments. This is bad brevity. However, brevity is not always a sign of [...continue reading]

This post is a sad post to write. The Supreme Court, the ultimate arbitrating body of the land doesn’t know the difference between a person and multi-national corporations. The marketing gurus must be proud of themselves. The first amendment right of free speech that five of the nine guilty justices vehemently defended is now not only enjoyed by us but also our stock holdings, or at least their lobby budgets, or something…. How exactly corporations are considered citizens with full sets of political rights I just don’t understand.
Are the justices really so confused to think that brands are people? Is Justice Anthony M. Kennedy desperately looking for a boy named Target? Does Chief Justice Roberts think he met Disney on his trip to the Magic Kingdom last fall? This is exactly what the marketing wonks want too. They hope you think Nike is your friend. That he makes you cool and athletic. It’s that branding and relentless advertising that keeps you coming back to McDonald’s. It isn’t the food. Modern Man sees the ad on the subway. His stomach twinges and next thing he knows there he is, at the counter. He hands the girl on the other side a dollar. She hands him a shitty burger, and -smile- he’s loving it. Sometimes he stays awake at night wondering what he was eating before they started advertising 100% pure beef. Was there dog in there?
While all of congress stood when Obama scolded the Supreme Court, there must have been more than a few happy Republicans and Democrats. If we take that gesture as a form of political speech then we can safely say that they were standing their lying asses off. Standing during a political rally to show your support is a reasonable enough right to give people. Other forms of political speech protected by your first amendment rights are flag burning, holding up god-hates-fags signs, distributing Nazi propaganda, and getting naked in public. We take this right very seriously in this country.
So seriously that activists create organizations around people engaging in, sometimes heinous, political speech. Activists create these organizations [...continue reading]

These days there are so many causes out there that it is hard to care about each one. So in an attempt to delineate use full causes from completely pointless causes I will here expound the three causes that I just don’t give a shit about.
#3 Diabetes
I understand we have a diabetes is nearly an epidemic in this country and in many others. However, when half the world is starving I have a hard time donating money so that the other half can continue to eat all the food without getting the health problems that goes along with it.
To be clear Type I diabetics I have sympathy for. It sucks you got the short straw when the G-man was handing out genetics. Sorry that you have to constantly check your blood sugar and inject insulin in your arm or risk death.
On the other hand, type II or “acquired diabetes” comes from a life time of eating junk food. For Type II diabetics I have no sympathy. After thirty some odd years of a high-fuctose corn syrup and fat based diet you expect me to give you money to find a cure? I’ll give you a cure. Set down the Mt. Dew and Corn Chips and go for a jog.  Try eating some vegetables fat-ass. If my penchant for frozen pizza and fast food fair lands me in hospital someday so be it. A man is only meant to eat so many pizza rolls after a certain point edible food like substances have their revenge.  Make no mistake that fatty salty snack is getting you high and that endorphin rush comes with some negative effects. Namely increased risk of stroke, diabetes, hypertension, heart-disease, and obesity.
#2 Abortion
Political science professors love to bring up Abortion. They like this topic because it gets people hot under the collar.  Nothing stirs debate like accusations of sexism and baby-killing. Personally I find this topic boring. People have been aborting their babies for thousands of years. In fact abortion predates Christianity. So what in Hell makes people think they can stop people from getting abortions?
When abortion was illegal women still aborted pregnancies. In Chicago women started the Jane Collective. A group created so that women wouldn’t have to trust profiteering amateurs who didn’t care about [...continue reading]

While doing my work-a-day news surfing I noticed a few articles about new non-traditional  services  and tactics being used at big companies.  Burger King is opening a bar in south beach. Air France KLM is denying that they are forcing fat people to purchase extra seats , while Southwest and United already have such a policy in place. Most interestingly though a Holiday Inn in London is offering human bed warmers. For a modest fee a holiday in employees dressed in footie pajamas will warm customers beds.
These business plans shed light on the quest for profits in the overdeveloped western economy.  Burger King is exploiting its relatively successful youthful advertising campaign. In its attempt to be the edgy fast food place of choice adding booze to the menu only makes sense. The only problem is to ask whether the novelty of a fast food bar is enough to draw customers regularly to the new restaurants.  The problem the King faces is that we have too much damn fast food places in the first place. The market is saturated so the branding and delivery needs to be unique. Burger Kings attempt to differentiate itself is no surprise considering the abundance of cheap burgers and french fries.  It will be interesting to see if the Whopper Bar catches on, or if it can’t compete with other cheap food and drink fair.
The struggling air-line industry is also facing a profit squeeze apparent from all sorts of different charges for things once included with air-fare. Soon I’ll be mistaking flight attendants for some good fellas. Extra peanuts- fuck you pay me. Check your bags- fuck you pay me.  Your ass is too fat too sit in the seat?  That’s right, fuck you pay me. However, if you have ever spent more than twenty minutes sitting next to a corpulent frequent flier, you probably don’t mind this development in the aviation businessmen.
However, most revealing is this bed-warming service.  Most developed economies are in the final transitions from an industry based economy to a service based economy.  I’m surprised this scheme hasn’t been tried before.  I [...continue reading]

I’ve recently been accused of “anti-Americanism.” If you’d like to read the conversation, just click on “Whats in a War” and read the comments below the post. This accusation of “anti-Americanism” starts with an interesting premise, the nation-state.   Even though there are two contents called America, I believe the reader was referring to the United States government and segments of American culture that this blog criticizes.  Assuming he wasn’t most angry about my apparent disbelief in doctrinal Christianity and my apparent distaste for MTV and other mind-dulling facets of American culture, but that he was most angry about my criticism of actually policy, we should examine the nation-state to understand the criticism.
For all of those readers lucky enough not to have spent hours scouring political text, the nation-state is this relatively new concept that really arose in the wake of the enlightenment. After loyalty was not required to our sovereigns, the bourgeois and the remaining landed class came up with this idea of the nation-state and the idea of nationalism that comes with it. It wasn’t long before the Kaiser drummed up a great deal of Nationalism and used it to start the Franco-Prussian war, the precursor in many ways to the world wars to follow.
Still the nation-state is a tricky concept. A nation is a people. A state is a group with enough guns to gain the moral legitimacy to use them.  There can be state-less nations, like Palestine, though Hamas seems to be evolving into state.  There are also perhaps nation-less states. The Vatican could be an example, a sovereign territory with-in a city with out a real people to govern.
So a people don’t need a state to be a nation, and a state only needs enough people to man the guns to be a state.  The question to ask then is what is our state’s relations ship to the people. Then we can perhaps discern what this “anti-Americanism” means.  One of the interesting things about the modern nation state is the inevitable coalescence of the forces of business and the state. In fascism the state directs the [...continue reading]