All the Significance Fit To Print

Although it was symbolic, it was historic. For the first time ever, the Roman Pontiff addressed the English Parliament and then, together with the Archbishop of Canterbury and all Christian leaders assembled, held services in Westminster Abbey. The two prelates affirmed the need for Christian evangelization in society and gave visibile evidence of their inescapable unity in Christ. For those in the English speaking world, it was no small matter, since the planting and then rupture of Christianity among the British people has defined who and what we are.

Not for the New York Times:

Mezuzahs left on people's door jams was evidently more significant.

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Social Basics

The Obama Administration announced that it is coming forward with a 50 billion dollar work-fare bill.

Whether Hoover/Roosevelt's WPA or Hitler's Arbeitsdeinst, everyone has understood the necessity and utility of public works projects. The defect in the Administration's policy is that it conceives of such programs as temporary, stop-gap measures. They are not; such programs are only the beginning of economic recovery and stability.

A truly social conception flows from the premise that every citizen is directly entitled to a guaranteed standard of living in terms of: education, employment, housing, health-care recreation and retirement.

This is not a question of "welfare" or "minimal scroungables". It is a question of building a society that has as its broad basis (not as its limit) a soci-economic egalitarianism that protects the integrity and develops the potential of the whole person.

National Socialism understood this from the beginning. FDRoosevelt promoted this concept at the very end in his 1945 speech about an Economic Bill of Rights.

And of course, economic rights is the social premise of communism and social democracy. Everyone has understood the concpet except for the US ruling caste from and after LBJ. The neo-liberal premise -- espoused by all administrations from Reagan to and including Obama -- is that if we throw enough goodies at the rich enough of it will miss its mark and actually hit the poor...sometimes, maybe. I seem to recall that Eduardo Porter of the New York Times editorial board once wrote an article entitled "Feeding the Rich feeds the Poor."

The time for this kind of thinking has come to an end. It is not necessary to abolish capitalism, but only to regulate so that it becomes the servant of society not its master.

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Denouement

AP Headline:

Despite Formal Combat End, US joins Baghdad Battle

ROFLMAO

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Senator Simpson and Bovine Body Parts

Social Security hatchet-man and former Senator Alan Simpson, co-chair of Obambi's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, has compared social security to a “milk cow with 310 million tits” [ here ]. 

We would rather be 1 of 310 million tits than a bovine asshole.
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Another Pyrrhic Obamacrat Victory

With evident glee, the New York Times reported that Michael Bennett, the "Obama-backed" candidate in the Colorado Democratic Senate primary, had won out over the progressive challenger, Andrew Romanoff.

Minimizing the divide within the Democratic Party, the Times relegated the Romanoff challenge to an inference and reported only that Bennett "reached out to Mr. Romanoff’s supporters, saying that he would work hard to prove himself worthy of their support, but that in the end the things that divided Democrats were small compared with the issues that would be discussed in the coming midterm elections."

In other words, once again Obama backed a blue dog Democrat and once again the Democratic Party establishment "reached out" to progressives by telling them that they were caught between a rock and a hard place.

Actually the divisions between progressives and sell-out Democrats are hardly "small". Obamacrats are basically Blue Dogs that talk the talk but walk another walk. It is simply another form of double-talk.

The Republican double talk is to talk about "individual freedom" where "individual" really means "corporation". The Obamacrat double talk is to talk about "individual welfare" where "individual" really means "corporation". Both parties are willing to feed the country into the corporate maw with the promise that the remains of country will trickle back down on us.

Obama has produced nothing on the progressive agenda, except sell out and defeat labelled "compromises" and "first steps".

Romanoff had virtually no money and lots to say. Bennett had nothing to say but lots of money. In the end money won out. “It is long past time to cast off the do-nothing, divisive politics of the past and get to work,” Mr. Bennet said. Yawn. It is long past time to cast OUT the do-nothing politicians of the past and get to work saving America for the American people.

What Romanoff stands for; What the Times did not report; What Obamacrats reject:> [here ] .

©Barfo, 2010
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Disconnects Redux

Needless to say, the press was aghast at Michelle Obama's extravagant vacation to Spain, topped off by a visit with the Royal Family at their summer palace on Mallorca. We will not add to cacophony except to say that Eleanor Roosevelt had the better idea.

The Democrats are running scared. It finally seems to have percolated into their sorry brains that they cannot win the November elections without their, by now, thoroughly disaffected progressive base. So President Obambi, discards his consensual and reasoned academic tone for displays of "hold-me-back!" pugnacity. It is worthy of Vaudeville. Only Vaudeville rang truer.

How is it possible for Michelle Obama to galavant off to the Costa del Sol when America's industrial base is gutted, when real unemployment has reached 17%-20% and when so many homes have been foreclosed on that the banks are hiding the trust deeds in their basements?

It is possible because no party in Washington really gives a damn about the working class. Apart from Obambi doing Rocky, the real talk in Washington is all about austerity, "flat" and jobless "recoveries" and structural readjusment to accept the "reality" of 10 percent permanent unemployment while corporate profits are mysteriously up and the HinWis are making out like the scumbag bandits they are. If the First Lady parties with high net worth individuals it is because that is where her priorities lie. And it is worth remembering that it was another HinWi -- the Democrat Senator Feinstein -- who said the other week that extending unemployment benefits encouraged laziness.

Neither Franklin nor Eleanor had much of any idea of what to do about the Depression; and, to this day, it is argued that nothing they did do really pulled the country out of the economic morass into which it had fallen. But said FDR, "We must be seen to do something!!" And what he made sure was that everyone saw that the something which was being done was something to help the UnWis -- the great un-worthies among the rest of us. For that they are remembered fondly. For their despicable indifference Obama and his 'Crats merit nothing but opprobrium.


Editorial Nut Cracking in Response to a Reader

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Connecting with Tar Baby and Disconnecting from Reality

Well... it's summer-time and the hydrants are in full-flush -- this time with gushing verbiage from the New York Times and other media outlets over a heated wrangle about an allegedly racist Tea Party billboard in Iowa.

The entire news-world furore driving this issue is a massive exercise in false consciousness that seeks to deflect attention from the political idiocy of the tea-bag movement with a mis-focus on America's handy-dandy, sticky, obsession for all seasons.

Looking at the Iowa billboard the last thing any reasonable, objective observer could think is that it was racist. What in the world is racist about it other than the fact that Obama is black? Is it necessary to "white-face" a black man in order to avoid accusations of "racism "? Nothing in the billboard harps on anything racial.

If anything stands out from the billboard it is "SOCIALISM SOCIALISM SOCIALISM" The message is not Black Black Black but S O C I A L I S M.

And here we come to the utter, beyond moronic idiocy of the tea party movement : carping about the far left, socialist policies of Barack Obama and the current administration".

Far left socialist policies of a candidate for office who was bankrolled by Goldman Sachs? The far left policies of a graduate from neo-liberal Harvard Inc. ? What kind of drivelling nonsense is that? I have said it on my blog (Barfo) and I'll say it again BISMARCK was more left than Barack Obama.

Yes ... the Great Otto Von Bismarck who (after a secret rendezvous with Germany's socialist leader) stole socialist thunder and instituted what is known as "state socialism" -- the socialism-within-capitalism that is the basis for modern European social democracy. When accused of dread and evil socialism by his own conservative party, Bismarck shrugged "Call it socialism or what you will, it's all the same to me."

The true meta-political fact is that (whatever else they might have called for) Soviet Socialism, National Socialism, Fascism, Falangism, and "Social Democracy" all espoused certain institutionalized social benefits deemed basic to the social compact and fabric. As President Sarkozy said in his recent trip to the U.S., his countrymen beheld our disastrous (lack of) health-care debate with astonishment and found it "incomprehensible" that anyone would be denied health care. So too would have Bismarck, Bonaparte, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, and ultimately Bevans who introduced "socialism" into England. "The collective principle asserts," he said, "that no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means."

This is not to say that the "collective principle" has been without a voice in America. On the contrary; a progressive idealism, often drawing strength from religious conceptions, has long been an engaging and redeeming feature in the American political landscape. In fact shortly before he died even FDR aimed to bring up America up to Bismarckian standards. (See his Economic Bill of Rights speech on Youtube or here ).

Since then, however, there has been a massive, coordinated and consistent effort funded and spearheaded by reactionary corporate and banking interests to de-educate the American public. As a result, there is a profoundly ignorant and intellectually diseased disconnect in American political discourse that prevents people from seeing that the political message of the billboard makes no more sense than the braying of an ass.

The capitalist-run press and the Pundits of Destraction that shape what passes for American political consciousness would rather NOT focus on the true meaning and evolution of "socialism" and on how politically retarded the American social compact has become. Rather than educate people on the imbecility that drives the Tea Party movement, the press would rather we all obsess over America's perennial bugbear ... racism.

Blech.

"Call it socialism or what you will; it's all the same to me."