Electronic Pen

TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Running now would be an awful idea
Like Gaddafi thinking it'd be neat
This week for him in Tripoli to have
A friendly little meet-and-greet.

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ERICA PAYNE FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

When Warren Buffet called on Washington to get "serious about shared sacrifice," he invoked the central premise of the American experiment, that each citizen has an obligation to look beyond one's own self-interest, to recognize the benefits that one has reaped from membership in these United States, and to understand that one is required, as a beneficiary, to give back.  Throughout history, Great American Presidents have both sacrificed personally for the good of the country and inspired others to do the same.

President Obama is not this kind of president.

Be it his 'temporary' extension of the Bush tax cuts; his embarrassing mismanagement of the debt ceiling debate, or his lackluster-at-best 'support' of Wall Street reform; President Obama has demonstrated an almost studied preference for not asking what we can do for our country.  Whether it is due to inexperience, bad advice, or lack of principle is irrelevant.  The president's inability to stir country-over-self patriotism - at a moment when it is needed most - has reached a point where it threatens the economy and the well-being of millions of Americans.

Unfortunately, such arguments, however true, have not stirred the president's advisors to change their losing strategy.  The advice of his strategists has been so bad, that the president risks not just losing; but actually being a loser.  Americans don't re-elect losers.  Ever.

What is obvious to everyone - except the president's closest advisors - is that the only way to NOT LOSE is to WIN.

But how on earth - in this morass of political dysfunction, with almost no real power and even less political capital - can the president win?  Game Theory can point the way.

Between now and November 23rd (when the super committee presents its deficit reduction plan to Congress), President Obama will be playing a variant of the Prisoner's Dilemma, a game popular among Game Theorists.  The Prisoner's Dilemma is a theoretical puzzle that reveals why two people might not cooperate even if cooperation is in their best interest.  Sound familiar?

In 1984, a game theorist by the name of Robert Axelrod conducted a Prisoner's Dilemma tournament as an experiment to study the problem.  He invited academics from all over the world to submit strategies in the form of computer programs which would play against each other.  There were over 70 entries, some of them very complex, but the result was a big surprise: one of the very simplest strategies, a program called "Tit for Tat", won hands down.  The tit for tat strategy is just that:  compromise on the first round, and on each subsequent round, play the same card that your opponent played on the previous round.

In the President's Dilemma, the President and the congressional Republicans each have two cards - one card says "compromise"; the other says "hardball".  In each round, both players play one of their two cards face down on the table. The referee (perhaps best symbolized here by our global economic competitors) then turns them over.   If both players play the compromise card, they split the pool evenly (for discussion's sake let's say 100 marbles).  If both players play hardball, the referee takes half the marbles and the players split the other half.  But if one player plays hardball while his opponent plays compromise, the hardball player takes all the marbles.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

It's come down to this: we have become the United States of food stamps.

Food stamps are important to those in need. Studies have also shown that food stamps generate economic activity: because for every dollar spent, there are some estimates that two dollars to three dollars goes back into the economy. That's not hard to believe when you see the ripple effect on grocery stores, truckers who transport food, and farmers, among others who benefit from food stamp purchases.

But what is troubling is that food stamp usage is at an all-time high in America because of the weakened economy and because of the stagnation and lowering of wages. There have been a few articles lately that wages are sinking so low for many jobs in the US that our manual labor force is headed toward third-world compensation levels.

This spiraling down of a living wage into a non-living wage has caused many people who work to need and qualify for food stamps. This is where government subsidies of corporations like Wal-Mart come in. Food stamps allow low-wage workers to literally survive, providing an indirect subsidy to low-wage employers.

According to one expert, food stamps are:

"increasingly work support," said Ed Bolen, an analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

And that's only likely to get worse: So far in the recovery, jobs growth has been concentrated in lower-wage occupations, with minimal growth in middle-income wages as many higher-paid blue collar jobs have disappeared.

And 6 percent of the 72.9 million Americans paid by the hour received wages at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour in 2010. That's up from 4.9 percent in 2009, and 3 percent in 2002, according to government data.

Bolen said just based on income, minimum wage single parents are almost always eligible for food stamps.

As a result, food stamp utilization, according to Reuters, has reached a record level: "Altogether, there are now almost 46 million people in the United States on food stamps, roughly 15 percent of the population. That's an increase of 74 percent since 2007, just before the financial crisis and a deep recession led to mass job losses."

A tragic irony of the new American economy is that you can be employed and still not earn enough to put food on the table for your family.

******

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DEE EVANS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Buzzflash at Truthout has run several blog entries critical of President Obama for not standing strong for progressive values.  Most recently regular BuzzFlash blog writer Bill Berkowitz weighed in about his "breaking up" with Obama. As a counterpoint, Dee Evans, who appears on the BuzzFlash blog, offered a counterpoint defense of the President.

With whom do you agree?

Regarding those Obama supporters who have now taken the World Wide Web by storm complaining about what President Obama isn't doing, hasn't done or isn't going to do...I have some food for thought.

If you go back and listen to some of Obama's early speeches before his election, he said in nearly every speech that "change is not going to be easy" and that "it's not going to happen overnight" but I think many of us were way too busy listening to the sound of our own clapping to hear any of that.

Obama came into office with a wrecked economy, high unemployment and debt and 2 wars and 2 1/2 years in people are already trying to call him a failure.  Bush came into office in peacetime with a budget surplus and we gave him 8 whole years to earn that label.  What's wrong with that picture?

Do I wish Obama would be more confrontational from time to time, sure but that is not who we elected.  Democrats had a choice between a hawk (Hillary) and a dove (Obama) in 2008 and they chose the dove.  Now you want the dove to act like a hawk and you're mad at HIM that it's not in his nature.  That's like asking a cat to bark like a dog and then getting mad at the cat when he meows!  What drives me crazy is that people on the Left act like Obama has somehow changed in the last 2 years.  This is who he is and who he has always been.  THIS is who we voted for and now we want to act like we got blindsided!

Remember during the 2008 campaign (both primary and general election) when people kept saying that Obama should fight back more, be more "in your face" and get mad.  He never did...and he WON, because that's what we said we wanted.  After 8 years of George W. Bush, we said we wanted calm and compromise...and that's what we got.  Remember how much we parroted the label, "No Drama Obama"?  Obama's never been about conflict, he's always been about compromise and those who act now like they've been betrayed were only 'hearing' what he said but were not 'listening' to what he said...there IS a difference.

And to all those African-Americans who have now taken to the streets to decry what they allege is Obama's lacking in the Black community, I still say we are the most unrelenting and unfair when it comes to our own.  Bill Clinton (who cut welfare and food stamps) was proudly dubbed by many African-Americans (including 2 of Obama's biggest critics, Tavis Smiley and Cornel West) as the nation's "first Black President" but Obama (who is our REAL first Black President) is not Black enough!  Really?

As far as I can tell, Obama has not strayed much from what he said he would do in 2008.  Yes he has done more compromising than he (or us) probably thought he would but it is what it is...he is not a king.  But Obama's premise has stayed pretty much the same.  People want to shout about Afghanistan, but he always said he would increase troops in Afghanistan.  People want to shout about single-payer healthcare, but Obama never said he would enact single-payer health care.  People want to shout about DOMA, but Obama has always been honest about his mixed feelings about gay marriage.  People want to shout about the extension of the Bush tax cuts, but fail to remember that out of that deal came the repeal of DADT.  People want to shout about him not doing anything for Black America, but I guess increasing funding for HBCU's(http://www.blackenterprise.com/2010/03/01/obama-signs-order-boosting-hbcu-funding/), expanding SBA programs for minority-owned businesses and increasing Pell Grants for low-income families means nothing.

We talk about how Republicans always seem to succeed where Democrats fail, well one way they do that is by sticking together through thick and thin.  Republicans stuck by Bush during his term no matter what, but Democrats always seem to be looking for the nearest bus to throw our representatives under.

I asked myself recently, what have I done since President Obama's been in office to help make his Presidency a success and to help move forward his agenda and my answer did not make me proud.  Have I attended any town hall meetings to voice my political concerns?  Have I placed any calls or written to my representatives in Congress to voice my support (or objection) for any legislation?  Have I made any donations (no matter how small) to Obama or the DNC since January 20, 2009?  Have I volunteered in any of my local campaign offices or elections to help send lawmakers to Washington who could help the President?

I think far too many of us were overly obsessed with the thought of making history with the first Black President and thus our vision of happiness and success was very narrow.  Once we helped get Obama into office, we thought "Mission Accomplished!", moved on and never looked back.  I think the thought that this man might actually have to legislate and govern (and God forbid...compromise) never even entered our minds.  I know that I could have done a whole lot more in the past 2 years in advocacy for the President's policies and I think many of us who voted for him could probably say the same thing.

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A BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT NEWS ALERT

The following is a news release from the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today said federal regulators should stop thumbing their noses at a year-old law and enforce limits on excessive speculation in oil markets.

He cited secret data collected by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission which showed that Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other banks and hedge funds dominated oil markets in 2008 when prices rose sharply and topped $140 a barrel. The records - first made public by Sanders - shed light on the role of speculators at a time when oil prices soared and the pump price for gasoline spiked to around $4 a gallon.

In a letter to the commission chairman, Sanders urged Gary Gensler to convene an emergency meeting to crack down on speculators and provide needed relief for motorists and for people who live in cold-weather states, like Vermont, who face sharply higher prices this winter for oil to heat their homes.

"While making this confidential information public may have upset Wall Street oil speculators, the American people have a right to know exactly what caused gasoline prices to skyrocket to more than $4 a gallon back in the summer of 2008," Sanders said. "Further, there is little doubt that the same speculators who caused gasoline and heating oil prices to unnecessarily spike in 2008 are playing the same games again in 2011.  This is simply unacceptable and must not be allowed to continue."

The average price for a gallon of gasoline is now $3.57, still 87-cents more than gas cost two years ago when oil supplies were lower and demand for gasoline was higher.  Sanders also noted that the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that the price of heating oil in the northeast will be about 33 percent higher than last winter.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT 

Rick Perry believes that he has earned respect for being a man so brazen that he didn't even blink when confronted with the apparent fact that he executed an innocent man. Indeed, he grew even more defiant as exculpatory evidence grew.

And, then, Perry made sure that the details of his eagerness to kill the "convicted" - but apparently innocent - man, were covered up by dissolving an investigation into the state killing of Cameron Todd Willingham.

Only a man with "guts," who carries a laser-sighted handgun with deadly, hollow-point bullets - even when he jogs with his security detail - could take pride in dismissing the Texas State murder of a man who wasn't likely guilty. As one person in a focus group on Perry, commissioned by a GOP gubernatorial primary opponent, crowed with admiration: "It takes balls to execute an innocent man."

A New Yorker article revealed that the investigating commission, before Perry dissolved it, found that the primary evidence against Willingham, "seemed to deny 'rational reasoning' and was more 'characteristic of mystics or psychics.'"

Justin Elliott of Salon believes that Perry's unapologetic execution of Willingham may have actually helped Perry beat Kay Bailey Hutchison when she challenged him in 2010:

Perry went on to cruise to a 20-point victory in the primary and an easy win in the general election.

[It] leaves one wondering, did the controversy actually help him in the GOP primary? If Perry jumps into the presidential contest, don't expect his primary rivals to bring up this old case ...

Some wags have joked that Perry is George W. Bush without a brain. Perhaps, Perry's pride in signing the death warrant for Willingham shows that he is also George W. Bush - who set a record for assembly-line executions in Texas - without a heart.

That's kind of like being Genghis Khan without the compassion.

******

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PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Most wealthy Americans will recoil at the suggestion that they should pay higher taxes, likely responding with the tired mantra that the top earners already pay most of the income tax. But, two points can be made in response to this: (1) Federal income tax is only a small part of the burden on the middle class. Based on data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the total of all state and local taxes, social security taxes, and excise taxes (gasoline, alcohol, tobacco) consumes 21% of the annual incomes of the poorest half of America. For the richest 1% of Americans, the same taxes consume 7% of their incomes. (2) The richest people pay most of the federal income taxes because they've made almost all of their new income over the past 30 years. Based on Tax Foundation figures, the richest 1% has tripled its share of America's income since 1980, after taxes.

But, there are better reasons why the rich should pay higher taxes.

The very rich benefit most from national security, government-funded research, infrastructure, and property laws. Defending the country benefits the rich more, because they have more to defend. Taxpayer-funded research at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (the Internet), the National Institute of Health (pharmaceuticals), and the National Science Foundation (the Digital Library Initiative) has laid a half-century foundation for their idea-building. The interstates and airports and FAA and TSA benefit people who have the money to travel.

Here's another good reason for the rich to pay more taxes: With the drop in tax revenue, funding for the preservation of American culture is disappearing. Do we want our national treasures deprived of maintenance because of budget cuts, as is currently happening in Italy? Do we want our national parks sold to billionaires? Do we want programs for music and the arts eliminated from schools, so that only children of the wealthy can
participate in them?

The 1912 book, "Promised Land," by Mary Antin revealed the wonder of a Russian immigrant coming to the U.S.: "In America, then, everything was free...light was free...music was free."

Not that capitalist markets don't have their place. But, the current view of democracy has gone to the other extreme. An extreme that allows individualism and personal gain to trump societal responsibility. The growing inequality makes community support and safeguards unnecessary for the privileged elite.

Finally, back to the tax statistics. Why should financial earnings (i.e., capital gains) be taxed less than wage earnings from actual work? The richest 10% of Americans owns over 80% of stocks, the gains from which are taxed (long-term) at a 15% rate, while most wage earners pay more than that on their income.

Furthermore, over the past 15 years millionaires have seen their income tax rates drop from 30% to 22%. During approximately the same time period, American economic growth declined from an annual 3.2 percent rate to 1.7 percent. Lower taxes for the rich do not lead to productivity.

Will the rich stop investing or move to another country if their taxes are increased? Not likely. They have it too good here. As Warren Buffett recently stated, "I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone - not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 - shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain."

Mr. Buffett is admitting what everyone else is beginning to realize. The rich take much more than they pay for.

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NIKOLAS KOZLOFF FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

From the Monroe Doctrine, which was aimed at curbing the encroachments of European powers in the nineteenth century, to Cold War foreign policy designed to forestall the geopolitical machinations of the Soviet Union in the twentieth century, Washington has stopped at nothing in its bid to maintain power and prestige within its own regional "back yard" of Latin America. But, with all of those rivalries now a relic of the past, the US is moving on to the next threat to its own hegemony: Iran. That, at least, is the impression I got from reading diplomatic cables that were recently released by the whistle-blowing outfit, WikiLeaks.

For Washington, a great concern was that Iran might gain a strategic foothold in South America, recruiting key allies such as Brazil. Much to the chagrin of the Americans, Brazil under former president Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva sought to carve out a more independent foreign policy, which embraced the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. By extending cooperation to Iran, Lula aimed to increase trade and boost collaboration on biotechnology and agriculture. In a surprising development, Lula even urged the west to drop its threat of punishment against Iran for it's pursuit of a nuclear program, a move which proved very reassuring to the politically isolated Ahmadinejad.

Throughout the Bush and Obama administrations, US officials in Brasilia sought to glean more information about this budding relationship, sound out disaffected politicians, and express displeasure about growing diplomatic ties between Tehran and Brasilia when need be. Key in this effort was US ambassador in Brasilia, Clifford Sobel, who pressured the Brazilian Ministry of Energy to cut its burgeoning ties to Iran. Speaking to government officials, Sobel expressed deep concern over the Brazilian state energy company Petrobras because it was considering plans to invest in the Iranian oil and gas sector, located in the Caspian Sea.

The Petrobras Imbroglio

WikiLeaks correspondence reveals Brazilian diplomats were walking a very fine tightrope, striking out on the one hand toward rogue nations like Iran, but on the other hand very keen on placating the Bush administration and staying within Washington's good graces. Responding to Sobel, the Brazilians argued that if they did not invest in Iran, then the Chinese would certainly beat them to it when when it came time to develop deep water exploration and production. However, the Brazilians also, "acknowledged the seriousness of the issue [Brazilian-Iranian energy ties] to the international community and, although they did not say Petrobras would halt its... activities in Iran, they did make it clear that they understand the sensitivity of the political moment."

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TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Late-night hosts will have a field day with this
Which will result in both laughter and cheers
But Jay Leno privately must admire a guy who
Wouldn't give up his job for forty-two years.

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110822/ts_nm/us_libya

NIKOLAS KOZLOFF FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

On the U.S. left, there are certain sacred cows that one should never take on directly.  For years, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has been, for the most part, sacrosanct and immune from criticism.  The underlying reasons for this kid glove treatment are hardly mysterious or difficult to surmise, particularly in light of Chávez's hostility to George Bush, the great bane of progressive folk.  Such sympathy would only increase over time, heading into high gear after the U.S.-supported coup of 2002 which was directed against Chávez.

When the coup rapidly unraveled and ended in fiasco, with right wing forces crumbling in disarray, the Venezuelan leader was returned to power in triumph.  Later, in 2006, Chávez was greeted warmly by the New York left after he lambasted Bush in a confrontational speech delivered on the floor of the United Nations.  Speaking from the same lectern that Bush had occupied just a day before, Chávez quipped "The devil came here yesterday, right here. It smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of."

When leftists want to know what to think about foreign affairs, many of them consult the views of celebrated academic Noam Chomsky.  For some time, the leftist MIT professor has provided sympathetic commentary on Venezuela, and in 2009 Chomsky even met personally with Chávez in Caracas.  It came as a slight surprise, therefore, when the professor of linguistics recently criticized Chávez for the latter's handling of a case related to María Lourdes Afiuni, a judge who was arrested in December 2009 by the president's secret intelligence police.  The Venezuelan president had ordered Afiuni's arrest after the latter freed a businessman incarcerated on charges of circumventing the country's currency controls.

In her defense, Afiuni claimed that the businessman's pretrial detention had exceeded Venezuela's legal limits, and that she was merely following United Nations protocol on such matters.  Chávez, however, was hardly convinced and proclaimed on national TV no less that the judge would have been subjected to a firing squad in a previous era.  Following her arrest, Afiuni was locked up in a women's prison where she was subjected to cruel and demeaning treatment.  Indeed, other inmates threatened to kill her and even sought to force her into sex.  Earlier this year, Afiuni was moved to house arrest after she underwent an abdominal hysterectomy at a local cancer hospital.

With much fanfare, the New York Times reported on the falling out between Chávez and his former supporter, noting that "Mr. Chomsky's willingness to press for Judge Afiuni's release shows how the president's aggressive policies toward the judiciary have stirred unease among some who are generally sympathetic to Mr. Chávez's socialist-inspired political movement."  In a telephone interview, Chomsky told the Times that he was requesting clemency for Afiuni on humanitarian grounds, and claimed that the judge had been treated very badly.  Though Afiuni's living conditions had improved somewhat, Chomsky noted, the charges against the judge were thin.  Therefore, Chomsky argued, the government should release Afiuni.

Chávez and Chomsky: A Warm History of Rapport

The recent spat between Chávez and Chomsky may put an end to a historically warm rapport.  Indeed, the Guardian of London recently wrote that "Hugo Chávez has long considered Noam Chomsky one of his best friends in the west. He has basked in the renowned scholar's praise for Venezuela's socialist revolution and echoed his denunciations of US imperialism."  In his speeches, Chávez frequently quotes Chomsky and the MIT professor has provided the Venezuelan leader with a degree of intellectual and political legitimacy.  Chávez has said that he is careful to "always" have not just one copy of Chomsky's books on hand but many.

The relationship dates back to 2006, when, during his celebrated speech at the United Nations, Chávez held up Chomsky's book entitled Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, and suggested that Americans read the work instead of "watching Superman and Batman" movies.  Speaking to the crowd, Chávez urged the audience "very respectfully, to those who have not read this book, to read it."  Going even further, Chávez said the MIT professor's work was an "excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century."  Chávez added, "I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States, because their threat is right in their own house."

Chomsky's book immediately rocketed to No. 1 on Amazon's best-seller list.  Speaking to the New York Times, a Borders Bookstore manager remarked "it doesn't normally happen that you get someone of the stature of Mr. Chávez holding up a book at a speech at the U.N." Book sales notwithstanding, Chomsky told the New York Times that he wouldn't describe himself as flattered.  For good measure, the academic added that he wouldn't choose to employ Chávez's harsh UN rhetoric.

On the other hand, Chomsky added, Chávez's anger with Bush was understandable.  "The Bush administration backed a coup to overthrow his government," the professor declared. "Suppose Venezuela supported a military coup that overthrew the government of the United States? Would we think it was a joke?"  The linguist added, "I have been quite interested in his [Chávez's] policies.  Personally, I think many of them are quite constructive."

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The creationist crowd does have some proof that Darwin wasn't right about every individual in a species. They are living proof: after all, they haven't evolved.

The other day, a very young boy in New Hampshire got the better of Rick Perry with a question about evolution: Perry responded, "That's a theory that is out there - and it's got some gaps in it."

Perry then went on to assert to the boy: "In Texas, we teach both creationism and evolution. I figure you're smart enough to figure out which one is right."

Except the US Supreme Court has ruled that it is a violation of the Constitution to teach creationism in schools.

Let's take another example that disproves evolution in the likes of Governor Perry. Texas has the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation. When queried by an interviewer about why the governor supports taxpayer funding of abstinence education in the Lone Star State when it doesn't work, Perry adamantly defended the program. This is not only a Victorian outlook, it contradicts the right-wing notion that every government program should be judged by its effectiveness.

And then there's Michele Bachmann, who just this week stated that Americans are concerned about the "rise of the Soviet Union." Maybe she was confused because it is the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Wall being erected. As with most embodiments of creationism, Bachmann's frame of reference moves backward in time, not forward.

BuzzFlash at Truthout noted earlier this year, "a fundamentalist Christian may feel reassured that - at the Creation Museum in Kentucky - a dinosaur wears a saddle to show that all life began simultaneously with a divine spark."

Maybe the Creation Museum should replace the dinosaur with a wax replica of Rick Perry and put a saddle on his back.

Evolution, on its path to the future, just passes some people by.

******

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NIKOLAS KOZLOFF FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Over the past few years, the international left has derived much satisfaction from the course of South American political and economic integration. The novelty of such integration is that it has proceeded along progressive lines and has been pushed by regional leaders associated with the so-called "Pink Tide." With so many leftist leaders in power, it is plausible to surmise that a left bloc of countries might challenge Washington's long-term hemispheric agenda. Yet, behind all of the lofty rhetoric and idealism, serious fissures remain within South America's leftist movement, both within individual countries and within the larger regional milieu.

That, at least, is the impression I got from reading US State Department cables recently declassified by whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks. Take, for example, the Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva administration in Brazil, which at times encouraged a "hostile" climate against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a corporately-sponsored plan backed by Washington, but on other occasions encouraged "public doubt and confusion through its own often-conflicting statements" about the accord. Behind the scenes, the Brazilian government was much more divided on the matter than was commonly portrayed, torn between its South American loyalties on the one hand and the desire to gain access to the lucrative US market for agricultural and industrial goods on the other.

In 2003, the US Embassy in Brasilia noted that "Brazil's political goals, which include a leadership role in South America, along with a strong focus on development and the social agenda, sometimes clash in its pursuit of certain national economic interests." Cautiously, Brazil conducted sensitive negotiations with Washington over the FTAA. Lula's position was somewhat delicate: while the president needed a substantial export boost to fund his social agenda, producers were fearful about facing increased competition.

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The biggest hurdle we face today is whether we choose to move forward as a nation or backward, away from progress and toward the ways not of our forefathers, but of the most hide-bound, parochial elements in our society. Our founders were not similar to the way today's conservative politicians like to describe them. Most of today's pols and pundits are woefully under-prepared to explain the motivations of our founders, and instead, they all too often make things up to fit their ideologies.

Our founders were always a mix, of course, but as they labored to form a union and write principles of government into a document that would stand the test of time, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and the rest were above all, a "band of brothers." Their imagination and foresight formed the basis of a brilliant plan.

Today, anything approaching an original thought is stampeded by the right wing as anti-American, and is considered to be not what our founders had in mind. As if the close-minded, under-educated politicians, who speak so loudly, actually understood anything more complicated than a series of talking points. Theirs is a game of takeaway, of rhetoric that fails to imagine consequences or devise rational structures.

So, whether it's Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, or Rick Perry, their talking points have a familiar ring to them. And, no matter how emphatic their remarks, when charged with formulating an opinion they glance nervously about to determine if their fellow candidates are on the same page. At the last debate the candidates who were present, raised their hands in the affirmative when asked if they would oppose tax revenues even if tax cuts were favored ten to one over revenue. So obsessed are Republicans with cutting things and currying favor with Tea Partiers, there has yet to be an intelligent debate about what effect just cutting programs would have on the general economy. With respect to the most-favored bromide of the day -"Cut, Cap and Balance" - conservatives can't get enough of its feel-good aura. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone on the campaign trail that across-the board cuts may turn out to be damaging non-solutions and that a rigid "balance" amendment may not allow government to deal effectively with sudden emergencies.

Conservatives maintain that they are simply sticking to their principles when it comes to holding the line on taxes, but their rigid foothold on economic procedures leaves little room for innovative programs and fails to even consider alternatives. In some parts of the country, civil rights are endangered due to a wave of regressive laws that are making their way through the state legislatures. Years of progress are being wiped out as a right-leaning Supreme Court and a newly minted House of Representatives chart a troubled course for the country.

Adding religion to the mix is, overall, an unsettling trend that in no way conforms with the constraints of our Constitution. Rick Perry mocks the president's approach to solving our fiscal problems, but seems to suggest we can pray our way out of the crisis. He says if he is president he would make government as "inconsequential" in our lives as possible. As others have pointed out, however, conservative officials were quick to avail themselves of stimulus funds, despite the ugly connotation that word has taken on. Moreover, it would seem there is a constitutional issue with respect to the legislators who signed Grover Norquist's pledge not to raise taxes. There is a much more important pledge that legislators promise to uphold when they are sworn into office - the duty to honor and defend the Constitution of the United States. How did we manage to get so far off track?

Perhaps the biggest problem we will face in the coming years is a failure to imagine, to see over the horizon and face the consequences of our actions or inactions in the face of an ever-evolving universe. That, more than anything else, sets the reactionary, mean spirited contingent in our Congress and the country today apart from our founders and all the imaginative forbears who created an extraordinary playing field for us.

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The Texas State Board of Education declares war on the Declaration of Independence.

That's one perspective on the Lone Star State board that approves educational textbooks in Texas. After all, when you delete Thomas Jefferson - author of the Declaration of Independence - from the state curriculum, something un-American is definitely afoot.

According to a Washington Post column on faith, the board was also rejecting Jefferson's - and the Constitution's - guarantee of a separation of church and state, noting the:

board's 10-5 party-line rejection of a standard requiring students to learn that the nation's Founders "protected religious freedom by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others."

Before that amendment was rejected, board member Cynthia Dunbar, a graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University Law School, argued that the Founding Fathers didn't intend to separate church and state, but rather did intend to promote religion. The board approved her revisions, which included cutting Thomas Jefferson (author of the Declaration of Independence and promoter of the phrase "wall of separation between church and state"), and replacing him with religious figures such as St. Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin.

That this historical and constitutional revisionism comes from people who fancy themselves faithful to the founding fathers might appear to be evidence of historical psychoses. Unfortunately, such mental impairment in relation to the facts of America's revolutionary foundation will affect generations of students in Texas, and around the nation. That is because Texas is such a large school book market that publishers often adapt their textbooks to the Lone Star State standards, instead of creating separate editions for the rest of the nation.

It's also possible, as at least one analyst has noted, that Jefferson was removed from the curriculum because he was a deist, as were many of the great minds of the Enlightenment.

There is, perhaps, another underlying reason for the antipathy in Texas toward Jefferson. The third president of the United States was concerned that democracy might be corrupted and overpowered by businesses, in essence, "too big to fail."

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations," Jefferson wrote, "which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

One thing that you can say for the Texas School Board; it sure knows how to turn historical fact into radical partisan fiction.

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BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Rep. Peter King, Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, thinking that Hollywood's elite will try and bail Obama out with an October 2012 release of a film about the assassination of Osama bin Laden, calls for an investigation.

Here's a question for you. Is it possible to stage an October Surprise if what's being planned isn't a secret?

One might think that Republican Congressman Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and the fellow who has been conducting congressional hearings about the threat of Islamic terrorism, might be pleased to see a movie about the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, one of history's all-time Islamic terrorists. After all, it might prove to be an object lesson to current and/or future terrorists.

Instead of being supportive, however, King thinks that such a movie - to be released in mid-October 2012 - is a ploy to bolster the electoral possibilities of Barack Obama; a cinematic October Surprise if you will.

The time-honored phrase, October Surprise, recently popped back into the news for the first time in oh ... say, two years (since the last presidential election).

There are October Surprises and then ... there are October Surprises. Historians may argue over what was the first "October Surprise" - some say that in 1968, Nixon's man (Henry Kissinger) who was hanging around the Paris peace talks between the North Vietnamese and the Johnson administration, somehow convinced the North Vietnamese that they would get a better deal from a Nixon administration, so they walked.  In the election, Nixon barely edged out Hubert Humphrey.

Four years later, just prior to Election Day in 1972, President Nixon's now National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, appeared at a press conference held at the White House and announced, "We believe that peace is at hand." Kissinger's statement was surprising mostly because Nixon had promised to end the war during his presidential run four years earlier, and had not succeeded. Nevertheless, he won an overwhelming victory over South Dakota Senator George McGovern.

But the mother of all October Surprises took place during the 1980 election between President Jimmy Carter and the Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan. The hub of this October Surprise revolves around whether Team Reagan was engaged in secret negotiations with Iran to free the American hostages  -- taken a year earlier - after the election. (For the full story on everything October Surpriseish, see Consortiumnews.com's October Surprise archive --  http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile.html.)

Twenty-first century OS - not so surprising

Last week, however, King called for a CIA and Pentagon investigation "wanting them to review the administration's cooperation with director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, both Academy Award winners for the 2009 film 'The Hurt Locker,'" the Associated Press recently reported.

It appears that King is worried that the Obama administration might compromise the nation's security by giving away "sensitive details about the Navy SEAL mission to the Oscar-winning moviemakers behind the project."

In an interview, King said he was motivated to speak out after he heard from people in the CIA who told him that, "they were opposed to this." "Most SEALs want to stay in the background," he said, and not "tip off the enemy of what they do and don't do."

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TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Their last Oval Office resident

Was such a fool and a clod in

Most ways that his profile since

Has been lower than bin-Laden.

Dubya ruined America for two terms.

To many people, what really perplexes

Is his party's new idea now is another

Dim bulb cowboy governor from Texas.

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DICK MEISTER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Discrimination against working women is an obviously serious matter, and
there's a lot more of it than is generally realized, as a new report makes
all too clear.

The report, from the Institute for Women's Policy Research, says that every
year, a substantial portion of the country's employers are charged with
discrimination against women under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the nation's
basic civil rights law. Certainly not all employers charged with

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ELLIOT COHEN FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

When Guardian reporter, Nick Davies, broke the story that Rupert Murdoch's News of the World had been hacking British citizens' voicemail messages, including those of a murdered teenager, there was a public outcry. Unfortunately, this is the tip of a glacial iceberg that has the potential to bring down a lot more than the News of the World.

Last year, without due public debate and input, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Justice Department approved a merger between Comcast and NBC Universal that gave the Internet cable giant control over the programming of NBC news.  At the same time, pursuant to the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, Comcast as well as all other telecommunication companies are required to cooperate with the Federal government in providing the facility for government to search through all electronic communications sent down their pipes.

So presently, the government, with the help of Comcast and other telecommunication companies, can hack everyone's phone and email conversations.   Here also lies a new 21st century media model:  a telecom company that owns and operates the infrastructure for the digital transmission of news and information; simultaneously owns the newsroom; and uses it infrastructure to assist the government in mass, warrantless surveillance of all American citizens.

The News of the World spied on a relatively few number of individuals for the purpose of getting a story.  Comcast routinely spies on millions of people on behalf of government.  The official purpose of such spying is to uncover terrorist plots; however, racial profiling can be used to conduct searches; mass sweeps are warrantless; and adequate judicial oversight of screening criteria and procedures is lacking.  Worse still, in this brave new world, the media entrusted to keep an eye on government abuses of power is now part of this overreaching power structure.

Further, given the symbiotic relationship between media and government, there is nothing to stop Comcast from examining the email messages and phone conversations of rival news organizations, political opponents, and other persons and organizations of interest in an effort to "adjust" its news coverage and massage its bottom line.  In fact, Comcast has maintained that it has a broad right to monitor its customers' email messages and Internet activities.  It has an established history of having spied on its customers as well as preventing them from sharing files.  Further, it is presently lobbying Congress to do away with net neutrality, the principle that assures that everyone, not just giant media companies, has an equal voice on the Internet.  And, in 2008, Chris Albrecht, presently CEO of Starz TV, reported that Comcast's senior VP told him that Comcast was experimenting with installing cameras into its cable boxes thereby allowing it to see into people's living rooms and identify viewers.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

How did Jesus go from being a socialist in the New Testament to a selfish Ayn Rand anarcho-capitalist in modern-day America? After all, one of the most well-known bible verses is from Mark 10:25: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Sociologist Gregory Paul stated the paradox clearly in an August 12 Washington Post op-ed:

Many conservative Christians, mostly Protestant but also a number of Catholics, have come to believe and proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated, union busting, minimal taxes especially for wealthy investors, plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations. And many of these Christian capitalists are ardent followers of Ayn Rand, who was one of - and many of whose followers are - the most hard-line anti-Christian atheists you can get. Meanwhile many Christians who support the capitalist policies associated with social Darwinistic strenuously denounce Darwin's evolutionary science because it supposedly leads to, well, social Darwinism!

But Paul points out that the New Testament primarily promotes what would nowadays be called socialism:

But to understand just how non-capitalistic Christianity is supposed to be we turn to the first chapter after the gospels, Acts, which describes the events of the early church. Chapters 2 and 4 state that all "the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need ... No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.... There were no needy persons among them. From time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need."

Now folks, that's outright socialism of the type described millennia later by Marx - who likely got the general idea from the gospels.

Paul further notes that "we have Christian creationists like Jay Richards writing books titled 'Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem.' Can a stranger amalgam of opposing opinions be devised?"

In essence, the modern prosperity theologians who dominate the right wing of the Republican Party are essentially heretics. They've grafted on a post-industrial-age emphasis on the acquisition of capital and material goods to the alleged son of God, Jesus, who was himself essentially the father of socialism (as recounted in the bible).

At the next Republican debate, we would like to see a test of faith. All the candidates should be required to thread a camel through the eye of a needle.

If they can't do it, they have to shut up about Jesus, Christianity and the bible.

Now that would be refreshing.

******

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ROBERT KOEHLER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

As crashing economies and austerity measures slap ever more ferociously at the lives of the vulnerable and disenfranchised, the Western world, with all its hidden poverty and institutional racism, may continue to convulse.

The riots that broke out in London over the weekend and spread throughout Great Britain, triggered by the controversial police killing of a 29-year-old man, have sent shockwaves in all directions. Who knew things were so unstable, that Britain's struggling neighborhoods were just one incident away from such destructive lunacy?

"On Twitter late last night, following the main bulk of the riots, I was astonished at the incomprehension generally expressed as to why they had occurred. There seemed to be an extraordinary lack of awareness that working class youth in Britain are being punished for the financial excesses of the banking collapse," freelance British journalist Pennie Quinton wrote on Al-Jazeera.

"The public spending cuts this year meant many of the youth summer schemes in London did not run. These riots suggest boredom - and inarticulate rage. The youth are smashing and grabbing the things society tells them to want."

Good God, the wealth gap is widening everywhere, and this is its cost: occasional public spasms of inhumanity and nihilism, perpetrated by those who have nothing much left to lose. But who cares about root causes? The riots are so compellingly photogenic, and the need for a return to order at all costs is suddenly so desperate.

"In central London," the New York Times reported, "owners of electrical goods stores along busy Tottenham Court Road shuttered their premises as convoys of riot police vans with sirens wailing crisscrossed the city, a show of force that seemed designed to cow potential looters and reassure their potential targets."

Prime Minister David Cameron, announcing the addition of 10,000 police to the streets, declared: "People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain's streets and to make them safe for the law-abiding."

This is the world I fear most: a world in which "us vs. them" is de rigueur, co-opting common sense, creating a schism in public discourse. Good guys and bad guys. It is, of course, the world we live in already, but its pervasiveness could spread. And there are so many who would prefer that, and know how to profit from it.

The British riots are a harbinger of what could happen in the U.S., where, of course, the same governmental "austerity" measures - the same cuts in services to the poor and middle class, the same jettisoning of vast segments of the populace to a forgotten hopelessness - are shattering the social structure. And the phenomenon of "flash mobs," in which hordes of young men, self-organizing through the social media, converge to commit random mayhem, have already sent jolts of panic through many urban centers.

And then there's the fact that big, full-scale riots are, well, as American as apple pie, what with our long history of racism and all. This is a looming disaster of immense proportions. Among other things, hard-core Republicans will, in their equal and opposite lunacy, see rioting as an excuse to justify further austerity measures (as punishment) and, ultimately, plunge the nation into all-out domestic war.

This is a peace alert! Peace consciousness is our only hope and it must spread. I believe that there is an extraordinary underground of such consciousness in the United States and around the world - an awareness that "us vs. them" is a single, devalued coin, that one side may succeed at doing great harm to and temporarily suppressing the other but will never "win" in the sense of freeing itself finally and forever of its enemy.

Last week, writing about the aftermath of the mass murders in Norway, and quoting columnist Colman McCarthy, I asked, "Why are we violent, but not illiterate?" There's a more concrete way to put the same question: Why was the Egyptian uprising at the beginning of the year a peaceful one while London's riot has caused the worst damage to the city since the Nazi blitz? Both were responses to police brutality, and occurred in a context of expanding social inequality, but the differences couldn't have been starker.

"When media analysts talk about an uprising like the one in Egypt as spontaneous," Cynthia Boaz wrote last month in an excellent analysis on TruthOut, "they are revealing their lack of understanding of the dynamics of nonviolent action and, simultaneously, are taking credit away from activists, who in many cases, have worked hard for years - often at great personal risk and sacrifice - to make this kind of victory possible. Regimes like Mubarak's don't fall when people just spontaneously show up in the city square. They only fall when movements are capable of exerting sustained pressure on them over a length of time."

The only way out of equal and opposite lunacy is to recognize that action and principle cannot be torn apart. "In Gandhian language, means and ends are inseparable," Boaz wrote.

What would it take to institute nonviolence training and planning on a national scale? I believe the resources to do so exist, if everyone who believes in it understands the urgency of beginning such a process now.

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