Tfgray’s Weblog

It’s been a fascinating few weeks. Mexico is pretty close to a Feds vs. Heads civil war, armed by us, Iraq continues to be a dangerous neighborhood, Afghanistan gets worse, and prepares to add us to the list of empires that ended their existence by invading them, screwy things continues to go on on Wall Street, with the screwers being paid handsomely by the screwees via the magic of the Bailout.

The Right has lit a major firestorm over Obama’s use of the teleprompter, which is sort of like criticizing him for being able to read. Michael Steele has declared  that his feud with Limbaugh, and subsequqent groveling was a deliberate strategy to “discover who the enemy is and who’s inside the tent.” I’m not sure whether he ascertained that Limbaugh is the enemy or “inside the tent,” but I sure wish that the interviewer had asked. Michelle Bachmann is determined to protect us against our dollars not being the world’s default currency, by writing a bill that prevents us from doing something that has nothing to do with creating a worrld currency. House and Senate Republicans unveil their budget  outline  template, or, in the words of Captain Barbossa, “More like guidelines, actually.” I really like the part about how we will get out of debt by reducing taxes by 30% on the taxpayers who allegedly pay 87% of all income tax. Palin’s high schoolish V.P. debate performance was due to her not being able to get anyone to pray with her beforehand, not due to any lack on her part. Glen Beck wrapped a dead fish on his show [I could not, for the life of me understand the point., but he seemed to think he was pretty funny naming it Larry and talking to it.] Oh, and Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurtzelbacher is horny.

 It’s sad to watch a once, or at least occasionally, great party (Lincoln, Eisenhower) fall into babbling incoherence. It’s even sadder to realize how much power they still wield. It’s frightening to think that there are 16 nationally elected Democrats who are willing to stand with them against President Obama’s budget.

Go here to read essays by AIG employees:

“We Were Betrayed!”

There are 3 links to other stories at the bottom of this one. Their perspective can be summed up in the lyrics of a Bone Poets Song (Great pacific NW band, BTW.)

Deep in the dark, in the boiler room of plenty, we stoke the banker’s fire.

These are the people who work in the boiler room, talking about how those fat bonuses were a substitute for 15 years of not getting raises, of how those who relocated to London saw their rents multiply five times over while their pre-bonus paychecks remained the same. How they had their jobs put on the line by bosses who demanded they make trades they felt were unwise–and with that loss of bonus, which would put them into an economic hole if they quit hanging over their heads, they went along–and how the boss who pushed them into those unwise business practices is walking around with his more than quarter billion dollar net worth intact.

Okay, we”re talking about very well-paid wage slaves, but still, it’s interesting to see that the pattern that exists at the bottom of the socioeconomic heap permeates the entire system. As individuals, they are as subject to the “You can be replaced” threat as any busboy, and there are thousands of well-trained mathematicians and traders standing in line to take their places.

Employee Free Choice Act, anyone? What would our economic system look like if, say, the AIG Financial Products (AIGFP) employees had gone to their union rep complaining of their boss’s abusive behavior? According to them, his giant profits (built on sand) earned him carte blanche with his superiors, and life or death power over his subordinates. Were they just chicken, or was this a situation in which having the sort of countervailing force that comes from being a member of a large organization, devoted to employee interests, could have created both better working conditions, more equitable pay, and more honesty and transparency in the business itself?

When will we learn that the power of the elite Few can–and must, in a Democracy–be balanced by concerted action on the part of the Many? That it’s okay, wise, and perfectly normal to join with others in the pursuit of common dreams. That the Cult of the Individual is a sham, foisted upon us by those who would use the oldest techinique in the imperial arsenal to their advantage: Divide and Conquer.

Latest news from our running economic soap opera, As The Street Churns.

Hank Paulson told the Senate Banking Committee today that no mention of oversight was made in his back-of-the-napkin plan to Save the Economy because he “wouldn’t presume” to dictate terms to  Congress… except for those 32 inconvenient words where he specifies that there will be no oversight. Tony Fratto, over at the White House, claims that Paulson’s cocktail napkin had been sitting there for several months, but somehow, (seeing as Everything Is Fine and Nobody Saw This Coming) they only saw fit to share it with Congress after the largest players in the economy started tumbling like bowling pins. Oh, and this is so important that Congress had better pass it RIGHT NOW, or else We Are All Doooomed and it will be all your fault! You know, sort of like how you better buy that house RIGHT NOW before you get priced out of the market.

And don’t bother reading the fine print. It will only confuse you.

So, if this was not a long-planned event, why was the plan written ahead of time? If they didn’t think they could force a gigantic liar’s loan on taxpayers by presenting it as the only, desperate, last resort during a crisis that could Take Down the World, why hold off until the crisis occurred? I’ll say it again. This is an attempted takeover of the US, and perhaps the global, economy. It’s a scam.

And there’s something else that’s set off my crap detector: Fox News is acting like nothing’s happening on this topic. Every time I surf past O’Reilly, Hannity, et al, they’re having trivia contests and chit chat. Why would it be in the interest of an alleged news organization to miss the biggest story of the year, maybe the decade?

Any thoughts?

Here’s a little something my son showed me over at Cracked:

So if somebody wants to bypass your critical thinking circuitry, all they need to do is make you scared or anxious, often with a time limit or urgent threat (“We need to act now, or lose our way of life!”).

Instead of pondering the situation with the analytical neocortex, you’re using the primitive limbic system, scanning the landscape for the “Right” and “Wrong” move. You’ll have no patience for wishy-washy talk about “a spectrum of options.”

http://www.cracked.com/article_16656_6-brainwashing-techniques-theyre-using-on-you-right-now.html