Get used to it, we don't have any oil

We always hear about what a great thing it is to drill for our own oil, how having domestic oil supplies is such a good thing.  There is one thing that is often overlooked in this argument.  It doesn't matter whose ground the oil is under, it will still not be ours.

This is not some "we all share the earth" philosphy or anything like that.  The is about business, how things work, how things are.  And how things are is that the oil will always be sold to whoever wants to pay for it.

The oil companies are multinational corporations.  They have no loyalty to any nation.  Theoretically, they are loyal to their shareholders (and this is a whole topic in an of itself, perhaps later) but mostly they are loyal to their own entrenched management.  So if an oil company pulls oil out of Saudia Arabia, or the Gulf of Mexico, or Alaska, or your back yard, it all gets dumped into that company's supply, and sold for whatever they can get for it to whoever will pay.

The price is set by a combination of supply and demand, and speculation.  Traders buy and sell oil every day.  Now different qualities may have different prices.  The price you hear quoted in the news all the time is what they call 'light sweet crude', the easiest to refine.  But where it came from?  Means squat.

So the next time you hear someone saying how important it is to increase our domestic oil supply you know they are taking you for a fool, or they are ignorant themselves.  In either case, they are missing the point.

News Flash! Muslim, marxist president!

There is a story circulated about Lyndon Johnson.  I don't know if it is true or not, but it makes for a good illustration.  Johnson was in a congressional race, and he told his campaign manager to leak a story to the press that his opponent was a homosexual, or made it a habit of having sex with farm animals (I have seen both versions of the story). 

His campaign manager was shocked.  'We can't say that, Lyndon,' he said. 'It's not true.'

Johnson replied 'Of course it's not, but let's make the bastard deny it.'

Anyway, the current round of rumors makes me think of that.

I always thought that Marxism is essentially anti-religious.  Now be it far from me to let a little thing like truth spoil a good rumor, but I think we can leave that Marxist part out for now.  But it is the denying part that I wonder about.

Lets invent a few rumors, just for the sake of discussion.

Sarah Palin is a closet lesbian.  She has known about this since she was a teenager, but made the decision to try and blend in because she feared being ostracized by her family and friends.

Newt Gingrich is a pagan.  Despite courting the religious right, he has been a pagan since his college days, and still meets at solstice to dance naked in a circle with a group of trusted friends.

George Bush is actually half black.  Even his brother Jeb does not know he is the progeny of an affair that his father had with a household servant.  When the baby was born with white features, George W and his wife came to an accommodation with the servant, and the baby was raised by the two of them.  George knew his mother as a family friend until his 21st birthday, when his father revealed the truth to him.

OK, these are all interesting rumors.  They would all stir up a huge amount of press.  But this is the important point.  Whether they were true or not, it doesn't matter, and the act of denying them, attaches more importance to them than they deserve.

So what if Sarah Palin was gay?  Well sure, there are elements in our society that would have a problem with that, but that would be their problem, not based on any fact.  Sarah will still be a shrill, brainless politician lacking the courage and will to do the job the Alaskan people elected her to do.  Being gay would change nothing related to her abilities,qualifications, or suitability to hold higher office.

Newt Gingrich a pagan?  Well, he has already demonstrated he is a hypocrite, preaching family values while serving his wife divorce papers as she was in the hospital with cancer.  So pretending to be a Christian to pander to the Christian right is no different.  It doesn't mean anything, it neither qualifies nor disqualifies him for anything.

George Bush half black?  What would that have to do with anything at all?  Would anybody even care?

Now I don't think that Obama is a Muslim.  But why should being a Muslim be an issue?

Oh, and the first major terrorist attack on American soil, wasn't that the Oklahoma City bombing?  Wasn't the bomber a Christian?  Should I be concerned if Obama is a Christian?  After all they blew up a building with a day care center in it!

It is the fact that anybody cares one way or another, that is what bother me.

Sending our children off to war

Last Sunday, my wife's younger son left his new wife to go off to training.  A few months training, followed by deployment in Iraq.

This by itself is not all that unusual, military families have been dealing with this for quite a while now.  My wife has too, has had to deal with this.  This will be his third tour.  He is not regular army, he is in the National Guard.  He continues to stay in the guard because they are helping pay his way through nursing school.

I wonder, would this still be going on, this perpetual state of war, if we had a draft?  If everyone's (and I mean the children of the rich and powerful, the children of our elected officials, everyone) children were exposed to a draft, could be taken from their lives and families and sent off to war, would it be so easy to tolerate?

Of course, men and women putting their lives at risk is not the only consequence of these wars we fight.  The combination of letting the rich pay less in taxes, encouraging US companies to export their jobs (and the accompanying payroll taxes) to other countries while spending money we did not have on our military is a big part of our ruined economy.  Of course those on the right choose to ignore that part focusing instead on the fact that Obama has not undone the damage of 8 years.

I was drafted, and did not find it a happy experience.  All in all, for me at least, there were no negative consequences.  Nobody shot at me and I got an education on the GI Bill when I got out.  But I am not saying that a draft is a good thing.  Quite the contrary.  But it is a bad thing that, if everyone experienced it, would provide the impetuous to keep us out of some of these really stupid mistakes presidents with a desire to enhance their image in the history books are prone to.

If the children of the senators and congressmen were subject to a draft, perhaps the vote on Iraq would have been a little more carefully considered.

What would you say?

OK, I copied this from the website for the Ed Shultz show.  I heard this when I was listening to the radio on my way to play some softball, and I found the idea intriguing.

You're downtown, in a major hotel. You step into the elevator at the lobby level. You press 7. The elevator stops at 2. The doors open. In step four tall men. Black suits. Crew Cuts. Earpieces. And behind them, The President of the United States. He's moving from a holding area on the 2nd floor, to his speech in the ballroom on the 10th floor. You're getting out on the 7th floor. The president smiles and reaches out to shake your hand.
And the question posed was this.  You got at most two minutes where you have the undivided attention of the President of the United States.  What do you ask him or tell him?

So I thought about for a while.  What would I say?  There is so much to say and two minutes are such a small amount of time.  So I settled on this.

Mr. President, when you took office, we were in deep shit.  The economy had been driven to ruin with a completely unnecessary war and massive deregulation, compounded by ignoring many of those regulations that remained.  It was a process begun by Ronald Reagan and continued by each successive administration.  The American people needed someone to kick ass and take names.  Instead they got a health care bill written to benefit the insurance companies instead of the people who elected you.  You backtracked on Guantanamo and the Patriot Act.  You have not reinstated the Glass-Steagall Act, and the loan modification program has been a dismal failure.  We needed FDR and you gave us Jimmy Carter.   Mr. President, if you intend to implement any meaningful change, you are running out of time.

So, there you have it, my elevator speech.

Commenting and making points

There was a news article making the rounds the other day.  It was about how GM was posting a quarterly profit, and may be headed for an IPO soon.  Of course there were a lot of comments, and a lot of those referred to the bailout.

One poster in particular made the following points:

• Bailing out GM not only saved jobs at GM, but at the employees of many suppliers around the country.  So that bailout alone saved a huge (he gave a number, but I don't remember what is was) number of jobs at companies other than GM.
• GM has already paid back the cash portion of the bailout.
• With the IPO the government will be able to sell the stock it holds in GM, getting the rest of the money back.

A responder said something like "You must work for GM".

Facts can be checked, they can be disputed.  Other facts can be reported that show how the original statements may be only half truths.  The responder instead chose to be a spoiled child, pouting for not getting his own way.  He didn't even say something like "I don't think that many jobs were saved" or make any claim at all the the original poster was somehow inaccurate.

Now this is not to say that a little healthy name calling does not belong in an intelligent discourse.  After all, if I felt that the right wing had any honor at all, were anything other than whores in the service of corporate feudalism, then I would be more restrained in my speech, but alas, that is not the case.  So I suppose that those who might disagree have to be given the same latitude.  But only if they have something to say.

Now if I had written that post, and gotten a comment like that, I would have done one of two things.  Choice A, I would just toss it.   Choice B would be a response something like this.

Thank you so much for your generous response,  I was pleased to see you did not disagree with any of my points.  Yes, I imagine you would think I would need to be a GM employee to know any of that, but in fact all I had to do was open my eyes.  You see, everything I said was a matter of public record.  So you can find out things like that too, just as soon as you take your head out of your ass.

So, I don't mind if people don't agree with me, but actually say something.

P.T. Barnum would have been proud

The right has been having a lot of fun with the immigration issue.  Now if you are in politics, and you spot a weakness in your enemy, you would be foolish not to exploit it.  No, I am not talking about a weakness in the Democratic party, or in the Obama administration.  The enemy of the right that I am talking about is the American working class.

I know, class is a dirty word.  I'll get into that in some other post, that is not my point here.  The topic here is illegal immigration.  Let's think about this for a change, instead of just parroting someone's party line.

Question: Why do people sneak into the United States?
Answer: To get a job.

Still with me here?

Question: Why can they find jobs here?
Answer: Because business will hire them.  They work cheap, and if there is any messy problem like paying for overtime or wanting protective clothing when working with toxic stuff, hell, you can just call immigration and have them deported.

Question: Why would I care?
Answer:  First of all, this is bordering on slavery, and therefore immoral.  But as most of these people don't look like your neighbors, you could care less.  So let's try something you might care about.  They drive down pay and benefits for everyone else.  They will work cheaper than you, with no benefits.

Now here is the part where they get you.  The "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" part where the tea party types and the others clamoring for building fences and deporting millions and militarizing the border lose touch with reality.

Question: Who benefits from illegal immigration?
Answer: The same people who supply the money to the Republican Party.  They look at you idiots and see "cheap labor" and "consumers".  They distract you with "Control our borders" while they are the ones hiring illegal immigrants, and holding them over your heads.  And you say, "Please sir, may I have some more?"
.
Do I have an answer to all this?  No, I don't.  I am not sure what the right thing to do is.  And yes, I think what is right is more important than what is expedient.  But I do know this.  The right has no interest in a solution.  They are the ones who benefit from keeping things exactly as they are.  Perhaps making it a little easier to threaten and get rid of any illegal workers who might get too uppity and think they should be treated as human beings, but other than that, the system is working just fine for them.

And as long as they can keep you distracted from their hypocracy, by vilifying people just trying to feed their families, you won't notice that they are screwing you.  Oh, and you will keep voting for their puppets.

Bruce got a tax cut

Ok, so this is old news.  Back when Cheney was in charge, I got a tax cut.  I make a comfortable six figure income,  always get to go someplace nice on vacation, in general, I have a comfortable life.  Like I needed a tax cut.

My kids, however, all of them have a more hardscrabble life.  None of them are starving, but none of their lives are anywhere close to as easy as mine.  They didn't get a tax cut.

What's wrong with this picture?