THE NEW "KNOW NOTHINGS"

The folks now intent on dividing us into
true Americans and fake, or anti-Ameri-
cans remind me of the American Party
of the 1840s - 1850s. They were called by
their critics "The Know Nothings." That's
because they were instructed by their
leaders to answer when questioned by
outsiders about their beliefs or member-
ship, to say: "I know nothing."

This is what happens, essentially, when
"low information voters" are asked why
they think Obama is a Muslim, or a
Socialist, or won't salute the flag, etc. They
don't know what to say, so they mumble
and stumble, reluctant to admit they got
it from Rush or Fox Noise (who don't know
anymore than they do, which is nothing!)

The original Know Nothings were under-
educated (for the most part), and nativist
white protestants, strongly opposed to im-
migration because they feared we were be-
ing inundated and would be "taken over"
by Irish (and other) Catholics who would
turn the country over to a rule by the Pope.
They were the only "real Americans," they
claimed. They spread scurrilous stories
about supposed sexual activities between
priests and nuns.

The great fear being pedaled now by and to
the unknowing is of Muslims, terrorists,
and Socialists, all lumped together and
loathed in the way communists have been
in the past. It's an old game. Obama is not
"palling around with terrorists." That's a lie.
And Sen. McSame keeps defending it. He
(O.) is not (present tense) "palling" with any-
one subversive. He served, ten years ago,
on a board with a bunch of Republicans and
one now respected college professor who had
been a terrorist 40 years ago, and was honored
as "Chicagoan of the Year" in 1997! Why
does Palin not mention that, by the way?

So the old Know Nothings were the real Ameri-
cans, and Catholics weren't. The new Know
Nothings claim only they are real Americans
and Obama and his supporters aren't. A Minn.
Congresswoman said Obama "may have anti-
American views." Evidence? "I know nothing."
"But we had better be frightened."

"The liberals hate real Americans that work and
achieve and believe in God," said a Congressman
in N. C. Which implies that we libs don't work,
don't achieve, and don't believe in God. Like
Obama has done none of the above? And hates
real Americans? Come on. Try to make sense!

A TV interview lady in Florida asked Joe Biden
if Obama is a Marxist. She cited Obama's "spread
the wealth" quote. Biden thought she was kidding!
She wasn't. Her husband is the county leader for
Republicans. They are genuinely that ignorant!
Teddy Roosevelt embraced the "spread the wealth"
idea, recognizing that all taxes do that, in fact.
Ronald Reagan of all people, introduced the in-
come tax credit for working people who live below
the poverty line. He was justly proud of it. It's the
best thing he ever did domestically. Was he a
Marxist, lady TV person?

Gov. Palin ridiculed fruit-fly research as a waste
of time and money. ("I kid you not," she said.)
I learned 60 years ago in a freshman biology
class that fruit flies are the idea species for study-
ing genetics because they have such a short gen-
eration time (about 2 weeks), and high fecundity.
A female lays an egg every 30 minutes (like Palin)
and lays 800 in a lifetime. Fruit flies are to the
study of genetics (and other things) what rats and
mice are to the study of cancer. If Palins writers
had just Googled the subject they would have
known this. But Know Nothings are proud of
their ignorance! They are afraid of smart people.
Smart peopld might know something.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

NAME YOUR FEAR!

Here's the current list (not in any particular
order):

Liberals(suspected of hating America, God and guns,
loving socialism, gays, terrorists, etc.) Also known as
"tax and spend liberals," elitists, intellectuals.

Socialists and Socialism (undefined: Social Security
has always been opposed by Republicans as "social-
ism." Reagan feared Medicare, sure it would bring
socialism). If those are, then we're already there.
It's not too bad, is it? Want to scrap social security
and Medicare?

Gays and gay marriage. The fear is that gayness
is catching, and is being taught to our children as OK!
Actually, sexual attraction is determined chemically
by estrogen and testosterone and related wiring. A
teenage boy attracted to girls is not easily dissuaded.
And vice verse for girls drawn to guys! It is equally
natural for some few to be drawn to the same sex.

Gay marriage is a big fear, although no one has ex-
plained how or why that should threaten traditional
marriage in any way. It doesn't. Every religion is
free to govern its own rules for recognizing and bles-
sing a marriage. That's as it should be. Civil marriages
are another matter. They are no one else's business.
Massachusetts has civil same-sex marriages, and the
lowest divorce rate (among heteros) in the country.



Communism (It has never worked anywhere in the
world, and can't work. It is being abandoned and
replaced in most of the countries that have tried it.)
Still used however as a bogey-bear to scare the hell
out of the uninformed and easily spooked!

terrorists: people who use or threaten to use force
on civilians for political purposes. Al Qaeda and the
Taliban are leading practitioners, along with the U. S.
and Israel who have both been doing it longer and
more efficiently. (See current threats against Iran.)

Muslims: Less than 5% of the 1 billion, 300,000
Muslims in the world are actually violent extremists,
but we are frightened spit less by any and all Muslims.
(Witness the 15-20% in our country who won't vote
for Obama because they fear he might be one.)
Actually, there isn't a Muslim country in the world
that isn't, as we speak, hunting down and killing or
capturing any and all violent extremists they can
find in their midst. (Check especially, Egypt, Pakistan,
Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.)

Anyone who opposes the war in Iraq must be feared,
because they "hate America" and want America to
lose! Well, 70-80% of us now oppose the war and
understand that it was and is a big mistake. The idea
(promoted by Rush and Hannity and implied by
McSame/Palin) is ridiculous to the point of absurdity!

Perspective:

Every four years the Republicans stoke up their
fear machine and grind it out to win (or steal) another
election. It's the only thing they're good at, and they
do it well. They hate government and don't try to
make it work (except for their favorites). Instead
they govern by the mushroom-growing method: Keep
'em in the dark and feed them horseshit!

Cheer up! "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but
of power and of love and a sound mind!" (St. Paul)


jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

NOT SO FAST ON THE SURGE!

Michael Gerson in today's Washington Post lauds
Sen. McSame for "the dramatic success of the surge
in Iraq," and faults Obama for opposing it. What
he has forgotten is that the purpose of the surge
was to achieve political accommodation. That hasn't
happened, and probably won't before we leave, if
ever.

So the surge was a tactical success, and a strategic
failure. We are no closer to political agreement
than we were pre-surge. And we may be further
from it, because a serious split is developing now
between the Kurds and the Shia. Pre-surge, the
Kurds were generally supportive of the Shia-
dominated government. That is no longer the
case. The Kurds, who are not Arabs, have been
oppressed historically by Sunni Arabs, and now
fear the same from the reigning Shia Arabs. The
20% of Iraqis that are Kurds are strongly pro-
American, and want us to stay on in Iraq. The
remaining 80% (90% of them), want us gone, and
are refusing to sign a status of forces agreement
with us so we can legally stay.

Obama was right of course, when he doubted that
added troops in Iraq would "solve the sectarian
violence." They didn't and couldn't. They curbed
it some, and we are glad for that, but they didn't
solve it. It will flare up again when we leave.
That's why we can't reduce our troop numbers
now below pre-surge levels. Nothing was settled
by the surge. Violence was reduced (temporarily)
without reducing it's causes in the age-old Shia-
Sunni struggle for dominance.

Iran now has much more influence on Iraqi poli-
tics than we do. And ours is declining with time,
as theirs is growing. As the Iraq Study Group
reported a couple of years ago, the only path to
peace in Iraq lies in cooperation and agreement
among the surrounding countries, including es-
specially Syria and Iran. We won't even talk to
them. So we'll keep spinning our wheels, wast-
ing lives and money, and calling it success and
winning! Have a nice day.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

SPREAD THE WEALTH (STW)

The very idea of STW enrages Sen. Mc Same! Ac-
tually, he likes to spread it upward by subsidizing
corporations and the rich via lower taxes, even the
fantastically profitable oil companies.

What is the alternative to STW? Hoarding it? Money
is like manure: for it to do any good, you have to spread
it around.

Reagan believed in STW. He thought it should trickle
down to the masses. The rich toss their table scraps
to the poor. "A rising tide lifts all boats." Except of
course, folks with leaky boats or no boats at all, will
drown, as many are doing now.

Spread the wealth already sounds better when you
call it what it really is: sharing the wealth. Ethicists
deal with it as "distributive justice." STW is mainly
what governments actually do. The building of the
interstate highway system STW in dozens of ways,
not just jobs. So did the G. I. Bill, following WW II.
In fact those projects created wealth, as well as
spread it around.

Failure to STW concentrates it ever more tightly in
the hands of the super rich. That is happening as we
speak. That always results in revolution unless it
can be corrected politically. It brought violent, cata-
strophic revolutions in China, Russia, Cuba and other
countries in the past century. If we can't alleviate
the suffering here by peaceful means, we will confront
increasing lawlessness and rebellion.

According to our Constitution, government, in addition
to providing for our common defense, must "establish
justice" (including distributive justice), and "promote
the general welfare." It can't do either of these without
STW. So let's stop the nonsense and get on with the
job cheerfully and intelligently. That's what Obama is
about.

Asleep At The Switch (cont')

Last time I suggested that the false god "Profit"
has been used to justify (and rationalize) a long
list of social and political evils. And I listed some
of those. I also quoted Peter Drucker's sage
contention: "There is no such thing as 'profit.'
There are only costs: costs of the past (which
the accountant records) and costs of an uncertain
future. And the minimum financial return from
the operations of the past that is adequate to the
costs of the future is the cost of capital." (p. 81,
The Post-Capitalist Society).

Some of costs of the future are the $10+ trillion
we owe in national debt, and the even greater
pile of private debt. In the crazed pursuit of
profit, we have allowed much of our productive
capacity to be moved overseas, and too many
good-paying jobs have gone with them. Increa-
singly, the jobs left have been low-paying service
jobs. People can't earn a living and support a
family on these jobs, let alone afford health care
or health insurance!

If you'd like to start to understand some of what
has been happening, and why, you might get a
new book by Thomas Frank: The Wrecking
Crew. The subtitle is "How Conservatives Rule."
Let's face it folks, the people in charge for most
of the last 30 years hate government and its
regulations. Remember what Reagan said?
"Government is the problem." So they have
been diligently dismantling the enforcement
agencies set up by law to protect clean air and
water, worker safety, investors, the poor and
their children, natural resources, and on and on.
Now these are folks who, taking their oaths of
office, vowed to obey and enforce the laws! If
you think I am overstating, read Frank's book.
He spells it out in chilling detail the who, why
and how of this deliberately destructive and
disastrous process.

Another helpful book is Bad Money by Kevin
Phillips. He is the author of American Theocracy
and several other important books, like The
Politics of Rich and Poor. This one is about
"Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, And the
Global Crisis of American Capitalism. It just came
out this year, before the current meltdown, but
he saw it coming, and explains in layman terms
what has been going on. It goes along with The
Wrecking Crew in that it shows how our financial
system has been trashed, robbed, and ruined by
our national leaders in Washington and on Wall
Street. "Bad money" results from fraud, cheating
workers and consumers, and swindling stock hol-
ders, as well as wild gambling with other peoples'
funds!

Another "must read" is The Shock Doctrine, by
Naomi Klein. It's subtitle is "The Rise of Disaster
Capitalism." If you only read one of the books I
have mentioned, make it this one! Arundhati Roy
has said of it: ". . . a brilliant, brave and terrifying
book. It's nothing less than the secret history of
what we call 'the free market.' It should be com-
pulsory reading." Chalmers Johnson said: "Naomi
Klein's expose of neoliberal economics is certain to
be sensational. She rips away the 'free trade' and
globalization ideologies that disguise a conspiracy
to privatize war and disaster and grab public pro-
perty for the rich few. Klein's is a long-needed
analysis of our headlong flight back to feudalism
under the guise of social science and 'freedom.' "

Klein points out that there are always people who
benefit from disasters. And some of them have a
hand in creating disasters, for personal gain. I know
that sounds ridiculous, but she shows it happening
over and over, and proves her thesis without
question! You and I know, for instance, that there
are people who benefit from train wrecks. Those
would be undertakers, hospitals and medical people,
ambulance owners, scrap dealers, track repair folks,
and etc., etc. (These examples are mine.)

Alert individuals have already reaped millions from
Katrina, and billions from Iraq. Klein explains how
Iraq was deliberately planned to be much more de-
structive of Iraqi life, property and culture than it
needed to be, in order to make possible a complete
remake of that society and its institutions along Wes-
tern (that's neoconservative) lines. That's not
happening, of course. The geniuses planning this
debacle had no idea of the lion and tiger cages they
were opening when they removed Saddam. He was
the animal trainer that kept that circus together.

Back to our domestic situation here: if Klein is cor-
rect in her analysis of the shock doctrine and the
way it worked in Chile, and New Orleans, and the
tsunami that hit Indonesia, we can expect the ex-
tremely wealthy people who typically move in on
the heels of disaster to buy valuable properties at
a fraction of their book value, to prevail on their
stooges in congress to put our nation's priceless
natural treasures on the auction block to meet our
current financial crisis. I'm talking about public
lands, including national forests, national parks,
federally owned beach properties, national grazing
lands, etc. etc. The justification will be, in addition
to the current crisis, the coming breakdown of
Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. We will
be told we have no choice, just like in the present
bailout of Wall Street. We did have choices once,
but that time is long gone. We slept too soundly.
Sorry. Go back to sleep.
to know what was going on!
It's dynamite!

DON'T ASK (For Whom the Bell Tolls: it
Tolls For You)
We Were All Asleep at the Switch

When trains are roaring towards each other on
the same track, the switch master pushes a but-
ton that sends one of the trains onto a siding while
the other goes safely by. If however, the train
master is "asleep at the switch," shit happens.

While our present economic train wreck was seen
coming by many and warned against by a few, the
folks in charge have been sleeping soundly, lulled
by market myths that have become religion, and
thrilled by bed-time stories of magic geese laying
golden eggs.

The forgotten truth of markets is that they always
crash. Have since Roman times, and whoops! They've
done it again! Peter Drucker wrote a prophetic book
(Post-Capitalist Society) in 1993 that predicted the
type of crisis we are now entering. He didn't know
the outcome of course, and said that no one really
understands the consequences of the knowledge re-
olution.

Noting that the major stock holders in most of our
companies are the pension funds consisting of defer-
red wages of retired employees, he foresaw that at
some point these passive masses of corporate owners
would become restive over the unsupervised and un-
controlled gambling of their desperately needed pen-
sions for the amusement and enrichment of people
they had hired as their fiduciarys to make their money
grow.

Drucker pointed out that there is neither rhyme nor re-
son for the totalitarian rule of our corporations and the
lack of participation in their control by their true and
actual owners. Said owners have been lulled (and gul-
led) by the largely fictitious assurance of a "fiduciary
relationship" existing between management and owner-
ship. If your lawyer, without your permission, flings
away your money in Las Vegas, he will be disbarred
by his state bar association. He violated his fiduciary
relationship. Our corporate managers however, have
been gambling with our permission, because our fund
management has kept reelecting to corporate boards
people in league with in corporate management. They
have thereby gone along with the careless, foolhardy
gambling going on.

Profits are the reason, the magic charm that sooths all
fears and disarms all caution. And as Drucker points
out in perhaps his most salient observation: "there is
no such thing as 'profit.' There are only costs: costs of
the past (which the accountant records) and costs of an
uncertain future. And the minimum financial return
from the operations of the past that is adequate to the
costs of the future is the cost of capital." (p. 81)

We are now understanding at last the meaning of "future
costs" that Drucker was referring to. We understand
also that "life jacket capitalism" will only save those at
the top of the ladder. The rest of us better be good
swimmers!

So all these years we have been soothed and charmed
by phantom "profits" that don't really exist. Like Esau,
we have sold our birthright for a mess of stew, and now
we are stewing! To enjoy these fake profits we have had
to be oblivious to the necessary pauperization of much
if not most of our working class, the degradation of our
infrastructure, the despoiling of our environment, the
neglect and weakening of our educational system at all
levels, the break down in health delivery, and on and on.
Undoing all this damage will just be some of the costs
of the national binge we have been enjoying.

More on this later.