WHAT BLUE DOGS REALLY WANT -- AND WHY THEY RULE

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Blue dogs claim they oppose the “public option” in any health care bill because they defend moderation in spending. In reality, a public health option, by presenting insurance company leeches with price competition, would moderate spending. Blue dog Democrats don’t favor a rational budget. They’re front-line champions of the busted financial structure championed by the corporations that pay them off. If these guys cared about a balanced budget, why did they cut taxes for the super-rich while they supported Bush’s $2 trillion war in Iraq?

The blue dogs’ buddies, their Republicans across the aisle, oppose any health bill in any form whatsoever because protecting insurance company profits isn’t enough for them. They, like their pill-addled hero Rush Limbaugh, want the Obama presidency to fail and the country to sink further into the poisonous swamp of lunacy fashioned from nearly three decades of domination by the corrupt, crazy remnants of what used to be the Party of Lincoln.

What’s fascinating is that the corporate greedheads that form the dominant Republican and Blue Dog coalition can find thousands of brainless foot soldiers to take to the streets in favor of a failed health structure ruled by insur-o-crats. But anything or anyone that opposes Obama is something these “You lie!” zombies can root for. Life was so much simpler when they had their “colored” drinking fountains. The only reason the tea-party nutsos call Obama a socialist is because they understand it’s no longer acceptable to call him a nigger (outside the comfort of their own little enclaves).

Almost equally confounding is how the Big Media can so consistently fail to look into the records and finances of the politicians on the take from the global companies that make the rules. MSNBC (that is, the GE Corporation) provide us with would-be comics like Keith Olberemann and Rachel Maddow to smirk their way through the nightly news, but they don’t hire real journalists who dig up facts. They figure we’ll be satisfied with vaudevillean, liberal counterparts to O’Reiley, Lumbaugh, etc. If these made-up TV clowns on the left or right had to chase down a real story they’d probably burst into flames.

Our country limps along on a constitution that bestows tremendous power on rural constituencies that elect people like the South Carolina governor who figured he could pave his way to the presidency by turning down federal funds to help unemployed people. Montana’s Max Baucus, who’s been screwing around for months to formulate a health plan that would supposedly be acceptable to Republicans, represents a state that has far fewer residents than Brooklyn. But it gets two senators. If we lived in a genuine democracy, a voter in Wyoming wouldn’t have ninety times the political clout of a voter in Long Beach, California. Imposters like Baucus and his blue dog pals wouldn’t be in the catbird seat.

WHY WE’RE IN AFGHANISTAN AND WHAT WE SHOULD DO ABOUT IT

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

There’s no light at the end of the Afghanistan tunnel. In fact, there’s not even a tunnel, just a deep, dark pit. We have no clear mission there, and after eight years of fighting we’re suffering more casualties than ever while the place remains deeply mired in violence and corruption.

A British newspaper recently published an interview with Britain's next military chief Gen. Sir David Richards in which he is quoted as saying that the Afghanistan mission could last up to 40 years. As it stands now, NATO has more than 100,000 troops there, 58.000 of them Americans. Another 10,000 U.S. troops will be added by year end. And those figures are misleadingly low because at last count we had 74,000 military “contractors” in country, most of them performing chores ordinarily done by soldiers.

The painfully slow withdrawal from Iraq (We still have 128,000 troops there) coupled with all those additional forces being injected into Afghanistan means that the same soldiers and Marines are deployed over and over again until they come back in body bags or with pieces missing, burned, or otherwise mutilated. Meanwhile the long, frequent absences wreck the emotional health of service people and their families, engendering divorce, alcoholism, and all the related negative outcomes that go with them.

What’s going on? Barack Obama’s not this stupid, is he? So why is he dumping all these troops down the Afghanistan hole? The answer is both simple and ugly. We’re there because if he pulls out and there’s another attack on the U.S. that approximates 9/11-magnitude, his presidency could be toast. Ever since they lost the 2008 election Republican leaders have made it clear that they’re itching for another successful attack on America so they can use it to win elections. And if such an attack were traced back to Afghanistan in any way after Obama had pulled out, they figure they’d be hitting the trifecta. Meanwhile, they took no responsibility for being in charge on 9-11, but that's how they play the game.

If Republican leaders were civilized patriots, Obama could get them to buy into a joint congressional resolution supported by both parties that would give him cover for withdrawal, leaving only intelligence and police operatives plus special forces teams to harass enemy movement along the Pakistan border. But Republicans have moved too far to the right in the last couple decades to even contemplate pursuing a rational, bipartisan agenda. They’ve politicized prayer, sex, and war, among other things, and rather than pull our troops from a quagmire that threatens to dwarf the Vietnam disaster, they prefer to let them die and possibly provide Republican political dividends.

We can expect General Stanley McChrystal, who’s in charge of both the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, to announce in the coming days or weeks that he’s changing the strategy to one of winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese – excuse me, I mean Afghans -- and to pretend that no one’s thought of that before. In fact, unless Obama changes the script, we can expect a succession of U.S. generals and lots of parrot-class commentators to say this for many years to come.

But the enemy has controlled much of the country for years and is well funded by an abundant opium crop that neither U.S. forces nor the Karzai regime has been able to do much about. In fact, Karzai's clique is itself riddled with opium traffickers and people who play both sides. Al Qaeda-born terrorism will be defeated by good intelligence and police work, not a never-ending occupation in a lost, hellish country whose only real talent is for resisting occupation by foreign troops.

But if Obama is truly convinced we must defeat the Taliban on the field of battle then he should involve all of America, not just that tiny sliver represented by military families. He must explain why victory is so important and then immediately re-establish military conscription so we can field a half a million troops in Afghanistan. Only this time the draft mustn’t be rigged to protect the offspring of the rich and powerful.

If he’s unwilling to do all that, he must withdraw, because anything less will fail and it’s crazy to continue sacrificing our troops for domestic political requirements. Just because Republicans pursue a loony agenda that’s no reason to oppose them with the same measure of lunacy.

HEALTH CARE, GOV. SANFORD & KING OF POP

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Wouldn't it be terrific if the mainstream media gave us such extensive, blockbuster coverage of the travels of Gov. Mark Sanford and the death of Michael Jackson because all the important problems were solved? Wouldn't it be nice if the frivolity of what passes for news meant that we’ve managed to raise Americans' longevity and instant mortality statistics above Third World status?

But no, that's not at all what it means.

Nor does it mean that the global economic meltdown is a problem that's been licked or that we don't have 200,000 troops sitting in the bleakness and danger of the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones.

What it means is that the mass media have become bored with corruption, ineptitude, families thrown in the street, dead babies, endless wars, and related issues. Because these circumstances have become more or less permanent, stories about them are of little consequence to the media gatekeepers. They’re much like the no-longer-so-new White House dog. Learn a new trick or get to the end of the news report where you belong.

Such are the rules of pack journalism, whose methods and results ensured that we couldn’t possibly be tipped off before the banking crisis that wrecked the world economy. Mainstream media don't check out stories like that until it's too late. Did you hear them asking back in 2002 why it was so necessary to kick the U.N. inspectors out of Iraq so we could replace them with a shooting war and an endless occupation that drains our resources and weakens our country?

Reporters and their bosses are still out there chasing each others' tails looking for the next O.J. or Nicole Smith. What's the latest hot story eating up thousands of reporter-hours as we speak? The possibility that John Edwards and his mistress made a sex tape. If it doesn't turn up, they'll just go back to their endless follow-ups on Sanford and Jackson.

“The big question,” I heard one of the CNN buffoons say as I fished through channels, “is whether the Sanfords will reconcile.” I asked my wife, “Is that really the big question? Can’t CNN find bigger questions than that?” But she was already heading to the living room to turn on some music and sit down with a book.

Meanwhile, as real news goes unreported, President Obama is day by day worn down by the “moderate” wing of the Democratic Congress (that is, Republicans with a D after their names) who work in tandem with the relig-o-crat greedhead crazies on the Republican side of the aisle. Who's representing the American public, 72 percent of whom want a government alternative to private health insurance and its deranged pre-existing conditions clauses? You tell me.

Sen. Diane Feinstein and her pals have already proclaimed that health care reform would cost $1.7 trillion over the next ten years. So, they say, its goals and methods must be vastly reduced. They get away with repeating this lying horror story because they and their bribe-master corporations know that mainstream media won't check it out.

So let's just look at the hypothetical case of a child running a high fever whose parents are out of jobs, savings, and luck. The parents can’t afford health insurance or a family physician so they take her to a hospital emergency room because by law it must treat her. There she’s diagnosed with swine flu and treated with Tamiflu. But she had to wait ten hours to be treated, and therefore many more patients and their families were needlessly exposed.

In a civilized country she’d have waited less than an hour at a clinic or physician’s office and been properly treated for approximately $200. That $200 is part of Feinstein’s scary story, part of the phantom $1.7 trillion because after all, the government just spent it to help the child. Feinstein doesn’t mention the $1,200 saved by having a rational system in place instead. Nor is this ever mentioned by the insurance or pharmaceutical companies, the AMA, or any of the other powerful lobbies feeding inaccuracies and perverted statistics to the mainstream media. Nor is it mentioned by CNN or Fox, MSNBC, etc., etc. Meanwhile what passes for U.S. health care takes up one-sixth of our gross domestic product while our health statistics are beneath those of Morocco.

Obama, faced with the real math of the “moderate-conservative” coalition in Congress, will most likely agree to water down a health plan to something that Congress's bribe-masters can live with, and we’ll continue suffering under a health care non-system designed to please the corporations that profit from it. And so it goes.

You know something? Maybe it is a better idea to follow the Jackson and Sanford stories. They’re not nearly as depressing.

'LIMBAUGH' BASHES 'THE BARFIGHTER'

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
I imagined Rush Limbaugh recently took time out from his busy day chasing OxyContin to interview me about my recently published novel The Barfighter (The Permanent Press). Here’s how it went.

GOLDMAN: Look, Limbaugh, if you want to cross-dress, that’s your business, but that gray sheath is all wrong for you. What kind of look were you going for anyway?

LIMBAUGH: Tell the truth. Don't I look just a little like Streisand?

GOLDMAN: Well, sure, but why --

LIMBAUGH: I’ll ask the questions. What the hell kind of book was that? I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it.

GOLDMAN: Did you really read it?

LIMBAUGH: Of course.

GOLDMAN: As your half-witted deity Reagan used to say, trust but verify. So tell us the name of the protagonist’s girlfriend.

LIMBAUGH: Okay, so maybe I didn’t read all of it. Why bother? You discovered there’s corruption in boxing? Well duh!

GOLDMAN: The book shows corruption, yes, but that’s not the main thrust at all. Besides, some of what you might call corruption – participation by convicted felons, for example -- isn’t entirely bad. Baseball would never allow an ex-convict to own a team because it’s a sport that tries to present itself as being purer than it actually is. Boxing gives a convicted killer, Don King, a license to promote. He’s still no saint, but the sport gave him a second chance in life. Providing second chances is a fight game tradition.

LIMBAUGH: (Feigns a yawn) Face it. The last thing the world needs is another novel about boxing.

GOLDMAN: Plenty of fine writers have mined the fight world for material, but I felt I had something else to say and did my best to say it. As I wrote I also thought a lot about regret, rumination, and the search for redemption. These are all very human topics that transcend the fight world, and I hope the book does too. My model was Moby Dick, which tells you something about whaling and plenty about the human condition. My premise was based on an experience I had while sparring in a neighborhood gym.

LIMBAUGH: Will we have to suffer through more of your boxing novels?

GOLDMAN: I still write my regular column for The Ring, but when it comes to fiction, I think I said all I wanted to say about boxing in The Barfighter.

LIMBAUGH: Who cares what you have to say? I’ve sold more books than you could even dream of selling, and to me they’re just a sideline.

GOLDMAN: Sure, you’ve peddled ghost-written titles seeped in your own cruel brand of pretentious ignorance, but there’s still room in this world for people who write their own books and for publishers trying to put out worthy titles. I try not to worry about no-talent jerks like you who hit it big. I prefer to focus on fine artists like John Updike and Joseph Heller who achieved great success.

LIMBAUGH: Then why did you choose me to conduct this interview?

GOLDMAN: Because you’re an interesting though repulsive phenomenon.

LIMBAUGH: Listen, climb soapboxes on your own time. I’ve got an appointment to sign some more multi-million-dollar contracts.

GOLDMAN: Proving once again how important it is to keep one’s sense of humor. Did I mention The Barfighter is also humorous?

LIMBAUGH: So it’s not a serious book.

GOLDMAN: It’s a mistake to believe we can take fiction seriously only when it’s devoid of humor. This widespread delusion is what makes it practically impossible, for example, for a comedy to win the Best Picture Oscar. Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and Kafka – not exactly lightweights – all incorporated humor in their work. Humor is an essential ingredient to living well. I’m particularly aware of this as I look at you, Limbaugh. If we had to take you seriously there’d be lots more people walking in front of busses. But I think I’ll stop right here because I did end up climbing on a soapbox, and when you prove Limbaugh correct about anything it’s time to quit.
(The Barfighter can be purchased at a discount from Amazon.com.)

OBAMA LETS FINANCIAL DOGS OUT

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
When President Obama went looking for a CIA director he settled on Leon Panetta, a smart, tough bird who knows his way around and also had minimal ties to the intelligence community.

But when Obama needed helpers to figure a way out of our economic quagmire, he followed an opposite strategy, choosing Wall Streeters from within the club. Not surprisingly, their lofty perspectives gave them no clue as to what’s going on down here in the financial sludge where the rest of us reside. Timothy Geithner, his Treasury Secretary, and Lawrence Summers, who heads Obama’s National Economic Council, have spent their entire lives inside the same privileged enclaves that gave birth to our economic ruin. They didn’t come into office questioning the structure that suckled them. Like their predecessors in the Bush Gang, they’ve been passing acres of cash to the same scumbags and idiots who gambled away the global economy. Now Geithner and Summers have developed a scheme designed to be so complex that we won’t understand what they’re doing while they pass on more trillions to the criminally insane. More on that later.

In a previous column I zeroed in on Summers. Now let’s take a better look at this Geithner person who supposedly supervises the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Geithner, whose father held an earldom in the Ford Foundation, went straight from college to the sinister lobbying outfit operated by Doctor Death himself, Henry Kissinger. Its primary purpose is to gain influence in Washington for a super-secret list of clients that you can bet never included Mother Teresa. After soaking up lethal doses of amorality there, Manchurian Candidate Geithner joined the entourage of Robert Rubin and Summers, who, with the aid of Alan Greenspan and others, set TNT under New Deal banking regulations, destroying the world economy and making lots and lots of money for themselves and their friends. Inside the sweet circle, Geithner climbed up to Treasury awhile, then the State Department, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Federal Reserve. There, as late as 2007, he was working to reduce capital requirements for banks so they could shoot craps for even higher stakes with other people’s money.

When the financial structure he’d helped to debase came apart, Geithner was well-known as a Fed hawk in favor of guaranteeing virtually all the banks’ IOU’s and asking virtually nothing in return. After returning to Treasury, he’s continued the class war against 99.8 percent of Americans. The $6.4 trillion question is why Obama lets Geithner, Summers, and the same old flatulent financiers regulate themselves and call the shots. Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch, for example, the firms that awarded triple-A status to trillions in worthless paper, are still paid by the companies whose financial instruments they’re supposed to rate.

Obama has certain goals he clings to – such as reforming the health-care non-system that forced his mother on her death bed to battle insurance company gnomes contending the cancer killing her was no business of theirs. On other matters Obama often compromises. Only last month he sat on his hands while the banks, after paying their usual legalized bribes to Congresspeople, managed to mutilate a bankruptcy reform bill. Where did they get the money to pay these bribes? From us, of course. Outraged Senator Dick Durbin of Illionis stated flatly that the banks still "own" Capitol Hill. Now once again they focus on their own short-term gains and wreck their institutions from within, figuring the long-term will take care of itself with more public funds. The government owns huge blocks of stock in "troubled" banks that brought on their own troubles, but Geithner has made no move to put individuals representing us, the taxpayer-stockholders, on their boards. Board members are still insiders like Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who used to make approximately $300,000 annually for attending four to five Freddie Mac meetings a year and look the other way while it filed financial reports that were later ruled fraudulent even by the notoriously see-no-evil Securities Exchange Commission.

By blocking legislation that would have allowed bankruptcy judges to jawbone down mortgage principal, banks owned by us the people will continue to torture underwater families. At the same time they create new foreclosures that make their bad paper worth even less, but that's the way they've always done it: Pay off Congress with relatively small bribes so they can harass widows, orphans, and other rabble.

Would you rather let the financially troubled family stay in that house down the block with a reduced mortgage or kick them out and create another vacant house that's a sitting duck for vandals and thieves?

Unlike Obama, Geithner and his ilk don’t compromise. They take all they can get, and without apology. Geithner’s TARP plan is to get super-rich speculators to buy rotten assets by guaranteeing their investments against loss. This will set the prices artificially high, earning profits for scumbags on both ends of the deal. This money, just like the bankers' bribe money, also comes from us.

Yes, we should ask Obama why he loosed the financial dogs on us. But we should also ask ourselves why we allowed him to open the gate. Actually, the answer’s not hard to find. Leonard Cohen already explained it: “Everybody knows the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.”

If you still have twenty dollars left to spend, consider buying my new novel The Barfighter (The Permanent Press; 2009).

THE BARFIGHTER EXCERPT AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOVELS, SOCKET WRENCHES

The American Library Association just nominated my novel The Barfighter, released this month by The Permanent Press, as a 2009 Notable Book. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 12. Beneath that is a comment on the marketing of fiction in the 21st century corporate world.

The hardest part about being tutored by Philyaw was not staring at him. That’s because he looked like Humphrey Bogart.

Philyaw looked so much like Bogey that no one would believe it without actually seeing it, and even then they had a hard time believing it. It was said he’d caused fender-benders just walking down a sidewalk. Cheskis marveled that Philyaw, rather than trying to alter his looks, embraced them, smoking old-fashioned, no-filter cigarettes and dressing like Bogey --- in a forties hat and rumpled trench coat. In 1985 this apparel would be rare anywhere, but in Southern California it was rarer than bar mitzvah bacon.

“What could he possibly do to look less like Humphrey Bogart?” Lorraine said to Cheskis after she’d consented once and only once to accompany Cheskis to the fights.
“He could wear an iron mask,” Cheskis responded. “Then he’d look like the Man in the Iron Mask instead of Humphrey Bogart. But I guess that wouldn’t improve things much, would it?”
Philyaw had once managed the most promising middleweight on the West Coast. But the kid’s bright future was irreparably harmed the night he carelessly stopped a hail of police bullets with most of his vital organs while running out of a liquor store he’d just held up in the Crenshaw District. It was rumored around the neighborhood that a secret room of a doughnut shop on Pico had photographs on the wall that showed the cops taking turns posing with their ski-masked middleweight corpse as though he were a prize elk. Some even claimed the head was mounted in the basement of the 77th Street Station.

They said Philyaw took the death harder than the kid’s mother. Maybe because she didn’t have to pick up the funeral tab. He’d been shelling out cash for years to build the kid’s career. The liquor store misadventure landed on Philyaw just as he was poised to pull the lever on a middleweight jackpot. Philyaw, who’d heretofore denied any resemblance to Bogart, disappeared after the funeral and eventually came back in his Sam Spade get-up with a Camel dangling from the corner of his lips. No one understood the meaning of this turnaround and no one confronted Philyaw about it directly. It was too easy to envision him grabbing the gat in his trench coat and casually plugging his inquisitor like Bogey did to Major Strasser at the end of Casablanca.

The Barfighter received strong reviews in Booklist, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly, but you’re unlikely to find it on the shelves of either Borders or Barnes & Noble, the two giants that have crowded out most other bookstores. The chains charge publishers for display space, and small publishers that either can’t afford or justly refuse to pony up these kickbacks are crowded out. Chains follow this questionable business practice because they have little to no interest in the content of their wares, which might just as well be cabbages or socket wrenches.

The Barfighter can be ordered from the publisher at http://www.thepermanentpress.com/bookdisp.ihtml?id=528 or at a discount from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1579621821/ref=s9_sims_gw_s1_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0Z5J03STBW17A3XWXKE8&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846
Should you pass this blog around to those who might be interested or ask a store or two to stock the book, you’ll get no grief from me. Thanks.

HOW TO SOOTHE SAVAGE (LITTLE KIMMY) JONG IL

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Pipsqueak loon Kim Jong Il, who, like certain previous U.S. presidents we could name, inherited his job from his daddy, is clearly trying to keep himself in the news. He's not willing to settle for the fifteen-minute fame coined by Andy Warhol. He's set on making the big time -- Springsteen- or Bono-class celebrity. Lasting and with a touch of hysteria. This gives us an opening, and if we do a little creative thinking we can use it. More on that below.

Little Kimmy’s missile launch seemed perfectly timed for a news media already bored with the European crowds turning out for Obama yet unwilling to go back to focusing on the same old credit default swaps, bonuses, bailouts, and new batches of homeless people. So they spent two or three excited days stewing over the missile launch out of North Korea even though it appears the test failed. Remember the time Kim’s K-Mart nuke just kind of fizzled like a bad match? Still, we can’t afford to have a poorly triggered nuke carried by a not-terribly-well-engineered missile flying over some civilized country the next time Kimmy finds himself ignored.

Okay, here’s what we do. Kim, reminded of his mortality by a stroke not long ago, clearly yearns to be immortalized in some way that reaches beyond communist statuary. Everybody knows there’s no fame to equal rock star fame. So why not ask U2 or the E Street Band to invite him into the band and go on tour with them? Whoever goes out there next. Intelligent rockers like them will instantly understand it’s better to have a maniac with a goofy haircut banging a tambourine at stage left than to have him blowing up parts of Japan or South Korea.

This is a win-win situation. It won’t hurt the band’s ticket sales, Kimmy finds fame beyond his maniacal dreams, the audience gets a little comic relief along with the music, and the standard news media get themselves a terrific story with loads of photo ops that maybe they can understand. Heck, if Billy Ray Cyrus had put Prince George up on stage with a toy drum we might have avoided the Iraq War.
(Please don't forget to buy several cases of my newly released novel The Barfighter available now from Amazon, The Permanent Press, and elsewhere.)

HOW ONE MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE STILL SCREWS US

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
We’re being told, as one Republican congressional member said it, that President Obama is taking America on a hard left turn. Actually he’s trying to take back only a part of what zealous right-wingers have stolen from us over the last forty years, such as union rights and a more progressive tax system. Right now the top income tax rate is 35 percent for the wealthiest taxpayers. As recently as the Kennedy Administration that figure was 91 percent. That is not a misprint.

More on that another time. Now I’m going to squawk about two inexplicable Obama mistakes. The first was making Lawrence Summers director of the White House Economic Council. This powerful position is now filled by a fat fool who leaves a trail of horrors everywhere he goes. Yet he keeps getting promoted to higher positions. He’s like the eye of a hurricane. Nothing personally touches him, but everything around him gets smashed into bloody toothpicks. But that’s not even the worst of it because now he gets to go around defending and perpetuating his blunders. All of which is very, very bad for the United States of America.

As a protégé of turd-mongering bandit Robert Rubin, Summers (pictured above) was one of the principal destroyers of the global economy, but if you ask him about it, he’ll tell you he did everything right. Summers pushed through the emasculation of the FDR-era Glass-Steagall Act that had prohibited investment bank/brokers, insurance companies, and traditional banks from mingling their businesses. That’s because there are inherent conflicts of interests among them. If it ain’t broke, you shouldn’t fix it, but the financial greedheads who hated Glass-Steagall poured money into Congress and into the hands of then-President Bill Clinton to take apart the New Deal legislation. In 1999 they got their wish while Summers, who’d been Rubin’s deputy, was Secretary of the Treasury. "Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century," Summers announced.

This barely reported giant step into darkness (few journalists understood it) turned loose banks, insurance companies, and brokers to engage in just about any business they wanted – businesses they knew nothing about, including the underwriting of a treacherous vehicle called the credit default swap. It basically insured the losses of crap-shooting masters of the universe even though the guarantors had no way to pay up and no way to disentangle the crazy derivatives they created. Meanwhile, Alan Greenspan, possibly the dumbest bastard in America, looked for new ways to deregulate other greedy bastards like himself who were almost as dumb as he is.

Rubin became CEO of one of the grateful hydra-monsters his initiative set loose upon the globe and went on to make barrels of money as his Citigroup traded the new, exotic derivatives made crazier by the legislation he'd spawned as a “public servant.” Unlike some of those AIG execs, he hasn't given back any of his tainted dollars. Meanwhile Summers, basking in the light of greed and idiocy, supported Republican initiatives to cut taxes for the rich, including taxes on capital gains, so we now have gardeners and housemaids taxed at a higher rate than the gazillionaire investors who employ them.
When Enron and other thieves looted California because the looters were able to buy off the Legislature and deregulate utilities, Summers complained it wasn't working out because there needed to be even more deregulation.

As he advises the President, Summers has an agenda in direct conflict with the nation’s, and he’s repeatedly shown his willingness to piss on everybody while he tells us it’s raining perfume. He shouldn’t be let anywhere near a government of the people.

Second thing Obama’s doing wrong: You can’t fix health care if you barely mention the insurance companies taking nearly half the dollars spent on health care. Get real, Barack. Tackle the giants.

In the midst of all these problems, I have a suggestion. Curl up with a good book. You might try my novel The Barfighter, set for April release by the Permanent Press. These books make excellent Father’s Day and Mother’s Day gifts. You might want to buy several boxes and pass them around this Christmas instead of cards. Find out more at http://www.thepermanentpress.com/bookdisp.ihtml?id=528

GIVE OBAMAS CREDIT FOR PICKING UP THEIR OWN CHECKS

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
It’s getting less and less likely that big-time news media will notice or point out information we ought to have. For example, when’s the last time you saw any of them try to get an honest accounting of how politicians spend their campaign contributions? A good three-fourths of our congresspeople hold ultra-safe, gerrymandered seats, yet they spend approximately half their workday raising millions and millions they don’t need to run campaigns they can’t lose. Something's fishy. But I’ve already digressed from my topic, which is to point out something telling about Barack Obama that I haven't seen pointed out.
For their well-earned pre-inaugural vacation the Obama family rented an estate in Hawaii. Just about no one noticed the significance at play. Liberal columnist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, for example, tried to make a point but missed entirely. Krugman actually castigated Barack for taking an ostentatious vacation. But he failed to notice that the Obamas paid for it themselves.
The Bushes, though they loved getting away from the White House, don’t enjoy travel, so they mostly went back to their own place in Texas, (a "ranch" that raises nothing) stayed with Daddy in Kennebunkport, or went to the presidential compound at Camp David. None of that was unethical. We can only speculate how Junior would have behaved if he were intelligent and curious enough to take more venturesome vacations. But let’s skip that topic and go back a notch to the president before him, namely Bill Clinton.
Bill and Hillary would walk a mile to avoid picking up a check of any kind. The Clintons enjoy travel – real travel. They just hate paying for it. The media never honed in on all the vacation freebies the Clintons grabbed – and still grab in their post-White House phase. We always get the destinations, but no one hones in on the particulars that count.
When the Clintons go to Martha’s Vineyard, they stay at the Robert S. McNamara mansion. When they hanker for the Dominican Republic, they take over the estate of Oscar De La Renta. In Jackson Hole, Wyoming they lodge in the elaborate digs of industrialist and financier Max C. Chapman. See a pattern here? The Clintons paid not one cent for any of this. They are confirmed, out-of-the-closet schnorers. That’s a Yiddish word that’s usually translated as “beggars.” But the word means more than that. A schnorer is fifty percent con-artist, fifty percent-beggar, and one hundred percent pain in the ass. A moocher, a parasite, a freeloader. A schnorer is the guy who’s always trying to get something for free, even if he doesn’t want it that much. The pursuit of making someone else pay is his chief delight.
When the Obamas looked for a place to vacation they didn’t pull down the list of ultra-rich jerks always looking for favors and willing to pay for them. (You could argue it's the taxpayers who actually do the paying, since their interests are sacrificed in order to pay off the hosts) The Obamas opened the Yellow Pages and rented the place, fair and square, just like anyone else would do. That’s a strong indicator of the changes we’re witnessing in this White House. The people at the top of this administration must adhere to the strongest anti-influence-peddling code we’ve seen in the modern age, and aides have their salaries frozen. Ethics. What a concept.
So no, the Obamas don’t stay at Motel 6, but hey, they actually earned their money. Most of it comes from Obama’s books, which he wrote himself. No ghost writers. That’s another form of integrity that nowadays is positively unique among public figures.
I won’t try to list all the other admirable things the Obamas are doing at this point. I just wanted to point out that they aren’t schnorers, and for this they deserve credit.

BUSH, CHENEY VERSUS IRAQ FACTS

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
As they make ready to slink out of Washington, Cheney, Bush, and the rest of their duplicitous band of blunderers and criminals are burning their documents and preparing the foundations for the fantasy memoirs that their ghost writers will create for them. And in a series of pre-departure interviews they’re giving us their latest talking points on the centerpiece of their disastrous rule -- the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Their preposterous claims can be disproved just by looking at the facts, but oddly, the journalists interviewing them never do that. Asking all the wrong questions, they just sit at the feet of these lying fools wagging their tails like spaniels.
Cheney, for example, says everything worked out fine, including the policy of torture, and Bush blames everything on bad intelligence. Neither is challenged by the TV “journalist” across from him.
This makes it all the more important to look at the facts now while they're still warm. When General Eisenhower's troops came across the Nazi death camps he immediately understood that the perpetrators and their apologists would later try to deny the facts and alter history. So within hours of the discovery he ordered his troops to shoot film, gather evidence, and seek out those responsible.
We need to do the same about the Iraq War. So let’s look at the record, which, by the way, gives some absolution to those members of Congress who originally authorized the invasion.
"A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is (sic) a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration," Bush told Charles Gibson.” (ABC's Gibson is the same phony imbecile who decided Barack Obama's nonexistent link to the Weatherman radicals of the 1970s was the central question of the 2008 election and devoted much of a Democratic debate to mucking through this delusion) Bush also told tail-wagging Gibson, "I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess." He also no doubt wishes the facts were different. Here they are.
Congress authorized the attack on October 11, 2002. The administration claimed at the time it needed to show its teeth in order to get inspectors in there. The joint resolution, the Bushies told Congress, was necessary in order to avoid war. On November 8, the U.N. imposed tough new arms inspections on Iraq. Now here’s the really interesting part. Ten days later, weapons inspectors dispatched by the U.N. returned to Saddam-land for the first time in almost four years. Meanwhile, Bush and Cheney passed the word to the Pentagon to prepare for an invasion, and by March 2003, had 200,000 troops surrounding Saddam.
But the inspectors led by the experienced Hans Blix couldn’t find anything. Saddam, growing more frightened, steadily gave way to Blix’s demands. U.N. inspectors could travel anywhere they liked without giving advance notice, and they could do it in helicopters so there could be no phony traffic jams to impede them.
Blix still couldn’t find anything. Increasingly skeptical and verbally attacked day in and day out by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their flunkies, Blix publicly asked the Bush administration to share its intelligence so he could dig up these phantom weapons of mass destruction. No response. Something was very fishy.
On March 14, Bush and Tony Blair gave up on securing enough Security Council votes to invade. Bush told the inspectors to leave so they wouldn’t get in the way of the invasion. Blix and his able crew left under protest, and March 17, Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to leave the country. The invasion commenced.
For years afterward the Bush-o-crats claimed they had to invade because Saddam wouldn’t let in inspectors. And the mainstream news media failed to challenge them. It felt like we were living in the old Soviet Union, where news was bent so drastically by the country's media that it was a running joke. Now Bush, buttressed by this crazy reporting he's grown so used to, blames faulty intelligence. But how could “intelligence” filtered through his propaganda machine trump inspectors who were there on the ground? Had he let the inspectors continue their work, many hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed might instead be living the lives they had a right to.
In 2005, the Downing Street Memo came to light, the smoking gun that revealed Bush and Blair had already decided to invade Iraq sometime before the memo date of July 23, 2002, using WMD as an excuse. The case was “thin,” but “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." This ultra-secret memo was never contested by Blair.
Why did Bush really invade? Alan Greenspan, an expert on global privateering and a booster of same, conceded the war had always been about oil. Bush talked about invading Iraq ten days after inauguration, at his very first meeting of the National Security Council. That was eight months before the Nine-Eleven attack he liked to blame on Saddam. Most of the time he used stylized sentences written for him by his handlers that implied the accusation without quite uttering it.
All the above is hard fact, not supposition, and of course should be the basis of interviews with the seedy, lying psychopaths at the center of this demented, wrecking ball of a war that turned out to be a snipe hunt.
What follows is mostly theory, but with plenty of evidence to back it up ---
The war decision had much to do with the November 2004 elections. Bush Junior desperately wanted to show up his Daddy, who’d invaded Iraq but left Saddam in place. Also, Junior, who harbors a hard-core Oedipal love-loathing for his father, was conscious that the murderous Saddam had once plotted to assassinate Bush Senior.
Bush Junior liked to brag he was “a wartime president” and assumed he would score a great victory (even though there had been virtually no planning for post-Saddam Iraq) and cement his place in history at least above Daddy and possibly alongside Lincoln and Washington. Junior also seemed to really believe that it was his duty to attack America's enemies. Though a history major at Yale, evidently he'd remained uninformed about the Cold War of nearly fifty years that never led to an all-out hot war between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.
There’s more than enough evidence to prosecute Bush, Cheney, Rice et al for their crimes so no future administration will try to repeat them anywhere at any time. And in the future, any "journalist" who even touches on this subject should use the facts or be fired because such gruesome media incompetence is as indefensible as the crimes themselves.

HOW BANKS BECAME FREE TO LET MAGIC OF MARKETPLACE KILL EARTH'S ECONOMY

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

The following CNN article from Nov. 12, 1999 sheds crucial light on just how the banking deregulation that spawned the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression came about. You'll find some familiar names, and they're not all Republicans. Phil Gramm is joined by Democratic luminaries such as Senators Charles Schumer and Christopher Dodd as well as Bill Clinton. All boasted of their work at the time.

They'd learned nothing from the deregulation of thrifts under President Reagan that ultimately cost taxpayers about $300 billion. The political pygmies of 1999 that took legalized bribes from the institutions they unleashed on us repeated the mistake of 1982, only this time to the tune of trillions. Most of those crooks and buffoons from 1999 are still running our economic affairs

Clinton signs banking overhaul measure

November 12, 1999

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The biggest change in the nation's banking system since the Great Depression became law Friday, when President Bill Clinton signed a measure overhauling federal rules governing the way financial institutions operate.

"This legislation is truly historic and it indicates what can happen when Republicans and Democrats work together in a spirit of genuine cooperation," Clinton said at a White House signing ceremony. The event brought together the president and several Republican members of Congress who have been among Clinton's sternest critics -- a sign of the bipartisan support that eventually developed for the package.

Congress passed the bipartisan measure November 5, opening the way for a blossoming of financial "supermarkets" selling loans, investments and insurance. Proponents had pushed the legislation in Congress for two decades, and Wall Street and the banking and insurance industries had poured millions of dollars into lobbying for it in the past few years.

"The world changes, and Congress and the laws have to change with it," said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm (R-Texas), who has fought for years for the overhaul. Gramm said the bill would improve banking competition and stability.

Financial Supermarkets

"This is a bill that is bipartisan, bicameral and tri-institutional," said Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), chairman of the House Banking and Financial Services Committee. He noted that the House, Senate and White House had worked together on the compromise that became law.

Clinton said the measure will "save consumers billions of dollars a year through enhanced competition." He said it also would protect consumers' rights and require banks to expand the availability of funds for community development.

At stake is an estimated $350 billion that Americans spend annually on fees and commissions for banking, brokerage and insurance services. Proponents say the legislation will save consumers some $15 billion each year, offering them greater choice and convenience and spurring competition. Consumer groups and other opponents maintain it will bring higher prices and jeopardize consumers' financial privacy.

The overhaul measure is one of the few major pieces of bipartisan legislation to emerge from the Republican-controlled Congress this year.

Clinton's support for the legislation comes despite warnings from Democratic critics and consumer activists that it could lead to price-gouging of consumers and the erosion of their privacy by newly formed financial conglomerates that are too big and powerful.

"The bill is anti-consumer and anti-community," advocate Ralph Nader declared. "It will mean higher prices and fewer choices for low-, moderate- and middle-income families across the nation."

In addition, he said, "Personal privacy will be virtually eliminated" under provisions allowing affiliated businesses of the newly merged companies to share customers' personal financial data as they offer one-stop shopping.

And up until a few weeks ago, the Clinton Administration itself had threatened a veto of the legislation as it took various forms that raised a series of White House objections. In recent months, the administration objected most sharply to the issue of rules requiring that banks make loans in minority and low-income communities where they operate.

Gramm, an outspoken conservative who opposes the rules, last year managed to kill a similar bill that would have overhauled the community lending laws. The White House insisted that banks be required to have a strong track record in local loan-making as a condition for being allowed to expand into other financial activities.

The big breakthrough came in the wee hours of October 22 when administration officials -- including Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers -- and key Republican lawmakers reached a compromise after negotiating for days behind closed doors. The White House then lifted its longstanding veto threat.

"It was sweaty, it was tense, but it had momentum," Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) said of the final bargaining session. He and Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut) whose states are home to Wall Street and the banking industry (New York) and the insurance industry (Connecticut), helped broker the agreement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

OBAMA AND THE DEGRADED STATE OF THE NATION

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

The Republican propaganda machine has added a new paragraph to its manual. Instant word went out to all the Fox-o-crats and their allies to predict that President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi will now make war on each other. That’s just wishful thinking.

McCain and Bush agreed on 90 percent of the issues. Pelosi and Obama will beat that by a mile. Neither is a deluded simpleton, which makes common ground much easier to find. But delighted as I am that Obama-Biden crushed the team’s misguided opposition, I regret not being able to watch Constitution-challenged Sarah Palin on the day she showed up to -- as she promised while stumping for votes among the misinformed -- run the Senate. That would have been a sight to see.

As it turned out, defeating McCain-Palin was a piece of cake. In a nation where millions have already seen the value of their 401K’s and home equity chopped to splinters, where those who haven’t lost their jobs fear that they will, and owners of small businesses are frightened and barely surviving, it became harder and harder to convince Americans they should choose more of the same. The hard part was already accomplished --- taking down the national Clinton Machine.

We’ve become so accustomed to a government warring on its citizens that it will be tough to get used to an administration that, for example, might actually take the needs of patients into account when it fashions Medicare legislation. But the pharmaceutical lobby is still out there, along with oily oilmen, the anti-health HMO's, anti-missile-missile alchemists, the arbitrageurs, hedge-fund managers, and all the rest of the corrupters that have been dribbling out tips to “public servants” in exchange for vastly disproportionate favors.

Observe that it was a Democratic Congress that, asked to approve $700 billion to save the self-destructive banking industry, tacked on another $150 billion for its biggest contributors. So yes, there’s a steep road to climb. Obama knew how to turn the corrupters’ weapons against them, raising so much money that they surrendered, unwilling to pour more crooked dollars into the election cruncher. But money is a hermaphrodite. It’s happy to switch sides.

Meanwhile the fourth estate, which is supposed to monitor the players, is in steep, steep decline. Billionaire Sam Zell, for instance, is at work as we speak gutting the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and all the other former watchdogs he purchased with leveraged dollars. Many of us, aware of this sorry circumstance, now look to the Internet for information. But it’s also a mine of misinformation. The Internet and talk-radio crazies were instrumental in spreading the McCain-Palin-Rove message to deluded bumpkins that Obama was a terrorist, socialist, Muslim non-citizen.

With all the twisted factoids, lies, and half-lies flying around, it will take a revived educational system to produce more responsible citizens who can cut through the crap. But Obama and the Congress have inherited an exhausted economy. Revenue from sales, property, and income taxes are all headed down. As recently as the Kennedy Administration the top tax bracket, now 34 percent, was at 91 percent, but the plutocracy hires high-priced accountants and lawyers, plus Democratic and Republican office-holders who for relatively small gratuities will continue to impede reform.

And thanks to stupidity and torpor, the Democratic Congress continues to pour $10 billion a month into Iraq for no rational reason that any fair-minded person can determine. As he looks for resources to pull this country out of the pit, Obama should look there first.

McCAIN, ECONOMY IN ACCELERATING FREE-FALL

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
As the world economy collapses around us it’s hard to take our eyes off the spectacle of the increasingly unstable, 72-year-old cancer survivor John McCain, who won’t release his medical records, barnstorming around the country with the message that Barack Obama is dangerous and untested and that only McCain and Palin can save the world, conquering greed, creating jobs, paying off everyone’s mortgages, and defeating whatever else ails us too.

When they stop in one place they stand outside their respective covered wagons loaded with tonic bottles and pledge to do it all because they know how.

But their bottles are empty.

Meanwhile, Palin has that frightening combination of stupidity, ignorance, and unbridled confidence that we’ve seen work so well for Bush Junior. She couldn’t name one publication she reads? Here’s another question for you, Sarah. Got any books in your home? Name them.

Back to McCain. At least he still has the presence of mind to know he’s lying, which may be why he looks so damned angry all the time. When he does smile it’s in the form of a Charles Manson grimace, except beady black dots take the place of Manson’s big zombie orbs. McCain’s lips spread horizontally as a smile should, but the eyes are pure batshit. In yet another spurt of self-righteous anger, he wouldn't even shake Obama's hand after the second debate. Maybe on some level he's convinced himself that the accusations he and his Rasputins have invented must be kind of true in a generic sense even if the facts have been twisted into a tangle of coat hangers.

But what's really scary are those supporters of his.

Stay safe, Barack.

HARD RAIN'S GONNA FALL

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Voters who believed there should be no bailout were wrong. Barney Frank and other Democrats removed much of the language in the bill giving Paulson and Bush an open-ended license to steal. So by depriving the Treasury of funds to buy up bad debt, the House probably (I hope I’m wrong) triggered a storm of horrors, beginning with bank failures, that, ironically, will leave the very Wall Street fat-cats the voters wanted to punish high and dry anyway. The rest of us will suffer due to what economists call the snowball effect. Banks fail, businesses fail, the customers of those businesses fail, government cash flow dries up as joblessness rises and the value of real estate continues to dive. There should have been much more in the bill to help the little guy, but there's a limit to how much decent legislation you can squeeze out of an indecent white House and Congress.

If we had a President who’d proved his/her character to the voters over the last seven and a half-years, most of them would have believed his/her appeal to support bailout legislation. But of course if we had a decent, intelligent president, the promise of deregulation paradise concocted by Phil Gramm and other highly paid thieves would never have made it through Congress and the White House.

As it stands, not even hard-core Republicans believe George Junior anymore. Most of us know him to be a liar and a fool. So when he entreats us to do something, as he did earlier this week when he asked us to support the bailout, we pay little to no attention and try to find out what grown-ups think about the subject.

Americans who re-elected Bush, a man aptly described by Democratic insider Paul Begala as a high-functioning moron, have yet to learn the consequences of their folly. FDR, facing a similar economic disaster in the thirties, told people the truth. So when he addressed them on the radio, most of them believed what he had to say. But in 2008, the voting majority of 2004 left us leaderless and rudderless.

No one knows what happens next. As the folly of doing nothing becomes clearer, the ensuing destruction might spur Congress to act, but once the glue is out of the tube there doesn’t seem to be much chance that this Administration of fools and crooks will figure out how to get it back in.

Our legislators, for the most part, don’t put the nation first. Members of Congress have showered themselves with so many perks and legalized kickback schemes that they will do almost anything to get re-elected, including triggering Great Depression II. They’re like dirty cops. They might start out with ambition to serve the country, but their morals gradually deteriorate as day after day they man the phones to raise money for themselves.

Our ghastly predicament will probably prod voters into electing Barack Obama, but it’s hard to say how much he can do for us now. He and Biden are vastly preferable to madman McCain, who facilitated both this global panic and the thrift disaster of the eighties, and to lipstick Sarah, who wouldn't know a Wall Street derivative from a walrus. But it would have been nice to choose sanity before, not after, the hard rain fell.

PAULSON DEMANDS LICENSE TO STEAL

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Only a thief demands a license to steal. What am I referring to? Here’s a sentence from the legislation demanded by Treasury Secretary Paulson:

Decisions by the Secretary [of the Treasury] pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

That gives Paulson the right to buy up paper from his Wall Street pals for $1.50 on the dollar and sell it back to them for 2 cents on the dollar, and we couldn’t touch him for it. He demands at least as much deference as the Vatican pays to the Pope. He’s telling us he wants a check for 700 billion, no questions asked, have it by Tuesday or the world comes to an end.

Think Katrina. Think Cheney, who dreams up a war, then hands out the contracts for that war to his own firm. The firm gets caught stealing --- blatantly making up services and merchandise it didn’t provide and sticking it on the invoices. And the firm retains the contracts. And nobody lays a glove on Cheney, who’s busily destroying evidence as we speak and preparing a wall around the evidence he can’t get rid of that will last into perpetuity.

This administration is dedicated to the proposition that the rich can’t get rich enough and everyone else can go screw themselves. Paulson’s incredible demands are a part of that program. In fact, it's their best scam yet, born of ineptitude, unwarranted conceit, and their thieving hearts.

When he went before a skeptical congressional committee today Paulson said he never intended to escape oversight. Then why did he invent an escape clause? It’s only a two-page piece of legislation. Are we supposed to believe he skipped that sentence? An honest broker could never dream up a sentence like that. Paulson, Bush, and their ilk think they have a divine right to steal. They'd pass any lie detector test when they proclaim innocence because they're so crazy they believe it.

When Congress is skeptical of legalized skulduggery, we should pay attention because no one in the world knows more about legalized skulduggery than our members of Congress. Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who convinced building contractors to do hundreds of thousands of dollars in free work on his property, then handed out government contracts to those same companies, now claims he did nothing wrong. And you know what? He probably believes it. He’s been pulling this crap so long he’s convinced himself the laws don’t apply to him. He’s mostly right. Only some of them do. And now Paulson and his pals want to cut themselves in for a bigger piece.

I guarantee you when the dust clears on this bailout legislation Congress will have cut itself a generous tributary from the new gravy train, one of the biggest ever. Congressional oversight means the profiteers will have to pay Congress to stay in business.

Let’s face it. We’re stuck. The American people refused to impeach and remove Bush and Cheney for their high crimes and misdemeanors, so we’re still dealing with these larcenous nitwits now that one of their many deregulation scams disintegrated into mush. So barring a wave of sanity that removes them from office, we’ll be putting up with their Treasury secretary another four months, only it will seem much longer. And they may be succeeded by the equally grotesque McCain-Palin duo, or, to hear her tell it, Palin-McCain. Meanwhile the watchdogs over Administration chicanery will be beak-wetting Congressional members.

We’ll have to keep watch on all this ourselves because it’s unlikely the big media’s pretty faces will do it for us.

I know a car dealer in Orange County, California who sold 137 cars in August 2007 and 7 in August 2008. There's a big shitstorm of a recession coming in after the Wall Street collapse. We need to help real people with needs, do what we can to curtail the thievery, and work to earn outselves a President Obama, who just might get something done to counter the corruption and endless war of our government -- a government that continues to make war on 99.5 percent of its citizens.

QUESTIONS BIG NEWS MEDIA DON'T ASK

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Major U.S. news outlets present the same puzzle that boxing officials present fans when we see particularly inept decisions by judges and referees. Are these guys corrupt? Or are they just that stupid?

Example: Sarah Palin, who proclaims herself ready to be the Number Two steward of the U.S. economy, gives an acceptance speech at the convention that fails to mention the banking and foreclosure crises that have already dragged down millions of American families and may just swallow the entire economy. These are man-made crises caused by the Republican insistence on deregulation so their corporate pals can work their swindling voodoo without government interference. Remember how they told us to get government off the backs of thrifts and we ended up with a savings and loan meltdown that cost taxpayers $300 billion? This new one apparently will cost us much more.

All Palin has to say about the economy is that John McCain will see to it that American companies sell all kinds of stuff all over the world, creating great jobs for everybody. And Obama won't. No word on how McCain will bring about this great turnaround in an economy entirely dependent on the cheap Chinese junk that has taken over our retail stores like alien spores.

Moments after Palin concludes her ignorant, xenophobic diatribe about why soccer moms make great statespersons, I hear CNN’s Wolf Blitzer describe the speech as “great.” Amazed, I flip the channel to MSNBC, where seconds later I hear Keith Olbermann, a self-proclaimed prince of the liberal media, describe the speech with the same word –-- “great.” I spare myself the horror of hearing the Republican propaganda machine's interpretation straight from the bowls of Fox News. Instead I turn off the TV altogether.

When I raised these points with a friend later, she wondered whether Blitzer and Olbermann meant that the delivery was great. That may be a good guess. Another reason Palin might get a pass is because when a book-burning, anti-intellectual nut job can appear almost normal, she's surpassed expectations. When thoughtful, articulate Barack Obama does a great job, they figure so what? He cheated by already being thoughtful and articulate. But can’t these TV guys explain just what they mean by "great" in precise English? Or is that too much to expect from big-cheese, network interpreters paid millions per year to speak their thoughts?As it stands, we're left with the same puzzle. Are they corrupt? Or are they really that stupid?

Okay, Olbermann and Blitzer may get confused from time to time, and life is hard, their hours stink, and they need help once in a while. So here's help --- questions to ask their interview subjects. Olbermann, whose MSNBC network is owned by General Electric, chief contractor in charge of building the Star Wars anti-missile network, might consider a query to Secretary of State Condi Rice and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden. Why is it so necessary to re-ignite the Cold War by placing these G.E.-built contraptions that have only a marginal interception rate anyway inside Poland? Isn’t this precisely the sort of corruption of American policy by the military-industrial complex that Ike warned us about in his farewell address? Weren't we better off when we were helping the Russians dispose of their old Soviet-era warheads?

Second question I have is for Wolf Blitzer. Just him. I don't want to confuse Olbermann with too many issues at once. Blitzer should keep posing this query to administration higher-ups until he gets an answer. Republican icon Alan Greenspan, who knows a thing or two about why people in this administration do things, said in his book that the Iraq War is clearly about petroleum. For a moment let’s skip over the more than four thousand U.S. war dead, the uncounted hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, the millions who are displaced, homeless, jobless, or permanently maimed. Let’s just look at the $10 billion check signed each month by U.S. taxpayers to pay for this nightmare. Now bear in mind that the oil companies don’t give us a price break on the petroleum they plan to extract from Iraq with these new drilling and exploration contracts of theirs. They always charge Americans the same world price they charge everyone else. In fact, they’re not even American corporations anymore. They’re global corporations. Why don’t we tell them to put up the monthly ten billion smackers themselves?

And here’s a question for big U.S. media. Instead of wasting our time with the kind of crap you routinely present as news, why don’t you pose truly pertinent questions? Are you corrupt? Or just stupid?

McCAIN-PALIN ADMINISTRATION COULD HAVE US LOOKING BACK FONDLY AT BUSH-CHENEY

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Too many of us are taking these Sarah Palin revelations too seriously. Instead we should all sit back and appreciate the entertainment value of the McCain-Palin ticket. This is like being fed the very best reruns of the fabulous Jerry Springer Show.
And I don't believe McCain made his running-mate decision at all hastily. He used every bit as much care as the Palins did choosing their self-described redneck of a future husband and in-law. Seriously, I feel sorry for both those kids. It's bad enough having to deal with an unplanned teen pregnancy without having the facts splashed around the world media.

As for other revelations, the facts that have come out on Troopergate so far are not terribly flattering to Palin and may involve lawbreaking. Her husband's very old driving mishap is of no consequence. Was she supposed to dump him because he had a DUI conviction 20 years ago?

But Governor Palin, we've recently learned, says the war in Iraq is our mission from God. That strikes me as being more germane to our elective choices than her husband's driving record. Some of these characters drawn from the Springer show apparently aren't terribly thoughtful in the foreign policy department. We already know McCain's mission: victory. Victory over who or what remains vague.

Let's look carefully at the substance of what McCain and Palin have to say at their Twin Cities convention. Then let's cut their bullshit campaign to pieces and save America from the kind of trouble that could have us looking back fondly at the Bush-Cheney era.

DAILY KOS, REPUTEDLY TOP-NOTCH, PLACES PALIN STORY ON SITE WITHOUT VERIFICATION, AND THIS BLOGGER WAS SUCKED INTO SAME MISINFORMATION MORASS

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

The Daily Kos placed an utterly strange story on its well-regarded site Saturday claiming that Sarah Palin's latest child was actually born to her teen-age daughter. Then it proceeded to ignore its own story, leading me to believe it was phony, but not before I'd leaped down the same hole of unverified information. This does not excuse me, but we have been so slammed around over the last several years by under-reported news and non-reported news from the standard media, that we've been led to believe we can get superior workmanship out of media outlets such as Daily Kos and HuffingtonPost. But these sites are run on a shoestring, often by people who are poorly paid and not terribly well-acquainted with professional standards. I apologize for mimicking their behavior, but I'd actually come to think of the Daily Kos as a legitimate information source and paid the price for it. Even if this story were to prove true, the Kos's odd lack of follow-up is evidence that the people there just put the story out there without checking it. Governor Palin's teen-age daughter is in fact five months pregnant, which the family announced today. But assuming Governor Palin bore her own child, her daughter's pregnancy of course has no bearing on the governor's suitability for office.

McCAIN CANDIDACY AN ACCIDENT OF HISTORY, GIVING OBAMA, RIGHT MAN AT RIGHT TIME, A SHOT AT VICTORY

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
As a presidential candidate, John McCain is an accident of history, just as Hubert Humphrey was in 1968. Back then the Democratic candidate would have been California primary victor Bobby Kennedy had not Sirhan Sirhan changed history in the kitchen of Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel.

And in 2008 the Republican candidate would have been Virginia’s George Allen, if not for his videotaped “macaca” remark. He had the contributors, the babbling-right-wing editorialists, and pretty much the whole world primed. But after Allen allowed us a quick look into his ugly mind, there weren't many GOP alternates ready to go for the prize. McCain, who’s too old and too ornery to be nominated under ordinary conditions, just happened to be the last man standing. Republican voters weren’t about to pull the switch for Mitt Romney, who’d abruptly switched virtually every political stand he’d ever taken as Massachusetts governor in order to sign off on all the hard-core positions a candidate must take to win GOP primaries.

McCain had also re-tailored most of his positions in order to pass muster with Mr. and Mrs. Right-Wing, but his switch had been a gradual one over approximately eight years. McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin for the No. 2 spot is an interesting one, but not likely to peel off nearly as many Hillary supporters as he’d hoped.

I’m not going to claim relatively untested Palin couldn’t possibly fill the role of president because if there’s one thing we’ve learned in the last eight years it’s that the country can stumble along with virtually anybody in the Oval Office, even a lazy little bastard who can’t put six grammatical words together and never asks any questions because he already knows everything.

But Barack Obama is not an accident of history. He’s the logical president for a country weary of a government that cares for the interests of only the very, very rich and their natural allies, the big global corporations out to buy favors.

Obama’s the logical president for a country that wants to get past its crazy concern over race. But of course not everyone in this country wants to get past race. When voters tell interviewers they don’t know enough about Obama, they’re basically saying they’d need to know an awful lot more about a black man in order to vote for him and they don’t really want to know too much because then they might want to vote for him. This is a man who wrote his own informative, revealing autobiography, writes his own speeches (as did Lincoln), and who told us in his acceptance speech exactly what he plans to do, who he is, and where he comes from. And they don’t know enough about him? Where do they live? Saddam’s old spider hole?

After what we’ve been through the last eight years either Al Gore or John Edwards --- both white Southern men with brains and decent instincts --- would have won this general election 58-52 percent. But Gore lost the fire in his belly and Edwards couldn’t get through to enough Democratic primary voters and ultimately self-destructed.

Naturally it’s going to be more difficult for an African-American with a funny name, particularly since a black man, as Jesse Jackson noted, isn’t allowed to get angry. And when the McCain-Rove machine really starts throwing mud, he’s going to have to be our new Jackie Robinson, the university-educated black man who promised Branch Rickey he would remain composed when taunted by racist ball players and fans. Robinson pledged to just play his best and pave the way for others. That’s what Barack is going to do for all of us.

OBAMA'S FOREMOST MISSION IN DENVER SHOULD BE TO RUB McCAIN'S NOSE IN BUSH'S STINK

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Even John McCain would have to agree that Michelle Obama was extremely poised for a Muslim, America-hating bomb-thrower from the Weather Underground. And those two daughters are triple-adorable. Trouble is, when the Republicans come to bat in Minnesota they will unleash TV sharpies like Fox’s Roger Ailes who will fill their precious time slot with vicious, anti-Obama venom that will take its toll. That’s why Fox News doubles the viewership of tamer CNN. It knows how to get eyeballs fastened on what it's doing.

The first night in Denver avoided disaster. Teddy was quite moving, and Michelle proved to be one of the finest public speakers in memory. Very few members of Congress can come close to her in terms of intellect and communications skills. But we now suffer under the worst president in American history running the most inept, venal, corrupt administration since Nero. Obama and his people must rub McCain’s nose in Bush’s stink. They must remind us over and over, using McCain's very own statements, asides, voting record, and senior moments as supporting evidence, why his administration would be a continuation of our present nightmare.

Positive campaigning is great, but Americans' hatred and distrust of the Bush administration are fantastic gifts to Obama. In Denver we should be hearing about McCain and Bush every fourth or fifth sentence. Cheney is hated from sea to sea, but I didn't hear one prime-time word about him. Also, that ex-GOP congressman from Iowa is one of the ten most boring people in America. He had to drive off millions of viewers with his dull, nearly pointless history lecture. Didn't anyone bother to check up on this guy? Listening to him was like tuning in to golf on your radio dial.

Democrats have all sorts of media experts they could call on – Rob Reiner, Spielberg, etc., etc. But whoever ran this show for Obama was far from first-rate. That may not be fatal, but it can’t help. There’s a saying in boxing: if you don’t train hard, remember your opponent will. It’s a concept Obama’s people clearly didn’t understand when they put together their first night in Denver.