It's a Free Country (They Told Us,and Back Then We Had Reason to Believe Them)

By MORT PERSKY

 

Good morning, America, my old friend, land that saved me and my family from Old World fires! What's become of our "free country," anyway, and doesn't anyone care? What in God's name is going on in Washington? Is there anybody left who answers to the name "American," as in the meanings "American" and "America" used to have?

Or is it all over for freedom of the press and all kinds of dissent, just like in Mao's China and the present China, which our apparently unembarrassed government continues to rebuke unself-consciously for behaving the same way we ourselves have apparently learned to behave, perhaps from the Chinese. Did we really like their model?

And if not, why don't we behave as if we notice we've made the change and who we now resemble? Why can't we see how we look in our self-ignorance as we arrest and/or intimidate people as the Chinese do, exactly the people we need to wake us up and point that out? Because it's high time we began turning back from wherever we've strayed, and suppression of free speech is the worst possible place to start, but we're already there.

Yes, of course the way we're treating Manning, Snowden, Assange and now Greenwald is exactly what we've always reproached totalitarian countries for doing. We've succeeded far too well in turning these rareties -- four people willing to take huge risks to tell us what's wrong -- into criminals in the public mind, just as the countries we rebuke did and still do, while we annoy them by lionizing their Snowdens. 

Good Lord, is this real? Has anybody looked at our "logo" lately, the flag of this once-great nation, great because it didn't do such things, or which once upon a time didn't appear to do them knowingly? And even our diaphanous excuses then were a noticeable improvement over what we've worked out for ourselves during our most recent presidencies.

What's up, Washington? Where's the country our Founding Fathers took the trouble of setting rules for in a document called the U.S. Constitution, the same rules that one of our political parties is even now cancelling out line by line, according to its own wishes? We still call it our rulebook (even in its ominous absence), the one that almost made it to age 200 in reasonably presentable condition, but for those nagging and oft-ignored complaints from citizens of a different color or sexual preference -- complaints from which a big segment of the citzenry apparently learned that not all rules must be followed, those based on fairness to be regarded as particularly onerous. Those based on shooting people to be most lightly and tenderly enforced.

And now breaking the Constitution's rules on the nation's highest court has become a political sport and pastime played by uncaring "justices" in black robes, enough of them with no consciences to speak of and no thought of imposing real justice, but unequivocally devoted to obliterating one step at a time the document on which they claim all their decisions rest.

Can we cure this self-destructive, self-aggrandizing gamesmanship while also doing the opposite of curing anything, harassing those whose careers require them to tell us the whole truth in their  media, though they currently don't. And there's government aid to bolster their shirking! We've still got the Constitution, but like the flag, it's treated like a dead or obsolesced symbol with only a few downgraded humans to speak out for it loudly enough to be heard. This turns out to be their problem and ours, though most forcefully claimed as a problem by the harassers and jailers. And some of us actually expect the poor beset few to awaken their country to what's become of it.

No wonder we ask ourselves if we can have any effect on our government beyond the votes we cast, making our choices with full confidence as if we had no clue that our political parties, particularly the Republican one but the Democratic one not excepted, were lying to them. So one might call it sheer luck that those who make an art of lying and fact-distortion keep pulling the least educated voters to their polls, provided they are also white. Thus professional legislators and office-holders have become an aristocracy of know-nothings, the persons least able to recognize the truth were it to pour down on them from the skies. As for voters who know the truth, whose TV commercials do they like this year?

And in this mendaciousness and inability to recognize truth when it shows its face lies the truest essence of our downfall, more than in our self-spying programs, our phony, thoughtless (and undeclared) wars in foreign countries, our idiot love of "better" weapons programs, and our war on dissent here at home.

"Dare we open our mouths?" hints at an un-Americanness so deep that no "Un-American Activities" investigators ever considered the question. And it cries out to be asked harder, more often & right now, remaining a bad bet to be uttered by non-risk-takers.

Alas, the question of opening our mouths was no total stranger even in the much better America, the one I don't have to break a sweat to remember. That America must be caught by the tail and hoisted onto dry land before it becomes a memory -- keeping the question ask-able, not accepted fact about the USA, version 21.0.

 

The Silence That Shouts Out Loud

Those who Marched to Praetoria wondering Where All the Flowers Had Gone; who heard what was Blowin' in the Wind and understood that a Hard Rain Was Gonna Fall; who knew the slough where the Big Fool Said Push On; who tried to Give Peace a Chance while the Dogs of War Ran  Loose; who Quit Followin' and said, "I Ain't Gonna March No More" -- those folks are puzzled and pained by the dreadful silence around them.

Where are the songs of protest in this, their nation's direst hour?

Why is no Ode to Bradley Manning being sung and strummed in smokey clubs and at angry rallies?

Why did the revelations of Ed Snowden not inspire barbed choruses of bitter dissent to be sung in the public square?

Why do those who march for justice for Trayvon Martin have no anthem to mark their steps, no buglers to sound their battle cry?

How can a president assume the right to murder citizens on his own authority without someone giving us a thundering j'accuse to sing from the mountaintops?

Why is there not one satirical music maker to decry the criminal incompetence and meanness of those we have elected to govern us?

Why is there no musical champion for our growing legion of poor and jobless?

Why do we not realize that We Did Not Overcome, and street-compose a new song to march to in the struggle to make a decent nation out of a sick one?

When will new rhythms and rhymes demand justice for our beleaguered immigrants and their starving children?

Who will raise his voice with the first song to demand the restoration of our civil liberties,the end of our corporate dictatorship, the reversal of endless war, the enslavement of the many for the profit of the few?

Songs of protest and revolution have always been part of great movements in human history.

Their absence in the United States today my be the most telling symptom of the nation's malaise and,therefor, its grim fate.

We got the the Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die blues. But the wars and ignorance drag on, and the chasm widens between the very rich few and the ever-poorer masses.

How many times must the cannon balls fly, before they're forever banned?

It's windy as hell today, but I don't see any answers blowin' around.

Nonfunctional. Dead. Kaput. RIP Democracy.

Even Jimmy Carter, who knows a good malaise when he sees one, recognizes that the U.S. has "no functioning democracy."

The former president and Chris Hedges, a reformed journalist who now writes the painful truth about our riven nation, both mentioned this fact recently. Hedges, who with other litigants sought a court's protection against persecution of journalists for such truth-telling, lamented that - having already been betrayed by Congress and the President - citizens can no longer rely on the courts for justice, either. Three strikes and democracy's out.

July, when we celebrate our independence from the English monarchy, has been a bad month for truth, justice and rule of law.

Besides the court's ruling against Hedges et al, we have witnessed:

--The acquittal of George Zimmerman by a jury of six white women in Florida.  These "peers" ruled that Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, was perfectly justified in shooting to death a 17-year-old black boy named Trayvon Martin who was wearing a hoody and carrying Skittles in a white neighborhood at night. Their logic was that Zimmerman, who had a gun, feared for his life at the hands of Martin, who was unarmed and whose hands, in fact, bore no trace of Zimmerman's DNA. 

--The refusal by the military officer in charge of his court martial to dismiss the "aiding the enemy" charge against Pfc. Bradley Manning. The lady colonel ruled that Manning did in fact "knowingly" aid the (unnamed) enemy when he released a trove of covered-up government documents to WikiLeaks. They disclosed, among other unsavory things, that U.S. forces have committed war crimes in their waging of endless war around the globe. Citizens, it seems to me, are entitled to know such things in a democracy. We laughed when a character in Walt Kelly's comic strip "Pogo" said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."  Nobody's laughing now, least of all those who believed, like Manning, that the truth shall make us free.

--The governor of Texas signed the most Draconian anti-abortion law in the land. It has already forced many women's health clinics to close.As in the Zimmerman trial, race is the looming specter here.  White middle aged males are telling black pregnant teenagers they have to bring their pregnancies to term because "life is precious." Well, precious in the womb, anyway.  When those black baby boys are old enough to wear a hoody and buy Skittles, they're fair game for any white whacko with a handgun.

--A United States Department of Justice lawyer filed a brief in court alleging that government use of drones to kill American citizens abroad was legal -- because the Attorney General and the President said it was legal.  No further comment necessary.

--A federal appeals court in Virginia struck down the long-established legal precedent of reportorial privilege that emerged from the Constitutional guarantee of a free press.  In ordering New York Times reporter James Risen to reveal his sources under oath, the court specifically held that there is absolutely no ground for protection of a reporter's sources. Risen's testimony is wanted in criminal proceedings against a CIA whistle-blower.

Wise guys used to say, "It's a free country, ain't it?"

It ain't.

Happiness Is a Deep Lake

SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF A REDWOOD TREE, Oregon--I love it! There's The Gas Station (also sells firewood). The Resort (The Post Office is behind the registration desk). The Pizza Shop (also sells 16 flavors of ice cream). The Campground (National Forest Service; fire ring and table at every site, pit toilets).  The RV Park (across the road from The Campground, privately owned and operated.  No propane; you get that at The Gas Station).

And there's The Park.  That would be Crater Lake National Park surrounding the deepest lake in the United States, 30-some miles in circumference and nearly 2,000 feet at its deepest point. Although it has at least as many Spectacular Things per square mile as Yosemite or Yellowstone, only about 500,000 people a year navigate south central Oregon's narrow, twisting Cascade range roads to visit it. For miles around it, there is, as Dorothy Parker put it, "no There there."

The Gas Station is open 7 days a week from 7 to 7. But there's a hot line telephone that rings up the night watchman at The Resort, who will hustle down there and fill your tank when the station is closed.

The nearest real grocery store is 35 miles away but there's a small store inThe Resort that sells the necessities of life -- fishing tackle, snowmobile route maps, sleeping bags, mosquito repellant, lots of mosquito repellant, bread, milk and coffee.  Plus Dave's amazing organic bread and Sin Dawgs. "Dave" is actually a small corporation far away in Salem, but, hey!, they're people, aren't they?  Dave bakes up the best-tasting loaf of healthy, whole-grain organic bread between the Atlantic and Pacific. And the Sin Dawg? It's a whole-grain baguette with a cinnamon-raisin filling that is so sublime it drove two generations of French pastry chefs out of business. A Sin Dawg breakfast sends you to heaven despite its name.

The Restaurant (part of The Resort) occasionally features Pan Seared Rainbow Trout. A patron might imagine he's devouring an animal that swam that very morning in Muir creek, but he'd be wrong.  It's a farm-raised fish from Idaho. The patron can content himself as he consumes the import with the knowledge that Muir creek indeed teems with the real thing.  The waterway, a thing of great beauty, is an appropriate tribute to John Muir, the great American naturalist who campaigned so articulately for the preservation of just such places as these. To sit beside it, hearing only its babble and the songs of birds, is to know at last what serenity is.

Absent the crowds attendant to other national park neighborhoods, Crater Lake is host to countless other serene places. Knowing this, one is prone to condemn the more harshly the crimes mankind, most especially corporate mankind, commits against too many of the planet's finest places. Imagine a mine pumping toxic tailings into Crater Lake near Wizard Island; behemoth thumper trucks pounding Pumice Desert seeking pockets of oil to drill into; a field of natural gas pumps where now stand the redwoods that tower over worshipful pines in the Rogue-Umpqua National Forest. Such sacrilege has been committed elsewhere on our public lands, and the profiteering overlords are pounding on the doors at this very moment of Grand Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, Otero Mesa and more.

Almost 8,000 years ago, Mount Mazama erupted in what may have been the greatest volcanic episode ever to take place on this continent. It made the crater that Nature filled with rain and snowfall alone (no river or stream flows into the lake carrying sediment; that's why its waters are so deep, deep blue) . For a long time native Americans were the custodians of this special lake and held it sacred. Sandals worn by their distant ancestors have been found buried under volcanic ash in a cave deep in the surrounding forests.

In 1853, a European-American Caucasian looking for gold found something far better: today we call it Crater Lake. We've only had 160 years In which to spoil it.  Give us time.

The Cuckoo's Nest

Insanity, Einstein remarked, is repeating the same action and expecting a different result. United States foreign policy of endless war, by this measure, is incurably insane.

Ah, but it's profitable for the powerful few corporations and indivuals who form the American ruling class. If by magic all military spending ceased tomorrow and forever, most of the country's economy would vanish just as magically.  Poof!

This is the corner into which unfettered capitalism has painted us.  Even if we could agree (althought not even the most powerful magic could accomplish this)  that fossil fuel energy must be replaced by renewable energy, the Exxons and BPs and their ilk are so powerful and so profitable that we could not do so, even though we know we are literally killing our planet by degrees.

Vietnam should have taught us that hegemonic war is disastrous, too, and if not Vietnam then Iraq, but here we are, in an Afghan quagmire, trying our damnedest to follow Israel into war against Iran, being prodded into making the Syrian civil war our war while a legion of "national security" experts plot the scenarios for their successors in our chain of endless war. Never mind the fact that each new war in fact diminishes our national security. Each new president, regardless of party, boards the war-making roller coaster the moment he steps into the Oval Office. When he leaves office he steps into one or another of highly compensated places within the hierarchy of the miIlitary-industrial complex. The policies   of endless war, of unfettered profiteering, of planetary  destruction are self-perpetuating.

We subsidize the companies that fuel the machines of war and spew the carbon that is killing the planet.  Their margins of profit make Midas look like a pauper.

Once in a discussion about climate change I remarked to a friend that technology is at hand today to transport goods and people in vast areas of the country with just the energy of the sun.  He replied that when it can be done profitably it will become reality.

Aye, there's the rub.  In this land of unregulated capitalism, it is unthinkable that we should make things happen for the immediate health and welfare of the populace, and the long term improvement of the health of the  planet. We act only on that which will further enrich the oligarchs of the ruling class. As long as they toss a few orts to the rest of us every now and then -- say, a few thousand minimum wage jobs -- the people remain anesthetized and sedate.

Poor fools think they're living in a state of democracy.  Actually it's a state of insanity. The kind Einstein warned about.

Neither Truth nor Law Shall Prevail

"when the President does it," Richard Nixon infamously told a TV interviewer, "that means it is not illegal."

Thus did the president who was not a crook establish the guiding principle of the two worst presidents in this country's history. When it comes down to presidential prerogatives, both George W. Bush and  Barack Obama hold that the law is a ass. International law especially is a ass.

And so it came to pass that the Obama administration bullied three of its European allies into acts of air piracy against the head of the sovereign nation of Bolivia because his airplane was wrongly thought to be spiriting Ed Snowden to safe harbor.

To their everlasting credit, President Evo Morales of Bolivia and the heads of two other Latin American countries, Venezuela and Nicaragua, told the U.S. and its pals, "we are not your colonies," threatened to close the American embassies in their countries, and offered asylum to Snowden.

Snowden, the former government contractor who made public secret documents disclosing massive American spying on its own and other citizens and governments, is in legal limbo in an area of a Moscow airport that is technically not "Russian ground." On that basis the Putin government won't extradite him, but it won't help him leave, either.

This raises questions as to whether Snowden can actually do anything with the new offers of amnesty.  The Obamanations have canceled his  U.S. passport.  He needs some kind of legal document to get out of Russia. His would-be benefactors in Latin America so far are being careful to stay within the complex rules of international law for such stateless persons. Perhaps one of the Latin American countries will decide to show the same disdain for law that the U.S. regularly shows, and figure out a way to pluck Snowden out of Russia and deposit him safely onto their soil.  But that's unlikely.  They may be piqued but they're not crazy.

Obama, playing the laid-back moderate role, said he wasn't going to send up a fleet of jet fighters to gun down any plane that dared to try to  fly Snowden to safe harbor. Given the episode of the Bolivian state plane, and Obama's record for truthful public statements, would you want to pilot a plane anywhere in the world with Snowden aboard?

I thought not.

Obama holds all the cards in his high-stakes game of Texas hold 'em against truth-tellers.  Julian Assange languishes in Ecuador's London embassy; Bradley Manning has his neck in a noose in a military "court" in Maryland, and Snowden is holed up in a ratty old Moscow airport.
Once upon a time in this land of the free, a Daniel Ellsberg could turn over the secret documents that exposed the lies and deceit of the Vietnam war, and there was still enough justice in our system for him to go free.

Back then, It was the president who was not a crook, not Mr. Ellsberg, who was discredited under the law.  These days, the president is above the law but truth-tellers are fugitives FROM  the law.

Go figure.

We Are All on Trial in Maryland

Little by little, day by day, the present and immediate past presidents of these United States have been scraping away the last remaining vestiges of democracy. It hasn't been a single-handed operation, of course.  Inept or ill-intentioned aides, cabinet members and advisers are complicit; so is a corrupt and cowardly Congress; so, too, a wayward and enfeebled press and a politicized judiciary.

Today in Maryland, the U.S. Military began a new and shameful exercise in contempt for human rights, the Bill of Rights and and other quaint aspects of democracy: Pfc. Bradley Manning's sham trial began in a military court.  The prosecution has named his alleged crimes 32 different ways, but ultimately they come down to this: he made the Truth public. For this our governors want him to pay with his life, either by killing him or stuffing him into the hellhole of prison without parole. He is 25 years old.

He will be judged in secret under something called the Universal Code of Military Justice, which is neither universal nor just.  The code is designed to enable an elite and amoral leadership to enforce discipline upon a brainwashed legion of trained killers.  Compassion, human rights -- even thinking, much less expressing forbidden thoughts -- have no place in this code.

But Bradley Manning is a compassionate and thoughtful man, one who finally acted on his beflief that murder and other high crimes must be reported to the public on whose behalf they are being committed. When he looked at video proof of a United States helicopter team laughingly assassinating innocent men, women and children, he acted. He gave this and thousands of other suppressed documents to WikiLeaks, the rogue journalists led by Julian Assange, an Australian, to publicize.

Now, like Daniel Ellsberg before him, he faces the wrath of our ever more secretive government.  Ellsberg risked life and career to leak to the press a secret study of the Vietnam war, an act that arguably led to U.S. disengagement there.  Manning said he believed "that if the public, especially the American public, had access to this information, this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general, as well, as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan."

Debate . . . on policy!  I am old enough to remember when there were those in government who actually believed that that is exactly what government is supposed to do.

But that was long, long ago and, it seems, far, far away.  This is now, this is today, and and today the Chief Executioner in this sham, Army Col. Denise Lind, has ruled that the 24 principal witnesses against Pvt. Manning may testify in secret.

The mere 70 (out of nearly 400 applicants) journalists who were credentialed to watch and report this farce won't even be able to tell the public who said, or showed, what, even though it may well send Pvt. Manning to face a firing squad.

I consider Ellsberg, Manning and Sy Hersh to be heroes for showing the American public the truth about Vietnam, Iraq/Afghanistan and My Lai. I decry as the ultimate treason our government's violent efforts to silence them and others like them.

You cannot, fellow Citizens, shrug this off as "not my business," or, worse, support your government in the name of "national security." If you allow the government to take away any citizen's rights, you forfeit your own, and there is no security.

Guest Blogger Handicaps 2016 Race

By Michael Brenner

 The 2013-2016 presidential election season is now underway after the traditional post-inauguration break.  There are only 1,258 days till American voters choose the 45th President of the United States. Time to check the racing form.

The race is expected to be fiercely contested by an unprecedented number of aspirants. So many in fact that the run for the roses may require an auxiliary starting gate for the first time in the nation’s history. Eagerly chomping at the bit, the would-be candidates are inspired by the surprise outcome of recent races won by dark horses with scant track records. The American Dream that anyone can become President has been realized – literally.
     
 DEMOCRATS TOP 3

  HILLARY is the early favorite. She has some obvious strengths. Hillary has been around the track at least once before;  twice was there as a pacifier pony; has been a (sometimes) stable mate of a proven winner, enjoys considerable crowd appeal especially among the distaff set; has demonstrated the necessary endurance, and has a driving ambition to stand in the winner’s circle draped with flowers. That keen competitive edge often reveals itself in the employment of ruthless tactics that, in some circles, have opened her to charges of dirty play. On balance, that factor should figure on the plus side of the ledger in today’s anything goes climate. An additional strength is a deep bench of supporters, donors and well-wishers who share her ambitions and dedication to self-service. In addition, she now can claim that her peripatetic travels to 110 countries, including the Cook Islands, makes her uniquely qualified to handle 3 A.M. phone calls as her biological clock doesn’t know night from day.
Weaknesses:  Concern that Hillary may be getting long in the tooth – prone to injury, her peak seasons behind her, and her diminished nimbleness that could leave her boxed in along the rail . Her much touted record as Secretary of State is tarnished by the serial failures of American foreign policy in the Middle East and devoid of tangible accomplishment.

Joker: Will Barack Obama throw his inconsiderable weight behind her – that’s the big unnown. Obama evidently does feel an obligation to the Clintons, for reasons no one can decipher. Whispers around Georgetown suggest that he is grateful for what she did back in 2008 when confronted with the question: “Do you believe that Mr Obama is a Muslim?” Her unhesitating answer, ”not as far as I know” helped to put the matter to rest at a time when the Obama camp feared Hillary’s answer would be: “not as far as I know; but anyway, there is no reason why Americans, in principle, should not accept as President a man who in good faith prays 5 times a day with his forehead touching the ground and whose pals call him Hajji.” The other joker in the pack is Bill. His irresistible impulse to grab the limelight could further solidify support for Hillary among her core constituency. On the other hand, the unpredictable independent vote may find the prospect of a sequel to past White House melodramas a retro form of comic entertainment.

Joe Biden, or ‘Lock Jaw’ as he is affectionately known to friends and admirers, is Hillary’s most formidable rival. As the incumbent Vice-President, he wears the invisible mantle of legitimate successor to Obama. He sits in all the big meetings, goes in and out of the Oval Office, visits foreign capitals with an entourage of 224 whose upkeep for a night at a Paris hotel tops half a million, and keeps his celebrity portrait in the public gaze. Biden is a seasoned veteran who ran the course on several occasions dating back to the last century. He could appeal to the Obama loyalists whose belief that something has changed in Washington is unshaken by the greatest policy continuity across Republican and Democratic administrations since Harrison/Cleveland II. A hybrid Blue Dog Yellow Dog mix, Biden will try to hog the Democratic middle-of-the-road where one finds the bundlers, the pundits and no small number of dead armadillos.

Weaknesses: A stale quality only partially offset by a hyper active style and a high voltage smile. Biden’s stock of platitudes is wearing thin after long exposure. It’s a liability made all the heavier by the fact that the same words and phrases have been uttered non-stop by President Obama and Hillary for years. But spoken in Obama’s portentous tones, they can pass muster – if barely. Spoken by Hillary, they profit from a gender inflection. Biden may have to reinvent himself to give Hillary a run for her donors’ money. There surely are no convictions or character traits that would stand in the way of his trying to do so. The selection of public persona is rich and there is an abundance of advisers and job seekers willing to help. The trick will be to pick the right one:  grizzled veteran fighting one last campaign to do what’s right for America; champion of the “middle class” who has discovered his working class roots – once again; or, simply, the plain vanilla alternative to the unbearable risk that the Clintons may lodge in the White House for four more years.

Andrew Cuomo doubtless will throw his figurative hat into the presidential ring – unlike his father who in 1992 had a private jet fueled and ready to go at the Albany airport before deciding at the last moment that sleeping in strange beds for a year wasn’t his thing. Andrew is not a Hamlet – he knows what he wants and will pull out all stops in going after it. That was evident in early 2010 when he announced publicly that his aggressive pursuit of Wall Street malefactors, as Attorney general of New York, was reaching the end - a few months before declaring himself a gubernatorial candidate. His campaign was well funded by members of the financial community. Cuomo will stress his Executive experience which includes a stint as Secretary of Housing under Bill Clinton. That is the one resume item that differentiates him from Hillary and Biden whose may claim to have been high level policymakers but never managed much of anything. It also allows Cuomo to assume the outsider role in the stylized Kabuki that is American politics. This is at a time when Americans’ disillusionment with “Washington” is at an all-time high.

Weaknesses: Cuomo’s self-portrayal as the can-do executive free of Washington’s insider entanglements is counterbalanced by his silence on the great issues domestic and foreign that are wracking the Republic. This discretion has kept him out of the crossfire but it leaves him without a core constituency or a cadre of devout followers. He is no one’s “great white hope.” Cuomo may opt to become the standard bearer of progressives simply because that is the niche along the spectrum that is unoccupied. Dusting off his credentials as one-time scourge of Wall Street might help; and his lack of conviction about most things would facilitate such a calculated move.  So, too, could memories of father’s genuine identification with the common man before retiring prematurely from public discourse to devote himself to enrichment. At the same time, it would open him to charges of opportunism. In the end, he will have to slog it out with Hillary and Biden without the one’s well crafted celebrity or the other’s ‘incumbency’ advantages. That means lots of money, which also means tempering any revival of his youthful reformist tendencies.

Sure Runners & Sure Losers: Al Sharpton

Wild Card: Elizabeth Warren

REPUBLICANS TOP 2

Paul Ryn: is the early line favorite on the GOP side. By virtue of having made the circuit in an auxiliary role last time, he acquires a bit of that Presidential timber image. He’s done the debates with the lectern and Stars-and-Stripes thing, he has made the necessary contacts with the money-bag types, the media have promoted him to benefit-of-the-doubt status, and the name recognition is high – thanks in part to the millions who think that he is the Jack Ryan of novelist fame who has made the jump from the Navy to politics. In addition, he is lionized among the frenzied Tea Party crowd who admire his gumption, his dogmatism and his instinctive facility in subordinating reality to fantasy. Moreover, he can stand up to the Liberal Establishment because he can talk in numbers. The fact that they don’t add up is another endearing trait.

Weaknesses: Ryan still looks like a kid with something of the hustler in him. Neither youth nor a penchant for sharp-dealing is itself frowned upon by American voters. They do, though, prefer to have it masked by a more serious demeanor that conveys gravity and sobriety. This clearly did not stop 60 million voters from being comfortable with putting Sarah Palin within a couple of melanoma cells of the Oval office. Then again, Ryan doesn’t have her legs - nor is either Hillary or Biden or Cuomo black. A perhaps more formidable liability is that Ryan’s positions on most domestic issues are out of synch with the attitudes of about 60-70% of the electorate. That arithmetic will work against any conceivable Republican candidate – assuming that this time around the Democrats bother to point it out. Ryan, though, is the poster boy for Republican reaction.
.
Chris Christie: the big man from New Jersey has an outsized appetite for everything – power foremost among them (since he has gotten his stomach stitched). His natural impulse is to holler, a trait that goes down well with the high octane elements that now dominate the Republican Party. Decibel readings correspond to passion, to outrage, to fighting spirit, to courage – all of which are dear to Republican hearts. Blood is what they want and blood is what Christie promises them – even if the wounds he inflicts are only verbal.  Furthermore, his electoral successes in a Northeastern state suggest that he might be able to tear loose a few much needed electoral votes from what has become a solid Democratic bloc. His supposed appeal to working class Reagan Democrats tempts the Republican movers and shakers. Like Cuomo, he will foster the image of a down-to-earth Washington outsider with a can-do record – while reaching his hand across the Hudson.

Weaknesses: Christie has a couple of serious liabilities. To the right, he has turned off some fans by two acts of betrayal. One, he greeted Obama personally when the President visited in the wake of the Sandy catastrophe and, horror of horrors, thanked the Socialist closet Muslim Obama for his assistance. Two, he has shown signs of going soft on gay marriage. Whether these twin sins will sink his candidacy will depend on how they are judged: mortal or just venal. Doubtless, Christie will manage to get a clutch of Archbishops and a Cardinal or two to vouch for him. It is by no means certain, though, that Catholic Church authorities can quell the unease felt by the largely Evangelical religious constituency that is the heart of the Tea Party. Christie’s other liability is his impulse to shoot from the hip – often with an AK-47. At times, his foot gets in the way. This may help him bond with the Tea Party militants but could hurt him in places where violence is not prized as a presidential asset.

Sure Losers: Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, Santorum, Paul(s)
Wild Card: Jeb BUush

OCTOBER SURPRISE

President Obama declines to endorse a candidate. “I have devoted my eight years in office to binding up the wounds of partisan conflict in the belief that we are first and foremost Americans. Not Republicans and Democrats, not conservatives and liberals, not Red states and Blue states. The people of this country want us to pull together in facing the great challenges of the Twenty-First century rather than to engage in endless partisan bickering. I believe that we have made progress in moving to overcome our differences. The task is not completed but we have set a solid foundation on which future leaders and future generations of Americans can build – going forward. After much reflection, I have reached the conclusion that most valuable parting gift, for the sake of this noble cause, that I can leave my fellow countrymen is to refrain from endorsing either party’s candidate. God bless you; God bless the truly UNITED States of America”

WINNER: WARREN over Bush by 50.45 vs 49.55 in the popular vote and 270 - 268  in the Electoral College. Warren is President (the Supreme Court permitting).

•  Michael Brenner is Professor Emeritus, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh.

Why Chuck Schumer (et al) Bit the Hook

The study group Just Foreign Policy says the New York Times has "gone Judy Miller" again, a reference to the discredited NYT reporter who shilled for the invasion of Iraq. JFP's complaint centers on the paper's stenographic reportage of the U.S. government line regarding the alleged use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war, without a scintilla of responsible journalistic skepticism or supplemental reporting.

In my opinion the Times "went Miller" a long time ago in its reporting on Iran's nuclear program, and continues to do so in articles like the recent story by William Broad and David Sanger under the headline "Iran Is Seen Advancing Nuclear Bid." For several years, these two reporters and others at the Times have been, at the very least, writing about Iran's nuclear program in loaded language, reeking of pro-hawk bias.  At worst they seem to have been weaving into their stories tainted information, colored by Mossad, concocted by Likud, conveyed by AIPEC and intended to influence world and American public opinion against Iran.

The Times's  public editor, an independent monitor of the paper's ethics, reportedly is looking into the Syria business.  Let us here and now look once again at the Iran reporting, because the Times and other complicit journalists like George Jann of the Associated Press have created a climate wherein, when a reader sees the phrase "Iran's nuclear program," he or she thinks "Iran's nuclear weapons program."  There is no credible evidence of a  nuclear weapons program in Iran.

At least as far back as 2010, the Times has used quarterly reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to introduce hints, innuendo or outright falsehoods.  On March 1, 2010, an independent online analyst wrote, "The Times imputes to the IAEA report statements, declarations and conclusions that just are not there." The very same statement can accurately  be made about the latest Broad-Sanger piece.

The headline writer obviously intends one to infer "weapons bid." The lede paragraph reports what the IAEA reports -- that Iran continues to enrich uranium -- but immediately invites the reader to doubt that it's doing so for peaceful purposes.  It goes downhill from there.

Two essential points must be made here: First. Iran, thanks to technology originally given to it by the United States during the reign of the Shah, has been enriching uranium for years.  As new technology has become available, Iran has acquired some of it.  The enrichment levels it produces are about 5% -- suitable for a wide range of medical procedures and treatments -- and exactly 19.7%, suitable to produce fuel for nuclear power plants like the 105 now operating in the United States. According to the the American Federation of Scientists, 90% enrichment is the minimum threshhold for "weapons grade" material.  Broad and Sanger, in their latest article, describe Iran's uranium as being "close to" weapons grade.  That is like saying $19.70 is "close to" $100.  Second point: As a signatory to the international accord on atomic energy, Iran was legally entitled to enrich uranium up to the maximum 20% level for peaceful (power, medicine, etc.) use. The Islamic republic insists that it retains that  right.  Israel and its western allies, particularly the United States, the U.K. and France, say, "No, we took that right away from you because you broke the rules."  But the issue has never been adjudicated in anything resembling an international body of law.  A diplomatic solution has been sought through negotiations between Iran and  the so-called P5+1 -- the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia as permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany.   No new talks were scheduled when the April session ended with little progress.  Broad and Sanger characterized the talks as "collapsed."  An American government official said, however, “There may not have been a breakthrough, but there also was not a breakdown." Surely the difference between these characterizations cannot be lost on such experienced diplomatic reporters.  Sober analysts in such diverse countries as Japan and Canada have suggested the obvious: the talks are in suspended animation until Iran elects a new president in a little more than two weeks from now.

Once they've written circles around the fact that there's very little news in the latest IAEA report, Broad and Sanger go off on a tangent that seems as transparent as the bizarre Rube Goldberg devices the AP's Jann has fallen for.  I've reread the IAEA text half a dozen times and find nothing in it to substantiate their claim that it bares a new three-part strategy for Iran to get A-weapons before Israel and the U.S. can stop them by going to war.  Their strategy hypothesis reads like a "what-if" memo written by a Mossad intelligence analyst.

It concludes: "The third element of the strategy involves speeding ahead with another potential route to a bomb: producing plutonium. The energy agency’s report indicated that Iran was making significant progress at its Arak complex, where it has built a heavy-water facility and is expected to have a reactor running by the end of next year."

Nowhere -- repeat, nowhere -- in the IAEA document does the word "plutonium" appear.  Nor does its U.N. chemical ID symbol (Pu) or any of its variations appear in the text. Its mention of the Arak heavy water plant notes that its inspectors were there in August of last year, but since have had to rely on satellite images to monitor its activity.

Perhaps the Times raised eyebrows at those parts of the IAEF report that mentioned the production or transfer to other facilities of small quantities of UO2 or U3O8.  While these could be used to produce plutonium, they are also consistent in their reprocessed state with efforts to produce high-efficiency fuel for a new Iranian nuclear power plant nearing completion.

Just as one must learn to walk before one runs, so also most of the verified Iranian nuclear activities could be stepping stones to starting work on nuclear weapons. My neighbor just bought shoes for his two-year-old toddler. Ergo, the kid plans to enter the Olympic Games.

No wonder Sen. Chuck Schumer thinks Iran already has enough weapons-grade material to arm a nuclear warhead, and has broadcast that lie to his constituency.  He thinks he read it in his hometown paper. The one that used to be respectable.

Beach Volleyball, Drought and the Very Very Rich

They're playing beach volleyball in the Rio Grande.  The "great river" of New Mexico and Texas is one long ribbon of sand.

Young people in bikinis are serving, digging and spiking where a year ago flowed the irrigation water that nurtured the Hatch and Mesilla Valleys' crops of pecans, onions, alfalfa, barley, lettuce, cabbage, beef and dairy products and, of course, chile. (New Mexico has an official state question: "Red or green?")

Caballo "Lake," the nearest reservoir to Las Cruces, is a mud puddle after more than a decade of drought.  Nearby Elephant Butte "Lake," the main water management facility for southern New Mexico and west Texas, is 90 per cent empty, man's management efforts mocked by a series of bathtub rings towering above the present surface level. They used to "turn on" the river, releasing outflow from these containments, in March or April when the snowmelt from the southern slopes of Colorado's San Juan mountains brought the Rio Grand to life.  Last year it was early May before they turned on the river; this year's target date is June 1, and the flow season will only be about a month.

This year's snow pack was only about 62 per cent of normal. By the time the melt flow reached Elephant Butte, it was 5 percent of normal. This after a decade of drought had already reduced reservoirs to mere ponds. "Each successive year of short water gets worse and worse," explains Phil King, who manages the Elephant Butte Irrigation District.  "This year is the most critically short in the history of the Rio Grande Project" (the system of dams and containments of which Elephant Butte is part).

The Mesilla Valley still has verdant fields of onions, alfalfa and cabbage and soon the lucky few farmers with access to ground water will plant the beloved crops of chile. "If you can pump," one farmer said earlier this year, "you pump.  If you can't, you're out of business."   This isn't the giants of Argribusiness; these are small, individually-owned farms and ranches operated pretty much the same way they operated two generations ago. But pumping water from the aquifers is a self-defeating process: wells are beginning to go dry or produce brackish water.  Ground water in aquifers is a finite resource, and there are lots of straws sucking away down there.

Not far from El Paso and Las Cruces is one of the last magnificent natural grasslands in the American west.  It sustains an array of biota whose abundance is almost non-existant throughout North America. It has enough ground water to slake the thirsts of El Paso, Las Cruces and surrounding areas for 100 years. It's called Otero Mesa and the congressman who represents this part of the southwest desperately wants to turn it over to his pals in the extraction industries for drilling and fracking. Steve Pearce is a member of the ultra-wealthy one percent.  Like his fellow plutocrats, he looks around and sees only dollars on the bushes and trees and under the mountains and in the canyons.  Since he's already rich enough to truck in his drinking water from Lake Michigan, he cares not a whit that the people he "represents" are perilously close to lacking the water necessary to sustain human life, let alone crop life or animal life.

And he's just a microcosm of the planet-raping, corporate-controlled, money-grubbing U .S. of A.

Let them eat cake.

Let them drink  champagne.

Pearce periodically conducts "job fairs" in his impoverished district, designed to prove that if the jobless ones who live here had any gumption, or got off drugs, they'd have their own hunk of the American Dream.

He seems not to notice that most of those jobs pay the minimum wage, less after unscrupulous franchise holders in the fast food joints siphon workers' money off the top.  Or pay nothing after the crop is picked.

The jobless can always join the volleyball game under the bridge.

Oh, to Be a One Percenter!

Drat.  I didn't win the big lottery prize, or any part of it.

The can't-miss start-up stock my savviest friend tipped me to last year is worthless already.

Just like my big California land investment of 10 years ago.

I still have the stock certificates for the company that, back in '84, was about to manufacture a 50-mile-per-gallon gizmo to attach to your carburetor.  Had the idea of buying a private island in the Carribbean with the profits from that one.

But the sad fact is that I'll still be wallowing among the other 99 percenters on the day I die. Curses on you, my father, for not leaving me a fortune to squander!  Oh, yes, for a long time I had hope.  Why else to buy a lottery ticket at those odds?  But even hope eventually dies, albeit slowly. 

But there is still The American Dream.  Everyone has an equal chance at The American Dream, right? Isn't that what Capitalism is all about?  God Bless America and American Capitalism. And so to sleep . . .

. . . "Gretchen!" (my secretary, who pays more taxes than I do).  "Gretchen, call the accountants into the office."

"Yes, sir." (They assemble around the emerald-inlaid oak table in the conference room with a view of the sea.)

"Crunch numbers.  How much did I make in the last hour?"

"Nine million, sir."

"That's all?  I must spend my way out of this Depression.  Buy me four more senators, 10 congressman, a governor and two cruise lines.  Also another small country or two."

"Consider it done, sir."

(A few hours later).

Gretchen: "The accountants are back, sir."

"What news, number crunchers?  How much have I made since last I saw you?"

Silence.

"Speak up!  How much?"

Milquetoast, the most junior accountant, hesitantly: "A- . . . a- . . . .about 4 billion, sir."

"A mere langiappe!  I'll have your heads!!  Explain yourselves."

"Sir, you ordered us to buy some countries.  (Pause).  And we . . . we bought Bangladesh."

(Pause.)

"Gretchen! Get me Kim Jong Un on the hotline."

(Red phone rings.)

 "Hi there Kimmer, you old Hook Shot!  TW here, Dennis Rodman's pal in the USA.  I remember you were looking for a place to test your new neutron bomb? Well, I've got the perfect spot and I can let you have it for a mere trillion, give or take a bill."

Thuggery to Keep the Press in Line

I cannot work up a great deal of sympathy for a press association that has transgressed against responsible journalism as often as the AP has in the last decade or so.  But count me in the chorus of outrage against the Obama administration's Nixonian netful of subpoenaed records from 20 phone lines of the Associated Press and its editors and reporters.

My outrage is less on behalf of the AP than it is in mortal fear for the First Amendment, for the very notion of free speech, a free press, a free people. Obama and his henchmen have been ruthless in their use of laws of questionable constitutionality to suppress dissent, intimidate news media, squelch responsible whistle-blowing and operate an ever more despotic presidency in utter secrecy.

The secret subpoenas in the AP case affected the work of more than 100 journalists.  No administration in history has attempted such a bald-faced mass intimidation of the press.  Moreover, Obama's hoodlum administration has brought leak-related criminal charges against six present or former government officials -- twice the number of all previous administrations combined,  including Bushes I and II.

You have to go all the way back to the Nixon administration to find precedent for the climate of hostility against good reporting and the public's right to know.  We at the New York Times Washington Bureau who made Tricky Dick's famous "enemies list" considered it to be a badge of honor when it finally became public. Yet as recently as ten years ago, some of us were still feeling repercussions of being named on that list. James Goodale, the great First Amendment lawyer who defended us in the Pentagon Papers case, considers the Obama team to be a far worse threat to press freedom than Nixon was.

At a time when the Obama thugs had already been caught red-handed abusing IRS powers to suppress dissent by the Tea Party and other conservative political groups, an understandably jumpy Attorney General Eric Holder sought to justify the the AP raid by scaring the hell out of  the common folk.  There was, he said, "a very, very, very serious" national security leak which "put the American people at risk."  Bovine excrement of the most hyperbolic sort.

Holder is the very same former Wall Street lawyer whose DOJ refused to even consider criminal cases against his former employers and their bonus-bloated banker pals who almost destroyed the entire American economy.  Probable cause?  R.J. Eskow, a senior fellow at the Campaign for America's Future, suggests these for starters:

    •    Which bankers conspired to rig LIBOR pricing or fix other rates?  
    •    What discussions were held among MERS users about using the database and shell company to conceal the identity of mortgage lien holders or evade local taxes and fees?   
 
    •    What conversations were held between accounting firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and executives at AIG, Goldman Sachs, or other institutions about concealing their true financial status?
 
   •    How frequently was JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in touch with the "London Whale" and his office, and how aware was Dimon of the extent of losses when he told investors the six-billion-dollar blunder was a "tempest in a teapot"? 
   •    When and how did CEOs and other senior bank executives learn of widespread fraud in the foreclosure process at their banks, and to what extent were they accessories after the fact in these crimes?

Holder has no prosecutorial stomach for such cases as these.  But he'll make an example of journalists doing their traditional jobs as a warning shot across the bow of other potential venturers into the deep dark secrets of the Obama White House.

No wonder so many of the mainstream media have shrugged and quit trying to do real journalism.