Another Nobel prize winning economist says: we're screwed

Joseph Stiglitz joins fellow Nobel-winner Paul Krugman in calling out the Obama administration. Both agree that the Obama plan will not work; Stiglitz is to be admired for stating in plain and unadorned language exactly why it won't work.

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ahnPchOxZMh8&refer=home

April 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration’s bank- rescue efforts will probably fail because the programs have been designed to help Wall Street rather than create a viable financial system, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.

“All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing ingredients,” Stiglitz said in an interview yesterday. The people who designed the plans are “either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent.”

Duty Now For The Future

Decades ago – long before I became gray and respectable – I was a big fan of the punk rock band Devo. I found myself remembering their second album just now; specifically, the title of the album: “Duty Now For The Future.” Today, that phrase seems to carry an unexpected weight; it seems pregnant with meaning and promise.

As I write these words, President Obama has just finished his inaugural address. It was an address for the ages, and yet one that was desperately needed at this particular time in our history. It pointed the way forward with resonant themes from a simpler and more honest time. The themes of duty, sacrifice, responsibility, obligation, and service.

To which I can only respond: it’s about time. Long past time, in fact. Long past time for Americans across the entire political spectrum (as well as those who consider themselves apolitical) to embody these ideas -- ideas that have recently been misappropriated by the hard-right fringe of the body politic and used as blunt instruments of political demagoguery.

It’s a funny thing about America: almost no one talked about duties anymore. All we hear from Americans is the endless din about “rights.” The idea that our rights can exist in a social vacuum, without a corresponding set of duties, is a toxic idea that is poisoning America. We have come to believe that we are nothing more than individuals, and that as such all we need concern ourselves with is rights, and never with obligations.

Let’s talk about obligations for a change, and about duties. A philosophy that proclaims the idea that rights do not have their basis in duty and obligation must inevitably result in a sick, narcissistic citizenry, a citizenry from whom the endless, birds-nest cheeps of “Me! Me! Me! Me!” has reached deafening volume. It is time for less talk about our rights as citizens, and more talk about our duties as citizens.

Obama is not calling America to service because such service is "needed” in any practical sense. He is calling for service, and sacrifice, and a sense of obligation because these are the rhetorical clarion calls by which one inculcates a sense of shared duties and national solidarity, without which no healthy, committed society can be built or surv

Welcome to the Desert of the Real

Writer Slavoj Zizek described “the desert of the real” as the place where there are no illusions, no alibis, and no more comforting emotions. For all Americans – but especially for those of us who gave our hearts and our time to getting Barack Obama elected – it is time to move from the warmth of election night jubilation and step into the desert of the real.

In the desert of the real, we must end a pointless war in Iraq while winning a just war in Afghanistan.

In the desert of the real, we must take the lead in repairing a global economic meltdown that is the direct result of America’s irresponsibility.

In the desert of the real, we must protect, defend, and repair a Constitution that has been treated as “just a piece of paper” for far too long.

In the desert of the real, there are still far too many Americans who need our best efforts to help them gain the basic human rights that most of us take for granted.

To those who might accuse me of being a wet blanket, to those who just want to kick back and enjoy the glow for a little while, I can only say this: there is no time.

There is hard work ahead, and some of it is dirty work, and some of it is the work of generations that many of us will not live to see complete. But it is work that needs doing, work that we should have been doing all along.

It is cold in the desert of the real; the light is bleak and hurts the eyes. But it is where we have to go, because on the other side of that desert is our shared American future. So let’s go, everyone. Wake up, get a shower, and roll up your sleeves.

Welcome to the desert of the real.

Obama to expand Bush "faith-based" initiatives

I wrote a review of David Kuo’s Tempting Faith for Free Inquiry back in late 2007 (an insider’s look at Bush’s “faith-based” presidency) , and took a certain comfort in the idea that we might soon see the end of this dangerous coupling of government and religion known as the “faith-based initiatives.” Looks like the “new boss” might have a lot more in common with the “old boss” than we suspected from his primary-season rhetoric.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/01/obama-plans-to-expand-bus_n_110140.html

CHICAGO — Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush’s program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and _ in a move sure to cause controversy _ support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.

This should not come as an enormous surprise: any of the “Obamaniacs” who actually took the time to read what Obama has written (I have, and I’m not even a fan, I was an Edwards man) would know that where he stands on “faith-based initiatives” is not that far from where the Bush administration stands. It’s one of the main reasons I wasn’t a fan of the guy, preferring my church and state kept comfortably far apart from each other, thank you very much. I do enjoy the one saving grace of not suffering all the recent throes and spasms of angst and gnashing and wailing that so many of the Obama fans have been going through. Having read the man’s work and knowing what he believed, I was not surprised when he trotted the homophobe Lonnie McLuskin out on stage. Having read the man’s work and knowing what he believed, I was not surprised to learn that one of his key advisers is talking about keeping 80,000+ troops in Iraq into 2010 and beyond. And, having read the man’s work and knowing what he believed, I’m not surprised at this latest pronouncement on “faith-based initiatives.” The man’s current behavior and statements are totally consistent with what he’s written. The only place he told some of them little white lies was during the primaries, to get the “left-liberal base” to turn out in droves for him. Obama’s a politician, and he’s gotten what he needed from the left-liberal base. He’s rowing hard to the right in preparation for a hard-fought general election to come, leaving the “base” behind to licks its wounds and “get over it.” I’m one of that left-liberal base, but like I said, I have this real bad habit—I read -- and so none of what he’s done recently came as a shock. To those who fell for Obama’s primary-season left-leaning rhetoric, I’ll offer the immortal words of Johnny Rotten: “Ever get the feelin’ ya been cheated?”

Obama field workers experience American race relations in the year 2008

Despite all the rainbow-coalition hugs and kisses at the Obama rallies, his campaign's field workers on the ground and on the phones get to experience another side of 21st-century America. When I see the naive Obama supporters on the internet saying "Race will NOT be a factor in this election! America's beyond all those old fashioned attitudes!" I don't know whether to laugh or cry. This is going to be one seriously ugly election; I'll be curious to see how many ways the McCain campaign can cook up to hint at the N-word without actually coming out and saying it. I have this very bad feeling that Obama is going to lose -- and racism (which I have taken to calling "America's birth defect") will be the reason.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24588813/

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.

Meeting cruel reaction
Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"