Jeffrey Lieber asks this morning: “What Will Become Of My Beautiful America?“. I started to write a comment to Jeffrey’s essay, but it rapidly grew beyond reasonable limits for a comment and became this essay and the quote for discussion below.

I don’t think America’s really going anywhere, or even collapsing as many people fear.

I think that the “empire” of the imperialists may collapse, the political power structures may collapse, and maybe even the “system” that all us old hippies tried so hard in the sixties and seventies to undermine many even collapse, but America?

America is an idea. It’s not the banks or the investment houses or the insurance companies or the weapons manufacturers or the political parties, or any of that stuff. America is an idea. An idea and a set of ideals held by hundreds of millions of people. Can that idea and those ideals collapse?

There is an article this morning in the International Herald Tribune by David Leonhardt that may in fact “herald” the future  of America on the “international” stage, an article that talks of a potential “silver lining” in the dark clouds of despair and pessimism that make up the psychic weather in the dark sky so many are afraid is falling lately.

One of the things that happens though when thunderstorms peter out is that the sun begins to shine again in clear skies, and Leonhardt’s article this morning offers a glimpse of some rays of sunshine shining through some as yet unnoticed breaks in the clouds…

Here are a few quotes from his article to hopefully spark some discussion of what the uphill run of this roller coaster could look like after we barrel through the bottom of the hill…

A power that may not stay so super

AT the turn of the 20th century, toward the end of a brutal and surprisingly difficult victory in the Second Boer War, the people of Britain began to contemplate the possibility that theirs was a nation in decline. They worried that London’s big financial sector was draining resources from the industrial economy and wondered whether Britain’s schools were inadequate. In 1905, a new book – a fictional history, set in the year 2005 – appeared under the title, “The Decline and Fall of the British Empire.”

The crisis of confidence led to a sharp political reaction. In the 1906 election, the Liberals ousted the Conservatives in a landslide and ushered in an era of reform. But it did not stave off a slide from economic or political prominence. Within four decades, a much larger country, across an ocean to the west, would clearly supplant Britain as the world’s dominant power.

The United States of today and Britain of 1905 are certainly more different than they are similar. Yet the financial shocks of the past several weeks – coming on top of an already weak economy and an unpopular war – have created their own crisis of national confidence.

[snip…]

Bill Maher’s New Rules

McCain’s new plan to get Bin Ladin: “Track him like Rambo, call in the co-ordinates and have Palin shoot him from a helicopter?”

…..

This post and the comments below are a small offering of sanity in an insane world. No bailing out allowed.

Professor Leo Panitch, Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto, talks with Paul Jay of The Real News, and describes the various decisions on the part of the US government which led to the financial crisis.

Panitch says that the roots of the crisis go all the way back to the 1960’s and that the effort to house the poor without mobilizing large public expenditure is what created the conditions for the crisis. As a result, the only way to resolve the situation is to return this role to the state itself, as funded by progressive taxation and a sharp decline in military spending, and to remove greed and the profit motive from the equation by making banking a public utility.

October 10, 2008 – 8 min 34 sec

Leo Panitch: The roots and remedies of the financial crisis

“It’s a panic situation, everyone is looking at the international financial situation and coming to the conclusion that the only safe position is cash.” — Brazilian Economist Flavio Serrano

The “rescue” appears to be rescuing the intended few at your expense.

October 07, 2008 – 3 min 10 sec

Worldwide financial fiasco

Markets around the world hammered by credit crunch as governments move to secure bank deposits

Chalmers Johnson discusses with Paul Jay the crumbling of the American Empire seen through the twin lenses of the cost of Military Industrial Complex and the cost of the Wall Street bailout bill, as if the more of your and your childrens and your grandchildrens money they spend the easier it is for political “leaders” in Washington to hide from reality.

October 5, 2008 – 10 minutes

Last days of the American Republic?

USA must cut back on military spending and build green infrastructure or face ruin

Chalmers Johnson: “Something has happened to us comparable to what happened to the former USSR after 1989 … And that led finally to the dissolution of the USSR.”

The economy looks like a drunk staggering around.

October 04, 2008 – 6 min 45 sec

Bailout bill no relief on foreclosures as 159,000 more jobs were lost in September, markets down again.

The financial bailout package was passed by the US House of Representatives on Friday but 108 Republicans and 63 Democrats still refuse to approve the bill. Markets drop anyway with the Dow Jones losing 818 points on the week. Jobs in September slashed by 159,000 and home foreclosures at 770,000 since August 2007 expected to continue to rise. The Real News Network talks to Michael Perelman, Professor of Economics at California State University, Chico.

Michael Perelman teaches economics at California State University, Chico. He has published 19 books, including, The Confiscation of American Prosperity, Railroading Economics, Manufacturing Discontent, The Perverse Economy , and The Invention of Capitalism . He writes a blog Unsettling Economics: A Progressive Look At Economics and the Rest of the Screwed Up World at michaelperelman.wordpress.com.

Pepe Escobar cuts through the fog and bullshit emanating from the Washington, Wall Street, and media lockstep march to relieve you and your children of all the money they can, your future and the future of the country, while doing their damndest to stockholm syndrome you into giving it up to them willingly.

Pepe Escobar: What’s behind the “no banker left behind” bailout

The financial crisis may be the number one issue on US voters’ minds, but there seems to be no leadership at work in Washington, comments Pepe Escobar. The Wall Street bailout rejected by Congress and then approved by the Senate may not be the solution. It’s up to foreign analysts and economists to tell it like it really is.

What is in fact being saved – capitalism or a banking oligopoly?

For the past two years since the midterm elections the Democrats in Congress have refused to use the power of the purse to restrain Bush and his wars.

Now it appears that they will have no problem using the power of the purse to bailout out Bush’s friends while at the same time virtually wrecking their own power of the purse to pay for and implement any progressive programs for the forseeable future.

Just whose side are these people on, anyway?

Ellen Frank is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, a member of the Dollars & Sense collective. She is the author of The Raw Deal: How Myths and Misinformation about Deficits, Inflation, and Wealth Impoverish America , was published in 2004.

On Wednesday night, the US Senate passed, by a margin of 74-25, a renovated version of the same Paulson rescue bill that the House rejected on Monday. The Paulson proposal has stayed relatively intact however, with the central new additions to the bill taking the form of tax breaks and increased federal deposit protection. Ellen Frank believes that this is a terrible bill, passed without sufficient discussion, and that it has been forced upon us through scaremongering and image conjuring of a new depression, something Ellen feels the US is not vulnerable to in the way it was in 1929. She also explains her fear that this bill will handcuff future administrations from implementing progressive government programs.

And the sad truth of the matter is that they actually really and truly are doing it for my own good.

I could even die if they didn’t do this for my own good.

Which makes it all the more incomprehensible. How did we get to a point in this society where deception or outright lies are the automatic knee jerk unthinking solution to any situation that might produce resistance?

What the hell ever happened to telling the blunt honest truth.

Why couldn’t they just have said look, this is what you need to do or you will die? Why con me into it?

I’ve had what I thought was a chest cold for the past 3 weeks. Lungs are sore from all the coughing, and then this morning I woke up and coughed again, but this time with a bit of blood coming up.

Not being stupid, or a tough guy at my own expense, I got dressed and walked down the road to the clinic to ask the doctor what she thought. She hemmed and hawed and poked and prodded and sent me around the corner for an x-ray.

X-ray tech says hey, this looks like you’ve got pneumonia, but tuberculosis is a possibility, so we want you to go over to the TB Clinic at the Disease Control Centre and spit in a cup so they can analyze it.

Well, ok, makes sense I figure, so off I go to the TB Clinic where they have me spit in a cup, see a little blood too, and then say well look, just to be on the safe side we’d like to repeat this test 3 or 4 times a day for the next couple of days, so why don’t we get you a bed in the hospital across the street for those couple of days.

That way if you have TB and are contagious we can have you fixed up real quick. Just a couple of days. Or maybe three at most.

Sure I say, why not. Better to be safe than sorry.

Off to the hospital. Up the elevator to the 8th floor. Hisssss….pop. The doors open into a negative pressure lobby. No germs get out to the public that way, apparently.

Looks like a real nice place. Nice smiling friendly caring people.

Hey, two or three days in here shouldn’t be too bad, I think to myself.

Nice room too. Though it would be nicer if the windows opened. And I thought it was a little strange that the fire exit door I passed in the hallway had a lock on it.

A lock on a fire exit door? Hmmmm.

Oh well, it’s only two or three days.

Doctor knocks and comes in the room all smiley and friendly. Wonderful bedside manner. Taps on ribs, listens to lungs, nods sagely and makes sympathic noises.

Looks up and says he thinks he can have me to a non-contagious stage in about 4 to 6 weeks, and until then I’m in fucking quarantine.

Anybody feel like feeding Magic for me while I’m in jail?

Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan – Matchbox Blues

Dreamed that I was lucky

But I woke up cold in hand

Hey, I dreamed that I was lucky, darlin’

But I woke up cold in hand, yeah, yeah

…

Whatever happens, I got to pay my dues somewhere

I’m not a Harry Reid fan, but neither am I a McCain fan.

From RawStory, with a video from PoliticsTV:

After trumpeting the need for his participation in Washington to discuss the proposed bailout of Wall Street, Sen. John McCain did not participate much in the talks, said U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Reid criticized McCain, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, for remaining silent for the first hour of the meeting.

“Finally Senator Obama said, ‘Can we hear from Senator McCain?’ and he didn’t say anything of substance, literally,” Reid said in a video available below. “That meeting at the White House was a waste of time.”

Reid claimed McCain’s unwillingness and inability to speak about the $700 billion bailout proposed by the Bush administration underlined his inability to lead the country.

“I know John McCain,” Reid said. “John McCain does not have the temperament to be president of the United States and he has proven that in the last week.”

^{Sen. Harry Reid gives an inside account of the White House meeting on 9.25.08, reporting Sen. John McCain barely said a word, and that his participation “blew up” negotiations on Capitol Hill. Reid says McCain’s behavior this week shows he doesn’t have the temperment to be President.}

Thursday afternoon we first heard that there had been an agreement in principle struck by criminals and thieves masquerading as politicians in Washington to stick their greedy little fingers in your pocket and give Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke nearly a trillion dollars of your money to bail out their buddies on Wall Street.

We then later in the day heard that there had been a hastily arranged meeting in the White House with both presidential candidates invited by Bush in which John McCain had “destroyed” chances of an agreement in a desperate political stunt of an attempt to bolster his failing campaign. McCain’s involvement, in the words of House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, was compared to “Richard Nixon blowing up the Vietnam peace talks in 1968.”

Country first my ass.

McCain’s stunt was not a stupid stunt. It was part of a shell game. A setup designed to con you. Designed to con you by giving top Democrats, Pelosi, Reid, et al a reason to support Bush’s plans to rob you blind while looking like they are saving you from a Republican plan to kill the bailout.

Think about that for a minute. Remember who passed all the Iraq Occupation funding bills for the past two years?

Oppose Bush my ass.

They are on his side. They are part of the scam. How clear does it have to be?

Now Wall Street financial analyst and historian Dr. Michael Hudson, Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City, cuts through all the crap to say bluntly that the proposed bailout is an empire buster likely to virtually destroy an already very shaky US and global economy, and is nothing more than a pyramid scheme, a blatant Once In A Century Rip-Off intended as a last ditch effort to save, at your expense, the finally and utterly discredited neocon “philosophy” of economics and governance, and George Bush and his criminal friends. The crooks attempting to steal every last cent they can bullshit you out of before republicanism and the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush finally go down in flames and ignominy. Taking you down with them.

If there is one overriding reason to oppose this “bailout” with everything in you, it’s this – it’s A Once In A Century Rip-Off.

A Once In A Century Rip-Off of… you.