I think about all those folks in power, the bankers and the media and the politicians, to name a few, and they want not just to keep their money but also are desperate to retain the one thing they believe money can buy and that is prestige.  When you’re rich, you’re treated better by the tradesmen, you have clout and can have things the way you want them … ultimately, you end up living in a bubble.  Now that bubble is breaking, not only because of the recent election and the recent wake-up call to all Americans over the hard times ahead, but because of overwhelming change, historic change, that is sweeping across our world.

I’m in a bubble, too … got a job, a roof over my head, enough to eat, clothes, all the necessities of life.  I’m white and heterosexual and still benefit from the unearned privilege that brings, I don’t get stopped by cops just because of my looks, storekeepers and landlords treat me well, all that jazz.

So, lots of bubbles.  No shortage of bubbles.

So there’s all these folks in power who want to narrow the odds so they stay on top.  It is very likely they aren’t even aware of that but instead talk themselves into believing they are acting in the best interests of rationality and intelligence and integrity.  Ha ha.

I’ve learned from the diversosphere and here at Docudharma, particularly from Winter Rabbit, Jessical and Robyn, a very different view of our present state.

Yay!  Another Monday Open Thread DD Ripple Awards!   A totally egalitarian endeavor, anyone can appoint themselves as awarders (is that a word?).  If no one does, then I reign supreme!  A win/win for me!  Mwoo ha ha ha ha.

The object of the award is akin to mining for gold in Sutter’s Field back in the Gold Rush Days.  Find a gem and give it some attention by bestowing an award.  Simple.

Without further ado:

From Roy Reed’s “The Weapon of Young Gods #39: Frayed Strands a great opening scene:

For many years I’d tried to convince myself that nostalgia meant death, that indulging in happy memories was much worse than just a pleasant waste of time, but recently I’d suspected that was a war I’d lost before it had even begun. The impulse to dwell to distraction had long since permanently fused with my frontal lobe, because not only had I been unable to kick the vile temptation, I’d come to enjoy it and-in a pinch-even capitalize on it. What I didn’t realize, though, was how completely uncontrollable it could be, and that almost cost me a lot more than a few lost hours on the day I discovered how completely Frankie had lied to me.

And as far as comments, a pretty recent one.  We’re all struggling with the issue of accountability and in edger’s essay: “Never Forget”, by Marc Ash, Jay Elias has this to say (and the resulting dialogue with edger is ripple-worthy, imo):

This is a question I’ve been considering lately…  

..that of how to deal with the felons who are former and current Bush administration officials.  And I remain mixed.

Prosecuting them for their crimes is something I consider important.  But to my thinking, the real failure has been to purge the Nixon criminals from the public sphere.  And without cleansing them, I don’t see how you can cleanse the Bush people.

How do we the people actually seek justice for Antonin Scalia, Henry Kissinger, or Pat Buchanan?  And if we cannot obtain justice from them, can we really honestly clean up the present?

I don’t know.

Open Thread is Open.

As I am resting in my own confusion at the moment, refusing to be swayed by even the best of writing, waiting for my own view to emerge, fragments of visions appear.

Resting in my own confusion.  You see, I have no great position of power so I can freely confess I don’t know what to make of the country of which I am a citizen.

I’ve written a little bit about freedom of information — that accountability is not just catching crooks and putting them in jail, but allowing the citizens of this country to be truly informed.  We have become a wierd mix of incredible secrecy in the halls of power, be they government or private business and no privacy allowed for the rest of us.

That can’t be good.

I have no doubt that the Obama Administration will do everything they can to get as much information as they can about what has gone on these past eight years.  They really don’t have any choice, after all.  Each member of Obama’s cabinet will inherit a big giant awful stinky mess.  Consider the EPA, just as the first thing that came to mind.  Not only will whoever heads the EPA have to deal with the climate crisis and the effects of all the deregulation that has gone on while corporations have basically set policy for that Department, they will also have to confront criminal acts, at the very least politicization of the Department (a’la the DOJ) and at most … well I shudder to think.

This mix of criminality, corruption and incompetence will be quite a challenge.

My question, though, is whether or not they will share all this information with the rest of us.

I think that’s a very important issue.  We can’t make informed decisions as citizens if we are not informed.

(h/t Huffington Post)

I hate to link to The New York Post but oh well.

To see Neel Kashkari field questions from a crowded room, one might think he’s still being paid by Goldman Sachs rather than American taxpayers.

The interim assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial stabilization yesterday had a tone of impatience during a question-and-answer session, leaving some attendees feeling cheated.

He tersely called the additional cash piped to AIG a “one-off event.”  Well, glad to have that cleared up!

I hope more news organizations follow Bloomberg’s action:

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News sued the Federal Reserve for information under the US Freedom of Information Act, claiming the Fed refuses to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans as well as the troubled assets the bank is accepting as collateral.

I’ll be damned if I’m going to speculate about a yet-again secretive series of actions using our taxpayer money.  The issue here is about transparency — we shouldn’t have to run around like Nancy Drew finding out what should be neither a secret nor a mystery.

We’ve lived for 8 years under the most secretive misAdministration in my lifetime.  Clearly our corporations and other big bidness has been secretive as well, and it’s become a national sickness, imo.

Enough already.  Time to let the sunshine in … all the way in.

I hereby announce the Docudharma Ripple Award, which means … well I’m not sure, but it’s an award, for Pete’s sake, so who cares!

More seriously, on a purely subjective note, these two comments were the result of the conversations we’ve all had on the blog, the ripples of ideas which flow from this site every day, I’m just catching two of them.

They come from my Friday Night at 8 essay Core and speak to the notion of centrism, left, right, middle, all that jazz.

First one is from NLinStPaul:

I remember a while ago

looking for a post by Madman in the Marketplace where he articulated that compromise (or the center) is the place you reach AFTER you’ve made effective arguments from opposing sides. It is NOT the place you start from. But I haven’t been able to find it.

That thought keeps surfacing for me when I hear all this talk about finding the “middle.” We haven’t even clearly defined all the positions yet!!!

And the second is from RUkind:

It’s like center is the new meme,

Same as the old meme. I think it’s more about clinging to the present or some vision of a recent past or embracing change and seeing where it takes us.

This country was founded by people seeking change from the old ways of post-feudal Europe. Once they got a foothold on the coast it was the Cumberland Gap and on to the Northwest Territories (Great Lakes region). Feeling too settled down? Across the Mississippi, up the MIssouri and then over the Rockies.

Same thing has been going on always here. People just keep coming seeking change. Even when you’re born here you’re likely to live in several places during your life.

Some people thrive on change, some people fear it. Change in your surroundings, your neighbors or even who you are. Like the song says, “You can’t go back and you can’t stand still.”

I don’t think left-center-right are the proper adjectives any more. I’d say change/status quo are the basic definitions and from there the direction of the change becomes a secondary attribute.

Just thinkin’.  Satya.

Congratulations!  Now all we need is a prize of some kind!

Open thread is now open for bidness!

Everybody’s talking about the center and where is the center and who comprises the center and then, of course, if you find yourself not included in this new definition of the center it’s like childhood games of musical chairs that moment everyone else grabbed a seat and you’re standing there, going “huh.”

Last one to the trough is a goober!

And the strange thing is I don’t really even know where the trough is or what’s in it or if I’d even like to partake.  But boy do I feel the vibe urging me onward like a madwoman at a sale at Century 21, the Downtown location, yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

Thing is, whenever  I get this feeling, that vibe pushing me along when I don’t recall asking for the shove, I get suspicious.

I start thinking, “is this some shiny distraction?”

Center.  Bah.

Have you heard about Obama’s Antie Zeituni?  Been a last minute flurry of rightwing vituperation over the leaked story that she is here illegally, as her request for sanctuary was denied.

Except the ICE has known this for a long time, yet didn’t decide to do anything about it until now, right before the election.  Oh those rascals!

Duke, over at the Sanctuary has this story down:

Obama’s Aunt is emblematic of everything wrong with immigration, both systemically and as a political issue.

Without knowing the specifics of her case it’s hard to say why in fact her status is what it is, but we do know that:

1. The authorities have know about her status for some time

2. DHS was ordered not to deport until after election

3.  The second person to leak the story came out of the Administration

4.  The timing of the story was orchestrated by Murdoch/Rove for maximum political effect.

Basically, the authorities have kept her under wraps until they could use her as a pawn for political gain.  

And here is where I see her as symbol for the whole immigration debate.  

The right wing has used 12 mil people as political pawns from the start of this current debate. If we look at everything they’ve done from passing HR4437, which they knew would never get through the Senate, to the failed CIR attempts, to the current fascists crackdowns…it’s all been nothing more than political theater. played against the backdrop of real human suffering.  

And now they wheel out Obama’s Aunt.  

They could have finished her case and deported her ages ago if that was in fact their intent. But it wasn’t. They’re intent was to keep her around to use as a pawn to whip up the base, and peel off independents.  

And is that really any different from anything else that’s been going on for the last few years to the rest of the migrant population?  

Of course not.

Thread away at will!

I like Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo, and think he has done an excellent job covering (and in many cases uncovering) the issues arising over the 2008 election.

I don’t always agree with him, but I think he has a good grasp of the difference between reporting hard news and editorializing, and he rarely mixes the two.

I also appreciate that he has established a real news organization that uses its own sources, and is a good model for citizen journalism.

But his latest posts on the negative cast of the McCain/Palin campaign have been breathtaking.

When he does editorialize about the dog-whistle smearing that has been done by McCain and Palin, his fury and contempt is clear, and because he’s not usually a ranter, that fury is more compelling in the contrast.

His latest post, McCainism is a doozy:

For my own part, obviously, I hope Barack Obama can pull off a victory on Tuesday. But more than that, I hope the result of the election can be a rebuke, a closing of the book on McCainism and the moral filth it has come to represent. I’m under no illusion that negative or even nasty campaigning will come to an end in the USA. I don’t think that’s realistic or even necessarily desirable. Hard-fought and brass-knuckle politics is something built into the fiber of American politics. It’s part and parcel of the intensity of belief and passion that many of us have for the issues at stake in our elections.

But McCain’s campaign has devolved into something altogether different … what with its increasingly open appeals to racial conflict and aggressive invocations of blood hatred of Arabs and Muslims. As The New Republic phrases it, McCain’s “subtle incitements of racial warfare and underhanded implications of foreign nativity.” Over the months we’ve become desensitized to the moral depravity of McCain’s campaign.

Obama speaks of getting past the divisive partisan politics that has sickened this country for so many years.  And he doesn’t only talk the talk, he embodies in his own behavior this philosophy.

Over at Daily Kos, Markos speaks of leaving everything on the road and of crushing the Republican machine.  He also defends being a surrogate in attacking Sarah Palin when both Obama and Biden could not:

I know I harp on this a lot, but it’s an important teaching moment — when Palin was picked, she debuted to sterling approval numbers. Her speech at the RNC was a big hit. She was beloved, and McCain’s numbers skyrocketed as a result. This site and others went on the attack. Republicans were busy trying to build a great story about Palin — hockey mom, “real”, ate mooseburgers, reformer, blah blah blah. We fought back discussing her record, her corruption, her lack of experience, and the results of her brand of “family values”.

Too many counseled that we should lay off her. It’s the curse of the Democrats — instead of trying to move public opinion, we’re constantly trying to “shift the debate to more favorable terrain”. That’s what happened when Democrats sold out our troops and voted for Bush’s war in Iraq. Supposedly, that would shift the terms of the debate from Iraq and terrorism, to more favorable domestic issues. Of course, that didn’t happen. We lost big in November 2002.

Then in 2004, we once again tried to move the debate from national security (Bush is too popular there!), which would be accomplished by nominating a war hero, taking that issue “off the table”. Well, Republicans, masters at this business, went straight after Kerry’s strongest attribute — his military service — and destroyed it via the Swiftboat stuff.

They even tried it this year, going after Obama’s strength — the passion of his supporters — by trying to brand him a “celebrity” on par with Paris Hilton. It wasn’t a bad line of attack until they undermined it with the selection of Palin, their very own “celebrity”.

This is all stuff out of Crashing the Gate and Taking on the System — our fear of targeting our opponents’ strongest points. Yet that’s how you win elections. So excuse me if I belabor the point, because it’s an important one.

People criticized us for taking on Palin, saying that we were ignoring McCain. But she was his biggest strength, and as such, it would be tough to knock McCain down if she wasn’t knocked down first.

Ultimately, we were successful beyond our wildest dreams — the McCain campaign has been forced to stash away Palin in Cheney’s undisclosed location, and even needs McCain to chaperone her during media interviews.

I remember when I, along with many other bloggers, were bitching about the endless stream of Palin diaries … yet many of those diaries, even the badly written ones, accomplished real citizen journalism in showing Palin’s weaknesses, most especially the corruption of her Governorship in Alaska.

Over at Zuky, Kai has posted part 2 of Time to Throw the Traders Out the Temple.  He has an interesting take on the economic situation we find ourselves in:

A potential catastrophe – or perhaps a historic opportunity – is unfolding in glacial slow motion before our befuddled eyes. Corporatist media prefer to reduce the situation to an infantilizing superstitious battle of bulls vs. bears, as though the stock market consists of imaginary stuffed-animal friends and whichever side we believe in with more fuzzy fervor will magically win. But to me the story of financial crisis and rippling economic disruption is a serious matter not because of what happens on Wall Street, but because of what it could mean for broad swaths of the planet for years to come

He does bother to define what he calls “economy:”

When I talk about the economy, I’m not talking about finance; I’m talking about human activity which produces and distributes social value, from food and shelter to laughter and beauty. Of course, our modern economy is inextricably entangled in the constructs of post-industrial capitalism. But the way things are need not constrict our envisionings of the ways that things could be better. And I think now is a particularly compelling moment for progressives to make the argument that things could be better.

The Open Thread Is NOW OPEN!  Ta da!

Duke has an essay over at The Sanctuary about Nancy Pelosi’s latest capitulation, this time on the subject of immigration.

According to the essay, Pelosi was talking about comprehensive immigration reform and decided to throw under the bus the idea of a real path to citizenship for many of the 12 million undocumented workers in this country.

The link in the essay to the LA Times article is not working, but here is the money quote:

…Pelosi also said Congress would have to tackle the politically sticky job of overhauling immigration laws in the new Congress, after a bipartisan measure collapsed last year.

The estimated 12 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally “are part of the U.S. economy. We cannot send them all home, and we cannot send them all to jail, so we have to address it,” Pelosi said.

Any solution would have to be bipartisan, she said, so it may require sacrificing some of Democrats’ past priorities, such as giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

“Maybe there never is a path to citizenship if you came here illegally,” Pelosi said. “I would hope that there could be, but maybe there isn’t.”

As Duke states, the egregious policies of the Repubs have drawn Latino immigrants in waves to the Democratic Party.

Yet here we have Pelosi, once again, speaking of capitulation and calling it “bipartisanship.”