Hattie's Web

They are going to get away with it, again.

Glenn Greenwald on how Republican lawbreakers in high places will never be indicted or prosecuted. This comment explains one of the reasons why:

Unfortunately

The only way to alter this dynamic is for the electorate to start caring about this behavior and vote out of office those that support it. Equally unfortunate is the reality that the American people have very little control over the federal government because the only access to the government is through their elected representatives. There is no process by which an initiative can be brought by the people themselves, any and all initiatives must be brought through an elected body, thus neatly allowing the "ruling class" to perpetuate this kind of behavior.

This is why it was such a bad idea to cede so much authority that belongs to the states to the federal government. This previous behavior is why the states depend on the federal government - in Missouri for example close to half of the state's budget comes from the federal government which makes the states nothing more than a client of the federal government and allows the feds to dictate to the states.

We're screwed.

-- Jeffrey P. Harrison

Hawaii is another state that lives off federal money. This means accepting a large military presence, above all. We have a new veterans' home, for instance, but a private hospital has fired a lot of its personnel and will close if it does not start showing a profit. The Saddle Road, which goes by a military installation where bombers practice and which will soon have a Stryker brigade, is being widened and improved, while all over the island streets and roads remain in bad condition and in many places unpaved. We local people have no control whatsoever over these matters. Some people benefit from the pork, but I think the overall economic effect is inferior to what state and especially local control over tax funds could give us in the way of services.

Getting back to the theme of Greenwald's posting: If none of these criminals ever come to justice, the imperial presidency will gather more and more power unto itself. Obama is already acting like the crowned Emperor of America, if not the world, and he hasn't even been officially nominated by his party. Whatever vestiges of humility he may once have possessed are now completely gone. He is one of THEM, the interlocking elites that control our lives. At the end of his posting, Greenwald offers this tidbit:

On a side (though not entirely unrelated) note, the aforementioned Obama friend, Cass Sunstein -- protector of Bush lawbreakers, advocate of illegal Bush spying and radical presidential powers, and fierce critic of blogs as "anti-democratic" -- earlier this month married beloved Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power. It's amazing how these sorts of circles always end up being so cozily closed.

And you and I don't belong.

Update: So Cass Sunstein more or less exposes the Obama strategy here. I suppose he'll be Obama's first Supreme Court nominee. The trick is to reassure the elites that they will come to no harm while milking the rest of us for votes. He is no fool and knows better, but his attraction to Power and power is just too strong, I guess.

Yet more: As I read around about Sunstein, the word that keeps popping into my mind is "craven." I knew people like him in college. Go along to get along was ever their strategy.

Update: Supreme Court of Hawaii (Unofficial) has a link to this posting, which it refers to as a rant. Rant? Moi?

Hard times

It hits me every once in a while how hard this recession is on what you might call the next bunch of people to be dumped from the economy: middle aged women. Some of the blogs I've been reading break my heart. They are trying to be optimistic and not take personally their total rejection by everyone except people dependent on them (and maybe by them, too) as they struggle to work or to find work, to take care of households, to provide necessary care to children and elders. What a nightmare. Maybe a silly feel-good movie like "Mama Mia"  is what women of a certain age need, after all.

One thing that maddens me is that a huge "self improvement" racket has grown up around the unmet emotional needs of this age group: Weight Watchers, Curves, cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, little degrees and certificates in this and that, and so on. They do what is expected of them, but if you are poor and out of the job market, marginal in the job market, or overwhelmed by the needs of others, you are basically toast.

These realities are behind the continuing support for Hillary Clinton. Women do identify with her as someone who has put up with a philandering husband, had a premature baby, and now is responsible for her aged mother. Not even rich and famous women get out of paying the "female tax."

Hillary's been an active member of AAUW, a group to which I belong, which recognizes education as the key to upward mobility for women. More and more we're seeing that that advantage must start young, so that women can be active in their careers in their 20's and 30s and build up equity and experience to carry them through their older years. 

Menopausal madness

A new movie, "Mama Mia" is upsetting people a good deal. I won't go see it, I don't think. Hey, it's only the change, don't fret. Anyway, here is the original video of "It's Raining Men." I love this kind of humor, now that I think sex is mostly funny. Batten down your ear hatches! (revised).

Here's the trailer. Her daughter's wedding is all about the men her mother had sex with! How cute. I could say more about the kind of feckless boomers who screwed up their lives and their kids' lives, but it's time to stop this and go have breakfast.

More: Hmm. I had better go see it. It could be satire.

Doghouse Riley and the Wolfman

There is nothing for me to say here, beyond, BRAVO!

Doghouse Riley

The Daily Howler

Rethinking Obama

I know, I know. But, as I say above, "a foolish consistency..."

The New Yorker article that I mentioned below, "Making It," by Ryan Lizza,  mentions that Obama was a community worker. Lizza quotes him:

“When I started organizing, I understood the idea of social change in a very abstract way,” Obama told me last year. “It was to some extent informed by my years in Indonesia, seeing extreme poverty and disparities of wealth and understanding sort of in a dim way that life wasn’t fair and government had something to do with it. I understood the role that issues like race played and took inspiration from the civil-rights movement and what the student sit-ins had accomplished and the freedom rides.

“But I didn’t come out of a political family, didn’t have a history of activism in my family. So I understood these things in the abstract. When I went to Chicago, it was the first time that I had the opportunity to test out my ideas. And for the most part I would say I wasn’t wildly successful. The victories that we achieved were extraordinarily modest: you know, getting a job-training site set up or getting an after-school program for young people put in place.”

My first reaction to this was to think, "What arrogance. People work very hard for these small gains, and they do make a difference." Then I thought again. What if all this community organizing is really a waste of time in the face of the indifference of people at the top to the fate of those below them? What if we had a President who actually had spent some time in the trenches?

I am an Antique

I was looking through a series of young women's blogs that are being featured at a conference for women bloggers being held in San Francisco. Clearly, there is not a thing that interests them that interests me.  Wow. Talk about a generation gap.

Take a look. 

• Glennia Campbell
• Kristen Chase
• Catherine Connors
• Tracey Gaughran-Perez
• Jory Des Jardins
• Susan Etlinger
• Beth Kanter
• Stephanie Klein
• Linsey Krolik
• Shannon Lowe
• Diane MacEachern
• Monica Mingo
• Stephanie Quilao
• Lisa Stone
• Laurie White

Look  at The Froth, and you can see the qualitative difference.

Doghouse Riley

There is little in the mainstream media that even comes close to the quality of this piece, "Catching Fugitives by Banging a Drum," on Doghouse Riley's blog, Bats Left, Throws Right. Read it and be informed.

Menopause Monday

I snuck through menopause as quietly as I could, because most of my friends were younger, older, and/or on hormones. I'm glad I bit the bullet, so to speak, but I had a (relatively) easy time of it, physically, although I did have some depression and not so nice physical symptoms for a few months. Although these stories treat only obliquely of "the change," that is really the theme of all these pieces. You could call them semi-fiction. I use some of the devices of fiction but the events are more or less real.

Golden Memories

A Poor Thing but My Own

The Madwoman Flies Dry

One reason I'm posting these is that I am seeing major avoidance of the topic among the huge cohort going through menopause now: the women born in the mid to late 50's and early 60's.  The silence is deafening. I'm not sure why this is so.

More on Time of Life Tuesday: The NY Times has some chilling material about bisphosphonates,, including the harrowing experience of a woman who was on both estrogen and alendronate. There is also this link to a small and not very long but intensive study on estrogen and raloxafine. It's technical but the results are clear. The study concludes that estrogen, while inhibiting the resorption of bone, also inhibits bone remodeling, the formation of new bone. Draw your conclusions. For myself, I wouldn't touch any of that stuff.Oh, and there's the jaw thing.

The Obama cover thing

Alex Koppelman in Salon has done a fine job of analyzing the reaction to this cover. I grow weary of the indignation, whether serious or false, about stuff like this. It's worth a chuckle, that's all.

And, as Koppelman says, it's a distraction from the important article on Obama in this issue:

"The cover of the New Yorker often has little to do with the articles inside it. In this case, though, there's a tangential relationship, as the magazine's Ryan Lizza has a really interesting profile of Obama, done by looking through the lens of his rise in Chicago. In fact, if I were Lizza, I'd be pretty upset at my editors today, as this controversy has ensured that his article is going ignored. Like so many articles in the magazine, it's long, complicated and detailed, and reporters and commentators who are discussing the cover are skipping over the article, presumably for reasons of time. (The reason I'm behind the curve on posting about this, in fact, is that I took the time to read Lizza's article.)

Even though I subscribe to the New Yorker I always read the important political articles online, because out here my magazines are often a month or more late. And this is an important article. I feel after reading it that I have a sufficient understanding of what Obama and his campaign are about.

More: Now here is some real political cartooning, as only Steve Bell of the Guardian can do it!  I loved "Maggie's Farm," his series of strips about The Thatcher-Reagan romance and other matters.

Obama supporters need to stop being so namby-pamby. Or, as Truman famously put it, "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen!"

(Click on pic for the full effect.)

More: This one's even funnier.

Yet more: This is no gentle Sparky. Tom Tomorrow would not be capable of anything so vicious! I'm  all indignant, aren't you?

These are like mixed nuts. I can't stop with just a few.

But I'll stop here. It's time to go clean my house.

Oh, just one more, from 2003. I submit that any cartooning you see in the U.S. is pretty mild compared to this!

Now I'll go clean my house!

And even more: this famous 1871 classic, titled "Let us Prey," by Thomas Nast on Boss Tweed and his scandalous political machine, with their whole edifice about to crash down on them.

Even more! This is too rich. By Andy Borowitz. This ought to be the last word on the subject, but it's just so much fun to comment on. I am cackling away here.

I'm going to stop this and go swimming at Richardson Beach.

Obama critics cry "foul"

The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.

From the New York Times. This article lays out the conflict very well. I agree with the commenter who said that the system is "broken." Indeed it is. A few more observations, just odds and ends really, because the article is excellent.

Obama has hired some very attractive young people and dispersed them around the country to "train" others to work for him. Clinton did exactly the same thing. He took over the party apparatus, laid out his campaign, and won. This was after he was nominated, however. Obama is not waiting to be officially anointed but is mobilizing everywhere (except maybe in Hilo!)

That big rally that was a turning point and convinced many that Obama was the Man: it was on one of the first beautiful days in Portland in ages. If I had been in town I would have attended the rally too. On an average cold and rainy day I do not think he would have had such a turnout. As well, Portland is a progressive enclave in the midst of a mostly conservative state. Oregon's reputation for liberalism rests totally on the residents of Portland proper and Eugene. The rest of the state is majority Republican, as are the huge and growing Clark County suburbs in Washington that are part of the Portland metro area. Another point: I don't think Obama can have it both ways. He and his backers can't claim that the big rally in Portland indicates that he will win and at the same time say that progressives represent fringe opinion. If he dumps progressives, he is dumping Portland but still using that rally to make himself look good.

A historical sidenote: Jesse Jackson was wildly popular in Portland when he was running for President, and he drew a large crowd at a rally I attended. He was so impressive to look at and listen to in those days. This was the 80's when many women were becoming impoverished by divorce, workplace inequities, poor health, the needs of family and so on. He addressed that issue by saying that a poor person pays the same for a loaf of bread as a rich person. That is no longer true, of course, because these days the poor person eats  Wonder Bread and the rich person consumes a premium loaf with Kalamata olives.

Well, maybe it is true that my point of view is strange, but I think the so-called mainstream folks are going insane, so at least I can choose my own brand of craziness. McCain and his people are obviously off their trees. But the oddities of the Obama thing are off the scale. Just today I read that Schwarzenegger wants to be his envronmental czar. That is ridiculous. But those Kennedys and their relations will probably get a nice spot in the Obama administration for him or his bride. See, this kind of stuff really chaps my hide.

Narcissistic grandstanding and opportunism  masquarading as idealism never work out well for anyone. I've seen plenty of this kind of ego at close quarters. Always, it is the unknown and unnoticed who have to carry on and deal with the messes these vain and selfish people leave behind them. So far all I see is "palaver and what they can get out of you,"  as the little housemaid Lily says in Joyce's "The Dead."