Like a cancer in remission, the vanquished enemies of democracy in America continue their lamentable existence, now as offstage agents of fear and doom. We did not need to wait long for a taste of their duplicitous tactics: citing the Constitution, FOX News anchor Chris Wallace claimed that Obama was in fact not sworn in as president on Tuesday, because the chief justice administering the oath of office flubbed his lines.

Wallace’s claim was a throwback to the ubiquitous misinformation campaigns of the freshly buried Bush era, for according to the 20th amendment to the Constitution, Obama became president at noon on the 20th, regardless of having taken the oath of office. 

Speaking of which, isn’t it about time that we replace the bible that is used in the ceremony with another, more ecumenical, text? Leaves of Grass, anyone?

As 2009 begins, the  financial downturn is starting to affect us all. The New York Times has just published a persuasive meditation by Michael Lewis on what the meltdown and bailout hoax reveals about the American financial model. An excerpt: 

The Madoff scandal echoes a deeper absence inside our financial system, which has been undermined not merely by bad behavior but by the lack of checks and balances to discourage it. “Greed” doesn’t cut it as a satisfying explanation for the current financial crisis. Greed was necessary but insufficient; in any case, we are as likely to eliminate greed from our national character as we are lust and envy. The fixable problem isn’t the greed of the few but the misaligned interests of the many.

A brave Iraqi reporter has eloquently expressed the opinion of millions – if not billions – of citizens of the world (including some Americans).

From the article on France24:

An Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes and an insult at George W. Bush, without hitting him, as the US president was shaking hands with the Iraqi premier at his Baghdad office on Sunday. As the two leaders met in Nuri al-Maliki’s private office, a journalist sitting in the third row jumped up, shouting: “It is the farewell kiss, you dog,” and threw his shoes one after the other towards Bush.

So the people who engineered ecological monstrosities like the Hummer are not going to get their hoped-for corporate welfare package. Breaks my heart, that.

I’d say the defeat of the latest attempt to make US taxpayers pay for the sins of blatant corporate mediocrity and greed deserves a little celebration…

I didn’t understand the reasoning behind the last bailout, and I sure don’t get the need for this one. Let’s hope the radical Republicans (!) manage to sink it…

Auto Bailout Bulletin

My peoples, what can I say? Obama’s victory took us off into that bright, glowing place that we only get to visit about once every decade. Granite walls collapsing into dusty puddles, the innocent dancing of my son to an unknown song, a quiet moment of humble and well deserved victory, love.

Stet turns two tomorrow. The main takeaway from my first 24 months of blogging is a reassuring sense of connection and empowerment. In the Age of Murdoch, that any individual with a computer and internet connection can instantly self publish on a global platform is an everyday source of wonder.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the ride so far, and hope you have too. Thanks for being there.

As the world awaits tomorrow’s opening ceremony, which is sure to include a gazillion sequined schoolgirls mechanically executing painful contortions in unison, I wonder where the true value lies in these mega spectacles. Thanks to the Olympics, people’s lives have been irrevocably upturned, as whole neighbors in Beijing were demolished to make way for Starbucks and Nike; undesirables swept off the streets to be either shipped away, thrown in prison, or euthanized; and potential dissenters systematically detained or imprisoned. All this damage before the Games begin, to save Chinese “face”.

In my life I have never been able to understand the collective “we” that people employ when referring to their favorite sports teams. The willed delivery of self that defines mass spectatorship has always tasted like cheap wine to me, and one has only to look its most notable effects (the murderous passion of hooliganism, for example) to understand what’s really at stake:

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting. -George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)

Next time you travel to the US, think twice about what you take with you – your files may be contraband:

In opening the 25 June hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights, subcommittee chair Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.) said, “Over the last two years, reports have surfaced that customs agents have been asking U.S. citizens to turn over their cell phones or give them the passwords to their laptops. The travelers have been given a choice between complying with the request or being kept out of their own country. They have been forced to wait for hours while customs agents reviewed and sometimes copied the contents of the electronic devices. In some cases, the laptops or cell phones were confiscated and returned weeks or even months later, with no explanation.

Everything on your laptop. Belongs to the US government. In perpetuity.

At a time when the essential truth of McLuhan’s vision of technology as an extension of our selves is irrefutable, the assertion that the US government – or any government – has the right to arbitrarily seize, copy, and analyze at its leisure every piece of data that we have created and own is tantamount to the revocation of habeas corpus.

When I read an account like this I wonder if anything will stop these secular mullahs before they achieve the dream of totalitarians since time immemorial: the ability to tear the lid off the last refuge humanity has, and stare right in.

From the acid-penned genius known only as Mr. Fish: