It may well turn out that Barack Obama will not be able to fulfill the great hopes that have inevitably been placed on him (probably nobody could), but he’s already done a great deal just by winning this election. Now the world can stop dumping on the Americans for not even being able to run their own fair elections while telling every one else to become democratic, and Canadian commentators can stop preaching to them about their lack of benevolence towards the downtrodden, while ignoring the often scandalous state of their own aboriginal communities. Because while the Americans, against all odds, voted for someone named Barack Obama to be their leader, a smaller percentage of eligible Canadian voters confirmed, in the most boring election in memory, the re-election of a prime minister whose name they could scarcely remember after his first term in office.

The US election with a set date, on the other hand, has gone on seemingly forever and cost scores (hundreds?) of millions of dollars, something which does not seem to have been mentioned in the current financial crisis, where that money might have been used for something more useful, like hiring more inspectors and controllers of financial institutions. But for all its own brand of windbagging rhetoric, a huckstering media performance, and sideshow shenanigans like a vice-presidential debate, the US system does allow the main candidates to give some indication of what they are really made of, something hard to argue for the Canadian system. It is an exhausting process and a youngster like Obama should have a real advantage over an old warrior like McCain, but the old soldier seems to be hanging in there quite admirably and ultimately the vote should come down to which of the two convinces more people of the superiority of their view of the world, assuming they put functioning ballot boxes in states like Ohio and Florida, and that the Palin fiasco doesn’t lead to comicall voting patterns. You’d have to be gambler to bet against Obama but at least the game seems to have been played on a level field.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.   –   John Maynard Keynes

As the U.S. economy falters due largely to lending practices that at best were idiotic and unethical and at worst illegal, the government has decided it needed to step in, and has done so at a potential cost of $700 billion. While not as much as the Iraq War has cost surely this must cement George W. Bush’s reputation as the worst American president of all time. This in spite of the inevitable stories in the press seeking to find good things to say about him as his administration slowly, ever so slowly, sinks below the surface.

The following are responses to the government’s bail out project from two of Politicsandpress’s correspondents.

Item from our European Correspondent:

“Hey, hey Ben + Hank finally came up with the plan to end the “turmoil”. Of course it involves having our grandchildren repay the Chinese who will fund it. It really is better than the previous final solution of getting all the worlds central banks to “inject” $180b into “the economy”. That was a good one. Some pundit summed it up for me: ”Having discovered that the brakes don’t work the bankers have supplied the car with a louder horn.” But this new one that Ben + Hank are going to “…work ALL WEEKEND perfecting” (the sacrifices these men make for us) is the one our grandchildren will pay for.

As I understand it from the press its premise is:
“…a comprehensive approach to address the illiquid assets on bank balance sheets that are … the underlying source of the current stresses in our financial institutions and financial markets.” (And all this time I thought the underlying problem was that Amercuns weren’t repaying their debts.)

Anyway, the way this will work is:
“…the new [taxpayer of the future] entity would “purchase assets at a steep discount from solvent financial institutions and then eventually sell them back into the market” through an auction.”

Cool. Buy stuff that is worth nothing (a debt that won’t/can’t be repaid) and later sell at a tooth fairy auction. Ben + Hank expecting to make money on this? Break even? Non-inflationary? They’re not even bothering to tell those lies.

So anyway, anyway, I am all for it cause it kicks the can down the road to a point after which I will have kicked the can.

Washington, DC responds:
The “market” just loves kicking the can. Investments go bad due to the ingenuity of the greedy little men in the world of finance [and the ignorance of the man of the street] with a large helping of gumm’t indifference - and oh yeah add the disastrous balance of trade - and the result is a $500, or is it a $800, billion bailout by our grandkids - ain’t capitalism wonderful? I’m hoping this will put a stop to the religious fervor of the followers of Milton Freedman and his laissez faire capitalism - well, that is too much to hope methinks, how about putting a dent in it.

PALIN COUNTRY

Please call us rednecks, ’cause we’re proud
To be so rough and rude and loud,
And act in ways elitists think
Proves that we’ve had too much to drink
In some dead-end Alaska dive
When, dude, it just shows we’re alive.
We love our church, our kids, our beer,
Can tell you right down to the year
That God put Man upon the Earth,
Know life starts well ahead of birth,
Don’t give a damn about the arts
And stay away from foreign parts
Until the moment that we’re sent
As John McCain’s vice-president

The great thing, when your neck is red?
Nobody cares what’s in your head -
The voters seem to like ‘em dumb,
So why not play a hockey mom
Who hunts and prays and procreates
To govern these Unites States?
If you can drive a snowmobile,
The people, bless them, think you’re real,
And in the end who needs a brain?
Just tell your kids they must abstain,
Pretend that when your rule’s ignored
It’s some great gift sent by the Lord,
And prove you’ll go to any length
To make such redneck fault a strength.

These are the canaries in the coal mine of climate change and big, beautiful (for the most part) California is surely one of the most vulnerable places on earth as much of it has been built in almost desert-like locations which must import water to sustain life on the scale that has been placed there. And water is what California does not have enough of, particularly southern California and especially the megalopolis of San Diego to Santa Barbara. For decades the waters of northern California and the diverted Colorado River have kept these places water-solvent but that time is coming to or has already reached an end. 20% of the California budget is devoted to pumping the waters of the north to the south, especially from the Sacramento River delta, whose dikes are now considered under a greater threat than were those of New Orleans before they broke. If the salt water of San Francisco Bay breaks through into the fresh water of the delta, the nightmare scenario, it is hard to imagine the future of Los Angeles. It is in any case hard to imagine how a life style pushing rice field agriculture, green lawns, swimming pools and golf courses can be tolerated,as it should be perfectly clear by now that water is the most valuable of all commodities for life - gas is incomparably less important - and that in southern California it is being wasted in an intolerable fashion. There are no replacements - the Colorado River is being siphoned dry by all the states it runs through. Neither Oregon nor Washington have any water they are going to spare for their wasteful southern neighbours, and it is against the law to export water from water-rich Canada, even if it were so inclined. San Diego is now setting up desalinization pilot projects, but this process causes many problems of its own and cannot solve the basic one - much more water is being used than is available. Perhaps Governor Arnie, who seems to have a good understanding of the problem, can convince some of those professors at his best universities to come to grips somehow with this really existential problem..

But it is not only Rogers and Belichick, the winner of four Super Bowls with the New England Patriots and the most successful football coach in recent NFL history, who will be present, but also former Wesleyan student and current arch Belichick nemesis Coach Eric Mangini of NFL’s New York Jets, who will be there for his fifteenth reunion. For Wesleyan is the only university to have produced two current NFL coaches, and Doug and many scouts feel that Wesleyan’s combination of intellectual depth and athletic grace has led to the development of a number of quarterbacks wearing the red and black, who would surely have dominated the football fields of America if they hadn’t gone into more scholarly pursuits.

So give credit where it is due. Obama has made a very smart political move by moving into this territory. He will surely deliver an excellent commencement address, and do his friend Ted a favour while doing it, even if his own elite university background is limited to mainstream Harvard. But with any luck, the sports journalists will also be there to keep watch over Belichick and Mangini, and to see how Rodgers is running along these days. Obama can relax in the afterglow of some heavy hitters from the world of sports, whose chumminess would be most helpful to his popularity among the blue collar working folk.

And what are we being fed by the media? John McCain’s barbecue menu and the great spitball fight between Senators Clinton and Obama. The press moves from spitball to spitball, manufacturing intensity on fundamentally trivial issues. They capture the public’s interest and create temporary shifts in polls that then feed the horse race mentality of a press unable to focus on the real issues that determine the state of the world and of America’s declining quality of life. Do we really care all that much that Geraldine Ferraro thinks Senator Obama is “lucky to be black?” Or that Senator Obama’s former Pastor has said some stupid things mixed in with a justifiable rage over much of what America has done to blacks for over 200 years? Or whether Bill Clinton plays his typical cheap tricks? Are those the only kind of issues that can capture the American peoples’ attention? Are we really so ignorant of the world or so lazy that we cannot put the effort into thinking about serious issues and identifying trivialities for what they are? Or have we simply turned it all over to a shallow, irresponsible press?

For a lengthier and stronger look at these concerns see Matt Taibbi’s latest piece on his website: The Smirking Chimp – here is a taste:

We can’t focus for more than ten seconds on anything at all and we’re constantly exercised about stupid media-generated non-scandals, guilt-by-association raps, accidental dumb utterances of various campaign aides and other nonsense — while at the same time we have no energy at all left to wonder about the mass burgling of the national budget for phony military contracts, the war, the billion dollars or so in campaign contributions to be spent this year that will be buying a small mountain of favors for the next four years. – Matt Taibbi

Steroid use is a serious issue at least partly because of its effects on those young athletes – high school age and younger - trying to gain an edge by using drugs that ultimately can seriously damage their health. By focusing on one player’s presumed guilt the Committee managed to create an opportunity for Republicans to rush to the protection of Clemens, a Bush family friend, and turn a potentially serious discussion into one more GOP generated partisan flackshow.

As for the Hearings – Mike Wise in the Washington Post cut quickly to the chase:

“As the contradictions kept coming yesterday in the Rayburn House Office Building, Clemens came across as a megalomaniac, a habitual liar and a barrel-chested fraud. The people who believe him now seem to be either paid by Clemens, married to him or in worse denial than the Rocket himself.

He came to Capitol Hill not to swear, under oath, his innocence of being a drug cheat; Clemens came here to show America that the arrogance of the elite athlete has moved beyond our ball fields, universities and clubhouses straight into a witness chair at a congressional hearing.”

Those Republican Committee members that attempted to portray Clemens as a hero rather than an egotistical liar were on something but it was decidedly not performance enhancing. They accepted Clemens’ nonsensical testimony without blinking an eye and proved once again that most of a generation of Republican politicians have become T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Men.

“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar”

This is not an isolated incident – throughout America voters have opted to reduce the quality of basic services in order to reduce their tax bills. At the same time the federal government has provided huge tax breaks to the wealthy thereby reducing funding for local and statewide services. As governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney consistently bragged about reducing the cost of services in the state by simply reducing their quality. This allows him to take credit for holding the line on taxes but also the blame for deteriorating services throughout the state.

We are a country of bridges that collapse, schools that don’t provide arts education, libraries with reduced hours, lousy train service, spotty public transportation services, deteriorating medical services, etc. According to the United Nations World population Prospects Report the U.S. ranks 32nd in infant mortality behind virtually all Western democracies as well as Cuba, S. Korea, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Japan and Singapore. The country ranks 38th in life expectancy behind such countries as Cuba, Chile, Costa Rica, Malta, Martinique and Japan.

For years politicians have promised lower taxes without mentioning the corresponding guarantee of reduced quality of life for the vast majority of Americans. And the American people have been willingly seduced by the promise of lower taxes while ignoring the ugly reality of what shortsighted policies have produced for coming generations. We are literally scared into spending trillions on a senseless war in Iraq yet cannot find the resources to fight fires, repair bridges, provide well rounded education to our young and improve health care for all at home. Shame on us.