It actually works like this: the Federal government prints trillions of dollars to hand to corporations, who then spend a small portion of that money buying policies from “our” politicians. As the actual global rate of growth has diminished from decade to decade since the 1970s (see the Tabb citation in this article), this has become increasingly the road to corporate profit.

Why we respect the money system which exists for this process of accumulation, anymore, is beyond me.

There are those who simply believe in undemocratic authority. There are others just in it for the money. Then there are those who are both. There’s some good news. Some American business leaders are stepping to the plate. 41 signed a letter condemning the court and demanding Congressional action. http://bit.ly/4UxoAk

unsound and furiously empty

Isn’t it just the privatization of the US Government?

There are those who simply believe in undemocratic authority. There are others just in it for the money. Then there are those who are both.

The vast majority of us will eventually wake up to the fact that we will be losers under the current dispensation. Then we will band together.

Glenn,

Here’s a test question.

Let’s suppose in Citizens United, the majority decision had gone the other way — the way most here believe it should have gone.

QUESTION: In the wake of that ruling, would Citizens United or any other corporation for that matter have had the right to spend unlimited amounts on political speech and advertising prior to 30 days before a primary election?

To what are you referring?

I hope it reaches the level of “vast.” And I hope it’s not too late.

No. Until now they have not been able to spend corporate funds at any time. The can raise money from employees and spend it through a PAC. Officers can give personal money. The 30-day rule, I think, has been scrapped by the ruling.

Enjoy our ‘net neutrality while it lasts. Once they manage to eviscerate that, the transition to oligarchy will be nigh on complete.

eloquent writing. but Moloch was already unchained, with willing servants throughout both political parties, and corporate propaganda utterly swamping the entire mainstream media.

folks need to detune from the propaganda frequencies, regard them with reflexive skepticism, scoff at their crudeness. Noam Chomsky has an interesting comparison of Soviet methodology and that of ‘the west.’

In totalitarian societies where there’s a Ministry of Truth, propaganda doesn’t really try to control your thoughts. It just gives you the party line. It says, “Here’s the official doctrine; don’t disobey and you won’t get in trouble. What you think is not of great importance to anyone. If you get out of line we’ll do something to you because we have force.” Democratic societies can’t work like that, because the state is much more limited in its capacity to control behavior by force. Since the voice of the people is allowed to speak out, those in power better control what that voice says–in other words, control what people think. One of the ways to do this is to create political debate that appears to embrace many opinions, but actually stays within very narrow margins. You have to make sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions–and that those assumptions are the basis of the propaganda system. As long as everyone accepts the propaganda system, the debate is permissible.

conversation at FDL have recently touched upon certain assumptions that are held to be taboo – and the reactions of the administrators have been quite instructive in microcosm.

the recent ruling from the Court does not change this structure, btw, and it is difficult to imagine how the Washington politicians could be even more servile to corporate demands, so we can continue working to give Moloch indigestion.

Yes, and the amazing thing is how many seem to be okay with that. Authority is very important to many, they need to follow, and they assume that the leader they follow deserves to be there, elected or not. Some of these sheep make money off the circumstance, of course. Others are simply weak.

Sorry, the answer is YES.

Don’t take my word for it. Download the opinion and read it.

You are exactly right. It won’t take long for the corporatists to make their threats and get the decisions they need to end the open net.

your conclusion

Good point that this is unfinished business and is nothing new.
The constant struggle among the rulers, the ruled, and the unruly, continues.
Our Noble experiment has had it’s ups and downs, made it’s mistakes, done wrong.
Together we have done great things as well. Enlightened self interest and free expression still exist and fiercely fuel progress.
We have also continued to form a “more perfect union.”
One day we will get it right.
Happy Trails

Please elaborate.

So what will Obama do about this he is President after all and the Leader of the Democratic Party. I’m not being critical Obama is our leader whats the plan?

My guess is that the strangulation will be pretty slow and under-the-table, so Politico might be correct in the short-term. For example, many states currently have no restrictions on spending by corporations on state elections, and yet there has not been a huge outcry over the lack of regulation in these states because Corporations can effectively hide their participation.

The fact that Republicans are dancing with joy at this decision is also ominous- The only way this decision is reversed is with a 2/3 majority in the Senate for either a Constitutional amendment or an impeachment of one or more of the judges of the radical majority, and that isn’t going to happen if Republicans think they are the ones that benefit from the ruling.

But what is the true endgame? This ruling, like so many other recent events, goes right along with the warnings explained so well in this:

ENDGAME

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1070329053600562261#

“Countless people will hate the new world order, and will die protesting against it.”

-H. G. Wells THE NEW WORLD ORDER (1939)

engage with ART. he’ll explain with far greater clarity than I would have the ability to muster.

but hold the thought that the First Amendment is our friend.

“My guess is that the strangulation will be pretty slow and under-the-table”
___

I think you’re right about that. No need to put on a full-court press when you already have the upper hand.

He seems to be examining several options. Some being talked about include bans on foreign corporation contributions, or bans on contributions from corporations with foreign shareholders, or new forms of public finance. Some have talked about fixing it by changing federal law requirements for corporations. But I’m not sure any of these would meet the court’s new test. That is, if corporations have a fundamental, constitutional right to free speech, can you abrogate that right throw any legislative means at all?

Everything that can be done should be done. But ultimately, we’re going to need a constitutional amendment or have the opinion overturned by a new majority on the court.

If ever there was a voice for status-obsessed Washington, D.C. insiders, Politico is it. And Politico is telling us the outrage against Citizens United v. FEC is unjustified, that freeing corporations to spend what they want to elect or defeat whomever they want is no big deal.

Are Glenn Greenwald, Kevin Drum, Elliot Spitzer and the ACLU, among others, all also status-obsessed DC insiders?

I also believe the SCOTUS decided this case correctly on free speech grounds. Is corporate control of the US Government a problem? Yes. A very big fucking problem. But the answer isn’t to stomp on everybody else’s free speech rights.

As for the practical effects of the ruling; So the sellout corporate whores in Washington DC will become better compensated sellout corporate whores. In other words they were sellout corporate whores before this decision. And I’m supposed to get excited? Sorry.

Nope, this is just more shiny objectory designed to distract from Rahmbamas many failures and sellouts.

Listening to Barack Obama attack special interests when we already know Barack Obama took $20,000,000 dollars last year alone to write the health industry wet dream passed by the Senate? Priceless.

Save for your true believers Barry…

unsound and furiously empty

With all due respect, and very sincerely, if you are going to review the piece in this kind of language, shouldn’t you go ahead and let me know what you’re talking about? I’m willing to learn. But this cryptic comment is mystifying.

Roe is next.

As the corrupt system fails people stop listening to Moloch. MSM reader, viewers etc has been going down for decades.

You’re certainly correct about the First Amendment.

The ACLU is reconsidering.

http://www.nysun.com/national/aclu-may-reverse-course-on-campaign-finance/86899/

How, exactly, were everyone else’s free speech rights being stomped by a ban on corporate political giving?

You want your rights stomped on? Wait till you try to be heard while corporations spend unlimited amounts. A great difficulty is the equivalence of money and speech. Those with more money have more speech. In fact, you have about as much free speech now relative to the rich as you have money.

Ah, mocker of men, dost thee then, align thyself with corporate “persons” rather than the simian forebears your moniker doth imply?

And thus, does revolution or even the mere thought of the justness of such an action, as governments are instituted among men, offend thee?

And when that created entity is seized and usurpated by those most powerfully fearful, those for whom there is never enough to satisfy their infantile egos, thou sayeth no compelling HUMAN need, however evident, obvious and, again, JUST, justifyeth the rising up of the people whose mandate is the only TRUE mandate, notwithstanding the epiphitics’ fabulistic assertion that they have the mandate of heaven?

Thou hast a poverty of imagination as well as conscience.

The Massachusetts election was a message to the establishment in Washington that they are too cozy with the banks, phrma, the health insurers, and wall street . Only a day later the Supreme court hands down a decision that amounts to treason, allowing corporations whose person hood is an obvious falsehood to trump the people’s voice in our faltering democracy .

The best solution in the wake of both the special election and this obscenity from the supreme court is to pass a constitutional amendment revoking the ridiculous claim of person hood for corporations and there by protections under the first amendment .

Not good enough pass a law.

I may be having terrible comprehension problems today. Do you mean it’s not good enough to pass a law? Or that a law should be passed?

“A great difficulty is the equivalence of money and speech.”
___

A.k.a. The Shit Sandwich Theory of Life. i.e.,

“The more bread you got, the less shit you gotta eat.”

I’m in complete agreement.

You all know that with unemployment above 10% we are going to get creamed in November this ruling only gives the GOP an edge when the economy gets back to normal.

As Albert Camus says, that is the role of the poletariat: to be betrayed by their purported leaders. But when they revolt against this betrayal, and die, that is the source of their dignity. P 185, The Rebel, Penguin Paperback, translated by Oliver Todd, 1953

I think that someone should explain this to that Texas guy Cornyn, he seems to be confused.

Sorry pass a law stop or limit all corporations spending on campaigns.

Entities which exist simultaneously all over the globe , who can clone themselves , have unlimited resources , never die and are comprised of many stockholders who are not American citizens are not people !

The arrogance of the five justices may yet turn out to be a blessing in disguise however if this ruling stands, without a constitutional amendment to fix it ,the only place democracy will find a voice is in the streets.

They may decide to permanently nix gay marriage first. It’s hard to guess who they hate more, or perhaps feel a more urgent need to suppress, gay people or women.

“if corporations have a fundamental, constitutional right to free speech, can you abrogate that right throw any legislative means at all?”
___

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS, with whom JUSTICE ALITO joins, concurring.

The Government urges us in this case to uphold a direct prohibition on political speech. It asks us to embrace a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censor- ship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet, and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern. Its theory, if accepted, would empower the Government to prohibit newspapers from running editorials or opinion pieces supporting or opposing candidates for office, so long as the newspapers were owned by corporations—as the major ones are. First Amendment rights could be confined to individuals, subverting the vibrant public discourse that is at the foundation of our democracy.

The Court properly rejects that theory, and I join its opinion in full. The First Amendment protects more than just the individual on a soapbox and the lonely pamphleteer…

…The text and purpose of the First Amendment point in the same direction: Congress may not prohibit political speech, even if the speaker is a corporation or union…

Perhaps you could remind me of the the part in the Constitution about the rights of big piles of money stacked up in artificial entities, creatures of statute. The plain fact is that corporations are legal fictions. They have exactly the rights given them under the statutes that created them. Or, to be more precise, the rights the Supreme Court finds in those statutes.

How can speech be free when it costs so much to be heard?

You are dealing with reason, Elliot.

Fictitious nonsense is the order of the day.

DW

This last week was horrible. The Dems seem enthralled with the MSM analysis and go back to the momma’s skirt of the worst Repug excesses. I really am at a loss.

I wish there would be a huge outcry. I do think some people are paying attention, but I have no hope of any revolt.

I see that MoveOn is organizing protests for Tuesday. Nothing near me right now, and I just don’t have the energy to organize, though I have done plenty of that.

Also may I suggest, in the wake of both the 2000 election and this latest piece of treason, a second amendment eliminating lifetime appointments to the supreme court and replacing them with perhaps a ten year seat which must be won by election from the citizenry .

I think it was Thom Hartmann who pointed out the illogic of the SCROTUS: since a corporation is comprised of a group of people, therefore that group or corporation is entitled to free speech (don’t get me started on how money does not equal free speech) just as those people who make up the corporation are entitled to free speech. Hartmann made the point by that illogic, then the corporation should also have the right to vote in U.S. elections.

Already they are accepting the Court’s decision as not all that significant. If ever there was a voice for status-obsessed Washington, D.C. insiders, Politico is it. And Politico is telling us the outrage against Citizens United v. FEC is unjustified, that freeing corporations to spend what they want to elect or defeat whomever they want is no big deal.

I’m going to keep pointing out these manipulation tactics (tools of the trade for sociopaths) whenever I see them: minimization–they’re trying to make a molehill out of a mountain.
http://counsellingresource.com/features/2009/02/23/minimization-manipulation-tactic/

Corporations are artificially constructed legal entities, not persons. First waterboarding is not torture, and now this. I can’t believe we have to argue against these nutty conceits.

- Tom

Masaccio,

I’m willing to debate you or anyone else.

I will not, however, cede conclusions that are assumed.

Thanks, masaccio. The cleavage of opinion on this issue is really kinda interesting, if frightening.

The only free speech at issue is that of the people. Even Glenn Greenwald seems to be blind to the practical effects. If someone has a firehose, and someone else has a glass of water to throw, who’s going to get wet?

Why this is hard for some to see is a little beyond me. The best way to destroy free speech is to give more of it to one person than another. Worse, to give more of it to non-persons, corporations, that to persons.

being a somewhat fictive person, I fear and respect the ability of the natural men to separate the propaganda from the truth every now and again.

the decision comes with a cost, but it’s best borne and paid.

I sideth not with the fearful foolish hobgoblin ghosts-in-the-corps, but tis but men behind the curtain.

That’s very funny .

Think Enron shell corporations funny contracts the bin Ladin Family can for example use their influence with Exxon Mobile or any American oil company to if they want to grant access to Saudi Oil in return for a pardon for Ossama Exxon gets then Sarah Palin elected.
How do we prove that any corporation is not influencing elections for foreign powers that want certain things from the American government?

“They have exactly the rights given them under the statutes that created them.”
___

And, having personally founded three (two for profit, one non-profit), doing all of the paperwork myself, I can tell you that those rights properly extend only to the purposes set forth in their charters.

(But, of course, to be fair, we always include the weasel phrase “…and any other purpose.” But, even that is normally construed legally as to empower you to branch out into new business / service lines beyond those explicitly set forth in the charter. Kind of a “10th Amendment” of chartering.)

I think it was 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election.

This is precisely what some otherwise intelligent folk refuse to address when they support or dismiss the impact of the ruling.

It’s already the case the voices of people are silenced behind a wall of huge spending (speech) by the wealthy. Hiding behind theoretical constitutional interpretations doesn’t cut it. Perhaps the Framers’ most brilliant insight was that the Constitution had to change to deal with circumstances unseen at the time of its creation. Mass media — and its enormous costs — were not seen.

The Court knows just what its doing: silencing the people to allow for elite, undemocratic rule.

and, with respect, a conclusion that contains the idea that the republic lays dying from this decision is the kind of dire prophecy that invites but a terse rejoinder.

I have mixed feelings about this but it was really helpful to me to read Greenwald’s discussions. We must stick with our principles. I had bought into the corporations shouldn’t be persons, but after reading GG it seems that it’s more complicated than I’d thought.

Anyway, it’s important that we fight the power of corporations, but I think this particular issue is too complex to be worth fighting about, unless the fight can bring some progress and light. I’d love to see you (Glenn Smith) address some of the compelling arguments Glen Greenwald has made, because at this point, from my perspective, he’s been more persuasive.

You can’t, under this ruling and current law. It will be perfectly acceptable for a foreign government to spend millions or even billions to influence election outcomes, kill treaties, force treaties, give themselves trade advantage, cause a war or undermine a war.

Its theory, if accepted, would empower the Government to prohibit newspapers from running editorials or opinion pieces supporting or opposing candidates for office, so long as the newspapers were owned by corporations—as the major ones are.

This seems to extrapolate reality to the nth degree. Is there a fix in there somewhere? Or must “the people” attack the ruling as has been done with Roe: try to find the loopholes to open or close as the case may be.

Glenn, isn’t this a blow to campaign finance reform all around? How much effect on the drafting of legislation will this have?

Okay. I’m going to do just that. I hadn’t seen Greenwald before today. Please watch DogCanyon.org over the next coupla days. And thanks. It’s an important discussion.

Gotta love Legend-In-His-Own-Mind Scalia:

Despite the corporation-hating quotations the dissent has dredged up, it is far from clear that by the end of the 18th century corporations were despised. If so, how came there to be so many of them?

LOL.

How, exactly, were everyone else’s free speech rights being stomped by a ban on corporate political giving?

First they came after the free speech rights of Citizens United, but I wasn’t a member of…etc, etc..

You want your rights stomped on? Wait till you try to be heard while corporations spend unlimited amounts. A great difficulty is the equivalence of money and speech. Those with more money have more speech. In fact, you have about as much free speech now relative to the rich as you have money.

And that is different then the situation before the Citizens United case how exactly?

The solution to corporate control of the government isn’t to shut down corporate free speech; the solution to corporate control of America is to get a political party that actually puts the interests of average Americans over that of their billionaire peers and buddies.

That is the solution. I wish I knew how to bring it about..

Do we let people vote X amount of times in direct proportion to how much money they have? The public has been abandoning the MSM for decades ever since Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine and big corporations have bought all the *cough* independent media.
Media use to be monitored tell me why does Fox have a broadcast license how does it serve the public good to have a tv network spread lies and hate that gets people killed?
Your freedom ends where mine begin as a real non Corporate Person having Corporations vote with their dollars takes away my rights.
Having no Media Representation other than blogs means I don’t exist.

I also believe the SCOTUS decided this case correctly on free speech grounds. Is corporate control of the US Government a problem? Yes. A very big fucking problem. But the answer isn’t to stomp on everybody else’s free speech rights.

IMO, the answer isn’t wholesale giveaway of democracy to corporate america either.
We all know There are limits to free speech. This opinion is a rightwing powergrab of the highest order. Nothing more, nothing less…

Yes, and that’s the purpose of the ruling. The philosophy behind the decision is not a democratic one, it is certainly not a free speech issue. It is the belief that only the elite are qualified to lead, and it makes the guarantee of elite rule the guiding principle.

This is more the macaquerman whom I recall with respect,

I appreciate that clarification.

We both agree that monkey-ing around with Justice and Truth to the benefit of those behind the curtain is not, then, the height of wisdom.

The cost will be paid.

But ’tis best if ALL involved understand how high that cost, in human terms (which are the ONLY terms which matter) will be.

Let us have no illusions

DW

Glenn,

Thanks for this very good post – one of many circulating right now. One thought about folk’s speech not attaining political power. Neither has the Declaration of Independence. It remains as it was written, unammended, written in clear and stirring language, and outside of the legal framework. It may be that folk speech, which is in the same boat, should stay there. This ruling, while superficially about free speech, was actually about redefining speech as money which will collapse all true meaning and creativity inherent within speech.Some oftThe most eloquent founding speech of our country arose out of the levellers and diggers from 17th cenury England who were moneyless. Tom Paine is an American example of this form of “folk” eloquence and forcefulness. His speech was utilized by the founding fathers, but dropped once they had achieved power – campaign rhetoric v elected rhetoric ? It seems to me, that in this current elite system of control and dominance, our free, folk speech becomes that much more powerful as it is outside of ANY elite framework. It may be that we all begin to exercise it much more eloquently, forcefully, and with greater effect. It has always been a powerful force,and it can become much, much more powerful now.

If it takes a constitutional amendment to combat this, then we should make TWO amendments at once, with the second being a term limit on Supreme Court justices. It’s just completely unacceptable that some moron posing as our President can appoint any pliant partisan hack to the bench and the American People have to suffer the consequences until he dies of natural causes. The Five Stooges have the rest of their lives to dream up new and exciting ways to crush democracy and enrich themselves and their owners. And THEY have health care coverage, unlike the destitute masses desperately waiting for them to expire at an opportune time.

Well, one big difference: CEOs or corporate officers, before the decision, had to be paid a salary, pay taxes on the salary, and then contribute. Now it’s tax free corporate spending.

I really have great difficulty with those who believe the first amendment should apply to artificial entities like corporations. How can the practical consequences be ignored? In the modern age of communications, it costs money to be heard. Corporations have a million dollars for every dollar I have, maybe more. That means the principle of free speech has already been scrapped.

Ruth Marcus says the court decision was “stunning in its intellectual dishonesty.” How perfect.

Given the Majority’s Straw Man conflation of regulation with prohibition, it also hints at an opening to attack all manner of lobbying regulation on “Congress Shall Make No Law…” 1st Amendment grounds. The proxy “representatives” of corporate “people” “peaceably assembling” for their “redress of grievances”?

A stretch? Perhaps. But it would not surprise me one whit to see that idea proffered.

Well said, dereg8.

agreed..

BINGO !!!

I wish to add to the voices here decrying corporate personhood and the subsequent gifting of Human Rights upon them by the high court. As a nominally independent branch of the government, one can only conclude that these judges fully identify with the moneyed class.

Only a Constitutional pushback from the “people’s branch”, the Legislature, can re-balance the stool. Hence, Glenn’s call for a song from the people.

And so there will be some Graysons and some ACLUs and others who may tilt at this windmill and give Roberts et al the opportunity to parse it again, if there be such a thing.

I guess “free speech” has its defenders, but the money we will spend to go after this will be one more pile o’dough that would have benefited us somewhere else. They keep us eating our tail.

I doubt that we can afford too many illusions these days.

Hers was a good column, indeed, and contrary to the emerging convention wisdom in the Village. Within a few days or hours, they will all be counting their money and shouting “conspiracy theorist” at those critical of the decision.

The “people’s branch” is owned and operated by the same “people” (corporations) this ruling will benefit.

Sadly, corporations will not be aborted. They are born and live, lo, thrive.

LOL, they are “persons” from the “Moment of Conception.”

Yes, it could be a skit for SNL if not for the tragedy of it. I wonder if there will now be legal skirmishes over the extent of their “living.”

Thats how we should attack this use Ossama’s family bribing the oil companies as an example for the Press. Every Dem should be saying this Supreme Court Ruling would let Ossama’s family bribe Exxon Mobile with Saudi oil in exchange for getting Ossama a Presidential Pardon.
Obama should to back up this point release everything classified the government has about Reagan and the Republican Party negotiating with Terrorists in Iran to keep the Americans held Hostage until after Reagan won the election.
Just what was the quid the Iranians got From Reagan and the Republican Party by the way?
Anyway the WH needs to do a coordinated response I would have the FBI investigate Scalia and Roberts get some dirt on them and force them to retire.

Yes. We cannot. And must not invest in illusions.

Unfortunately, the epiphitics do not concur, believing they are vastly able to do precisely that, afterall, they are using our money and goodwill and can always hide eveything behind those other curtains.

The ones that have “National Security” spelled out in big letters on them.

DW

The “people’s branch” is owned and operated by the same “people” (corporations) this ruling will benefit.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but this ruling exacerbates that unfortunate relationship.

Too bad that the President and few Democrats will utter any of this, and whatever is uttered will not be aired.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Glenn W. Smith and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

“We expect too much if we think that any of them will, without a propular uprising on par with the abolitionist and civil rights movement, participate with the revolutionary music making that might bring down the walls.”

First of all, thank you for being who you are and sharing yourself with us in these Sunday mornin’ readings of the scripture accordin’ to Glenn W. Smith. I am brought back from the drak edge of despair often by reading your beautifully crafted essays.

My response today is to say that, increasingly, we are approaching a remaking of the period 1963-68 in this country and in addition to your reference to the abolitionist and civil rights movements we must recall the anti-war movement that in fact facilitated the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in an effort by the bosses to split and deflect the movement that threatened to undo the entire corporate war oligarchy in 1967-68. I guess what I would like to add to your hopefull rememberance of our history of resistance is that we need to use the corporate wars that ObamaRhama are distracting us from with their concentration on domestic social problems. The use of those concerns disarticulate solutions from the main cause of the problems which always come back to the economic and social costs of two and soon to be three corporate wars of occupation and exploitation. This is why I, in my limited understanding of American history, I come back to what I see as the heart of social and political resitance in our country and that’s the anti-war sentiment which must be exploited in order to draw the various and creative elements of our democratic coalition together. Kill the corporate wars and the political and economic beasts that make and profit from them, and we solve the terrible problems of economy and social dislocation and fear which devide us now.

Folks still wonder and many get tired of my salutation of “AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND…” but in the end it is the wars and our fearful acceptance of those wars as long as someone else’s kids are fightin’ them that is the heart of the beast.

Bless your heart Brother Glenn and keep the reds flags flyin’!!

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, WE WIN THE WAR BY STOPPIN’ THE KILLING!!!

It is the wars.

And the joke of “National Security” which they imply.

Thanks, Norske. I look forward to your thoughts on Sundays as much as you look forward to mine, maybe more.

The root of all our largest problems in Washington is the intrusion of corporations in our government .

All attempts at reform and to address the dire problems which confront our species on planet earth, war, poverty, and the environment are rebuffed and repelled by these moral less entities, who by there very legal definition exist solely to pursue profit for their stockholders.

This may well be our best possibility to fix the root of the problem !

Gets right to the heart of the matter.

The problem is not that five justices interpret the Constitution differently, it is that they are willing to fabricate interpretations which best serve their personal agenda.

No problems only solutions !

Think of this ruling as part of the “healing process” . This is an opportunity !

Our opponent is off balance.

It does give us that opportunity, if we will be awake to it.

Scalia in a nutshell:

“Life is unfair. Get over it.”

He’s openly said essentially that.

And the Rs scream about activist judges. These 5 are just plain purchased.

I am not a lawyer, but I have carefully read the arguments from Glenn Greenwald, Jonathan Turley, Kevin Drum, Elliot Spitzer and the ACLU, and the distinction between following the constitution and liking the outcome are very clear to me.

From Glenn:

In general, a law that violates the Constitution can’t be upheld because the law produces good outcomes (or because its invalidation would produce bad outcomes).

What I mostly read since the ruling is an uproar over the OUTCOME of the ruling, and I agree with that. But I’m convinced, FWIW (not a lot, probably) that the abhorrent ruling was correct.

I thought Rehnquist was an abomination. The 2000 court looks good in comparison to what we have now.

Let us awaken the sleepwalkers soon, for it will take them some time to get their bearings.

Perhaps we can pass out moral compasses with instructions printed on the backside?

Americans, as citizens and human beings must choose; either they may compromise with comfort, which will be of short duration and will allow them, ultimately, no choice … or they may choose to side with conscience, which will be dangerous and very hard indeed, but it might, just possibly, allow us some choices.

Your posts, Glenn, are among the best of the best. Thank you.

DW

None of the people who complain about activist judges have any objection to conservative activist judges.

was he wrong about that?

I am not a lawyer either but I reject the ideas that money equals speech and corporations equal people.

I rarely say this about anyone but I think Scalia is just plain evil. He cares nothing about other people – that, to me, is the absolute worst that a person can be. He’s also a smartass and thinks he’s cute and funny. He’s not.

Well, that’s the essence of “life is unfair” Scalia. Basically, ‘you want “justice”? Look elsewhere. Not my job. My gig is to determine what the Constitution permits and constrains as indicated by my ouija board textualist divination of what words meant at the time of enactment. ‘

I was just thinking that if there is any truth to the adage that only the good die young, Scalia will be on the court for a VERY long time.

Of course not.

Leading the witness, your Honor.

But, the implication is far more complex.

You will agree, I hope, that life provides, just in the “process”, sufficient human anguish so as to NOT require the need of us encouraging savagery amongst our selves or honoring myths of inherent superiority, as in a self-appointerd elite whose overall percentage of the population coincidently matches the percentage of sociopaths one might expect to find in any society?

It has been a piece meal approach up till now .

By Scotus over stepping themselves they have left their flank exposed.

This ruling is the best opportunity we have been offered to rein in the corporations since the Massachusetts elections the day before.

Just because they are rich and powerful doesn’t mean they’re smart.

ROFLMAO !

bingo!

If he keeps getting fatter and fatter that may not be true. Last picture I saw he was huge. Pass him another dessert.

The “life is unfair” statement was accurate. More unfair than necessary as a result of Scalia’s rulings.

The “get over it” was obnoxious wishful thinking. We do not have to get over it and we will not. We will endeavor to reverse this miscarriage of justice to our final breath.

It is amazing just how open the corporations have become. They are no longer just the power behind the throne, the commonocracy is finished. Most members of congress sold out long ago now we see that SCOTUS-the 5 rethugs-have also become finger puppets. BIG SIGH. Now that they have pretty much completed their takeover what is left for those of us who care about the republic? The sheeple vote as the TV propagandists tell them too, congress and the executive act like finger puppets and now, the last bastion of the common man is gone. SCOTUS is no longer the court of last resort . Now then, what about NET NEUTRALITY? Will the corps win over the internet next?

I will not allow myself to wish that harm will befall another person, however despicable. Having said that, he would not be missed.

I will wish that he might one day (soon) see the error of his ways, unlikely as it seems.

of course, life amongst billions is complex. I failed to understand why you were nutshelling.

Ooops my post at 108 was meant to be as reply to you , looks like I’m talking to myself again .

Tell the democrats that the population which handed them an electoral defeat in Mass,because of bank bailouts and talk of a mandate unanimously agrees that corporations have too much power in their government!

Let any republican who wants to go down in defeat in November oppose such an amendment!

Debate? I see a lot of flat statements. Why is mine different from any of yours?

Yeah. Just because life is unfair is not cause for social apathy.

“Nature may be red in tooth and claw, but it is not merely so.”

what?? I have to forswear sociopathocracy?? when did this become affective, you leveller?

Scalia punts on the entire point of having our Constitution, that’s all. Lame beg-off. “Hey, I’m just a mechanic.”

Gotta go. Later, ‘pups.

We must put together a coherent strategy to force the democrats to focus on this ruling and a constitutional amendment to fix it !

Obama can win himself mass approval by speaking in favor of it and re energize both the party and his base !

This is a platform that independents , republicans and democrats will get behind !

This ruling violates the very basis of speech itself. Only the devil, or his corporate minions, could consider money as speech. Dead entities spewing dead money for deathly outcomes empowered by five ethically and mentally dead men. Money as speech is a ruling so fundamentally morally and ethically and logically bankrupt that all honest speakers have no choice but to oppose it wholeheartedly and whole speechfully. Speech is a living, breathing aspect of all intelligent life – money is not.
In the beginning was the word and the word was God and the word was with God and the word was….a $ 1 bill.

Which is only a facade. Scalia’s “to the letter” interpretations are carefully crafted to support predetermined outcomes.

What I mostly read since the ruling is an uproar over the OUTCOME of the ruling, and I agree with that. But I’m convinced, FWIW (not a lot, probably) that the abhorrent ruling was correct.

Whether the ruling was “correct” or not seems moot to me.

The FACT is the ruling has a disastrous OUTCOME for our democracy and must be REMEDIED with a Constitutional Amendment.

I doubt if the Framers of the Constitution wanted foreign entities to enjoy the rights of American citizens.

gimme some context, if you would. Scalia is capable of saying and meaning almost anything and if you’re being serious, put some flesh on the bone.

Scalia forgets that his doG made a lot of a**holes as well.

Nice weighted discussion here today. Thank you all.

Agreed. This is not a shallow left/right issue, it is fundamental.

But gluttony is one of the Big Ten – that’s all I’m saying. I really don’t wish the man harm, but he certainly doesn’t care about me and mine.

Agreed, the man is a blight on the nation.

Might be fun to see Scalia and Limbaugh sumo wrestle, though.

ART explained that some days ago, masaccio.

Apparently, from his perspective, if you are not a lawyer, then you cannot possibly have anything of merit to say to ART or the subject at hand, which appears to be the enitirety of our legal system and all of its applications, and whatever you persist in saying, only proves your ignorance and willful intransigence in acknowledging the asserted axiom.

He has written a book.

He is an expert.

And, as I’m not a LAWYER, I am waffling as to whether to accept his kind invitation to avoid responding to his comments, as that seems the gist of his “position”, if I have understood it aright.

He assures us that he is much, much, more to the left than any of us, though what facts he has in evidence, as regards the rest of us, escapes me.

I hope that you may find this “analysis” of some small worth in your approach to this worthy and superior person and the undeniable qualities of his interpretation of things beyond the ken of those who are not lawyers.

Perhaps ART should be talking with Congress, which is mostly decomposed of lawyers? Especilly, if he wants this glorious decision to stand.

DW

WOW. Glenn calls for “revolt.”

Does that legitimize my comments over the last few days?

[modnote; no.]

Good day, razorbrain.

Good to “see” you (and it shall be ever thus).

(Ye have been judged. There is no appeal.)

;~DW

This may well be our best possibility to fix the root of the problem !

I think that all laws/regulations governing corps must be rethought to Force them to removing any and all opportunities to participate in Politics of any sort. If their Charters spell out that the Corporation cannot get involved in the politics of this country and have that codified State by state and Federally. They would would be forced to rewrite the covenants that they were founded on!! I know I am not a lawyer but … Men made these rules of incorporation and men can change the rules.. the SCROUTUS be fucking damned until we can get those 5 out of office. There couold be a citizens watch group that has each and every SCRTOM Judge watched 24×7 and as soon as he slipps up(and ya know Scallywag would be 1st) impeach them. Asw it is I think those 5 have already commuted impeachable acts as they have given a non living entity Free Speech under the guise of personhood. Which they know was originally just a ploy by a court reporter(who had ties to the RailRoad Barron’s of the 1880′s… We are fucked until we can get this “Settled Law” reversed on the basis that it is a lie!!

Glenn I always love your Sunday Morning Posts… Keep up the great writting!!

This is very important. They are right, theoretically. But followed to its logical conclusion, their argument fails. Badly.

Here’s why.

Forms of speech are not equal. They were much more equal when the First Amendment was written and adopted. The Constitution was intended to provide for these sorts of future developments, so we could adapt.

What do I mean about unequal forms of speech? Just one example. Television advertising communicates to the human brain in a manner far different from person-to-person speech. There are many questions about how this is so etc. etc. Some research even shows advertising is able to alter memories without rational mediation.

This is not true of simple written and spoken speech.

So, when corporations are given “free speech” they are really given more powerful speech, because they can afford much more of the more powerful form of speech, TV advertising.

Now, old Rationalists still believe in universal reason, that all of us could, in theory, relate to TV the way we relate to our neighbors conversation. All one has to do is follow the money. The billions spent on advertising is spent because its more powerful than person-to-person speech.

I’m starting to love you ;).

We have had some spirited debates the last few days about what can be discussed here in terms of extra-legal options. I think that may explain the vague language.

Wow, DWBartoo, thank you so much. I must say that the general thoughtfullness of the FDL community contributes much to your perception. I’m lucky to get to write here.

but he looks really old. Hatred does that.

Yes, and one reason for it is we begin with a much broader coalition — or possibility of a coalition — of people who strongly oppose the ruling for a variety of different reasons. It has, for instance, fired me up rather than demoralize me. I think many may feel that way, too.

Thank you. I hope all of you understand that it’s the FDL community itself that adds so much insight and intelligence. Not kidding. This is a special place, and I’m very honored to be one of you.

Let us make certain that all of our luck continues by hanging, in trust and intention, together, Glenn, for if they take this forum from us, we shall surely (as some others once understood) hang alone.

DW

I haven’t read all the post, but I’ll post my ideas.

I called Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow and told them to impeach Roberts and Alito for lying under oath about following precedent. They lied to the senate under oath and should be impeached as the constitution allows.

Second, I told them to cut the Supreme Courts budget. Turn out the lights and have them all go home. They are a seperate and equal branch, but that doesn’t mean congress has to give them money. Its time for retaliation. Not threats to their lives like the right wingers do, but real political hardball. I like cutting their money best. With no staff or operating money they can’t damage the country further.

SCOTUS Voyager: Five of Assinine

Thanks, Glenn — Moloch is the perfect allusion here.

Back in 2004 when Ken Blackwell with Diebold stole Ohio’s electoral votes, and decided Cheney’s re-election, I said that four more years of Bush SCOTUS appointments would be the end of the U.S. Constitution.

The past year has confirmed that corporatist interests, the political power structure formery known as representative government, and what was once known as the Fourth Estate have chosen how this empire will end. And these economic hyenas will not be denied their due.

Exodus 17 concludes: “I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven! … The Eternal will be at war with Amalek throughout the ages.”

While extorting The People’s compliance by threats from without, the threats from within have built one infrastructure while foresaking all others. America’s toll road to perdition.

Have to concur with Ian — The Unvarnished Truth about the U.S.

Solidarity has brought down other walls, as we know. Consider this the locking of arms.

We must strike while the iron is hot !

E mail and call your rep’s, write a post on this and cut and paste on other blogs ,

use the telephone ,

write a letter to the editor ,

comment on the e comment section of different newspapers we pages ,

and once again a spokesperson would help propel this into the public dialogue !

Despite their protest, members of Congress would be one of the principal beneficiaries of this decision, the money would only be used against those who oppose the Corporate mindset, as Obama pointed out in his fabulistic “I’m fighting for you” speech, failing to go the next obvious step, by saying loudly and clearly, “Those whom the Masters of the Universe do not target, should be understood to be aligned with the Corporate agenda, and are not to be trusted unless they can prove otherwise – in this case, there may be NO presumption of innocense.”

Exactly right Glen !

This goes way beyond the divided and conquered partisan politics we have been hamstrung by on other issues .

Yes.

I like your approach !

I have had a really positive response from conservative contacts here in Texas and around the country. Many are outraged by this. As I noted the other day, this ruling opens for us renewed framing about our commitment to individual rights. The Right has labeled progressives as collectivists, or socialists or blah blah. Emergency needs have forced us to look for larger, programmatic solutions. This allows us to focus upon our real roots, and take back the frame. It was my own skepticism of authority that led me to the Democrats o so many years ago.

That’s it. The Mod has driven me away to the football games.

Please continue to play amongst yourselves.

(Exits stage left, shaking head.)

I will put the nose to the proverbial grindstone but will be of only moderate help as I am leaving for Madrid and the Atlantic coast of Spain and Portugal for a month with my family in a few days .

I will have a computer with me but I am not sure how often I will have internet access while traveling .

Ya know, for someone who said yesterday that it wasn’t all about you, you do seem to manage to keep it all on you all the time it seems.

Have a great time Freeman and do connect when ya can…

edited…

These arguments are facetious. The first argument given by the crowd you listed was that the First Amendment doesn’t protect people it protects speech. Fine, we’ll agree to make that distinction. The next argument was that there is a difference between arguing to uphold the Constitution against all infringements and “Outcome-based” reasoning. There may be a difference but this is where it all starts to unravel. Questioned about the money = speech and corporations ⊂ persons suppositions, in two consecutive posts, Glenn argued with lists of questions, which basically argued for both of these premises (neither of which appears in the Constitution or its amendments) based on outcomes. The difference between these and the initial argument based exactly on the wording of the 1st amendment could not have been more glaring.

Next up, the argument was that all 9 justices agreed with these equations, and the text cited was from the dissent. But Justice John Paul Stephens did not argue that corporations had the right to speak freely, but rather that free speech is free speech regardless of its source. In other words, to derive a right for corporations, which is necessary to then argue that money is a form of speech, is to invert Glenn’s original argument that the 1st amendment doesn’t protect those who speak, but the speech itself, which is really what all 9 justices believed in concert.

Consequently, the argument is no more valid than any other that argues outcomes or the rights of entities, and in particular, does nothing to invalidate the arguments of those who believe that money ≠ speech and corporations ⊄ persons. It’s simple logic. You can’t argue premised on only the 1st amendment to invalidate arguments on outcomes and then argue on outcomes to validate arguments for corporations. And if it’s wrong for your opponent to argue that protecting speech implies a right of persons, then it’s wrong to argue that it implies a right of anything else.

[Edited by Moderator]. With all due respect.

I also find a broad consensus of concern, Glenn, in the past two months I also find more and more people of various political stripes agree with the thought that the “problem” might not be government per se, but the nature of those who would be politicians.

I see more awareness now than I have ever, in my sixty-three years, seen before.

You and I agree that recent events are, contrary to what some might expect, energizing, and present a most rare opportunity … if the people are capable of rising onto their hind legs and behaving like mature, rational and responsible HUMAN beings.

But I will not minimize the danger, nor the cost, as the only human “policy” that will succeed, “going forward”, is the truth, simple and unvarnished.

DW

The Framers, aware of this creative power, protected the people’s voices with the principle of free speech. The folk have never achieved political ascendency, of course. It seems rather obvious to say that authentic popular democracy has nowhere been achieved.

No more than one in five U.S. citizens knows what you’re referring to, Glenn — the seminal 85 articles published prior to and in support of adopting the Constitution in 1789, and later, the Bill of Rights.

It’s not really surprising that you are in favor of this travesty of everything the First Amendment was intended to achieve. After all, you are also in favor of what Israel does to the Palestinians. But what you don’t seem to understand is that, in this case, in relationship to the corporate elite, YOU are one of the “Palestinians”.

I’m in favor of what Israel does to the Palestinians? You’re about FOS.

Couple of days ago, some thin-skinned thing said that I supported Joe Lieberman and then deleted my denial.
This the kind of crap that you want to continue?

Sorry, I should have clarified. The Glenn that msmolly cites is Glenn Greenwald, not Glenn Smith.

Yes, and now there’s yet another Glenn @ 160. Now y’all know why I use the full middle “W” and Smith. The curse of a common name. Online search clarity forces me to use the more pretentious sounding full name!

So you aren’t in favor of what Israel does to the Palestinians? Sorry, I must have gotten the wrong impression from the way you seem to instantly appear whenever the word “Israel” is mentioned. So are you saying you strongly disapprove of American support for Israel? And to get back to the subject this thread is actually discussing, how do you think the flood of money the Supreme Court’s decision will unleash will affect the ability of the U.S. Congress to address this issue? Or any other issue?

I know what you mean, I’ve got ratfoods coming out of the woodwork. “g”

I have noted that there are those who say you are a troll. As you know, I do not agree with them, and have wondered how it has come to be that you are assumed to occupy certain “positions” which I have never seen you claim.

It is baffling, macaquerman.

DW

LOL. I’ve met several. s/

And “W” has had such a bad reputation, of late.

:~DW

Greenwald’s powerful logic is his Achilles Heel, too. I’m always complaining of that to him. The human that stands out from his writing is an automaton, dressed up in antiquated APA-style vestments. He’s totally into the whole “rational actor” approach. As if politics were rational!

When people say, the Left doesn’t know how to talk about religion, to engage with deeply spiritual as opposed to excessively logical people, I think this is what they mean. For Greenwald to omit religion from an analysis of an battle in a holy war spanning millenia, was really telling.

In his article on preventive detentions, he doesn’t mention the perfect religious symmetry between the detain-ers and detain-ees. Check it yourself: the highly relevant, to my way of thinking, words: Christian, Jew, Muslim, and religion; don’t appear. How does an attorney so talented miss the whole Crusade angle?

Also, I really like your use of mythology at the outset. There’s a world of wisdom in our myths, I’m always saying, but the one true religion these days is the myth of Western science (of the cosmos as a construct of fully-automatic mechanical forces among atomized particles between which there is no middle ground, no Commons, no intrinsic identity with all there is; you know, Cheney’s world).

Strange thing is, and this comes a total science geek, if we assume the cosmos, our very own source, to be nothing but god-forsaken dirt, one big mechanism governed by Newton’s laws of which our science, economy and military are the supreme examples, then we end up making Newtonian voodoo dolls of our natural born selves.

This is the source of an answer to the question many have asked, regarding the conflation of money with speech.

If the cosmos is a mechanism, and if the economy is a cosmic justice-dispensing machine (either God’s own or no one’s own), then the unit of energy analogous to the erg is the dollar. Recall that we shipped the largest amount of cash to Iraq, pallets full of $100 bullets, in the history of the world.

Words, too, become reduced to quantum energy packets, in the minds of unreconstructed mechanists. What’s the difference between deploying snipers, and deploying Message Force Multipliers? They both:
* hide their violent intentions;
* target vulnerable audiences;
* make career-advancing killings.

The bad news is, just as excessive logic can be for attorneys, the myth of the Newtonian mechanism is now exposed as the Achilles Heel of our political economy. We can no longer simply apply more leverage while denying “externalities” like pollution, toxins, et cetera.

Metaphorically speaking, were in the same condition as Neo was when he awoke, to find himself an organic being in a hyper-mechanized world (in the movie The Matrix).

That’s why I’ve been saying, reclaiming our inalienable humanity is the first step toward humanizing our politics. We need to be the organic earthlings we’ve always been, while strangely believing ourselves to be “lean mean fighting machines.”

So, before we do that, are you still [Edited by Moderator. Not even as a bad attempt at humor]

Well, we figured that W wasn’t an honorary title bestowed on you by the former war criminal in chief, Glenn.

D’oh, left out the link to Greenwald’s article: Obama to indefinitely imprison detainees without charges

I’m pretty obnoxious, but too often people think that disagreement with one contention indicates supporting it’s opposite.

Last year I did run across an instance where someone had registered as ratfood at a gardening site and thought what are the odds?

Ratfood in the Garden — sounds like an edgy new rock band

You’ve not lost that, um … polished and very keen edge, I see macaquerman.

DW

I have a quite common name (click on the “F” and see my facebook profile). According to facebook there are over 1,500 with my name.

But it was my luck that the only deadbeat I’ve run across (out of the couple of dozen others I’ve known or had dealings with directly) had the same middle initial as I have.

Ah, you’re not just pretty, you are beautifully obnoxious, but, as a dedicated curmudgeon, I can appreciate that, mocker.

;~DW

I like it.

You are exactly right about Mr. Greenwald’s style of argument. I don’t know him, so I want to refrain from characterizing or essentializing him in someway. I am preparing a longer refutation of his argument.

A key point is one I’ve made before: speech forms are no longer equal. The speech of those who can afford television advertising is much more valuable obviously, it costs more) than the speech of the streetcorner activist. It is a mistake to ignore this and claim, as many rationalists do, that universal reason allows precisely the same reasoning ability, or the ability to resist or think through,television advertising as it does as essay at Slate.

Let it roll!!!

ratfood, you rock!!!

DW

I should have said Salon. Sorry.

Thanks, I can still get down like I used to, just harder to get back up.

“Rationalists” and those who are “passing” as “pragmatists” appear to have less than six degrees of separation between them when it comes to the aquired skill of ignoring the “inconvenient”.

Lucrative careers await.

(Unless “things” suffer some equally inconvenient “change”.)

Real good piece:

This cut: “led by a dull, uncharismatic elitist with the unpoetic name of John Roberts.” Exactly distilled my own thinking, thank you.

He was allowed to skate through his confirmation never giving a simple or streight answer to the softballs. He was of course only demonstrating the real value that is sought. The value, that is: Have the ability to and inborn nature to never say anything true or plain when there is a chance to lie and obscure. That turns upside down the concept that the supremes are of any use in explaining the law, which is less a thing to be understood as time made it into a kind of Alice in Wonderland experience. IE: Cheshire cat… provence. ” it means precisely what I wish it to… “

You know, Macaquerman, I think that comment is perfectly typical of why I think you’re a Troll. The extreme, almost ludicrous way you over react and immediately begin launching the most exaggerated personal insults. I said I thought you were in favor of how Israel treats the Palestinians, and you respond by accusing me of being in favor of the murder of children. But isn’t it your position that Israel treats the Palestinians fairly? Don’t you believe that Israel is acting in self defense? If so, why are so deeply hostile to the suggestion that you favor Israel?

You haven’t answer my question about how you think the Supreme Court’s decision will affect Congress’s policy on the Middle East. I think we both know it will strongly reinforce the status quo, on this as well as on almost every other issue. And I think that fact has a lot to do with your support for the Supreme Court’s decision.

I’ll be interested to see if you can respond to this post in any other way than with another scream of irrelevant insults.

I did not kneed to know that, ratfood.

Is Arthur in this un rightis?

I know the old chap rather well, but I’m trying not to knuckle under, if ya know, what I mean?

But you are too young, for such dis-jointedness, if I recall?

DW

As regards Jamesian or Deweyan pragmatism, anyway (I wish there was another name for it), ignoring the “inconvenient” violates everything they stood for and wrote about. I agree there has been much foolishness perpetrated in the name, and terrible misunderstands about what philosophical pragmatism is. It is, in the end, a wonderful explication of and justification for an empowering humanism.

48 with psoriatic arthritis, which if you’re unfamiliar is sort of a variant on RA. Also rife with osteo-arthritis in addition to a few factory defects of a skeletal nature.

Fortunate to have Medicare and grateful to cope as well as I do.

Glenn,

The walls of the city will only fall, when the mode of the music finally changes — when leaders in high office and in business and the MSM publically read your Moloch post from beginning to end as a call to action like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BksTHQo8Q78

And then they actually back up their rhetoric with decisive, effective action, and risk being branded as traitors to their class as was FDR.

and my response was to highlight your very obnoxious leading question.
I answered it calmly and you continued the bullshit.
Introduce an unrelated issue, make me defend a position i don’t hold, and then say that it’s unimportant and off-topic while you’re posting follow up questions?
wonderful of you.

In all ways cool, you is bad to the bone, ratfood.

(I feel for ya and appreciate that you choose to help me better understand your life and thereby even more deeply appreciate the effect of your presence here.)

DW

Thanks, I’ve been hoping I wasn’t being unfair, I really do admire his hair-raising logic more often than not.

Imagining our selves and our cosmos as mechanisms is extremely powerful, as we all know, but that doesn’t make us mechanisms, we’re still organisms, only now we’re nucking futs after centuries of seeing our selves that way.

That’s the effect I call cellf-imprisoning our selves in cellves of our own mistaken making.

The flashes and sounds from commercials are notorious uses of TVs as modems, to jack us around against our better judgment or will, not just abstract conveyors of abstract arguments. As Chomsky & Herman noted so long ago, we’ve been reduced, from citizens to consumers, and are being delivered to slaughter by the manufacture of consent. To insist that it be done rationally completely misses the point.

I don’t support Congressional policy in the ME, if you’re talking the tilt to Israel.

and that never entered my consideration of the decision.

Excellent, knowbuddhau.

Powerful stinger, there at the end,

(The truth is like that … )

So you think saying I’m “FOS (Full of Shit?)” is a calm response? You may notice your reaction to my response was edited by the moderator? It’s probably lucky for your reputation that it was. Your reaction was so ludicrously extreme that it frankly made you look really bad. Do you really think the reason your post was moderated is because I’m the one being unreasonable?

Have you read Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent”? He talks about the way some positions are filtered out of the discussion. It seems to me that you are acting (perhaps not consciously) as a filter in the Chomskian sense, doing your best to make sure that the subject of Israel is never discussed. If anyone does mention it, even in passing, you instantly appear and start making the sort of comments for which you got moderated.

[Mod Note: As you noticed, the Mod does edit. And you're very close. So let's back off the heat on both sides now]

Book Salon a couple of flights upstairs with Joseph Stiglitz’s Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy hosted by William Black

Glenn, who brought up Israel in the middle of a discussion of a Supreme Court decision?
It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Chomsky.

Who opened up with an unfair and untrue allegation?

It wasn’t me and Noam.

Let’s leave it at that.

And perhaps you might note that I answered the almost-reasonable, but still unfounded question about the ME.
If you want to continue…

Not this Glenn.

and bless you for that

I had thought that I was being belabored by an agent of the FDL Corp.

bless you twice for pitying my foolishness and easing my paranoia.

OK, speaking of Achilles and his heel, I just visited Scott Horton’s blog, No Comment, for I swear the first time today.

I’m going long on this one, then going outside. I bow in all y’all’s virtual directions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Auden—The Shield of Achilles

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

Continue reading here

–W.H. Auden, from The Shield of Achilles (1953)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The assumption of the mechanistic reduction does just that to the whole cosmos, reducing it to “nothing but” god-forsaken dirt. Mechanism is a view, an heuristic, a metaphor, a myth, one among many, that has become the one and only officially authorized truth, making it our de facto state religion. Even using language and words is a technique of using tools to convey thoughts, but who mistakes the words for the things themselves?

When you shout someone down, does it matter if you make sense doing it? Did the Brooks Brothers rioters make sense?

Tom Engelhardt calls it a “religion of Force.”

Excerpted from
Crusading the Arc of Instability
Tom Englehardt, TomDispatch
January 18, 2007

The Church of Our Man of Global Domination

So think of this as Bush’s crusading scorecard for the years 2001-2007 — this record of barbarism with its guarantee of a “whirlwind of blowback,” as Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times puts it, and the unmistakable look of a war against Islam.

In truth, the most obvious factor linking all of the above together, however, the real thing they have in common, is not, in the normal sense, religious at all. If there is a religious war going on, waged by men (and a few women) of faith, then that faith is neither Christianity, nor Judaism, nor is the war against Islam per se. It comes instead from the fundamentalist Church of Our Man of Global Domination and at its heart is the monotheistic religion of Force. If the arc of instability were inhabited by recalcitrant, angry, sometimes armed, and sometimes destructive Buddhists, sitting on vast energy reserves, this war would look like a war against the Buddha himself.

The essential doctrine of faith that ties all the disparate foreign-policy acts of this administration together is the belief that to every global problem, to every difficult situation, there is but a single striking and uniform response — not the application of democracy, but the application of force.

[...]

The sort of eternal global military domination imagined in the National Security Strategy document they issued with great fanfare in 2002 is, of course, long gone. The sort of domination in Iraq and other lands in the arc of instability of which the neocons dreamed so fervently is no longer at issue either.

The religion of Force has proven itself a remarkably weak reed in our complex and difficult world, but that doesn’t matter to them. Like many cultists, deeply imbued with their own way of looking at life, our President, our Vice President, and their dwindling band of compatriots can still imagine no other solutions than force, whatever the presenting problems. [Emphasis added.]

Consider the possibility that the quickest way to slow down King Corporation is by purging all his handmaidens. All Republicans. All Democrats. In a single news cycle next November 2.

If November 2010 makes Fall of 2008 look gilded? If the violence we see today in Afghanistan is beginning along our southern border? The 40%-50% of eligible voters who normally don’t bother in midterms?

Please note: Mexico has had two “successful” revolutions.
The first in 1810. The Second in 1910.
Apparently celebrations meant to honor 1810 helped beget 1910.

FLUSH the DC TOILET in 2010!

Replace as many congressional Republicans and Democrats as possible with candidates who belong to neither wing of the Wall Street Party.

Saturn devouring his sons.

http://www.avenuedstereo.com/modern/goya_saturn.jpg

SUPREME COURT RULING ON CAMPAIGN SPENDING CANNOT BE DOWNPLAYED

THE INTEGRITY OF OUR REPUBLIC IS AT STATE.

As some folks downplayed the Massachusetts loss, there is one story that we cannot allow to fade.

All three of the White House Staff sounded an alarm about the Supreme Court’s decision that lifts all limits on corporate spending (which includes everything from Big Business to Big Labor to Big Advocy Groups). I am alarmed about this on a number of levels.

This ruling gives foreign powers an enormous amount of power in determining American political life.

Here is a good (bad) example: Aramco, a corporation owned by the Saudi Arabian government, will have enormously more influence in choosing your senator than you will.

Saudi Aramco is the state-owned national oil company of Saudi Arabia. It is the largest oil corporation in the world with the largest proven crude oil reserves and production. Headquartered in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Aramco also operates the world’s largest single hydrocarbon network, the Master Gas System. It was known as just Aramco between the years of 1933-1988, an acronym for Arabian American Oil Company.

Associated companies/subsidiaries

* Aramco Services Company (ASC): HQ in Houston.
* Aramco Overseas Company B.V. (AOC B.V.) – HQ in The Hague.
* Aramco Associated Company (AAC)
* Aramco Training Services Company
* Saudi Refining, Inc. (SRI)
o Aramco Financial Services Company (AFSC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi Refining, Inc.
* Saudi Petroleum International, Inc. (SPI) – HQ in New York.
* Bolanter Corporation N.V.
* Pandlewood Corporation N.V.
* Saudi Petroleum Overseas Ltd. – HQ in London.
* Vela International Marine Ltd.: HQ in Dubai.

Each of these companies will be able to spend money freely on issues or candidates they endorse. Current disclose rules will provide no relief from this. There is virtually no transparency now. How bad will it get when there is even more money flowing in the system and the motivation to create front groups or bury responsibility in jargon will be even stronger than it currently is?

Want to guess how interested this company will be in controlling our energy policy? Want to guess how interested this company will be in controlling our environmental policy? Want to guess how interested this company will be in controlling our trade policy? ….Our research and development policy?….Our international banking policy? ….Our Middle East Policy regarding Israel, Iran, Muslim Fundamentalism?

This will not stand. It cannot stand. There are too many Americans who love this country and won’t allow it to happen. Are you one of them?