Spill, Baby, Spill

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Obama's "brand" is competent government, that's one reason so much is expected of him, and this particular disaster is probably the worst possible for him because he has limited choices on what he can do. That's why it's essential he give the appearance of being in charge even if there is little he can do.

A lot of this is the media's fault. I've been watching the TV coverage carefully all along and my constant question has been "Where are all the boats out there sopping the oil up?" An Obama representative was on Meet The Press this morning saying there were 1,400 boats out in the Gulf doing all kinds of things to get rid of the oil. Well, then, WHY THE HELL HAVEN'T I SEEN THAT!! Or even heard it. We see the footage of the oil hitting the marshlands over and over and over, but pictures of boats in the Gulf are few and far between.

It's been my suspicion for a while and this adds to it, that the corporate media is doing it's best to deliberately put Obama in a bad light. They ignore news that would make him look good and focus only on news that makes him look bad.

But Obama is helping them. He believes in substance over appearance so he doesn't spend much time boasting over his accomplishments when he should have everyone in the administration announcing them every second of every day. I thought he had learned that but apparently he hasn't.

Make no mistake, I am not a big Obama fan, it's clear he is just another corporatist, but there have been dozens of things that show why it's better to elect Democrats over Republicans, but few people know about it. Taxes are the lowest they have been since the 1950's because Obama has lowered them (I got an extra 20% off my taxes this year), but when the Tea Party people were polled 80% of them thought he had raised them.

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Rand Paul

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Watching the news the last few days has been hilarious. It seems that everyone is shocked and surprised at the idea that Rand Paul is against the civil rights act from 1964. I don’t know why they are surprised, there were articles on this in a Kentucky newspaper earlier, besides, this is basic Libertarianism. They want the government out of everything.

Imagine if people could do whatever they wanted on their property, which is one of the main Libertarian principles. Anyone could keep any kind of person they wanted out of their shop which operates in the public domain. In one place that is owned by a Muslim there would be no Jews or Christians allowed, or if he wanted to charge black people twice as much he could do it. Nor would he need to follow even the most basic safety needs.

Libertarians say that the free market will work these things out for themselves, someone restricting certain people from their establishment would not be able to stay in business long, or if people started dying in there people would stop shopping there. The problem with that is - people have to die first! You would think that maybe we could do something that keeps people alive - well we have, it’s called regulation.

And businesses in the South stayed open during 100 years of Jim Crow laws, so the market doesn’t always correct itself and sometimes there is a huge price to pay when there is a correction. The Libertarian view is that freedom doesn’t come cheaply, besides, they think only stupid people would get hurt and who cares about them, anyway?

The free market is a fraud, it doesn’t exist. It would be like a football game with no rules, brutal and no fun to watch. On top of that without government interference it’s the rich who are in control. Over time all the small businesses get swallowed up by the big corporations and when there are only a few places someone can work the corporations effectively have slaves who have to accept whatever ridiculous wages and working conditions they want. So in a very real sense it’s like a football game where all the rules were written by one team and only for their benefit. Any doubts who would win?

So libertarianism and smaller government is not about freedom, at least not about the freedom of you or me. It’s all about the big corps being able to do whatever they want at any cost. This is what we have seen happening because of the 8 years rule of the Bushies. The idea is that business can “self-govern” - what a joke. The banksters were self-governing when they crashed the world’s economy. British Petroleum was self-governing with that oil rig, where the spill is in the process of destroying the Gulf. They couldn’t even be bothered to have an emergency plan in place just in case anything did go wrong.

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Frank Frazetta, Master Comic Book and Fantasy Illustrator, Dies

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Frank Frazetta, the master illustrator whose brooding, epic painting style shifted the tone of comics and fantasy paperback covers forever, has died. He was 82.

He was the Grand master of comic and fantasy art, I'm sorry to see him go. I think all art in the field today was influenced by him. I rarely cry when famous people die but I'm feeling misty right now. I spent a lot of time from my teenage years on studying - and copying - his art.

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