Rotten to the Core

Dear Apple defenders,

I don't give a damn about Apple as a corporation. I am only interested in Apple as a cultural phenomenon. However, if you wish to encounter real criticism of Apple's corporate practices, not some fluff by the NYT, please read William Black's two analysis pieces about Apple as a criminal fraud operation:

• Anti-employee Control Fraud - In this article, Black discusses the nature of this kind of white-collar crime, how it functions, why it drives ethical corporations out of business, and how international supply chains encourage this behavior.
• The New York Times’ Ode to Foxconn and Anti-Employee Control Fraud - In the second article, Black goes through the New York Time's article and it's failure to really interrogate the discrepancies in the accounts given by and about Foxconn. 

Weekly Menu - January 29

Here's what's on the menu for this week around here.

Rotten Apples

There is nothing so annoying as an Apple fanboi/grrl. Especially when they are probably just some shill hired by Apple to search The Interwebz and post pro-Apple comments to blogs that have said something less than complimentary about their gizmos.

What Riverdaughter Says

The left blogosphere might want to think about that for awhile. If it thinks that nothing it does makes a difference to the powers that be, maybe it should try dissenting and allow the pain of independence work its magic. DON’T say you’re going to vote for the bastards even if they treat you like shit. And then mean it. They’re counting on you to go along with the crowd in order to alleviate that pain and fear. Peer pressure only works if you let it. And those of us who have resisted from the beginning can’t reason with you to make you see our point of view. Resisting peer pressure is something you need to come to grips with on an emotional level your own. It *is* painful but worth it when your thoughts are your own. It’s sometimes physically disorienting and nauseating, I won’t lie to you. People aren’t going to like you. They’re going to call you stupid or mentally ill. They’ll say they were wrong about you and you’re not as sexy and smart as they thought you were. They’ll tell you that you will bring Armageddon down on everyone’s head if you let the Republicans win. They know how the brain game works because they’ve read the studies and it’s always worked this way. If you give in to them, they win and they can do whatever they like because they know you will go along in order to feel good about yourself.

They need you more than you need them.  They still need the momentum of the crowd, the frenzy of the mob, the mounting pressure as the election gets nearer.  They need your vote.  If you refuse it, you monkeywrench their entire peer pressure apparatus and then they have to start paying attention to you and addressing your demands.  They’d rather not have to do that.  They have other people to win over.  It’s easier for them to know that they have checked you off their list so they can move on to tougher nuts.  Don’t make it easy for them.

Sunday: Ok, I think we’re on to something here

Amen.

Anglachel

Occupation

oc·cu·pa·tion

[ok-yuh-pey-shuhn] noun

1. a person's usual or principal work or business, especially as a means of earning a living; vocation: Her occupation was dentistry.
2. any activity in which a person is engaged.
3. possession, settlement, or use of land or property.
4. the act of occupying.
5. the state of being occupied. 

Republican Follies

Obama is extraordinarily lucky in his selection of opponents this time around. Though hard to believe, the Republican Party is more internally divided than the Democrats, though the individual divisions have more ideological and participatory coherence than their counterparts in the Democratic Party.

Weekly Menu - January 22

I'm not sure I'll keep posting this, but I've had a few people ask me the kinds of things I cook and how I decide what to cook.

Food Experiment

Something I've been doing over the last few months is keeping a database of food purchases. I'm doing this for a few reasons.

Judgment

I'm in absolute, complete, unequivocal agreement with Riverdaughter in her post "failure to discriminate", especially this:

I’ve never seen so much denial in my life. The right was happy as all get out to stomp all over us before this shooting. If it really had nothing to do with it, and I’m not saying it did, why not just admit that it was fun while it lasted? Sarah and Glenn aren’t apologizing. Take credit for the poison. You deserve it!

But if you’re tired of it, like I am, turn off the TV and the radio. Step away from the fight. If you are an FDR type Democrat in Exile like me, this doesn’t have anything to do with you anyway. It’s just two anachronistic, legacy parties going at each other. It has very little to do with how people are living today. It won’t get more people employed, fix our crumbling infrastructure, punish the bankers or end a war. It is a major distraction.

Enough.

It's called judgment. It exists in its exercise. It is what my class has consistently, persistently failed to do since it decided the last Democratic president was too white, too hick, too Southern, and too transactional for them to deign to support. It's what my political opponents, the Movement Conservatives, refuse to do in their single minded pursuit of power, demonizing anyone who fails to fall in behind their hateful, anti-democratic message.

I've been avoiding the news for the most part this last week because of the opportunistic appropriation of the shooting by the usual political suspects. It's why I've avoided most American political news for the last two years. I think I stopped paying attention to most of the Media Kabuki when the loudest voices of Left and Right decided that whatever was wrong with the country, no matter the specific wrong being mentioned, it was the fault of "liberals". Those damn extremists. Those damn partisans. Those damn centrists. Those damn moderates. Those damn transactional, practical folks who give a little here and take a little there, aren't much in the mood for conspiracies, don't agree with any exterminationist sentiments (left or right), don't like culture wars standing in for political contest, and are getting really, really tired of single-issue, faux-victim politics.

Anglachel

Voices in His Head

A member of my family is paranoid schizophrenic. As I read about Jared Loughner, I think of this relative. There are many points of congruence - the decent but incomplete education, a fascination with intellectual discourse, a seemingly coherent exterior, a deep core of paranoia.

A familiarity with firearms.

In Search of the Ordinary

I've been really busy the last few days at work and haven't had any energy to blog. I still don't have much.

My evenings lately have been spent watching re-runs of Dr. Who. It is great fun, what with constantly saving damsels in distress and entire civilizations and foiling the bad guys.

I can see the appeal.

Mostly I've sat in wonder at the explosion of ever expanding hysteria among what were once reasonably intelligent blogs. I can't even begin to address these things because the fundamental assumptions underlying the arguments simply aren't rational. They have bits of fact, threads of insight, and an overwhelming body of self-referential reasoning. It reminds me of Thomas Pynchon's observation in Gravity's Rainbow:

If there is something comforting--religious, if you want--about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.

I feel caught between a faith that cannot see its lack of foundation and a determined cynicism that will not allow foundations to be laid. Faith and anti-faith denying a place to reason.

Apocalypse is so much easier to conceive of than the ordinary.

Anglachel

Imaginary Friends and Political Monsters

I haven't owned a television since 1989, and encounter it only rarely, such as at a bar or a friend's house. I read about media, entertainment and television on the Internet and in print far more than I watch it. I estimate I watch 8-10 hours of TV a year (broadcasting, not using a TV to view movies or DVDs) and am put off by most of what I see.

Which leads me to the reports of various head-explosions over Dancing with the Stars, where viewer voting is keeping Bristol Palin in the competition. Being without a TV and completely unwilling to even try to locate clips online of any contestant, I can say that I am unbiased about the relative dancing skills of anyone appearing on the show - don't know, don't care

What I do care about is that the show is adding to the media relevancy of the Palin name. McCain's choice should have been a sad selection of VP, on par with Gore's ill-advised selection of Joe Lieberman*, notable only for its bald-faced pandering to a certain obnoxious group internal to the party. But a funny thing happened on the way to the defeat, namely that the Left's reaction to Palin cemented her as a hero on the Right, while their beatification of Obama has led to increasing levels of political demonization of people with reasonable criticisms of his ineffectual center-right politics.

Oh No - He's Your Son of a Bitch

Obama is not a Clinton Democrat. I'm a Clinton Democrat. I voted for Hillary. I picked the candidate who had the best mix of policies for the middle class and who had the best track record of delivering on legislative measures. I picked someone with a decades long record on human rights and promoting heath care reform. Me and the majority of registered Democrats threw our support to Hillary Clinton.

Obama did not come to power because of me. I did not give Obama my primary vote. I constantly pointed out his conservative tendencies in my blog. I did not give him any funds. I did not cast a vote for him in the general - I wrote in Hillary's name. I knew what he was and what he would do since November 2007. I did not fall for his bullshit.

YOU DID.

You, David Sirota. You Josh Marshall. You, Jane Hamsher. You, Arianna Huffington, and Markos, and Armando/BTD, and Big Media Matt, and Ezra Klein, and Kevin Drum, and Steve Benen, and Digby, and Jeralyn, and Chris Bowers, and all the rest of you self-proclaimed liberal/progressive/radical types who decided that you should be the arbiters of progressivism.You proclaimed "Out with Bubbas, up with Creatives" and swore your allegiance to Whole Foods Nation. Your idol was The Precious.

You shilled for someone whose political hero is Ronald Reagan. You gave him your votes, your money, your volunteer time, and your seal of approval. You devoted your time and energy to promoting him and brushing away the very valid questions about what he would actually do if he gained the office. You called those of us who dared to ask these questions bitter, low-information, racists, and said we were voting with our cunts. You said that we didn't support Obama because we supported McCain/Palin. You did everything in your power to bully, threaten, shame and intimidate us into going along with your delusional fantasy.

For crying out loud you fucking threw PAUL KRUGMAN under the bus when he didn't drink your poisoned kool-aid!

Obama is your creation, not mine.

He is your son of a bitch, through and through, and is made in your image. He is what he labeled himself - an Obamacan, neither Democrat nor Republican, dedicated to nothings save his own cult of personality. You chose him and made him the media darling you wanted to associate with. You did so knowing exactly what he was, and the single biggest reason you did this was to piss on Bill and Hillary Clinton. All you wanted him to do was beat "that bitch", and it never once occurred to you what your son of a bitch would do when he got into office. This is why I call him The Precious - a beautiful thing that destroys and corrupts everything and everyone it touches.

Don't you presume to call him a Clinton Democrat.

Anglachel

The Truth of the Bitter White Elite Class

In the 2008 primaries, I wrote an article The Myth of the Bitter White Working Class that, using the work of Paul Krugman and Larry Bartels, poked holes in the moronic claims by Stevensonian elites that the white working class in America, Bubbas and Bunkers, are collectively responsible for perpetuating Republican rule because they are such knuckle-dragging, low-life, racist, anti-intellectual rubes, clinging to guns and God, as Obama (in)famously put it. I pointed out, way back in April 2008, this was little more than projection:

The basic problem is that two similar reactions to frustration - anger and bitterness - are getting conflated and transposed in an attempt to explain away Obama's failure at the polls.  ... What we are seeing is the way in which Obamacan bitterness over not getting what they want (and a pony) results in them crudely projecting their biases and fears onto people who are simply voting their interests. Bitterness is a reaction to having been stymied or betrayed, and is not an automatic reaction to having to work hard. I suspect a lot of working class people, regardless of color or gender, look at the shit life throws them pretty much the way I do, which is to sigh, daydream a bit about winning the lottery, and then just getting on with the business of making do with what life has handed you. It's only if you feel entitled to something you haven't received or burdened by things you do not deserve that you become bitter. Anger can be empowering. I have never encountered bitterness that is not corrosive and destructive.

Phrenology

Lambert beat me to the most amusing line from Bob Somerby's post election take-down, but there is a lot more to the Incomparable One's analysis than the snark about limbic brains.

What Bob is doing is unpacking the cultural Stevensonian shorthand of "dumb racists" and demonstrating why this narrative does not play in Peoria - Shop of Fools. Focusing on how the phrase "take our country back" is used and abused by various political actors, Bob says:

[Former Pennsylvania governor Ed] Rendell wants to take our country back already! He wants to take it back so much, he voiced the desire three times.

Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with what Rendell said. This is standard political talk—so standard that it formed the title of one of Dean’s books. But when Robinson hears this language from the other side, he types a hackneyed column, using mumble-mouthed formulations to advance the one political claim modern liberals know how to advance. Is this as dumb as what Bachmann did when she spoke with Cooper on Wednesday? That would be a matter of judgment. But in our view, it reflects the paucity of actual politics in the burgeoning liberal world. This lack of real politics also appeared when Collins blathered at Maddow.

Olbermann Out

Falstaff says it best: "Keith, we knew ye all too well. Richly deserved -- but for rather different reasons. This is like getting Capone on tax evasion."

Here are my reasons:

• Falsies -May 13, 2009
• Women They Love to Hate -November 14, 2008
• The Lady Killers - October 15, 2008
• Metaphor? No, Murder. - April 25, 2008 
• Olbermann Calls for Clinton's Murder - April 24, 2008

Anglachel

Dance With Them Who Brung Ya

The saying goes that you should "dance with them who brung ya," a colloquial way of pointing out that you have substantive obligations towards those who brought you to whatever festive occasion you are attending.

The Democrats faced the penalty of failing to follow this advice in two ways in the midterms. The people who the Dems didn't want to be seen with in the last electoral round and who have been treated as expendable for the last two years, most crucially white, relatively affluent women, declined the invitation, either by outright defection to the opposition (notably those who are married) or by not voting at all (unmarried women). The party was also rejected by those who they courted assiduously two years ago - independent men and the "youth" vote - who decided to find another dance partner this time around.

From the LA Times, "Blacks, Latinos stick with shrinking Democratic base" (my emphasis throughout):

Democrats searching for good news amid the rubble of Tuesday's midterm election results can look to Latinos and African Americans, two groups of voters that stayed with the party in large numbers.

But that, in a sense, is like taking comfort in that fact that as your house is falling down around you, it isn't also on fire.

On His Head

Sorry to keep quoting myself, but when you're right, you're right. On June 7, 2008, I posted The Front Lines of Democracy, an analysis if HRC's "concession" speech. I quoted her at length and then talked about how her presentation of the issues and challenges facing Democratic candidates and constituencies differed from Obama's:

The New Gilded Age

I'm watching the balance of power wobble along (Boo, Rand Paul! Yay, Andrew Cuomo!) and have some special interest in local and state initiatives (Boo, Prop D! Yay, Prop 19!), but otherwise don't have much invested in the outcome.

The course for the next generation was set back in 2008, when the Stevensonian elite subverted their own party's electoral process (Be a Democrat for a Day!) so that they could feel morally superior voting for a black man. Obama himself has said quite clearly that no one would bother to vote for him if he was white. This says much of his political calculation, but even more of his supporters. They were truly the Joshua Generation, unwilling to do more than their political predecessors and envious that they could not be cultural heroes like the economic giants of FDR's era or the moral giants of MLK's. And, having aimed so low and compromised so much so they could pretend to stand up to the "racists", they now get to live with that legacy. Unfortunately, so do the rest of us.

The Unwashed

I watch the current electoral folderol with mixed feelings. As for my local charade, I'm voting Yes for most Democrats (but not Jerry), Yes on legalizing pot, Yes on removing the 2/3 super majority vote to pass a state budget, No on most else, and a bothered No on Prop D in San Diego, which asks for a half cent sales tax increase, but only after the mayor has satisfied certain conditions for regulating the city budget, chief of which are union busting and outsourcing. The money gathered is not allocated for correcting any of the budget shortfalls, such as public safety staffing or reductions in public services, and is tied to a midnight pigs-at-the-trough deal with the state giving large sums of city money to a redevelopment agency that has some ethics problems with keeping track of the dough. Isn't Prop D the Stadium Initiative? is how one local small business person (runs a very nice restaurant in my neighborhood, in fact) discusses the proposition, which in this formulation manages to get cover for putting local people out of a job (the union-busting) and hand bags of cash to the local Republican-dominated developer elite who want their downtown taxpayer funded football stadium, damn it!

Back to the unease.