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In the parlance of the classic British colonial era, President Obama is faced with a bit of a sticky wicket in Benghazi, Libya. The metaphor refers to a patch of rough grass making it hard to hit the ball through the wicket in the British sport of cricket. British colonials liked to bring a little of England to the warm climes they colonized and played cricket on native-tendered grass between dealing with unruly wogs and quaffing gin and tonics to fight boredom and malaria.

Obama’s sticky wicket in Benghazi (four dead Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens) comes from the decision to pump in weaponry to support an assortment of militias to “take out” Muammar Ghaddafi, the mentally ill leader of Libya protected by a phalanx of armed females, a leader the US opposed after they supported him after they had opposed him. (I think that’s the correct order.) Ghaddafi was, of course, the inspiration for Admiral General Aladeen, Sacha Baron Cohen’s satiric leader in The Dictator.

Ghaddafi was finally ignominiously taken out in the desert by men who naturally humiliated him for a while and made him grovel before they put two into his brainpan. Praise Allah! God is great!

An armed man during the Benghazi consulate attack and the aftermath

Typically for American preemptive nation-state hits, at this point things got a little murky. As in: Who the heck are these militias we’re supporting? The media blitz until this point had the US as the good guys and the Ghaddafi troops as the bad guys. All was well. American leaders had convinced the American media who had convinced the American people that it was good-guys-versus-bad-guys and we Americans were the good guys working with Libyan good guys.

But, then, that pesky problem of Islam crept into the affair, and things quickly got confusing. Some of the militias we presumed were good guys were actually bad guys with strong feelings about Islam. The troublesome fact we suddenly became aware of was that these Muslim bad guys hated Ghaddafi just as much as we did. People started scratching their heads.

We know that there isn’t much “Hope” for “Change” — at least for progressive change — should President Obama win a second term as president.

Even when he had the chance, with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress during the first two years of his presidency, and with a solid mandate from the voters to act on restoring civil liberties, taking significant action against climate change, ending the wars and defending Social Security and Medicare, he did nothing.

There are some Democrats still caught up in the fantasy, imagining that if the president is re-elected, and doesn’t have another term to worry about, he will finally show his “real colors” and become the progressive they imagined him to be in 2008.

The evidence that this is not the case, though, is clear in the way he is campaigning. You don’t hear, and did not hear in either of the first two presidential debates, any call for voters to give the president a strong Democratic majority in House and Senate. In fact, there was not a word in either of those debates from the president about the importance of getting rid of the Republican control of the House, and of solidifying the Democratic grip on the Senate to prevent Republicans from again blocking any progressive legislation.

Sweating the small stuff: The Obama/Romney election is much ado about nothing

I went into my local township building Monday to settle up my local income tax bill. I had filed for an extension of my federal and state taxes back in April (call it my “Romney extension), because of my father’s unexpected death a few weeks before the tax filing date and the need to deal with his funeral and with arranging for care for my widowed mother, who has alzheimers, had taken up all my time.

I paid my local tax bill on time though, because at 1 percent of income it is a relatively small amount and was easy to get out of the way. I just made a rough estimate and dropped a check with the one-page form in the mail, figuring I’d settle the amount due after my federal taxes were completed. So, after finally getting my federal and state taxes done, I went to the town hall to settle up. It turned out I’d overpaid my local taxes by $165.

Ordinarily if I’ve overpaid my local tax, for example by paying too much in the four required estimated tax payments, the township simply applies the overpayment to my next tax year’s estimated payment. Not so this year. I was told that the collection of taxes by all the townships in Montgomery County had been privatized — taken over by a private accountancy firm called Berkheimer Tax Administrator, a company expressly created to bid for outsourced collection operations of local towns, school districts and counties, for a fee.

The immediate problem for me resulting from this astonishing privatization of a fundamental local government activity — the collection of taxes — was that the local township office said they could not credit my overpayment as before. “Berkheimer is in charge of the money,” a township official told me, “and they will send you a check for the overpayment.”

“But that means I will be late in filing the first two quarterly estimated payments for 2012,” I said, adding, “but I’m really not late, because they already have my money!”

Local governments are privatizing tax collection departments. Next the IRS?

Much is rightly made of the ‘maverick’ character of former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Arlen Specter in obituaries and other media coverage since his recent death.

That maverick streak certainly animated Specter’s December 2010 Farewell Speech from the Senate where he criticized the lack of civility currently rampant in that body plus assailed both political parties for perpetuating legislative gridlock and abuses of Senate rules.

Missing from this coverage, however, is any mention of a proper but unpopular position former prosecutor Specter took on the most contentious murder case in the history of the city where he lived – Philadelphia.

In July 1995, Specter bucked Philadelphia’s legal and political establishment by criticizing the judge then handling a pivotal appeal hearing for Mumia Abu-Jamal charging that jurist with crippling proper court procedure by unfairly rushing that critical Post Conviction Relief Act hearing.

Specter offered this unusual criticism in an equally unusual forum: a speech before the Republican National Committee.

Arlen Specter (l), and on right, French Mayor Catherine Payge with filmmaker/professor Johanna Fernandez and Mumia's son Jamal Hart a

Six children were attacked in Afghanistan and Pakistan this past week. Three of them, teenaged girls on a school bus in Peshawar, in the tribal region of western Pakistan, were shot and gravely wounded by two Taliban gunmen who were after Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old girl who has been bravely demanding the right of girls to an education. After taking a bullet to the head, and facing further death threats, she has been moved to a specialty hospital in Britain. Her two wounded classmates are being treated in Pakistan.

The other three children were not so lucky. They were killed Sunday in an aerial attack by a US aircraft in the the Nawa district of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, not so far from Pakistan. The attack, described by the military as a “precision strike,” was reportedly aimed at several Taliban fighters who were allegedly planting an IED in the road, but the strike also killed three children, Borjan, 12; Sardar Wali, 10; and Khan Bibi, 8, all from one family, who were right nearby collecting dung for fuel.

Initially, as is its standard MO, the US denied that any children had been killed and insisted that the aircraft had targeted three “Taliban” fighters, and had successfully killed them. Only later, as evidence grew indesputable that the three children had also been killed, the US switched to its standard fallback position for atrocities in the Afghanistan War and its other wars: it announced that it was “investigating” the incident and said that it “regretted” any civilian deaths.

There are several questions that arise immediately from this second story. First of all, if the three kids were close enough to be killed by this “precision” attack, they were surely also close enough to have been visible to whatever surveillance craft was monitoring the activities of the Taliban fighters, and if they were seen, there should have been no air strike called in. Second, the US, allegedly trying to reduce civilian casualties, is supposedly now operating its air attacks under rules of engagement that only allow strikes where there is “imminent danger” to US or allied forces. How is planting an IED an “imminent” danger? If the location is known, troops in the area can be alerted, and the IED removed or detonated. An identified IED is not an imminent threat.

The American media have been awash in coverage of the attack on the three Pakistani girls, and on the fate of the courageous girl’s education advocate, young Malala.

Dead children killed by US airstrike and Malala Yusufzai, 14-year-old victim of Taliban fanatics in Pakistan

Tuesday’s Presidential debate spoke volumes about the sorry state of politics today. Granted, both contenders gave a good show: Obama was back on his game and Romney did his best to sound like Ronald Reagan. The pundits have been given a lovely hopper of fodder to hold them for a week or so. It has been agreed that Americans only care for a spectacle, so this debate will be analyzed and judged the same way any theatrical event gets reviewed by the critics.

Unfortunately, between some of the things that the candidates said and the vast number of issues that they carefully avoided, with the help of a two-party run Debates Commission, the future doesn’t look too bright in the seeing-things-how-they-really-are department.

The two men tripped over each other praising domestic oil and gas extraction, arguing over who is the better friend to fossil fuel energy. Obama gushed excitedly about the 100 years’ worth of natural gas energy that we are starting to extract and consume. He even dragged up that old chestnut, “clean coal,” pointing out its “rightful” place in his energy policies. This is the same President who has been talking about the threat of climate change and our need to cut carbon emissions. But at this point in the campaign, it must be that the message isn’t selling well with potential voters, so any acknowledgement of the problem was jettisoned for the debate performance; better to not remind voters about such a downer issue. Until climate change can be monetized and traded for profit, it’s not going to have much appeal for the voting public.

While Obama and Romney held their carefully staged 'debate', the whole Stein/Honkala Green Party presidential ticket was busted outside for trying to crash the two-party show

 
No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
– H.L. Mencken
 
Frontline recently ran a documentary that amounted to interwoven bios of the respective characters of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. It made two points very clear. One, it takes an obsessive personal determination to seek the office of President of the United States of America. And, two, this being America in 2012, the capacity to delude, evade and outright lie through one’s teeth is critical to the process.

Unlike parliamentary systems like in Britain, the US campaign involves years of campaigning that involves filling up media and cable news space with pizzazz and conflict that has nothing to do with the real problems of America. Paradoxically, citizens get tired of it all as they clamor to be entertained by it. Avoiding substance becomes a real art, as the various media emphasize personal drama and the political equivalent of sports statistics. Meanwhile, the real problems fester and get worse, making American politics a lot like the Romney-Ryan health plan: Wait until the problem has reached the emergency level, then call 9/11. In American politics, this usually means a military or police option. Who says bi-partisanship is dead?

The two-hour Frontline documentary broke this mold a bit and actually analyzed what made the two candidates tick and, most important, what it was about them and their lives they most wanted to hide from the American people.

.

Obama was raised a virtual international orphan who developed into a strong-willed loner determined to fit in and to lead by facilitating a “get along” attitude among the diverse elements of American culture. He wants to avoid any discussion of this because, while his mother was an American citizen and he was born in Hawaii, his absent father was Kenyan and the American culture he has spent his life trying to fit into has deep and powerful strains of racism and a fear of anything foreign. One begins to appreciate how much Obama has hidden of his roots when Frontline points out he is the only Nobel Peace Prize winner with a Kill List.

Romney, on the other hand, was born into a powerful political family that was part of a religious group — the Morman church — that suffered and transcended serious trials. This inclined them to circle their wagons and struggle mightily to provide for their families in a religious version of The Godfather saga. Reportedly, the Romney family made, lost and re-made fortunes a number of times. But like Obama, Romney can’t discuss his family history because his grandfather and other Morman relatives were polygamists.

 
Life was passing away little by little
into stored memory.
Consequesntly death was becoming less possible;
just another archive
as life flowed back into the sun.
 
It is not at all surprising that
we started seeing ourselves in the sun.
Vision is a ray of transmuting images
with its own wavelength –
a 93,000,000 mile pure stream of imagery
and alongside it
words from life,
like ants,
carrying bits of memory and meaning,
glowing darker toward the growing disc. . .

After spending much of her 94-years as a civil rights activist this Washington, DC resident is understandably supportive of the Barack Obama presidency because she like many African-Americans never thought she’d ever see a black man sitting in that Oval Office seat designated for the most powerful person on earth.

This 94-year-old bristles at the extraordinary amount of criticisms unleashed against Obama telling a niece that she’d like to take a sharp sword and stick Obama critics “in the butt!”

Many blacks are touchy about criticisms directed toward Obama, feeling – with factual basis – that Obama receives unfair criticisms, particularly from right-wing conservatives.

For example Michelle Bachmann, the extremist Republican congresswoman with presidential aspirations, blasted Obama blaming him for historic high levels of black unemployment, a rate consistently double that of whites during this so-called Great Recession which actually is a full-blown depression for minorities and many whites.

Of course Bachmann’s partisan slam was silent on small yet salient facts like Obama inheriting the jobs killing recession from his Republican Oval Office predecessor who Bachmann blindly supported.

And, Bachmann’s blast blithely dismissed the fact that she and her Republican confederates on Capitol Hill have persistently opposed efforts by congressional progressives to pass jobs creating initiatives that would significantly increase employment among all jobless Americans, including blacks.

Blacks have been disproportionately punished in the US depression, and stimulus programs have helped mostly whites

One thing you can say about the financial industry. It has no sense of loyalty.

Back in 2008, most of the biggest contributors to presidential candidate Barack Obama were financial companies. According to the campaign fund tracking website Open Secrets, after the $1.65 million donated by a political action committee (PAC) for the University of California, the next biggest contributor was a PAC for the giant bank, Goldman Sachs, whose employees ponied up a reported $1 million. Right up there among the top contributors to the Obama campaign that year were two other of the nation’s top banks too: JP Morgan Chase, whose employee PAC gave $809,000, and Citigroup, which gave $737,000. Two more big banks, UBS and Morgan Stanley, as well as General Electric, which less than a year later bought a bank to enable itself to benefit from the government’s largesse in doling out billions of “rescue” dollars under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), were among Obama’s top 20 campaign donors, handing over $533,000, $512,000 and 530,000 respectively to support his election.

Obama, after winning the presidency, repaid all that campaign largesse, appointing bank industry lackeys and executives to top positions. He made Timothy Geithner, who as head of the New York Federal Reserve branch during the Bush administration, had ignored the scandalous derivatives scandals that brought on the financial crash, his Treasury Secretary, and Lawrence Summers, who as Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, had pushed for the deregulation of derivatives, and for allowing banks to merge with investment banks, and who during the Bush years earned millions as a consultant to the hedge fund industry and from speaking fees provided by Wall Street banks, got the post of head of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors. Meanwhile, GE’s chairman and CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, who famously exported thousands of GE jobs abroad, was given the post of White House Jobs “Czar.”

Given the ease with which the Obama administration allowed the financial industry to subvert the Congressional legislation designed to reform the banking industry in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008-9, and the White House decision not to prosecute a single bank executive for the wholesale destruction of the US and global economy, one might think that Wall Street would have rewarded Obama with more money for his re-election campaign. Instead the industry, seeing even more advantage in having a Republican in the White House, and particularly one of its own — venture capitalist and multi-millionaire Mitt Romney, has switched its support over to his opponent.

Wall Street has dumped Obama this time around, despite his four years of favors to the industry