Happy Birthday, Peace Symbol

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the peace symbol.

More nostalgia

When science discovers the obvious

It took a scientific study for someone to figure this out:

In the world of romance, we seek out partners who are just as "hot" or "not hot" as we are.

A new study supports the idea that super models flock together while individuals lacking the perfect face and body also stick together.

"Beautiful people marry beautiful people and less beautiful people marry less beautiful people," said Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at MIT's Program in Media Arts and Sciences and Sloan School of Management.

Well golly gee. Who knew?

Progressivism is still dead, thank you very much

From David Sirota's column in today's San Francisco Chronicle:

Obama has let Clinton characterize the 1990s as a nirvana, rather than a time that sowed the seeds of our current troubles. He barely criticizes the Clinton administration for championing job-killing trade agreements. He does not question that same administration's role in deregulating the financial industry and thereby intensifying today's boom-bust catastrophes. And he rarely points out what McClatchy Newspapers reported this week: that Clinton spent most of her career at a law firm "where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards," including Wal-Mart's.

Sirota points out that "Obama hasn't touched any of this," noting, for example, that

his campaign relies on corporate donations. Though Obama certainly is less industry-owned than Clinton, the Washington Post noted last spring that he was the top recipient of Wall Street contributions. That cash is hush money, contingent on candidates silencing their populist rhetoric.

More music they don't make anymore

Morford on Exxon, profits, war, and greed

Interesting quote from a column by Mark Morford:

Here, then, is perhaps the most dominant question surrounding the upcoming big transition, as the nation prepares over the next year to finally rid itself of the cancer of Bush: Are we still capable of reshaping the capitalist demon, injecting it, on a national scale, with something like conscience and compassion and responsibility, sans the need to sell your mother, rape Alaska, or bomb ancient cities and kill pathetic foreign dictators in a pitiable attempt to vindicate your dad? Is such a turnaround even possible anymore?

Because this nasty truth remains: Bush or no, Exxon and its nefarious, insanely powerful ilk are ramming full speed ahead, undertaking more incredibly brutal, land-raping techniques as you read these very words to get at the Earth's remaining supply of oil, sucking up tar sand and coal and anything else possible to maintain profit and power. They are, and will continue to be, utterly relentless and, at least for a number of years to come, quite unstoppable.

There is no eliminating the dark side of capitalism, the gluttony and the greed and the violent underbelly. There is only minimizing, shifting the emphasis, changing the pitch and angle of approach, trying to take what is, at its very heart, a flawed and self-destructive system, and making it into something proud and interesting and vibrant, something actually worth defending.

Can it be done? Is it still possible? No matter how many poetic Barack Obama speeches, no matter how many pragmatic Hillary Clinton promises, it's a question that seems far bigger than both of them. And the truth is, it's really the only question that matters.

They don't make music like this anymore

I love Berkeley

From today's New York Times:

BERKELEY, Calif. — While the City Council here has little — read, no — sway over foreign policy and distant wars, local parking is a different matter. And so it was that a parking space directly in front of the recruiting station here for the Marine Corps was awarded on Tuesday night to an antiwar group in the hope of running the Marines out of town.

Having failed in recent years to impeach President Bush and stop the war in Afghanistan, members of the City Council approved a resolution that encourages people to nonviolently “impede, passively or actively,” the work of the recruiters.

Life Under American Capitalism

Here's two news items about life under American capitalism:

Exxon Mobil Posts Record Profits

US loses 17,000 Jobs in January

Neither Obama nor Clinton

I occasionally hear the word "progressive" used to describe either Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama. Whenever I hear that, I have to shake my head. It quite frankly bothers me that mainstream corporate liberalism is somehow trying to co-opt the word "progressive" for beliefs and values that are diametrically opposed to progressive ones.

Let's get something straight. There will be no progressive realignment under a Democratic president. While I understand the frustration that one feels after eight years of Bush, I would not characterize either Obama or Clinton as being even remotely progressive. Both candidates, for example, have gone out of their way to placate corporate interests in the hopes of getting support from Big Business (as the recent article in Fortune that I cited in my previous entry put it, "Clinton and Obama view CEO support as a key part of their crossover appeal.")

You cannot be a progressive if you are not willing to actively challenge the corporate ruling class--something that is clearly off both of these candidates agendas. Instead, they go hat in hand looking for handouts from corporate CEOs. And we know how the tit for tat works in that case.

Neither candidate calls for single-payer health care. Neither candidate calls for an immediate and total withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Both candidates have repeatedly voted to fund the war in Iraq when it has come up for a vote. In fact, neither Obama nor Clinton will commit to getting US troops out by 2013! Obama counts among his advisers none other than Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was one of the biggest hawks in the Carter administration.

There is a lot of wishful thinking every November among people who support the Democrats, who keep hoping that this party, that is so much in bed with corporate interests, and which refuses to denounce Bush as a war criminal, and which continues to fund the war in Iraq, will somehow act as a progressive force in American politics. It just ain't gonna happen.