Re: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23iht-edcohen.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print
Does it ever occur to people like Cohen that the Bush administration's response to 9/11 wasn't really a frantic lashing about to deal with an incalculably frightening and disheartening event? Within weeks after the event, the Patriot Act sprung from the drawer of a Justice Department attorney intact -- a complete architecture for undermining civil rights in an era of unending war and indeterminable threat. No, that was an act of calm prepossession, as if the events that apparently made it necessary were somehow preordained, if not necessarily prescribed.
Does Cohen and his cadre ever wonder why the Bush administration moved so swiftly and readily toward a usurpation of power -- the consolidation of control into the "unitary executive" branch? Again, the swiftness and sureness of these OVP-led actions betrays not a sudden fright -- a search for answers though the midst of dark nights of the soul -- but rather the execution of a thoroughly reviewed and vetted strategy -- one just waiting for the right event to precipitate its execution.
Does the wise man like Roger Cohen consider that the company the Dick Cheney lead before "reentering public service" was so completely prepared to operate as the outsourced provider for military services -- that its capacity was an almost hand-to-glove fit for the military operations deployed in the Middle East? Was this the sudden and striking response to a global crisis comparable to that executed by the US during World War II? Or was it evidence that Cheney and Rumsfeld and their minions had been preparing these plans for over a decade -- again with precision and refinement, and executed with the calm resolve of a weekend corporate golf outing?
Does Cohen wonder how a large component of the real horror of the abuses of Abu Ghraib were conducted by a band of privateers, indemnified from accountability by the administration? Could it be the case that 9/111 galvanized this posse of "broad shouldered" men to disrupt the military chain of command sufficiently to remove all accountability except for the few "bad apples" captured on cell phone cameras? These patriots doing the dirty work of democracy -- for $1250 an hours billed by CACI, Inc. of Reston, VA. Was this the panicked and irresolute action of a nation swaying as it developed a response to an unseen, incalculable horror? Or was it further proof of a monstrous architecture, lovingly conceived and hatched inside right-wing think tanks through the Clinton era -- as the BJ kabuki played to its sad denouement?
Cohen's intellectual fraud in this piece is that he conflates the "torture issue" with all the wrongs committed by BushCo during its reign. In his construction, by facing some of the ugly facts of one tiny side note of the most monstrous strategic miscalculation in the republic's history, then somehow we can claim to have had our collective "accountability moment" and move on. But the failure to expose and recognize the fact that the Bush administration's activities were clearly NOT those of a flailing and reactive group, but were instead marched out in order as off a giant GANTT chart on a wall in the White House sub-basement. that is the real danger that this post recognizes and which the commentary amplifies. Lots of people (Richard Clarke, Ron Susskind, Naomi Klein, et alia) have demonstrated that the Bush administration's actions were clearly preordained and predetermined to a frightening degree. Cheney sought establishment of unitary executive. He and Rumsfeld executed a well-established plan for privatizing the military. The frightening pictures from Abu Ghraib were a distraction from the fact that private companies were doing most of the torture! Did that thought only occur in a post-9/11 environment? Given what we know now, it's impossible to think that it wasn't pre-ordained.

The New Thesis, take 1
The corporate media has decided that the downturn is the fault of all the evil working and middle class people who were part of an evil conspiracy to take out bank loans and credit lines they could never afford to pay back. It's YOUR FAULT PEOPLE is the message I see seeping from the corporate media I catch out of the corner of my eye.
I have another perspective. Corporate America has pursued a set of catastrophically destructive strategies since the beginning of the new millennium. Some would say twas ere so, but the cost removal policies that drove the outsourcing boom, the establishment of law and legal concerns as the primary skill set for the executive class, and the strategy of making money by floating cashflow and other financial engineering tactics have left most businesses merely hollowed out shells. Now that the opportunity to make money with money has dried up, corporate America can now be characterized as a metastatic body committed to strategies that have no connection to combining capital, labor, and other infrastructure into products and services that are demanded now, and into the future. They are still looking for ways to make money by floating cashflow into the giant Ponzi system that the Ibanks and insurance companies had devised, and are hunkering down to generate income by suing. This is what they have left.
The Dow is down, and will continue to sink, becuase the future cash flows of these reckless, smoldering hulks will continue to sink. Big business largely divorced itself from its underlying productive capacities, and as a result will flounder in a new environment that is diametrically opposite to what it is set up to achieve. Companies with lawyers as their CEO will continue to crash and burn. Companies who elevated financial engineers to key spots will shrink into oblivion.

That Prince of Foods
"...Bruce Fowler on trombone, Napoleon Murphy Brock on tenor sax and lead vocals, Terry Bozzio on drums, Tom Fowler ob bass, Denny Walley on slide, George Duke on keyboards, Captain Beefheart on vocals and soprano sax and madness. Thank you very much for coming to the concert tonight, hope you enjoyed it. Goodnight Austin Texas wherever you are!"
I llistened to this song for the nth thousand time at the gym yesterday. No matter how many times I hear it, I always want to match the energy and intensity screaming through. FZ and the band were on that night at the Armadillo World Headquarters in May 1975. Wow. The Flyers were playing the Sabres on their way to their second Stanley Cup. I was in 8th grade at St. Barnies. It's sometimes interesting to go back in time to think about what you were doing in your life when a live recording was made.
Muffin Man is really tow songs, I think. The spoken-word studio intro, with the processed piano and kazoo, and the live section; essentially the with same phrase repeated twice, and then the solo.javascript:void(0)
I think Zappa once said that he always played the same solo. In his Project/Object universe that's probably totally valid. Having listed to a lot of his work, there's certainly a lot of resonance among his soloes. But this one benefits from Bozzio's muscular drumming underneath--Terry Ted's work throughout that Bongo Fury record is a pretty singular statement in rock drumming. To the extend that it drove FZ's wailing, cutting, smashing solo on that song again validates Zappa's belief in teh importance of the accuracy and discipline fo the drummer as being the key to playing his music correctly.

White Paper
I'm working on a white paper for community infrastructure co-ops.
My intent is to get fed funding for building a prototype.

Transparency
They're pouring water on blades of the paper shredders in the EOB right now -- the way they did doing battlefield amputations in the Civil War.

Vikram Pandit is an abject failure.
'nuff said.

Why He Won

I don't see how Bush fucking up has anything to do, per se with Obama getting elected.
In my mind, Obama got elected by running a near-flawless campaign. He leveraged Howard Dean's groundbreaking work in terms of organizing and fund raising. He recognized that in genuinely troubled times, overt and reactive partisanship wasn't the right prescription. Overall, he had a winning strategy from the outset, and stuck to it. One of the bobbleheads I heard last night coughed up a truism: most battles are over before the first shot is fired.
Obama's victory is akin to Bill Clinton jumping into the fray in 1991, when all the Democrat bigshots were bailing -- refusing to be cannon fodder before an a triumphant GHW Bush's inevitable landslide. Clinton (and his team) sensed something different and developed the plan to capitalize on it, and it worked. In the face of obstacles and stupidity, their hand stayed firm. It was the plan that won.