Unhappy anniversary

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, According to the New York Times, both Democrats and Republicans did their best to ignore this:

Never mind that Iraq remains in perilous shape, free of Saddam Hussein and growing economically, but still afflicted by spasms of violence and struggling to move beyond autocratic government. With American troops now gone, the war has receded from the capital conversation and the national consciousness, replaced by worries about spending, taxes, debt and jobs. Whether the United States won or lost, or achieved something messy in between, seems at this point a stale debate.

This may be evidence that both Democrats and Republicans are morally bankrupt.

But some folks remember. For instance Jan at Can It Happen Here? posted this reminder on Monday. Democracy Now! posted an interactive timeline of all of their Iraq War coverage, which is continuing.

Looking at the consequences of the Iraq War is painful and disturbing. But is worth attending to the consequences of past and present US military interventions in the hope that we might prevent such evil and folly in the future.

The difference between feminism and assertiveness training

Over at Feminist Peace Network there is a fascinating new post on a soon-to-be released book by Sheryl Sandberg. You've never heard of Sheyrl Sandberg? Neither had I. Apparently she is the one woman on the board of directors of Facebook. Based on this accomplishment, Ms. Sandberg has authored a book.

Now frankly, I have a life and I'm busy with school, and I don't get on Facebook that much. (If I had more time to spend online, I might blog more often.) But apparently, Facebook, which has a policy against permitting hate speech. Except, they have this funny exception when it comes to posts justifying rape and other miscellaneous forms of woman-hatred.

Apparently, Ms. Sandberg has nothing to say about this in her new book, Leaning In. But she apparently has a lot to say about what women need to in order to achieve personal success. The problem, apparently, is that women lack the assertiveness to "lean in," to put ourselves forward, to take charge. But for some of us, feminism has always been about something more than getting a few more women at the top of the corporate ladder.

As Lucinda Marshall of FPN puts it:

What irks me is the notion that if women behave differently, the corporate world will welcome them in and hold the ladder while they climb to the top. In what way is this really different than telling a woman that what she wore precipitated a rape? I’m also thinking of military generals telling women that if they take on combat roles they will finally be paid equally and maybe be less likely to be sexually assaulted. The problem with that, and the problem with what Sandberg is saying is that the real issue is that there is something terribly wrong with the power-over dominator system on which the corporate and military power structures depend. And even if a higher percentage of women rise to the top, most women, and for that matter most men, will still be at the bottom.

I admire the deft way that Lucinda Marshall unpacks the self-absorption and arrogance of one very privileged woman who wants to lecture the rest of us on what we ought to do differently. Taking on Facebook's over-the-top sexism? Apparently Sandberg doesn't give even passing mention to that.

But having said all this, I've incurred an obligation to read the book for myself and form my own opinion. Fortunately, I can do this without contributing to Ms. Sandberg's outsized wealth. Copies are on order at my local public library, and I've placed a reserve request.

Of tar sands and corporate profits.

This is just a quick post in honor of my friend Stefan Warner, who was arrested with seven others at a civil disobedience action near Schoolton, Oklahoma today. Stefan, working as part of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, chained himself to a piece of equipment that is being used to construct part of the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance is holding a training camp for activists March 18-22 in the Ponca City area, and encourages people who are interested in working with them to attend.

If this pipeline is constructed, it "could devastate ecosystems and pollute water sources, and would jeopardize public health," according to Friends of the Earth.

According to newsok.com:

Calgary-based TransCanada has proposed a 1,700-mile pipeline, dubbed the Keystone XL, to carry oil derived from tar sands in Alberta to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast. Although the northern leg of the project has not received federal approval, the company currently is constructing the 485-mile southern portion of the pipeline that will transport oil from storage facilities in Cushing, Okla., to Texas, said TransCanada spokesman David Dodson.

The man who locked himself to the machinery, called a side boom, was removed after he was lowered to the ground and a local fire department used a pair of bolt cutters to free him, Conn said. A spokesman for the environmental group identified the man as Stefan Warner, a youth pastor from Harrah.

For in-depth background about the XL Keystone Pipeline, I recommend Michael Klare's excellent post at CommonDreams.org

Alarming changes

After our conversation last night at the Mary Daly Discussion Group, my friend Carolyn sent me this great link to this recent post on the New York Times Green Blog. A new draft report from the National Assessment and Development Advisory Committee (NCADAC). The Green Blog's Justin Gillis reports that the draft seems to be taking a much stronger stand about the seriousness of climate change and the ways that human activity is responsible for bringing climate change about:

If it survives in substantially its current form, the document will be a stark warning to the American people about what has already happened and what is coming.

“Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present,” the draft document says. “Americans are noticing changes all around them.

“Summers are longer and hotter, and periods of extreme heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced. Winters are generally shorter and warmer. Rain comes in heavier downpours, though in many regions there are longer dry spells in between.”

Gerda Lerner, 1920-2013

I didn't know until I saw this piece by John Nichols at thenation.com that Gerda Lerner died on January 2. Gerda (Kronstein) Lerner's many accomplishments included joining the anti-Nazi resistance in Austria as a teenager, a lifetime of radical activism, and a groundbreaking role in creating the field of women's history. Nichols's post contained a link to Patrick Kiger's moving remembrance of Lerner published on the AARP blog.

Kiger recounts this story of Lerner's extraordinary courage, which seems to have been drawn from Lerner's autobiography, Fireweed:

Born in 1920 in Vienna, she was a 17-year-old high school student when the Nazis seized power in her country. Lerner secretly joined the anti-Hitler resistance, helping to circulate underground protest newspapers. She subsequently was arrested and jailed by authorities, who, fortunately for her, were unaware of the extent of her activism. Though terrified, she summoned up the astonishing bravery to write petitions — on toilet paper, the only paper she had — demanding that she be allowed to take the national exam, which Austrian students were required to undergo to qualify for college. Only after her father, a pharmacist and businessman, agreed to turn over his property to the Nazis was she was finally released (after six weeks in custody). She promptly reported to the hall where the test was being given. As an additional act of defiance, she demanded the right to eat while taking the exam, since she had been given such sparse rations during her imprisonment that she had lost 25 pounds. While munching a cheese roll, she wrote such an excellent essay that she received the highest possible grade.

Forced into exile in the United States to escape the Nazis, Lerner married and raised children. Finally, in her late thirties, she was able to begin taking college courses.

According to Lerner's biography in the Jewish Women's Archives:

Gerda immigrated to New York in 1939, the only member of her family to obtain a visa. Working as a waitress, salesgirl, office clerk, and X-ray technician to support herself while she learned English, she began to write fiction about Nazi brutality and the capacity to resist it. “The Prisoners” was published in 1941 and “The Russian Campaign” in 1943. She married Carl Lerner, a respected film editor, in 1941. They lived in Hollywood for some years before returning to New York. Their daughter, Stephanie, was born in 1945; their son, Daniel, in 1947.

Lerner became politically active in the Congress of American Women, a progressive grassroots women’s group concerned with economic and consumer issues. She also participated in events sponsored by the Emma Lazarus Federation, worked in support of the United Nations, and actively supported civil rights for African Americans. Continuing to write, she collaborated with Eve Merriam on a musical called the Singing of Women, which was produced off-Broadway in 1951. Her novel No Farewell (1955) focused on Vienna on the eve of German occupation. For Carl Lerner’s directorial debut she coauthored the screenplay Black Like Me (1964). She later described her husband’s death in a moving memoir, A Death of One’s Own (1978).

In the late 1950s, Lerner began work on a novel about Sarah and Angelina Grimké, the South Carolina sisters who migrated north, became featured speakers of the American antislavery society, and ignited the explosion of women’s rights within the abolitionist movement. Seeking more information about her subject, she enrolled in courses at the New School for Social Research. There her fascination with the topic prompted her to teach one of the first courses in women’s history. After completing a B.A. in 1963, Lerner went on to complete an M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia in 1966. Her dissertation was published as The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels Against Slavery (1967).

According to Wikipedia:

Lerner was among the first to bring a consciously feminist lens to the study of history, producing influential essays and books. Among her most important works are the documentary anthologies, Black Women in White America (1972) and The Female Experience (1976), the essay collections, The Majority Finds Its Past (1979) and Why History Matters (1997), The Creation of Patriarchy (1986), and The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (1993). She published Fireweed: A Political Autobiography in 2002.

She was also a founder of the National Organization for Women. Among her academic accomplishments were establishing the first graduate program in women's history at Sarah Lawrence College and the first Ph.D. program in women's history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Instead of a New Year's resolution...

...you might try doing this instead.

Paul Krugman says, "Let's not make a deal."

As he so often is, Paul Krugman is right about the current budget negotiations in Congress. Krugman argues that the by gaining seats in the Senate and by winning the presidency by a clear majority have the political capital to refuse the demands of House Republicans in order to reach a budget deal.

In saying this, I don’t mean to minimize the very real economic dangers posed by the so-called fiscal cliff that is looming at the end of this year if the two parties can’t reach a deal. Both the Bush-era tax cuts and the Obama administration’s payroll tax cut are set to expire, even as automatic spending cuts in defense and elsewhere kick in thanks to the deal struck after the 2011 confrontation over the debt ceiling. And the looming combination of tax increases and spending cuts looks easily large enough to push America back into recession.

Nobody wants to see that happen. Yet it may happen all the same, and Mr. Obama has to be willing to let it happen if necessary.

Why? Because Republicans are trying, for the third time since he took office, to use economic blackmail to achieve a goal they lack the votes to achieve through the normal legislative process. In particular, they want to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, even though the nation can’t afford to make those tax cuts permanent and the public believes that taxes on the rich should go up — and they’re threatening to block any deal on anything else unless they get their way. So they are, in effect, threatening to tank the economy unless their demands are met.

Mr. Obama essentially surrendered in the face of similar tactics at the end of 2010, extending low taxes on the rich for two more years. He made significant concessions again in 2011, when Republicans threatened to create financial chaos by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. And the current potential crisis is the legacy of those past concessions.

Exactly.

And a hat tip to Progressive Breakfast for the link.

Demographics

The while [male] establishment is finished. Bill O'Reilly says so. This clip has gained a lot of attention over the past few days, and I want to keep a record of it on my blog because it may mark a historic turning point in US and world history.

O'Reilly's arrogance is annoying, to say the least. He says that Democratic voters "want stuff," meaning unearned handouts. In other words, he is against a humane society in which we all recognize our interconnection and help out people who are having a difficult time. And he ignores the "stuff" that the present system has given to white people, to men, to the 1 percent of the wealthiest US citizens whose greed in endangering the well-being of the 99 percent and the rest of the planet.

But he's acknowledging that US society is becoming more ethnically diverse, and with that change, our society is becoming much more progressive. He is mourning something that I would personally celebrate--the passage of racist, capitalist patriarchy.

With a lot of hard work, those who welcome a changing United States can make this come true.

The lesser of two evils?

If the Green Party's presidential candidates had been listed on the Oklahoma ballot, I would have voted for Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala.

Given Oklahoma's extremely restrictive ballot access laws, the only two choices I had were Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Obama is the lesser of two evils by a large margin. Romney demonstrates a complete lack of core integrity, a willingness to shift from progressive to extreme conservative opinions based on whatever is popular at the moment, and an alliance with the most regressive economic and political forces in the United States.

Nevertheless, I wish I'd had the option to vote for Jill Stein today. For one thing, living in the reddest of red states, I know that Oklahoma will go solidly for Romney. Given the reality of the way the Electoral College operates, a vote for anyone else is a protest vote. I would like my protest vote to be for the candidate I prefer.

As Doug Henwood put it in a recent post for The Nation:

...I wish, just once, an endorsement of a Democratic presidential candidate coming from the left would mull over some serious structural issues that are at stake.

There are certain eternally recurrent features of these endorsement editorials, and they are depressing. The shortcomings of this year’s Democrat are acknowledged, only to be dismissed, because this is always the most important election since 1932, or maybe 1860. If the Democrats lose, brownshirts will move into the Oval Office. It will be repression and immiseration at home and aggressive war abroad. Sure, there will be some repression, immiseration and war even if the Dem wins, but see above re dismissal of shortcomings.

The persistence of the pattern is no exaggeration. Here’s something from a 1967 essay by Hal Draper on the imminent 1968 election: “Every time the liberal labor left has made noises about its dissatisfaction with what Washington was trickling through, all the Democrats had to do was bring out the bogy of the Republican right. The lib-labs would then swoon, crying ‘The fascists are coming!’ and vote for the Lesser Evil.”

And what is the consequence of that swoon? Draper’s answer: “the Democrats have learned well that they have the lib-lab vote in their back pocket, and that therefore the forces to be appeased are those forces to the right.” Almost every editorial urging a vote for this year’s Dem will lament the rightward move of our politics without ever considering the contribution of such calls to the process.

In other words, the Democrats will continue to ignore and disrespect the progressive vote, because they've learned that they can get away with it.

I would much prefer to have the opportunity to vote for candidates who actually respect my views.

Oklahoma State Ballot Questions

Oklahoma Policy Institute has an excellent page explaining the 2012 Oklahoma State Questions. This page has links to further information about each ballot measure. I especially like their explanation of the many flaws of SQ 759. Here's one example:

Extensive research on affirmative action has so far uncovered no evidence of a new regime of ‘reverse racism.’ In fact, White women have benefited enormously. In the thirty years following the onset of equal opportunity, White women reached their proportionate share in management occupations and more than tripled their rate of college completion.

Equal opportunity initiatives do not advance women and minorities over Whites and men; they privilege fair and equal access for all groups. A scholarly analysis of thousands of ‘reverse discrimination’ cases in federal courts in the mid-1990s found that almost all of them lacked legal merit. Most of these cases failed because disappointed applicants erroneously believed that a woman or minority got the job based on race or sex, not because their qualifications were superior to their own.

In other words, the not-so-subtle subtext of SQ 759--and other efforts against affirmative action--is the unfounded belief that if someone besides a white guy succeeds, it must be because of "reverse discrimination."

But what about quotas? Aren't those a bad idea? The answer is, quotas have been illegal in Oklahoma since the 1980s:

Many people mistakenly believe that affirmative action is a quota system, where people are hired based on a ‘count’ of minorities that must be selected. Public hiring quotas and contract preferences have been illegal in Oklahoma since the early 1980s. The State Regents for Higher Education have never used minority admissions quotas. The myth is so pervasive, even several legislators think that SQ 759 would eliminate quotas.

What is affirmative action? In Oklahoma, state agencies report annually on the demographic make-up of their workforce, and are encouraged to improve outreach during the hiring process among demographics they find poorly represented. The state Office of Personnel Management says affirmative action involves simply, “identifying departments in which the number of women or ethnic minorities is below that for the general workforce, then recruiting qualified candidates to address the situation.”

I'm voting no on State Question 759.

The Soviet naval officer who prevented WWIII

I was six years old during the Cuban Missile Crisis back in 1962. I remember the nuclear air raid drills that we used to do when I was in elementary school. I have vague memories of the 1960 presidential election that happened the year I turned four. I have fairly vivid memories about the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. But I remember nothing of the missile crisis. Did the grownups protect us children from the news about this horror? Or was it so frightening that I simply blocked it out?

One reason that the Cuban Missile Crisis is only an important and frightening historical event that I can't remember, and not something far worse, has to do with the bravery of Vasily Arkhipov, a Russian naval officer who refused to consent to the launching of his submarine's nuclear weapon. 

Edward Wilson, writing for The Guardian, tells what happened:

If you were born before 27 October 1962, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov saved your life. It was the most dangerous day in history. An American spy plane had been shot down over Cuba while another U2 had got lost and strayed into Soviet airspace. As these dramas ratcheted tensions beyond breaking point, an American destroyer, the USS Beale, began to drop depth charges on the B-59, a Soviet submarine armed with a nuclear weapon.

The captain of the B-59, Valentin Savitsky, had no way of knowing that the depth charges were non-lethal "practice" rounds intended as warning shots to force the B-59 to surface. The Beale was joined by other US destroyers who piled in to pummel the submerged B-59 with more explosives. The exhausted Savitsky assumed that his submarine was doomed and that world war three had broken out. He ordered the B-59's ten kiloton nuclear torpedo to be prepared for firing. Its target was the USS Randolf, the giant aircraft carrier leading the task force.

If the B-59's torpedo had vaporised the Randolf, the nuclear clouds would quickly have spread from sea to land. The first targets would have been Moscow, London, the airbases of East Anglia and troop concentrations in Germany. The next wave of bombs would have wiped out "economic targets", a euphemism for civilian populations – more than half the UK population would have died. Meanwhile, the Pentagon's SIOP, Single Integrated Operational Plan – a doomsday scenario that echoed Dr Strangelove's orgiastic Götterdämmerung – would have hurled 5,500 nuclear weapons against a thousand targets, including ones in non-belligerent states such as Albania and China.

Ironically, there might have been far fewer casualties within the US, Wilson notes, because "The very reason that Khrushchev sent missiles to Cuba was because the Soviet Union lacked a credible long range ICBM deterrent against a possible US attack." In other words, the US government considered European civilians to be "acceptable pawn sacrifices" should the Soviets launch a nuclear attack.

Fortunately, we don't know how that war would have turned out. Before the B-59 could launch its nuclear missle, all three of its senior officers had to agree. Two of the three officers said yes. Vasili Arkipov said no.

A recent PBS documentary tells the story. The entire Edward Wilson article is also worth reading for its analysis of how nuclear weapons still endanger the survival of life on Earth.

Hat tip to Brandon Wade for posting about Arkhipov on Facebook.

Enough is enough...

...according to Emma's Revolution:

The major presidential candidates ignore this...

...but Amy Goodman, Bill McKibben, and climate scientist Greg Jones talked about it yesterday on Democracy Now!:



Here's a sample of what you'll hear on the video:

AMY GOODMAN: Bill, you mentioned that the storm is made up of elements both natural and unnatural. What do you mean by that?

BILL McKIBBEN: Well, look, I mean, global warming doesn’t cause hurricanes. We’ve always had hurricanes. Hurricanes cause when a wave, tropical wave, comes off the coast of Africa and moves on to warm water and the wind shear is low enough to let it form a circulation, and so on and so forth. But we’re producing conditions like record warm temperatures in seawater that make it easier for this sort of thing to get, in this case, you know, up the Atlantic with a head of steam. We’re making—we’re raising the sea levels. And when that happens, it means that whatever storm surge comes in comes in from a higher level than it would have before. We’re seeing—and there are a meteorologists—although I don’t think this is well studied enough yet to really say it conclusively, there are people saying that things like the huge amount of open water in the Arctic have been changing patterns, of big wind current patterns, across the continent that may be contributing to these blocking pressure areas and things that we’re seeing. But, to me, that, at this point, is still mostly speculation.

What really is different is that there is more moisture and more energy in this narrow envelope of atmosphere. And that energy expresses itself in all kind of ways. That’s why we get these record rainfalls now, time after time. I mean, last year, it was Irene and then Lee directly after that. This year, this storm, they’re saying, could be a thousand-year rainfall event across the mid-Atlantic. I think that means more rain than you’d expect to see in a thousand years. But I could pretty much—I’d be willing to bet that it won’t be long before we see another one of them, because we’re changing the odds. By changing the earth, we change the odds.

And one thing for all of us to remember today, even as we deal with the horror on the East Coast, is that this is exactly the kind of horror people have been dealing with all over the world. Twenty million people were dislocated by flood in Pakistan two years ago. There are people with kind of existential fears about whether their nations will survive the rise of sea level. We’re seeing horrific drought not just in the Midwest, but in much of the rest of the world. This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened on earth, climate change, and our response has to be the same kind of magnitude.

McKibben's organization, 350.org, is starting a 20-state Do the Math tour to help organize a movement to change human consumption patterns to mitigate climate change before it's too late. Too bad they're not coming to Oklahoma.

Hail and farewell

George McGovern is dead.

Green Party Presidential ticket arrested at debate

This just in. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Cheri Honkala have been arrested as they attempted to enter the venue for tonight's debate between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney.  Stein and Honkala issued a statement calling the debate a "mockumentary."

Although Stein has been approved for presidential matching funds and is on the ballot in 38 states, she has not been permitted to participate in the debates. Neither has Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who is on the ballot in 47 states. A recent NPR story suggested that Johnson, who is polling at about six percent in national polls, could draw enough votes to affect the outcome of the race. Stein and Honkala's statement claims that they have "polled 2-3% in four consecutive national polls."

The Commission on Presidential Debates might argue that because neither Johnson nor Stein is likely to be elected president in November, they are not relevant to the debates. But this is clearly wrong. Given the structure of the Electoral College, both Stein and Johnson have the possibility to affect the race. It would be good for the country and for voters if Obama and Romney were forced to face a wider spectrum of ideas. Personally, given the doleful state of the economy and the clear and present danger of climate change, I would like to learn more about the Green Party's Green New Deal. While I personally think the economic aspects of the Libertarian Party platform would be disastrous, especially in terms of worker rights, I think the public has the right to hear those ideas.

Given that only Romney and Obama will appear on the Oklahoma ballot on November 6--and there isn't even the opportunity to write in a candidate's name--I will certainly vote for Obama. Obama is clearly the better candidate of the two--even though most of his policies are to the right of Richard Nixon's. I understand that some commentators on the left think it's blasphemous for progressives to even think of voting for Stein. Her voice still needs to be heard.

I have signed a petition calling on the CPD to open up the presidential debates to Johnson and Stein. If you would like to sign that petition, you can do so here.

Wow. Walmart workers are striking

Graduate school has eaten my brain, and I almost missed noticing that Wal-mart workers are striking in several locations across the US. As thenation.com's Bryce Covert points out:

It’s not just the workers who walked off the job that have something at stake in taking on Walmart. As these sorts of jobs increasingly dominate our workforce, we’ll be forced more and more to ask not just how many jobs the economy is adding, but what kind of jobs. If Walmart and its ilk supply most of them, families will have little money to rely on, few benefits and chaotic work schedules. All eyes should be on this historic strike and what gains Walmart’s workers are able to make in negotiating higher pay and better benefits.

Goodbye, Columbus Day

Thanks to commondreams.org for reposting this marvelous essay by Dana Lone Hill about all the reasons not to celebrate Columbus Day--and how South Dakota, alone among all the US states, has given up this celebration.

Here's a sample:

I always felt proud that our state didn't honor someone who murdered, enslaved, and raped indigenous people. Considering that it was the beginning of a genocide, this would be like putting a day aside to honor the memory of Hitler and selling sheets at a discount for the role he played in the world. Mickelson's initiative made me feel like we were a little ahead of the rest of the country: this is the same state that remembers the Wounded Knee Massacre, the Occupation of Wounded Knee, and unsolved deaths of our people in the 1973 incident. So, we celebrated Native American Day, not Columbus Day.

Yet, as Lakota people, we have all experienced racism in the state of South Dakota. Every single one of us, many times. My first time was when I was six years old and moving off the reservation. I was called horrible names, but I survived. And that was only the beginning.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

Happy birthday to me

Only four more years until I'm old enough to join Old Lesbians Organizing for Change.

Feminist Library in danger of closing

While doing some advance research for an upcoming project in a library school class, I happened to do a Web search on "feminist library." This is how I discovered The Feminist Library in London, which

is a large archive collection of Women’s Liberation Movement literature, particularly second-wave materials dating from the late 1960s to the 1990s. We support research, activist and community projects in this field.

That's the good news. The bad news is, due to local government cutbacks and a privatization effort, it's in danger of closing.

Activist efforts are underway to save the library. You can read about these on the Save the Women's Library blog and on the library's Facebook page.

Real change is a do-it-ourselves project

So notes Alan Minsky in his excellent analysis of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, posted over on Truthdig.

Minsky notes that leaders of the Democratic party don't live up to the faith placed in them by Democratic party nationalists:

In 1999 Bill Clinton, under the guidance of Summers and Rubin, signed legislation eliminating the Glass-Steagall Act, perhaps the most important piece of financial industry regulation in American history. This move is widely seen as paving the way for the financial collapse of 2007-08 that sparked the current Great Recession.

Wednesday night at the Democratic convention, Clinton said the Republicans want “to get rid of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts.”

Furthermore, while the Democrats decry Paul Ryan and his embrace of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, they have forgotten to mention that during the Clinton years, Rubin was “joined at the hip” (according to former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr.) with die-hard Randite and Republican darling Alan Greenspan, working together to block oversight of toxic financial derivatives.

Would the rank-and-file Democrats—defenders of the middle class, lovers of Bill and Barack, kept in the dark about the minutiae of economic policy—ever have supported these policies that boosted the 1 percent at the expense of the 99 percent? If not, that’s some serious betrayal.

Voting for the Democrats can be an understandable strategy in a swing state, Minsky says, but it won't lead to the economic, social, and political transformation of this society that the vast majority of us need:

The kindheartedness and generosity of spirit I found in Charlotte are inspiring, but if these people’s political activity still revolves around Obama, aren’t they missing the bigger, more important picture? Sure, but when there’s no other game in town, ameliorating the system so it causes less damage is not something that should be entirely dismissed. Would I vote for someone other than Obama in a swing state? I live in California so it’s not an issue, but I know come early November if I were faced with a choice between the only two candidates who could win and they were in a neck-and-neck race, I’d vote for the less reactionary one. But I’d never lose sight of the fact that the two main political parties are too far down a path to address the nation’s problems in the way they must be addressed. This is not to say we’ve lost hope, not if we recall that the major political parties have never really been the vehicles for progressive change. The New Deal, the Great Society, hell, even the right to vote in this Godforsaken political system were won not by politicians and their big-money backers, but by tremendous social movements that rocked the world. We need hope and change; it’s up to us to produce them.

Minsky's post is fairly long, but well worth reading in its entirety.