Olberman's had enough

Notes 32

When you daily address the absurdities and inequities of the American scene and try to give witness to them and restore sanity, you end up distraught and burned out. We’ll miss ye, Keith.

Keith Olbermann gives abrupt goodbye to MSNBC show
Writer David Bauder, Ap Television Writer – Sat Jan 22
NEW YORK – Keith Olbermann was MSNBC's most popular personality and single-handedly led its transformation to an outspoken, left-leaning cable news network in prime time. Despite that, he often seemed to be walking on a tightrope with his job. Friday night, it snapped.
MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines insisted Olbermann's exit had nothing to do with the acquisition of parent company NBC Universal by Comcast, which received regulatory approval last week.

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A few years ago, an historian said history was dead. Now democracy may be dead.

Does "Democracy" Still Mean Anything? (And in Case It Does, What Is It?)
Zygmunt Bauman, Truthout: "Henry A. Giroux wonders how one can possibly explain 'the electoral sweep that just put the most egregious Republican Party candidates back in power?'... One is the successful creation of 'punitive justice and a theatre of cruelty' as the political formula accepted (or at least acceptable) by the majority of Americans. The other is the accelerated pace of 'social amnesia': The most outrageous misdemeanor of the rulers, not so long ago a cause of public outcry, is pushed aside or forgotten altogether in time for the midterm elections. But there is another possibility as well, one that is perhaps too gruesome for the future of democracy to be seriously broached. It is the possibility - nay, the likelihood - that the link between public agenda and private worries, the very hub of the democratic process, has been broken, with each of the two spheres rotating by now in mutually isolated spaces….”
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Common Cause alleges that both justices were paid guests at exclusive gatherings organized by Koch Industries, where conservative business leaders and elected officials secretly strategized around elections. The justices were among those who provided the critical votes in the 5-4 ruling, a ruling that has prompted an unprecedented flood of corporate expenditures on electoral campaigns over the last year.

On Anniversary of Citizens United Ruling, Calls for DOJ to Investigate Scalia and Thomas
Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now!: "Today marks the one-year anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate spending on election campaigns. We speak with Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause, which has filed a petition with the U.S. Department of Justice urging it to investigate whether Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas should have recused themselves from the case last year because of a conflict of interest."

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Oh, hell, why wouldn’t you expect Obama to put wolf in charge of hen house when his re-election is at stake? He’s a blessed pragmatist. To hell with principle.

Volcker Out, Immelt In on Economic Board
Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Anahad O'Connor, The New York Times News Service: "President Obama will name Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chief executive officer and chairman of General Electric, on Friday to run his outside panel of economic advisers, replacing Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, who is stepping down, the White House said. Mr. Immelt will chair a new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness that Mr. Obama intends to create by executive order.... The changes signal what the White House describes as 'a new phase of our recovery,' a shift from crisis to job creation."

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Ancient Aphorism: To the victor belongs the spoils and corporations are collecting on their investments

Court and Chevron's "Crude" Attacks Continue
Thursday 20 January 2011
by: Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis
A recent Fortune magazine cover proclaimed it "the most pro-business court we have ever seen," and, as the Times more understatedly noted last month, "It is clear ... that the Supreme Court these days is increasingly focused on business issues."
Joe Berlinger's back is against the wall. Last week the independent filmmaker, already facing crushing debt from legal bills, was dealt a major blow in his continuing fight against the third-largest company in America: Chevron.
In May, federal judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered Berlinger to turn over to Chevron more than 600 hours of raw footage used to create the film, how Ecuadorians challenged the pollution of rivers and wells from Texaco's drilling in the Lago Agrio oil field, a rainforest disaster savagely damaging the environment and the local population's health that's been described as the Amazon's Chernobyl.
In case you missed the Times story over the holidays, it was headlined "Justices Offer Receptive Ear to Business Interests." Scholars at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago prepared a report analyzing nearly 1,500 Supreme Court decisions across almost six decades. It found that, "The Roberts court, which has completed five terms, ruled for business interests 61 percent of the time, compared with 46 percent in the last five years of the court led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in 2005, and 42 percent by all courts since 1953."
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