Give the gift of self-gratification. In my ongoing search for those cultural developments that best illustrate America's debasement as a society, the "give-to-yourself" movement stands near the top of the heap (WSJ, sub. req'd):

With Christmas 2003 promising to deliver the first big shopping season in years, retailers are targeting the most important person on your shopping list: you. From Neiman Marcus to Macy's, shoppers are seeing everything from $130 sweaters with your own initials (in rhinestones no less) to "reward yourself" gift certificates to beefed-up wish-list programs (they work like wedding registries for yourself). In its holiday catalog, Pottery Barn suggests "gifts for everyone including yourself," while Henri Bendel in New York is devoting half a floor to personalized gifts it thinks may inspire double-dip buying. One of the biggest players in all this? The diamond industry with its campaign for "right hand" rings that women can select for themselves.

[...]

Even some retail experts are
Merry Christmas, Americans! Thank you for
giving your wages to your wealthiest people.
Iraqi citizens are giving too — our blood!worried stores could be getting carried away with the whole give-to-yourself movement -- and in the process, dilute the gift-giving industry altogether. With registries, gift cards and now me-shopping, "gift-giving has become a lost art," says George Rosenbaum, chairman of Leo J. Shapiro & Associates, a survey research firm in Chicago. In Pittsburgh, Ellen Levick, owner of women's fashion boutique Allure, says the whole notion of wish lists doesn't sit well with her. "It seems a little forced," she says. "It can turn people off."

For Christmas I was going to give a bunch of heirs and heiresses a ten-year gift of $1.5 trillion, and for my favorite multinational corporations I was going to stuff a big red-white-and-blue stocking with $128 billion in small bills culled from workers' wages. But I'm too late.

As the true leaders of the give-to-yourself movement, they're already giving those gifts to themselves.

{ 1:08 PM }

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"Greed springs eternal." Paul Krugman reviews Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, and Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth by Joe Conason, in The New York Review of Books.

{ 9:34 AM }

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Fake heroes demand unchallenged propaganda. The Jessica Lynch story keeps on stinking (The Macon Telegraph):

Officials at Georgia Military College turned away reporters and photographers who were invited to hear a speech Wednesday [November 12] by a helicopter pilot involved in the rescue of Jessica Lynch.

Col. Jim LeBrun, the principal of GMC's high school, and Janeen Smith, the public relations director for the school, stopped members of the media outside the auditorium with "bad news."

LeBrun said Marine Maj. Craig Kopel told them before giving the speech that he would not speak if any members of the media were present. They said he did not want his name or photograph printed, though his name was in a news release announcing his appearance. Kopel was scheduled to speak to junior and high school students.

LeBrun said Kopel would "get in trouble" if he spoke to or in front of the media.

Invited journalists were informed that they were "trespassing" and were told to stand in the street off campus to keep them away from the purported hero.

How exactly would Kopel "get in trouble"? And who exactly would force these troubles upon this supposedly heroic pilot ?

Marine Maj. Craig Kopel — dupe, phony, yes-man, or all three?

{ 3:25 PM }

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The rats are fleeing the other rats. Now that so many ships are sinking, the rats are running away from one another. It's almost funny when scandal-ridden companies pretend they are taking the high road (WSJ, sub. req'd):

Halliburton Co. (HAL) dropped Putnam Investments in the last month as a money manager for its pension plan, a company spokeswoman told Dow Jones Newswires.

Zelma W. Branch, in the global public-relations office of Halliburton, said that Putnam was one of about 20 money managers. The decision to drop Putnam "had nothing to do (with) current allegations against Putnam," she wrote in an e-mail.

Putnam's former CEO was recently ousted in a wave of scandal.

Halliburton's former CEO now oversees the invasion of other countries and the award of no-bid multibillion dollar contracts to his recent employer, from whom he still draws six-figure deferred compensation. His stint in the White House was richly financed by another energy industry CEO whose criminal behavior is yet to be confronted.

But that's the United States, where CEOs wage war to promote and conceal corporate crime. In direct contrast, one country that has enough ethical backbone to indict, humiliate and jail energy industry CEOs who commit financial crimes is, oddly enough, France.

{ 8:37 AM }

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Government by tantrum. Dissatisfied that only 98 percent of their judicial nominees have been appointed, Senate Republicans are going to throw a 30-hour tantrum to try to get the other 2 percent on the bench (Seattle Post-Intelligencer):

For 30 straight hours -- from this evening through midnight tomorrow -- senators will condemn each other and Bush for the impasse over four U.S. Appeals Court nominees: Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, Texas Judge Priscilla Owen, Mississippi Judge Charles Pickering and Hispanic lawyer Miguel Estrada. Frustrated at the delays, Estrada withdrew his nomination in September.

Democrats have refused to allow confirmation votes, and Republicans have not been able to get the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture to cut off debate and force final action on the nominations in a Senate split with 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and one independent.

The math to end a filibuster -- essentially endless debate -- just isn't there.

"What we really want, and the purpose of doing it, is an up-or-down vote," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. "Just 'yes,' 'no'; move on to the next judge. And they won't give us that."

[...]

Republicans hope the all-night Senate session -- the first to go past 4 a.m. since 1992 -- will swing public favor and maybe some campaign cash their way during the winter break.

[...]

The Senate has confirmed 168 of Bush's judicial nominees, and Democrats have blocked four. Democrats point out that Bush's confirmation percentage is much higher than that of President Clinton.

"All of this probably matters to 500 people: 100 senators, their staffers, and the 50 reporters who cover us, and no one else," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said about the 30-hour debate.

But Democrats say they welcome the free 15 hours to criticize Bush and the GOP on the economy, Iraq and Bush's choices for key judgeships.

Companion to the plutocrats, Bill "Pussycat" Frist is doing his gosh-darnedest to please his social superiors. Frist's medical education doesn't really count for much in the GOP hierarchy after all — he's still just a servant to the wealthy dynasties that have decided to jerk our courts toward increasingly radical conservative ideologies.

{ 9:51 AM }

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Ship of cowards and whores. Apparently New York may lose hosting the real business of the 2004 Republican Convention to its harbor:

Republicans, including Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Rep. Vito Fossella, are considering docking a luxury cruise ship in New York Harbor where members of Congress and lobbyists could stay and play during the GOP convention next summer.

The idea of bunking members of Congress on the Norwegian Dawn cruise ship is under consideration because of the unique qualities the ship would bring, including privacy and security, according to a spokesman for Fossella (R-Staten Island).

[...]

The cruise ship, with accommodations for 2,200 guests and 14 bars and 10 restaurants, would mirror other hospitality suites DeLay (R-Texas) has championed for members of Congress at past conventions. At the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia, DeLay secured private railroad cars, where members could meet and mingle with invited guests such as lobbyists - no media allowed. He also provided members of Congress with cars and drivers. The amenities were funded by corporate contributions to a political action committee.

"It's as if Tom DeLay is the personal concierge for members," said one Republican staffer who refused further identification.

Tom DeLay is the cum towel of corporate interests.

Pimp or whore, they're all cowards. They're just plain scared of New York. They realize that everyone, in sight of Ground Zero at least, is onto their game of the attachment of anything they want to 9/11/01. And they are managing once again to defile the crematorium of lower Manhattan with the stink of their decadent fraudulence.

Newsday link via bloggy.

{ 4:51 PM }

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"The central focus of my life," by George Soros. The billionaire, philanthropist and tireless promoter of democracy, has a new target (Washington Post):

George Soros, one of the world's richest men, has given away nearly $5 billion to promote democracy in the former Soviet bloc, Africa and Asia. Now he has a new project: defeating President Bush.

"It is the central focus of my life," Soros said, his blue eyes settled on an unseen target. The 2004 presidential race, he said in an interview, is "a matter of life and death."

Soros, who has financed efforts to promote open societies in more than 50 countries around the world, is bringing the fight home, he said. On Monday, he and a partner committed up to $5 million to MoveOn.org, a liberal activist group, bringing to $15.5 million the total of his personal contributions to oust Bush.

[...]

In past election cycles, Soros contributed relatively modest sums. In 2000, his aide said, he gave $122,000, mostly to Democratic causes and candidates. But recently, Soros has grown alarmed at the influence of neoconservatives, whom he calls "a bunch of extremists guided by a crude form of social Darwinism."

Neoconservatives, Soros said, are exploiting the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to promote a preexisting agenda of preemptive war and world dominion. "Bush feels that on September 11th he was anointed by God," Soros said. "He's leading the U.S. and the world toward a vicious circle of escalating violence."

Soros himself wrote an article articulating his position that appeared in The American Prospect:

According to the ideologues of the far right, who currently dominate the Bush administration, the success of the American model has been brought about by a combination of market fundamentalism in economic matters and the pursuit of military supremacy in international relations. These two objectives fit neatly together into a coherent ideology -- an ideology that is internally consistent but does not jibe with reality or with the principles of open society. It is a kind of crude social Darwinism in which the survival of the fittest depends on competition, not cooperation. In the economy, the competition is among firms; in international relations, among states. Cooperation does not seem necessary because there is supposed to be an invisible hand at work that will ensure that as long as everybody looks out for his or her own interests, the common interest will look after itself.

This doctrine is false, even with regard to the economy. Financial markets left to their own devices do not tend toward an equilibrium that guarantees the optimum allocation of resources. The theories of efficient markets and rational expectations don't stand up to critical examination.

[...]

The Bush administration's policies have brought about many unintended, adverse consequences. Indeed, it is difficult to find a similar time span during which political and economic conditions have deteriorated as rapidly as they have in the last couple of years.

Back in March, before the invasion of Iraq, we noted Soros's indignation at what he saw as a "parallel between the Bush administration's pursuit of American supremacy and a boom-bust process or bubble in the stock market."

Soros is another capitalist against Bush, not unlike billion-dollar money manager Seth Glickenhaus whom we profiled earlier.

Bleeding hearts aside, sooner or later even the moneymen figure out that what's bad for human beings is ultimately bad for business.

Thanks to reader Carl Tichler for the Soros Fortune link, which unfortunately moved into the paid subscriber archives.

{ 8:45 AM }

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Muzzling London. The nastiness of the reality it created is causing the White House to insist on alternatives (This Is London):

White House security demands covering President George Bush's controversial state visit to Britain have provoked a serious row with Scotland Yard.

American officials want a virtual three-day shutdown of central London in a bid to foil disruption of the visit by anti-war protestors. They are demanding that police ban all marches and seal off the city centre.

But senior Yard officers say the powers requested by US security chiefs would be unprecedented on British soil. While the Met wants to prevent violence, it is sensitive to accusations of trying to curtail legitimate protest.

Met officers came in for heavy criticism when banners were torn down and demonstrators prevented from coming within sight of Chinese President Jiang Zemin during his visit in 1999.

But with tens of thousands of protestors from around the UK set to join blockades and marches during the Bush trip, US officials are reportedly insisting on an "exclusion zone".

"Exclusion" of civil liberties is the guiding principle of policy, until voters eject the Bush administration next year.

The London trip starts on November 19.

{ 2:40 PM }

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