The BobboSphere: Don't believe everything you think.

Meet Michael J. Lotito of the firm Jackson Lewis LLP. He was among the many individuals in expensive suits who worked very hard to bring on the current global economic disaster. Michael J. Lotito did not peddle subprime mortgages in hardscrabble neighborhoods. He didn't sit in a bank and lie to people about the advantages of interest-only home loans. He didn't hawk bundled exotic securities in the global marketplace. His firm, Jackson Lewis LLP, isn't even located on Wall Street. Their New York office is on Staten Island. It's not a mortgage lender, an investment bank, or a stock brokerage house.

First of all, it's not the fault of "the market". Blaming the market for the estimated 1.7 million foreclosures this year means that no one is responsible and everyone is off the hook. But market fluctuations are not the weather, nor are they "Acts of God", to use the favorite expression of the insurance industry. Markets are constructed by real human beings. Markets have rules written by real human beings. Markets have referees and judges who are real human beings. Markets have participants who are real human beings.

Forget about the "invisible hand of the marketplace" so beloved by ivory tower econ professors and overpaid media pundits. There is no invisible hand of the marketplace. Real human hands shape the marketplace and they have left plenty of fingerprints behind. Those estimated 1.7 million foreclosures mean a lot of fingerprints.

An old buddy of mine used to say," The hardcore Republican vote is 5% the super-rich and 95% the super-stupid." I used to believe that, but I don't believe that anymore. I believe it's 5% the super-rich and 95% the super-evil. If you need a definition of super-evil, try here.

Please note that I am not talking about the deluded and the ignorant Republican voters. The deluded can be helped to see clearly and the ignorant can be educated. I am talking about the hardcore GOP base, the people who come to McCain/Palin events and turn them into rallies reminiscent of the ones at Nuremburg in the dark days before World War II.

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­­­The Straight Talk Express is arguably the most famous bus in America right now. Riding around in the conveyance favored by everyday working class people is a nice touch really. It makes McCain seem like one of us. It's true that McCain now flies around in a Boeing 737 of the same name, equipped with first class seats for himself and his entourage, but it's the bus that people see and remember.

Buses remind us of going to work bleary-eyed in the morning crowded together with lots of strangers and then coming home exhausted at night crowded together in the same way. Buses are about enduring extreme heat and cold waiting for them to arrive. They are about the fear of being late to work when you miss one, or when it breaks down or gets stuck in traffic. They are about the fear of waiting for one at night in a dicey part of town, hoping that you won't become another mugging or rape statistic.

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They stand over the city like the great predatory wading birds they are named after. And from time to time, like those great predatory wading birds, they come down swiftly on those below and take a life...often more than one. They are the construction cranes, whose numbers grew with the massive lending sprees that fueled the hi-rise building boom in our great cities.

But the construction cranes don't take lives with sharp beaks and unerring vision like their avian namesakes. Instead people get electrocuted when the cranes collide with power lines, operators fall out of them, they fall on top of people, or they crush people in the other gruesome ways that heavy complex machinery can destroy the human body.

"This is a war on the middle class", an American Axle worker said, "People are losing their homes, while the banks and the rich are getting more profits. They preach they are creating more jobs—but what kind of pay are these jobs?"

The jobs that the striking American Axle worker referred to pay $14 an hour, down from the $28 an hour that the American Axle parts workers had been formerly paid. As peoples' mortgages, car payments, kids' college tuition and health care went down the drain when the strike was lost, American Axle CEO Richard Dauch was rewarded with an 8.5 million dollar bonus for his brave service in the battle against the American middle class.

So Barack Obama is tacking to starboard. That's steering to the right for you landlubbers. But as a politician who lives next to those inland seas we call the Great Lakes, he must have seen sailors do this hundreds of times. He's already tacked to the port or the left side. Now it's time to tack to the right or the starboard side. Paradoxically, that's how you sail in a "straight" line and end up arriving at your destination.

Let's remember that Barack Obama is a South Side Chicago politician. Veering to the right after starting out on the left is a time honored Windy City tradition.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung...
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

Update: I received some sad news this evening of August 27. Del Martin died today. She was a fighter and a great lady. My sincere condolences to Phyllis Lyon and to everyone who was touched by Del Martin's wonderful life. .

Shortly after 5 PM on June 16, 2008, longtime lesbian activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin were wedded by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome. Both women were well up into their eighties and had been together for 55 years. They were founding members of the Daughters of Bilitis which began way back in 1955 and became the nation's first lesbian advocacy group.

Given their history, it was fitting that they were the first gay Californians to get legally hitched. They were followed by hundreds more, joining the many gays who had already married in Massachusetts where it has been legal since 2004.

On February 7, 2007, Carmen Cecilia Santana Romaña, a leader of a Colombian agricultural workers union was murdered in her home that she shared with her 3 children and her husband Hernán Correa Miranda, who was also a union leader. Carmen Cecilia Santa Romaña was among the over 2500 union activists killed in Colombia since 1986. Most have been killed by paramilitary death squads with close ties to the Colombian military. The US government has lavished millions on that military.

It's amazing how much terrorism it takes to keep a US approved free market economy going these days. Carmen Cecilia Santa Romaña had visited a Colombian human rights organization in November 2006, and spoke openly of the fear she felt and the intimidation that was part of her everyday life. The father of her children had been murdered and she wanted the killers found. She wanted to return to her home and resume her work as a union organizer, but her actual homecoming turned into a death sentence.

One of the many things that puzzle me about American life is the notion that the right wing is pro-business...more specifically, pro-small business. Groups like the Republican Party, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and their large corporate backers claim to fight for small business which is supposed to flourish under their version of free market economics.

As a bona fide independent contractor working in a small biz with a grand total of 3 employees (but with a somewhat larger number of associates and co-contractors), I am going to weigh in here from the point of view of a little guy.