No, I Will Not Perish (yet) Horn

Ben Smith's Blog: Anuzis joins campaign against EFCA - POLITICO.com
SEIU head fights to merge labor unions - Ben Smith - Politico.com

Indeed, the anti-EFCA campaign is turning into something close to a full employment project for Republicans in exile. They were also giving away a Wii at CPAC yesterday.

Punditry: re the labor movement paints us as intrinsically tied to the electoral/legislative process and thus "special interest"-y...Maybe that's appropriate? We should ask Dave "I was born a Democrat and I'll die a Democrat" 3544 about this some time.

Slowcore Week: Slint and Codeine - a shared musical language? / In Depth // Drowned In Sound Pukekos: Codeine

Okay, in its matter-of-fact way, this is some of the best writing about Slint that I've read. Indeed, some of the speculation about possible Slint influences even kinda makes sense: Ubu, late Birthday Party, King Crimson, s/t-era Sabbath. Read this, even if you don't know who Slint are, because you need to know who Slint are. (Also, of course, Codeine are the original, glacial rock formation. But we've spoken of Codeine before, much more than Slint, who made what is probably, if I'm honest, my favorite record of all time with Spiderland. Check out the complete Codeine 7" discography on the Pukekos link above, btw.)

Economist's View: The Employee Free Choice Act
Bloggers and Unions Join Forces to Push Democrats - NYTimes.com

Anyway, back to Big Labor. 'Seems we've even got our own squadron of Post-Keynesians, these days, telling people, shucks, maybe doing something to stimulate growth in real wages'd be interesting, and maybe it'd be even more stimulative than, say, lowering interest rates and/or maintaining a strong dollar policy? I wonder to what extent the MoveOn, kos-ish "progressive" crowd can be said to be on board with the Economic Policy Institure, CEPR milieu? Or are they more of a Center for American Progress Crowd? Do they have their own research institutes? Increasingly, I dwell upon the in-politics of those privileged wonks who're allowed to "shape" policy "debates."

Michael D. Yates, "Michael Steele Is a Nitwit and Wolf Blitzer Is a Jackass"
Ben Smith's Blog: Coming back to Romney - POLITICO.com

And then there's the old Republican Party and the old conservative movement. Notice that I don't put "movement" in scare quotes: their thing is as real as any cargo cult or drum circle, to me. Conservatism is a social fact.

Letter from Washington: The Gatekeeper: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
Twitter / clairecmc

As I mentioned before, I do love my glimpses into the inner workings of staff meetings, staffers and staffers' bosses. "The Gatekeeper" is a long, fascinating portrait of Rahm, probably my most guiltiest pleasure of a good time in recent days. Claire McCaskill is easily one of our coolest senators and also one of our least snobbish.

Open Left:: Nate Silver to Progressives: STFU and Defer to the Serious Experts and Czars
Digby populism tango

What does it say about me, that I cannot quite bring myself to "care" about rival tendencies and rival formations within the Netroots? I dunno.
But I do know this: remember our legendary (and worth-revisiting) "let's eliminate these adjectives" thread from the Prisonship? I have a less elitist, more parochial, but nonetheless similar directive in mind for mainstream political discourse: nobody should be allowed to use the term 'populism' until having read Ernesto Laclau's On Populist Reason. Surely I have no authority, and only a scoffing, sardonic-at-best relationship with the kinda at-large political philosophy that informs whatever kinda dumbed-down 'realist' orthodoxy permeates pundits' collective consciousness. But in my ideal world, let's say, 'populism''d have a stable referent. And activists, at least, could drag it out of the gutter of commentator-speak and the graveyard of flippant, loose snob-lips.

Stephen Malkmus | Pitchfork

Do you know what? Malkmus never seemed that likable to me in interviews, until now! Dig his really interesting, sober appraisals of what was going on during the short life of "indie rock" (1989-1994).

Language and Obama’s Budget - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com

Who else has budget mania? Don't stop until you get enough.

Well, shit, Tom Daschle....

Ezra Klein is out front with the chasepack for HHS Sec./Health Care Czar gig (feat. Oregonians Kitzhaber and Wyden, among others) now that Daschle has left the scene.

Truth is, this may be a bad hit for the administration's health care efforts (these have already taken a backseat to the stimulus blowouts, of course.) I don't claim to know whether of not having a "Man of Stature Who Knows Washington" will or won't be decisive, but clearly there's not a comparable MoSWKW waiting to assume Daschle's position.

You know what, tho? 'Hell with it. Government-as-such faces a deficit in the legitimacy dept. that has to be erased if we're going to see even the "compensatory neoliberalism" schema de l'Obama administration brought to bear on this sonuvabitch. So if it means a Daschle has to disqualify himself in the face of little but the appearance of misconduct...well, I think we've got bigger fish to fry. Anybody disagree? There's plenty of reason to disagree.

Hillary

Too bad I'm not in a place where I can live-blog tomorrow's Clinton confirmation hearings. Le politico reminds us to pay particular attention to the Kerry/Clinton interface:

While unlikely to be acrimonious, this exchange – tinged with the awkwardness most familiar to the high school prom court – is on the list for reasons of pure spectacle.

To wit: Kerry wanted to be president. Then Clinton wanted to be president. Then Kerry wanted Obama to be president. Then Obama became president. Then Kerry wanted to be secretary of state. But Obama wanted Clinton to be secretary of state. This all sets the stage for Tuesday’s confirmation hearing, where the back-and-forth will be finely parsed for any evidence of recriminations.

Or maybe Kerry will eliminate the need for such parsing by asking, “Why you and not me?”

More Solis

More reason for optimism that "greening"/stimulus/EFCA might could be integrated into a whole, big, New Deal 2-ish package: green Jobs jedi (and Ginger endorsee) Van Jones says, Hilda Solis = "not crap."

Hilda Sollis Confirmation Hearing Re-Run Live Blog

That's right. It is Friday night. What's your point?

We may get our progressive yet...

Latest dirt on the DoL search is centering on Harley Shaiken out of Berkeley. And I'm saying that a Shaiken nomination is definitely "not crap."

Here's Shaiken's 2007 House committee testimony in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act, and here's that testimony distilled down into an LA Times op-ed.

OG commenter/AFT guy Martin on Arne Duncan

from 11/20/2008, back before Obama tapped this bleeping "CEO" for the Education Sec. gig:

As a Chicago Public School teacher, I get very worried when Arne Duncan is mentioned as a possible Secretary of Education. The number of CPS students who have been murdered continues to rise on his watch. The number of neighborhood public schools who are closed (and replaced by charters) continues to rise each year. The only schools in CPS which are not segregrated (mine is 99.7 % African American) are the magnet schools. Working in this system, I see very little the federal government can do to actually help inner city schools (policy-wise anyway, we haven't received money from the state of Illinois to build or maintain school buildings in 6 years. That's for the entire CPS district. So, some infrastructure money might help). If Arne Duncan is put in this post, he offers no real education change.

Praise to Martino for being way out front on Arne Duncan. But heaven help those galldarn teachers' unions! [update, as of 12/16, Wobs tells me some higher-ups say it could be a lot worse. and Ezra Klein has a nice summary post that portrays Duncan as a sort of "Switzerland" between/among the unions and the reformers.]

NY Sen. Chasepack: Fran Drescher

this is getting wild, child.

NY Senate chasepack news

the AFT's very own Randi Weingarten in on the list now?

(h/t Reihan Salam sur L'American Scene. Salam also dilly-dallies with Doug Henwood on the Dan La Botz/UAW episode of Behind the News. Is Reihan my fave conservo-blogo? Prolly. It's interesting to hear a conservative intellectual decrying the Right's tax cut fetish, that's for sure. Mebbe I'll send 'em a gratis copy of the solo alb.)

The Good Staffer: Was it Rahm who Dropped the Dahm?

Was it Rahm who dropped the dram on Gov. B?

Local Chicago press is reporting that Rahm Emanuel reported Blago after someone approached the Obama folks about who he wanted for the Senate seat. In other words, yes, Rahm may well be the good guy here.

The good guy is one way of looking at it. Another is that Rahm is smart, and ruthless. Blagojevich is legendarily corrupt and known to be under investigation. His willingness to reach out to the White House and try and embroil them suggested a willingness to compromise Obama and his presidency. So Rahm cut him down. It's reminiscent of nothing so much as Tony Soprano killing Christopher Moltisanti when Chris becomes a liability. Rahm may have been a key figured in getting Blagojevich elected, but he's not going to sit and watch Blagojevich compromise the rest of the party. This sort of strategic ruthlessness, incidentally, was the whole argument for hiring Rahm.

(h/t Firedoglake, via Ezra K.)

Labor Sec Is Not Sebelius

h/t Ben Smith:

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, mentioned as a potential veep and then as a likely secretary of labor, e-mailed Kansas reporters that she's taking herself out of the mix, the Kansas City Star reports.

Her choice leaves unclear whether Obama will pick a prominent labor secretary — Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has also been mentioned — to speak for labor on the economic team, or a lower-profile one whose job could be largely to reorient the Department of Labor.

Jared Bernstein as Biden's Economic Staffer

I don't know if the appointments of the Vice Presidential-elect qualify as "boom-worthy" (Dave?)... But if so, then Boom!

The Economic Policy Institute is now, I daresay, in the (White) House. Check their Board of Directors for a sense of their, uh, "vibe." It's OG-friendly.

crap/not crap: BHO's Cabinet Appointments (as of 12/1/2008)

well....? A new poll is available on the right side of your screen.

around the what if horn

more than anything i'm tired this long weekend. i've been sick and chained to my office-tv-bedroom habitat forever, but it's clearly going to continue for a few more days, months... thankfully i'm finally well enough to take walks, enjoy promenades, prance about the precincts, etc... so i've got that (read: the out-of-doors) going for me, which is nice. at a certain point, it is a itself a sin for even the catholic-est ex-catholics to brood, non? so if the best posture i can muster these days is "enthusiastic convalescent," then...

i turn to fluxblog in an attempt to end a decade's hiatus from any and all hip-hop, etc. kanye west, l'il wayne (sp?)... how else am i supposed to start? (any and all advice is welcome. i'll probably end up regressing to thirty-six chambers or midnight marauders, if not just giving up and only ever rocking the soft rock or the shoegaze records.) i appreciate fluxblog's 'singles' format, and i like the renewed sense of possibilities that mp3 web action brings to the audio life.

looks like chris matthews really is staffing up for the PA senate seat run.
dean baker occupies the position of Marvel's (Uatu the) Watcher, pointing the way to a possible reality-based discourse around EFCA that seems less improbable every day.

in other shield news, an interview with writer Shawn Ryan - who'd've thunk he worked on Nash Bridges? - coinciding with the (gripping) series finale from last tuesday. neophytes should resist the urge to skip to the end without watching the whole thing, tho....Ryan justifiably feels some pride for the series' ability to maintain the beginning-middle-end formal architecture that so few movies/tv shows/etc ever pull off.

more jeffrey jensen telephone calls on matablog!

boof! more depressants for yr depression

a longer, dismal-er Ben Smith take on the Sec. of Labor non-story. boof!

merit-pay: mebbe in 2017

I thought so. You?

Tom Daschle for HHS Sec

Not a surprise (sorry, not a very informative link but the story just broke.) Comments?