SoCal in the House!

I love this article from market watch:

Worker Advocate: Solis Nomination Slap in the Face to America's Independent Minded Workers

Last update: 6:21 p.m. EST Dec. 18, 2008
WASHINGTON, Dec 18, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ --
Mark Mix, President of the 2.2 million member National Right to Work Committee, has released the following statement about President-elect Barack Obama's selection of Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-CA) as the next Secretary of Labor:
"Obama's appointment of Hilda Solis is very disturbing news for America's independent-minded workers.
"Congresswoman Solis is a die-hard forced unionism activist who apparently believes that all workers should be gathered into union collectives -- whether they like it or not. Throughout her political career, she has unfailingly carried water for Big Labor and voted in favor of every forced unionism power grab that has come before her. In fact, she had a 100% voting record from the AFL-CIO, in support of their radical forced unionism agenda.

how much can an independent minded worker in a forced union collective expect to bring home?

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 needless suffering/essay contest

whoever downloads, digests and most thoroughly reviews this "vintage" Pearl Jam demo gets a fancy piece of vinyl from me for a trophy (or a fancy cassette: your choice, i've got cool trophies available in both formats.) i'll be looking forward to some earnest, scholarly, scathing whatever. may the worst person win!

Next We'll have Tony Blair and Jeff Tweedy...

...talking about Harold Wilson and the other fall of the house of labour.

(h/t Washington Note)

".exactly these cans." horn

[i'm working through an obstacle with exactly these cans on my ears. dual volume controls! i am enjoying very much the new Deerhunter and Lambchop records, and speaking of Lambchop the newest Giant Sand would go well between your Lambchop and your Testface records.]

The Interview: Barack Obama - Person of the Year 2008 - TIME

don't even think about not reading this, because it's lengthy and candid.

Palin leads top 10 list of memorable political economic quotes - Politics- msnbc.com

what a year of politics we've lived through? huh. this is a pointed kind of scrapbook, this list.

Electrical Audio - Best Albums of 2008

outside of our immediate circle, this is where the real top 10 conversation goes on. i am having a great time preparing my top ten...especially since i've already leaked the identity of my #1 on the other blogo.

Golden Girls Jewelry! » Is The “Thank You For Being A Friend” Necklace The Best Christmas Gift Since Christ Was Born?

i come to Best Week Ever exclusively for Paul F. Tompkins. but they've got me by the elbow now. shoegaze and pop-gossip, merry New Year!

blog.aflcio.org, "double-standard-critics-of-big-three-loan-subsidize-foreign-competitors"
again, i keep wondering why it took labor so long to get this winning message out to people!

back to work.

marxist nerd adult comedy here

from an email list i won't name because i don't know who would or wouldn't want their identity revealed. and Human Subjects is the order of the day, people.

>From Engels: "Hungary, Poland and Russia are the only countries in Europe where invasion is impossible in winter."

Wow. If only Hitler had read some more Engels!

-(Poster 1).

^^^
(Poster 2): Actually, I'm kind of glad he didn't (smile).

(some of) NAM's Greatest Hits - Then and Now

National Association of Manufacturers, (1895-???)

*On the need for Employers to Organize (against the free press and direct democracy, etc):

We must co-operate – we must get together and stick together to uphold our honor and honesty, we manufacturers and merchants, or rampant labor men, socialists and demagogues will be our undoing. All these new fangled ideas about the initiative, referendum and recall, and all these attacks on capital, no matter how honestly obtained, are for the sole purpose of putting more power into the hands of the papers and politicians. In fact, I think the greatest menace that our country has today is a so-called “free press,” bidding for popularity with the thoughtless mob.

* Contra the eight-hour working day, from a pamphlet entitled, Eight Hours by Act of Congress: Arbitrary, Needless, Destructive, Dangerous:

The National Association is committed to an unrelenting opposition to this vicious, needless, and in every way preposterous proposition…The worst that can be said of it is none too bad.

The chief work of the Association is an educational one – the molding of public opinion. [If successful] the public spirited masses of the country will rally to their side, and the featherheads and mountebanks who have been casting discredit on many of the labor unions will drop back into obscurity from which they were originally dragged.

We must point out to the people that all this legislation that is going on affects them; shorter hours increases the cost of living, raises taxes, creates a condition for them that is really worse than it is for the manufacturers. We owe that to them. We must do it. That is the most important thing for this organization to do.

* Contra the Employee Free Choice Act

Union bosses have made it clear that their highest legislative priority next year is passage of EFCA.

The card check bill would eliminate over 70 years of precedent established under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 by taking away employees’ freedom to choose under a federally supervised, secret ballot election when deciding whether or not to join a union. It would replace the private, secret ballot election with a system called “card check” which allows a union to organize if a majority of employees simply sign an authorization card. Under this system, the employees’ signatures are made public to the employer, the union organizers and co-workers.

Trading federally supervised private ballot elections for a card check process tramples the privacy of individual workers. Secret ballots are the only way to protect an individual’s freedom to choose without subtle or overt coercion.

(Good to hear this defense of the secret ballot/democracy from a group that has publicly opposed the free press, direct democracy and the direct election of U.S. Senators, eh?)

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.]

Let's talk about restructuring for a moment, shall we?

To the Senators from the Deep South who decided that clinging to a dying ideology was more important than thousands of middle class jobs:

I couldn't help but notice that many of your home states receive much more federal revenue than you pay in taxes. Hardly the model of self-sufficient, pull yourself up by your bootstraps-tuitiveness, eh? Yet somehow you manage to pony up massive subsidies in order to lure automotive manufacturers from overseas into your states. In other words, the hippy-dippy West Coast, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and yes, Michigan - the very people you just completely fucked over - are making it possible for your state governments to give massive handouts to automotive companies (some based in "socialist," big gummint countries with free shriek! health care) that are directly competing with the domestic industry.

Let's say we withhold highway dollars, medicare funds, and social security payments until your states "restructure" those sweetheart deals. What's that? That will hurt people whose jobs and livelihoods depend on the flow of those federal dollars? That didn't seem to keep you from fucking anyone over, now did it?

clumps

(so anyway i have a long nite ahead of work tonite so i thought i'd send out a relay.)

*goes without saying politico clump
Robert Kuttner on the current BHO conjuncture
Bidenland will be Laborland!

Joe Biden and Robert Kuttner are in their different modalities both sort-of "go-to" guys at this moment. God knows it's great to hear that Biden will be a major labor liaison in the WH. Meanwhile, Kuttner's timely and perspicacious book has rightfully won attention far and wide, and he has subsequently half-emerged even on the stodgy old Sunday Morning circuit as the farrest out left-liberal prognosticator.

*introducing some important blogs clump
Will and the Grits
Mc'CaterbaronvonBear produces fearful catalog
Elvira, embroideries.
here we encounter three figures with whom i've shared a lot of collegiate thundering, but with whom i've also done, let's face it, years of blogging going back prior to even the early prisonship days. (who else misses friendster, folks?) but seriously, here we have three evocative blogposts from three tried and true OG commenters. first, Wilbro re-engages the questions of Southern self-identity that plague the post-Faulkner, pro-Cracker Barrel (or "profauckobarro") impulse that defines so much of our crowd. secondly, recalcitrant blogger kyle mc'caterflare has delivered a terrific festoon of albs straight out of his personal wheelhouse, which is of course the horror-soundtrack milieu. thirdly, the ever-Elvira-like Elvira does outstanding work with primary texts and pedagogical anecdotes that come off with a kind of, uh, gravitas that say, your average pattyjoe clump-post doesn't. highest recommendations

*ooh, cinema! clump (featuring survey question)
gabba drops this (apparently British) cartoon The Snowman on me, and reminds me how I've been emo since way before i ever heard slint or whoever.
the a/v club on cool but unnecessary movie sequels
it's important to me that Weapon X is important to Ezra Klein.
so here's the big question...has anybody seen The Two Jakes (Chinatown sequel). i've heard it's alright - Nicholson directed it? - but i'm more than a little fearful of it, seeing how Chinatown is such hallowed ground...(seriously though, a survey question: name your three favorite sequels.)

wow

have a nice day.

Not what was intended by nature

The skateboard video aesthetic was never meant to be applied to... golf:

for the record

i've listened to Dave Emory's anti-fascist research for more than a decade, and have written plenty about his importance to my "life of the mind," which is not to say his influence on my politics. that said, i think i've only ever forced his work on to jerobaim and angelor to any serious degree.

that said, during my tenure at the OG my taste in "alternative" political theory has trended towards the libertarian and/or union-busting. for those (between/among) us who are looking for a new flavor of off-the-rails spoken prose...well welcome to Dave Emory in the BHO era. You might be familiar with some of these Rezko-Syria-Norquist-Terror associations, but never before from a nominally pro-Obama point of view. from the most recent of the web texts that now accompany Emory's weekly broadcasts/podcasts:

This program explores a web of associations in Chicago that connect Obama to the urban political machine of the Daley family and–more importantly–to a milieu of slumlords who’ve generated much of their wealth at the expense of poor African-Americans. (As disturbing as this connection is, Mr. Emory stresses that this is not necessarily to be held against Obama. Dave opined that no one can ever become President or even a major party candidate without associating with some pretty unsavory individuals.) Of greater significance for our purposes is the fact that one of the principals in this slumlord network–Syrian-born Antoine “Tony” Rezko described by some as Obama’s political godfather–has links to the Bush administration, GOP string-puller Karl Rove and to people associated with the Carlyle Group. In addition to Rezko’s links to the very Republican elements who are ranged on the opposite side of the aisle from Obama, Rezko has links to terrorist elements as well. (This is explored at greater length in FTR #655.) Interestingly–possibly significantly–Rezko’s elevation into the ranks of Illinois politicos came courtesy of Talat Othman, a close associate of the Bush family and administration, as well as the man who interceded on behalf of the individuals and insitutions targeted by the Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002.

See Emory's full-blown and fancy new website for way, way, way more info.

(horn) friday nite Sprites

• prisonship seasonal phonics (prisonship forensic rorschach) « The PrisonShip really, nobody's hitting up the Advent thread? do you not believe that the Prisonship has re-risen for some indefinite interval?
• Pearl Jam to reissue Ten in four different packages when i told frequent commenter robes about this development, he unwrapped his salmon wrap and cried into the spinach tortilla. anyway, that's how i remember it.
• Kids in the Hall reuniting for new series i hope this doesn't turn out to be underwhelming.
• Ben Smith's Blog: Clintonites against Kennedy i cannot get enough from this NY chasepack saga.
• Obama's Smoking Drama what brand do you think BHO smokes? i'd say either Marlboro Reds or Camel Lights. Winston Lights on the outside.

cards' acoustic "fix it"

i was captivated by this performance when i first saw it and now it's available on le youtube, hoorah!

some thoughts:
1) sad how post-Unplugged acoustic rock situations require drummers to try to "Rock" with brushes. it's an emasculating set-up (even for ladies), akin to "Rock Saxophone" and "Standing-Up Keyboard Rocker." Certainly the winter hat makes Brad seem like an approachable potential dormmate, though.
2) i'm showing this vid as testimony to my grandiose claims about the Cards' vocals. but Damn if neal casal's tiny-framed glasses and face-squelching aren't a little uncomfortable to look at. he plays unbelieveable comp gtr on this song, tho.
3) i wish bill ayers had taken a page out of ry-ry's book and dressed up like 1951 Ginsberg for his Hardball interview.

Unionization as Stimulus

Ezra Klein joins in our speculation about the chances of getting the Employee Free Choice Act folded into BHO's early, massive stimulus bill for 2009:

In 10 years, you can imagine the history being written either way. You can imagine EFCA being rammed through atop the stimulus package, and it ascends into the pantheon of crucial changes that would never have survived our system if not for the reformist opportunities of a national emergency. That is, after all, how the National Labor Relations Act passed in the first place. There's precedent here. But you can also imagine the stimulus bill getting bogged down in a fight over worker ballots, with business interests spending hundreds of millions on the campaign, and the Obama administration suffering a humiliating early defeat as they find themselves unable to overwhelm a Republican filibuster. In that world, EFCA will look like Clinton's damaging effort to allow gays in the military. Like with most policies, the question is passage. If EFCA is tried and passed, it will be a great victory, If it's tried and failed, it will be a deep wound.

Will Barry step up to the plate? Is it even doable with the threat of filibuster...My teeth are gonna be chattering for a long time over this. Those congressional hearings are going to give me seizures, I just know it.

"this is rock history/narcissism and pedophilia"

• Axl Rose On Chinese Democracy, Bipolarity, Running Late & Kanye West - Stereogum AXL talking in MYGNRforum.com - Dec 12th 2008 - mygnrforum.com Guns N Roses sometimes i confuse myself. the only Guns and Roses product i ever paid money for was the You Could Be Mine cassingle, but somehow i find myself entranced by the Chinese Democracy and related hoopla. it's weird and Citizen Kane-like to read transcripts of Axl's speech, par example. (read the first link first, you cows!)
• green blog of revolution: I'm Not So Sure About That no matter how many of us may be "hardly getting over it" when it comes to Dave3544's new, sidelined Achilles posture (let alone Ash)... this is a must-see thread. hop on over and help warm things over! the idea of a rock and roll class in middle school is really silly, but the idea of a Top 30 list in that context is just a fucking car wreck. seriously, see for yourself. the list reads like the Happy Days soundtrack for a while, then turns into the Monterey Pop guest list. throw in elton john, and you're done! and how the hell did BB King get dissed?
• (blog title, of course, from a fantastic, underrated joan of arc alb that helped define my year living in the fraternity house.)
  

How do you prepare for the world's largest tailgate party?

I'll be honest - I'm excited that I'll be able to go with T. and E. downtown on January 20 for the Inauguration (whether we'll be watching at the Mall or staking out a spot for the parade is still up in the air). The level of security that's going to be on display is to be expected. It's the rest of the wackiness that's making the event seem like a Dead lot for straight people:

Sgt. Robert LaChance, a U.S. Park Police spokesman, said that it is "not legal to camp on the Mall" and that tents would be banned.

Raise your hand if you were wondering if there's anything more pleasant than sleeping outside in the middle of January in DC.

Unlike at the Capitol or on the parade route, backpacks, chairs and strollers will be permitted on the Mall, he said. People can also bring food and coolers there.

Raise your hand if you were wondering how you were going to keep your tasty beverage ice-cold in the middle of January in DC.

In case of disaster, the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency plans to use a new loudspeaker system on the Mall to tell people what to do, officials said.

Really? It sounds like I'm about to see more cops in a roughly six hour period than I've ever seen in my entire life. What sort of disaster could possibly befall us?

What's that?

Still to be determined: how many portable toilets will be set up for the events.

Fuck.

ryan adams & the cardinals - cardinology

ryan adams & the cardinals, cardinology

( editor's note. do you know the Billy Joel song, "The Stranger?" Do you understand the sense - it goes back to Kafka, at least - in which various forms of mistaken identity result in our inability to distinguish ourselves and our desire from our antagonists? It has to do with all sorts of freud/lacan/etc suspicions about the ultimate ineffeable lust/death horizon. )

Anyway, here's what i'd say in regards to Ryan Adams. It is perfectly possible to write great songs without writing good lyrics. It is also true that the work of one of our preeminent songwriters can be filled with horrible lines. It is above all true that our best gtr rock needn't brandish "meaningful" words.

Yes, this is a magnificent, groovy, stony rock album. The Cardinals are the best thing ever to have happened to Ryan Adams - Neal Casal (gtr) and Jon Graboff (steel) work to make him a better gtr player, and even manage to cultivate a collective band-persona that undermines Adams' own tendencies towards (justified and unjustifiable) solipsism. Above all, they allow for his seemingly-contrived-but-actually-very-self-evident blend of grateful dead/faces/smiths/sonic youth/replacements. what do all of these rock groups have in common? They write memorable verse-choruses that are shot through with and defined by guitars even more than their sing-song-y lyrical qualities.

Now, this is not to say that the album doesn't benefit from its vocal component. regardless of the often vacuous words, the singing on the album is phenomenal. The harmonies are way more realized than on previous Cards albs, and Neal Casal is really foregrounded rather than sounding like just a backup guy.

Anywho, the songs can be lumped into roughly three seperate categories: Dead-ish, generic FM 70s and "modern."

Dead-ish: "Born Into a Light," "Evergreen," "Fix It," "Natural Ghost."
Generic 70s: "Let Us Down Easy," "Like Yesterday," "Stop."
"Modern Rock:" "Go Easy," "Magick," "Crossed Out Name," "Sink Ships."

Okay, so I've mentioned how awesome and sonic youth worship-y the Cardinals gtr tone is, right? It's just jammy, reverb-y Fender city (see the pic above.) The album recording retains this 'verb-y, live-sounding stereo gtr jangle vibe, often over- or under-laying a tasteful Garcia-ish acoustic strum-pick. Graboff's steel is often ambient, supplanted by keys or otherwise reserved - rarely is it deployed in the strict "country" sense we'd expect usually. And the rhythym section stops and starts adeptly and interestingly, in a way that reminds me of Mike Heidorn on the first 3 Son Volt records, that are herky-jerky, but always stopping and starting in 1-2-3-4 clowckwork installments. Does that make sense? Brad Pemberton of the Cards is a great drummer and seems like the dude in the band I'd most like to have a grilled cheese avec.

I've also already mentioned how much I was enamored with the packaging of this album, and its accompanying 7" and t-shirt. Lemme also mention this about the mp3 download that came with the 180-gram LP: the mp3 is a direct rip from the fucking vinyl! you hear the crackles! that impresses the crap outta me, and it should impress you too. 2008 is the year that mp3s and fancy vinyl tag-teamed compact discs to effing death!

Anyway, song by song in the key of post(ph)vainne:

1. born into a light: this follows in the tradition of the awesome "Goodnight Rose" from Easy Tiger. if Cold Roses was clearly sort of going for a Terrapin Station vibe, 2008 Ryan is really feeling things more of a bearded, Reckoning-ish way. Great song, bad lyrics. "Keep the faith," Ryan? Really?
   
2. go easy: bad lyrics, great singing. short, pretty, Cards come in and get out.
   
3. fix it: great single. great swanky disco strut. great neal casal guitar break. one of the songs i will remember when i remember 2008. inoffensively carole king-y lyrics here.
   
4. magick: this song is absolutely abysmal and reminiscent of the lamentable rock and roll album. ryan actually sings "later on we hit the mall" in this song. gripping, i know. i mean, it's cool that the guy lives in a bubble and decides not to write songs about Bolivian tin miners... but this is va-pid. the only way i can get through this song is imagining that it's Trefz Minx (/evil r+b) singing the "let your body move" part of the chorus. this is a phenomenally bad entry into the "New Wave Ryan" canon, and totally inappropriate alongside the other songs.
   
5. cobwebs: now this i love. 'intro is the most (new school-) sonic youth-y part ever in a Ryan Adams song. as lyrics go, the haunting chords on the "if i fall/will you catch me?" make it more acceptable than it reads.
   
6. let us down easy: wow, this is the Cardinals' version of Magnolia's epic "Hammer Down," which is itself a re-statement of the great Band/Crazy Horse Woodstock balladry school. how do you like the Casal/Ryan vocals here? hard to deny.
   
7. crossed-out name: see, these lyrics are unbelievably emo and black-rimmed-glasses-wearing-y. but they actually pull it off, for my money! the problem is that my patience has been so stepped on with all of the less-fitting earlier new age/rich kid tripe that i cannot appreciate this small, good thing. sure i can, actually. but you get me, no?
   
8. natural ghost: another high-point, for me, albeit the most blatantly kinda 80s-Dead-ish ballad. i love the guitar break, tho there's no solo and nothing really "happens." (pretty much tracks 5-8 amount to the "high-water mark" on the alb.)
9. sink ships: this song is really boring until an uber-goth, uber-emo, uber-love is hell bridge turns us into a weird elevator shaft. it's a grand left turn.
   
10. evergreen: not as silly as "Monkey and the Engineer," but at the same time it's a way more tasteless tiptoe through the tulips than anything this side of Eugene's lavender fleece factory. are you really singing to a tree on this, ryan? i thought you were mister death metal -sylvia plath guy. there is a billy corigan-like privileged whimsy when it comes adams' selection of motifs on this album. if Ryan ever finds Jesus, we're all effed.
    
11. like yesterday: boom! this is the song with the 70s-sounding, interlocking/harmony gtr leads! be-au-ti-ful singing! what a treat!
    
12. stop: now here's the unkindest cut of all. this is an arresting, well-written song with lean and clean lyrics and an effortlessly everyday, humane theme. it's also wrist-slittingly sad. 'so weird... after so many songs about nothing or songs that are just doused in sentimental abstractions, songs housed in hackneyed architecture... we end on this grown-up a note?

And that's how we leave it. I can bitch all i want about everything about ryan adams that doesn't directly relate to my listening to his songs... But when i'm listening i'm pretty enthralled and pretty forgiving of his trespasses. his sonics and his phonics and his sins are endlessly understandable to me. And his band's tone is my favorite one. Again, not all great songwriters - let alone great singers - have necessarily always written good lyrics. That's as silly as expecting athletes (or artists) to be adept at politics!

So long as the Cardinals remain the irresistible rock guitar force that they are, and so long as ryan adams and neal casal keep wrapping their throats around each other like lovers wrap around their nude legs... Well, there's no need for Ryan Adams to say anything "literary" or even "sonorous," let alone "true" (sic). I mean, all Van Morrison does these days is scat, right? That's what you can do when you've got the voice, right?

I guess i just don't quite understand why ryan adams gets a book deal, tho i can guess i understand why he'd wanna try to be a novelist (wouldn't you?) isn't this going to distract him from making me alternately Rumors, Planet Waves and Goo-influenced FM sounds?

NY Sen. Chasepack: Fran Drescher

this is getting wild, child.