I once scavenged; thus, my society should abandon the project of feeding its hungry.

From MaxRedline a conservative blogger I have enjoyed reading for months, this moral tale comes in response to "a discussion involving public schools offering free meals year 'round."

Judge for yourself, readers, based on the merits of the writing. But first, a caveat from the author:

If you're a leftist, you may as well move on now, because I'm going to explain exactly why compassion is not necessarily good. This will cause your head to explode, so in the interest of your personal safety, you should leave.

Are you still in, readers?

My parents were out here for a visit a few years ago, and one of Dad's observations was that Oregon has so much food, growing everywhere - even in the urban areas - that it would be almost impossible to go hungry during the summer months. He was right.

Unless you're absolutely a sloth, you really can't go hungry. Nuts and berries grow in almost every neighborhood in which I've lived or visited. To supplement, there are edible native plants in abundance, as well as - in the urban areas - food distribution centers.

The only way someone can go hungry here is if they sit on their fat ass and demand that others bring stuff to them.

Sure, and you may have to get hands dirty by picking nuts and fruits, by participating in one of the many gleaning programs, or otherwise working to feed yourself and your kin, if any. But forty+ years ago, finding myself out of work for a time and with few actual possessions such as telephone or tv, I lived in Forest Park for a couple of months - a mere jaunt to downtown Portland.

It involved a bit of work, as I had to fabricate a small shelter - but it was well-camoed and actually had quite a spectacular view from the entrance. I harvested quite a number of edible native plants and obtained water from a nearby spring. Perhaps the greatest amount of work involved digging a privy; difficult to do with but small tools and hands.

Of course, as the economy improved I was able to secure work, leave the park, and build things up. I now live in a house, complete with mortgage, in Portland's West Hills.

Nothing was given to me. I worked for everything, however meager it may have seemed at the time.

And if I can do it, surely then others can as well.

I'm not advocating that everybody move into the park and start digging privies and setting snares, but there are far more private social services in play now than there were 40 years ago. The one factor that remains is this: you have to be willing to do at least some work.

"Free" meals served year-round at schools simply undermines the values of self-reliance and personal responsibility; supplanting them with a "somebody owes me" mentality.

Please discuss.

Hot, Hot Ballot Initiative Video Action

So begins the Wrestlemania III-style ballot referenda warfare that will define my dissertation research and, sorry in advance, a lot of my blogging in the weeks to come.

The big news here being that Oregon's own Norquist-y, anti-tax Wrecking Crew is evoking that socialist Barack Obama as a voice of marcoeconomic reason! Here's to six more months of escalating cognitive dissonance!

Charles Grassley [R-IA], populist: pt. 927

Finally, we begin the post-bipartisan phase of the Health Care culture wars.

Chuck Grassley Gives Up The Game

In an interview with The Washington Post, Chuck Grassley said that the town hall meetings have convinced him to revisit the breadth and scope of what the Gang of Six is considering. The calls for reform are "not quite as loud as people that say we ought to slow down or don't do anything," Grassley said. " And I've got to listen to my people."

So that's it then. A bipartisan bill is a smaller bill. The search for compromise hasn't led to a compromise bill. Rather, it's leading to a call for compromising on what was supposed to be the compromise....

[read the full EZRA KLEIN article.]

Now when do we enter the post-post-politcal phase? When do we stop pretending that class/race/gender antagonisms, among others, aren't more constitutive than the universalist tents we're trying to crowd everybody under? More on this soon.

PS - I was pleased to see frequent Hardball contributor/conservative public intellectual John Lott appear in the "Health Care Gun Guy" comments thread.. OG faithful, won't you please welcome/engage with this policy thinker?

A belated answer to Lex

Blogger lex dexter said...

EZ, Are the progressive and populist traditions reconcilable?

August 3, 2009 3:41 PM

I was too busy to compose a serious answer, and I was hesitant to give it a rush job (my usual)... but Digby posted to day about this topic and I thought it brought some of my thinking on this q. She was discussing Rick Perlstein's piece in the WAPO.
from digby:

Rick talked about some other things that were equally fascinating, particularly the issue of why the demagogic rhetoric of the right seems to work so well:
You can't "demand" that people be more logical. Emotion is part of the human animal. What I would have liked to have seen, as an advocate of healthcare reform, is for Obama and the rhetoric to COMBINE rational appeals with emotional ones--like FDR and and Truman and LBJ did so effectively in their own attempts to pass progressive legislation. They roused people in their lizard-brains, too, just for progressive ends. Read a book about the 1948 presidential election--Truman made arguments in a very blunt, emotional style...

And he mentions my biggest pet peeve -- the sell-out on populist economic issues, which should naturally belong to the left right now and is instead (dangerously) being appropriated by the right:

Somewhere along the line Democrats lost a sense of their natural power base--which is the fact that their ideas are economically beneficial to the vast majority. Acknowledging this fact became "demagoguery." Conservatives convinced them it was "class warfare." They became afraid of their simplest and most powerful message. All the other timidity follows from that.

In our country, populism has almost always been caught up in race and nativism, but it didn't have to be that way this time. The democratic Party's ties with corporate America cause a great deal of this problem to be sure, but I agree with Rick that much of this is sheer Pavlovian reflex. They are afraid to say the truth. The right is unafraid to lie. And that leads to a distorted political dialog that nobody can understand. And into that void, the scare tactics have a distinct advantage.

I think that the "traditions" are not very reconcilable, but I think that the term, along with progressive, can be re-branded to more positive use. The original progressive's were mostly white male protestant business owners that wanted to take back govmint from the flood of (non white non protestant) immigrants, but that doesn't stop me and many others from using the term to denote liberal ideas in general. (I liked how nate discussed this at 538:

the term "progressive" is equally ambiguous, and is associated with at least two relatively distinct philosophical traditions. Although these two "progressivisms" share common ground on many (probably most) issues, they are at loggerheads on some others, as has perhaps become more apparent since the election of President Obama.



The first type of progressivism has its philosophical underpinnings in 18th Century, Enlightement-era thought. It believes that politics is a battle of ideas. It further believes that through the use of reason and the exchange of ideas, human society will tend to improve itself through scientific and technological innovation. Hence, it believes in progress, and for this reason lays claim to the term “progressive”. Because of its belief and optimism in the faculties of human reason, I refer to this philosophy as rational progressivism.

Rational progressivism tends to be trusting, within reason, of status quo political and economic institutions -- generally including the institution of capitalism. It tends to trust these institutions because it believes they are a manifestation of progress made by previous generations. However, unlike conservatism, it also sees these institutions as continuing works in progress, subject to inefficiencies because of distorted or poorly-designed incentives, poorly-informed or misinformed participants, and competition from 'irrational' worldviews like religion. It also recognizes that certain persons who stand to benefit from preserving the status quo, particularly elected officials but also corporations, may seek to block this progress to protect their own interests. The project of rational progressivism, then, is to propagate good ideas and to convert them, through a wide and aggressive array of democratic means, into public policy.

The second type of progressivism is what I call radical progressivism. It represents, indeed, a much more radical and comprehensive critique of the status quo, which it tends to see as intrinsically corrupt. Its philosophical tradition originates in 19th Century thought -- and specifically, owes a great deal to the Marxist critique of capitalism and the Marxist theory of social change. It also finds inspiration in both the radical movement of the 1960s and the labor and social movements of late 19th and early 20th centuries (from which it borrows the label "progressive").

Radical progressivism is more clearly distinguishable from "conventional" liberalism and would generally be associated with the "far left" -- although on a handful of issues such as free trade, it may find common cause with the "radical" right. Radical progressivism embraces the tradition of populism and frequently adopts a discourse of the virtuous commoner organizing against the corrupt elite. It is much more willing to make normative claims than rational progressivism, and tends to view conservatism as immoral and contemporary American liberalism as amoral (at best). Its project is not reform but transformation.

Rational progressives sometimes regard radical progressives as impractical, self-righteous, shrill, demagogic, naïve and/or anti-intellectual. Radical progressives, in turn, regard rational progressives as impure, corrupt (or corruptible), selfish, complacent, elitist, and too quick to compromise.

my point (made through (over) use of other's quotes) is that the terms can be used by anyone, willing/able to construct a (rational) defense of what they mean by the labels. Somebody got a problem with that?

Ezra Klein suggests ultimate Lex Dexter meltdown upon us

Gah! Oof! (from le Washington Post):

As you'd probably expect, the Senate Finance Committee is moving toward dropping coverage of end-of-life counseling from its bill entirely. Luckily, the committee's ranking member, Chuck Grassley, has some advice for those who are confused about such things as "living wills" and "advance directives" and "full and aggressive treatment."

I think the best thing to do is if you want people to think about the end of life, number one, Jesus Christ is the place to start, and after that, in the physical life, as opposed to your eternal life, it ought to be done within the family and considered a religious and ethical issue and not something that politicians deal with.

Another, way more telling town hall interview

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quoth Krugman:

What I think is going on here, at least partly, is that the peddlers of anti-progressive lies are managing to convince a certain kind of American — white, socially conservative, etc. — that the hate-mongers are people like them; and, even more important, that progressives are Those People, people not like them.

Obama’s skin color makes this easy; but the Clintons faced the same kind of thing. Why? Well, the old line about Clinton being the first black president gets at something: even if Bill Clinton had a regular skin and name, he was obviously comfortable with people who didn’t, which made him one of Them.

And anti-intellectualism is also part of it.

In any case, it’s scary: you’ve got a good segment of the American population that is completely impervious to any kind of evidence, any rational argument. I mean, who collects statistics? People in black helicopters!

Chuck Grassley separates self, chain

from l'Huffpo:

One of the three Republican senators working on a bipartisan health care bill perpetuated a particularly outrageous untruth about the legislation on Wednesday. Appearing at a town hall in his home state of Iowa, Sen. Chuck Grassley told a crowd of more than 300 that they were correct to fear that the government would "pull the plug on grandma." "There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life," Grassley said. "And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. You shouldn't have counseling at the end of life. You ought to have counseling 20 years before you're going to die. You ought to plan these things out. And I don't have any problem with things like living wills. But they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma."

Let's.Take.This.Opportunity.To.Abandon.The."Bipartisanship."Bullshit.

Chris Matthews Interviews the Health Care Gun Guy, Lex Goes Off the Chain

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I should let this must-see speak for itself, but first, one anthropological observation (AO) and one non-anthropological one (NAO).

1. AO: Notice how the Health Care Gun Guy seems to think he has acquitted himself well. That, my friends, is the most important thing about this back-and-forth, and I would love to hear your thoughts on Health Care Gun Guy's worldview. It speaks to how the Tea Party episteme is immune from most progressives' idea of the "facts." By extension, it calls into crisis the efficacy and/or coherence of whatever semblance of "civil society" and/or deliberative, public, political discourse these Town Halls are meant to constitute. Tea Parties are all about "Liberty," but weirdly, they are also impervious to the basic democratic processes that progressives and moderates think of as being boring, sure, but also sacred. (In short, the emergent conservatism/political theater/Angry Old Man Draped in Historic Garb aesthetic is a way bigger threat to the "incomplete project" of modernity than postmodernism ever was. Remember the definition of fascism as the "aestheticization of politics." Fascism is, after all, always available (if not appetizing) for disgruntled non-majorities in liberal democracies. )
   
2. NAO: I am frightened for the safety of the President, and even more fearful about a certain right-wing tendency's overall effect on our society. If this is the sort of generalized anxiety that comes out of the woodwork when we are merely trying to pass a limp-ish public healthcare option...what's the Cap and Trade debate going to look like? Are people going to move away from the 'BHO is not a citizen, BHO is a Muslim' meme, into "BHO is selling our planet to space aliens who will give us daily rectal exams and make us wear veils and shawls?" This would be funny if it weren't the most un-fucking-funny fucking thing I can fucking think fucking of.
   

Fun with Straw...

Over the weekend on ABC's This Week, after being pressed by Staphy about the lack of any mention of the phrase, NOOOT propped up this beauty:

You're asking us to trust turning power over to the government, when there clearly are people in America who believe in -- in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards.

So, what other public policy decisions should be determined by this test?

Can you prop up a bigger Strawthing?

I mean there are clearly people in America who believe in __(Blank)___...so we can't ___(Blank)___

We can't lower the drinking age, because I mean there are clearly people in America who believe in infant alcohol use.

any others come to mind?

Re: the Unemployment "good news."

From Doug Henwood, a most trusted reporter on the US economy, whose weekly radio program and whose Left Business Observer are tent-poles buttressing my shoddy, B- theory-tarp.

While the unemployment rate fell by 0.1 point to 9.4%, the first decline since April 2008, it looks like a lot of people have given up the job search as hopeless, meaning they’re no longer counted as officially unemployed. And the ranks of the unemployed are increasingly dominated by people who’ve been jobless for half a year or more—people whose prospects for re-employment in the future are usually quite damaged by these long spells outside the labor force.

So while there are some signs that the recession is drawing to a close—an impression confirmed by the drop in first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week—the job market is still awful, and the recovery that’s likely to follow the end of the recession sometime later this year will almost certainly be very weak and not very joyful. The U.S. economy has some serious structural problems that aren’t even being discussed, much less addressed.

But I guess it's hard to find time to discuss "serious structural problems" amidst all of this latent xenophobe-qua-deficit-hawk Tea Partying? Between this and the Diana from OR vid [see below]. I feel like our political culture has less depth than, say, an average NFL Films presentation from the late 1960s.

SEIU Receives Threatening Phone Call from Diana from OR

This is what I mean when I say "creepy."

Anyone know a Diana?

from Kos,

Hello, my name is Diana and I'm calling from Oregon.

I just wanted to let the SEIU know that America is watching the thug tactics that you folks are using at health care meetings and various other public places, and the absolutely thuggish violent tactics that your group is using.

I suggest you tell your people to calm down, act like American citizens and stop trying to repress people's First Amendment rights. That, or you all are gonna' come up against the Second Amendment.

Stop the violence.

apparently the SEIU is receiving nasty calls...Not to get psycomalogical but sounds like somebody is projecting. Most of the mob behavior is coming from the nuts.

I have to get to one of these meetings, sounds like a ball...

Blog Before the Aftrn Walk, Blog Before Hardball

Short (sized-'Large') American Apparel short-shorts, Cinci Reds Jersey, white ankle socks.
Bob Dylan Christmas Album on the Way
Oh, Jesus. The worst part is that I could imagine liking this -- like, there's a 12% chance I might like this, even. I need to keep myself out of the way of this release.

Fake turkey sandwich on the bakery dept.'s sourdough from yesterday.
Pukekos: Black Eyes
This Is Dancefloor Numerology: Tim Hecker and Fennesz Album Pack
Black Eyes being an always-intriguing latter-day Dischord group, and Pukekos being the best extant mp3-blog-chronicler of a certain tendency in our coastal lives after hardcore, over emo; Hecker and Fennesz representing the most promising of the laptop-shoegaze-minimalism genre that I'm trying to crack open. Do you all like this latter kind of music?

If only the above were my own, actual kitchenette.
Why The Misfits Are The Most Mythic Of All New Jersey Artists
Don't forget the Music Blogs (like Pship!)!!! Don't forget the rock-write, children.

We The People Stimulus Package

I am particularly interested in those individuals who decide it's time to put on the historical garb. This is about as close to a set of Tea Party 'first principles' as I've so far found.

"If you decide to do nothing again, then buy a gun. You'll need it."

Memo to WOBS -- Will You Join the Tea Party Express?!?

I'm in.

Another Post About Aerosmith and the Black Crowes

In a sweeping, communist-er than thou tirade against the four of five Anglo-American 'left' journals with readerships greater than 200, The Commune arrives upon that beloved OG tackling dummy, John Bellamy Foster, and spews forth fire:

To borrow a catch phrase from Nick Cohen: what’s left of the left? Not much it seems once we plunge into the depths of the other journals floating about out there. A glance across to the U.S. publication, the Monthly Review, might indicate that we are looking at the journal of New Maoist thought – and that would be the Mao of the Great Leap Forward, rather than the Mao of the Cultural Revolution. The entire issue for July to August 2009 is devoted to agriculture, “food sovereignty,” land reform and, or course, the relevance of climate change to all these matters. The May 2009 issue even has a favourable review of a book of Mao’s poetry. It seems that under John Bellamy Foster’s editorship (author of the fraudulent “Marx and Ecology”) the Monthly Review is becoming entirely devoted to slightly left of liberal North American thought: climate change, anti-Zionism, anti-war. Anything, it seems, than engagement with the working class, the labour movement and the promotion of communist ideas.

I know what yr thinking, and yr right! Why accuse a man and his (marxist) organ, of Maoism, when the far more damning charge is that of irrelevance? Probably because you're a self-identifying communist raging against the non-revelation that actually existing 'marxism' in this Northern hemisphere is largely, lamentably, of an academic sort.

'Thing is - and I'm saying this as somebody with a New Left Review chest tattoo, mind you - MRZINE is probably the most accessible, least Trot-y, closest thing to left-of-liberal one-stop-shopping for international news that we have here in Amorica. And notwithstanding some recent grossness re: overly 'hard left' Iran-boosting, le MR usually manages to stay on this side or the reality/ir-reality divide, and even eschews the lengthy Plekhanov references/hammer+sickle porn that alienates so many of us pomo-petit-lumpens -- let alone, y'know, actual humans with non-blog jobs.
Yep, even accessible, less-than-parochial marxist clearing-houses like MRZINE are rarely accessed by exactly the folks parochial marxists wish were accessing 'em {-- and that sucks big phlegm-sodas outta cat-sacks, don't get me wrong.} But at l'end of le day, even less accessible* is the cliquish ur-theory that'd cast Foster's eco-marxist imaginings as not just 'wrong,' 'dumb,' or 'ill-conceived,' but instead as "fraudulent."

[* Yeah, yeah, and, uh, least accessible is my writing style, sure. But do you see me fronting any worker-councils, foaming beatitudes, or spewing forth any other such vanguardist-froth? No you don't, Jack/Jill. No you goddamn don't. And shame on me for that. But I gotta go watch Dynasty, see?]

Nobody Loves the Federal Reserve

Nobody loves the Fed, and why would they? But shite, shucks, I cannot say I fear le Fed so much as I fear, say, the CIA.

Turns out, I'm out of step with our great nation on this one. Or at least, so says Gallup:

In 2003, the slight majority of Americans, 53%, said the Federal Reserve was doing an excellent or good job and 5% called it poor. Today, 30% of Americans praise the job the Fed is doing, while nearly as many, 22%, call it poor. While this ratings downturn coincides with a substantial drop in consumer confidence toward the U.S. economy over the same period, it is unclear how much of the Fed's image decline is due to the general decline in the country's economic climate, as opposed to specific perceptions about the agency's performance in carrying out its monetary responsibilities and possibly its role in the crisis surrounding U.S. financial markets. The Fed's low excellent/good rating may also reflect the higher-than-average percentage of Americans having "no opinion" about this arm of the government, relative to the other agencies rated.

1. So anyway: which government agency and/or department do y'all disapprove of the most?!?
   
2. And more importantly, do you foresee a continued Kucinich-Paul nexus mingling with the usual white supremacists and gunfucks to strike up/consummate/re-debut a truly 21st Century monetarist paranoia?!?
   

EFCA w/o Card check is like (blank) without (blank)

according to politiBLo:

Despite the backing of President Barack Obama and congressional leaders, plus a multimillion-dollar union advertising blitz, Senate leaders can’t muster the 60 votes they need to avoid a GOP filibuster on labor’s top priority: the Employee Free Choice Act.

So a group of Senate Democrats is reportedly considering dropping the bill’s controversial “card check” provision to break the legislative impasse. That will help, but other formidable obstacles lie in the path of long-overdue changes in U.S. labor law.

So what is EFCA without card check?

its like herb without THC
its like coffee without caffeine
its like freedom without forty acres and a mule

(reasonable and non-comical discussions about the actual ramifications of or the remaining provisions of the bill are welcome as well)

well, thank god andy stern is on top of this development....

"Unions OK drop of 'card check' in bill "Union leaders present at the talks have included AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern and Communications Workers of America president Larry Cohen.

A compromise would allow unions to get a vote on something that can pass and achieve some goals.

Without better protection from employer anti-union campaigns unions will not gain anything. It is hard to see how EFCA w/o card check still moves that ball...

Remember L'OG?

C'est mort? I dunno.

Fraad Wolff is....wait for it.....Right Again

At this point, the only thing annoying'er than MJ elegies're snobbish, lazy expressions of outrage re: the MJ coverage. But that doesn't change the fact that some way more serious shite is afoot then MJ's being dead -- even if, like MFW below, you think that MJ has become a symptom of the national anxiety re: the clearly worsening economy:

In these times our cable news system truly becomes irrelevant all the time. I will not pretend to know or understand exactly why Michael Jackson suddenly means so much for so many. I don't doubt the feelings are real and intense. I haven't the faintest idea why and how Jackson became the symbolic icon for national grief. But I do know that many missed a few very, very real news stories over the last two weeks.

The "green shoots" theory about imminent or arrived economic recovery has withered under the pounding rain of actual data. Last Thursday we learned that wages are completely stagnant, hours worked have fallen and 467,000 net jobs were lost in June 2009. Since December 2007 approximately 7 million Americans have lost their jobs and the total number of jobless Americans is just under 15million. Four and half million Americans have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks. Male unemployment is officially at 10%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics broad unemployment measure U-6 includes marginally attached workers and involuntary part-time workers. The June measure of U-6 unemployment stands at 16.5%. The average American work week declined to 33 hours in June. This is the lowest number recorded in the 45 year history of the measure. It is fair to think of the falling number of hours worked as another form of unemployment impacting millions. Perhaps this is part of the reason millions are interesting in grieving?

Hi, I'm Lex, and I'm an Enema Addict; or, New Moves

It's amazing how love and happiness can throw off my habitus, my swagger and my wannabe Slint-y, stop/start-y dynamics of irony/earnestness. This week I find myself filled with the kind of happiness I've forever associated with happy people - all sincerity and good cheer, y'know? But nonetheless, yesterday I forged a new path back to my old catholic-leninist cavern. Guess what? I found it bedecked, as always, in my same old, douche-y and definitive swirl of interpallative echoes: Who Do You Think You Are? [henceforth WDYTYA]/How, Then, Shall We Live?/What Is To Be Done?

How the hell are happy people supposed to live? To think? To dress? Who do they think they are, and how do they sleep? What sort of lexicon changes, tonal shifts and assorted other New Moves, accompany this transition into 'Bliss,' 'Innocents Abroad,' and a whole bunch of other Chisel references...

As I tried to tell a roomful of unionists a coupla weekends ago, WDYTYA? is a necessary, generative, and constitutive strategic question for social movements, families and all sorts of other collectives. But WDYTYA? amounts to little more than a moralistic enema kit when we pose it in self-centered terms. As with political philosophies, my self-understanding is at its most insidious when it is subject-centered (i.e., starting from me and my internal monologue, rather than the relays, relations and the reasons for relating from which my monologue and sense of 'me' should ultimately spring.)

It's an insult to love and happiness, receiving these latter two social materials in self-ish terms. These days I feel a sense of intimacy/embededness/security/assuredness I'd given up on years ago, but even that miracle - and even the triumph of 'Two-Beer Lex' over harder-partying days of old - doesn't guarantee a life without hangovers.

Maybe I can't control that part [- hell, maybe all this inward-facing horseshit is part and parcel of the vagaries of catholic school/graduate school/reading too much/thinking too much/ life on the losing side of medium-term political history. - ed] But, to the extent that an ideology of personal responsibility applies [it rarely does! - ed], I should probably accept the fact that most of these behaviors are part and parcel of a life-path I've chosen for myself...Shucks, though, here's my counter-mantra:

I may never totally vanquish these intermittent emo-bursts, but at least I can let them pass without confusing them with referenda on my character (pfft!), or without confusing my character (pfft!) with my life's work.

Doing right by people I love - and doing right by people I don't even know - is probably as close to a worthy undertaking as is to be found, non? It's also an assured ticket out of navel-gazing, moralizing, enamizing,who do I think I am?'-ing.

At some point, any good socialist, and anybody who's ever felt really loved, recognizes that relations of production, and/or relationships-en-generale, are the privileged venues for building a life worth living, an identity worth articulating or, even, a self worth 'finding' (c.f., Teenage Fanclub, 'Your Love is the Place Where I Come From.') I've been writing against the popular-therapeutic concept of 'self' since I was 21 (See the Spring 2001 issue of Southern Anthropologist, par example), and've sought to inoculate my-self with the widest swath of social-psycho-theoretical tinctures on display since long before then. But there still may be no exit, ultimately, from intermittent bouts of self-ishness that, among other things, define a certain strand of post-Old Testament modernity, and reign over these United States with all the self-evidence and goes-without-saying-ness of gun-related deaths and anti-intellectualism.

Either way, blaming my-self further elevates self, soul, essence, and personhood over the solidarity, love, material-being-in-the-world, and public/intimate socialities to which I long ago pledged my oath and faith. That's just dumb. And that's why today is the first day of the second part of the first day of the rest of my life. That's why I'm working out with some New Moves.

Arlen Specter at Employee Free Choice rally part 2

Shit, if you're still living with the OG in our "Mob Rules" period [Dio=solid citizen, Tony Iommi (still) =Lex]-- well then, maybe you've got the patience to stick around for six minutes of a poignant, EFCA-related stump showdown that makes me glad I'm not Arlen Specter.

I believe that we can all agree that when the revolution does come, these two will be first against the wall

Greetings from the Nuclear Burn Zone

TGIF

Serious thinking on a sunny day

If we are going to kowtow to minorities to the point of giving up our own language traditions, we should not be surprised that the left wants to destroy not only our traditions and our culture, but also us. And before anyone gets huffy, look at the hundreds of American towns named for places in Europe but pronounced as if they were simply American.

By the way, my surname comes from Belgium and no one outside of my family pronounces it correctly and we have been here since before 1620.

Matthews/Burris: 21 slow-burning Minutes re: 'pay to play'

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Au Contraire, Mon Frere

Far from being a blight on the visual environment, outdoor advertising is a valuable part of the business community.

Shut 'Em Down

I gotta say, I am at a loss on this Guantanamo closure thing. Have any of you all seen one tiniest bit of argument about why we can't have the alleged terrorists in prisons in the United States? I mean I can think of arguments, but I haven't seen them. It seems that most people seem are intimating that it is a safety issue, as in "I don't want them in my state!" Is that it? Because that makes no sense. It's not like our maximum security prisons are being escaped from every day. Are people afraid that their state would become a target of a terrorist attack? Is that it? Somebody help me out here.

And while I am here, I might say that while I was born a Democrat and I will die a Democrat, that doesn't mean I can't be ashamed of being a Democrat when we have "leaders" like the ones we currently have. Will somebody in my party grow a fucking backbone and do the right fucking thing every once in a while?

EZ, you love to defend the party in all matters, what do you got to say about Pelosi and Reid?

US Chamber of Commerce Still Horrified About EFCA

Five state-specific commercials about "card check!" Aren't I one lucky sonuvawhatever!

Hot Talk

Making an ass of myself over at NW Wingnut again. Join me, won't you?

0-4, damn

Consider four attributes of the ideal man: self-control, bravery, confidence and sex appeal.

TGIF - free agent edition

This one goes out to our favorite quarterback.

TGIF - welcome back edition

I'm sure we can all get down with NWA's strong stance against the use of mind-weakening narcotics.

the War is over....Time for Celebration?

The war, first declared by Nixon in '71, is over!

I new BHO would end a war, just wasn't expecting this one:
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday: "Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them," he said. "We're not at war with people in this country."

Good to hear.....

Now if we actually stop locking up 100,000's of otherwise law abiding Americans, that would be a real victory!

Super-Weird Chris Matthews Content

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

13 minutes of power. Just disregard this, pretend I never posted it, etc.

I've had a good night's sleep, but this clip is still on my mind.

Is it simply the subject matter - the characters involved herein - or something else, about Matthews' 'performance?' Is he starting to remind me of some ensemble character in an Altman-ish rendition of my wonky-(we)blog-life? I fucking hope not, Jesus. When did Matthews gain the ability to turn into an ultra-avunvular, asshole-ish Jack Lemmon at will?

Disregard this.

The rise of the dead?

Just thought I would let ya'll know that the LA forum show was very hot. the setlist:
(Set 1)
Viola Lee Blues->
Bertha->
Viola Lee Blues->
Caution-> (raging! warren screaming something about a Gypsy woman)
Viola Lee Blues->
Black Peter
Cosmic Charlie

(Set 2)
Shakedown Street
New Speedway Boogie
Scarlet Begonias
Fire on the Mountain
Drums >
Space
Dark Star
Wharf Rat
Dark Star
Satisfaction

(Encore)
One More Saturday Night

Warren was sharp, there was very little aimless noodling, and the sound was excellent. I would recommend catching any and all possible future shows (with this lineup)

I am finishing up my finals week, and intend to begin posting more frequently (as in more than not at all) but first, piles of tests to grade....

I love reading Lex and SoliCit, but I wish that Wobs, Dave3544, and Ash would come out of retirement or "whatever", return to the OG, and we could have even more extended dialogue and good-natured back-and-forth over the ongoing apocalyptic deterioration of the "free" market system, the debate over holding torturers accountable, and of course the sad saga surrounding EFCA. Helloooo????? Are you out there?????? Would it kill you to post once in a freakin blue moon? (like me....)I know you comment here and there, but that isn't the same thing......just sayin. organize some serious grievances.... work it out........love is the answer... (I might be slightly influenced by my experiences from last night, but still....)

Business School Horn

EzraKlein Archive | Those Scary Union Organizers
Hipster's Complaint | Culture | The American Scene
Q & A with Alyssa Picard - The Boston Globe

Personal Health - High- Functioning, but Still Alcoholics - NYTimes.com
Wilco's Jeff Tweedy Responds to Jay Bennett Lawsuit :: Music News :: Articles :: Paste
Disgraced John Edwards back in the spotlight - Ben Smith - POLITICO.com

Start Making Sense: The Obama Administration's new international tax proposals
Obama Dines With Economic Critics - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com
The Health-Care Talks: Will Obama Get More Involved? - TIME

How Not to Join a Union

from the Center for American Progress, prolly the liberal wonk-Tank closest to l'administration.

if you've been avoiding the jargon-y EFCA talk up until now, here's as accessible a place as any to jump in.

TGIF

Goddammit, them's fightin' words

But, as a rule, if you’re really in the mood to see blood spilled, take advantage of your right to free speech by taking a position on the first amendment. For instance, there are those who argue there should be absolutely no limits on free speech, even when it comes to pornography, blasphemy or sedition.

Do you have to ask?

I think Jonah Goldberg nails it here.. The one overriding feature of the Obama presidency has been arrogance. The left, lead by the Obamessiah and his wife, Mary, thinks they own the world, but as the totally un-orchestrated Tea Parties show, there is a revolution a'brewin'. A revolution inspired and supported, but in no way organized or funded, by many groups that Jonah Goldberg works for and/or his mom owns. Please, whatever you do, do not notice the fact that Goldberg supports his assertion that Obama's arrogance is breathtaking with one quote from Charles Schumer and...well, the Schumer quote.

100 Days and Life to Go -- Thoughts?

We should be mindful, and critical, of even the best-written of the leading liberal fantasy-'profiles' of Obama.

Also: whatever their imbrication w/i a vast, world-statist conspiracy may be...the Politico's done us a service by compiling these 165 vids of the first 100 days.

BHO at 100 Days: C/NC? Step to it.

Another Idea That's Time Has Come

Fuck yeah! Andy Stern!

and/or

Perez Stern!

Go figure, huh....?

I'll admit it, we're complete and total hypocrites

Speaking, as I often do, for "the left," I'd like to take a moment to criticize President Obama for golfing this weekend instead of staying at the White House to monitor the developing swine flu epidemic.

The comparison between the swine flu outbreak which has devastated approximately 20 Americans in five states and Hurricane Katrina, which wiped out an entire American city, left approximately 2000 people dead, and tens of thousands homeless is in no way specious. The comparison between Obama golfing (golfing!) during this crisis and the (some say) criminal disregard for life shown by President Bush is so strikingly similar as to be shocking. The whole Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln thing is done after this. Also comparable is the fact that Obama has not even bothered to appoint someone to the position of Director of Homeland Security Health and Human Services Secretary who is acceptable to the extreme anti-abortion crowd, while all President Bush did was publicly praise the guy who fucked the whole Katrina thing up. I'd like also to note that it took 20 people getting sick before the Obama administration declared a public emergency, while Bush was savaged for waiting only two days after the hurricane struck to do anything about it.

When are we on the left finally going to admit that this Obama guy is exactly the same as Bush? Hypocrites all, we are.

Wings

Lex has been repping the Wings for awhile now and I have been listening. I gotta ask though, is Wings what happens when there is no one to say "no"? That's my take on it. Not that I don't dig the whatever goes approach to music, but I'm just wondering if that's the general take on it.

The New Ellroy is Coming, 9/22

Dear Booksellers,

In all its mellifluous and macho-maimed magnificence: my new novel, Blood's A Rover.

Knopf will drop this atom bomb of a book on you September 22. Your job is to groove it and grok its groin-grabbing gravity between now and then. From that point on: you handsell it to the book-buying public; I appear at your store and drive legions of my fans and your customers nuts; we all make out and give publishing a cash-cascading and profit-pronging boost in a bum marketplace!!!

Dig it!!!!!

The novel covers 1968-1972. It's a baaaaaad-ass historical romance -- huge in scope, deep in its exploration of the era, filled with my trademark craaaaazy shit, and suffused with a heightened sense of belief and the corollaries of political conversation and revolution. Oh, yeah -- this is a book for these times!

You've got Howard "Dracula" Hughes, Gay Edgar Hoover, and Tricky Dick Nixon. You've got the mob's evil eyes scoping the Dominican Republic. You've got voodoo in Haiti, a vicisiou armored-car heist, and the Feds out to deep-sixi the black militant movement. More than anything else, you've got three obsessed right-wing toadies grapping with the horror of their misdeeds - and seeking redemption in the peron of my greatest female character: The Red Goddess Joan.

Read this book.

Grab its greatness.

Find me on Facebook and let me know what you think (post on my wall!)

Yours truly,

James Ellroy

(h/t: Sarah Weinman)

Ya think?

A checker at the local grocery store was just speculating that Cheech and Chong may, may, have been stoned while making the movie Up in Smoke. He doesn't know for sure, but you gotta think maybe they were.

Frame Talk is Frivolous, Frame Talk is Fun

The Politico has really nice dish - or mebbe it's navel-gazing tripe - about the official BHO semiotics of the Frst Hndrd Days.

ps - No, I have not abandoned the for(u)m of weblogs ("blogs"), I'm just caught in a move-in bind.

pps - And how about unconditional endorsee - and example of all that is righteous in the 20-something blog-wonk matrix - Ezra Klein getting hired by the MotherfuckingWashington MotherfuckingPost?!?

Bigger by the second

Over at NW Republican wingnut Coyote is having a fun time with numbers. In a post titled "An Obama rock concert?" - reference to the 75,000 people that turned out in Portland to see Obama The Decemberists - he posts picture of roughly 5,000 people in Lansing to see Joe "the Plumber" Plumber. No one said math was Coyote's strong suit.

Better, in the same post, he estimates that the crowd in Salem was 2,000. Now, one expects that a wingnut website is going to double the size of the crowd that actually shows up. Just as the cops automatically double the number of beers Coyote estimates he drank when they pull him over. Maybe he realized that in a state of 3.7 million, pulling in 2,000 people is not so impressive. What is that 5/ten-thousandths of a percent? I'm going to be honest with you, I'm not used to dealing with numbers that small, so I may be off, correct me. Or maybe Coyote remembers that Obama drew 10,000 people in Eugene - twice - so he updated his post and his number to reflect that some people were estimating there were 3,000 people there. Seconds later it was 3,200, but you know the libural media, right?

Six hours later, Coyote had that number up to 4,000. I am imagining that by this afternoon 8,000 people will have been at the Capitol yesterday loudly protesting the policies of the Bush Obama administration and calling for an end to the War tax cuts for the wealthy an increase to the capital gains tax an end to government as we know it.

Really when was the last time liberals were able to draw such a crowd? Huh? Huh? Oh yeah, that Obama rock concert.

Lex and George Will in a tree

I see that George Will has come out strong and insanely against people wearing jeans. If memory serves, and believe me it does, George is also on record opposed to men wearing shorts. I believe this makes two - count 'em TWO! - fashion policies shared by George Will and our own Lex Dexter. If Will ever comes out against men wearing sandals, then Lex will have found his soul mate.

Oh, I know that Lex is going to protest that he is not against jeans, but rather than he can't find any to fit is scrawny ass, to which I retort that none of his other pants fit him either, so I'm not sure why jeans wouldn't make the cut.

Tea Party Placards

The following slogans and screeds appeared in placard form during my ethnographic travels into le Right yesterday:

• My President Would Be Legal
• President Obama, Show Us Your Birth Certificate
• Revivetherevolution.com
• Suicide By Stimulus
• Stop Borrowing/Start Budget-Cutting
• Terminate Expanding Authority
• Taxation Erodes American (dream)
• Heil Hope
• Billions for the Bankers/Debts for the People
• Stop Raiding Our Piggy Bank
• Let Capitalism Work
• Less Government = Freedom
• Flat Tax 10%! Make It Do!
  
• Somalia Pirates = US Congress
• FairTax.org
• Comrade Obama
  
• Wake Up America, Before Your Liberty is Gone
• The Problem with Socialism is Eventually You Run Out of Other People's Money
• Democracy is Slowly Being Eroded
  
• We Hate Porky Little Amendments
  
• No Nanny State: Leave Us Home in Our Sovereign State of Jefferson
  
• More Common Sense/Less $ and Cents
• Obama: the Next Chavez
• No Taxation Without Representation
• My Tax Dollars Go To Illegal Aliens
  
• Punish Success/Reward Failure: What's Up With That?
  
• Taking Everyone's Assets
• NO to Socialism
• Tired, Enraged American
  
• Free Markets Not Freeloaders!
  
• If You're Not Outraged/You're Not Paying Taxes
  
• Freedom Is Not Just Another Word
• Abortion Kills Children
  
• Our Government Stole My Paycheck
  
• Separation of Powers, Buckos: Big God/Small Government
• Expensive Health Care: Michelle Obama made $350k for sitting on her a$$
• Obama, You of All People Should Know that Pork Defiles
• Ron Paul for President

What, you need a chaser? This knocked 'em dead in Medford.

Exactly

When a right-wing blog posts a commentary with the headline "The American Gorbachev" can expectations be so high that they are impossible to realize? No.

This piece is less of a critique and more of a comparison of two leaders of two big countries. Again, this comparison is not entirely accurate and/or scientific. I mean you can compare Bush to Brezhnev using the same template. Both invaded Afghanistan and stayed home more than they traveled. There was even a theory that the reason Brezhnev stayed home and Gorbachev traveled so much is because Brezhnev was fed from the outlet and Gorbachev worked on batteries. So, in this light, the real purpose of this comparison is more in the line of Plutarch’s ‘Parallel Lives’ of let’s say,“Alexander the king, and of Caesar, by whom Pompey was destroyed.”

Oh, and, in conclusion:

If Obama is the post American captain destined to bring our spaceship down from the position of superpower to “a normal UN sanctioned operational mode” let’s hope for a smoother landing and a sharp difference from Gorbachev who neglected the fact that one can make a nuclear submarine feel like a raw boat for only as long as it is facing an iceberg.

Fuck the police and the New York Yankees

H/t: LGM

The NYCLU is on the case.

Campeau-Laurion, the director of Web productions for a media company, attended the Aug. 26 Yankees-Red Sox game with a friend, who had a ticket package for 11 games at Yankee Stadium during the 2008 season. Campeau-Laurion had attended several of these games with his friend.

Campeau-Laurion quietly watched the game, ate a bag of peanuts and drank two beers. He decided to use the restroom at the start of the seventh-inning stretch – a period when fans often choose to use the restroom. He got up and made his way down the aisle as “God Bless America” began playing. A police officer blocked his path and indicated that he could not leave during the song. Campeau-Laurion explained that he needed to use the restroom and was not concerned about “God Bless America.” Then he attempted to walk past the officer.

Before Campeau-Laurion could take a step, the police officer grabbed his right arm and twisted it behind his back. A second officer twisted Campeau-Laurion’s left arm behind his back, and the two officers then marched him down several ramps to the stadium’s exit with his arms pinned behind his back. The officers refused to ease their grip, even though Campeau-Laurion was not resisting them.

The encounter ended with one of the officers telling Campeau-Laurion to leave the country if he didn’t like it.

What makes this worse - much, much, much worse - is that this is, apparently, the official policy of the NY Yankees.

The Yankees began playing “God Bless America” during games following 9/11, as did all Major League Baseball teams. Unlike most teams, the Yankees also instituted a policy of seeking to prevent fans from moving during the playing of the song. It did so to promote patriotism amongst those attending Yankees games.

They are evil. And so are their fans.

A moral dilema

Is it wrong that I just spent a decent amount of time wondering which would upset me more - the death of one of my cats or the breaking of my favorite hammer?

Is it wronger that I still don't know. I mean cats are cats, but the perfect pipe is something special.

Health care, statistics, and vadge

In my last newsletter I gave you some statistics. I did not do this to attempt to set a hard base line, rather to point out the fact there is no “silver bullet” solution to our current health care situation. A few years ago a person testifying before a committee said “statistics are like a bikini, what they reveal is enticing but what they conceal is critical”. One should view any numbers under deliberation from such a perspective, as they often don’t tell the whole story.

-- Jeff Kruse, OR-1 (R)

TGIF

Listen To Her Heart 1978 Tom Petty


If this isn't working for you, you can watch it here.

You know, I don't get the Petty hate out there. Maybe if you're only knowledge of him was Full Moon Fever, which is middling rock over-played to the point of annoyance, then maybe. Then again, it could be just me. It could be that you needed to be a ten-year-old Solid and watching MTV in 1982 and have "Refugee" be the most interesting thing you had seen on the box. Although how you could deny "You think you're gonna take her away, with your money and your cocaine" is beyond me. Give Tom three minutes, you got nothing better to do on a Friday.

Isn't Jolie French?

I know all of you have been getting excited about the possibility of an Atlas Shrugged movie coming out soon. I mean it doesn't have a writer, or director or anything, but with just about everyone going Galt and attending tea parties and whatnot, you just know it is going to happen soon.

Our good friends over at Big Hollywood, perhaps America's best website for wingnut discussion of popular culture, are already speculating on who should be cast in the lead roles, especially that of Dagny Taggart. She is not only the heart of the book, but she has been the main source of wingnut masturbation fantasies since 1952. As such, it is crucial that the actress be hotter than the proverbial baker's oven. But does she also have to be ideologically pure? The answer, at least from the comments I read, is no. Actually, the answer seems to be that one Angelina Jolie, who is hotter than the proverbial baker's oven, would be so awesome there is some effort to rehabilitate her.

Actually Ms Jolie is a pretty good choice for the role. She is nowhere near as far left as her fellow actors, gave a fairly good interview in '08 about McCain and the good he might bring (apostasy!) and from what we've gathered is a serious woman that the world takes seriously- she supposedly holds her own quite well in cabinet level meetings and knows more than her UN counterparts about Darfur and whatnot.

Scrolling through the comments, I see no objections to her on the grounds that she is twice divorced, a home wrecker, and/or living in sin with children. My how the wingnut opinion of single mothers has changed over the last year.

Anyway, the biggest fear, of course, would be that "Hollywood" would destroy the story because they don't "get it." This has been my biggest fear for some years. It also serves as a ready-made excuse for the all-too-predictable failure of the movie at the box office. I mean, we all know that Americans are dying to see a movie in which the richer/betters in our society laugh as civilization disintegrates. Especially if the last half-hour of the movie features a twenty-five minute radio address from a character who has only briefly appeared in the film up to that point. Can you imagine the cuts to all of our heroes listening intently to their radios while John Galt explains to the word that they will all die unless they cede complete control of the world to him and his chosen few? Riveting film going to be sure. America is ready, but Hollywood couldn't handle it.

Of course, it has been suggested that the book would work better as a seven-part miniseries a la John Adams, which is, of courser, even more true. Then, Galt's speech could take up a whole episode and we wouldn't have to cut any of the brilliance. That way we could spend an hour watching scenes of bridges collapsing and roving bands of marauders killing each other and rich people packing for the big get away all while listening to a disembodied voice tell us that all of that was a result of taxes. Obama would never let it happen.

Anyway, you buy the tickets, I'll buy the popcorn, and we'll laugh and laugh and laugh.

Always nice to find an offer like this in your inbox

Reminder--Order FREE Organizing Materials Today

Twilley/Seymour Sunday Horn

Robert Kuttner: Obama's Banking Rescue: O for Opaque
Obama Officials Think Krugman Is Naive: Newsweek's Evan Thomas
Frank Schaeffer: The Krugman/Limbaugh Nightmare: President Obama Might Succeed

Well, the story of my wk is pretty much a) Dwight Twilley doing 'Looking for the Magic' and b) my rapidly-deflating faith in the Obama administration's ability to get us outta this mucky political economy-y quagmire. You?

Oxdown Gazette » Shorter Elizabeth Warren: Timothy Geithner, WTF?
We're Still Getting Screwed: Geithner Plan Will Make the Rich Richer! | Dean Baker
Dean Baker, "Unemployment Jumps to 8.5 Percent, Economy Sheds 663,000 Jobs"
Bankruptcy Would Be Tinkering Around the Edges of Detroit's Problems

No, seriously...I think we're very effed here.

Benjamin Dangl and Michael Fox, "Beyond Elections in the Americas: An Interview with Michael Fox"
Reid to liberals: Back off - Manu Raju - POLITICO.com
Van Hollen asks liberal groups to lay off - Alex Isenstadt - POLITICO.com

Better look elsewhere for some inspiration, because there's nothing about Evan Bayh that's ever going to get you too hot/heavy. At the same time, it's apparently very important that all we 'liberals' remember that anything that upsets Harry Reid's re-election plans is terrorism, indeed.

Salute Your Shorts: Godard, Truffaut and A Story of Water :: Paste
L'arrivée d' Sylvia Kristel
Badiou-101-for-the-rcpusa
On The Idea Of Communism: Badiou On Politics, Economy And The State « Kasama
The US maoists are reading Badiou, eh?

We electrified the guitar

If you haven't, do.

TGIF

Wouldn't mind taking this song out for a beer and seeing what happens, if you know what I'm saying.

The invisible hand of whatever

I doubt that anyone who reads this blog is a big fan of the "Market." Or at least the notion that the Market makes everything better. Still, on a micro level, supply and demand work pretty well. At least for determining what an item is worth. Let's say I "own" a house and I want to sell it. I put it out for bid, and people looking to buy a house tell me what they'd be willing to pay for it. Whatever the highest bid comes in at is what my house is worth at that moment. I've simplified, hopefully not to the point of uselessness.

There are times, of course, when a value needs to be put on my house without the mechanics of the market involved, say for tax purposes. In order to determine the value here, a neutral party, most often from the government, estimates what my house might be worth these days and taxes me accordingly. Now, you could easily argue - and people on the right especially often do - that the government is not neutral, because they have an incentive of over-value my house in order to collect more taxes. We all know that if there is one thing the government loves, it is collecting taxes.

Now the last person who should be relied on to fairly value my house is me, right? Especially in any meaningful way. For tax purposes, I am going to value my house at $4. If I want to borrow money based on the value of my house, then its worth at least $400,000. Right? We all know this.

So someone, anyone, please for God's sake explain the new mark-to-market rules to me. How in the fuck can it make sense to let banks, not the market, not the government, but banks themselves declare what their mortgage holdings are worth? Am I understanding right that banks are saying, jeebus, no one on the market wants to buy our house for anything more than pennies. And then they say, jeebus the government is saying our house is only worth pennies. But the banks want their house to be worth more. They need to their house to be worth more so that no one thinks they're poor and have no assests, so they are going to be allowed to say that their house is worth whatever they think it is worth? And then borrow money based on that value?

This seems like perhaps the dumbest idea ever. And I don't want to go too far down this road, because I am not a trained economist in any way, but isn't this solution (again) designed to get banks lending money to each other? So if one bank tells another bank that it has holdings worth, say, ten million bars of gold-pressed latinum, it can borrow from the other bank one hundred million bars of gold-pressed latinum. And in turn that bank can borrow even more latinum from the first bank! Yeh! Because what we have here is a liquidity crisis, not an exploision of a debt-based housing bubble, a lack of middle-class jobs, stagnant wages, an over-supply of housing (in some areas), individual debt such that it makes semse to lend money to nobody. Those are problems we don't have. Nope, all we have is a crisis of confidence. If banks are not forced (BY THE GOVERMENT!!!!!) to tell people what their actual assests are worth, but are, rather, allowed to make up whatever they want, then we will all be able to see that Bank of America and CitiGroup actually have lots and lots of money and we can all quit worrying and start borrowing and buying each others houses at wildly inflated prices again.

Seriously, someone tell me where I have gone wrong, because I am starting to sound like someone who raves about these things. I feel like I am one step away from advocating a return to the gold standard here and this not a place I want to be.

This is not going to end well

In times past there was a prevailing wisdom that the violence stemming from the drug war equated to just one drug dealer killing another and after they finished killing each other off, things would go back to being peaceful and all would be well— this theory is no longer valid.

Ah, "Moderates"

Looks like we lost Feinstein on EFCA as well. Dig this:

"I think in this economy that what has to happen is that the unions and management get together and try to see if they can work out something," Feinstein said.

Yes, because after management has managed to fuck this economy nine ways 'til Sunday, we need to make sure that they stay in charge of this thing. Wouldn't want to go nuts and make it easier for the workers to have a voice, would we? I mean, I am sure the anti-EFCA forces will be perfectly willing to make some compromises that are good for everyone. And why do I deeply suspect that the compromises will be something along the lines of "stiffer penalties for management when they break the law balanced by stiffer penalties for unions." In other words, more of this crap where we pretend like there is a level playing field and both sides need to work to make nice-nice. Fuck that noise.

Wait a tick

I am trying hard not to think about the fact that it appears that Obama just killed the unionized American car industry, or at least let it die. Trying very hard. I must say, however, that it is disheartening to read this:

President Obama announced Monday that struggling automotive giants General Motors and Chrysler will be given a "limited" period of time to "restructure in a way that would justify an investment of additional taxpayer dollars."

at the same time that I know that the government is spending $970 billion to buy up worthless mortgages in the hope that one day, maybe thirty years from now, they might be worth something (and then we can auction them off for pennies on the dollar!).

The US autoworker is about to take a giant kick in the metaphorical balls. What makes me cry is that, while I just read a whole lot about how bad Joe Finance has it because he might lose his million dollar bonus at AIG, I imagine I am about to read a whole lot about how Joe Autoworker had it coming because he wanted health care after he retired. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I'd also like to note for the record, before we get too far down the fuck road that Obama defended the AIG bonuses because there were in a legal contract, and here he is saying that UAW must again "restructure" its contract in order for the industry to get more bailout money.

Of course, when one looks across the aisle, what do we see? Fuck stick and Lex hero Senator Bob Corker. Here is a guy who looks at a situation where the auto industry is coming to the government begging for money to stay afloat and the government says, sure we'll give you the money, as long as you make some changes to your business (especially if you can figure out a way to fuck your workers, because worker fucking is fun for everyone) and this asshat sees the heavy boot of communism come crashing down on American capital.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee and member of the Senate Banking Committee, said this is a "major power grab" by the Obama administration.

"This is a marked departure from the past, truly breathtaking, and should send a chill through all Americans who believe in free enterprise. I worry that in one fell swoop we've lost our moral high ground throughout the global community as it relates to chastising other countries that use strong arm tactics to invade on private property rights," he said in a statement.

God bless the people of Tennessee, but do they really look at the situation with the US auto industry, and one imagines the firing of Rick Wagoner, and see a totalitarian government interfering with the fine, fine businessmen at GM? How can they vote for this guy?

Lord the hate feels good, now I know how Vader felt.

But back to the sadness. Is there anyone who reads this blog thinking Obama is doing well? Are we still cutting him slack? Anyone ready to cut the line? I'm getting very, very close and having a harder and harder time believing that it would have been all that much worse under McCain. Especially when I read shit like this.

Goddammit, I so wanted to have something to believe in.

Follow Up

I'm posting a follow up to my earlier post about that highlarrious "Union Thuggery" video posted on NW Republican. I spent a good part of the weekend posting comments with the fellas over there with Brown Beard and Wobs joining in. Anyone want to help out?

I think I saw that movie

This has to be one...........
the most original thoughts regarding the impact of socialism on society. I would've used it for the benefit of my children had I not already informed them of the LBGT community looking for the perpetual free ride. Information that I acquired as an adult, since I'm not LGBT, had to be disseminated to my children at an early age because I married a closet case that eventually colluded with the gay family court system. My children were able to observe first hand that LGBT children are not "born that way". Kudos on your economics lesson to the economically naive.

Before I Give Myself a Well-Deserved RugBurn

I'm in a horrendous mood: EFCA's fucked, fntsy bsbl is off to a false start, and my worst pangs are wholly unmentionable for the moment. Suffice it to say that the soothing, sleek seal that is the Sea and Cake's Car Alarm isn't even enough to calm my shit down. Whatever, I'll spin it again....

Anyway, all this shit makes Dean Baker's shit-talk-y, sardonic Beat the Press blog even more appropriate than it already always is. No matter how far we've all contorted ourselves in the service of sanctioning and/or "giving a pass" to these or those of the President's this and thats, I think we all do well to keep the raspier raps from Baker, Henwood, Frank and Reed close at hand --- even if it means my recycling new iterations of what're closely-held, nearly 'goes without saying'-y premises.

Par example:

The media are busy perpetuating a myth that the United States has been a beacon of "free market" capitalism. This is a lie. The United States never had free market capitalism and certainly the system in place over the last three decades hardly qualifies.

The U.S. put in place policies designed to transfer income from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. This is most evident now with the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent bailing out the banks. For the last three decades, the banks and their top executives, made vast fortunes using a free government insurance policy called "too big to fail," under which bond holders and other creditors could lend money to the banks knowing that the government would honor their debts if they ever got into trouble.

It is an outright lie to call this a "free market." This is a huge government handout. This insurance policy is enormously valuable and the banks did not have to pay a penny for it. The banks are ardent opponents of free market capitalism. None of them have advocated that they be allowed to collapse.