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.

For Crying Out Loud, Eff All Holidays!

When are we gonna get another alb outta Testface? I dunno, but we're getting serious prose in the interim. I mean, this has gotta be the equivalent of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory for the David Yow generation.

State of Hillary

I wonder what you all think about this.... crap? not crap?

as for EZ.....

not crap...

My hopes

After John Edwards bowed out (and in retrospect, wasn't that a bullet dodged), I was leaning towards Obama over Hillary Clinton. It was his organization that sealed the deal for me. Like the post says, it's "an organization like nothing I've seen before." The Obama campaign has trained thousands upon thousands of people on how to run a political campaign. It has networked self-contained groups of skilled volunteers. It has created the sense of community and urgency that is required to move a campaign forward.

Those of us working to elect Obama share a lot of the same values, and on Nov. 5, a potent political machine is going to wake up, probably hungover, with nothing to do. People have been given the tools - I'm excited to see what we can build with them.

[updated]: Great minds, yadda yadda yadda.

Prove Me Wrong...Good On You!

'Gotta hand it to Chris Dodd....'even Doug Henwood (sur le LBO listserve) gave the plan a "looks not too bad."

Between this and the FISA filibuster, if Dodd actually passes this thing as is - which I will believe only when I hold a copy of the bill in my shaky, shocked hands - I'm gonna send him a twelve of pabsts and mebbe even one or two of my rare-er seven-inches.

(ex post facto editorial addition: Krugman concurs, calculated risk hails it as a positive step and reports that CNBC reports Paulson has agreed to the bit about government taking equity in the bailed out banks.)

Crap/Not Crap - Craft Union Voluntarism

The Federation adopted an equally interesting political strategy, for Gompers sought to make voluntarism and the craft unions' nonpartisan civic education a source of political strength rather than weakness. Trade unionists would debate and deliberate political issues within their own councils, formulating a cohesive set of policy demands. They would then present labor's agenda to each of the political parties, and educate their members on the parties' response. The AFL, as in the past, would not affiliate with a political party; in fact, the strategy would only work if they did not. Gompers itended to forge unions into a highly knowledgeable, independent bloc of swing voters, so that all parties seriously contesting elections would have to address labor's needs. Organized labor would not be apolitical or partisan but would pursue "aggressive nonpartisan political action." As he explained it, "labor does not become partisan to a polititcal party, but partisan to a principle." - Schools of democracy : a political history of the American labor movement by Clayton Sinyai

Crap/Not Crap

McCain's pick of Palin make concerns about his age and health legitimate talking points and lines of attack for the Dems.

I say "not crap."

Never Thought of It That Way

Chris Matthews just asserted that JFK was "Killed by a communist."

I'm not a Oswald expert, but I've never heard it put this way. What do you think, fair to say JFK "killed by a communist"?

EZ Polling

New poll up on the right.
Same rules: vote early, vote often!
All findings will be over-extrapolated
and will include incoherent graphics.

A Timely Reminder

I am not having the best of days. This perked me up considerably. Thank God for youtube.

Crap or Not Crap

The French

In a thread down below, I already came out firmly on the side of "crap."

I realized, however, that my pronouncement may have just been my Anglophila talking, so I gave it a day and I tried to think of things that the French have given the world that could change my mind. What have the French given the world that is unique or valuable or worthy?

I came up with one thing: ennui.

No one does ennui like the French. That's it. Wine? Italians do it better (so do Spaniards and Americans). Cheese? Again, Italy and England. Art? Stealing art maybe, but the best impressionist in the world was Dutch. Colonialism? I think we can all acknowledge that England rules the waves. Love? Come on, no one does love like the Canadians.

There you have it, the French are crap.

I expect to see everyone who reads this blog pipe up in the comments. Everyone has an opinion on the French. Take the 20 seconds necessary to give us yours.

Serious thinking, for once

I don't know enough about what's going on in Venezuela to have an informed opinion about Chavèz and the Bolivarian Revolution. But a few things jumped out at me in this piece:

Critics fumed that Chavez did not consult with major business groups before approving the decrees, and some warned the laws would scare off private investment and further weaken private enterprise.

"We ask the president: Why does he fear democracy?" Fedecamaras business chamber leader Jose Manuel Gonzalez said at a news conference.

A very juvenile, very vulgar Marxist inside of me takes a great deal of smug satisfaction at this quote. How does it feel now that the shoe's on the other foot, motherfuckers! As I said, juvenile and vulgar.

Under one of the new laws, food retailers or distributors caught skirting government-imposed price controls or hoarding products will be punished with up to six years in prison.

Crap/not crap: Criminalizing, with prison terms in addition to civil fines, unethical business behavior (for our purposes we'll assume the process to arrive at this was democratic).

Enough. The big boys can play now.

Crap or Not Crap

The No-Strike Pledge American labor made during WWII.

While it might seem obvious that labor would agree to support the war effort and tone down worker militancy, others have argued that the roots of all (I exaggerate for effect) that ills American labor today can be traced back to this agreement. Ultimately, labor unions themselves became responsible for controlling worker militancy and striking became a rare and ritualized endeavor tied to the collective bargaining process, rather than a way for pissed-off workers to deal with grievances or shop-floor disputes in a timely manner. This responsibility for unions further lead labor leaders to view any membership radicalism with suspicion, as it might upset the productive tranquility guaranteed by the labor-management alliance.

What do you all think? Was it a mistake for labor to agree to the No-Strike Pledge during WWII?

Crap or Not Crap

This is the cover for this week's The New Yorker. I'm not going to link to all the hubbub, because either you live on the net or you don't, but there's some disagreement about whether this is hilarious satire (not crap) or badly done satire (crap).

What say you?