A Conservative's Guide to What's Happening Egypt

It's pretty simple, really:

1. The unrest in Egypt and Tunisia are the result of our invasion of Iraq, validating the Bush Doctrine and vindicating Cheney; unless

2. You'd like to point out that Iraq is now peaceful because of the war and installation of democracy, thereby validating the invasion of Iraq and disproving the liberal thesis that you can't create a democratic society through invasion; unless

3. You'd like to worry that the uprising in Egypt is being led by the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islam may take control, something Iraq avoided, thereby validating the invasion of Iraq; unless

4. You'd like to argue that the uprising is a genuine democratic revolt that could be co-opted by the Muslim Brotherhood unless Obama sends messages of support to the democratic resistance as he failed to do with the Green Revolution in Iran.

Any way, you win and the liberal islamofascists lose!

Don't Text the Subtext

So, Tracy Morgan is asked by Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley "Tina Fey or Sarah Palin?" This is to help settle an ongoing argument. Everyone acknowledges that they are fine looking dames, the both. Morgan tells them that he thinks Sarah Palin makes fine masturbation material. Everyone gets uncomfortable and TNT apologizes for Morgan's behavior.



Dear TNT:

Mayhaps you might consider apologizing for having your co-hosts ask a guest which of two national prominent women he'd most like to fuck. That is what they asked him, even if they didn't use any naughty words. You see, I know you're concerned that some thirteen-year old boy was just robbed of his innocence by hearing the word "masturbation," but the real damage was done before that when he realized that the only place for women in this conversation was as a sex object. Even if he couldn't figure out what the initial question meant (unlikely) he would be hard pressed to miss the follow-up conversation about how fine looking they are.

So your apology only reinforces that at TNT sexism is perfectly acceptable, as long as no one uses any naughty words. So, fuck you and your apology.

Oh, and Kobe Bryant is a rapist.

Spot On, I Guess

For your reading enjoyment.

LOOMING DEFICIT FOR LCC

LCC’s Strategic Plan (2010-14) in part promises to “Promote responsible stewardship of resources and public trust [and] ... apply principles of sustainable economics, resource use, and social institutions to Lane’s learning and working environments.” Lastly, the 2010—11 budget commits to “focus on our mission of teaching and learning.”

Reports on the best current available estimate for LCC’s combined downtown projects of $52 million pencil out to approximately $294 per sq. ft. Problematically, remaining downtown projects’ construction costs unfunded liability attach to the 90,000 sq. ft. learning facility planned at the former Sears site. Depending on the accuracy of various available yet sketchy estimates, the budget deficit approximately oscillates between $650,000 and a whopping $8 million.

Although according to The Register-Guard 85 percent of the funding is virtually guaranteed through the issuance of bonds and state and city of Eugene funding, moving forward in spite of as much as an $8 million funding hole during this extraordinary economic time, may expose the Board of Education to an even more on-point charge of governance entropy than recently leveled against the college’s administration. Lest LCC’s board panic, reasonable taxpayers may consider embracing a PAYGO or similar funding methodology.

Jose Ortal, Blue River

Listen, Spock

Been reading and participating is some hot abortion debate over the last few days. The consensus on the left is that people who shout "abortion is murder" can't possibly actually mean this, because then they would also be calling for life sentences for women who abort their babies, which is something that almost no one does. Having refuted the basic claim - that honest people really do believe that life begins at conception and abortion is killing a person - the conversation then moves to the "real" motives of these people. (Oh, it is also often noted that many anti-abortion screamers have no problem obtaining abortions for themselves or others). The most popular theories being that rich white folk want to control women, poor minority women, and/or poor people in general.

I'm not sure I disagree, necessarily, but it occurred to me this morning that for the most part, the thinking of people who scream "abortion is murder" goes something like this:

Jesus said abortion is murder and nothing you say is going to change that. He's God, you're not.

Logic is not going to win the day here.

Because I'm That Kind of Contrarian/Asshole

Under 7%, people

Recession Continues to Take a Toll on Union Membership | CEPR Blog

The labor market recession continued to exact a toll on union membership in 2010. According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics Union Membership report, the unionized share of the U.S. workforce dropped to 11.9 percent last year from 12.3 percent in 2009. The private sector unionization rate fell to 6.9 percent in 2010, from 7.2 percent in 2009.

Even as employment losses slowed in 2010, unions continued to lose members, compared with 2009 where union membership and overall employment decreased at about the same rate. In 2010, union rolls shrank by about 600,000 members. Over 2009 and 2010, the Great Recession helped to reduce union rolls by more than 1.3 million members. In the absence of federal support for state and local governments, public sector cutbacks will continue to depress the overall union membership rate.

Don't Blog, Organize!

I've been working on it for two days now and I have still not made it all the way through this great post on L'Hote. As I was thinking I should finish reading it before commenting on it, it occurred to me that maybe there is no strong labor presence in the blogosphere because people who care about labor are working very hard organizing people and they have little free time to be thinking about how to craft a left critique of the modern political scene, let alone write about it. Lord knows there are precious few brilliant people in the labor movement today - dying professions tend not to attract large numbers of the best and brightest - and those that exist need to be in the field, not running blogs.

And I second Farley at LGM, let's not be thinking that the modern American labor movement is populated with a whole of far-left people, especially in any kind of leadership role. Hasn't been the case since the 50s. As the post itself makes clear, centrist liberals have been willing to run away from the crazy commies for a long time now and people who espouse far-left ideas do not rise high in any American bureaucracy, including labor.

All of which is kind of covered in the post itself. I wish I had more time to engage with it.

For God's Sake, Why Can't We Put This State on Kruse Control?!

Senator Jeff Kruse
R-Roseburg, District 1

E-Newsletter Number 1, Volume 1

Working Hard For You

DEFINNING GOVERNMENT

I received a few interesting responses to my last newsletter. There were some who seem to get the impression I am anti-government. Actually there are people who seem to think many of the groups who have sprung up around this country, like the Tea Party, are anti-government. They are not and I am not. Government is essential for a well ordered society. The alternative is anarchy, which no reasonable person would want. The real question is; what is the role of government? This is the question our Founders tried to answer with the Constitution.


Some answers seem easy, like national defense and police protection. But even areas like these can have subsets. Clearly an army needs to be of a national scale, but do we need a national police force? As in most areas of government The Constitution assigned these duties and responsibilities to the individual states. Additionally the states have assigned core functions to the individual cities and counties. This is simple in principle as the best government is at the level closest to the people. In reality the states have found it necessary to have a state police force to deal with public safety issues that cross jurisdictional boundaries. Similarly the federal government found it necessary to create the FBI to deal with public safety issues that crossed state boundaries. I don’t think anyone would argue this matrix is not necessary and appropriate, but it should also be noted jurisdiction starts at the local level and moves up based on defined criteria.


The transportation infrastructure is another example of an area government involvement is logical and necessary. This area also has well defined areas of jurisdiction and responsibility. While it is important for the federal government to have responsibility for the part of the transportation system connecting the country, it would create an unmanageable mess to put the feds in charge of all city and county roads. The reality is, in most areas of government involvement, the farther up the “food chain” one goes the more complicated and non-responsive things become. This is a good agreement for local control in everything from education to social services. One size does not fit all and never works the way it is intended.


The question before us now is quite simply has government become involved in areas of our life it does not have the Constitutional authority to be involved in. Example: the Federal Department of Education. The enumerated powers clearly leave this authority with the states and very few in the education enterprise will tell you they find benefit from this agency. The same can be said for all social services. What we have seen at both the state and federal level over the last 60 years is a growth in government that has out stripped our ability to pay for it with increasingly diminishing returns on investment. Currently the only sector of our society experiencing growth is government and the increasing tax burden is making it harder for many in the private sector to stay solvent. During this Legislative Session it is my hope we will revisit a lot of the programs enacted over the years (most with the best of intentions) and make discrete decisions as their continuation.

I want to tell you a story about a conversation I had with a constituent many years ago. She called to complain about the quality of food her kids were getting in the school breakfast program. At the end of the conversation she actually said (almost as a threat) that if there wasn’t improvement she was going to start feeding her kids breakfast before they went to school. I told her maybe that would be a good idea. When we have reached the point where people think it is government’s responsibility to raise and feed our children we have gone too far.

Without personal responsibility there can be no personal success. As long as a person is dependent on government they will never achieve their full potential; which would be my wish for everyone. Government is not smarter than people and people know more of what is in their own personal best interest than government does.

A line from a John Lennon song from the 60’s was “power to the people”. It is time to once again make that line a reality.

Sincerely,

Senator Jeff Kruse

Gun Show

When we live in a country where someone can seriously advance the argument that the fact one of the people who tackled the Arizona shooter to the ground had a concealed weapon on him at the time is proof that concealed carry works and gun control is a loser, liberal idea, then I don't know what the hell we're gonna do.

Said it before, say it again, seems like we lost the debate somewhere and were not even in the fraking game any more.

Jelly!

Ezra Klein - Who can replace labor?

Ezra Klein - Who can replace labor?

But as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue persuasively in "Winner-Take-All Politics," labor has long been the largest organized, sophisticated, and funded group advocating for working-class interests in the political system. But they're in decline -- and they're in decline even as business groups double down on their efforts to affect political outcomes.

If you even vaguely believe in the importance of interest groups in the political system, you should consider this a very big deal. But, again, it's not at all clear what can be done about it. My depressing answer is that it's so hard to imagine a successor to organized labor that perhaps the only plausible response is to also reduce the political power of business groups, perhaps through something like the Fair Elections Now Act (which would presumably reduce the political power of all groups, while increasing the political power of voters and small donors). But maybe other people have better thoughts on this.

Only labor can replace labor, Ezra.

Biggest Day of My Life

Happened 15 years ago.

Message: I Care

Looks like someone we know is all fired up about the initiative process.

Goddamn Red Dawn, Yo

Hard to see, but six jets left contrails in the sky while I was walking to work this morn.

Yglesias » Understanding the State/Local Budget Crunch

Yglesias » Understanding the State/Local Budget Crunch

From the California section of N+1′s year in review:

Without any pressure telling them otherwise, Democrats, faced with an ineluctable revenue crisis, are going to go with what has been their signature political move for decades: conceding. The point is, it hardly matters whether you cut the budget with fat Republican enthusiasm, like Chris Christie in New Jersey, or gaunt Democratic humility, as Jerry Brown has promised. What effect this coming evisceration of social services and mass layoff of public servants will have on the makeup of the country is incalculable. That it will only contribute to the deep recession, which supposedly ended several months ago, is axiomatic.

I think the spirit here is right, but the details are wrong. The thing about state governments is that they need to balance their budgets. Consequently, it actually matters a great deal whether you implement cuts with Christie-like enthusiasm or not. Christie has actually been lowering taxes on the richest New Jerseyites, thus increasing the need for cuts. Conversely, while it’s quite true that state budget cuts amidst a recession impair recovery, it’s also true that state tax hikes amidst a recession impair recovery. The only solution to the macroeconomic problem of state/local budget cuts is for congress to appropriate funds.

This is a really big problem! Congress should appropriate funds. What’s more, congress should—but gives no indication of giving any consideration whatsoever to doing so—be looking at some way to reduce the systematic tendency of state and local government to engage in pro-cyclical budgeting. So it’s really two big related problems, and their scope is much wider than the ideological back-and-forth about the optimal size of the state/local public sector.

Ah Yes, the '60s

Just started reading Nixonland on my Amazon-brand e-reader (Kindle). The book opens with some stirring scenes from LBJ as he goes about creating the Great Society. For a second there, you remember that there were politicians who really seemed to care about helping people, not just winning elections.

I was reminded of this while reading Bobo's latest. Mostly because of this:

The welfare policies of the 1960s gave people money without asking for work and personal responsibility in return, and these had to be replaced. The welfare reforms of the 1990s involved big and intrusive government, but they did the job because they were in line with American values, linking effort to reward.

And I, of course, starting thinking about how if linking effort to reward is America's #1 value, how come we always focus with the poor and not on the inheriting rich? Maybe we can take all their money and they can know the morality of working for a change.

Anyway, just as I was working myself up, I came across this sentence:

The geniuses flock to finance, not industry.

And I was reminded that no one can possibly take David Brooks seriously.

Mix Master Mike

This was Amber's main present from me this year. A Kichenaid 3b from c. 1948.

We've had pancakes. Well, the girls have. Everyone knows I only eat griddlecakes.

Black as My Coal

Shorter George Will: China uses a lot of coal, so suck it Portland!

Yglesias » Chris Christie Should Do His Second-Most-Important Job Properly

Yglesias » Chris Christie Should Do His Second-Most-Important Job Properly

Steve Benen flags Chris Christie’s defense of leaving the state governorless amidst the snowstorm by, among other things, saying “My first and most important responsibility, in my view, is as a husband and a father.”

In a Real Talk sense, I think this is false. But be that as it may. What about Christie’s work in his second most important job? New Jersey, historically, hasn’t had the office of lieutenant governor. But the state authorities decided very recently that was a bad idea and created one. It’s really not a post that carries with it a ton of responsibilities, but filling in for the governor if a situation develops while he’s on vacation in Florida is on the list. Under the circumstances, it seems pretty clear that the governor and the lieutenant governor shouldn’t go on vacation simultaneously and that the governor should put some effort into working this out. Failure to coordinate the schedules properly hardly makes Christie history’s greatest monster, but it was an error. An error that nine times out of ten probably would have gone unnoticed, but the snowstorm meant the error turned into a problem for the state. The decent response to a small-but-real error is just to apologize and move on but Christie’s managed to turn an asshole persona into national YouTube stardom so I guess he thinks it’s best to act like a jerk.

Bloggingheads.tv - The Year in Politics

Bloggingheads.tv - The Year in Politics
Dave Weigel and Ben Smith: what a Skype-wonko-porn-on, I tell ya. I watched all 66 mins.

Public Pension Problems: No One Told the NYT About the Financial Crisis | Beat the Press

Public Pension Problems: No One Told the NYT About the Financial Crisis | Dean Baker

The NYT apparently has not learned about the financial crisis that followed in the wake of the collapse of the housing bubble. That is the only possible conclusion that readers can take away from an article about anger at public sector workers that failed to note that the plunge in the stock market in 2008-2009 was the major cause of the shortfalls in public sector pensions.

Certainly if the reporters and/or editors at the NYT had known about the financial crisis and the stock market plunge it would have been featured prominently in this piece.

Girl in a Chair

Holiday Cheer

I am supposing that Monday marks the beginning of the Republican race for president. As such, you probably all saw this article about the GOP frontrunners committing gaffes here or there in the last coupla months. The Pawlenty bit has been bugging me for a couple of days now. Yes, it pretty funny fucked up that he got caught citing bad data from a Big Government article and doesn't seem to realize that relying on hard data from a propaganda site is dumb. He genuinely seems to not be in on the joke, which I guess is why he's a favorite among the powers that be in the GOP. W. again.

What has been bothering me though is that, while it is fun to make fun of the dumb guy who is running for president, what is being overlooked is that Pawlenty was attacking Obama for only creating jobs in the government, not the private sector.

In a Wall Street Journal column, he said most labor union members now work for governments, which Obama has rendered "the only booming industry left in our economy." Since January 2008, he wrote, "the private sector has lost nearly 8 million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000."

Politfact proved that the stats were bogus and that the 590,000 only included part-time census workers. The problem I have is that if the private economy did lose 8 million jobs, shouldn't the government have created a fuckload more than 590,000 jobs? Wouldn't we want the government to create something on the order of, oh I don't know, 8 million jobs? Of course it can't, but shouldn't that be the goal here?

I feel like this is a very minor replay of the tax deal. We are so far from anything that looks like the New Deal, the only conclusion we can possibly reach is that we lost the political debate to the extent that our talking points aren't heard. Where do we go from here?

Fortunately, we'll have a good two years of horse race to talk about and the Palin-Pawlenty ticket will remind us that the lesser of two evils really is the lesser of two evils.

Speaking of Los Bee Gees - I Can't See Nobody - Festival Hall, Melbourne, Australia

The pre-Disco shit is amazing, too. Goes good between your Zombies and your ELO, en particulier.

nalt2

nalt2, summarizing some tendencies in Althusser.

6. Ideology "in general" "has no history" [i.e. no actual content, no concrete origin in wrong perceptions etc.], although specific ideologies do. Ideology in general is always "imaginary", representing a non-historical "reality". Imagination is "eternal" [i.e. makes the same continuing, permanent, and wrong relations between people and social reality, the famous "imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence".] Ideology is a representation of this imaginary relationship. It is not just an illusion which can be easily dispelled by a correct interpretation, not just a lie to fool subordinate classes, not just the result of a necessary alienation - ideology is needed in social life. Ideology does not just misrepresent the real nature of capitalist society - the relation of individuals to the realities is necessarily "imaginary distortion".

Zee band - eet eez back together

You guys think my writing is turgid?

Check out this bit from Poulantzas, as close as it gets to my personal justification for m'dissertation:

But, I repeat, the relative autonomy of the state, founded on the separation (constantly being transformed) of the economic and political, is inherent in its very structure (the state is a relation) in so far as it is the resultant of contradictions and of the class struggle as expressed, always in their own specific manner, within the state itself- the state which is both shot through and constituted with and by these class contradictions. It is precisely this that enables us exactly to pinpoint the specific role of the bureaucracy which, although it constitutes a specific social category, is not a group standing above, outside or to one side of classes: an elite, but one whose members also have a class situation or membership. To my mind, the implications of this analysis are of great importance.

YouTube - GG Allin - Die when you die !!

YouTube - GG Allin - Die when you die !!

Don't worry none, it's censored for those who don't actually wanna see grainy excrement footage.

Perfectly Pedestrian Oatmeal Stout

8# LME
.75# GW Crystal
.5# British Chocolate
.33# Roasted Barley
.33# Black Malt
2 oz Willamette
.5 oz Cascade
Wyeast Irish Ale 1084

Steeped grains at 155-175°F for 30 minutes. Boiled wort for 20 minutes before adding .5 oz Willamette hops. Added the rest of the Willamette hops after 15 minutes. Boiled for 45 more minutes for a total of 80 minutes. Added the Cascade hops when I killed the boil and moved the wort to cool in an ice bath.

OG of 1.070 @ 60°F

Notes: Not happy with the preliminary color. It is definitely brown. I should have ignored the guy in the homebrew store and added more black malt. Only added .5 oz hops at 20 minute mark as an error. Thought I'd put half the package in, but obviously had not. Got wort to too low of a temp in the ice bath, now have to wait for it to come up before I pitch the yeast. Forgetting to mark the carboy before I brewed was a mistake, now I have no idea how many gallons I am brewing.

This is my first brew in about 10 years, so I am sure there are things I am missing. This is will be the first time I won't be putting my beer in a secondary. Plan on going 4 weeks in the primary and bottling. Whether or not one needs to use a secondary fermentor seems to be a matter of great controversy, but may lack of secondary compels me to side with the primary-only crowd.

Wish me luck. Will keep you posted.

In Unfolding War on Public Employees, State Lawmakers and Media Likely to Do the Work Themselves | FDL News Desk

In Unfolding War on Public Employees, State Lawmakers and Media Likely to Do the Work Themselves | FDL News Desk

But I don’t think states or municipalities need much help from the federal government in their desire to rewrite public employee union contracts. There has been a concerted effort for years to demonize and delegitimize public employee unions, from both Republican pols and the media in general. This has left a distorted impression about greedy union contracts and well-paid government functionaries. So the new class of Republican governors would certainly want to capitalize on that by pleasing the public, who now favor things like wage freezes (which Obama just instituted at the federal level) and furloughs and bigger pension contributions, punishing those workers. And they are animated by a general hatred of unions, which have maintained their strength in the public sector while fading away in the private sector.

Somebody Bet on the Bay

Ah, Good Ol' 1208

1208 Kelly Blvd., Springfield, OR, the house I grew up in, is for sale.

This 759 square foot beauty features two bedrooms and one bath. It has an "open floor plan" which, in this particular case, means that it would be crazy to waste the space between the living room and the kitchen with a wall.

As can see in this photo gallery, petty bourgeois indulgences like dining tables and/or space will not be a temptation. And check out that sweet gate (can I get a close up of that ironwork?) which is wide enough to allow you to park a vehicle in the back yard, should the garage, driveway, street, and tire-rutted side yard not be enough capacity for all your vehicles.

The immediate area features several unpaved streets, so male youngins can partake in the neighborhood tradition of rock fighting and making long skid marks with their bicycles. (I have no idea what a girl might do in this neighborhood. Not sure there were any when I grew up. Well, not at the rock fights.)

Can a family of four, two dogs, and two birds live comfortably in such space? No. No, they cannot.

How much would you pay for this fine house and piece of solidcitizen history? An astounding $165,000. I shit you not.

The Day After Christmas

And a man's thoughts inevitably turn toward tires.

N'Oubliez Pas La Raison

What I Miss About Maryland

Hate, Hate, Hate, You're a Fucking Hater

Matthew Franck is a hater. I was listening to this wanker on NPR yesterday, while I was on my way to get some delicious Taco Time brand tacos and had one of my what I like to call "yelling at the radio" fits.

His basic premise is that we gay marriage supporters call the haters "haters" because we have no real arguments to support gay marriage. Let's have an honest debate, he says. Honestly, I've been listening to the "debate" about gay marriage for some time, so by default I am thinking that this hater is filled with the hate, so he better start off bringing some serious non-hate arguments to justify his anti-gay equality stance.

Instead, he starts from the premise of gay marriage is just wrong, wrong, wrong. To back this up, he points to the wisdom of the American people. They think gay marriage is wrong, so it pretty much must be wrong, so therefore those opposed to gay marriage cannot be haters. This is when I start shouting at the radio as I drive down the Interstate designated 5.

Matt then bolsters his "wisdom of the American people" argument with the "since the beginning of time" argument. At this point, I begin wondering if I have been so caught up in my own hate that I have missed the fact that I was somehow teleported to Eastern Washington and I am listening to some yokel with four tin cans and a transmitter give me a little God's country education. But no, I am still on 5 and headed to Springfield for those delicious tacos. And listening to the National People's Radio which for some reason decided to give this fuckwit 15 minutes of airtime to spew his wildly ahistorical bullshit.

So, in a short span of time we have the "'Mericans don't like it, so it's can't be good" argument and the "this is how God has always wanted it" argument. My favorite bit came when he had to the answer the dreaded "If marriage is only for the purpose of having men and women fuck so they can make Jesus babies to be raised safely by a mother AND! a father [as God intended. I will give Matt this, he didn't resort to any biological determinist crap, which must be tough, because it's sitting right there] then why do we let old farts and the barren get hitched?" question.

Tears of rage turned to tears of laughter as I took the new Beltline flyway exit to my hometown [former Eugenians would not recognize the Gateway exit anymore. Seriously, when you come back out here you will find yourself paraphrasing Burne with a little "My God, what have they done?"], as Matt combined America and God to come up with the argument that marriage, since the beginning of civilization itself, has been for the purpose of hot man on woman action and, while it might be true that old folk can't produce babies, their sweaty old-person fucking is in line with the "principles" on which marriage is based, so it's okay, but the gay fucking can never produce children, not even in "principle," so cannot be legally sanctioned with society's highest honor. This is the way Americans want it.

This line of argumentation forces me to picture a young girl uptalking her way through this argument.

"Um, like marriage is for, like um, making babies? And, like, my grandma can't have babies? But she should be allowed the legal protections and benefits of marriage because her and Mel, they like, have sex like you would if you were going to make a baby? Or could do it that way? So, like, it's the same principle as baby-making sex? So it's cool. But the gays? They can't make babies? So they shouldn't get be allowed to get married or anything."

So yes, society has decided that the only people who have the right to marriage are those that fuck in the heterosexual style. This is not hate. This is, well, ummm...you see, more than 66% of Americans are opposed to gay marriage, and since the beginning of time...

The tacos were delicious. I had three.

Hot Stove

Who cares if old J.B.
Is monarch of the sea?
I'm not afraid if his Free Trade scoops all my biz from me.
I seek a greater fame,
And get there all the same.
I knock creation to all tarnation at the Glorious National Game!

Pigeon Shit

1. (At least) 3 examinations yesterday.
   That night I dreamed of buying sneakers.
   
2. Wishing for a real War on Xmas.
3. OG-ing again again.
4. Unrequited blogger.
   
5. Maybe gonna turn on the amplifier, now.
   

Prisonshift

1. Box Elders, Alice and Friends. If this, and not Crooked Rain, 'd followed Slanted and Enchanted, it'd've been less surprising. Gtrs, bs, drum and organ. Songwriting born punk but trending rock, sad stories for lyrics.
   
2. Dental hygenist/shrink/nutritionist, all dancing with me today before Jesus lets me set down.
   
3. Writing on this blog - and not the regular one - in hopes nobody/somebody's reading. A familiar, but embellished, speechlessness and/or gagging has m'befallen.
   
4. I thought I'd known depression by December 2008, but that was numpin. Wait til you actually get the things you want from your life; then you'll know the unhappiness, seasickness and slow dying that come with vivre sa vie.
5. Your gut expands and distends, your chest sours and waking approximates a bloody sneeze. You make a list of people you love the most and become progressively horrified for them and their proximity to you.
6. Spirits and demons take on a rhetorical utility.
7. Reading Blood Meridian, which is a hoot and big time life-affirmer.
   
8. Aqua aerobics also this AM! Damned if we won't have an aggressive internal monologue amidst all the me time therein.
   

Prisonship Twi-ddle-dye-dees

1. Elevated liver enzymes.
   
2. Julie Klausner on TBSOWFMU
3. My 2nd-or3rd red Stax cup from the Soul Museum, filled with sub-room temperature coffee and expired 1/2+1/2 dregs.
   
4. Having seen Thee Oh Sees, the Gories, Teenage Fanclub, Superchunk, Nobunny and Bob Mould in the last coupla months.
   
5. The Poulantzas Reader.
6. Cheaply Priced Blue Note lp reissues, such as Hank Mobley's Workout.
7. Poulantzas: "I was able to avoid conceiving of the different instances (in particular the political, the state) as being by nature and pre-existing, in essence, their meeting together within a precise mode if production." This is what he calls the "regional theory," his elaboration on Althusser's idea of "relative autonomy."
   
8. my first ever for-real toilet punk-ish, killed by desk-ish sounding song for my imaginary punk band, Thee White Vote. Lyrically the inspirations are from The Exorcist and Paul Muldoon. It's entitled, "Captain Howdy Has a Shack."
   

Weigel : Tea Party Patriots Against the Tax Cut Deal [UPDATE: and RedState!]

Weigel : Tea Party Patriots Against the Tax Cut Deal [UPDATE: and RedState!]

And so Charles Krauthammer and Grover Norquist have company in opposition, albeit much more muted than opposition to, say, cap-and-trade.

This is the first "tell" we've gotten yet re: how the tea party will take to compromise-y, everybody's dirty-y life in governance. But note that last bit about how their oppo towards cap-and-trade is much more do-or-die, apparently.

Bottom line? Only tiny ideological minorites really care about deficits and spending enough to choke on tax cuts and/or constituent services. It's just that vast majorities appreciate the discourse of deficits cuz it allows 'em to talk about 1,000 other t(h)ings and s(t)uff and p(e)ople.

Pawlenty: Public unions 'exploiters' - Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com

Pawlenty: Public unions 'exploiters' - Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com

“Unionized public employees are making more money, receiving more generous benefits and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt,” Pawlenty wrote in an opinion piece.

Working families' wages have been systematically pushed down by whom since the 1980s (- aka, shucks, circa PATCO)???? By you and yours, dick. You think public employee unions are the reason working families suffer under neoliberal tax policy? You dolt.

On the Relative Autonomy of the Capitalist State

Poulantzas

“[attributes] to the capitalist state a precise role as political organizer and unifier, and as a factor for the establishment of the “unstable equilibrium of compromises,” which role is constitutively connected with its relative autonomy. Two directions that are nothing more than two aspects of a single approach. The separation of the economic and the political provides the general framework, depending upon the different states of capitalism (this separation is itself liable to transformation) for an examination of the relative autonomy of the capitalist state – with the concrete form taken by this autonomy depending upon the precise conjuncture of the class struggle at any one time. For this separation of the economic and the political is itself nothing more than the form taken by the constitution of the classes and hence it too is a consequence of their struggles under capitalism.

Pwismship Tin-vin-toddies

1. Stationed at home in Michigan, snow day.
   
2. Crass agit-prop framed on the office wall.
   
3. Blacktop Ikea utilito-desk speckled with paper clips and stems.
   
4. Wedding pics.
5. Zwan memorabilia.
   
6. Dillion Jaguar copy > EH Small Clone > Fender Deluxe tubes
7. File cabinet on wheels
8. Paper-covered dissertation journal/sketchbook. Prominence of Poulantzas therein. WFMU, Goner, In the Red stickers.
   
9. Rob Smith's recent show at Ditch.
10. Superchunk, Majesty Shredding.
11. A deep, wide pile of New York Review of Books ' to further examine -- though their writing about the tea parties and le Right en general has been kinda weak, truth told.
    

Any Socialism Cannot Go Around, But Must Go Through, this Precept

Like a three-hole-puncher. We need to help bind this kind of thinking up.

Q&A With Shipping News’ Jason Noble

Q&A With Shipping News’ Jason Noble

We have to be advocates for art and music, and despite the myth, very few bands or record stores make much money. They just want to work with music they love. So it’s really up to us. That goes for small labels, book stores, publishers, printers and anyone working to keep independent thought alive. The environment in the U.S. is very hostile and short-sighted right now. We need to speak up for “the other” and question anyone that is embracing corporate/pseudo-religious conservative extremism. Once again, it’s a scary time. We just had an entire election cycle where no one even mentioned that we’re fighting two wars! It was all about assigning blame and attacking people, for being an immigrant or “socialist” or anyone requesting decent treatment. I understand why people get duped by these outrageous claims and shoddy promises by the right wing. (And to be fair, the liberals have their share of inconsistencies and foul-ups.) Local culture, when it is active and engaged, makes us more tolerant, more informed and less likely to be filled with irrational fear. And records sound better than mp3 files.

Laclau, "Universalism, Particularism and the Question of Identity"

If democracy is possible, it is because the universal has no necessary body and no necessary content; different groups, instead, compete between themselves to temporarily give to their particularisms a function of universal representation. Society generates a whole vocabulary of empty signifiers whose temporary signifieds are the result of a political competition. It is this final failure off society to constitute itself as society - which is the same thing as the failure of constituting difference as difference - which makes the distance between the universal and the particular unbridgeable and, as a result, burdens concrete social agents with the impossible task of making democratic interaction achievable.

Racial Propositions (excerpt) - Daniel Martinez HoSang - University of California Press

In case you were wondering, this's what I've been thinking about lately as Advisor B and I hustle towards finally a-finishing our Tea Party papier. In addition to writing the best book about the larger cultural and racial stakes of the ludicrous initiative process that I have been able to glom, Hosang's also translated the "invisibility" of the hegemonic political subjectivity du jour into something goddamned see-able :

Political whiteness describes a political subjectivity rooted in white racial identity, a gaze on politics constituted by whiteness. This concept draws from and extends both George Lipsitz's observations about the "possessive investment in whiteness" and Cheryl Harris's critical account of "whiteness as property." Whiteness, Lipsitz argues is "possessed" both literally in the form of material rewards and resources afforded to those recognized as white as well as figuratively through the "psychological wages" of status and social recognition detailed by W.{ths}E.{ths}B. DuBois. Harris similarly describes a "valorization of whiteness as treasured property," recognized by the law and enforced by the state, which produces a "settled expectation" that its beneficiaries will face no "undue" obstacles in claiming its rewards. Whiteness, she explains, "is simultaneously an aspect of identity and a property interest, it is something that can be both experienced and deployed as a resource."

The concept of political whiteness describes how these norms, "settled expectations," and "investments" shape the interpretation of political interests, the boundaries of political communities, and the sources of power for many political actors who understand themselves as white. It does not simply describe the interests or politics of "white people," which after all are necessarily varied. It instead concerns the process by which some political claims and interests come to be defined as white. James Baldwin described an "American delusion" fostered by whiteness that leads people to believe "not only that their brothers all are white but that the whites are all their brothers."Like whiteness in general, political whiteness is a subjectivity that constantly disavows its own presence and insists on its own innocence. It operates instead as a kind of absent referent, hailing and interpolating particular subjects through various affective appeals witnessed in claims to protect "our rights," "our jobs," "our homes," "our kids," "our streets," and even "our state" that never mention race but are addressed to racialized subjects.Political whiteness is, in one sense, a widely studied phenomenon. Scholars and observers have long sought to explain the relationship between white racial identity and political behavior and action. In most accounts, however, white racial identity is viewed as fully realized and defined, constructed outside of the field of politics. Conflicts like ballot measures merely express its preordained interests. This account, by contrast, does not view political whiteness as a fixed, a priori identity that simply becomes expressed through political conflicts. Carmichael and Hamilton's argument certainly holds true: there are deep "traditions" of racism embedded in diverse institutions and structures that shape the contours and trajectory of white political identity at any given moment. But white political identity is hardly static; it also becomes transformed and renewed through struggles such as ballot initiative campaigns.

The Hegemonic Character of Political Whiteness
Political whiteness bears two characteristics that are central to all hegemonic formations. First, as cultural studies scholar Raymond Williams explains, "the hegemonic has to be seen as more than the simple transmission of an (unchanging) dominance. On the contrary, any hegemonic process must be especially alert and responsive to the alternatives and opposition which question and threaten its dominance" because a "lived hegemony is always a process." It must be "renewed, recreated, defended, and modified" as it is "continually resisted, limited, altered, [and] challenged by pressures not all its own."California's racialized ballot measures reveal precisely such a process at work. Taken together, they demonstrate the contested formation of political whiteness, a gaze on politics that is characterized by both continuity and change. Rather than viewing these ballot measures as primarily concerning the rights of various racialized minorities, we can understand them instead as contests over the political authority and "settled expectations" of whiteness itself.A central assertion of this book is that the political forces that opposed civil rights and racial justice policies are the ones that have best understood the malleable nature of political whiteness, and have constantly tested the ways they could adapt and incorporate new ideas, values, and experiences. Their opponents, by contrast, rarely attempted to challenge political whiteness as a fundamental identification, treating it instead as an inexorable force of political life.Williams's second point about hegemonic formations concerns the question of opposition. By definition, ballot initiatives are viewed as contests between opposing political projects, which presumably do not share similar ideas, commitments, or values. But Williams argues that the very power of hegemonic formations derives from their capacity to shape the terms on which they are opposed: "nearly all initiatives and contributions, even when they take on manifestly alternative or oppositional forms, are in practice tied to the hegemonic: that the dominant culture, so to say, at once produces and limits its own forms of counter-culture."

Union disclosure unlike other groups' - Ben Smith - POLITICO.com

Union disclosure unlike other groups' - Ben Smith - POLITICO.com

"[U]nions are [501](c)(5)s and don’t disclose...is that the business as usual? Or does that make them shadowy?" Jim Dyke, one of the GOP consultants on the board of American Crossroads, asked on Twitter today.

There are elements of this comparison that make sense. The same collapse in campaign finance restrictions that allow unlimited corporate spending allow unlimited union spending.

But when it comes to disclosure, talk of unions is a red herring. While they aren't required by the FEC or IRS to disclose donors, a separate piece of federal law, the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, requires that unions disclose all sources of income that adds up to more than $5,000, a requirement overseen by the Department of Labor. As a result, unions disclose more than many political groups about their internal operations, and certainly more than than do 501(c)(4) nonprofits like Crossroads GPS or 501(c)(6) groups like the Chamber.

Fundamental attribution error - Psychology Wiki

Fundamental attribution error - Psychology Wiki

In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (sometimes referred to as the actor-observer bias, correspondence bias or overattribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior. In other words, people tend to have a default assumption that what a person does is based more on what "kind" of person he is, rather than the social and environmental forces at work on that person. This default assumption leads to people sometimes making erroneous explanations for behavior. This general bias to over-emphasizing dispositional explanations for behavior at the expense of situational explanations is much less likely to occur when people evaluate their own behavior.

The term was coined by Lee Ross some years after the now-classic experiment by Edward E. Jones and Victor Harris. Ross argued in a popular paper that the fundamental attribution error forms the conceptual bedrock for the field of social psychology.

Unions Find Members Slow to Rally Behind Democrats - NYTimes.com

Unions Find Members Slow to Rally Behind Democrats - NYTimes.com

“They’re always effective,” he said. “The union leadership is wedded to the Democratic Party. But what we’ve seen cycle after cycle is the membership demonstrates real independence and votes independently of the union bosses.” (According to a national exit poll conducted by Edison/Mitofsky, 60 percent of union members voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 and 37 percent for Senator John McCain.)

Weigel : The NRCC and the Coming Republican Majority

Weigel : The NRCC and the Coming Republican Majority

Kevin McCarthy, the Energizer Bunny who gets credit for recruiting most of the party's best candidates, is probably going to be the party's whip. That would pole-vault him past Mike Pence, the conservative darling who is mulling a run for president or governor of Indiana in 2012. Right now Pence is the third-ranking member of the House leadership, a position won in no small part because conservatives wanted to reward him after the Bush years and his failed post-DeLay leadership bids.

Democrats are hoping against hope that Republicans will fight amongst themselves if they take the House, but the most likely scenario is a Boehner-Cantor-McCarthy leadership team with Pence remaining as the cheerleader whose utterances are not quite considered reflective of what the party is doing.

Tuff rocks for Mike Pence, non?

Steve Early, "This Labor Day, Let's Salute All Union Stewards -- and Their Cutting Edge in California"

Steve Early, "This Labor Day, Let's Salute All Union Stewards -- and Their Cutting Edge in California"

The real heroes of what's left of the labor movement are not people with full-time union jobs, union-furnished cars and credit cards, and union benefits that dues-paying members don't get anymore.

That's the first fucking sentence of this fucking article. Wow, let's salute union stewards by denigrating union staff. Fabulous. One more thing, while we're saluting union activists and insulting staffers and staff work - the two are linked zero-sum style, I suppose? - can we give an erotic massage to old-ass Baby Boomer "New" Left fossils? We can?!? This isn't Labor Day, it's fucking Xmas!

I will probably finish the rest of this article and like some of what it has to tell me. But just now I'll thank Steve Early, who joins Robert Gibbs in providing exactly the fodder I need for my dissertation chapter about the paid and unpaid, the recognized and unrecognized work of union staff. Eat fucking shit, Steve. And get used to eating it. You were wrong about the Revolution and you're wrong now.

Christie, take two - Ben Smith - POLITICO.com

Christie, take two - Ben Smith - POLITICO.com

Chris Christie's initial, blustery response to the feds' denial of funding due to an apparent bureaucratic error seemed, at first, a triumph of his blunt style.

Now, not so much:

The error was first reported Tuesday evening by The Star-Ledger. On Wednesday, Christie blamed Washington bureaucrats for their inflexibility to fix what he described as a clerical error. Christie said [Education Commissioner Brett] Schundler had provided the correct information during a presentation of the state's application in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 11.

But on Thursday, the U.S. Department of Education released a video of that presentation that showed neither Schundler nor the other four people from New Jersey's delegation were able to come up with the information for the correct budget years.

Before the video was released, Christie had said he would not fire anyone over a paperwork mistake made by a "midlevel" staffer.

Christie just fired Schundler.

The Star-Ledger suggests that the problems between Christie and Schundler -- whose appointment was celebrated on the right -- were deeper, and that he had to go in any case.

You cannot imagine the sorta sick joy I take outta this story. Chris Christe NEEDS TO GO, so he can go onto Fox News and, mebbe, end up a perennial R veep chasepacker.

Oh, My Sides! Obama Says He’ll Keep Pushing for Employee Free Choice Act | Work in Progress

Oh, My Sides! Obama Says He’ll Keep Pushing for Employee Free Choice Act | Work in Progress

For Obama to even mention the Employee Free Choice Act as anything but a deader-than-dead failure of his administration is an insult to the intelligence of every working person in America. Obama had the opportunity to push through the Employee Free Choice Act between February and April 2009. He let it linger, then let Democrats start sniping at it, and then the ship sailed with Scott Brown’s election. Unions dismantled their Employee Free Choice Act campaign teams in January 2010. It is no longer even close to an option.

Bringing up the Employee Free Choice Act now is worse than being a tease. It’s being a dishonest, two-faced manipulator who is desperately begging for help from the very people who only got out the vote and donated money in 2008 on the promise of fundamental change like the Employee Free Choice Act. For Obama to come back two years later and promise the same thing that’s not even possible is offensive.

Unions near feud settlement - Ben Smith - POLITICO.com

Unions near feud settlement - Ben Smith - POLITICO.com

Jesus fucking christ, it's about time.

t r u t h o u t | Former San Diego ACORN Employee Files Lawsuit Against Righ-Wing Activists O'Keefe and Giles

t r u t h o u t | Former San Diego ACORN Employee Files Lawsuit Against Righ-Wing Activists O'Keefe and Giles

As The BRAD BLOG has documented for many months now, the activists edited their tapes to appear as if O'Keefe dressed as and represented himself as a pimp to ACORN workers. He did neither. In fact, he represented himself as Giles boyfriend, hoping to save her from an abusive pimp. Moreover, the highly edited tapes were edited to give the impression that ACORN workers advised the pair on how to break the law. Here's just one example of how O'Keefe and Giles misrepresented what had actually occurred in the meetings and on their deceptively cropped tapes.

The blatantly dishonest hoax, however --- amplified and enabled by a wholly uncritical mainstream media --- was brutally effective and destructive, coming as part of the years-long assault by the GOP and the Right against ACORN, largely for having had the temerity to legally register hundreds of thousands of low and middle-income (read: Democratic-leaning) voters to legally cast a vote and participate in their own democracy.

Vera's complaint goes on to note that the eavesdropping and recording provisions of the Penal Code, Section 632, "defines confidential communication to include "any communication carried on in circumstances as may reasonably indicate that any party to the communication desires it to be confined to the parties thereto."

"Although the Act contains exemptions for particular individuals or circumstances," the complaint reads, "no exemption exists for filmmakers, the media, or journalists."

In his 28-page report [PDF], the CA AG explained that since O'Keefe and Giles received immunity from prosecution after providing the complete tapes, they "did not determine if they violated California's Invasion of Privacy Act when they recorded the ACORN employees. If the circumstances meet the requirements of the Act, the ACORN employees may be able to bring a private suit against O'Keefe and Giles for recording a confidential conversation without consent."

Former San Diego ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera, has now filed suhch a private suit against O'Keefe and Giles.

In addition to naming O'Keefe and Giles, the suit also specifies unnamed defendants "DOES 1-20 inclusive," allowing for the plaintiff to add additional co-defendants later, as the need arises throughout the discovery phase of the case. As the secret video tapes made in California were the last among a number of such tapes made by O'Keefe and Giles (the others on the East Coast), and as O'Keefe and Giles' employer/pimp Andrew Breitbart lives in Los Angeles --- and has lied about the tapes in the past, as seen in both his newspaper column and on video tape --- it seems quite possible that he would have been aware of the video taping in advance of the California meetings, at the very least.

If so, we'll be neither surprised nor saddened to see Breitbart named as one of those DOES in the not-too-distant future.

t r u t h o u t | The Politics of Death: Throwing Mumia Abu-Jamal Under the Bus

t r u t h o u t | The Politics of Death: Throwing Mumia Abu-Jamal Under the Bus

Because Trots for Romney, Trots for Blago and even, most recently, Trots for Crist, have been active with the Mumia defense histrionics.

By the way, has anybody out there read the memoir of Maureen Faulkner, widow of the police officer Mumia has been convicted of murdering? It's co-authored by Michael Smerconish, a popular fount of "centrist"-ish pablum on Hardball. I'll allow readers to draw their own conclusions about the memoir itself, but here's what one of Lex's Oracles had to say:

"The Bible teaches that the truth will set us free, but Michael Smerconish and Maureen Faulkner teach us that even a powerful truth needs courage as its ally."
Chris Matthews - Host of Hardball with Chris Matthews and The Chris Matthews Show

Fuck that, Chris. What a bunch of swishy drivel. That's probably why Romney, Crist and Blago don't wanna do yr dumb show no more times. It's probably why I, myself, find myself wondering if I wouldn't be better off to allow myself only one hour of daily cable talk, and that talk should be Maddow talk? Probably I should really watch GritTv, huh?

What news videos do you people watch? I could use some ideas.

Connecting Dots | Democratic Strategist

Connecting Dots | Democratic Strategist

It's reasonably clear by now that by sheer repetition, the claim that the president has fumbled the BP oil spill in some significant way has sunk into media and public perceptions. Some of this, of course, is coming from people who are lifelong cheerleaders for offshore oil drilling, and who idolize Dick Cheney, who is probably more responsible for the policies that enabled this disaster than anyone else. But presidents do get blamed for things they didn't do, so appearing large and in charge in the present and future must accompany any Obama effort to assign responsibility for why this happened in the first place.

Aside from that difficult task, the president must also connect the dots between the disaster and the path he wants the country to take on energy policy. While it may seem obvious to some of us why a carbon cap or tax of some sort is an appropriate response to yet another calamity associated with fossil fuel production, it's not at all obvious to the public generally. And this is the same public, moreover, that never much bought the president's arguments that health care reform was essential to the country's economic future. So while it might not be that hard for Obama to rally support for tougher regulation of offshore drilling, it will be a much heavier lift to connect the disaster to the need for climate change legislation.

Alvin Greene Interview with CNN Must See! 6-12-2010

Why am I so sure that we won't be delighted when we get to the bottom of how, exactly, Alvin Greene became the D nominee for US Senate in South Carolina? This is a harrowing clip.

Gather Your Armies

This would be what I'd call taking it to the next level ca. 2010.