Cogitamus

Sunday avoidance therapy: The inaugural session

Eddie Izzard's delicious Cake or Death bit--via Lego animation.

This morning, Mr. Litbrit was thoroughly engrossed in watching the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona--only seven more hours worth of exhausted drivers trying to stay awake and manage their seriously compromised race-cars while going in circles with the odd engine fire just to keep things interesting!--and I was puttering around the place in my Not-from-Wal-mart pajamas, indulging in the customary vat of coffee and gathering up stray tea-plates and buttered toast crusts. Mostly I was trying to stay away from any manifestation whatsoever of the dread Sunday news--the shows and the periodicals--all the while amusing myself (and horrifying the children) by singing:

Mother doesn't go out anymore--
Just sits at home and rolls her spastic eyes;
But every weekend through the door
Come words of wisdom from the world outside.

If you wanna know about the bishop and the actress;
If you wanna know how to be a star;
If you wanna know about the stains on the mattress--
You can read it in the Sunday papers, Sunday papers...

Suddenly it occurred to me: there are probably quite a few of us out here doing likewise--that is, engaging in one form or another of this very behavior. And thus a recurring blog bit was born: Sunday Avoidance Therapy. If you're interested in escaping the frustrating political domain for a blessed hour or two--or simply looking for a bit of time-suckage so you can put off doing the laundry while simultaneously convincing yourself that broadening the mind and having a laugh or two are more important than having clean socks--this post's for you.

In the spirit of camaraderie, then, I'll share a few of the bits and pieces I found while taking a Sunday spin around the 'Tubes, only one of which is (tangentially) related to politics and the mainstream media, but hey, it is by Matt Taibbi--here you go--who rips David Brooks a well-deserved new one, which, come to think of it, begs the question as to exactly how many new ones a single human can endure having ripped before he becomes more orifice than substance and thus simply evaporates?

So then...let's go: First, to sunny Barbados, land of my grammar-school years, where Prince Harry--the irreverent, naughty prince, and definitely the one with whom I'd want to be stranded on a desert island--told the audience at a recent Haiti fundraiser that if they were able to raise BBD$5,000 (about USD$2,500) in the next 25 minutes, he would get up and dance for them. They did, and he did. See? We're not all stiff-upper-lip sorts.

Next, we'll go back in time a few months, to Hallowe'en, and alight in England just in time to see Christopher Walken's reading of Lady Gaga's Poker Face for the Jonathan Ross show on BBC1 (if you haven't seen this yet, and you're as big a Walken fan as I, be sure to click through.)

Onward to yesterday's time plane, where yet more Lady Gaga action was taking place back in America, land of Miss America (and what I wouldn't give to see a contestant sing the theme song to Team America, World Police in the talent portion, but I digress). As you may have heard, one of the celebrity judges for this year's pageant was Rush Limbaugh. As you may not have heard, Rush got up and danced. And shook his groove thing and pumped his fist, kinda-sorta in time with the music, so help me.

You're welcome.

And now, here's some real rhythm-making goodness: check out Terry Bozzio's roadies setting up what is easily the biggest drum kit I've ever seen.  (Corvus, I hope you're reading.)

Finally, in the interests of science, we'll wind things up in Ecuador, where field researchers continue to discover new species; my personal favorite, the adorably tiny scaly-eyed gecko, is shown perching his half-inch-long bad self on the tip of a pencil-eraser.

Got any fabulous and fascinating links you'd like to share? Mi comment section es su comment section, estimados amigos.

The Scott Brown Crash and Other Deep Thoughts

There is much that is inane in every day of television news, but little more nonsensical than the attempts to put meaning on each day's stock market gyrations.  Indeed, television business reporting is one of those things that we would simply be better off without (not to mention much print business journalism, particularly anything that sells itself as investor oriented).  Really, how much do we really need to watch "journalists" hump CEO-leg like they're dogs in heat?  Not the most edifying spectacle in the world.

And then there's the brilliant financial minds who promised us a "Scott Brown Stock Market Rally."  Sad to say, the S&P 500 is down by over 6% since Cosmo Boy won the most important election ever, a mere ten days ago.  That's a lot of wealth shed over one man and a truck.  (I kid, of course, but this is the kind of thing that the dumb asses on the right do all the time -- see here, here, here, here, and, oh what the fuck, here.   (Doesn't being wrong and stupid ever get wearisome?)  I particularly love Malkin asking what would the reaction been if this happened under George W. Bush?  Sweet fucking Jesus in an internment camp, does this moral gorgon not know that over his eight year term the S&P 500 was down 37%?  This is a record of remarkably futility and actually, a long enough market cycle to mean something -- that their heroic president was a monumental fuck up, a disaster of the highest order on virtually every front.   

Of course, Republicans are historically bad for the long term market -- Hoover, Nixon and Ford join Bush as the only presidents in the last one hundred years to have had negative markets for their entire time in office. 

I will note that the S&P 500 is up by approximately 33% since Obama was inaugurated, so draw your own conclusions.

Some have suggested that these predictions and correlations are nonsense.  And on a day-to-day basis they are.  But, as conservatives like to remind us over and over again, markets tend to be right over the long term.  

It's Friday evening; you know what that means: Montrachet Time. B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton & Jimmy Vaughan play Rock Me, Baby

Okay, so they're not sporting six-packs and sprayed-on leather jeans. Nor are they leaping around the stage or dodging airborne panties. So what. That's a whole lot of legend sitting on those chairs up there, passing sweet and well-seasoned blues licks back and forth like a plateful of the best Southeastern barbecue.

I've been fortunate to see all but Eric Clapton in live performance. And I recently watched Jeff Beck and Buddy Guy play together in the HBO Hall of Fame special, which in turn led me to dream of an evening wherein Beck and Eric Sardinas joined forces with Guy, King, Clapton, Vaughan, and friend of this blog Minstrel Boy to put on a once-in-a-lifetime (but intimate!) show at one of St. Petersburg's many small and very fabulous nightclubs.

Should that awesomeness ever come to be, I'll let you know--and I'll be sure to save us all a big table up front.

Bon Weekend, everyone.

XXX
D.

We shall miss their voices, even as their words live on

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame
of killing innocent people. -- Howard Zinn, 1922-2010

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection,
and on his own terms, not anyone else's. -- J. D. Salinger, 1919-2010

Sally Quinn - Hideous Human Being or Most Hideous Human Being

I read this column by Sally Quinn in utter disbelief.  This old, irrelevant, deluded fool thinks that she and the other Georgetown socialites hold the key to helping create a successful presidential administration.  The arrogance and insularity are pretty remarkable even by Village standards.

What's amazing to me is that Sally Quinn's main claim to fame and her road to professional advancement was that she fucked Ben Bradlee while he was married to someone else.  (In a wonderful twist, she writes the Post's "On Faith" blog.) You would think someone with that on her resume would be a bit more circumspect, but she was a particularly vicious critic of the Clintons.  

Ah well, as Winston Churchill should have said, some are born to greatness, others have it thrust into them.*

*Line actually stolen from a National Lampoon piece about Margaret Trudeau from many years ago and then mingled in my mind with the equally wonderful "Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill" by Michael O'Donoghue -- representative line -- "eat it raw, fuzznuts!"  

The Fierce Urgency of Now

One of the sorry aspects of being at least an amateur student of American history and a member of the left is that you realize how few moments that liberals have been ascendant in the last 100 years.  Basically in that century, there were six years under FDR and two years under LBJ.  That's it.  By 1938 the New Deal was pretty much exhausted, and by 1966, the Great Society was buried by the twin waves of Vietnam and white backlash.

I allowed myself to become pretty uncharacteristically optimistic in the wake of Obama's victory and the smashing triumphs in the congressional elections of 2006 and 2008.  I was particularly heartened by the demographic characteristics of the win, with younger people rallying to the liberal cause in a way not seen in well over a generation.  

But here we are a year into Obama's term and he has lost the initiative in a big way.  These are twelve months that we can't get back -- they are gone irrevocably.  The nature of the American system is such that any political leader trying to change the status quo needs to strike quickly while he has the advantage, which can disappear at any moment.  It is this that distinguishes our system so much from parliamentary systems (and not in a good way). 

A few months ago I was pretty sanguine about Obama's first term at that point.  My comfort was based on two premises -- one, that a health care bill would certainly pass -- that anyone with half a brain on the Democratic side could see its necessity for both the country and their collective fortunes -- and two, that the economy was bound to start coming around. It seems that I was wrong on both points.

Now I guess it's not shocking that the likes of Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh don't understand or don't care about getting things accomplished -- both have deep intellectual and ethical deficits.  But Barack Obama is a very smart guy and a pretty good student of history.  He has to know his time for action may be highly limited.  Yet, I see a President who is not fully in the moment.  I've mentioned this before, but really, listen to the Lyndon Johnson tapes sometime -- to his inexhaustible efforts to wheedle, cajole, threaten, flatter, menace, and beg for congressional support for his ambitious agenda.  This was a man who knew what urgency was.  Obama needs to engage the Hill on a much more insistent level.  And his underlings need to figure out that they need to get things done now!

Alright, he's twenty minutes into the speech.  Time to listen and see if he's getting it.  Please feel free to weigh in.

SOTU-Open Thread/Liveblogging

Good evening, fellow Cogbloggers.  I don't know if Sir C was going to set this up, so I thought I would get us started.

President Obama has just arrived at the podium...and we're off!

Please join me in comments.

For President Obama: This mother's words

Good evening, President Obama:

If, by some infinitesimally tiny chance, the blogs Cogitamus or litbrit are on someone's feed--and that someone happens to be nearby as you prepare to speak--I want you to know something:

I've supported your candidacy for President since you were a twinkle in Harry Reid's eye. Before that, probably--a friend gave me Dreams From My Father well before the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and she said, simply: Watch this guy. He's something special. I read; I agreed. I still agree.

Over the course of your campaign, I donated. I call-banked. Last November, I walked around a neighborhood full of cranky retired Republicans in rainy weather and got to hear the clichéd phrase Get off my lawn! for real. Like millions of others, I was thrilled to have the privilege of being able to do my part to help elect a leader who'd put America on the right path--the path to justice; the people's path--at long last.

Yesterday, I stood on a street corner in the middle of my hometown, in Florida, and held aloft a big red sign emblazoned with the words:

PASS HEALTHCARE NOW!

The group with whom I was demonstrating--we were outside the office of our Congressman, C.W. Bill Young--was promptly set upon by some pretty nasty characters, Mr. President; some of them were wearing combat fatigues and t-shirts with your face on them. Your face and a swastika underneath it. One of these creatures carried a sign with a delightful water-color painting of Speaker Pelosi--she was depicted undressed, with exaggeratedly saggy and unattractive body parts, and the text read: Obamacare can't fix THIS!

You'd have been proud, though, because I did the Barack thing: I remained calm and just smiled my own considerably toothy smile at those charming interlopers.

And then I put my British reserve in my back pocket and shouted at the top of my lungs: Hey, hey, ho, ho, Big Insurance has got to go! as well as What do we want? HEALTHCARE! When do we want it? NOW!, and I kept it up as my friends joined in the cheers and cars beeped their horns as they passed.

I even got invited upstairs to speak with Congressman Young's aide. I expressed my wishes for my family, for my country: universal and affordable health care. Medicare for All. I don't mind what you call it or how it's branded, really I don't (and it's not often you'll hear me say that, word-wonk that I am).

Anyway, Mr. President, I know you're well aware that people are hurting. The cost of health care is destroying our citizenry at a time when people have already lost their savings, their retirement funds, and all too often, the very homes in which they've lived and built their families.

I'm only a little bit older than you are--ten months, to be exact--but I figured out long ago that the whole reaching-across-the-aisle thing was never going to work. It doesn't work in my own extended family, it doesn't work in the circles of other parents with whom I must sometimes interact--both of which groups of people, unlike you and Congress, are in a position to simply avoid talking politics--and it most certainly doesn't work in Washington. I know you get this. How could you not?

They want you to fail. They want your party disemboweled and they want you gone from Washington.

But America needs you. And tonight, when you speak to the country in your first State of the Union Address, we need you to get very, very tough, and--yes--very, very partisan. We want you to lead: it's why we all worked so hard, and gave of our lives, our time, our money, our words, and our love.

We want you to lead.

You are the President. Your detractors and political enemies are licking their chops, waiting for healthcare reform to die on the vine because they know that failure begets more failure; gridlock begets frustration and disillusion; and disillusion itself will beget a catastrophic disaster for progressive hopes come November.

As Ezra says today: you have the ball. And as I say--pardon my French--We're perilously close to Game Over, here: time to put your muscle and skill behind that motherfucker and go for the win.

Because we all know this much about the healthcare game: victory for the people will translate to megawattage on the scoreboard--and that brilliant, much-welcomed light will surely slice up the fog hanging in the air between now and this November.

Yes you bloody well can!

Also at litbrit.

A Couple of Thoughts on the State of the Union (before it happens)

Like many, I am pretty disgusted with the Obama Administration pushing  this foolish domestic spending freeze as a highlight of the direction in which the President wants to take the country.  First, it's a bad idea on the merits -- especially the notion that defense spending is sacrosanct.  Christ, if there is any place where we are massively misspending money it is there (although I wouldn't even cut there right now for stimulus reasons).  More disturbing to me than the merits of the policy is the ideological positioning it indicates -- it's positively Clintonesque, and I don't say that as a good thing.  It's both defensive and transparently manipulative, not exactly the way you change the debate.  And that, as our friend low-tech cyclist observed, was a big part of the point of electing Obama -- he would be the guy who would change the terms of the debate.  In fact, I liked what l-t c said so much, I am just going to go the lazy route and quote him:

The problem with using right-wing frames to push liberal goals is that you're entrenching right-wing frames. Like with triangulation, it may work your way for a moment, but over the long haul, you lose big.

The best reason for supporting Obama over Hillary was that here was a guy who was capable of changing the way Americans thought about things. He's a guy who could really have been using the Presidential bully pulpit to do just that. Instead, as Ezra said last week, he's been playing an inside game for the past year. And now that that seems to be coming to an end, he's pushing the other side's frames? That's almost as bad as his absenting himself from the field as the Dems were falling apart last week.

Yes -- exactly so.

I think it's pretty clear that the SOTU is the opening shot in the 2010 mid-term elections.  I hate to think that, but that's the reality of the foolish world in which we live.  Accordingly, I would like to see Obama try to begin the conversation about what happened to the economy, why it happened, what he has tried to do about it, why his efforts to date have fallen short, what he intends to do about the failure, and why the Republicans have nothing to offer in terms of solving our current dilemma.  I think it needs to be a pretty partisan speech and one which lays the blame squarely on the greed and stupidity of the free marketeers run amok.  But he shouldn't just point fingers at Bush and the GOP.  He also needs to admit that his Administration failed to fully grasp the gravity of the crisis and that, as a result, not enough has been done to help the average person.  And then he should lay out some simple, concrete, and immediate steps that he will be asking the Congress to enact in order to get America working again. 

The model is Franklin Roosevelt's fire side chats -- educate the people, describe the problems and their causes, and identify the solutions.   He should ignore the audience in the Capitol and speak directly to the people at home and should do so by conveying in direct and empathetic tones that he understands the fear and frustration brought about by unemployment and our current economic insecurity.  I would not worry a whit about sounding bi-partisan or throwing a bone to the Republicans.  I would speak out against the filibuster.  I would not say a word about the election in Massachusetts. 

It actually strikes me as a pretty important moment for him and the country.  I hope it's a fighting speech and not a mewling, milquetoastian, monologue.  I'll be watching anxiously. 

Every Man a King - Or We Don't Need no Stinking Spending Freeze

"Every Man a King" - Huey Long and his All Women Band

Sometimes when people are triangulating you need a little dose of the Kingfish.  Speaking of which:

"Kingfish" - Levon Helm

A superb cover of a Randy Newman tune from the incomparable "Good Old Boys." 

I'm having my own little populist moment.  And no, teabaggers are not invited. 

The Populist Illusion

In this most disturbing of political seasons, perhaps the one I find most disheartening is the illusion among elements of the left -- the Jane Hamsher and Glen Greenwald wing again -- that there is common cause to be made with the tea partiers.  The idea is that we share a collective outrage against Wall Street and the banks and the Washington power elite -- that more unites us than divides us.  This is a sort of crude dimestore quasi-Marxism -- the kind of thing most of us shed by the end of senior year of college -- or maybe a year or two into grad school for the slow among us.

The tea partiers are not class conscious warriors against corporate greed.  They are simply the successors to a long line of resentful reactionaries.  It is not a coincidence that the tea party movement emerged only after Obama took office.  The tax cuts for the wealthy, the corporate give-aways, and the bailouts of banks by the Bush Administration generated not a whimper of protest from these same elements. 

Julian Sanchez in a recent post cogently described the teapartiers' political attitudes as "ressentiment."  I particularly liked this bit -- "conservatism is a political philosophy; the farce currently performing under that marquee is an inferiority complex in political philosophy drag."  And then this:

Think back to the 2004 RNC—which I happened to be up in New York  covering. After witnessing three days of inchoate, spittle-flecked rage from the people who had the run of all three branches of government, some wag (probably Jon Stewart) puzzled over the “anger of the enfranchised.” And it would be puzzling if the driving force here were a public policy agenda, rather than a set of cultural grievances. Jay Gatsby learned too late that wealth alone wouldn’t confer the status he had truly craved all along. What we saw in ‘04 was fury at the realization that ascendancy to political power had not (post-9/11 Lee Greenwood renaissance notwithstanding) brought parallel cultural power.  The secret shame of the conservative base is that they’ve internalized the enemy’s secular cosmopolitan value set and status hierarchy—hence this obsession with the idea that somewhere, someone who went to Harvard might be snickering at them.

There are many aspects to the anger of the teaparty right -- racism, nativism, greed, homophobia, a deep seated sense of inferiority, bitterness that the world and the culture are leaving them behind -- suffice it to say, however, that Obama's failure to support a robust public option specifically or to be more progressive generally is not among them. 

Anger is a symptom, not the disease.  I am angry about a lot of things -- rising unemployment, rising poverty, declining union membership, declining wages for workers, unnecessary wars, torture apologists -- it would be hard to give an exhaustive list -- but I assure you that my anger has nothing in common with the anger of the tea partiers, because anger is just the first part -- it's what you want done to solve the things that make you angry that define a political cause or world view.

We aren't going to find some magic convergence that will bring about a new populist majority.  These people are going to remain our political enemies.  The work of creating and maintaining a progressive majority is going to be difficult, maybe even impossible.  But if we are going to do it, we need to see the world clearly, not indulge in this kind of wishful thinking.  

 

In Praise of Ulysses Grant

The other day we had a discussion in the comments to my post about the significance (or lack thereof) of the Clinton presidency, about other two-term presidents who had not distinguished themselves.  There was some contention that Ulysses Grant belonged to the list of ineffectual or poor two-term presidents.  My gut reaction was that this was unfair (I am a big Grant fan), but my knowledge of his presidency is sketchier than I would like.  I know a great deal more about his generalship, which has tended to be underrated, largely I think because for some reason the southern version of the Civil War, inexplicably, tended to prevail during much of the Twentieth Century.

In highly timely fashion, Matt Yglesias linked today to a post from a few years ago by Nathan Newman, lawyer, labor advocate, frequent TPM contributor, and good guy.  Newman describes how Grant fought vigorously against Klan violence against Blacks in the post-Civil War South, until largely undermined by a reactionary Supreme Court.  Newman makes the case that Grant's reputations has largely been sullied by the racist-driven narrative that took hold in post-Reconstruction America.  He also notes that the post-Grant Republican Party makes the transition from fighting for racial justice to fighting labor on behalf of its corporate masters. 

Anyway, I think Grant is one of those figures who clearly merits a second look, one based on genuine scholarship and not the received wisdom of an earlier age.

America isn't Working

So I've been trying to keep my chin up and think about fighting the good fight, the way forward and all that and then made the mistake of reading the New York Times today, which made me feel like slicing a vein.  

First I read Bob Herbert, who continues to be the only major newspaper columnist who is really focused on what is happening in the economy writ large.    In a column entitled "They Still Don't Get It," Herbert continues to lament the failure of America's political leadership to grasp what is happening in the country.  Herbert cites some frightening statistics -- the addition of five million people to the ranks of the impoverished from 2000 to 2008, an increase of 15.4%, bringing the total number of Americans living in poverty to 40 million.  Even more frighteningly to me, there are now 91.6 million Americans living at or below 200% of the poverty line, which is a mere $21,834 rate for a family of four. In other words, thirty percent of our countrymen are living in highly marginal circumstances.  

And one of the reasons for these dire figures -- private sector union membership has now declined to 7.2% of the work force, down by 800,000 members since 2008.  There are now more union members in the public sector than the private sector.  Unionized workers make median weekly earnings of $908.00 versus $710 for workers who are not represented by unions, a nearly thirty percent difference.  This does not include the pension and medical benefits that almost all union members get, something that would likely increase that wage differential to at least fifty percent, which explains why employers routinely break the law in order to prevent their employees from unionizing.

Construction and manufacturing, two areas in which high school educated men have traditionally been able to earn middle class wages, have been crushed in the current recession.  They alone account for the loss of a staggering 2.2 million jobs.  Overall employment has declined by 7 million jobs since this debacle began. 

Unemployment in the "recession proof" District of Columbia hit 12.1% in December 2009, with the African-American community suffering rates of unemployment more than twice that. 

The casino economy ushered in by Reagan, tolerated, if not embraced, by Clinton, taken to ludicrous heights by Bush, has collapsed and left a crater in its wake.  The Obama people underestimated just how serious the damage was when they took over.  Now, a year into his presidency, it is time for a radical break from business as usual.  Obama needs to step up and show just how seriously he takes this problem.  Tell Evan Bayh and the other deficit "peacocks" to fuck themselves -- the only thing that matters now is getting Americans back to work.  

After that, we need to figure out whether we are going to continue to be a society in which the average person can have a decent economic life or whether such quaint notions have been consigned to the scrap heap by the invisible hand. 

.    

This and That

- In reading this post from Bruce Reed the other day offering advice to Obama and the Democrats, while trumpeting Bill Clinton's political adjustments after the 1994 election, this thought kept occurring to me -- has there ever been a less consequential two-term president in the history of the United States than Bill Clinton?  Seriously, what did he accomplish in his eight years?  A balanced budget.  That's something.  There was prosperity on his watch -- but how much of that was ephemeral and how much of it was Clinton's doing?  It seems to me that the neo-liberal policies that he embraced were not all that different from those of Reagan and Bush II -- oh they were the free market with a human face of sorts, but by and large he helped foster the bubble economy.

- In retrospect a good many of the mainstream media types have come to extol Clinton's virtues, although they weren't so keen on him when he was in office.  (Not presiding over two recessions, two stock market collapses, two disastrous wars, one major city drowning, and the near collapse of the world financial system can make you look good by comparison.)  This morning I heard some jackanapes on Morning Joe (ah, that could be any of them), talking about the virtues of things like the school uniform initiative and welfare reform, claiming that if Obama would just embrace some of these micro-initiatives it would add up to something big in the end.  This is nonsense -- Clinton made a virtue of necessity post-1994 and was quite good at getting himself reelected.  But that's about it.  The sum and substance of his accomplishments, particularly from a liberal perspective, are close to zero.  Obama seemed to have noticed this during the campaign and it clearly drove Bill batshit.

- On the other hand, just making a cursory listing of the disasters over which Bush 43 presided makes it clear that there is no way that this guy will be rehabilitated in our lifetimes. 

- Oh how little I knew the truth of this line -- on July 14th last year, I wrote these words about Ted Kennedy under the heading "Indispensable People:" "I am pretty convinced that the absence or incapacity of certain people at key moments can change history.  I worry that, with respect to health care reform, Ted Kennedy's illness could be one of those instances, which I find heartbreaking given his virtually lifelong devotion to the issue."    

- Happy 37th anniversary to Roe v. Wade.  May the Roberts Court be as protective of women's reproductive rights as they are of corporate speech.  (I had a hard time writing that last bit with a straight face.)  [The comments on this CNN article about the anniversary really capture the "reverence for life" that is, of course, at the heart of the anti-abortion movement --  I particularly like the one that says the "best known form of birth control is to keep your danged knees together."  Isn't that precious.]

   

On the Psychology of the two Parties

Watching the Democrats completely lose their shit over one special election loss is fascinating if one can get past the that horrible feeling of bile rising in one's throat.  Oh, and the despair -- that's a bit of a bummer too.

Anyway, this made me contemplate how the Republicans would react to a similar setback.  And the answer is that they would not have backed off an inch.  They would ratchet up whatever their issue de jour was and push it twice as hard.   

The Republicans now operate as if they are the natural governing party of the United States.  Electoral setbacks prompt neither reflection nor course correction.  The fact that they had their asses handed to them in both 2006 and 2008 only made them double down on their positions, to push further to the right, to make intransigence a religion.  In their eyes, the Democrats are forever illegitimate, even when they win -- they are never truly the majority party, even when they demonstrate overwhelming electoral superiority.  

Of course this has come at a price -- they do only have 41 seats in the Senate, are down by 79 House seats, and have lost the White House.  But despite these setbacks, they have basically stymied the Democrats over the last year.  They have shown what a disciplined minority party can do in the American system to prevent the majority from being able to govern.  And they are unapologetic, nay, gleeful about it.  

The Democrats seem to have bought into the Republican world view.  Even when possessing majorities of a size that the Republican Party hasn't seen since before the Great Depression, the Democrats still seem to buy into the narrative that suggests that they aren't quite legitimate, are not fully American.  And at the first hint of slippage in popular support they assume the worst and want to apologize and retreat.  They seem congenitally unable to play the kind of hardball that is a reflex for the Republicans. 

The differences are not simply true of the party's respective elected officials -- it is also true of their political bases.  The Republican base is rabidly loyal and will sing the praises of just about anything the party leaders do.  Although they have airbrushed Bush out of the current family photos, they stood by him with a slavish devotion throughout most of his disastrous reign, even when he brought electoral disaster upon them.  Much of the lefty base seemed ready to denounce Obama as traitorous at the first hint that he was not going to be able to deliver all that we had hoped. 

Part of me envies the Republicans -- their collective certainty, their hard-headedness, their fierce discipline, and sheer bloody-mindedness.  Now, of course, these are also the qualities of a borderline personality, of a bully who lacks any ability for empathy or introspection.  I don't want to emulate a party that is grounded in hatred, greed, and anti-empiricism.  But I do want my leaders and my ideological fellow travelers both to see the strength that can come of standing firm, or being loyal and steadfast, of not bending with each small storm.  

It's time for all of us to pull together and get shit done, to fight the good fight and to do so unapologetically.  Let's go toe to toe with these assholes and if we go down, go down swinging.  Our leaders owe this to us and we to them. 

Corporate Money is Just Like a Citizen's Speech

I've yet to digest the Supreme Court's decision of today, but it appears to make the remarkable case that a fictional entity that is solely a creature of law has "free speech" rights equal to those of natural born persons.  Once again, the judicial right shows itself to be unrepentant activists, contemptuous of both precedent and the actions of our elected representatives.

Anyway, the first thought that leapt to my mind was this quote from the 18th-Century British Jurist, Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who asked "[d]id you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned and no body to be kicked."  Well, according to the Supreme Court, a corporation may have neither soul nor body, but evidently possesses a mouth that cannot be shut.  

This strikes me as a decision that is monumental in its implications and staggering in terms of its fundamental badness.  

Nut Up or Shut Up!

I know, I know, let's not remain calm in a situation that calls for panic.  But now that Scott Brown's win has given the Republicans a 41-59 majority* in the world's greatest deliberative body (and by greatest I mean the shittiest conceivable group of enemies of the people assembled under one roof since Czarist Russia), some sort of plan is in order.  

Evan Bayh and Mary Landrieu have already proposed a predictable course of action -- capitulate and scramble to win favor with our corporate overlords. Sweet Jesus those two make me sick.  But even stalwarts like Barney Frank and Anthony Wiener seemed to be caught up in a frenzy of indiscipline and overreaction. 

So, as that pithy pamphleteer V. I. Lenin asked, what is to be done?  It seems to me that current conditions call for a rather different approach by both Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress.  Everything for the next nine months needs to be geared to the mid-terms -- lines need to be drawn, enemies made (willingly), and contrasts between the parties heightened.  Messages need to be simple and digestible and geared to a simple question -- which side are you on?  

Up to now, Obama has been focused largely on a conventional legislative agenda -- the uphill battle to push one bill after another through a maddening mine field of obstruction.  He has been cool, patient, and deferential to the legislative process.  That's got to end.  It's resulted in a year long battle for a health care reform bill that may yet die on the vine and tore apart the progressive community in the process.  It allowed the tepid and unprincipled -- Baucus, Grassley, Enzi, Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu, Lincoln, Snowe -- to hijack the process, delaying it for an endless period of time, while gradually sapping it of much of what would most appeal to the broader electorate.  Protracted battles that are filled with dithering, compromise without end, and the indulgence of the diva-like tendencies of various senators are not going to cut it.

I believe that the House must pass the Senate's version of health care reform however flawed it might be.  They should do so with the promise that the reconciliation process will be used in the Senate to try to improve the subsidies and to scrap the "Cadillac tax" for an alternative funding mechanism -- bank tax anybody?

And then what?  I would argue that some sort of quick jobs bill needs to be pushed and pushed hard, filibuster be damned.  I would like to see a substantial infusion of money to the states to preserve public jobs, some sort of acceleration of federal construction to create jobs in that troubled sector, a summer jobs program for young people, and subsidies for green energy.  The bigger the better I say.  Let the Republicans block it -- dare them to block it.  And call them on it over and over again.

Then it's enemies time and I nominate the banksters for that role.  I would push several measures aimed at the big banks -- 1) aggressive regulatory reform, including a separate consumer protection agency; 2) mortgage relief through the bankruptcy process; and 3) punitive, nay, confiscatory, taxes on obscene bonuses.  These measures have the virtue of being good policy while tapping into the deep anger towards the banks.  Best of all, the Republicans will oppose all of them -- no doubt they will filibuster them.  And this is good.  The bullshit populism of the GOP will be exposed in stark fashion.  And there's your election theme -- whose side are you on -- the people or the banks? 

Now pukes like Bayh and Landrieu won't like it, but I say fuck 'em.  It's time for the gloves to come off.

Lastly, I would bring back the name Bush and invoke it like a mantra.  Remind people time and time again what he and his party wrought.  Reagan never stopped doing this to Carter and it worked.  It should be done this time with the aim of bringing ever lasting discredit to the casino economy ushered in post-Reagan.

This is not Obama's natural turf.  But clearly, if he cares about his agenda, he must stem to the extent possible legislative losses.  It is time to remind the public of why we are in the mess we're in and that the Republicans will, when push comes to shove, side with forces of corporate malfeasance over the people whenever such a stark choice is laid before them.  I am confident that this is the right approach to changing the dynamic out there. Plus, it will be fun.

*All credit to the inestimable Roy Edroso  

The Insanity of American politics

Dear Lord in Heaven, watching the smoking crater of Massachusetts politics tonight makes me thankful, once more, that I don't live in a jurisdiction bound by US law.

In recent Canadian history, we've had governments hang on the importance of one MP.  Canada's had five straight years of minority parliaments, and during the last two Liberal governments there were at least two votes I can remember where the handful of independents (who'd kept their voting intentions a secret) held the fate of Parliament in their hands.  Governments have survived because single MPs crossed the floor.  So I can understand how the loss or gain or one seat can matter.

But this.  This is ridiculous.  The Democrats are going to go from having a crushing majority in the House and Senate to... having a crushing majority in the House and Senate.  Except that it won't matter, because American politics is so broken as to not be described by that noun anymore.  The Democratic Party, never the best organized institution in the country, is going to bolt to the right like a lopsided deer in hunting season.  The Republicans -- still a laughable minority in both houses of Congress -- will dominate the discourse even more than they already do.  And even if the President understood the anger that both his base and opposition feel at the way his first year has gone [1], he doesn't share it, and so can't really help address it.

[1]  We're all officially passed the "give him time" point, right?

Cruel Irony Abounds

I can't tell you just how sickening it is to me, a lifelong Kennedy fan, to watch the fate of health care reform and perhaps the entire progressive agenda go down the shit chute because his seat is being lost to a shallow right wing dirt-bag.  I am keeping my fingers crossed, but when Nate Silver says you're going to lose I tend to take that to the bank.  [It looks all over now with Brown holding a 90,000 vote lead.]

Coakley could not have run a worse campaign from what I can see.  She was lackadaisical, standoffish, bloodless.  I kept thinking of one of my favorite denunciations of Mike Dukakis as a "man who couldn't ad lib a fart after a baked bean dinner."  She butchered sports analogies about local teams -- yeah, that sounds silly, but in a sports mad area it makes you seem like a phony.  She went on vacation -- it was a two month campaign for fuck's sake.  She snorted at the notion of going out in the cold and shaking voter's hands outside of Fenway Park. 

There is no way to understate what a debacle this will be for liberals.  The thing that amazes me is that there are people on the left who somehow think this won't be a total disaster -- that it will in fact galvanize the Dems to be bolder.  (See this comment thread at Hullabaloo as an example of collective delusion.)

It won't.  The "centrists" are going to run for the fucking hills.  See e.g. Exhibits A and B and C.  Say goodbye to climate change legislation and immigration and labor law reform.  The House should pass the Senate version of health care and then tackle the subsidy issue through reconciliation.  Something needs to be salvaged from this clusterfuck.

I have never been so bummed out to be from Massachusetts, even when they elected Willard governor.

I blame everyone.  

What MLK, Jr. was Fighting for at the Time of his Death

And no, it wasn't every person's right to go Galt. 

One of the infuriating aspects of the King Holiday is the annual attempt by Republicans to try to lay some claim to his legacy.  It's as if they think none of us have ever paid attention to the things that have made the GOP what it is for these last forty plus years. 

This article in the American Prospect by Peter Dreier is a wonderful antidote to this kind of nonsense.  Dreier's piece focuses on the cause that drew King to Memphis at the time of his assassination and makes the always necessary case that King was a genuine man of the left.  I have tried to emphasize this each year, because it seems to me one vital aspect of the King legacy that is consistently (and deliberately) overlooked. 

I anxiously await the GOP platform devoted to the elimination of unemployment, the creation of a guaranteed minimum national income, and more low-income housing.

From Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Three dreams, in color

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

A right delayed is a right denied.

President Obama--are you listening?

Sunday by request: The Beatles, Rain; Filmed for the Ed Sullivan Show, 1966

I'm listening closely to Ringo's percussion work in this one, and Corvus is absolutely correct: what genius drumming.  Apparently, Rain is one of Ringo's favorites, too.

To get a little perspective as to the level of natural talent we're talking about here--because the bare-bones, low-tech nature of the equipment meant one had to be really, really good--keep in mind that this song was recorded, in mono, in 1966.  I was only five.  Hell, I remember dancing around the living room to The Beatles whenever they were on Top of the Pops (The Kinks and The Rolling Stones, too), with coffee-table edges looming closer to my head than my shins.  Whoa, I am old.

Old, but not entirely ossified in the skull or soul, and still able to be enlightened and even, sometimes, surprised.  Thank you, Corvus.

Satan writes to Pat Robertson

Satan apparently got wind of Pat Robertson's recent foul remarks about Haiti and was none too pleased. So he did what any good blogger/citizen journalist would do: he whipped up a terrifically scathing bit of snark. And then fired off his complaint to the letters section of a major newspaper, in this case the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating.

I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth -- glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake.

Haven't you seen "Crossroads"? Or "Damn Yankees"? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox -- that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it -- I'm just saying: Not how I roll.

You're doing great work, Pat, and I don't want to clip your wings -- just, come on, you're making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That's working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.

Best,
Satan

(With thanks to Ms. L. Coyle of Minneapolis, who somehow, er, intercepted the sulphurous transmission* and was kind enough to share it with the world.)

* Line-breaks and italics mine, as they did not appear online.

Dear Charlie Cook: 'Colossal' Dem Miscalculation, My @$$

Charlie Cook says the Dems "have made a colossal miscalculation" by spending so much time on health care and climate change, and not doing more for the economy.  Not only do I disagree, but I'm really just left shaking my head.

Here's Cook:

Honorable and intelligent people can disagree over the substance and details of what President Obama and congressional Democrats are trying to do on health care reform and climate change. But nearly a year after Obama's inauguration, judging by where the Democrats stand today, it's clear that they have made a colossal miscalculation.

The latest unemployment and housing numbers underscore the folly of their decision to pay so much attention to health care and climate change instead of focusing on the economy "like a laser beam," as President Clinton pledged to do during his 1992 campaign.

First thing is, what more could Obama have done about the economy if he'd focused on it like a laser?  Cook doesn't say, and that's a big omission: if there's nothing more that Obama could have done, no matter when he shifted focus, then it hardly matters that Obama's spent most of his time on other issues.  And since Cook's a pretty sharp guy, I'm sure he's not assuming that Obama can get stuff like this through Congress if he really tries to make it happen, because we know that's bullshit.

Last winter, the stimulus Obama got was pretty much all he would have been able to get.  And that would have been the case for some time afterwards.  Only when it became clear that, even with the stimulus, unemployment was going to be around 10%, did centrist Dems (who hold all the cards here) finally start evidencing any appetite for a jobs bill.  And that's just been in the past couple of months, max.

Now, Obama seems to be ready to pivot to doing something about jobs.  And while, yes, it's about freakin' time, it's not like he could have gotten anything at all through Congress even a few months ago.

So maybe he's lost a couple of months, but maybe the added urgency of the evidence piling up will enable him to get a bigger bill through Congress.  Hardly a colossal miscalculation.

Numero two-o (as Joe Bob Briggs used to say), Cook says, "if Obama and Hill Democrats had taken a more modest approach to health care reform, they could have pivoted back to jobs and the economy sooner."  Aside from the fact that an earlier pivot really wouldn't have accomplished much, it's hard to imagine a more modest approach to health care reform that would have worked.  As Ezra and others pointed out when Peggy Noonan said Obama should have just passed a ban on discriminating on the grounds of pre-existing conditions, it's all tied together.  No pre-existing conditions would mean we could all wait until we got sick to buy health insurance.  To keep that from happening, you need the individual mandate.  And the mandate makes the subsidies necessary.

There's other stuff in the bill, but that's the core of it.  So what's your 'more modest approach,' Charlie?  He doesn't say.

Third, Cook lists climate change among the timewasters.  Sorry, Charlie, but nothing's more urgent than dealing with climate change: let's pray that we're not already in 'too little, too late' territory on this issue.  If we endure a 'lost decade' but manage to keep global warming under 2°C. between now and 2050, I'll consider it a huge win for America and humanity in general.

Finally, there's the point that so many people have made lately: the point of a big majority like this is to use it, because it won't last forever.  We have to pass legislation now that we may not be able to pass at any other time.  While the economy will eventually get better even if we do nothing more for it now, we may or may not eventually pass universal health care, and 'eventually' would be sometime around 2025, if we're lucky.  And waiting until the next time the Dems have a 60-40 Senate majority to deal with climate change - if there IS a next time - is an invitation to let the world fry.

The 'colossal miscalculation' would be to put these things off.

Friday forecast: Dazed and Confused

I don't know about you, but when I think about what has already happened in the first two weeks of this strange, frustrating, and deeply unsettling year, my prevailing instinct is to want to pound on things. Hard. In this video of the Led Zeppelin classic Dazed and Confused (live in Denmark, 1969) the late John Bonham, one of the greatest drummers in the history of rock 'n roll, gives thrilling shape and sound to what's going through my mind.

Verbatim.

So, readers, what music says it all for you this weekend?

(H/T Tom Hagerty)