Wednesday Open Thread

 

"Johnny 99" - Bruce Springsteen (in beefcake mode)

Any thoughts on the State of the Union and its rebuttals? 

I note that the Washington Post was disappointed that Obama did not address the need for austerity down the road.  The people who write for the Post must wake up every day with a hard-on for cutting Social Security.  It is a truly perverse obsession, one which at some level speaks to the need among elements of the American elite [the real elite; not people who go to movies with subtitles and read novels that aren't part of the Left Behind series] to inflict pain on working and middle class Americans, as if the central problem in our country is that these people have it too good.  Putting morality aside, it's also stupid economics as Atrios reminded us yesterday with respect to England's current example. 

On the other hand, I find this article that Lisa pointed out by Robert Scherer to be pretty bad advice in terms of what the President should have said.  Attempts to relitigate the cause of the crisis at this juncture would have basically looked like Obama was looking to blame others for our current dilemma and although that may be fair, the electorate would view it as a failure of the person in charge to take responsibility.  Such a retrospective perspective would have also subject the President to virtually unlimited potshots by the media talking heads.  It would have been an enormous error and set precisely the wrong tone for the moment.  Scherer also takes out of context what Obama said about the economy -- it's pretty odious cherry picking I think -- as the piece quoted by Scherer leaves out the statement he then made about the fact that the stock market rebound and robust corporate profits are not a substitute for jobs.  Scherer also contends that the government wasted trillions in the bank bailout (which again, was undertaken under Bush), which is simply untrue.  Lastly, Scherer writes in a political vacuum, as if the 2010 election did not completely change the landscape that Obama is facing.       

I certainly agree that Wall Street is the villain in this piece, but I just don't see that that pretending that this is 2008 (or 1998 and the genie can be put back in the bottle) again is really a viable approach going forward. 

What say you?   

Comments

[Stephen]

It is a truly perverse obsession, one which at some level speaks to the need among elements of the American elite [the real elite; not people who go to movies with subtitles and read novels that aren't part of the Left Behind series] to inflict pain on working and middle class Americans, as if the central problem in our country is that these people have it too good.

This is where their delusions about being jes' folks come in. These elites really do think they're regular, hard-working, middle-class Americans. So what they're doing is showing their own willingness to personally take the hard road for the sake of their country which they love so gosh-darn much.

These people feast so much on their own bullshit it's a miracle that they don't all die from e coli poisoning. I really do think that they believe in the image they've created for themselves.

As for what Obama should have said, it's not appropriate for a family-friendly blog like this one.

[kathy a.]

the wapo editorial seems critical of hiring more teachers and construction workers! if one is worried about education and international competitiveness, about infrastructure, and about unemployment, those kinds of hires are essential. also, employed people spend more money, creating more employed people. duh.

i don't understand what these people are thinking when they talk about slashing social security. the payouts are not making anyone rich. what do they think will happen if that is an older or disabled or orphaned person's main income, and it is taken away? the average monthly benefit last month was just over $1,000. that income is close to poverty level; in more urban areas, it is an impossibly small amount to live on.

it wouldn't bother me in the least if people who do not need SS benefits were persuaded to donate them back to the fund, as one of my college professors did. but it is stupid and mean to abandon people who need that income. at best, it shifts burdens to their younger family members, who may already have enough on the plate. i don't want to contemplate the worst case.

[Toast]

the need among elements of the American elite to inflict pain on working and middle class Americans

It brings me back to that report I saw a few years back - I think on Drum's or Benen's blog - showing how at every income level people do better under Democratic administrations than Republican ones; the difference being that under the governance of the latter the poor and middle class do a lot worse. If this is generally known among policy makers - and I'm hard-pressed to see why it wouldn't be - then how does one not conclude that the economic elite really do seek to enhance their relative wealth by suppressing the wealth of the masses? Yet when I pitch that notion, even stalwart liberals dismiss it as too cynical to have any merit.

[low-tech cyclist]

I'm surprised the WaPo editorial board hasn't already proposed "let them eat cake" as a serious solution to the problems of the American working class.

They are every bit as pampered, ignorant, and out of touch as any of the landed gentry or hangers-on at the court of Louis XVI.

[low-tech cyclist]

Toast - I struggled for awhile to reach some other conclusion, but I find it's inescapable. Our economic elites unquestionably want control more than they want increased wealth in an economy where affluence - and as a consequence, power - are more widely shared.

[Davis X. Machina]

but it is stupid and mean to abandon people who need that income. at best,

The only problem is that 'stupid and mean' is enough of a foundation to base a political party on, and one that will win elections as often as not.

[Stephen]

Yet when I pitch that notion, even stalwart liberals dismiss it as too cynical to have any merit.

Well, if you're saying that these people sit around and literally think, "I'm willing to lose money if it means that other people I don't know - but whom I don't like - will lose even more," then, yes, that's too cynical. But that's not what you're saying.

What's really going on is that these people are convinced that they're nothing more than good, hard-working folks who earned everything they have with the sweat of their brow coupled with living a moral lifestyle. Poor people are lazy and/or people who do immoral things, which makes their economic situation entirely their own fault. They don't deserve to get any assistance. And that's as far as the thinking goes. Since punishing the lazy and immoral is right and good and the proper function of government, it's impossible that such governance could be detrimental to the nation. And since these people have never benefited from any assistance in any way, what the government does or does not do for other people could not possibly affect their economic well-being.

[low-tech cyclist]

Stephen, I think your characterization is more reflective of the Tea Party types than of the economic elites manipulating them.

It's inconceivable to me that corporate chieftains aren't aware that they do better when Dems are in power than when the GOP is running things: not only is it a fairly well-known fact in general among educated people, but fercryinoutloud, these people know what their bottom lines look like.

But power and control are valued in their own right. And wanting more power instead of more money is hardly irrational.

[Sir Charles]

I agree with both of you, but would also add in the weird, puritanical, pain is good for you mindset -- that there is some virtue in people being deprived.

Other people of course.

[minstrel hussain boy]

one of the things that has baffled me throughout my musical career is when i run across folks who have achieved riches and acclaim in our business that don't even notice how much dumb fucking luck that took.

i can tell you about many, many times when i've finished playing a stadium gig for pantsloads (more than shitloads, but less than stupid money) of money and heard someone in a dingy little club somewhere playing better than i just did for a lot less. it's gotten so that this is something i've come to expect. part of it is that the local crews will always tell us about folks who are someplace playing their asses off, but a lot of it boils down simply to i got lucky and they didn't.

there are a lot of abitrary cuts that take place as you move through the various levels of the business. i've seen folks who killed in a little club full of their friends face a stage in front of a big ass crowd and totally freeze, or change their playing so that they are trying to not fuck up rather than play great.

what the people who have decided that they are deserving of all that shit miss the point is that it takes a big time measure of luck in this business at every step of the way. you have to be lucky to find those critical folks right at the start who give you a nudge in the right direction. it can be something as simple as giving you a chord manual and a dog eared fake book, or it can be as personal as showing somebody how to hold a pick, how to handle an electric guitar that is turned all the way up and control that fucker. without that kind of help, especially at the beginning, a new player is going to go nowhere. they'll sound like shit for a while, and then get tired of sounding like shit and quit.

once you get to sounding good, then you need luck to find a place that will let you play. i'm not even talking about getting paid to play, i'm talking about somewhere you can go up in front of people and suck. getting up there and sucking is the only way you can learn how to get up there and not suck. it takes luck just to get to the point where you are sucking in public.

it takes luck to pass that point too. every step of the way, this business takes luck. no matter how long you stay in it, the need for a lucky streak never diminishes. it takes a large measure of luck to land steady gigs at holiday lounges, it takes luck to land cruise ship gigs, it takes luck to find and agent, and then it takes luck for that agent to not turn out to be a crooked motherfucker.

realizing that luck is one of the reasons i have always tried to leave folks i encounter in the business walking away thinking that they were really lucky to get me.

i have never thought that the measure of success i attained is any kind of just due or reward. it certainly isn't a case of me getting what i deserved. prisons and homeless encampments are full of folks getting what i deserved.

i've been lucky. i got nothing coming. i got mercy and not justice.

whoopee!

[Sir Charles]

mhb,

People have a very hard time acknowledging the role that luck plays in their success. I'm not sure why that is --that they think it devalues their work or that it's just scary to contemplate -- but it happens all the time.

[kathy a.]

MHB nails it: people conflate the power of luck with their own hard work and/or brilliance. or as molly used to say, quoting hightower [i think], "he was born on 3rd and thought he hit a home run."

somehow, when luck and the circumstances of actual life turn against someone, that is all their own fault.

i am lucky, lucky, lucky, too. i'll never be rich, but i've had so many fortunate chances to do OK by my family, to do good work in some larger senses.

[Toast]

MHB: I wrote a post back in 2005 musing on the role that luck and contingency play in our lives and how the correct apprehension of that role leads, I think inexorably, to a preference for liberal economic policies, chief among those a strong social safety net. I count that realization as one of the "Ah-HA!" moments that shaped who I am. It's something I came to through personal experience, through fucking up.

I think that the great mass of self-described "Tea Party" conservatives -- not the poor backwards-ass fucks that the right manipulates, but the successful, educated, "true believer" types -- are straight, white, middle-class males who went from a comfortable upbringing to a nice college and then straight into a stable career without stumbling or taking the necessary detours that might have tipped them off to the nature of things.

They could all stand to stop and ponder for moment an old saying I remember from my Catholic upbringing:

"There but for the Grace of God go I."

I say "luck" now rather than grace, and I no longer believe in the Big Guy, but there's a shitload of wisdom in that expression nonetheless.

[oddjob]

Tracey Chapman used to be a street musician, playing in the Boston subways for the spare change of passersby.

[minstrel hussain boy]

one of things that used to really piss me off in early recovery (i was a touchy motherfucker too, everything sucked and everything hurt) was when sanctimonious buttmunchers would say stupid shit like:

"you survived all of that and got to this place because gawd has a plan and purpose for you."

my response was;

"ok, but what if god's plan is to keep fucking with me?"

tracy is a perfect example, one of many. thing is, tracy knows and sees clearly how lucky she was to be noticed.

i also like to cite the jefferson corollary to luck:

the harder i work, the luckier i am.

[big bad wolf]

way OT, but interesting. nabakov and butterflies: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/science/01butterfly.html?hpw

[oddjob]

Thanks for that, bbw. When I was in grad school (entomology) I remember reading somewhere that Nabokov was regarded with skepticism, and that while he was good at collecting and naming new species he had some rather weird ideas about evolution.

I guess the ideas weren't so weird after all.

[oddjob]

the harder i work, the luckier i am.

Always.

[oddjob]

You can't strike while the iron's hot if you've never learned how to strike.

[Sir Charles]

We are having a bit of a snowpocalypse here right now. And it's snow accompanied by thunder and lightning, which is always kind of cool.

Heavy rush hour snow turning things into a clusterfuck with horns blaring and sirens wailing.

Very glad to only have a mile drive ahead of me.

[Mandos]

What are you doing driving a mile, mister! That's a walking distance. Why, in my day...

[Sir Charles]

Mandos,

I admit, it's shameful. Particularly because I often drive to the gym nearby on my way to work rather than wallking. I find the car useful for what seem to be the constant errands I face -- food shopping, dry cleaning, etc. Plus virtually all of my clients are outside of DC now, so I need a car pretty regularly.

The drive was quite nightmarish -- rear wheel drive is not a great thing in the snow -- 30 minutes to go a mile.

[Mandos]

One day we shall live in a world where no clothes need to be dry cleaned... Well, I do, at least.

People drive RWD cars? What is this, the 70s? Next you'll be telling me it's manual transmission. Tee hee.

I see people attempting to move their cars by spinning their wheels, and I get a little frisson of that superior Canuck feeling. On the other hand PEPCO is harshing my mellow, as it is Max Sawicky's...(remember him?)

[Sir Charles]

Mandos,

My dry cleaner worships me -- well, really my wife, but I do the toting and paying.

I am emberrassed to say I didn't realize I had a RWD vehicle. I don't really fret a huge amount about cars. As an old Massachusetts resident I pride myself on being able to drive in snow, but I was really struggling tonight.

The electricity went off in my cffice for about a minute today, much to my horror. I have ominous deadlines on Monday and cannot afford a lost day right now. (I did myself proud by exclaiming "Fuck Me!" while I was on my cell phone with a client when it happened.)

Wow, I had totally forgotten about Max Speak! I loved that guy.

[Mandos]

I rediscovered him on Twitter, where he gets away, apparently, with saying things he wouldn't in his current job if he had a blog. He just tweeted about the merits of cannibalism, so he hasn't changed *that* much.

[Mandos]

But don't try to look him up now... Twitter just failwhaled. I thought they were in California!

[oddjob]

Cool news video from Australia.

[unique baby gifts]

I was very pleased to find this site.I wanted to thank you for this great read!! I definitely enjoying every little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you post.

[Lisa Simeone]

It's a fucking tundra out there. I HATE WINTER!!!!

[litbrit]

Hello everyone. Yes, i am still alive, just cold, damp, and achy from all the nasty weather followed by not sleeping very well for, oh, years.

I feel for Lisa and Sir C, having seen the pics of their cities on the news. Heaven help us if we get snow in FL--I don't believe there is a single snowplow in the state. And it's not as though we can borrow Georgia's: if they've got them, they'll be needing them more than we will.

Roll on spring! All three days of it. Then, sauna time. *sigh*

[kathy a.]

sounds like a lotta winter out there. we had so much rain this winter. the last couple of weeks have been perfect, though -- mid 60's + sunshine. sending some to those in need.

[oddjob]

The snow plows are busy removing the latest foot of snow that came down last night.

New York City's snow storms have set records this year.