"Sweet Tooth" - Kids on a Crime Spree
I love this Buddy Holly meets the Jesus and Mary Chain sound. And clocking in at a very concise 2:13.
I saw "Margin Call" yesterday and would definitely recommend it. It is a very micro look at the financial crisis, not an attempt to draw bigger conclusions, but works well as a story. Very well acted too.
- Speaking of which, I liked this piece on OWS in TNR by William Galston on OWS as an act of revolt against the irresponsibility of America's business and political elite. Although this sounds bad coming from someone on the left, I think that a great deal of the success that the United States has enjoyed has been attributable to often having better elites than most societies -- elites that tended to have some sense of broader social responsibility. I think OWS rightly taps into anger that our current problems were caused by an incredibly irresponsible financial elite, aided and abetted by a political class that has grown addicted to the campaign money that they produce.
- I find this kind of treatment of OWS -- also in that schizophrenic rag, the New Republic -- that it's a big hippie fest that is going to alienate real American to be a tiresome replay of the battles of the Sixties, with no sense that the culture has changed markedly from where it was forty or so years ago. One of my law partners was up there the other day and ran into members of two of the city's building trades unions, both of whom were prominent participants in the "Hardhat Riot" of 1970, in which unionized construction workers (to what should have been their great shame) attacked students protesting the Vietnam War. This time around, the construction workers (who, by the way, are far more likely to sport long hair. tattoos and earrings these days than the average college student) are with the hippies. This is not to say that the rifts of the Sixties are fully buried -- but times do change and so do institutional and cultural responses.
- It was interesting today to hear a story on N(ever) P(issoff) R(epublicans) about Obama's swing through Nevada to promote another attempt at mortgage relief and the question of what the GOP response would be. The story hinted at, but naturally never quite explicitly said, that the Republican plan is the one articulated by smug, entitled prick Mitt Romney -- let the foreclosures proceed and the miracle of the markets will do this work. Once again, the defeat of bankruptcy cram down by the Conservadems in the Senate continues to hurt the economy and the President's prospects for re-election. Again, though, Obama appears to be fortunate in his enemies.
- Which also leads me to wonder why his opponents think there is any mileage to be gained from attacking the President for removing all troops from Iraq by the end of the year. The Republicans already have the votes of Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer -- who the fuck else thinks keeping troops in Iraq is a good idea?
- I am not even going to bother to link to it, because he pisses me off so much -- I'll link to the great Mr. Pierce instead -- but David Brooks had a column about Americans returning to a "moral" approach to economics, i.e. people are not using their credit cards so much. He does not seem to realize this is a bad sign -- that it indicates consumers who are tapped out and fearful. But it was an interesting insight into the way that the well to do journalistic community in DC thinks about these matters. Moral rectitude is achieved through pain -- pain of course suffered by others. I'd like to see David Brooks go without a paycheck for a year and see how virtuous he feels at the end of it. (It was also rich coming from a writer who once celebrated consumption as a kind of artistic commentary on life in the U.S.)
What's happening with you on this fine Monday?