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Friday Night Music-Sympathy for the Rich

Friday, December 10, 2010

At the moment this is written, the House Democrats have done the unthinkable. They have stood by their guns and told Obama to stuff his deal, which fact, at first, I thought would render this video choice inapt. When I first chose it, I figured to say something to the effect that the rich folks on this side of the Atlantic don’t have to join the Kinks in lamenting their tax burden, as they had been, indeed, “saved from [the] squeeze”.

But now I can just turn that around. The upper 2% can join the Kinks in singing the blues, for the time being at least. Most likely, few will, as no one really believes they’ll be squeezed in the end.

Please pardon the video, in which there seems to be no effort to “suit the action to the word[s]”. It’s a great song nonetheless, and captures well the exquisite anguish experienced by our betters, as they contemplate the horrible prospect of paying something close to their fair share.


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Gentleman’s C

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Now that we are approaching the conclusion of what is perhaps the greatest political surrender in American history, it’s time to look back and ask ourselves. How did CTBlue do? Did his predictions here and here come to pass?

Well, as you can see above, I get a passing grade. I got a lot of the details wrong, as I thought Congress would lead the way to the surrender. In a way they (with Obama’s passive as always acquiescence) did, by putting the issue off, a strategic blunder so massive one stands in awe. I certainly did not anticipate the fact that Obama would embrace the issue as his own, and bravely lead the Democrats off a cliff.

So, how did I earn my C? Well, I got the denouement right. And I did anticipate Obama’s willingness to cave, though not his absolute eagerness to do so:

The only question that remains: Will Obama stick to his recently announced position (so far he is, but we’ve heard that before), or “compromise” by giving the Republicans everything they want?

Stay tuned, but I predict it won’t be pretty.

Well, though I framed it as a question, I think it’s pretty clear which way I thought Obama would go. So, my passing grade.

I was hoping to get an F on this one, but never had much hope.

The road ahead is far easier to predict. The Republicans have taken Obama’s measure, and despite the fact that they will be in legal control of only one House of Congress, they are now effectively in control. No one will ever believe he will stand firm on anything, as indeed, he never has and never will. Obama got one year of unemployment benefits ( a relatively small benefit to the economy that will be of little political benefit to him and his party) in exchange for two years of tax cuts, meaning he’s going to have to give away something else a year from now to get the benefits extended again, and will no doubt be forced to give way on taxes again in time for the 2012 election. We can expect him to continue to lash out at the people who voted for him and actually believed his message of hope, while giving the Republicans more love than any Stockholm syndrome sufferer ever gave to his tormentors. Bill Clinton had his defects, but he learned quickly how to manipulate the Republicans and make them look bad. Obama hasn’t learned that, and never will. It’s going to be a very difficult two years, and, regretfully I must say we can’t afford four more years of Obama’s incompetence. Looking back, it would have been better if John McCain had won. The economy would be a total disaster right now, no doubt, but the Democrats would have complete control of the Congress right now and would be positioned to take the White House in 2012 with, perhaps, a candidate ready to lead. There’s no reason to think Obama will change if re-elected, so even if he wins we will get four more years of Republican rule, regardless of who theoretically controls the Congress. That means, by the way, four more years of recession/depression because the Republicans will insist on policies designed to keep the economy depressed, which has benefitted them electorally, and Obama will be incapable of opposing them or even of articulating a counter-message the American people can understand and/or believe.

We are fucked.


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I’m confused.

Monday, December 6, 2010

According to the Huffington Post there’s no chance the Democrats will have the spine to let the Bush tax cuts expire. I don’t quarrel with that.

But this had me shaking my head:

A top Senate aide, meanwhile, predicted that there would be “lots of nay votes on a White House compromise,” though likely not enough to sustain a filibuster. A far more difficult calculus faces the party in the House, as The Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman reported. But even then, most observers expect leadership to let only enough disaffected members vote no so that it doesn’t endanger final passage.

Since when has a Democratic Congressman had to be allowed to vote against his or her party? Seems to me the Blue Dogs have made a habit of it, their reward being a party that fell on its collective sword in a (thankfully) mostly vain attempt to save their collective asses. Does Pelosi have some sort of hold over the votes of the progressives that she lacks over those of the DINOs that are constantly impeding real progressive legislation in the House?

The odd thing about this is that it assumes that the legislation will need any unwilling Democratic votes. Is this to be one of those “compromises” that the Democrats have to push through on their own? Shouldn’t there be enough Republican votes (all of them, I would say, or no deal) so that, along with the willing Democrats, the cave in will pass easily? I mean, you can always count on the Democrats to reinforce their spineless image. Since when have they needed to be pressured?

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Friday Night Music-REM

Friday, December 3, 2010

I have a sort of a rule that I don’t repeat an artist/group that I’ve already done, but I can’t be sure as far as REM goes, and when I search the site for the group’s name I get every post where the letters “rem” appear in sequence. So, I’m going to assume that this is their first appearance. Losing My Religion.


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Outrage fatigue

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Another post at Kos, as at so many of our left leaning blogs, documenting yet another “outrageous” act by a Republican, this time the fact that John Kyl is holding up the Start Treaty in order to get a tax cut for the rich.

I must confess that I am not outraged by this, nor am I outraged at any of the other outrageous acts in which Republicans have engaged lately. I will admit that the acts of the Republicans are objectively outrageous, but I no longer find them emotionally outrageous. At this point, it is just Republicans being Republicans. It is what they do. Worth noting and cataloging to be sure, but not worth an increase in one’s blood pressure. After all, so far as the Republicans are concerned, I can take comfort in the fact that I am in no way responsible for their push to establish a plutocracy. I didn’t vote for them, contribute money to them, or support them in any other way.

I’m afraid that at this point my emotional outrage is reserved solely for the Democrats, from Obama on down, for whom I do have some responsibility, although in my defense, I didn’t have a lot of choices. I know objectively that spineless retreat and ineffectual public communication is what the Democrats do (in the latter category, and somewhat mysteriously, only after they get elected, see e.g., Obama’s campaign in contrast to Obama’s presidency), but I confess that I can’t accept this with the equanimity with which I can accept Republican outrageousness. It is outrageous that the Republicans will hold the government hostage to get their tax cut; it is even more outrageous that the Democrats will cave. It is outrageous that the Republicans are out to destroy the middle class, it is even more outrageous that the Democrats will let them do it. It is outrageous that the Republicans manipulate the middle class, working class, and stupid class with misleading frames; it is even more outrageous that the Democrats make no attempt to counter those frames by effectively packaging the truth. It is outrageous that the Republicans accuse Obama of failing to reach across the aisle, it is even more outrageous when, in the teeth of 2 years of evidence to the contrary, Obama agrees with them.

In the single case of the tax cuts, it would have been easy- it would still be easy- to brand the Republicans as lackeys of the rich, the servants of the folks who are living off of our bailouts. I am 100% certain that if given the choice, most people would prefer no action on taxes over giving yet another tax cut to the rich. But that’s not going to happen. The best we can hope for is a “temporary” extension that will be made permanent later, either by another Democratic capitulation, or by the Republican president elected in 2012 due to the Democrats demonstrated weakness. Meanwhile, the Republicans will, out of feigned concern about the deficits they created with their tax cuts, demand cuts in programs that benefit the lower 98%, to which demands the Democrats will cravenly accede, since they won’t want the pundits and the Republicans to think they can’t make “tough choices”.

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Corporations doing good

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Sometimes corporations do good. It is almost always unintentionally, and always out of self interest, but nonetheless it can happen. We insignificant denizens of the internet have not been able to get the federal government to commit to net neutrality, despite the fervent promises of Democrats, at any rate, to promote the concept. Of course, we are used to Democrats running away from their promises even faster than they run away from their principles (amazing how fast you can run without a spine) even when their principles are in accord with what the majority favors.

But I wander.

It looks like we have a fighting chance to get net neutrality, because there are some corporations that want it as much, or more, than we do. Netflix, for example, has a vested interest in keeping the “series of tubes” unobstructed.

It is a sad fact of life that we stand the best chance of having something happen in the public interest that also happens to be in the interest of at least some powerful corporations. It remains to be seen whether Netflix, at the moment, is strong enough to defeat Comcast, but it’s just possible that this is one time when having a Democrat in the White House, and putative Democrats running a regulatory agency, might just make a difference.

At this stage in our history, the internet is a relative anomaly. It is actually a democratic, open institution. If we can preserve that it might make it slightly possible for we the people to counter, at least somewhat, the coming corporate domination of the political process.

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Restoring Sanity

Monday, November 29, 2010


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Mean spirited, bad policy and bad politics. What could go wrong?

Monday, November 29, 2010

Some time ago Tom Tomorrow released a cartoon in which he speculated that Bush and Cheney, et. al., were actually aging 60s radicals who had plotted for years to get elected as right wing Republicans and screw everthing up, guaranteeing that the Democrats could take over and fulfill their radical agenda. The only problem, in the cartoon, was that it turned out that Obama was leading a similar conspiracy from the right.

Sometimes, I wonder whether there wasn’t more than a grain of truth in that cartoon. Witness today’s announcement that Obama will unilaterally freeze the pay of 2,000,000 federal workers, thus giving the Republicans a) something they very much want anyway, and b) 2,000,000 votes (more if you count family and friends) they might otherwise never have gotten. All this in the name of making “tough choices” and taming the deficit, based on the fantasy that the economy has turned around and that it’s time to tackle the structural deficit instead of further stimulating the economy. It is, of course, irrelevant in this nation, at this time, given the level of our discourse, that the structural deficit is a function of health care costs, and that Obama’s tough choice will simply hurt two million people while doing precisely nothing to affect long term deficits and while it further decreases the demand that the economy needs to recover in real life as opposed to the Obama Administration’s fantasy world.

In return for throwing 2,000,000 people under the bus, Obama got what he always gets in negotiations with the Republicans: nothing. Only this time, he didn’t even try to get anything. He gave them this bone for free. They will now proceed to get him to make another “tough choice”: tax breaks for the rich in amounts that make the money saved by screwing federal workers look like peanuts.

If Obama and his crew are really plotting to hand the country over to Sarah Palin, then they’re brilliant. But if they’re not-if Tom Tomorrow was wrong- then we’re seeing political malpractice on an unprecedented scale.


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Friday Night Music-Johnny Rivers

Friday, November 26, 2010

Johnny Rivers made his name covering Chuck Berry songs, which he did skillfully enough. Sometime around 1965 he could be heard singing the theme song to a TV series imported from Britain, which was called Danger Man over there, but Secret Agent here. That series, starring Patrick McGoohan, was followed by the cult classic The Prisoner, in which the Secret Agent, still played by McGoohan, was confined in The Village, as a result of his decision to leave the world of Secret Agentry for reasons never explained, either to the proprietors of the Village (that is, in fact, their chief demand of the prisoner) or to the viewer. As the wikipedia entry on the song points out, “the lyric “They’ve given you a number and taken away your name” appears to anticipate The Prisoner“, since everyone in the Village is, indeed, assigned a number and relieved of their names, McGoohan becoming “Number Six”.

The song was written by Steve Barri and P. F. Sloan, the latter of whom wrote the seminal Eve of Destruction. At least as I remember it, it took a while for the song to be released as a single after the show began playing here in the U.S.

Rivers went on to record a song called Come Home, America in 1972, which was no more than a middling hit, but for which he should be forever honored, as it was inspired by George McGovern’s acceptance speech at that year’s Democratic National Convention.


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For this we can give thanks

Friday, November 26, 2010

It’s been dismal lately, but just before Thanksgiving we got a bit of news that gave us a little in the way of political good cheer. Tom Delay was convicted of money laundering by a Texas jury, in a case that seemed to defy the constitutional mandate for a speedy trial. Seems like he was indicted in the dim and distant past. In a way, he was, because the core of the case centered on a Texas law that forbade corporations from contributing directly to political campaigns. That particular prohibitions seems quaint, in light of the Supreme Court’s Citizen United opinion.

Still, for what it’s worth, the country may eventually be protected from Delay’s political machinations, not to mention that he will be unable to inflict his dancing on a helpless nation.

It’s not much, given the truly bad news this month has brought, but it’s something, and it came just in time. I wonder, by the way, if Fox News saw fit to mention it.

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