Cogitamus

When Assholes Pray for Guidance

I refuse to link to the asshole who, from his dinky little fringe ass "Church of You're Evil and God Hates You For It" in Eastfuckyercuzzin, Florida. He's already gotten far too much press and attention.

After General Petreus voiced his concerns that the action of this Christiopathic jerk (wow, i'm proud of myself, i haven't called him a cocksucker yet) would inflame anti-American sentiments and give aid and comfort to our enemies and place the lives of Americans in greater danger, this idiot, this self-righteous piece of shit, said that he would "pray for guidance."

Unfortunately my experience is that when assholes pray for guidance they usually report that God wants them to keep right on being assholes.

My own plan for the day involves hanging out with my little town's Interfaith council where we will attend the Ramadan services at the local mosque, followed by a delightful feast as our muslim friends, neighbors, and fellow Americans break their Ramadan fast for the day. I also plan to give away a few copies of the Koran. Not because I believe that Islam is the revealed truth of anything, but, because they are my friends, neighbors, and fellow Americans who are not to be tolerated, but to enjoy the same liberty of conscience and worship that is supposed to be the right of all.

The rights of free speech allow the Florida dickfaced moron the liberty to say and do what the fuck he pleases. I will exercise my same rights by ridiculing, deriding, and saying that deluded jerkwagons like him give me a goddamned rash right on my half-breed ass.

Dawn Comes Soon Enough for the Working Class

"The Have Nots" - X

I was going to try and crank out something original for Labor Day, but actually came across three excellent pieces while perusing the newspapers today -- what a rare event -- so I think I am going to draft off of Harold Meyerson and E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post and Cornell Professor Jefferson Cowie in the New York Times.  The always excellent Meyerson -- his survival at the Post is a small miracle -- laments the continued erosion of organized labor in the American private sector, a decline that threatens to become terminal at some point, and notes that it has resulted in the American workers bearing the disproportionate brunt of the current recession.  He contrasts this to Europe, where the impact of the recession has been considerably ameliorated for workers as a result of their political and organizational clout. 

Dionne follows in a similar vein, emphasizing the cultural loss that goes with the withering away of unions:

Even worse than the falling membership numbers is the extent to which the ethos animating organized labor is increasingly foreign to American culture. The union movement has always been attached to a set of values -- solidarity being the most important, the sense that each should look out for the interests of all. This promoted other commitments: to mutual assistance, to a rough-and-ready sense of equality, to a disdain for elitism, to a belief that democracy and individual rights did not stop at the plant gate or the office reception room.

(He also points out the crucial role of the United Auto Workers in the civil rights struggle, a refreshing and timely reminder at a time when some in Democratic circles think that it is okay to say fuck the UAW.)

Lastly, Professor Cowie talks about a time, not so long ago, when workers struck and struck often, not just for money, but for their own dignity in the work place.  In the words of the old IWW slogan, the quest for not just bread, but roses too.  Alas, 1970 seems like a million years ago in that regard -- can you imagine well paid industrial workers downing tools now because their work place was dehumanizing or because management showed them a lack of respect?  Hell, let's just cut the question short -- can you imagine well paid industrial workers? 

Ultimately, what Messrs. Meyerson, Dionne, and Cowie all get at in slightly different ways is that the demise of organized labor is the demise of both countervailing power and counter-cultural narratives that were crucial in creating the broadly prosperous, more egalitarian (on a class basis) America of the period 1945-1980. 

Something that they don't point out is that a white working class America that is completely unmoored from the organizing and educational guidance of unions is one that is increasingly reactionary in its politics, laden with racist and nativists resentments, and suffering from a total absence of mediating institutions that can explain powerlessness and an eroding standard of living in an accurate and meaningful way.  In such an environment, members of the working class begin to eerily resemble the character "Blake" in Jonathan Franzen's novel "Freedom" who sports a bumper sticker on his Ford F250 that reads "I'm White and I Vote."  In an America without unions, tribalism will trump solidarity every time -- and we will all suffer for it.     

Happy Labor Day

"Salt of the Earth" - Bettye LaVette

A pretty stunning cover of a rare, underappreciated Rolling Stones' song.

Hope all is well with you.  Still recovering from too much work, which has rendered me somewhat depleted in terms of desire to write.  That and a certain despair about the current political moment.  But on the plus side, it is stunningly beautiful here.  The windows are open for the first time since the last week of June, there is actually a bit of a chill in the air, and the last two days have been crystaline.  I managed to get back to the gym yesterday for the first time in about three weeks and to play a couple of hours of tennis and live to tell the tale.

Amusing anecdote of the week:  I arrived early at the courts at the hoity toity St. Alban's school and began hitting serves by myself (I am not a member but one of my playing partners belongs) when the young tennis pro there walked by and said "sir, we have a whites only policy."  I laughed and said, "well, it's always seemed that way to me, but I don't think I'd say it so openly."  He looked puzzled -- it occurred to me that he was not from the U.S. -- and said, "the dress code sir, you need to wear whites."  I, of course, had my black shorts, black sneakers, and gray sleeveless shirt ensemble on, suitable for all occasions.  I assured him that I would look completely virginal the next time I took to the courts.

I suppose it would be appropriate to discuss the state of the labor movement on Labor Day, but frankly I'd rather focus on the beautiful weather and the prospects of playing tennis again on Monday.  Suffice it to say that things suck and I really don't know what the future holds, but nothing good seems to be on the horizon. 

But still, we fight on, we must fight on. 

Enjoy your day off and remember those who made it possible.  And drink a toast to the salt of the earth.  And consider this an open thread.    

I Hate Rahm Emanuel

I swear on everything that is holy, everything that is unholy and everything that is holey that if I ever come face-to-face with fuckstick extraordinaire Rahm Emanuel, I will tell him to go fuck himself with a fucking rusty metal pole.

"Fuck the UAW?"  Really?  Fuck you, Rahm.  The question is not how many votes Democrats are going to lose because of this clown's bad advice and pathological need to insult his most important constituencies, it's how many goddamn SEATS he's going to cost us.

Presidential Bons Mots

Why Mandating Paid Vacations and Sick Days Won't Hurt Workers' Pay

 

I've been a big advocate of mandating paid vacation and sick days for a long time now.  The reasons are obvious: people need time off, sometimes because we get sick, and sometimes just because we need a respite from the wear and tear of working.  This is especially true for the low-wage workers that are least likely to have any paid vacation time or sick days.

I'd bet that a law mandating two weeks' paid vacation, and five sick days per year, would be overwhelmingly supported by actual living, breathing human beings, though it would surely be massively opposed by the corporate world.  Still, that's the sort of battle line that we'd like to draw, isn't it?

Not that I think that would be the ideal amount of paid leave, just that job one would be to get any minimal amount of paid leave enshrined in the law.

But this issue was brought to mind by a back-and-forth on this issue between Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and others over the past day or so.  Matt says:

A paid vacation is a kind of accounting fiction — you continue to draw a paycheck (and health care benefits, etc.) even while you’re on vacation. But nobody’s going to pay you to go on vacation. You’re paid for the work that you actually do. The money you get on your vacation days is part of your payment for the work you do on the other days. Over the long run, if the government mandates a certain number of paid vacation days, then positions that currently offer fewer vacation days then that will become less lucrative.

And:

over the long run the total share of GDP going to labor force compensation is roughly constant at around 56 percent of GDP...If you make employers give people more time off, that will be made-up somewhere else in the system. Simply mandating a certain mix of vacation time (or any other kind of benefit) doesn’t change bargaining power available to low-productivity workers.

That last sentence is just plain wrong.  Mandating benefits to the lowest-paid workers the only way to increase their bargaining power, since they have essentially none of their own.  And it's pretty damned effective, too.  When we increased the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour, how many workers earning less than $7 per hour had any meaningful paid benefits?  Very few, I'd bet.  What countervailing cost did they incur when their wages increased?  None. 

Matt is right that the costs of mandated vacation and sick leave will be made up somewhere else in the system.  The question is, where?  In the case of the minimum wage hike, it's hard to say, but it surely came from people who can better afford it, whether it came out of corporate dividends, or out of the benefit packages of higher-paid workers, or wherever.  The same would surely be true of mandated vacation and sick days - and it would be more easily absorbed than the minimum wage hike.

After all, the jump from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour is a 41% increase in wages and FICA payments for those at the bottom rung of our economy.  Ten days of paid vacation and five paid sick days would effectively increase the pay of those who had neither by a multiple of 52/49 - the weeks they'd be paid for, divided by those they'd actually work.  52/49 = 1.061, a 6.1% increase in compensation.

That's pretty modest, but it would make a real difference in the lives of those that have few or no paid days off.  And it would probably have a bit of a ripple effect: two weeks' vacation is no longer a selling point to a potential employee when the law requires that you offer at least that much.  There's also the matter of status: people who aren't as easily replaceable as the folks stocking shelves at WallyWorld will expect a better benefits package than those folks, including the amount of paid time off.

Matt's right that paid vacation is a bit of an accounting fiction, but sometimes those fictions have real-world implications.  Most people aren't in a position to individually negotiate a tradeoff between vacation and base pay; they've got to take what their employer is offering everyone else with a similar job type.  There's really no way to get people some more vacation (or, for those at the bottom, any vacation at all) without either mandating it by law, or having unions that can negotiate it (a rarity these days, unfortunately), or having the market mandate it (even rarer, in the absence of the first two).

Finally, I'd bet my bottom dollar that Matt's wrong about his boldfaced sentence that "Over the long run, if the government mandates a certain number of paid vacation days, then positions that currently offer fewer vacation days then that will become less lucrative."  First of all, there just isn't that much room for most of them to become less lucrative.  Second, unlike pay hikes, a paid leave requirement has the side effect of reducing the annual productivity of each worker by the amount of leave taken.

Now, we normally regard a drop in productivity as a bad thing, but think it through: if the demand for a company's products remains unchanged, but its workforce just became 6% less productive because they now had 15 days of leave each year, what are they going to do about it?  If they're profitable, or expect to be in the near future, they're going to hire more workers so that they can meet the demand, and sell as much of their product as they possibly can.

And (Econ 101 time!) if the demand for X increases, what happens to the price of X?  Right, it goes up.  And that's true even if X is the workers of a certain class.  It may go up only infinitesimally, if the supply of those workers is very large, but it damned sure won't go down.

So mandating a modest amount of paid vacation and sick days won't cause the wages of our lowest-paid workers to decrease over time.  Quite the opposite, actually.

Quick Hits On Religion

• Stephen Hawking says that God did not create the universe.  Apparently this is a bit of a change from his previous statements about religion.  Fair enough, I suppose.  What gets me, though, is that according to the article, this change is a result of the discovery of exoplanets:

In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.

"That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions -- the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.

That seems a poor reason to abandon the possibility of a God.  Prior to 1992, did he really think that our solar system was unique in the vastness of the universe?  And did this uniqueness, especially as applied to the Earth, really inspire him to consider the possbility of a God?  Even the most anti-science Evangelical zealot doesn't base his or her belief in God on the idea that the Earth is totally unique and alone in the universe.  It just doesn't come up.

It seems to me that whether one believes in a creator-god or not, the likelihood that we are the only sentient life in the universe is exceedingly small.

• When Glenn Beck talks about religion, it doesn't make me angry, it makes me feel naseated.  Nothing shows the complete intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the conservative movement, however, than the willingness of any person of any faith to be associated with such an obvious charlatan.  In everything he does, Beck is a parody of himself.  Beck once spent days on his radio show going through an elaborate hoax in which he claimed he would send a live gerbil through a bank's drive-thru tube, and nothing about him, from his creepy mugging for the camera, to his Vick's-induced tears, to his remarkable commitment to lying about every single thing he discusses, has changed from his puerile morning-show days.  He wants to marry the Religious Right to the Teabaggers, not because he necessarily believes in his own BS, but because he wants to expand his market presence.  Beck and Palin are very similar.  Both of them are doing whatever it takes to cash in while they can with no long-term strategy in place.

• It's been out a while, but Andrew Walsh wrote an excellent article for Religion in the News about the continuing sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church.  Walsh works hard to be even-handed in his account, but the current Pope doesn't end up looking very good.  It's clear that his priority - like those of most of the RCC's bishops and priests - is a wrongheaded desire to protect the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church, no matter what innocent victims have suffered

Thursday Morning Open Thread

"Don't Ask Me Questions" - Graham Parker and the Rumour

Incendiary song seems to fit my mood.-- the Rumour were a really fabulous band.  On this song usual rhythm guitarist Martin Belmont fires off great jagged leads, while usual lead guitarist Brinsley Schwarz handles the reggae style rhythm.  The song opens with one of those great Parkeresque lines:

"Crimson autograph is what we leave behind, everywhere that man sets foot."

Heading to NYC today to look at a couple of schools with the young master.  It's my first non-working day in seventeen days and I believe the first vacation day (of sorts) of the summer.  I am totally ready.  Amtrak is doing the driving and I've got the latest Jonathan Franzen novel, "Freedom" to keep me company. 

Have a great day.  I'm not on the Accela (on my own dime) and I'm not sure if they have access to the internets.        

Blog note

 

Good evening, everyone.  Yeah, it is I, litbrit--your long-lost contributing author--remember me?!

I'll be back soon with something witty or wicked or pissed-off-ish to say, but until then, I thought I'd better deal with our current spam problem by temporarily installing a word-verification function in the comments section.  I apologize for the inconvenience, and I hope it will only be necessary for a few days--long enough to train whichever spambot that's doing this to go elsewhere.

Thanks for your patience.

Glenn Beck May Not Drink or Drug Anymore

But, he's far from being anywhere close to recovery. It happens to a lot of folks. There's this temptation, which is always a pitfall for an addict to go "Cool! Jesus washed my ass whiter than snow, I don't drink/drug/smoke/shoot/stick up my ass that shit anymore."

There are a lot of religion based programs that cater to helping people get off drugs. I haven't met many folks who have any kind of long term recovery from them. My own personal observation is that they take the first three steps, which in many ways are the most important steps, for the person trying to recover which robs that person of the spiritual journey that is essential to long term recovery. My own journey did not lead me to any god or any religion. Thing is though, I made that journey.

When you take somebody like Glenn Beck who, while they are doing what ever they do, is a lying, cheating, sniveling, whining drunken cocksucker and take away the dope to be replaced with Jesus all you will ever end up with is a lying, cheating, sniveling, whining, sober and sanctimonious cocksucker.

Kathleen Parker in today's Washington Post, gets it wrong as usual. What Glenn Beck does isn't anything close to what happens in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've been going for close to twenty years, and I admit that I've seen lots of folks like Glenn. I've also seen them not last very long.

One of the things that I've really come to admire about AA is that it is one of the purest forms of democracy out there. Meetings are autonomous, as are the people who attend them. Lines can be drawn and those who stray to the point of affecting AA as a whole are put in check, but, affecting AA as a whole is almost impossible to do. A very cool thing that one of the co-founders, Bill Wilson, said about AA is "AA works best when it is simultaniously a responsive democracy and a benign anarchy."

I didn't come to recovery because of law enforcement, and I had my run ins with them. I didn't come to recovery because of family intervention (they tried twice and failed miserably both times). I quit because it was time for me to stop. The last time I got sober, it was simply time, I was done.

Sometimes in a meeting I will say "I can tell my entire story in less than thirty seconds. (at this point incredulous looks appear)
I did way too much dope for way too many years and my life sucked.
So, I quit doing dope, but my life still sucked.
So I started doing dope again and my life sucked worse.
So I quit doing dope, started to go to meetings, got a sponsor, took some steps, and after twenty years,
My. Life. Doesn't. Suck."

Folks like Glenn Beck take the easy way out. While my life in recovery has been rewarding and one of the very best things I've done, it ain't been easy. I'm glad that Glenn isn't getting stoned anymore. Truly. I wouldn't wish a life of active addiction on anyone. I can testify though, easy don't cut it Glenn. You need to get to work.

The Can't Do People

If I had to define one of the three of four most salient qualities of the American national character or ethos, it is that historically we have been people who built big things and did so despite enormous logistical and technical difficulties.  From the transcontinental railroad to the Panama Canal to the Hoover Dam, TVA, and other myriad projects of the New Deal, to the astonishing production during World War II, including, however morally dubious, the conception of and completion of the atomic bomb in just a few short years, followed thereafter by the Interstate Highway System and the Apollo moon project -- where we literally went from the first sub-orbital flight to a man on the moon in less than a decade -- there is an amazing lists of accomplishments that reflected a culture of problem solving and doing -- one in which government took the lead and made things happen, either on its own or in conjunction with the private sector.

And yet in the last week or so, I've been reading about the inability of a local public utility unable to quickly restore electricity after summer storms, of broken waters mains, unsafe bridges, and, in Iraq, of the United States abandoning billions of dollars in uncompleted projects, unable to finish such basic infrastructure projects as sewer systems and electrical grids.  

The question that arises in my mind is when did this happen to us as a people and what can we do to solve it?  It's not like there isn't a plethora of infrastructure needs and projects out there.  And we have an army of the unemployed who could be called upon to do these things.  Why is it that the American people are now satisfied, at some level, with a second class infrastructure, that is too often jury-rigged and inefficient?  And why do we suddenly seem to view failure as not only acceptable, but, indeed, to be expected? 

How do we change this?  

In 1973

Well after the end of "official combat operations" in Vietnam there were 168 deaths of American Servicemembers.

Quartermaster Chief Petty Officer Arthur Eschman was one of them, he was my friend, now he's dead, after they declared an "end" to the war.

Boatswain's Mate First Class Alexander Hailey, killed in Phu Bai, while "advising" South Vietnamese troops. Al owed me $145 dollars from losing poker hands. Fuck it, Al, I miss you still, you were a good man who died too young and for no good reason.

End? What end? All the carefully parsed sentences and carefully chosen words in the world will amount to jack fucking shit when the guys in their dress uniforms pull up to the curb of yet another American house and regret to inform the occupants that their son, brother, husband, father, wife, daughter, or other relation has been killed in that stinking goddmaned desert half a world away.

Fuck all your fine words. We're still going to be dying there.

Other Ways of Viewing our World

As I mentioned in one of the comments below, I am becoming increasingly convinced that part of the essential task of any new left in this country will be to change the language, the terms of debate, and the parameters of possible politics.  Absent some new moral language, some attempt to break out of the current morass, we on the liberal side of the divide are stuck with a technocratic, instrumental language, that lacks the passion to persuade. 

Alas, I have an oral argument at 9:00 AM tomorrow in federal court, so coming up with this new approach is not on my agenda for the evening.

I'd suggest two items for your perusal though that give some glimmer of what I mean.  The first is an interview in Salon with fellow labor lawyer Tom Geoghegan about his new book, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?  I had dinner with Geoghegan a year or two ago in Chicago and found him to be a very smart, exceedingly decent, slightly quirky fellow.  He's a beautiful writer as lawyers go.  And has a great soul to go with the talent. (h/t Sully) Geoghegan makes the case for German social democracy and what it could mean for the quality of life of working and middle class Americans. 

I was also struck by this wonderful letter from Michael O'Hare to his students at Berkeley, explaining why their prospects are going to suck so much more than those of the baby boom generation,

Two pretty good stabs at explaining how a politics of solidarity could make our lives more pleasant, and, without being overly instrumental, could also make us more prosperous.

Alright, gotta get some sleep.  Must be on my game in the morning.  ,    .  

 

Fuck You Glenn Beck

This is what the work and life of Dr. King were about. This is why folks stood against bullets, dogs, nightsticks, lynchings, and all manner of brutality. This song, those people and the legacy of grim determination in the face of oppression and injustice means that you, and those like you will never win. Never.

Rant, rave, sell all the overpriced gold you want. You will never win. Never.

Pharoh's army always gets drownded. Always.

Dr. King, and all the people who stood with him know what that time, that man, and that speech meant. It means you will lose. Vinceremos. Siempre tu cabron.

Nyee ndih dayaweh yuul dahikah nagonashhi keh
Sozhanee Ga'age soladahiz
Nadizhiil da'aatzah
Da'azyee Nogi gawoyee itiisgoh ya

(Where the fight is the hardest
The Raven Soldiers will always be
There we will stand and die
Here, at our home
That is our task, and our honor)

Glenn Beck Rally Commemorative Poster

Driftglass is a national treasure.

Friday Afternoon Open Thread

"The Underdog" - Spoon

I was looking for something inspirational, as opposed to yet another song about drinking.  I've been living on caffeine and alcohol the last two weeks, so I don't need anything that would make me yearn for an early happy hour.  

Thank God it's Friday -- only two more working days until Monday.  I'm getting in the home stretch of my crazy case.  Just filed a brief and have a reply due Monday at 9:30 AM, with a hearing the following day.  I'm totally worn out and what little I am reading about politics these days is not helping my mood.

The one saving grace of being in the office this weekend is that it makes it unlikely I will run into the Glenn Beck crowd for whom my patience is likely to be limited. 

I'm going to link to two recent Washington Post articles that didn't make me unhappy -- one written by a 14-year old about his adventures building a guitar ultimately used by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers -- definitely one that minstrel hussain boy should read -- and another an obituary about Bill Millin, a Scottish soldier who played the bag pipes on the beach at Normandy during the invasion while under fire.    Anything that I see in the Post that doesn't leave me enraged is a net plus.

How are you all doing? 

Are the Dems destroying their brand?

Such as it is, I mean.  But sheesh, if the Democratic Party isn't going to have a hair-on-fire moment about 10% unemployment, exactly what is the point of having a Democratic Party?

Krugman, this morning:

[T]his isn’t a recovery, in any sense that matters. And policy makers should be doing everything they can to change that fact.

The small sliver of truth in claims of continuing recovery is the fact that G.D.P. is still rising: we’re not in a classic recession, in which everything goes down. But so what?

The important question is whether growth is fast enough to bring down sky-high unemployment. We need about 2.5 percent growth just to keep unemployment from rising, and much faster growth to bring it significantly down. Yet growth is currently running somewhere between 1 and 2 percent, with a good chance that it will slow even further in the months ahead. Will the economy actually enter a double dip, with G.D.P. shrinking? Who cares? If unemployment rises for the rest of this year, which seems likely, it won’t matter whether the G.D.P. numbers are slightly positive or slightly negative.

All of this is obvious. Yet policy makers are in denial.

After its last monetary policy meeting, the Fed released a statement declaring that it “anticipates a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization” — Fedspeak for falling unemployment. Nothing in the data supports that kind of optimism. Meanwhile, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, says that “we’re on the road to recovery.” No, we aren’t.

As Cassandra Krugman points out, there isn't a whole lot the Dems can do in the way of legislation right now, but there are some limited actions that the Administration can take independently.  As Krugman says, "It can revamp its deeply unsuccessful attempt to aid troubled homeowners. It can use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored lenders, to engineer mortgage refinancing that puts money in the hands of American families."  And the Administration can and should lean on the Fed to do everything it can, regardless of prospects for success.

Finally, the very least that the Dems can do is pound at the GOP legislative roadblock 24/7 between now and the election.  If the Dems don't propose anything, then the GOP doesn't have to block anything, and both sides look exactly the same to the typical low-information voter.  Every Dem worth his or her salt should be deeply angry about the fact that the GOP refuses to let them help ordinary Americans, and should be expressing that anger every time they have a TV camera on them or a microphone in front of them.

And they need to craft legislation - big legislation, dammit, no pussyfooting around - that would get money into people's pockets, and put people back to work. Let's have aid to states, food stamps, further unemployment aid extensions, and every unsexy infrastructure investment we're going to have do do sometime anyway: legislation that would repair or replace every last aging, crumbling water or sewer system in this country, that would rebuild a few thousand of our most dangerous crumbling highway bridges, and that would remove some of the major bottlenecks in our freight rail system (e.g. Chicago, Baltimore) and build freight lines on major transportation corridors where existing freight lines are either inadequate (e.g. I-95 in the Southeast) or nonexistent (I-81).

We're gonna have to do this stuff anyway.  So it's insane not to do it now, and put people to work at a time when far too many people simply can't find a job.  And that's what every Democrat in Congress, or running for Congress, ought to be saying right now.  Over and over again, loudly, at the top of their lungs.  On every damned Sunday talk show, every damned week.  And making the GOP block debate on such legislation, over and over again.

Finally, they ought to promise that if they're still in control of Congress in January, they'll end the filibuster so that they can pass this legislation whether the Republicans like it or not.

And it wouldn't hurt if, on top of this, Obama shut down the silly (and potentially dangerous) Catfood Commission.  If there was ever a time to talk about cutting Social Security benefits or raising the retirement age, it certainly isn't now.  Obama should say so, clearly and unambiguously, and send them home.

Let's at least give people something to vote for, okay?  Because if the Dems keep treating this moment like it was no big deal - the GOP's blocking everything, there's nothing we can do, so we're just not going to treat unemployment as an issue - then the Dems will lose control of at least one house of Congress, maybe both, this November, no matter how terrible the GOP is.

Sure, people like us will support the Dems, no matter what.  But think on this: during his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai E Stevenson 'Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!'  Stevenson called back 'That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!'  We, too, need a majority.  And we're damned sure not going to get one unless we are visibly fighting for that majority.  If the Dems aren't fighting for those who are hurting from our continuing economic troubles, then the people who should be voting Democratic probably won't vote Republican, but they may well just give up, drift off, and conclude that neither side is worth voting for, so why bother?

It's hard to blame them.  And that's the danger here.

Patty Griffin, VoteVets, Flu Season

First things first, I love Patty Griffin. Sometimes I wish I didn't have so much fucking seniority and wasn't too expensive for folks I really like to hire. Then I talk to my accountant and think differently. I helped Patty with the demo for this one, we snuck her into a top flight studio in L.A. and helped her to do shit up right. When we finished with this song (it was the first time I heard it) the engineer said "I wish you would have told me you were using the 12 string, I had to adjust the EQ's across the board." I said "It was six dude, the lyrics made me so goddamned mad I was hitting the shit out of it."

Sweet Lorraine the fiery haired brown eyed schemer
Who came from a long line of drinkers and dreamers
Who knew that sunshine don't hold up to dark
Whose businesses fail
Who sleep in the park
Lorraine who spoke of paintings in Paris
And outlandish things to her family just to scare us
whose heart went pokin' where it shouldn't ought
Whose mother could only sppit at the thought of
Lorraine, sweet Lorraine

Her father would tear her out like a page of the bible
Then he'd burn down the house to announce his arrival
Her mother was working and never was home
Lorraine carved out a little life of her own
Lorraine started working, Lorraine went to school
Her mother threw stones at her on the day that she moved
Now isn't that a very strange thing to do
To someone who was never really wanted by you
Lorraine, sweet Lorraine

Her daddy called her a slut and a whore
On the night before her wedding day
The very next morning at the church
Her daddy gave Lorraine away
Lorraine, sweet Lorraine

In the battle of time in the battle of will
It's only your hope and your heart that gets killed
And it gets harder and harder Lorraine, to believe in magic
When what came before you is so very tragic
Lorraine, sweet Lorraine Lorraine, sweet Lorraine

The Dixie Chicks have been about the only country acts with the gumption to record Patty's songs. More folks should.

VoteVets has an open letter supporting the Islamic Center in New York up. I encourage you to sign on too. They were silent at first, now they aren't. I was talking about this with our local Imam, he's a friend and a very good man. One of the things that really has him puzzled about all this bullshit is that the Imam and the congregation of Muslims that want to build this center are from the Sufi branch of Islam. That's like the fucking Quakers folks. Mystics, visionaries and pacifists. Exactly the kind of Islam we should be nurturing and encouraging.

There was the stabbing in New York just recently to demonstrate without any measure of doubt that this shit has gone way too fucking far. To the folks who try and pretend reason and call for dialogue my position is this:

Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Now.

You don't have a leg to stand on morally, ethically or legally. If the idea of a mosque there offends you, then get yourself used to being offended, because I intend to devote a great deal of time and energy to making your bigotted ignorant ass feel offended.

If these dunces are taking moral direction from the likes of Newt Gingrich, if their idea of a voice of reason is Michelle Bachman and Glenn Beck, there is no talking to be done. Stands need to be taken, ground chosen, fights planned.

I ain't no pacifist.

We are getting an early start to flu season here. Half my family is down with it. I'm not allowed to get sick until they all get well.

I'm Not Going To Say Anything About Glue Factories

Social Security is not a welfare program.  It is not a handout.  It is not a grant, subsidy or loan.

When a person starts to receive Social Security checks it simply means that they are being refunded the money that they have paid into the system, most often for 30-40-50 years.  Any currently living American who has ever drawn a paycheck has paid and/or is still paying into the system.

So yes, Alan Simpson was being offensive when he called Social Security a "cow with 310 million tits." 

But more importantly, his remarks show a profound misunderstanding of the program he is tasked with 'fixing.'  Alan Simpson doesn't understand what Social Security is.  Either he is too feeble-minded to grasp it, or, since he's about to turn 79, is starting to lose his mental capacity to the many forms of dementia that afflict so many of America's elderly citizens.

Whatever it is - stupid or suffering from a disease of the brain - Alan Simpson is unfit for the job he currently holds and should be, as it were, put out to pasture.

Not This Shit Again

Digby just points out that subpoenas are coming, so I'll say what's necessary.

According to this video, Obama spent $23 million of taxpayer money to influence a 'constitutional referendum' in Kenya.  A 'yes' vote will result, and I am not kidding, in increased access to abortion AND the legalization of Islamic law tribunals.

I suppose it also will enable fundamentalist Islamic imams to consecrate gay marriage, and make it legal for extreme conservative Muslims to finally realize their goal of allowing women to walk the streets naked.

They really believe that Democrats want to impose Sharia law on the USA, which will result in homosexuals getting married and having sex in public, abortions on every street corner, the abolitiion of every religious expression, and the legalization of crack.  This is what they believe.

It's not stupidity or ignorance, it's a mental disorder.  They're insane, and there's enough people in this country like them that they have a chance to take over at least one House of Congress.  Again.

Libertarianism

I've been thinking about what makes libertarians different than conservatives.  The short answer, as best I can work out, is that those who argue "because Jesus" generally call themselves conservative, while those who have 99.99% of the same goals as the god-botherers, yet who don't automatically give "God-Jesus-Bible" as the answer to every question tend to call themselves libertarians.

Amanda does a great job of defining the libertarian's primary motive, whether religious or not, which is that "libertarianism tends to spring up when you start to believe human beings exist to serve systems and institutions, and not vice versa."  Most conservatives, and those who identify as libertarians especially, for some reason conflate their own sense of self with that of corporations.  Not a corporation; this isn't about brand loyalty or where one works.  It's more that these people. . .here, let me illustrate this with some Cake lyrics:

Birds fall from the window ledge above mine.
Then they flap their wings at the last second.

You see birds fall from the window ledge above mine.
Then they flap their wings at the last second.
I can see their dead weight
Just dropping like stones
Or small loaves of bread
Past my window all the time.
But unless I get up,
Walk across the room
And peer down below,
I don't see their last second curves
Toward a horizontal flight.
All these birds just falling from the ledge like stones.

Now due to a construct in my mind
That makes their falling and their flight
Symbolic of my entire existence,
It becomes important for me
To get up and see
Their last second curves toward flight.
It's almost as if my life will fall
Unless I see their ascent.

• Mr. Mastodon Farm by Cake

See, there's a construct in their mind that makes the success of a few large corporations and their CEOs symbolic of their entire existence.  And if they don't take constant action to ensure these corporations/CEOs' success - at their own expense, if necessary - then they are convinced that their lives will fall.

That's why libertarians, with the exception of legalizing marijuana and maybe prostitution, can never be found defending individual liberty.  Instead they defend without fail the right of  corporations, which they invariably describe as 'businessowners' even when they're really talking about a multinational conglomerate, to lie, cheat, pollute and discriminate however they want.

I have yet to see a libertarian or conservative fight for an individual's rights or liberties and not have that individual turn out to be a corporation and/or its CEO.  Civil liberties for actual human beings are defended only by liberals, full stop.  If you want, like E.D. Kain at Balloon Juice, a so-called 'limited government in terms of scope,' then you need to support Democrats.  Democrats are the ones who will keep the government out of the bedroom, who will stop individuals and institutions from trampling on the rights of others.

Anyone truly concerned about individual liberty is a liberal.  Libertarians and Conservatives, on the other hand, are - as described so well by Cake - nothing so much as suffering from an identity crisis, at best.

More Of This, Please

The Obama administration is taking on Big Agriculture on behalf of farmers and ranchers.  It's a two-pronged effort, using antitrust powers of the DOJ and the USDA's authority to put in new regulations that strengthen farmers and ranchers against the mega-corporations that (mis)manage America's food system.

There are several ways in which one could respond to these developments.  One is the entirely predictable route taken by the journalist, which focuses on things like "OMG look at the country yokels and union thugs working together" and "Democrats and Republicans both suck" - though to be fair, in this issue they really do.

My initial reaction is to wonder how I could get on the platform at their meeting at Fort Collins to let the attendees - especially the red-staters like my fellow Kansans - know that if they want to preserve their way of life at all, they need to be willing to support the rare politicians like Barack Obama who actually want to do something to break the stranglehold corporations like Monsanto and Tyson have on our food production system.  Because most politicians, no matter their party, will gladly bleed these ranchers and farmers dry, destroying not only their families but also the land itself so that an extremely rich minority - who can afford to buy all their food from a privately-run farm in the hollow center of the Earth if they wanted to - can make a few extra bucks.  And then when the crops have been genetically engineered to the point of being toxic to human life, when the land is so drained on the one hand and pumped full of toxins on the other that no food could grow anyway, these same politicians will gather up the farmers, ranchers and their families and bodily feed them into Big Agriculture's gaping maw as protein sources for hydroponic tomeatoes, now will extra Soylent!

Ahem.

What I think we need to take from this, however, is that when we elect Democrats - even with all the mistakes they make - good governance happens.  This fall, remind everyone you can that not only do we want to stop the GOP from destroying the country, we also want to have more stories like this one.

The Face of Incipient Fascism

Unfortunately, one can't really use fascism as a meaningful term since that insipid fuck Jonah Goldberg stripped it of all meaning; nonetheless, if you want to get a sense of what a nascent fascism feels like, watch this video featured at TPM, which evidently originated at the Gawker:

I do like the eloquently stated line: "you motherfuckers don't even know my opinion."

Jesus, this is ugly shit.  I hope the people who've gotten this ignorant rabble stirred up are very proud of themselves.

This would be the comic version of the same impulse.  Yes, here in DC, we have an enormous problems with "homosexuals with automatic weapons."  Why just last week my hairdresser pulled a Tech Nine on me when I criticized his use of product.

This country has taken a very ugly, deeply shameful turn.  

Saturday Night Open Thread

"Corpus Cristi Bay" - Robert Earl Keen

I love this song.  The video images on the post don't really have anything to do with the song -- although they're pleasant enough -- but the quality of the recording is very good.  

Work madness continues.  Spent all day at a vote count for a union election, then went out and bought a car, which is one of my least favorite activities of all. 

And I'm heading back in tomorrow for as long as the coffee and Concerta can keep me going.  I've been writing non-stop at work for days in a way that I seldom do anymore -- 14 hours on Tuesday and 16 hours on Thursday --  it's a bit exhausting and leaves very little left for blogging.  One more week of madness and then I head into court to argue this thing and hopefully that will be that.   

I hope to get a chance to write a little bit this week.  In the meantime hope all is well with you.  What's going on in your world? 

Franklin Graham is a Bigoted God Botherer

Like a lot of cracker bastards, Franklin Graham is obsessed with bullshit like "seed." These same slave fucking sons of bitches who rated "degrees" of racial mixings are now telling folks that even if Barak Obama is a Christian, he is only that way after a conversion, that he was born Muslim.

"I think the president's problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim, his father gave him an Islamic name,"

These Christiopathic morons don't even care that they are lying. To be considered a Muslim by Muslims there are things that must be done. You can read about them here. One is not "born" Muslim, it is something one does, and must do every day.

Now to the real thing I was going to write. I had a run in with Frankie's daddy Billy. I'm not at all surprised that Frankie is a self righteous, pompous, bullshit and hatred spouting redneck piece of shit, his father was and raised him that way.

Back during my Vegas time, one of the main ways I'd make a living was to do the "Nevada turnaround." I'd sign on for three months with an artist and we'd do two weeks Vegas, two weeks Reno, two weeks Tahoe for two or three months at a time. Usually we were playing the Cabaret clubs, five nights a week doing ten to twelve forty minute sets a week. All in all, it's not a bad way to work it.

When I met Billy Graham I was with the Righteous Brothers. Bobby Hatfield (the high voice) was a quick witted scamp. We had a lot of fun and made some great music.

So, there we are in the VIP lounge of an airport (had to be either Reno or Vegas, the airport in Tahoe was a Quanset hut and didn't have amenities like lounges) waiting for our flight to the next town, and in sweeps Billy Graham with his posse of bodyguards and rednecks. He didn't say "Hi," or bother to introduce himself, he walks right up to our group and starts into a fire and brimstone rant about how Bill and Bobby have no right at all to call themselves "Righteous" because Billy, being so fucking close to God and Jayzus knows that they are not righteous, but actually anti-righteous. That son of a bitch was all red in the face, going on and on without pause, the volume kept increasing. At some point in his rant I got up and picked out a couple of the more threatening members of his entourage that I was planning to lay the fuck out with my Les Paul in a gig bag. (note: if you ever find yourself in a position where you are planning an El Kabong on some motherfucker, the Paul is your perfect ax, those sons of bitches are heavy)

Finally, Billy paused in his tirade to take him a breath on account of God and Jesus didn't give him a pass on essential human activity and Bobby chimed right into the gap.

"Well son, I never liked your goddamned crackers neither."

The loud and raucous laughter that folowed that one left Billy with no option but to damn us all to hell and stomp off in a high dudgeon.

When dealing with assmunches like that, ridicule works wonders. You might say, it creates miracles.

Do big cats like catnip? ~ Friday OPEN THREAD ~

Of course they do.

My favorite moment is when the roly-poly cheetah suddenly pauses and stares at you with this slightly guilty look on his face: I was only holding it for a friend, I swear!

Apologies for the ridiculously light posting of late. The boys have just returned to school, and I've been submerged in Mama Lioness duties, which challenges, I am here to tell you, are considerably rougher, tougher, and more formidable than those faced by Mama Grizzlies (do any little ones of any stripe or spot like getting shots and being prodded and poked?)  The cubs do look rather irresistible in their freshly-pressed uniforms, though.

Hopefully I'll be able to dive back in to blogging next week. Until then,

Bon Weekend, everyone.

XXX
D.

(H/T and congratulations to four-time Daddy Lion Dr. Shadowfax)

Really Late Night Thread

"Almost Summer" - Jason Collett

Continuing my musical love affair with our many talented friends from the Great White North.

I had one of those oppression by technology kind of evenings -- after putting in eleven very solid hours today, I went home, walked the dog, grabbed a quick dinner out with the family, and then sat down for some well deserved vegging out in front of the tube with laptop in hand.  Of course I checked my work email and had nine or ten comments regarding a brief that I have been laboring on from several different outside law firms.  Although the tenor of the comments was very positive, I felt compelled to run back to the office and incorporate the various suggestions and corrections.  (Well first I stopped to get a four pack of Boddington's Pub Ale -- hey, I only consumed three of the four pints.)

Anyway, four hours later, here I am.  But the work looks pretty damned good and I am going to relish those five hours of sleep.  

Even as bleary eyed as I am, I've got to think my head is clearer than either Howard Dean's or Nancy Pelosi's.  What the fuck is wrong with them?

Consider this a wide open thread.  Hopefully injunction papers will be filed tomorrow and I might even be able to write again soon.  

I Told Him So - Redux

Taking a brief breather from injunction madness to note with grim satisfaction the indictment of Roger Clemens on perjury charges due to his testimony before Congress regarding the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

I warned him and I warned him again that he was getting into trouble.  But did he listen to a lifelong Red Sox fan and shut his fucking mouth.  Oh no he di'nt.  

Alright -- duty calls again.  My brain is fried but I hope to write tonight.  

Target Ain't People

Even though Target has backed off of further campaign contributions and their CEO has apologized for that action the fact remains that they gave $150K to a far right wing republican.

Fuck. Target.

Harold Meyerson Hits Another Out Of The Park

Read it:

Not to be difficult, mind you, but what is it that the Democrats see themselves running on in the next 75 days -- or, for that matter, the next two years? Health-care reform? Since many of its benefits don't kick in until 2014, it exists in the minds of millions of Americans chiefly as a nebulous threat. Financial reform? A major achievement, but largely negated by the public's perception that the Obama administration, like its predecessor, moved heaven and Earth to bail out the banks. The economy? The evidence is overwhelming that the Obama stimulus saved millions of jobs, but the economy is still the worst we've seen since the Depression, and there are almost no signs that it's going to get better.

The Democrats have a doctrinal problem: They (well, many of them) believe, with good reason, that the government must step in where the private sector fears to tread, boosting consumer demand through stimulus, subsidizing health insurance for millions of Americans who otherwise would go without. But the administration's failure to jolt a structurally dysfunctional economy back to health has discredited the very idea of governmental activism with much of the public, and not just the far right. That leaves the Democrats not as the party of government so much as the party of paralyzed government. That the Republicans are largely responsible for the paralysis isn't a big problem for a minority-status GOP so long as the public has concluded that activism per se is a bad idea.

So how do the Democrats defend and improve their brand? Is there a type of governmental activism that still retains public support -- and actually extricates us from the deepest hole we've been in since the '30s?

There is. If the Democrats focused on boosting manufacturing, with a corollary upgrade to our infrastructure, they'd tap into the only area in which the public wants a more activist government.

Let's be honest here: conservatives can support this type of thing because it plays into their nativist bigotry.  So what.  The various 'free trade' deals that our corporate masters have been pushing down our throats haven't exactly come from a desire to reduce racial prejudice in the world.

It's a sign of how thoroughly corporations own the political process that the Democrats in Congress and the White House, usually so stinking desperate to find something, anything, that they can do to make 'moderates' and conservative happy, never seem to get around to this issue.

Meyerson needs to be read and heavily promoted by every blogger, every person who considers himself or herself a progressive.  Anyone interested in social justice and civil liberties needs to understand how necessary a strong, growing middle class is and how getting America making things again is how we bring that middle class back.