The Triumph of Reason Over Weather

New York becomes an objectivist paradise:

By Wednesday afternoon, three days after the snowstorm began, the city’s snowplows had not visited the block. It seemed the sort of thing that people in Chicago might regard as no big deal — life on an unplowed street. But the snow that covered the street outside these residents’ houses complicated and frustrated their days and their lives. It undermined their faith in the city, but it strengthened their bonds with the people next door.

Garbage trucks had not made pickups in days. Garbage cans that were empty on Sunday were filled nearly to the top on Wednesday. No one had received mail all week. Two residents who rely on Meals on Wheels did not receive food on Monday and Tuesday because the driver could not navigate the thick snow...

By then, Ms. Brickell said, she was approaching her breaking point, uneasy about what could happen, for instance, if a fire broke out. So while her husband worked outside on Tuesday, she worked the phones. First, she called 311 to ask when the street would be plowed. She gave up after an hour on hold. So she called the 105th Precinct station house; a police officer suggested she reach out to the Sanitation Department. She did. The man on the other end of the line told her the plows would be there in a couple of hours, she said.

She and other homeowners expressed a mix of resentment and outrage. They said they felt abandoned by the city and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose remarks, they said, belittled their predicament. “We’ve been supportive of Mayor Bloomberg right from the start,” said Mr. Moore, who has lived on the block since 1994. “But it’s really mind-boggling to see what’s happened here. The city really came apart.”

The George W. Bush School of Public Safety claims another legacy. Bloomberg evidently sat on his hands, expecting that his expertise as a financial wizard would enable him to scowl away the storm. And of course it didn't help that, when a few Parks employees were yanked out of classification to run a few plows normally used for tree-clearing, the usual band of clueless hapless schmucks and egotistical assholes were out on the roads getting stuck and causing accidents.

But it's OK because these people waiting around for the nanny-state to change their diapers are just going to have to get used to fending for themselves in the new improved era of drowning in the bathtub. Trust me, honey. When the Peoples' Republic of the Democratic Confederacy gets through with government, you'll never even know it existed.

Make the Teachers Cry

Esquire nails the past year's politics.

A Christmas Gift

From one of the finest Christmas/Winter programs ever. Wassail!



















Blessings to you all, and may peace not come too late.

They Go Together Like a Horse and Miscarriage

I admit I was amazed that DADT was repealed by the Senate, especially this particular collection of gutless wonders and ignorant bigots. Will wonders never cease? Well, yes; in fact, immediately. We couldn't have the yin of repeal without the yang of segregationist xenophobia, so the DREAM Act went down the toilet, weighted down by the fantasist construct of anchor babies. Sleazy corporations can breathe a sigh of relief that the cheap illegal immigrant labor they so rely on will remain cheap, and dependent on the mercy of employers for their basic human rights.

Just Sick of It

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The Gates of Rashomon's Cable TV Show

Jeeeayzuss. This maroon has to be the sobbiest mope in the House.

If a woman carried on like this, tearing up so frequently that she got a reputation as an ambulatory faucet, her future would be dim indeed. But this is America, where 51% of the population gets an average of 16% of the representation, even though women don't really need any since we have achieved full equality now. So what's the beef?

Well, for instance, here's the post-2010 election response in the Washington Post to Boehner's victory speech:

But neither Obama nor McConnell could hold a candle to Boehner in the emotion department. Last night, when he talked about working hard to achieve the American dream, putting himself through school and "working every rotten job there was...and every night shift I could find," choking up the entire way, Boehner humanized himself. He went from being a faceless leader of the opposition to a real person who has worked hard to get where he stands today. Not every American can reach that plateau. But every American can relate to having dreams and knows what is required to achieve them.

See that? Crying "humanizes" him. As if standing upright on two legs, speaking a language, and using tools wasn't enough.

Or for the Blatancy Award, there's this:

...what a refreshing change compared to the left always trying to feminize males.

The left tries to feminize its males, as opposed to the right, whose males are manly and can do it for themselves.

But let a woman weep just once, and we get this:

Yet, in the end, she had to fend off calamity by playing the female victim, both of Obama and of the press. Hillary has barely talked to the press throughout her race even though the Clintons this week whined mightily that the press prefers Obama.

Or this:

Contrary to popular wisdom, this was not an Ed Muskie New Hampshire moment. When a tall, lanky man breaks down in tears that’s one thing; it’s quite another to see a teary-eyed confessional woman. There is a double-standard, but it’s not the one we’re told: Men always seem to look weak when they tear up; women can look, well, empathetic and sensitive.

Yes, men have come a long way since the days when Ed Muskie's career was immolated by tears. Now, if it's not proof of membership in homo sapiens, it's merely a lovable quirk that's of no consequence in the big picture. But the next time a woman shows emotion, you can bet there'll be no end of speculation on whether she's headed for the loony-bin, or just a cold calculating bitch looking to manipulate our votes.

Bah.

The Stinking Remains of American Mercy

Why is it that we hear no end of pseudo-horror about Cadillac-buying welfare queens and homeless people with cell phones and single mothers who use food stamps to buy steaks, and all the well-fed punditry and Congressry get up in arms about how it's time to tighten down the screws on programs for the people who have the least, but when it comes to stuff like this:

The Internal Revenue Service has filed a $15.4 million claim against Yellowstone Club co-founder Edra Blixseth for unpaid taxes during the two years leading to the exclusive Montana resort's bankruptcy.

The claim was filed Friday in Blixseth's personal bankruptcy case in Montana.

Blixseth, who lives in Rancho Mirage, Calif., ran the club south of Big Sky with then-husband Tim Blixseth for much of the last decade. The millionaires-only ski and golf resort counts Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former Vice President Dan Quayle among its members.

...nothing but crickets. What are all those millions when compared to the pennies stolen by the poor? I guess the rich should be admired for ripping off the taxpayers, because the very fact of their wealth gives them the droit du seignieur. Hand over your nubile daughters, peasants, it's The Family Feudal.

Revenge of the South

TPM points out that the incoming House GOP Chairs are overwhelmingly male (all but 1) and exclusively white. True, but what is more telling are the areas of the country from which they come:

• 9--South/Southwest
• 4--Great Lakes Midwest
• 2--California Great Flakes Region
• 1--Washington State, John McCain Region
• 1--New York, 7th Richest U.S. County Region 

Note that out of 17 Chairs, more than half come from the southern climes.  They never forgave us for defeating them in what they still call the "War of Northern Agression", and by God, they shall have their revenge!  If they can't secede with guns, they will accomplish it by enshrining politically poisonous legislation until the educated north becomes either irrelevant or exhausted.  Either way, the balkanization of the Union continues apace.

Israel to U.S.: Go Fuck Yourself...

...and cough up the planes, too, bitch.

The Ones That Mother Gives You Don't Do Anything At All

I'm still confused by what appears to be a contradiction between the recent fainting spells over Social Security going bankrupt and the proposed 2% tax "holiday" from having to pay taxes into it. I also admit I'm not the most educated audience on economics, though I try to keep up, but this does have more of the same stink of cognitive dissonance as the idea that tax cuts to the rich will "create jobs", when the empirical evidence of the last 9 years (and especially since the Great Recession) argues quite the opposite result.

Thus, I find this this Moody's chart, thanks to George Washington's guest post at Naked Capitalism, to be both edifying and infuriating:



As the chart shows, the actions that will help lift us out of this mess made by the rich are the very things they have brought out their big guns to murder, while the actions that will actually drag the recovery back into the sump are the actions the rich are making sure, via their lap dogs in Washington, will most definitely be taken.

As time goes by, I find Kevin Baker's comparison of Obama to Hoover becoming more and more on point. God help us.

Circuses, Hold the Bread

There's a reason why David Chase made New Jersey Tony Soprano's home:

The Livingston school district elementary teacher launched into a list of complaints about drops in municipal aid, increasing NJ Transit fares and tax cuts for those making more than $1 million.

His question: How could Christie sign off on a tax cut for the most wealthy, ignoring the regressive nature of the sales tax, while those at the bottom were getting squeezed with increases like the transit fares?

The two adversaries went back and forth for a few minutes, until Chaudruc, a Republican, interrupted the governor.

"You want to come up here?" Christie shouted. "You come up here ... Let’s have a conversation.."

Chaudruc, who stands 5’6" and weighs about 160 pounds, backed away until the governor insisted "bring him up here," and a state trooper escorted him to the stage.

Christie, a few inches taller and several pounds heavier, loomed over Chaudruc as he launched into a tirade.

"Your wonderful increase in taxes would have killed jobs in this state," Christie said pointing his index finger at Chaudruc. "You and I have different ideas of what being a Republican is all about because I’m not going to raise taxes."

Before he could get another word in, Chaudruc was ushered off the stage and out of the room by a trooper.

I guess he's lucky Christie's muscle didn't usher him into a pair of cement shoes, too. Because this is not the behavior of a public servant, but a mafia don used to bending reality to his will. Would a public servant, elected to help the people of his state, treat them like this?

The oddest moment of the night came when a Haworth woman took the microphone to ask Christie to help her get her house back after being evicted by federal marshals.

Anticipating her question, Christie told her it was a federal matter and to leave the microphone. After she was moved to the side another man approached the microphone and began to shout about the same issue.

The woman and man stood next to the microphone shouting for several minutes until police escorted them from the building.

You want government to help you? Fuggediboutit!

This is what our obsession with entertainment in politics has produced: the election of a person whose main talents are the ability to pitch tantrums and bully the powerless, and whose best moneymaker is knowing how to convert those talents into media circus face time.

Climate Change

In Northern Europe, people are dying of record cold, and schools and airports have been shut down, while in southern Europe, temperatures have been moderate. There is some speculation that it may be the result of the BP oil spill's disruption of the Gulf current. Climate change may also be implicated, if the previous winter is any indication. The Financial Times notes:

The performance in combating ice in some areas seems to have benefited from the lessons of last year.

A new strategic salt reserve has prevented grit shortages so far this year and the Department for Transport is working with other departments to remove barriers to the use of tractors to clear snow-clogged rural roads.

However, the ultimate problem for the UK – and other northern European countries shivering in the severe cold – may be that preparation for severe winters and other extreme weather is growing in importance.

Climate change may be making extreme weather events more common than past calculations have suggested.

Indeed, Mr Muir questions if severe weather is as rare as statisticians sometimes claim.

“The 50-year storm seems to come around every five years,” he says.

Another Dangerous Socialist Strikes A Blow For Evidentiary Standards

Stodgy old James Fallows writes a column, and depending on your addiction to ideology, either proves he is Not A Very Serious Person after all, or applies the Charles P. Pierce argument that:

"If I see a guy walking down the street with a duck on his head, I can write that I saw a guy walking down the street with a duck on his head. I don't have to find someone to say they saw a guy walking down the street with a duck on his head, and I particularly don't need to find someone on the other side who will say, no, what you saw was a duck walking down the street with a guy on his ass."

Update: As if to confirm the very point James Fallows was making, Scott Simon held an approving interview this morning with Ross Douthat, whose original NY Times column prompted Fallows to write the response referenced above. Simon verbally nodded and "yepped" right along with Douthat as Douthat made his lame comparisons again. Not once did Simon challenge him about it, or even play the devil's advocate; it was as though Douthat's flimsy thesis was so self-evident as to render journalistic curiosity moot. This is your NPR "Nazi propaganda". Roger Ailes must be so pleased.

Pointing The Way With An Empty Sleeve

From our Department of Beaux Gestes:

"President Obama announced a two-year pay freeze for civilian federal workers on Monday as he sought to address concerns over sky-high deficit spending and appeal to Republican leaders to find a common approach to restoring the nation’s economic and fiscal health."

Seems he's hoping that throwing a bunch of working people to the wolves will head off a Republican slashfest and...wait for it...:

"Mr. Obama expressed optimism that the meeting with legislators would be a productive and fresh beginning. “My hope is starting today, we can begin a bipartisan conversation about our future,” he said. “Everybody’s going to have to cooperate. We can’t afford to fall back on the old ideologies or the old sound bites.” "

That old chestnut, buy-partisanship, bought with the paychecks of the working class, because for Obama it seems that nothing succeeds like failure. And fail this will, as the impact of the further loss of wages and the domino-effect on the local economies where these people live and work settles over the country. This, even before the next wave of further municipal and statewide layoffs of public workers, when the new fiscal year will require state and local governments to try to close new budget gaps. After all, what's better for an economy sunk in joblessness and plummeting living standards than a good old-fashioned putsch?

In exchange for this hollow and cowardly gesture, he may be able to carve out an estimated $60 million from a deficit of 1.3 trillion over the next 10 years---a move that will impress no one and which will impact neither the deficit, nor the Republican death squads, nor the public at large. Hell, you could get 60 million in one fell swoop by confiscating the 2009 salaries and bonuses of Bank of America's Thomas Montag, Morgan Stanley's Walid Chammah, and Wells Fargo's John Stumpf on some tax dodge charge. They wouldn't miss it, they're eminently guilty of that and more, and it would certainly carry more symbolism than this empty charade, thrown out in a stench of desperation by a man whose head seems to have been, of late, stuffed with straw.

These men are nihilists, there's nothing to be afraid of

Once Upon A Time, in America:

Walter--Alan Grayson
Donny--The Democratic Party
The Nihilists--Louie Gohmert, Spencer Bachus, & Steve King
The Money--The Federal Reserve
Lebowski's Car--The Government
The Girl--The Unemployed of the American electorate
The Dude--Obama
The Big Lebowski--George W. Bush


Walter/Alan Grayson: Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

[the Dude, Walter, and Donny walk out of the bowling alley, to find the three Nihilists waiting in front of the Dude's car, which has been torched]

The Dude/Obama: Well, they finally did it. They killed my fucking car.

Nihilist/Louie Gohmert: Ve vant ze money, Lebowski.

Nihilist #2/Spencer Bachus: Ja, uzzervize ve kill ze girl.

Nihilist #3/Steve King: Ja, it seems you have forgotten our little deal, Lebowski.

The Dude/Obama: You don't HAVE the fucking girl, dipshits! We know you never did!
[the Nihilists, stunned, confer amongst themselves in German]

Donny/The Democrats: Are these the Nazis, Walter?

Walter/Grayson: No, Donny, these men are nihilists, there's nothing to be afraid of.

Nihilist/Louie Gohmert: Ve don't care. Ve still vant ze money, Lebowski, or ve fuck you up.

Walter/Grayson: Fuck you. Fuck the three of you.

The Dude/Obama: Hey, cool it Walter.

Walter/Grayson: No, without a hostage, there is no ransom. That's what ransom is. Those are the fucking rules.

Nihilist #2/Spencer Bachus: His girlfriend gave up her toe!

Nihilist #3/Steve King: She thought we'd be getting million dollars!

Nihilist #2/Spencer Bachus: Iss not fair!

Walter/Grayson: Fair! WHO'S THE FUCKING NIHILIST HERE! WHAT ARE YOU, A BUNCH OF FUCKING CRYBABIES?

The Dude/Obama: Hey, cool it Walter. Look, pal, there never was any money. The big Lebowski gave me an empty briefcase, so take it up with him, man.

Walter/Grayson: And, I would like my undies back.
[Stunned, the Germans confer amongst themselves again]

Donny/The Democrats: Are they gonna hurt us, Walter?

Walter/Grayson: No, Donny. These men are cowards.

Nihilist/Louie Gohmert: Okay. So we take ze money you haf on you, und ve calls it eefen.

Walter/Grayson: Fuck you.

Still I Look to Find A Reason to Believe

"Even with most Americans on our side, the odds are long. We learned long ago that power and privilege never give up anything without a struggle. Money fights hard, and it fights dirty. Think Rove. The Chamber. The Kochs. We may lose. It all may be impossible. But it's OK if it's impossible. Hear the former farmworker and labor organizer Baldemar Velasquez on this. The members of his Farm Labor Organizing Committee are a long way from the world of K Street lobbyists. But they took on the Campbell Soup Company - and won. They took on North Carolina growers - and won, using transnational organizing tactics that helped win Velasquez a "genius" award from the MacArthur Foundation. And now they're taking on no less than R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and one of its principal financial sponsors, JPMorgan-Chase. Some people question the wisdom of taking on such powerful interests, but here's what Velasquez says: 'It's OK if it's impossible; it's OK!' Now I'm going to speak to you as organizers. Listen carefully. The object is not to win. That's not the objective. The object is to do the right and good thing. If you decide not to do anything, because it's too hard or too impossible, then nothing will be done, and when you're on your death bed, you're gonna say, 'I wish I had done something. But if you go and do the right thing NOW, and you do it long enough "good things will happen-something's gonna happen.'

Shades of Howard Zinn!"

---Bill Moyers, speaking at Boston University on October 29, 2010 as part of the Howard Zinn Lecture Series. You can watch the entire lecture here.

"Although we have always benefited from the activities of public-spirited individuals, even men and women of great wealth who recognize that greed as a principle of public conduct often leads to perverse outcomes, the United States Constitution was emphatically not founded on the assumption that either citizens or magistrates could be trusted to act selflessly. If my argument can be taken as a call to republican virtue, it is only so within the modern realist framework devised by Madison and his colleagues in 1787, according to whom government is a response to humanity’s inherent wickedness. Men are not angels, Obama notwithstanding. A properly American call to republican virtue is not a utopian exhortation that our citizens cast aside their private and selfish interests and embark on a course of austere political action, with their eyes fixed on some transcendent public good apart from their own. No, what is required is that Americans take a stand on behalf of their selfish material interests and against those of the monopolies and transnational corporations that have captured our institutions of government. The paradoxical character of our popular corruption is that the people have become slothfully selfless, too absorbed by their ephemeral entertainments and petty cultural disputes to assert their self-interest against the plunderers who rule them.

Surely, however, the American people have not become so servile that they will forever submit to the rule of 1 percent. Surely we are capable of recognizing that the perverse corporate regime that has arisen in our country is a usurpation of popular government. Our Constitution unquestionably recognizes the right of a people to alter its mode of government; we have done so twenty-seven times. We may do so again. We may throw off these bonds and provide new guards for our future security."

---Roger Hodge, from Speak, Money, Harper's Magazine, October 2010, from his book The Mendacity of Hope.

Fucked Once More by Mob Mentality

Once again, it's morning in America for the rich white men among us.

Enjoy it while you can, monkey-boys...the demographics of the country are going to look very different in a few years, and what goes around...

Vote Locally, Weep Globally

Voted after work, around 5:15 p.m., and was told that turnout was around 50%. This is really amazing for this election cycle in my district. What's better is that Dems outnumber Republicans here, so at least, from a micro level, things look much better than nationally. But I have a somewhat depressed take on the outcome anyway. Tomorrow Helicopter Ben will be dumping more money into the economy and a trip to the grocery store will cost even more, no matter who is in power.

But fuck Toomey, and fuck Corbett even more. If they get in they will cut the throats of the poor and middle-class and line the pockets of their kleptocrat friends with the wages of the powerless. I remember watching in horror, after 4 years of murder and idiocy, as my neighbors hoorahed themselves hoarse for another 4 years of Bush. I realized then as never before that there really was no underestimating the intelligence, or the meanness, of the American public. And now, whaddya know? Here we are again, back at the old same place, faced with the prospect that the droolings of these class clowns will once again take the place of public policy and statecraft, and that their oily squirmings under the watchful eye of the robber barons will grease the old wealth re-distribution sewer that flows upward, ever upward, forever and ever, amen.

Arm in Arm Down Burgundy, A Bottle and My Friends and Me

Good news for the self-medicating among us:

Researchers at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have reached an early, but important, milestone in the quest to grow replacement livers in the lab. They are the first to use human liver cells to successfully engineer miniature livers that function – at least in a laboratory setting – like human livers. The next step is to see if the livers will continue to function after transplantation in an animal model.

This bodes well for those of us who, anticipating a Republican rout at the polls, will be doubling down on our retreat from reality via the bottle. How did they do it? It's the kind of story that makes one cry out passionately for photos and diagrams:

To engineer the organs, the scientists used animal livers that were treated with a mild detergent to remove all cells (a process called decellularization), leaving only the collagen "skeleton" or support structure. They then replaced the original cells with two types of human cells: immature liver cells known as progenitors, and endothelial cells that line blood vessels.

The cells were introduced into the liver skeleton through a large vessel that feeds a system of smaller vessels in the liver. This network of vessels remains intact after the decellularization process. The liver was next placed in a bioreactor, special equipment that provides a constant flow of nutrients and oxygen throughout the organ.

After a week in the bioreactor system, the scientists documented the progressive formation of human liver tissue, as well as liver-associated function. They observed widespread cell growth inside the bioengineered organ.

Wow. Just...wow. And for those of us who despise the animal holocaust of R&D experimentation, there's also this:

Bioengineered livers could also be useful for evaluating the safety of new drugs. “This would more closely mimic drug metabolism in the human liver, something that can be difficult to reproduce in animal models," said Baptista.

Forget the political world for a minute. Because science--you know, that area of human knowledge that has been pretty much shat on and flushed down the toilet of right wing minds--science is so full of wonders happening so fast now that if we don't pay close attention, we are going to wake up one day in a world we don't even recognize, one that our politics will be useless to comprehend.

Have a tall cool one on me this weekend, and don't fret about your liver. It's OK. They'll make more.

Steal the Vote, Take 3

The fools are up doin' it again:

The group is also organizing volunteer “surveillance squads” to photograph and videotape suspected irregularities, and in some cases to follow buses that take voters to the polls.

In the days before the Right broke democracy, the cops used to call that kind of behavior "intimidation" and "criminal threatening" and "conspiracy", and charges would be laid. Now these people have had their way so long that they feel free to curb-stomp liberals without compunction at their masters' rallies.

Just all in a day's work for the useful idiots in the plutocrats' Sturmabteilung.



Massive Attack via Bag News Notes.

Corporate Welfare, Come Hell or High Water

Good news for them that's got:

Ford Posts 6th Straight Profitable Quarter

The Ford Motor Company said on Tuesday that it earned $1.7 billion in the third quarter and that it expected to have zero net debt by the end of December, one year ahead of forecast.

It was the sixth consecutive profitable quarter and the best third quarter in more than 20 years for Ford...

...Ford has been able to accelerate its turnaround, without much help from the economy, by not only selling more vehicles but increasing the average price buyers pay.

And for this they get a nearly half billion dollar tax break from one of the most economically hard-hit states in the union, and the chance to employ 900 workers at the bargain rate of $14 an hour in a state that lost more than 800,000 jobs between 2000 and 2009.

They've got the state pinned to the ground and they know it. Nice of Granholm to help them rape it while it's down there.

To Be Fair

Bitter as I am about what I see as Obama's betrayals of his own articulated principles (public option, DADT, civil liberties and privacy issues under the Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act, failure to hold criminal executive actions under Bush accountable, and expansion of the unitary executive privilege since Bush), I think this, written by The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg, is a fair summation of the current mess, which is not Obama's fault:

Obama is no more to blame for the Great Recession than F.D.R. was for the Great Depression. But the longest and deepest mass suffering has occurred with Obama in the White House and Democrats holding a majority in (if not always in control of) our two national legislatures. That—more than tea parties, more than Fox News, more than the scores of millions of anonymous corporate dollars poured into negative campaign advertising courtesy of five Justices of the Supreme Court—is why, next Tuesday, the Republican Party is overwhelmingly likely to retake the House of Representatives outright and, at the very least, to augment its share of seats in the Senate enough to make its veto power absolute.

From the outset, the Republican legislative strategy has been to reject any hint of compromise in favor of making unprecedentedly ruthless use of Senate filibusters and threats of filibusters in order to thwart or weaken everything the Democrats seek to do, the better to attack them for lack of accomplishment. In this way, four hundred and twenty bills passed by the House (which is fifty-nine-per-cent Democratic) have died in the Senate (also fifty-nine-per-cent Democratic). Even among the small minority of voters who have some familiarity with Senate rules and their baneful consequences, few know that the Democrats had their filibuster-proof majority—sixty votes, not all of them reliable—for just seven of the Obama Administration’s twenty-one months. Under the circumstances, the record is impressive: a health-care program that will cover twenty million of the uninsured while restraining costs; partial reform of the financial industry; the rescue of the American auto industry, saving a million jobs; and a fiscal stimulus—$814 billion of tax cuts, infrastructure projects, and help for states and cities—without which, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, today’s unemployment rate would be pushing twelve per cent.

It is often said that Obama—in 2008, a gifted orator with minimal national experience—has been better, as President, at “governing” than at “politics.” His fitful attempts to present his programs as a coherent, compelling whole have been a failure. He seldom offers the consolation of anger; his instinct for comity can look, to some, like detachment, even weakness. His supporters are worried, sometimes dispirited; his enemies are full of passionate intensity. The Republicans offer plenty of rage and resentment, but nothing of substance beyond fulminations about a deficit that their proposals—more and bigger tax cuts for the comfortable, the gutting of health-care reform—would exacerbate. President Obama and the Democrats kept the Great Recession from becoming a second Great Depression. But the presence of pain is more keenly felt than the absence of agony

That said, his jettisoning of progressive supporters and their goals, which he once pretended were also his, is hard to forgive, and maybe if he had tried as hard to justify their faith in him as he did to mollify his enemies, his party would not be looking down the barrel of Sarah Palin's re-load.

Pity for us all, because the future, should the Right manage their takeover, looks like more of the same.

Thoughts for the Election Season

Via Yves Smith, here's a powerful kick in the teeth: Chris Hedges speaking in Troy, NY on October 15, 2010. You don't have to agree with him. You don't even have to believe him. But you need to admit the truth in what he says. Like it or not, the best efforts of progressive activists over the past 10 years have failed--really failed--to make any appreciable difference. Liberals have lied themselves into believing that they are independent of special interests, when in truth they sold themselves into the bondage of corporate control years ago. When is the last time you heard a Democrat stand up in public for the working class, the weak, the powerless, or the poor? Paraphrasing his quote of Daniel Berrigan, "If voting were effective, it would be illegal."

This Was Like Finally Lancing A Boil

Everyone's been so busy parsing out the superficial reasons for NPR's terminationof Juan Williams (political corectness! Muslim-bashing!) that they seem to have missed the real one--this tidbit offered at the end of the NY Times article:

Mr. Williams’s contributions on Fox raised eyebrows at NPR in the past. In February 2009, NPR said it had asked that he stop being identified on “The O’Reilly Factor” as a “senior correspondent for NPR,” even though that title was accurate.

Alicia C. Shepard, the NPR ombudswoman, said at the time that Mr. Williams was a “lightning rod” for the public radio organization in part because he “tends to speak one way on NPR and another on Fox.”

Ms. Shepard said she had received 378 listener e-mails in 2008 listing complaints and frustrations about Mr. Williams.

And one of those e-mails came from my household. Williams long ago gave up any pretense of journalistic integrity, and has been talking out of both sides of his mouth and trashing Democrats for years now. In fact it has amazed us in Riggsvedaland how he managed to hang on to his job this long. He layered his own political views over what should have been unbiased reporting so reliably that while he was still a reporter NPR changed his position to "analyst" to let him keep working. Good riddance. And BTW, wingers, the constitution guarantees that the government, not your employer, must allow you to speak your mind. Williams probably belongs to a union, and can grieve the issue if he wishes. If he doesn't, oh, well, that's life in the brave new right-wing free-market world.

UPDATE: Squirrel!! Clearly the problems facing the country pale beside the firing of some talking head that most of the outraged masses wouldn't have known from Eddie Haskell until last week.

UPDATE 2: And please, enough of this. Williams compromised himself and NPR as journalists practically every fucking time he opened his mouth. Everyday in my real life I work on cases where individuals' civil rights have been violated, and this man was in no way a victim of a) hate speech, or b) an abridgment of his right to free speech. There are certain things I cannot talk about, and things I cannot do, because they will violate my employer's standard for ethical employee actions, things that most other people are allowed to do. This does NOT make me a victim of civil rights violations, and if I repeatedly choose to violate those standards and get canned, that does not make me another Emmett Till. The best and most sensible comment yet made about this was by James Wolcott, who wrote:

When the camera is on Poor Juan, he begins to wobble, unsure of himself, trapped in enemy territory and suffering Hamlet indecision. The war was a bad idea--but we can't pull out, can we?--drilling in Alaska--it's gotta be bad for the caribou or whatever's up there--but these conservatives make a lotta sense--I can't see me driving a solar car anytime soon--oh God now they're going to bring up partial birth abortion--I guess I'm against that but I'm also for a woman's right to choose--I wish the other guys would stop glaring--Brit looks like he's about to snap at me again, and Fred--Fred's snickering again--Fred's always snickering at me!--someday I'm going to stuff those snickers down his throat! Then, his eardrums beating from the pressure of the voices in his head that won't leave him alone, Juan often concedes the argument but shakes his head to show he's not fully convinced, his way of salvaging some scrap of dignity. We will know this pressurized process is complete the day Williams walks into the Washington studio as a black man and walks out as a disgruntled honky--then he'll really blend.

Well, clearly that day has come and such a relief it must be for Williams, able to capitulate to conservative middle-aged white men without having to fret about whatever flak he might get back home at NPR. After his craven flying Muslim comments, which originated let us recall with his deferential pandering to Bill O'Reilly's bullying need for validation, his contract was terminated by NPR and Fox News snapped him up for $2 million. Within 72 hours, Williams has gone from a muddled sincere victim of sound-bite to full Bernie Goldberg blowhard apostate. From Talking Points Memo:

Here's Juan from this morning on the events of recent days: "This is evidence of one-party rule and one sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech and writing. It leads to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought."

One-party rule? The Gulag? The gulag of Fox News chat millionaires.

Well, now he can Uncle Tom to his heart's content and feel like he's Solzhenitsyn.

Oh, and as an aside, I'm finally pretty sick of this asshole and his bipartisan fantasy wanks.

Study in Contrasts

In Europe they know how to handle this kind of thing:

Company Head Arrested Over Sludge Torrent in Hungary

Here we would put him in charge of the clean-up, then let him chase journalists away from the spill site and feed bullshit statistics to the government, after which everyone would puff up and brag about how they never let him get away with a thing. Because conventional wisdom in the U.S. would be that the worst possible punishment is to take away the goddamn bonus and do a lateral transfer.