Dumb and dumber

Unfortunately, I'm referring to me.  I should know better, but after avoiding right wing blogs since shortly after the election, I just couldn't help myself and wandered over to The Corner tonight after the Obama shindig.  A couple of whiny complaints about stem cells (not too bad) and some KJ silliness (nothing to see here, move along) and then I was smacked upside the head with this dandy from Jonah G:

A Question I Wish Someone Asked Tonight   [Jonah Goldberg]

From a reader:

Jonah; I have never seen this point made:  all of Europe, which has nationalized health care already, is also experiencing the current economic crisis.  Why does Obama believe that bringing national health care here will in any way save us a similar economic crisis in the future?  He keeps repeating that only if we get health care costs under control will we have “real” prosperity, but the countries that have already “tackled” this problem in the past were not spared their own economic meltdowns.

Uh, Jonah and friend, the reason you have never seen this point made (at least in cognitive circles) is because it doesn't even begin to make sense.  I'm reasonably sure that the derivative traders, uber-creative "financiers" and the rest of the criminal Wall Street crowd weren't trading in health care futures...

Shit - that question is so stupid I can't even come up a parody comparison.  I keep going back and re-reading it and...

Like I said - I should know better.

Where have you gone, Ray Suarez?

For anyone who doesn't get the reference, Suarez was the longtime host of NPR's Talk of the Nation.  Last I knew, he had moved on to Jim Lehrer's PBS show.  He was a remarkable journalist, speaking fluently on a wide array of topics and he asking the most pointed, informed, enlightening questions I could have imagined.  He was a joy to listen to, regardless of the topic, and I frequently scheduled travel time for the 1-3 p.m. time slot to hear his show.

I don't catch much of the show anymore, and Neal (Neil?) Cohen strikes me as something of a lightweight.  He also seems to be enamored of his role in the beltway chattering class and it really colors his questions.

But today I caught a piece of the show where some giggly guest host was having a "political round table" with another beltway chatterer questioning whether Obama was "laughing too much" and showing a lack of...I don't know...somberness (apparently that is not a word but I don't care) by appearing on Leno and talking about the NCAA tournament on ESPN.  

Beyond missing the absolute irony of holding this discussion on a "intellectual" news program, they relied for support of this hypothesis on a guy traveling the country for the first hundred days who talked to a few people in a diner this morning.  Gallup would be proud.

And this is the high end.  I'm starting to think we deserve whatever fate we get...

The Great Compromise

"I used to sleep at the foot of old glory

And awake in the dawn's early light

But much to my surprise

When I opened my eyes

I was a victim of the great compromise"

For those of you scoring at home, that's John Prine from...I don't even know when.  I also don't know, btw, which of the many great compromises our government has served up to us that he is so eloquently referencing.  Probably Vietnam and the faux populism wars like that demand.

Regardless, I'm feeling it now.  I think the Treasury Department needs some sort of slogan for the cash shoveling currently underway:  "Bankers and Financiers First!"  "No Banker Left Behind!"  Something...

And while I'm not ready to take up my pitchfork and join the "populist uprising" or express confederacy with the misplaced outrage of the Rick Santellis of this world, I am indeed starting to lose the faith.  And though I am far from an expert in the complex economic issues at play here, I understand enough to sense the swirling sound of "hope and change" sliding into the sewer hole with the mountains of cash we're feeding to the criminally inept folks who created this mess.  

Meanwhile, the recipients of our cash infusions send us notices that, well, darnit, we're just going to have to tweak up your interest rate by 6 or 8 points, or raise your insurance premium by 40% due to "economic circumstances beyond our control..."

Watching The Watchmen

And I did, last night. Either I've become a completely unsophisticated dufus (entirely possible), or I've achieved some sort of cynical immunity from sloppy stories and crappy metaphors and the like. Regardless, that is three hours of my life I'll never get back.

Yes, I get it. Duality. Good and bad in all of us. I saw The Dark Knight (where they missed the real opportunity to make him heroic by choosing to have him violate everyone's civil rights - means justifies the ends, sounds familiar, blah blah blah...arrrgh) and that was plenty of that lesson. It was also a much better movie than The Watchmen (though still utterly forgettable to me).

The story line in The Watchmen was hackneyed and full of gaping holes and lousy plot devices. And some really bad "oooh" moments (I know a few therapists and none of them carry a briefcase full of Rorshach cards and nothing else). And the whole midget in prison scene? What did we learn from that?

I could continue but I'll spare you. We should have seen "I Love You, Man". At least you're going to get what's advertised...

Oh, and I can't help but comment on having an opening montage so long they had to stretch out "The Times They are a Changing"????? Get some editing scissors, dudes.

Is anybody there?

Wow. I didn't even look but I haven't been here in a long time. A lot has gone on since whenever it was...I didn't speak a word about Obama or recession or all the craziness in my own life. I think I actually had a lot to say but couldn't find the time or the energy to put it here.

Maybe now...maybe things are clearing up.

I listened to some John Hiatt yesterday while I was watching my daughter at gymnastics practice. I've found new music (new to me, anyway) recently and sort of lost track of him. It sounded great and made me think of here and all that has gone on over the past few years. I'll have some things to say about that in the coming weeks...

"Is this the place I can rest my poor head
And gather my thoughts in sweet silence
And is this the place where the feelings aren't dead
From an overexposure to violence
And is this the place I can slowly face
The only one I truly can't know

These are tears from a long time ago
I've got these tears from a long time ago
And I need to cry thirty years or so
These are tears from a long time ago"

Oh, and happy birthday Emily.

Torture

My old friend Bob sent me a link to this Esquire article which is a travelogue of sorts written by a soon to be new father who participated in torture as a representative of our government. I had read the article a few weeks back, flying home from Tucson, and was really...really impacted by it. I remember not being sure if I wanted to keep reading at the jump, or whether I should just go back and re-read the bad joke section.

Anyway, I did finish it, and then Bob sent it along today as part of an ongoing, group discussion that I would loosely describe as a friendly debate amongst a group of people who can't believe we are where we are.

I was sending a note back to Bob and the group about the article and I wrote something to the effect of, "We're all victims of torture when it's done in our name..." I'd have to go back and see exactly what I said, but it wasn't something I thought about or considered. It just came out, which is sometimes how truth is revealed. Patty calls it the "cuclunk sound of insight." Some might describe it as epiphany, but it didn't feel enlightening. Just depressing.

That was an enormous pain in the ass

Jesus. Take 10 or so months off and they change the whole world. Perhaps I'm not meant to blog, because it took so long to get through the blogger system and set up new accounts and grapple with the eternally appearing empty sign-in screen I've forgotten what it was I was going to write about after all this time.

But, I guess the work is done, so I'll probably come up with something...

Right and Wrong

I was musing about something to write about this evening and the old James Carville book, "We're Right, They're Wrong" came to mind. Of course, that was back when Carville actually was a "Spirited Progressive" and not a media mogul/whore. I actually liked the book because it argued, as I recall, that fundamentally, progessive ideas are what's best for America and Americans. They also tend to be better for the world.

It got me thinking about the actual arguments about what we're doing as a country, as opposed to the slick marketing and media chicanery that passes for political debate these days. It reminded me of late 2002 and early 2003 as Bush and Company made the case for and then, case or otherwise, invaded Iraq.

In my professional life I am surrounded by conservatives and they uniformly lined up to support the case. I got urgent cell phone calls during Colin Powell's (false) presentation to the UN telling me about the weapons of mass destruction and the mobile labs. Breathless co-workers would race into my office as the war began to report the latest finding (false again) of WMD's. Everyone around me knew that Saddam Hussein was practically sleeping with Osama bin Laden. All work in my office ceased in order to watch as they (in a staged event) pulled down the statue of Saddam, and the consensus was that Bush would be on Mt. Rushmore by the end of 2003.

My conservative colleagues used every imaginable slur- I think they were following some sort of Ann Coulter Talking Points Memo - to malign me and my liberal (you have to say that with contempt) ideas.

Of course, I don't hear much of anything from this group anymore. I was right on every point - not because I'm a brilliant geopolitical thinker, but because I stuck to my progressive instincts and didn't buy the hype. And it wasn't always easy. Because I was too young to really understand Watergate, and a little too something else to get the full measure of Iran Contra, it was hard for me to believe that so many people - our leaders - were just flat lying to take us to war. But as we all know today...

Of course, this is just one of many, many examples of where we progressives have argued - mostly amongst ourselves - that some policy or program espoused by the Bush adminstration was a bad deal. And today, on every point I can think of, we were right.

Which is a very long winded way of recommending this post by Kevin Drum, who addresses this topic from a different angle (and more eloquently) and also manages to get a few digs in at Wal Mart, which always warms my heart.

Sometimes you have to wait for it...

I wrote about instant karma a long time ago here. It really is my favorite form of justice, and there's something much more satisfying about a guy who burns a mouse to death for sport and winds up with the mouse burning his house down than all the trials and punishments in the entirety of the US Justice system.

But, as is the case with most things of value, you usually have to wait for it. If instant karma were a frequent reality, people around me would be bursting into flames daily - at a minimum. It can be worth it, though, and such is the case with Katherine Harris, who laid all the groundwork for the Supreme Court to appoint our current president.

Although the downward spiral for her has been fast and violent (and I feel no sympathy at all, unlike the more charitable folks at TPM), I'm not sure there's any fate that could befall her that would even out the karma score. Looking around at the devastation and destruction that Bush has wrought in so many places on so many levels, even I can't come up with a suitable fate.

Line of the Day

From Matthew Yglesias, subbing for Josh Marshall over at TPM:

Ignorance is, if not bliss, at least widespread.

An Unholy Alliance

Driving back to my office today, I caught a little bit of Al Franken's show on Air America. He was discussing the state of the welfare state in America with the head of Catholic Charities. His guest (whose name escapes me) was a priest who spoke articulately and passionately about the sad state of affairs for the poor and working poor in this country.

After one of the commercial breaks (why we have this on subscription satellite radio is beyond me) they had the traditional "bumper music" playing back into the discussion. It was odd to hear a live version of "Franklin's Tower" by the Grateful Dead playing while Franken did his voice over announcement of his guest, the priest, talking about welfare. Cognitive dissonance.

Which matters none to the discussion, which confirmed that, by every objective measure, the poor and working poor are worse off than they were 5 years ago. And although Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress ended "welfare as we know it" in the 90s, everyone forgot to follow through with the health care support and child care support and light rail transportation systems and training that make it possible for welfare recipients to transition into the workforce.

During the Clinton years, those things were less of a priority because the booming economy meant a scarcity of labor. This translated to fast food joints offering signing bonuses and base wages higher than minimum wage, and obviated much of the need for the support systems. But everyone - Clinton included - knew that would end someday (the scope of the massive thud and continuing downward spiral were only understood by those who "saw into the heart" of George Bush) and that the huge migration of people from welfare to work would reverse course.

The problem we're facing today is that the safety net is largely gone and none of the support systems ever materialized. So, welfare as we know it is gone. Poverty, as we've always known it, marches on, leaving the most vulnerable among us with nowhere to go.

"In another times forgotten space,
Your eyes looked from your mother's face..."