Having It Both Ways

Art vs Life

One way to put it:
"Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it." --Vladimir Mayakovsky

I don't know what that really has to do with anything right now, but I got to thinking (usually kinda dangerous for me) about parallels and coincidences and intersections, and I can't help but assume that there's no way I'm the only one in the world who wonders about the eerily converging similarities between the Duke brothers from the movie Trading Places and the Koch brothers.

Mortimer and Randolph Duke

Chuckles and Davy Koch

Olbermann On Joe Pa

It's one of the saddest things ever. Joe Paterno has been a hero for a lot of us for a very long time. And while I think this is something that happened as much in spite of his management rather than because of it, I also think this is a good example of what can happen when somebody stays in a position of great power for way too long.

Word is that Paterno will resign at the end of the season. I have to agree with Keith on this one (fire his ass today), but I'd go one more step and say that Paterno should be in front of a judge right now, trying to make a case for why he should not be in jail.

NYT Late To The Party - Again

Some pretty decent analysis from Numerian at The Agonist, on the main reason our 4th estate is in the middle of an Epic FAIL.

As an ex-subscriber to The New York Times, I too have been outraged by such stories, but not because I read them in the paper of record, which is not simply very late to the game of reporting on this phenomenon - it is too late. I’ve been outraged by these stories because I have been reading about this for years on internet blogs. Some of the most persistent reporters and analysts who write about this problem include Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, Yves Smith at the Naked Capitalist blog, and Karl Denninger at the Market Ticker blog. All three of these writers have no doubt lost some readers over the years because they write about these stories over and over, and manage to maintain a sustained fury over the debasement of the rule of law that is evidenced by the way the big banks operate, and the inability or refusal of the government to do much about it.
These are the sort of people who have been criticized for years by The New York Times for sloppy reporting because they don’t have to live by the strict journalistic standards that are upheld every day by the mainstream media.

Whether or not this is true – and for the most part these writers have been careful about ensuring that the facts they present are verified – it is definitely the case that mainstream media reporters and analysts have not taken the angry, vituperative, and in some cases vulgar tone that bloggers take when talking about the collapse of the rule of law.

Therein lies a problem, and it is one that the mainstream media is only now beginning to comprehend. The undermining of the US Constitution and the laws as passed by Congress, and the refusal by government to investigate or prosecute these violations, which are now rife, represent some of the most serious challenges imaginable to a democracy based on a republican form of government. Anyone who takes their responsibilities as a citizen of the US seriously should be outraged by these circumstances.

Maybe we're starting to see some signs of revolt from inside the closed-loop crony-driven system which has tied Business, Government and Press together into a neat little bundle. We need that rebellion because we've allowed our little experiment in self government to slip into the oldest game in the world - ie: once everybody's guilty, nobody can be held responsible.  We have to figure out how to split it all up again, and put clearly discernible dividers back into place.  Balance has gone out of the system and must be reestablished.

Let Herman Be Herman

The allegations of sexual misconduct against Herman Cain will win him the nomination.

And here's the frame-up:  "It's just another instance of racist America's eagerness to condemn a black man for daring to approach a white woman.  The Democrats have a shameful history of this, you know.  All that Jim Crow stuff was because the Democrats were in charge of things in The South for way too long." (that's in quotes because it's what I expect to hear - not what anybody has actually said)

It doesn't matter what Limbaugh and all the others said about how Clinton's philandering exposed a character flaw that made him unfit to serve - this is the age of Confirmation Bias after all.  We can cherry pick the coverage and the analysis, and just choose what we wanna believe.

It just seems so fucking weirdly typical.  The leading lights for the Repubs and 'conservatives'  do, in fact, display a veiled racism on a pretty consistent basis.  Welfare Queens; Barack The Magic Negro; Food Stamp President; etc.  But now they've decided to play some kind of intra-race game.  They look at Obama, and they see a guy who's done almost exactly what they always say everybody should do.  He came from humble beginnings; he dreamed big; he worked hard; and he made it all the way to the White House.  He's devoted to his wife and kids; he loves his job; and he wants to serve his country.  What have the Repubs been telling us they want in a president that's any different from ANY of that?

Well - here it is: Plenty of people in general (and Repubs in particular) believe the crap about a big chunk of the 'black community' being anti-smart.  They're expecting a lot of black people to look at Obama and think, "he needs to back off a little - he's acting too white".  Cain fits their frame because he's their anti-intellectual black guy, which makes him the perfect anti-Obama.

Like Ann-The-Man Coulter said: "Our blacks are just so much better than their blacks".

Shocker In Ohio

From a local NPR affiliate:



Listening to this, I got the feeling that I was hearing the famous Left-Leaning Bias that 'conservatives' are always carping about.  But when I listen to the national shows on NPR (eg: All Things Considered), there's nothing even approaching this.  The Repubs have done such a thorough job of brow-beating CPB, nobody has the balls to say anything bold on the air. All we ever get is the notion that every side of every issue is perfectly valid, and oh yeah - "both sides do it".

Am I to understand that some random 3rd string nobody on public radio in Ohio is actually The Liberal Media?  And how long before the anti-media harpies swoop in to pluck out his eyes?

John Mayer And Herbie Hancock

I think this is what Weather Report and Brian Auger always had in mind, but could never really make work on a regular basis.  This album is a little spotty too, but when it's good, it's really good.

Professional Left Podcast 100

Episode 100 from The Professional Left:

(hacked from Crooks and Liars - how proud my mom would be)

Featured links:
Newt Gingrich lauded by WaPo

Rachel Maddow rips on Paul Wolfowicz

The Pentagon's double-dip on weapons

The Perpetual War Portfolio

OWS With Triumph

The Late Great Washington Post

The only reasons I go to The Wa Po any more (other than the Sunday crossword - which is usually awesome) is to mock George Will, or to find new ways to call Marc Thiessen an asshole.

James Fallows at The Atlantic has by far the best reason to tell Wa Po to pound sand.

Headline: "Where job measures go to die"
Subhead: "Another bill fails in Senate"
What actually happened: The bill got a majority in the Senate, 51-49.

But because Mitch McConnell's GOP minority has resolved to filibuster everything the Administration proposes, the measure never came to a vote on the merits. The Democrats, with "only" 53 votes (including 2 Indeps), cannot get 60 votes to break a filibuster, since the Republicans with 47 always-unified pro-filibuster votes, can stop anything they choose.

American Taliban

This jackass is a sitting judge in Texas who presides over a court that hears a lot of cases involving child abuse. His name is William Adams.

The Daily Mail has a good report.

Elizabeth Warren Heckled

Everybody gets to say what's on his mind, even if he insists on being a complete asshole about it (speaking from experience here).

Two things I really like about this:
1) Warren quiets the crowd when they start to go after him for calling her "a socialist whore".  She's a fighter and as sweet as she sounds, I'm betting she can cut you to ribbons when she feels the need, but she keeps it cool and there's nothing the guy can push back against.  Conflict resolved.
2) As is usually the case, the heckler was prob'ly a little nervous about being kinda shitty in public, so he needed to make the statement and then stride purposefully from the room - for dramatic effect.  But the door at the front is locked.  He tries the opener a couple of times, and then has to walk past the crowd to get out.  His body language is defiant and proud, but nobody's paying any attention to him, so again he has nothing to fight.  He's just some random dick callin' people names.

(hat tip: Crooks and Liars)

Random Shots

Today's pix:

Allow Me To Reiterate

Matt Taibbi has written a lot of this before, and practically nothing is being done about it.  An awful lot of the people who should be in jail are the ones who keep telling us to keep pushing forward; keep working at it; it'll take a huge effort, but we'll get there if we just keep pluggin' along.  I hate the feeling, but some of these pricks had better start gettin' some serious prison time before the OWS hippies lose out to the angry mob.

When enough people find out they have nothing left to lose, it only takes one good leader - somebody who can whip the crowd into a rich creamy lather - and then they simply come to your penthouse and take what they want.

It's a kind of social extortion that's been going on forever.  Most people don't begrudge rich people being rich.  It's being said more often in the press now, but most Americans are OK with unequal results; even when it's obvious you never worked a day in your life to earn it and you just got lucky and won the birthright lottery.  Good on you.  Fuck a super model for me.  Who knows, maybe I'll get my chance some day and we can fuck one together.  But when the game is rigged, and everybody knows it's rigged, and a bunch of Silver Spoon Legacy Pukes are out in the open about trying to make sure it gets even more rigged, then we gotta a problem, son.  The unwashed masses will sit still for a lot as long as they believe they have a legitimate shot at makin' it big someday.  The economy is Confidence-based in more than just a paper money kind of way.  Once that confidence is betrayed, everybody loses everything.

The whole game was based on one new innovation: the derivative instruments like CDOs that allowed them to take junk-rated home loans and turn them into AAA-rated instruments. It was not Barney Frank who made it possible for Goldman, Sachs to sell the home loan of an occasionally-employed janitor in Oakland or Detroit as something just as safe as, and more profitable than, a United States Treasury Bill. This was something they cooked up entirely by themselves and developed solely with the aim of making more money.

Read more: Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi

Say What?

This is what it looks like when you step on your dick wearin' track shoes.



These guys need us to blame government; to blame Fannie and Freddie; they know they've screwed the pooch in a huge way, and if we don't go along with their bullshit explanations, confidence goes out of the system; and since confidence is what holds up this kind of "modern economy", the whole thing craters in on itself.

One other point: Remembering that it's never about what they say it's about, if Bloomberg is out saying shitty things about Washington, it could mean that there are some very "candid discussions" going on behind the curtains.