the defeatists!

This might be the beginning of the end of the Muslim Threat. Or not...

Still, if history is any guide, the news that the FBI has arrested someone for plotting with people he thought were Al Queida to blow up DC subway stations is actually kind of reassuring. The FBI has its issues, of course, but it's been really great at infiltrating screwed up organizations and taking the nutcases down. The German American Bund, the KKK, the American Communist Party -- the FBI did such great jobs of infiltrating these things that the joke about the Commies was that most of the people at any party meeting, function or sewing circle were informing on each other to each other...

Thanks for comming out, ehh?

First there was this--

Then there was this --

But this is, without a doubt, the greatest motivational speech of all time.

Any score less than a B should spell defeat! But, it won't...unless...

"Support the troops!" "Care for the VETS!" and yet, here we are. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America is a reasonably non-partisan group and has published a legislative score care of its legislative lobbying and then looked who voted for what. Crusader AXE was not surprised at the lousy scores posted by lots of Republicans, but was kind of amazed at the extent of the correlation. In Arizona, for example, both Senators scored D. Really, John McCain. Linsdsey Graham scored a C and his buddy, Mr. Teaparty DeMint scored a solid F. Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning both scored Ds. Only 3 of the 57 Democrats posted  a score below a C in the Senate was Russ Feingold (who manages to piss everybody off), Carl Levin, and Arlen Specter who was a Democrat for about 60% of this congress.

It would be interesting to compare the ratings of the Senators in the IAVA poll against a more right wing organization. It's hard to be an upstart organization for Vets and be totally nonpartisan but IAVA tries. But, take the Club for Growth -- they rank people by their adherance to their ideology. Since Vets  Download Comparison of Senators , CFG -IAVA does it on a more specific set of issues, we might see more mix than perhaps between other rankings. Well, we don't...Of the people with the top scores from the Club for Growth, all were Republicans, 1-15. Of the bottom scores, 86-100, all were Democrat, except Arlen Spector who was a Republican since Nixon. Four of the Club for Growth's folks top folks were Vets; four of the Club for Growth's bottom folks were Vets. One of the bottom 15 for the Club was rated by the IAVA as INC; however, Senator Al Franken of Minnesota is trending toward a B, and has voted with the Vets on 6 of 9 issues.

The lowest score of the Club for Growth's Top Performers was 70.16; the highest score for the bottom 15 was 3.01. Conversely, the highest score from IAVA for a Club for Growth Top Performer was C; two of the bottom 15 were rated C by the IAVA, two were rated A and the remainder were rated B. A couple of other interesting trends: one Democrat in a tough race went from an A+ rating to an A (Barbara Boxer) while another went from an A to an A+ (Blanche Lincoln).

Another interesting trend is the VOTE FOR/VOTE AGAINST TOTALS from the IAVA. In the House, I looked for names I'd recognize on the lists. Since Nancy Pelosi doesn't  vote as Speaker of the House unless there is a tie, I really don't know a lot of the Democratic House Members. So, this is totally subjective and perhaps odd, but I would guess that the vast majority of the Democratic Members were listed as C or higher. In the House, since they babble more than Democrats in the Senate, I was kind of stunned at the Republicans on the list that IAVA explains as "These legislators must improve their voting records if they are to legitimately claim that they support Iraq and Afghanistan veterans." Such great patriots as Michelle Bachmann, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Joe Barton, Roy Blunt, Dan Burton, Darrell Issa, Ron Paul Jean Schmidt and Louis Gomhert all claim to totally for Veterans and the Troops, but scored an F. Not a D, but an F. Now, a few Dems are probably sprinkled in here, I suspect but the only one I recognized was John Conyers of Michigan, who is a somewhat unrepentant leftist. Still...aren't these the people talking about impeaching the Senate and supporting oddball candidates who wander around in Nazi uniforms, worrying about GAYS, GODS, GUNS and "unAmerican congressional members," and so on? Oh, and apologizing to BP? Really -- the district that Joe Barton represents in Texas bleeds RED, WHITE and BLUE as well as Gray and AGGIE Maroon. Joe Barton hates the troops...And, Ron Paul? Seriously...Ron Paul? At least he's consistent. Not unlike Conyers and Feingold, he's not going to pander to a voting group but a D? On Vets issues?

Similar and starker in the Senate. There are nine members of the IAVA's A Team, defined by IAVA as "These legislators showed a consistent commitment to support our troops. On behalf of all veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we say thank you." All 9 are Democrats, and several -- Boxer, Lincoln and Wyden are in tough to relatively tough races. Some of these folks have nothing to gain electorally by pushing a pro-Veterans agenda. Christin Gillabrand and Chuck Schumer are from New York; the big concentration of veterans in New York are upstate and as a dumbass Irish guy from Syracuse, I know the liklihood of people in upstate going overwhelmingly for the Democrats. Gillabrand is not having a hard time against her opponent, but this is not what's going to put her over the top. 

Now, the Senate's D team is really interesting: Thirty-three members, and 32 of them are Republicans. Russ Feingold is a contrarian asshole, and if he loses, he loses. The Democrats need more party unity, and voting against the Reform Bill because it wouldn't require the appointment of Elliot Spitzer as Witchhunter Profundis with an auxillary of Brandeis Law Students as his sans coulettes for Wall Street showed that he's too pure for the world. And, it's consistent -- he's opposed to all entitlements, even those earned by blood. Fuck him. On the other hand, the Republicans... All those great patriots like Saxby Chambliss who won his seat from a Max Cleland by lying, innuendo and basically pissing on those of us who wore the uniform of this country; Lamar Alexander who took Al Gore's old seat in 2000 and used to look like a moderate Republican. Now, of course, that's a very endangered species. The two Senators from Arizona and the two from Texas are waltzing across the bridge of sighs; Kyl is just a rightwing jerk but McCain, Cornyn and Hutchinson claim strong patriotic, pro-troop, pro-veteran credentials. Well, you can claim whatever you want to; it's up to voters to pay attention. They probably won't but...maybe they will. I can understand Jeff Sessions place here, since a lot of Veterans are people of color, and he's pretty consistently shown he's not in love with people of color, except Clarence Thomas. He's also joined by his leader, Mitch McConnell and Sessions' (the temptation to type Secessions was extreme, but I managed to avoid the pun!) partner from ALADAMNBAMA, Richard Shelby. Of course, that favorite son of the south, John Thune of South Dakota is there...I know that the plains states have a relatively high proportion of veterans so this makes little sense, except he's counting on those farm boys as either being unable to read and count -- fingers and toes having been lost at Inchon or shot off in other conflicts over the years -- or he just plans to lie. Of course, the saints -- Coburn and Imhofe of Oklahoma (which also has a lot of Vets, what the hell is wrong with us? and our organizations? Are we stupid? One must wonder...)are joined by the sinners Ensign and Vitter.

I can dislike Feingold's position and still say that if he's defeated it will on balance be a bad thing; I can admire Ron Paul's attitude toward the Federal Government even though I don't agree with it and respect his consistancy. But, the overwhelming majority of these assholes are the guys who were upset when President Obama didn't wear a Flag lapel pin, and love nothing more than going to a Tea Party Rally and being cheered by folks who think that these guys are for them. They're not. They never have been. They never will be. And, it's up to us to help our deranged brothers and sisters to see the light.

Hey, if you think it makes sense to cut consumer protections and aid to Veterans, the aged and children, more power to you. Goddamn it, campaign on that. However, saying you're for liberty while wanting to cut Social Security benefits or VA medical care is simply impossible. Like an atheist going to Mass, Temple and the Mosque you're nothing more than a goddamned hypocrite. And, maybe someday we'll wake up...

Christian charity? From "Christians?" You on drugs? Must be great shit!

Reasonable people can agree to disagree; unreasonable people need to be exposed to reason. Eric Wattree and Johnny Punish do so and they deserve to be read.

Every now and then I come up things that I wish I had written.  "On his last duchess" by Robert Browning. The opening riffs to Layla. The Declaration of Independence. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Two things on Vets Today hit me that way. The first is this piece on the Tea Party by Eric Wattree...

Let me ask you the above question again. Do You Trust the Republicans to show you Christian Charity? Many of you need to think about that, because when you hear those Teabaggers out there screaming that they want their country back, their corporate masters are depending on the fact that they’ve done enough damage to our educational system where many of you won’t know what that really means. In fact, many of the Teabaggers don’t know what it means.  If they did, they wouldn’t be out there.

What many Teabaggers don’t seem to realize is that corporate conservatives are using them like pawns to promote their own enslavement.  They’re using the bigotry of many of the social conservatives to carry out an agenda that they’ve been embarked upon since the end of the Great Depression – to undo the New Deal, which brought about all of the safety nets that serve to protect the economic lives of the poor and middle class...

Do you get on your knees every month and pray that God stop the utility company from cutting off your lights? No you don’t – you don’t have to, because God answered your prayers in advance by blessing you with the common sense to go pay the light bill.

*

The same is true of your freedom. It’s not going to do a bit of good to get on your knees and beg God to protect your civil rights if you don’t vote. God helps those who help themselves. So if you don’t use the common sense that he gave you and vote to protect your rights, the lights of this free society are going to be shut off just as surely as the lights in your home will be shut off if you don’t pay the light bill.

*

Thus, all of our childrens’ tomorrows may be directly dependent upon our gettin’ up off our asses today.

Brother Wattree has nailed the situation. Impeccable logic, and an honest, short exigesis of how we got to the point where the party of Lincoln advocates the end of economic freedom for all under the rubic of "local", and "privatization." Back in the day when rural children had to read things in school like "The Jungle" and "the Illiad," these idiots would not have gotten away with this. I'll stipulate that Chris Coons and Chrissy "Not Hynd" O'Donnell was not exactly Lincoln-Douglas or Darrow-Bryan, but come on. She went to a sleep away camp on masturbation and the constituion, and people take her seriously? We're ignorant. Here's a question -- ask Sarah Palin to explain the context of Jefferson's remark about the tree of liberty.

Johnny Punish is a artist, activist and provocateur. He should probably be a Defeatist, except Mr. Fun would be upset because he has better hair than Mr. Fun. Anyway, he takes the decline of American Freedom back to 1982...in a piece worthy of Richard Condon or Robert Scheer at their most conspiratorial or Hunter S. Thompson at his most trenchant.

In 2010, many believe that freedom is on the decline in the USA. Many seem to believe that this decline started on 9/11. With the Patriot Act passage and all the homeland security surveillance, that would seem logical but it would be very wrong. I mean most Americans have no clue on when the assault on their freedoms started. It was way back during the Reagan Administration. Welcome to reality!

Yes, 9/11 was a huge major event. Like any major earthquake, it moved the freedom fault off it’s axis but it was NOT the shot that started the decline. No-sir-ree, the shot heard across the known world that truly launched the end of freedom was made by a tiny thin lady with all the good intent of your own grandmother who just wanted to save our kids from falling into the ditch.

There was NO way that this grand dame of America could have foreseen the massive avalanche that she launched when, in 1982, she said that little phrase “Just Say No” to little schoolgirl in trying to give her advice on what to do when someone offered her drugs. She, like our own mothers, was just trying to care of our kids. Opps!

One of the problems that I face daily is dealing with rage. Most of us veterans do. We miss the camaradarie and trust that we had in the service; we miss the belief that someone has our backs. Brothers Punish and Wattree appear to be trying to cover us, if only we will let them.

Get too close I'll be gone like a cooooooooool breeze

Crosby, Still & Nash - Southern Cross

HK | Myspace Video

For some reason, I'm thinking of Steven Stills. At one time, people talked about Stills in the same breath as Clapton, Bloomfield and Hendrix. His demons kept him from really slamming the American consciousness the way he could have. Still, (No pun intended) For What It's Worth and Suite: Judy Blue Eyes are incredible. Graham Nash is supposedly working on Stills tape library -- Nash has been associated with him for over 40 years, but was stunned when he started the project. "In the 60s and the 70s, he recorded with everybody." Stills used to wander around with a guitar and Jimi Hendrix in New York and London, just walking into clubs and asking if they could sit in. Now, that's what the blues and rock and roll are supposed to be about. Sitting in, and playing to stay alive. Steve Stills could probably be the poster boy for the Defeatists. Talented beyond belief, but stymied by...rainbows? Fate? Alcohol? Love? He's a cancer survivor now, and the new re-united Buffalo Springfield project should be interesting. He and Neil Young feed off each other, and I'd be interested to see how Jimmy Messina and Richie Furay (whom I dislike and who foisted that pimple POCO on the world of rock and roll) fill it out.

Anyway, some things from Stills. At the time of Southern Cross, Crosby was so out of it they'd turn off his guitar. I referred to them as the Genius, the Braindead and the Twit...I really find Nash's Guitar god posing annoyingly amusing or amusingly annoying. Four chords, and you'd think he was Rory Gallagher...
Where Stills generally seems like a Bluesplayer -- I wonder if he ever sat in with John Lee Hooker?

And now, for something, completely different...

They walk, they talk, they crawl on their bellies like a reptile...You make bad choices, Floyd.

What's the difference between Larry Flint and Linda McMahon?

Pretty simple -- she's got more money and is not as bright.

Flint defended his porno empire based on pornography as political speech. McMahon defends WWE as not as bad as it used to be and protected by the constitution...because women on leashes and barking like dogs in spandex halters and speedoes makes money and making money is protected by the rights of the...Chamber of Commerce?

Absurdity time...armageddion time! (Update because I can...)

From Matthew Yglesias via Krugman, Laurence Meyer, a former Fed governor exposes something amazing...

"The content of his assertions sound completely insane, and yet to the best of my knowledge are 100 percent true:

There’s also another tradition that began to build up in the late seventies to early eighties—the real business cycle or neoclassical models. It’s what’s taught in graduate schools. It’s the only kind of paper that can be published in journals. It is called “modern macroeconomics.”

The question is, what’s it good for? Well, it’s good for getting articles published in journals. It’s a good way to apply very sophisticated computational skills. But the question is, do those models have anything to do with reality? Models are always a caricature—but is this a caricature that’s so silly that you wouldn’t want to get close to it if you were a policymaker?

My views would be considered outrageous in the academic community, but I feel very strongly about them. Those models are a diversion. They haven’t been helpful at all at understanding anything that would be relevant to a monetary policymaker or fiscal policymaker."

I just read an article that was recommended on Linked In as a "entailing of the bank cartels." Turned out to be not so much...the article was by one of the leaders of the Austrian School of Economists, and celebrated the downfall of John Maynard Keynes. Well, the guy who wrote the article died in 1995. "Timothy Leary's dead....and so is Murray N. Rothbard." Rothbard should be read, as should Keynes. Schumpeter. Ricardo. Adam Smith. But, read with a grain of salt...things have changed, and when a positivist fanatic like Greenspan confesses that his fundamental assumptions were wrong about regulation and banks and interest rates and human nature, a critical thinker needs to be more critical.

I disagree with the fundamental premise of the article, that Keynes has been proven wrong or irrelevant. So do the current crop of topeconomists like Paul Krugman.  As I said, the article is actually very dated, since Rothbard died in 1995 as the Austrian School was triumphant and driving Gingrich and the Republican congress.  Keynes was pretty much ignored during the Reagan, Bush I and II and later Clinton administrations due to the influence of the wing-nuts of the Republican party who were advocating oddities like tax cuts during a war. Although in theroy, Keynesian thought has been vindicated in the recovery from the "Great Recession," it has really only been applied around the edges. The limited successes of the stimulus spending have been due to the timidity of the amount invested. The monetarist versus fiscal divide really has stayed on the side of the Austrians -- unless something changes radically with Sumner's departure, we'll probably stay stuck.

TARP didn't do much for troubled assets; the rapid return of most of the money to the federal government is not necessarily something to celebrate. Like it or not, we are a consumer driven economy, and if consumers aren't working and aren't able to access money to purchase, then there's not a lot of space to grow the economy. Which works well, I guess, for social media that depend on out of work and sub-optimally employed folks to read, review and hope as the pieces come in.

I'd love to see an uptick in manufacturing and construction. If there's a lot of work building infrastructure, then there are going to be a lot of purchase orders for concrete, steel, asphalt, copper wire and heavy equipment. More design work for engineers, more construction work and on and on, down to more sales of roach coach cheeseburgers and coffee to people working by people working.

Banks doing especially well and finance companies doing especially well is a terrible leading indicator. Banks and financial services should, in a healthy and growing economy, probably lag the other sectors. They haven't and that should be troubling to all of us.

"Fair play to the man. You can't blame him, can you?"

You know, as we siddle into the home stretch for the election, I'm amazed by the absurdity of the American people, especially the knee-jerk right. I was talking to a fellow this past week and he's not an idiot. He's a typical white, middle-class professional soldier who made the comment, apropos of nothing, that he couldn't wait for his absentee ballot to vote against Patty Murray (Democrat) of Washington. "They say it's a battleground state, and it's important to get people like her out..." His adoring girlfriend who used to work for me caught her breath, and the other two people at the table visibly shook. Expecting, of course, the usual response from me...icy logic, facts and a crescendo of motherfuckers. Instead, I said "Patty Murray has been excellent for Vets. Her first job was with the VA at American Lake Hospital. She's backed the military on everything, and been a great advocate for the GI Bill. Dino Rossi, her opponent, made his money as a real estate speculator in King County. He's anti-Vet, and anti-military. You do what you want to but...you know who's rated near the bottom by the Disabled Veterans of America on Vets Issues -- John McCain! You were in combat; do you think the GI bill is a giveaway?" Well, he kind of backed off, admitted his disappointment with McCain on the New GI Bill, admitted it was a great help to him and the folks in the service,  got red and muttered about getting back to work. He's a new First Sergeant, and I said, "Yeah, I understand. You know someone is doing something awful someplace and it's your fault. Good luck..."

Two articles posted on The Raw Story got my attention. The first is about the continuing financial meltdown in Ireland. Their bank bailout is going to cost them $69 billion, and since there are only 4.5 million in the population, they're still trying to get their arms around what happened. The quote above refers to a guy who painted his cement truck with anti-banker, anti-capitalist slogans advocating the firing of all politicians and then drove his truck through the gates of the Dail, the Irish Parliament and left it. He's now a folk hero of the Great Recession of 2009. Ireland can do without more folk heroes.

The second has to do with Las Vegas and Nevada. Unemployment is almost 15% -- that's the official rate, there is probably a real rate in the 30% range -- and the economy state wide is in free fall. As a result, Sharon Angle and friends are circling like vultures -- whom she resembles physically as well as intellectually and spiritually -- and Crusader AXE is placed in the awkward position of hoping Harry Reid pulls out a win.   

What is worrisome now is the nature of this economic downturn, when many people saw the value of their retirement funds or homes collapse. Economists say people are less likely to gamble as freely as they have in the past, particularly baby boomers, who may now be rattled about their retirement years. In one sign of this, while there were more people coming to Las Vegas in recent months, gambling receipts have remained stagnant...The downturn in gambling is just one big part of the economic malaise. Nevada is paying a price for an exuberant and often speculative run of commercial and residential construction that has left the market glutted. As a result, the confidence that the return of tourists alone would spur the city to rebound automatically after this recession -- the way it did after, say, the recessions of 1982 and 1992 -- is absent.

The Irish have developed a knack for describing this, and it's one that we should adapt. People asked on the street how they feel are more than willing to talk about it, but supposedly they first apologize for the cursing they deem the only appropriate way to express the depths of their feeling. The article cites headlines that condemn "Wanker Bankers" and "Crooked Politicians." Wankers, for those of you not up on your British Isles vernacular are jack-offs. While I though Hank Paulson and Dick (DICK) Cheney resembled a pair of flaccid penises (penii? my Latin is rusty), I can't picture language like that on the front page -- FRONT PAGE -- of the Dallas Morning News or Newsday.

However, although that sort of anger is symptomatic of the Tea Parties, which is intriguing since the guys digging us out are not the guys who got us into it. Let me tell you, I'm having issues with the idea that giving tax cuts to rich bastards is the way to help the middle and working and used-to-be-working/middle classes. The logic escapes me. I'm sure that the good people of Nevada are willing to march through their torchlit streets -- the libertarian-right state government can't fund street lights off the stip in Vegas -- cursing Harry Reid, but that's about as logical as taking Marie Antoinette's pastry chef to the guillotine.

Taking a note from Ireland may not be a bad idea. As NPR's correspondent pointed out, there are limits to the efficacy and audacity of rage.

Discourse in Ireland over this issue has become so acrimonious and heated that one of the more weighty newspapers, The Irish Independent, today took the unusual step of publishing a front-page editorial appealing for national unity, and for an end to the "shambolic and hysterical debate." It wrote: "Such is the depth of the country's problems that action is what is required, not anger. As the Finance Minister (Brian Lenihan) has observed, anger is not a policy." (empahsis added)

However, Ireland's anger is unlikely to die away any time soon.

There's nothing wrong with anger when thinking about policy. That anger needs to be ice cold, though and focused on fixing the situation, not on revenge. Governing well will be the best revenge on the crooked, stupid, masturbatory, blind and tone deaf. Unfortunately, the American people may not let the government govern that way. The president may be reduced to playing defense...which would be a terrible shame.

I think Patty Murray wins in Washington State; I think Barbara Boxer wins in California. Reid probably wins by 1-3% in Nevada. Despite Frank Rich's vapors, I don't see Christine O'Donnell winning in Delaware in this or any recent century. But places that can really be hurt -- Kentucky, West Virginia, Connecticut, Florida -- may not be able to overcome the lack of direction on the part of the good and furious intensity of the evil.

Since I'm not exactly sure what we're turning into...

Blogging is more work than you might think. My brothers have generally lost interest although they occasionally through something up although they are more into gorilla theatre on Tumblr and Facebook these days. Frankly, this gets old at times. I'm pretty sure that we're not a porno site, and I'm pretty sure that we're still left-libertarian. That said, this is one of my favorite pieces by the poet laureate of New Hampshire who now lives in Jacksons Hole, Tom Rush. It may be apropos, it may not. It is incredible and now I know it's in an open tuning. Bastard.