Warning to Children

Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, and muchness,
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and pare the rind off:
In the kernal you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed in dappled
Red and green, enclosed in tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel-
Children, leave the string alone!
For who dares undue the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by the dappled
Green and red, enclosed by the yellow
Tawny nets, enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,
With the same brown paper parcel
Still unopened on his knee.
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
He lives- he then unties the string.

By Robert Graves

Currently playing: The Raincoats Odyshape

A Year Later, Little Change on Wall Street

More casino capitalism under socialism for the rich. Meanwhile, the right rouses the moron minority to protest extending basic health care coverage to all Americans, not to mention putting a lid on the profit gouging health care industry. The upside-down world logic of the free-marketeers and their satanic bargain w/ bible-thumping social conservatives soldiers on. It'd be funny if I felt more certain ab their inevitable surrender.

Currently playing: Dump Grown-Ass Man

The Obama Conspiracy Theory Challenge

Leslie Savan @ The Nation


Currently playing:Serengeti Dennehy

Listen to the thunder: Did Sonics leaving doom Nickels?

In a recent colunm this is the question sports columnist Art Thiel explores: did the Sonics leaving Seattle doom incumbent mayor Nickels reelection bid?

First, a little context. Seattle’s incumbent mayor, eight years in office, Greg Nickels, just got beat in the primary by two guys w/ very little to no political leadership experience: one guy says he’s going to fix Seattle w/ managerial skills he learned as a top executive in the wireless industry and the other guy is running on a platform to kill the tunnel project and have the City takeover the public schools. (Writing this, it occurs to me that some might think I’m making this stuff up. I’m not.)

(And let’s also remember that the 75% who did not support Nickels in this primary represent ab 10% of the eligible voters in Seattle. I bet he still would have won in a general election and I bet that’s a bitter pill to swallow in the Nickels camp right ab now.)

Couple points ab Thiel’s question: Did Sonics leaving doom Nickels?

Settling for cash, as Nickels did, rather than continuing a case to make the Sonics stay in Seattle until their contract with the Key Arena ended in 2010, a case that most think the law was on the side of the City, was a cowardly nebbish move. No question. Right, anything could have happened in those two years— like an economic meltdown! Maybe Clay Bennett and his Oakies could have been pushed to sell the team to someone local. I don’t know.

But Howard ‘Starbucks’ Schultz-- repeat after me-- sold the Sonics to someone from out of town in the first place, w/out making any public gesture to sell the team to someone who would for certain keep the team in Seattle (there are plenty of people with that kind of money here), thereby flagrantly fucking over Seattle Supersonic basketball fans!

So Schultz is Seattle enemy Number One on losing the Sonics. But Nickels
does at least deserve more blame than Bennett, who I still hear people blaming. B/c, they say, he said he’d try to keep the team in Seattle, are you kidding me?! It is complete idiocy to have expected him to do anything other than what he did.

Commissioner David Stern deserves special mention as a creep here, too, for his patronizing blackmail threats to move the team if the City couldn’t build an arena— unlike The Key, he decreed— up to NBA standards. Standards that have nothing to do with the cost or spectator experience for the average fan, by the way.

Thiel also throws some shame on Seattleites for not supporting large public subsidies for sports franchises. I’m of two minds on this one. I can sympathize w/ taxpayers. Safeco was built even though the public had just voted down public support for a new stadium b/c of the ecstatic momentum created by the M’s victory over the Yankees in the ’95 playoffs (the peak moment so far in the M’s 30 plus year history). I’m glad we have Safeco but can see how the public might be sore over this. W/ the revenues coming to pro sports it doesn’t make much sense that they receive tax subsidies, or not w/out the public having more of a stake in their connection to the city. Meaning: they can’t be sold to another city w/out the public’s consent. Look at the case of the Sonics, duh! This is where Nickels did have a chance to stand up for the city and he turned the ball over, gave it away, so to speak. Maybe some sonic fans voted in the primary. I did and not for Nickels.

On the other hand, this city does seem to have a problem getting behind big civic projects. It’s astonishing how long it’s taken this city to get a little patch of light rail. Oh, light rail’s a huge developer’s appropriation of public funds that would be better spent on more buses or bicycles on every corner or stand-up scooters for everyone, shouts the opposition. Rail transit seems like a nice feature in Portland and SF and NY and Chicago and D.C. For every big civic project proposed here there is a virulent opposition. Now it’s the tunnel. This guy, Mike McGinn, garnered enough support to oust Nickels b/c he opposed a tunnel project to replace Highway 99 through downtown and open up the waterfront to more touristy foot traffic. Again, the imagined result sounds nice. But it’s a huge misdirection of public funds, so say the opposition.

You might expect this is your typical anti-tax/govt spending stuck-in-the-muds but most those people live outside the city. More likely it's a swelling eco-friendly civic responsibility movement that is popular enough to block such big projects but, for me, hasn’t yet (or can’t?)come up w/ appealing big vision alternatives.

Too Cool For Woodstock

Chuck Eddy’s antidote for all the Woodstock anniversary puff pieces appearing everywhere. Let’s face it, the music from this iconic event was, w/ a few exceptions, a “tedious snooozefest.” As “a modest proposal” Chuck suggests an alternative lineup that would have made the three-day concert more exciting and memorable musically. I’m w/ him here until he suggests replacing Jimi & Janis. Before me, I see a stampeding horde of old hippies with pitchforks. It’s not just that the event was ab more than music, for some who were there, apparently, the music was irrelevant. I saw this piece recently where the couple who appear on the cover of the original concert album look a lot older, they are still happily together (yay), and they have no memory of the music at the event at all. For them it was more like this mass give-peace-a-chance happening. For others, it was an exhibition of the potential size of a segment of society, a counter culture. Which turned out to be valuable mostly as a marketing audience. Still, even if it was more ab “peace, love,” or marketing, than “music,” Jimi & Janis are part of the Woodstock brand. Love the idea of Archie Bell & The Drells on the bill, though.

Currently playing:"Tighten Up," Archie Bell & The Drells

Invented post-disco RnB-

Big fish eats little fish-

From NY Times editorial

Moebs Services, a research company that has conducted studies for the government as well as some banks, reported recently that banks will earn more than $38 billion this year from overdraft and bounced-check fees. Moebs also estimates that 90 percent of that amount will be paid by the poorest 10 percent of the customer base.

More "too big to fail" is socialism for the rich-

From Robert Reich (Clinton's Secretary of Labor)blog:

The insurance [govt bailouts]these "too big to fail" banks are receiving makes them more like public utilities than private firms. As such, not only is it entirely appropriate for government to review their pay but also to make sure pay is kept within strict bounds -- not $100 million, not $10 million, not $7 million, but far, far less. As long as you and I are cushioning them, their top brass should be earning just about what the top brass of any public utility earns (which, when I last looked, ranged from $100,000 to $600,000).

The big banks have a choice, of course. They could opt out of the "too big to fail" system. They could break themselves apart (or invite antitrust agencies to do the breaking for them) so they were no longer too big to fail and won't be bailed out the next time they make hugely stupid mistakes. Then they could award their executives and traders as much money as they wanted and as the market would bear -- because then they'd be part of the free market instead of wards of the state.

Currently playing: Neil Young's Live at Massey Hall

Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?

No.

But they do need to know how to teach— which is what education degree programs are supposed to teach. Being scary smart or possessing an elite Ivy League education is no guarantee on the “how” part of teaching K-12, I can assure you.

I was annoyed that I had to earn/pay for an ed degree to teach kids but I got two important things out of the experience: 1) I had to talk ab the how of teaching, or pedagogy, w/ a multicultural mix (specially funded by the Pew Charitable Trust, I was enrolled in a cohort w/ over 50% para-educators of color)(paras are non-certificated staff who assist teachers— usually only English Language or Special Education teachers— and they often comprise most of the non-white staff in the schools where I have worked) of 60 other would-be teachers and four professors (it was like a year in a cross-cultural encounter group); and 2) I got to apprentice in a couple public school classrooms with (if not amazing mentors) experienced teachers. The latter was invaluable if for no other reason than once you’re in a public school classroom you are mostly on your own. There just isn’t much room in the day for much mentorship or collaboration. It’s you and a bunch of teenagers in an overcrowded classroom. Sink or swim.

On the other hand, my degree program felt padded and a little disconnected. By the second year students were impatient and grumpy. Others have given me a similar impression of their ed degree program experience.

In some cases these programs even give off the fumes of a racket. The continuing ed program in Washington, instituted after I’d already entered the profession, thankfully, just reeks of backroom deals between state legislators and higher education: ‘okay, we’ll support raises for teachers if you make our continuing ed programs for teachers required.’ And it’s not that I’m opposed to continuing education. It’s a travesty that critics talk ab the importance of teacher academic preparation without bemoaning the fact that, of all professions, public school teachers rarely receive money for rigorous continuing education. And so it’s not surprising that most teachers fulfill their cont ed requirements with coffee and cookies clock hour seminars.

What ed degrees are supposed to do should probably really be part of an apprenticing, probationary, period for new hire teachers that includes a lot of collaboration and mentorship and participation in book groups on education theory. On the job training. Make it three year’s long, give new teachers three sections their first year, four their second, and a full schedule that final year of the apprentice program. (In fact, all Ed PHD candidates should, minimally, have to go through this practicum b/f they begin their research, if you ask me.) One advantage, here, is you’d reduce the number of unemployed teachers with education degrees and so this aspect of the higher ed racket. Most importantly, you’d separate the chaff from the wheat teacher-wise much more efficiently. Educators lament the number of teachers leaving the profession b/f they’ve taught five years, and this on top of their expensive one or two year ed degree program. It could be done better.

If you really want to raise teaching standards what is needed is more time for teacher planning collaboration and more money for continuing education. The fact that teachers have to pay for almost all their continuing ed out of pocket, in the field of education of all professions and w/ the current focus on raising teaching standards, is the height of hypocrisy.

Should people with undergrad and advanced degrees in subject matter (history, English, math, etc) be able to go straight into teaching? W/ some sort of on-the-job mentorship and pedagogy training program, sure.

(See the NY Times Room For Debate blog for other perspectives.)

Currently playing: "Tin Birds," Blank Dogs

The Amazing Lightening Bolt!

Jamaican Usain Bolt sets new record(9.58)in the 100 meter sprint in Berlin. I cannot recall any sprinter in my lifetime who has so dominated the field in the 100 that he could cruise at the finish line as Bolt did in Beijing. Someone ought to create a superhero comic book about the guy.

Currently playing: Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Health Care Crucible: Public or Private?

Fits over health care reform at congressional Town Halls around the country have dominated the cable news for the past week, so the Pres weighs in with a NY Times Op-Ed. Perhaps it’s his measured style, or intended to counter the “loud voices,” but it comes off too lukewarm. Once the hysterical opposition talk about “death panels” and, gasp, “socialism” (“We gotta stop this madness before we turn into Russia,” one woman stammered in frustration. It’s still the Cold War! Later the same lady admitted on some cable news show that she didn’t hear a word of what Arlen Spector said in response to her question) blows over it’s going to come down to costs. How is this thing going to be paid for? Universal coverage means increased costs. Meaning: higher premiums. Making it illegal to deny people coverage because of their medical history is going to increase costs. Meaning: higher premiums. It is extremely hard to believe that cutting wastes and inefficiencies (networking records, bundling payments for doctor care, etc), as good as these ideas might be, will cover these increases in costs. Taxing the rich might get us universal health care but it won't stop inflation in health care premiums and costs. Or let me put that more directly: based upon what evidence could we possibly believe that health insurance companies given this scenario will NOT continue to raise premiums? Backroom handshakes w/ Big Pharma? Over the last decade or so health care premiums paid by people, families, has grown three times faster than wages. The measures to keep the insurance companies accountable that Obamacare is now talking about, at the height of the debate, involve coverage issues but not, seriously, costs. Sure, I think everybody should have access to basic health care. But Obama is still pulling punches w/ the corporations, and has apparently given up on the importance of the public option, or in his words, "keeping the insurance companies honest." Come on, the profit gouging will continue without a not-for-profit public option to keep the private insurance companies, yep, honest on costs. The NY Times prints some University of Chicago economist (also something in the Washington Post)explaining why any public option (under a "fair" set of regulations)would not impact health care costs significantly. His case is not convincing. How is it all those European countries and Canada get way more "care" for the buck than we do after all? Tell me it has nothing to do w/ the fact that as public services they don't have to pay CEO and managerial supersalaries or hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising and lobbying the government? So, apparently, we're going to get universal health care and more inflationary health care preminums and costs. This is the great democratic compromise on the table at the moment. And when costs do blowup it will be blamed on Obamacare, of course. Wall Street is going to be O’s undoing, I'm just saying.

Currently playing: Best of Tom Ze

Yes-we-can in the just-say-no days-

Currently playing:


Couldn't find an original but this will do, although the cover shot is just the kind of MJ pic I cannot bare. (Close your eyes or be prepared to do so b/c otherwise there are some fun dance sequences.) From the special edition version of Bad. Four or five great tracks on that LP but this is the overlooked gem. I might have liked Pretty Woman if this ditty would have been part of the soundtrack.

Job Losses Slow, Signaling Momentum for a Recovery?

This is one of those kinds of front page stories on the economy where the headline and reporting seem to be at odds. Editors must hope most readers won’t read much past the encouraging headline because the reporting chips away until by the end of the story you have almost the direct opposite sense from what the headline has suggested.

The first paragraph establishes that the employment report serving as the basis for the story is somehow encouraging despite that fact that businesses have not started hiring or even stopped shedding jobs.

In the second paragraph we learn the good news is that fewer jobs were lost in July(247,000)than any month in the last year. The unemployment rate actually dropped from 9.5 to 9.4 but this was because a lot of Americans have simply given up looking for work. Good news?

There is anecdotal evidence from businesses that the pressure to cut jobs is ending but several paragraphs on we register what’s lacking from the other side of this equation is that there remains no sign as to when they might start hiring again! Something like 15 million Americans have gone over six months without being able to find any kind of job. This is a 61 year-old record. Again, many more have stopped looking altogether.

There is a lot of talk about the 700 billion stimulus putting the brakes on job cuts and jumpstarting a recovery. I’m sure it hasn’t hurt. But how does this 700 billion measure up to the spending cuts at the state and city levels continuing across the country?

Currently playing: Wayne Shorter Speak No Evil

notes from summer '09 road trip

Drove over 7,000 miles in 19 days, seeing friends and family, watching lots of baseball, eating way too much junk food.

Saw the Boise Hawks play Salem-Keizer Volcanoes; Short Season A ball, affiliates of the Cubs and Giants. The guy who MC’d the betw inning entertainment (usually standing on one of the dugouts w/ cute kids from the crowd or the high school-age girl ushers) carried on like some fringe character from a David Lynch movie: bushy headed, Hawaiian shirt, pot belly, shorts, smarmy prime time DJ banter, something sleazy behind his steely smile. Fun baseball, although more raggedy than the majors, of course. The heckler sitting next to me mentioned a couple of players being almost washed up at 23 or 24. Someone needs to write a book ab some great minor league careers. Not just those guys who finally make it to the Bigs, but also guys who played their whole careers in the minors. The latter including a majority of major league managers today, right?

The shapes and colors of the canyon lands of S. Utah and N. Arizona are striking and beautiful but then you finally get to the Grand Canyon and it is so “grand” it takes your breath away, a miles wide and long and seemingly deep, craggy rock chasm in the earth. I might be one of the last Americans to see it b/c most of the other people there were Europeans.


Santa Fe, NM looks like a pastel beehive splayed across some shrubby desert foothills. On closer examination, however, it’s my first taste on this trip of tourist glitz: guys in fancy shoes w/out socks, women carefully tanned and accessorized, an upper middle class cheesy kitsch to the place. A lot of the art looked like stylized road signs or unused furniture. Georgia O’Keeffe would be embarrassed. All of which I say as if I knew what the fuck I was talking ab after a hour walk around downtown.

So I’m speeding betw Amarillo and Tulsa, banging radio stations betw audio books, when I find two guys and gal talking about health care reform. They say the health care proposals in congress will increase abortions by providing more tax dollars for abortions and/or requiring insurance companies to pay for abortions. Dripping w/ sarcasm they insinuate that the whole health care reform effort in congress is really a stealth effort by liberals, Democrats, so-called progressives, immoral secular humanists to promote abortions. The stuff ab liberal motives is right wing boilerplate crap (can’t you just see James Carville rubbing his hands together in diabolical glee, “More abortions, yes!”). Still, extending coverage to more Americans by sheer numbers alone probably would increase the number of abortions. What is the number of women now who don’t have abortions b/c they don’t have insurance coverage or can’t afford them? So these guys would have us believe that it is more important to prevent abortions (any abortions) than provide every American w/ basic health care, let alone allowing every woman the right to choose whether or not she gives birth. Righteous creeps.

Outside my motel in Tulsa stood a dense orchard of green leafy trees, from which a buzzing whine blared upon my arrival. A ringing metallic sound so startling I stood listening to it for minutes waiting for someone else to come along and explain it to me. I’d heard Cicadas b/f but never this screamingly loud. I would have asked how locals deal w/ them at night, sleeping, but I never noticed them over the air conditioner in my room. Never tried any fried Cicadas, either.

I wish I had taken a picture of people along side the road, sitting on the tailgate of their pickups, the back full of watermelons or some other assorted fruits and/or vegetables, sunflowers, etc.

What makes Busch Stadium is the fans, the sea of red. I liked the country music soundtrack (although I doubt enough that I’ll track any of it down) but that was all they played. And, honestly, the Stan ‘The Man’ Musial statue out front is too cartoonish, looking like some superhero baseball player from The Incredibles.

Parts of north St. Louis looks broken and neglected. Talk ab the recession there would be a cruel joke; it’s always a not-so-great depression in this part of town. Where’s the stimulus money supporting entrepreneurial efforts in these communities? And I don’t mean a Starbucks.

The immense public works in downtown Indianapolis look like this life-size model of classical imperial architecture made out of poured concrete.

The Cubs and White Sox, w/ their combative managers, Lou Pinella and Ozzie Guillen, have to be one of the best rivalries going in interleague play. Guillen, recently said of the Cub’s park, “Wrigley Field is just a bar.” My kind of bar, though. As baseball parks go, it’s charming w/out being ostentatious. The ivy, the spoked, half-wheel steel framing, the bleechers on top of brownstones across the street. You miss all the information delivered by the jumbotrons found at most MLB ballparks and then again you don’t, either. At the field level, anyhow, the aisles are roomier than the tightly engineered sardine can seating found in most newer parks. They serve this frothy pilsner called Old Style. They sing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” louder than any other park I’ve attended. And, if they win— which hasn’t always been that often!— their victory song spills out into the street. Right, a bar, but a damn good bar.

At the White Sox new U.S. Cellular Field they have an open causeway like at Safeco. That’s where you can see the field from the main concourse all the way around the field. Nice feature. But, otherwise, Cellular feels a little non-descript and generic. Super big billboard ads ring the outfield. It does the job but seems, in Chicago of all places, lacking in character. Old Comiskey Park’s home plate in the parking lot is maybe the best Cellular has to offer.

The thing ab the Chicago style hot dog is that it’s not really ab the dog at all. So it’s 100% Vienna beef, big deal. They are no better than your average dog served at the local Cost Co. W/ the Chicago dog it’s really ab how you dress the dog. Ketchup, which I’m tempted to agree w/, is considered a sin. Instead, they insist upon serving the dog w/ a small salad on top. Not just any salad, though, but this particular Chicago style salad, which is hotly disputed, but goes something like this: shredded lettuce and tomato, glo-green relish, spear of pickled cucumber, sport peppers, and celery salt. They’re good.

Sculptor Henry Moore is one of those kinds of artists so iconic that reaction against his style only goes to affirm his greatness. Abstract, elemental, sexual, all curves, entangled, enveloping beauty; ab presence and absence, isolation and connectedness. Overly serious, perhaps. But always viscerally pleasing.


I lucked onto an orchestral music performance at Frank Gehry’s Pritzker Pavilion in Millenium Park. Should not be missed.

On a road trip, McDonald’s is a pit stop oasis b/c of their reliably clean bathrooms. So I’m in one near Milwaukee (some suburban mall expressway). There are at least five TVs in the place, one even broadcast on the mirror in the bathroom! All of them are set to the Fox News Channel. On Fox they’re talking ab the doubts and fears of Americans regarding the health care reform proposals in congress: they’ll ration health care, old and weak people will be euthanized, they’re an underhanded effort by godless liberals to increase abortions, they’re a guvment takeover by a blackcommiesocialist in the white house! Working stiffs, families, old people watch silently, munching down their burgers and fries. People ought to leaflet these places w/ the address for the O Team’s website debunking these industry supported distortions.

Wisconsin is lush, green, and fragrant farmland.

What is it ab big tree-lined streets in college towns like Flagstaff, Ann Arbor, Madison?

The Metrodome in Minneapolis brought back nightmares of the Kingdome. The cavernous concourse; shivering under the interrogation lights of the dome; the superball bounce of the indoor turf; the echoey blare of the sound system. But I saw some good baseball at the Kingdome and the Twins certainly have some storied history of their own at the Metrodome. Besides, they finally move into a new outdoor ballpark next year. It’ll feel to fans like a get out of jail free card. But what will happen to Kirby Puckett street?

What makes the Badlands so bad? It’s not that they are without beauty. The canyons, ravines, colored rocks, plains of prickly shrubs and dusty roads and vast horizons. It’s b/c it is merciless land and you know anybody living there w/out air conditioning would have to be tough as leather. Generally quiet but capable of ferocity like the lightening storms driving along I-90 through South Dakota and Wyoming.

Drove through Yellowstone too fast to see any bears.

Long road trips and audio books are a perfect combination. Enjoyed them so much I tried listening to one at home only to find I couldn’t stay focused w/out the wheel and scenery of the road.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: In case you haven’t heard of it, episodic panorama of life on the antebellum Mississippi. Important lessons from the story: fear and desire, equally, make people do stupid things; loyalties often defy common sense; w/out lying life would be dreadfully dreary.

The Old Man and the Sea: ode to heroism in work.

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Always enjoy stories ab the Spanish Civil War, but this one is weighted down by lots of the kind of corny romantic machismo you expect in Hemingway’s writing.

Nobody Move, Denis Johnson: More corny romantic machismo, actually. But also more humor and humility, messy desperation, and gritty sexuality. Good crime novel; good fast-food reading.

In Defense Of Food: Eat food, mostly plants. More leaves, less seeds. Avoid: processing; ingredients you don’t understand; “refined” sugar and carbohydrates (meaning: pop and white bread). Don’t rely on nutritional additives and don’t trust nutritional claims (including “organic”). Grow your own and/or shop your local farmer’s markets. Eat “real” food b/c the Western diet of fast food kills.

The Plot Against America, Philip Roth: What if fascism would have taken hold in America? What if aviator, national hero, and Hitler protégé Charles Lindbergh would have been elected President of the United States in 1940? Story told from the perspective of an 8 year-old Jewish boy from New Jersey. Equal parts funny and fucked up. The story achieves a believable balance of whimsy and tragedy but ends abruptly, leaving an incomplete, unsatisfying feeling.

Cobra II: Peloponnesian War-length account of invasion and occupation (although way more on the invasion) of Iraq. Would-be/should-be lessons learned: 1) The incredible arrogance of Rumsfeld and the Bush Team that they were going to transform the military approach to combat with efficiency management strategies from the corporate business world and “shock and awe” technology; 2) The compelling evidence that the domestic campaign for the war— shoddy intelligence ab WMD’s, trumped up links to terrorism, spreading the expectation that Iraqis would receive American soldiers as liberators, and a stubborn commitment to fighting a high-tech war w/ as few soldiers as possible— cost innocent Iraqi and American lives; 3) The incredible amount of “friendly fire” soldier’s face in combat; 4) The amazing acts of courage by soldiers in combat; dragging comrades to safety under a hail of deadly fire, etc; 5) The lack of adequate planning and commitment to empowering Iraqis to organize and rebuild their own country after overthrowing Saddam was as criminally irresponsible as the manipulations to snooker congress and the American people into supporting the original invasion.


Great way to see the country.

Currently playing:"Street Walker," Michael Jackson

"Dream On" By Robyn

Thugs and badmen
punks and lifers
locked up interns
pigs and snitches

Rest your weary heads, all is well

You won't be strip-searched, torn up tonight
you won't be cut up, bleeding tonight
you won't be strung out, cold, shaking to your bones
wishing you were anywhere else but right here
So dream on

Thieves and muggers
tricks and hustlers
cheats and traitors
scum and low-lives

Rest your weary heads, all is well

You won't be sad or broken tonight
you won't be squealed on, ripped off tonight
you won't be back-stabbed, double cross, face down
teeth knocked out, lying in a gutter somewhere
So dream on

So dream on

Freaks and junkies
fakes and phonies
drunks and cowards
manic preachers

Rest your weary heads, all is well

You won't be pushed or messed with tonight
you won't be lied to, ruffed up tonight
You won't be insane, paranoid, obsessed
aimlessly wandering through the dark night
So dream on

So dream on

You won't be insane, paranoid, obsessed
aimlessly wandering through the dark night

So dream on



Currently playing:Robyn's "Dream On"

Neil Young, 1970-71

Phil Dellio on the massively expensive Neil Young Archives box set (first installment!). It's still too rich for me but this does make me want to take some Neil on my road trip and replace my old bootleg cassette copy of Massey Hall as soon as possible.

The Embarrassment go with the Force--

Currently playing: "Don't Stop Until You Get Enough," The Embarrassment

The Black Van Gogh

don’t stop until you get enough

“Listen up and I’ll tell you a story/about an artist growing old/some artists go for fame and glory/some artists aren’t so bold.”-Daniel Johnston

Michael Jackson was so bold. His rocket to fame may have been fueled by terror but it was blazingly bold terror. Prince of Disco. A West Side Story for the MTV 80s. Military regalia that made him look like a dictator from a Third World country.(Or for awhile there maybe it was all the TW dictators wanted to look like Michael?!) But w/ one white, sequined glove, of course. Jackson was the man who would be king. The self-proclaimed: King of Pop. And if you’re talking numbers who, beyond Elvis Presley and the Beatles, both with considerable headstarts, could possibly contest his crown? Thriller sold more than a 100 million records. The next closest is AC/DC’s Back In Black with 45 million. MJ more than doubles the rest of the field.

A friend complained to me recently ab not being able to connect w/ the 24-7 coverage of Jackson’s death. Glorifying a pedophile, was his objection, basically. I blustered back ab what a singularly brilliant icon of American entertainment he was, blah, blah, forgiveness, blah, blah, and then dismissed his post-Thriller music as strained, stuck in caricature. Typical second-hand rock snob humbuggery.

Truth is beyond the biggest singles I barely knew his post-Thriller music. I’d never heard until recently the three albums he put out after Bad (’88): Dangerous (‘91), Blood On The Dance Floor (although I know some or most of this material from the History Part 2 CD) (’96), and Invincible (’01). Truth is I felt squeamish ab Jackson myself. But I turned him off before the pedophilia soap opera began.*

For me, it was his evolving/devolving/mutating appearance. He looked like a freakish plastic surgery casualty. I think I even remember the video where I turned away: “Remember The Time,” or if that’s the one where he and some perfect African model are Egyptian pharaohs or some such. He looked like he was wearing a creepy Diana Ross theater mask. I cringed looking at him, shocked by what he’d done to his appearance. Forever after I’d channel surf past him faster than you can say Jerry Springer Show.

But then the day he died I started playing his music again. We grew up together, for goodness sake. "ABC" on TV is one of my most exciting early pop memories. When I was living in group houses in the '80s he was moonwalking. He’s barely a year older than me. “Don’t Stop Til I Get Enough,” “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” “Human Nature,” “Man In The Mirror,” “Smooth Criminal,” etc. The guy completely invented post-disco RnB. He ate hiphop for lunch and then served it as an after-dinner dessert. But I’d played all those songs silly when they came out. I wondered what the hell he has been doing musically for the last twenty years?!

So I’ve been checking out MJ’s 90s and beyond music. I was familiar with more of this inspriational stuff than I expected in that way we pick up massively popular music in the air, radio, out of cars, in malls, dentist offices, on the street. It's astonishing how many of his lyrics from this period directly fuel the tabloid soap opera. Sings MJ in “In The Closet,” from Dangerous, “Something about you baby that makes me want to give it to you/just promise me whatever we say or do/ you’ll keep it in the closet.” But then he throws everybody off by using female pronouns. Right. Makes me wonder if his lyrics were ever used evidence against him in the child abuse trials? He sounds increasingly embattled and isolated; he is part of the culture but sounds a part from it too, both solipcistic and universal.

At any rate he was definitely NO musical caricature of his former self in the 90s. There is no sign of decline until at least 2001’s Invincible and then that’s arguable. During the 90s his music in several ways expanded, growing in variety and depth.

His funk rocks harder than ever. Check out “Who Is It,” “Give In To Me,” the aforementioned, “In The Closet,” or “This Time Around.” Play these songs up against your favorite grunge, Nine Inch Nails, or whatever hard rock from the same period. Nothing as classic as “Billie Jean” but they stretch his rock inclinations without sounding like retreads. They feel less like a crossover novelty than “Thriller.” They are angry Michael w/ angry guitars.

His inspirational balladry, a weakness in his solo work of the 70s and 80s (“We Are The World” aroused the first MJ backlash, as I recall), grows in depth and songcraft: “Heal The World,” “Keep The Faith,” “Gone Too Soon,” “Earth Song” “You Are Not Alone,” “History.” Sure, there’s a lot of Hallmark card sentiment in these songs but I find their let’s-all-sing-together gospel fervor more uplifting than “God Bless America” at post-9/11 baseball games. In every one of them it’s as if he were trying to top that gospelly Coke commercial, "we'd like to give the world a coke," in hand-holding pop universality.Pleading for unity over cynicism is fine by me w/ a nice melody or beat.

What stands out in this period as something different for Mike are these personal songs like “Stranger in Moscow” and “Childhood” going gothic. This is music not quite like anything he’s done— uber-loungy Judy Garland-Barbara Streisand-Nelson Riddle-Robert Plant baroque pop elegance— and he totally owns it, as good as my beloved Dusty Springfield doing “What Are You Doing With the Rest of Your Life” or any other song I’ve heard in this style. His vocals soar, delicate as gossamer wings, dramatic as Liz Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, plucking and dropping intimate flower petals of melody in a slow hypnotic dance, like some pied piper of the apocaplypse. Compare these w/ ballads from his early period, “She’s Out Of My Life” or “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.” In the 90s his voice assumes a heft and virtuosic richness unavailable to him before. His singing is stunning.

On the other hand, “Childhood” also stands out as a song in which he takes head-on the tabloids attacks: “People say I’m not okay/because I love such elementary things/It’s been my fate to compensate for the childhood I’ve never known” and “Before you judge me/try hard to love me/the painful youth I’ve had/look in your heart/and then ask/have you seen my childhood?” Yeah, but like Kimya Dawson says, “Having been fucked is no excuse for being fucked up,” either. She also suggests, in her songs "My Heroes," if MJ is guilty "off w/ his balls." All I know for sure is if he is guilty this has to be one of the creepiest great songs I’ve ever heard.

When he isn’t singing, he resorts to his post-JB jams. Pre-hiphop and anti-dance music people will never get this stuff but it's MJ’s bread and butter, really. Sure, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” and “Bad” and “Jam” are repetitious. But as long as you feel the force “keep on with the force don’t stop,” just like Michael says. And through the 90s he does not disappoint. Check out album tracks like “Can’t Let Her Get Away” and “Money” “2Bad.” He works the rhythm like it were an exorcism— his kinetic dance energy feverishly masterful. It's always state-of-the-art funky, incorporating current Rnb trappings and then showing the way. At his best, MJ makes the pleasure of rhythm feel involuntary and this will probably last as his greatest aesthetic achievement.

My overall sense is that his post-Bad records will eventually grow in reputation with his death. He's been set free and so has his music. Only Invincible starts to feel merely ordinary in Jackson terms. (Which means it was probably strikingly better than most pop long players put out that year. And talk about star-crossed: the guy puts out a record called Invincible a month after 9/11!) Dangerous and Blood On The Dance Floor, or what I know of the latter from History Part 2, are as unique and musically rewarding as Thriller or any other record he has made.

None of this is to suggest I haven’t had trouble following the TV coverage, too. I don’t want to see the dangling-baby-over-the-balcony scene ever again. He was unhinged, no question. I don’t know how anybody takes that many drugs. I don’t want to watch Joe Jackson plugging his new record label, again. I prefer seeing MJ at one of his last public events, the announcement of his proposed upcoming 50 shows in London. He’s decked out in an Elvis Presley shirt and hair, Ross fright mask, giving some Nixonesque peace signs. And then into a Kung Fu fighting stance he works the crowd with some grunts and stomps like he really believed he was going to do it to them all over again, as only the king of pop could.

And the best eulogy I’ve heard so far comes from radio talk show host Bev Smith on a News Hour last week. Brought on the show to defend all the MJ memorial coverage (how could Jackson be given more coverage than the cap and trade system being discussed in congress? groused a panel opponent), Ms. Smith would not give an inch, concluding one of her segments with “He’s our Van Gogh” or something to that clear effect.

The black Van Gogh sounds about right to me: Michael Jackson R.I.P.


*(So he's a pedophile? Duh, the guy built a theme park for pre-pubes in his backyard! The evidence as to whether he hurt children is not clear to me, although I’m no expert on the literature. But, I gather, nor are most those positively sure he’s a perverted monster.)

Currently playing: Michael Jackson

Need a life? Plenty of folks are willing to share their’s online.

From Melody McDonald in the Seattle Times:.

“Experts say social-networking junkies — people consumed with e-mailing, texting, tweeting, blogging, podcasting and videoing — are everywhere. They're college students, marketing professionals and journalists. They're attention-seeking extroverts and anxiety-ridden introverts. They're young; they're old."

My blogging isn't an addiction yet but it certainly does feel a little silly. No one is reading this. (Or this or that or laugh or don’t or think or don’t or tell me why or don’t or keep it to yourself or I don’t care that much. Do what you can, okay?) It’s a message in a bottle. It’s scrawlings on this bathroom wall, public restroom. (But no one writes back!) I’m part of none of the groups from which most social-networking junkies belong. I’m an attention- seeking introvert. And I’m old but not “old.” I’m like a blogging Yosemite Sam, “Where the hell is everybody, dagnabbit?” If I could only get Shaq to twitter ab me I’d be really big, living large. But is that what I really want?

Currently playing:Wilco a ghost is born

1969: A Space Odyssey

An A.O. Scott essay ostensibly ab Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey but in which said film is barely directly referenced. This is, however, not such a bad thing. He historicizes the film’s release in 1969, the year a man walked on the moon. It’s in the Space & Cosmos section of the paper. (BTW, 6% of Americans today believe the moon landings were faked.)

Currently playing:Fucked Up The Chemistry of Common Life

Art Thiel on the surprising success of the M’s through first half of 2009:

The M’s are unexpectedly over .500, 46-42, at the all-star break. So why not give some credit to the new coach and the new general manager. And, sure, throw in there some praise for the veteran clubhouse leadership of our depleted former stars, Ken Griffey jr. and Mike Sweeney, as Thiel does. But let’s also not forget to mention the most miraculously successful hitting by a handful of guys hitting close to or below the Mendoza (that's .200, as in NOT good non-baseball fans)line I’ve ever seen. They only hit when you absolutely need them to. It's uncanny. Now let’s hope they can keep this up all year!

Currently playing:"The Way You Make Me Feel," Michael Jackson

Too big to fail is socialism for the rich—

and who is and who isn’t too big to fail anyway?

Currently playing:Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy

Goldman Sachs- Up, Everyone Else- Down!

During the second quarter Goldman Sachs recorded the biggest quarterly profits in the institution’s 140 year history, while unemployment, pushing 10%, reached its highest point in three decades. Isn’t the amount, the humongous dwarfing scale, of financial investment profits on Wall Street that— and this is key— do NOT CREATE JOBS on Main Street an important, crucial, if not the biggest long-run, problem with the economy?

Currently playing:Flying Saucer Attack Rural Pychadelia

Leveraging success one customer at a time

I just saw the CEO of the reconstituted GM, Mr. Fritz Henderson, on the News Hour. It was like a scene from a Christopher Guest movie: imagine a folk music record executive, from A Mighty Wind, talking about coming back from bankruptcy. “Smoking hot!” Can’t find the video but here’s a taste from another recent Fritz presentation.

Currently playing:"Can't Let Her Get Away," Michael Jackson

Unsung Heroes of the Collapse

Banker's Holiday Continues, Part 8 (or 9)--
“Four of the [Banking] industry’s top trade groups spent nearly as much on lobbying in the first three months of this year as they did in all of 2001.” Stepehen Laboton, NY Times, 6/4/09


End of school: grading, graduation, and goodbyes. Gawd, I hate goodbyes. Kids have the get-out-of-jail-free smiles plastered on their faces since Memorial Day. They don’t want to sit through lessons about racism as a justification for economic exploitation during the age of imperialism; Kipling’s “the white man’s burden,” etc. “Yeah, right, Mr. T, can we have our party now?” RIF-d (i.e., “reduction in force,” a euphemism for you no longer have a job) teachers shuffle out the door wondering what they did wrong (nothing), blaming older teachers that don’t work as hard as they do. Everyone else heads home, again, shaking their heads.

This year’s graduates, the first batch at my school I taught as 9th graders, were especially touching as they crossed the dais with their diplomas, looking simultaneously like they’d been shot out of a happy cannon and totally unsure of where the hell they were going. Politicians like to huff and puff about our failing public schools (usually as a pretext for cutting funding and implementing some punitive accountability measures), but this year’s grads are better prepared for what lies ahead than I ever was, at least as smart as my generation, and a whole lot smarter than the collective stupidity of this country’s leadership since I graduated from high school.

But those goodbyes. I freeze up tight. I fear I'll explode in tears; red face, snot, choked up, “I’ll really miss you, man!” So I really have to psych myself up to make it through w/ the right degree of stoic composure, ‘onward and upward, summer adventures, don’t forget me when you make it big, fond farewell and pip pip cheerio.’ And, still, I probably reflexively do a little avoidance. But I muddle through, hug someone too tight, gush too much after a couple beers, but I make it through another year w/ my stodgy dignity more or less intact: happy to collaborate and learn from students and colleagues and do what I can to give kids a little leg up and over on their way who knows where, to English literacy and world citizenry! The stuff of teacherly hopes. But I still hate the goodbyes.

So, at any rate, I haven’t had any time (or emotional energy) for writing for awhile but I’ve followed the news on the economy some. (I can’t help myself.) Sorry to say, if you haven’t noticed (and if you follow only TV reports you might not have), but our side is losing. Sure, the stock market is rebounding, banks credit is loosening. Unfortunately, unemployment continues to grow (pushing 10%), there’s no certain ebb to the tide of mortgage foreclosures yet, and there are more blue hairs working at Fred Meyers. But Wall Street’s confidence in its ability to continue fleecing the public is rising, so things are getting back to normal. Some catch-up.

preposterous hopes— too big to fail?

Maybe foolish but there really did appear to be an opportunity in this economic crash, because of its shocking severity (“apple pie and Chevrolet,” the latter just went bankrupt!), to see some real political-economic reform. At minimum, some basic national antitrust wakeup call to the effect that private banks and corporations “too big to fail” are a threat to democracy and nothing more than a “socialism for the rich.” If a business is too big to fail then make it public, and so politically accountable, or reduce and limit its size so that it cannot become too big to fail. To fail to make this correction makes a massive shell game mockery of our democratic system, one that people recognize (here and abroad) even if they don’t understand the complexities of the economy.

banks win, consumers lose

It’s embarrassing, really. Despite promises and rhetoric to the contrary, Obama has given in to the status quo on Wall Street. Lawmakers who have discussed the issue with the administration say the president’s senior aides concluded that a battle with Wall Street was simply not worth the cost. What aides? His guys from Wall Street, Geithner and Summers? What costs? Their friends in banking, their investments?

It’s so galling you couldn’t make this stuff up. The economy tanks, demand plummets. The government pours trillions of dollars into saving the financial sector, instead of nationalizing and reorganizing it. So out of gratitude the banks sit on the money because they don’t want to start lending until they know the full extent of the damage from the housing crash. And then at the first signs of stabilizing markets they begin raising staff salaries, again, and rates on customers (you know, to cover their costs from losses in the housing market). Meanwhile, the O Team finally gets around to some “compromised” regulatory reform proposals (being furthered by galling bank interests as I write) that, mostly, will increase the power of the Federal Reserve to police Wall Street, which is like asking Miller Brewing to police drunk driving.

The proposed regulations do nothing structurally about the size of those private profiteers too big to fail and little about the shadow banking and “off balance sheet entities” that mark the most grotesque dishonesty of the banking crisis. According to those that know better, the proposal to require some skin-in-the-game (5%, reportedly)from loan operators is laughably insufficient. No one has been more wrong in the run-up to this collapse than credit-rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor's. And, yet, not a peep about reforming these institutions. Nor a word about limiting the “brokered deposits” or “hot money” that has destroyed many regional banks.

The administration’s talk about consumer protection, see Geithner on Meet The Press, seems like token public relations. (Throw the dogs a bone, watch them scurry after it.) Curbing predatory credit card practices is welcome but small potatoes compared to losing your job or home or pension. Obama made promises about helping save people’s homes from foreclosure and then abandoned those plans to a congress full court pressed by the banks. (How, at this point, you might wonder, increduously, could the unpopular banks exert this kind of influence? I don't know but I bet it has something to do w/ money.) Consumers trying to hang-on to their homes are lost in the black hole maw of the mortgage servicing industry: a Kafkaesque labyrinth of customer service reps, a system mismanaged and overwhelmed by the demands put on it. Meanwhile, the banks squeeze another cool $13 billion in “bailout” money out of a congressional bill intended, in the President’s words, to “stand up to the Special Interests, and stand up for the American people.”

Bernie Madoff’s Wall Street

Mad greedy Bernie Madoff goes to jail for 150 years. Yes. It’s like dunking some asshole at a county fair. But let’s remember Madoff was NOT some rogue operator or extreme aberration on Wall Street. He was an insider’s-insider, a respected confident to the head of the Securities Exchange Commission. Madoff helped set the rules. For goodness sakes, if insider expertise was what’s needed to save the economy than Bernie Madoff would have made a better (or at least more honest) choice to join the O-team than Geithner and/or Summers. And it’s hard to imagine, grand larceny thief that he is, how he could have advised any more favorable terms for Wall Street than those two supposedly paragons of business propriety.

Obama explains the collapse thusly: "A culture of irresponsibility took root from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street. And a regulatory system basically crafted in the wake of a 20th century economic crisis--the Great Depression--was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st century global economy."

And William Greider responds: “That is not what happened, to put it charitably. Unlike some other presidents, Obama is much too intelligent not to know this. The regulatory system was not overwhelmed by historic forces. It was systematically gutted and dismantled by the government in Washington at the behest of the banking interests.”

Banking interests from which Madoff was not an exception but a leading light. They believed in the wonder of securitization, investments without risk, based on inscrutable formulas and off the books trading. It’s guys playing with other people’s money, with said people totally oblivious until it is too late. So that’s their own damn fault, say P.T. Barnum capitalists. But is playing suckers really the kind of “business model” we need or want? I wouldn’t think so but, to this point, the O Team has done everything they can to mask the problem and jumpstart the banker’s game of bubbles and busts. More casino capitalism for everybody!

In Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi (The Great American Bubble Machine), already identifies the new bubble sector as the carbon cap-and-trade still being ironed out in congress.

apologies and promises

Obama apologists will argue he’s too busy with health care or creating this carbon trading system to take on the banks. But if he’s doing this alone then we’re lost. And if he cannot put some people on the job to make sure the right thing gets done in congress in support of new bank rules and forestalling more home foreclosures then he does not possess the leadership we need. Come on, all the talk about standing up for Main Street, while turning a blind eye to cutthroat Wall Street deal-making, after already giving these guys the farm and then some, is contemptible.

Reagan Did It

Of course, Obama did not make the deregulatory mess our financial system is in but he’s enmeshed in a wonky conservative account of the crisis. It was Alan Greenspan, as Fed Chair, with Ben Bernanke’s help, who, back in the High Tech bubble recession of ’01-’02, reduced interests rates too much, setting the stage for the housing bubble. Or the one I heard the other day, the crash was caused by government over-reaction to the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers in September. (Apparently, the trillions the public have put into the financial system has been necessary only because the government started a panic!) These aren’t credible explanations for the scale and systemic reach of this economic downturn, but they support the status quo economic policies coming out of the Wall Street-Washington axis.

So where did this whole mess really start? Krugman nails it on the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act, of 1982. This is some Reagan supported legislation that deregulated standards on debt-to-asset ratios and led directly to the Savings & Loan collapse of the late-80s. And, most importantly, it inaugurated a “free market” revolution of deregulation and privatization and tax cuts for the rich and a general drift towards levels of inequality not seen since the Gilded Age. The Reagan Revolution. And it ended as a credible economic model, even if some haven’t got the memo yet, in the crash last fall.

More Chapters

As an epic novel the crisis has entered one of those long, digressive passages in Moby Dick. Emerging are the stories of forgotten heroes like Brooksley Born and Sheila Bair and Elizabeth Warren (pictured above). I don’t know what to make yet of the preponderance of women fighting the good fight here. I hope there are more of them to step up, though.

community services and the free market religion

Locally, it would seem the free market religion still holds sway. Tax revenues are down so the state budget was slashed. You might expect some politicians to question a tax base structure that puts such basic community services as police, health care, and education at the mercy of the ups and downs of the market but I haven’t heard a word.

It seems like the same old game. Russel Investments, for example, is this huge investment services firm-- homebased, or up to now, in Tacoma—who manages $136 billion in assets from 147 countries. Because Russel has been talking about moving, local congressman, Norm Dicks, has pledged more than $148 billion to keep them in Tacoma. (And Gov. Gregoire will chip in another $700,000.) You have to wonder how the math here adds up to benefit the local community? What it appears to be is the same old state and municipal groveling to win favor with big corporations in hopes for some growth trickle down.

Which brings me back to where I started following this crazy mess last summer. I’ve supported government spending because I hate to see people lose their jobs or homes or pensions. I watched people lose jobs this spring and I felt bad for them. I do not know what I’d do if in their place; I’d really feel lost. Or if my parents lost their pensions, it’d be very hard on them. These are hardships I would not wish on anybody. But these wishes beg the question as to how much longer this growth economy, that I hope the government can revive, can be sustained?

People have been raising this question for a long time and been dismissed as hippy-dippy Chicken Littles for a long time as well but the signs of stress on climate and our food and water supply have multiplied in the last decade more than anyone expected. It is becoming increasingly apparent to all that we cannot continue to consume resources as we have indefinitely, and the rate of per capita consumption in our country cannot be extended to the billions in China and India without dire consequences for the planet.

The grandeur of “free market” theory is based on the delusion of a perpetual motion machine. It fails to account for the finite energy sources it needs as inputs or the impact of the wastes it generates as outputs. From a broad view what we’re experiencing economically are pressures, breakdowns caused by debt (investments in the future) growing faster than our ability to produce real wealth. We’re pushing up against Malthusian limits (the days of cheap energy are numbered) and need another green revolution to stretch those limits. But at the moment it’s hard to imagine how this need can be reconciled with an economic growth model based on ever increasing demand and consumption.

muddling through

Back in the day my friend Pam and I used to go for these long walks after work. Ranting, laughing, shaking our heads at the office drama, upside-down politics, the impossibly Dilbertian people that filled our work lives. We developed a ritual in these conversations where at some point one of us would, sigh, and exclaim as to the wonder that the world keeps spinning, that people don’t stop in the street and go stark raving mad from the upside down craziness of it all. Something like Peter Finch in Network, I suppose we imagined. We settled on this little ritual as an ironic punctuation mark on our ravings: because at the end of the day what always astonished us most was that, despite all the dysfunctional drama of our workplace, our programs and organization always seemed to muddle through. And that seems true of the world, too: it seems to muddle through just like us. You have to wonder, though, how long this can last.

Currently playing:"Tell Me," The Rolling Stones

Happy Birthday, America!

I Hear America Singing, by Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics--each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat--the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench--the hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter's song--the ploughboy's, on his way in the morning,
or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother--or of the young wife at work--or of the girl sewing or washing--Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day--At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.


America, by Cluade McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

America, by Allen Ginsberg

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.


Obama and I do email (although I get the eerie feeling he isn’t reading mine)—
Jack --

This weekend, our family will join millions of others in celebrating America. We will enjoy the glow of fireworks, the taste of barbeque, and the company of good friends. As we all celebrate this weekend, let's also remember the remarkable story that led to this day.

Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, our nation was born when a courageous group of patriots pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the proposition that all of us were created equal.

Our country began as a unique experiment in liberty -- a bold, evolving quest to achieve a more perfect union. And in every generation, another courageous group of patriots has taken us one step closer to fully realizing the dream our founders enshrined on that great day.

Today, all Americans have a hard-fought birthright to a freedom which enables each of us, no matter our views or background, to help set our nation's course. America's greatness has always depended on her citizens embracing that freedom -- and fulfilling the duty that comes with it.

As free people, we must each take the challenges and opportunities that face this nation as our own. As long as some Americans still must struggle, none of us can be fully content. And as America comes ever closer to achieving the perfect Union our founders dreamed, that triumph -- that pride -- belongs to all of us.

So today is a day to reflect on our independence, and the sacrifice of our troops standing in harm's way to preserve and protect it. It is a day to celebrate all that America is. And today is a time to aspire toward all we can still become.

With very best wishes,

President Barack Obama

July 4th, 2009

P.S. -- Our nation's birthday is also an ideal time to consider serving in your local community. You can find many great ideas for service opportunities near you at http://www.serve.gov.

Reply: Thanks for the holiday wishes, President Obama. Right, I should do more, I’ll get right on that. BTW, could you ask your friends on Wall Street to do a little more to serve their communities— as opposed to extorting money from them? A more perfect union means you have to stop this long cycle of fucking over the little guy with deregulatory greed and regressive taxes. More equality, less greedy hustle. Be sure who your friends are, Mr. President. Thank you very much. Best, Jack.


Currently playing: "Poker Face," Lady Gaga

sweeter than the rest

I'm no big Kobe or Phil Jackson fan but this is the most convincing and, I would expect, the most satisfying ring for both guys. You could certainly make an argument that before this one Kobe would have no rings at all if it wasn't for Shaq. And, yeah, passing Red Auerbach is awesome and all but, again, I'm sure some sports talk radio wag has contended that, hey, PJ Carlisemo could have coached championships with Jordan and Pippen and then Shaq and Kobe. This one, however, is different. What was it-- three years ago?-- the Lakers didn't even make the playoffs and Kobe was demanding to be traded to the Clippers. This is a strong Laker team, deep, but not bought like the one (w/ Malone and Payton) that lost to the Pistons and sports only one superstar, Kobe. And now the most successful coach, Jackson, in the history of the NBA.

Currently playing:"i wish i were," Martha Wainwright

Star Trek's Multicultural Imperialism

Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.

As evidenced by the crew of the Enterprise, the mission has presumably already been accomplished on earth. On the bridge is a veritable rainbow coalition of skin colors, continents, funny accents, and even a guy from another planet, Vulcan, where all actions are guided by (gasp) reason. Created at the height of the Civil Rights era, the original Star Trek projects the 1964 Voting Rights Act into the future: all races, classes, and gender (although women still wear mini-skirts, thankfully) push the buttons and pull the levers of power as a team. It’s the inclusive dream of liberal capitalism (note, again, ship’s name) come true: democracy, cross cultural understanding, and the entrepreneurial spirit of economic development all mutually reinforcing the fundamental human drive for adventure and creative contact with what’s new. And I love it for this reason alone: it rubs wrong the stodgy, narrow conservatism that hates anything new or different (read: people of color, non-Christians, and gays).

Star Trek XI (the first in over a decade) is, in the best sense, a popcorn movie, a summer blockbuster. It’s awesome big, goofy cliché fun, and jumps up and down like an 11 year-old on a can of Monster. I’m no Trekkie but like many who were kids at that time I watched every episode of the original series multiple times as it was broadcasted daily as reruns in the early ‘70s. With that background, I found the prequel vision of the principle characters fun and, particularly, in the case of Spock even touching. Although, I must say, the cameo appearance of the original Spock, Leonard Nimoy, felt gratuitous (if obligatory) and seemed only to ground a film that otherwise warps through space.

(I am left wondering, though, what the uninitiated make of the cheesy character acting? If they like it they ought to check out more of the original because even as fine as Chris Pine is as the brash young James T. Kirk he cannot prepare you for the Shakespearean hambone antics of William Shatner. And if that’s not enough for you check out Rhino Records compilation series Golden Throats for some Shatner and Nimoy musical performances. Show stoppers!)

At any rate, I’m happy to report that in the Star Trek future discrimination, disproportionality and, apparently, group oppression of any kind disappear. Although, unfortunately, bad guys are still around. Turns out some cultures are just genetically predisposed to being meanies; or, rather, not getting enough love as children, for them, has become a cultural tradition, it is not clear which is the case. In the original Star Trek one group of perennial evil doers, the Klingons, look vaguely like Genghis Kahn’s Mongol horde on a spaceship, evoking a murderous cold war Sino-Soviet hybrid. In the latest installment the bad guys, Romulans, look like white supremacists with a tattoo fetish. Nero, their leader, is bent on revenge against Spock and the Starfleet Federation for failing to save his home planet from an exploding star. In either case these baddies are presented as if they’d be welcomed into the Federation if it wasn’t for the simple fact that they’re all haters and can’t get along with others.

This is just about when, if you think about it, the multicult dream starts to sound like a good old fashion whitewash. Or a Benneton ad, might be more like it! Nero and his Romulan gang want to destroy the Federation because of a natural disaster. Right, and Lil Wayne and his posse are bound and determeined to bring down the United States government because of Katrina. Anybody that doesn’t join hands with the Federation (or celebrate the joys of shopping)must be a cracked sociopath; an “enemy of freedom,” a violent actor filled with blind, misplaced hate. This is the appropriation of civil rights goals to rationalize liberal capitalist imperialism: making the structure of power transparent and inclusive to all races and genders (or other marginalized groups) (or at least commitment to the same) renders opposition to the system as negligible— the actions of incorrigible cranks like Klingons and Romulans. In short: it’s a belief that full civil rights can be achieved without any rethinking and reforming of the system that generates economic inequality. Ideologues of the left and right may snicker at this feel good liberalism but its importance as dream making myth rallying support for the status quo should not be underestimated.

This is no mere red state-blue state divide. Even if the republicans drag their feet on policies that promote inclusiveness, and thinly veiled demagogic bigotry remains their chief campaign strategy, any open opposition to the equal opportunity for all creed would spell their decline, if not total destruction, as a major political party in America. From this viewpoint, democrat or republican, civil rights have become the American Dream in that in America everyone, regardless of their background, ought to be able to strike it rich and live like a King in their castle. But this creed ignores the economic origins of equal rights claims. And the consequences of this outlook on U.S. foreign policy is, in short, an inability to recognize (and so confront and reform) the divisive injustice of American imperialism. Team America is seen as at worst a bumbling superpower with good intentions. By contrast, Kim Jong II is a megalomaniacal dictator threatening world destruction as a way to shore up insecurities about his own power. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Iranian Mullahs view all individual human rights as a conspiracy against the Koran and Islam. Like Klingons and Romulans, these guys were just born evil.

From another viewpoint, however, it is international forces of economic development, beginning with Columbus, colonialism, imperialism, and subsequent mass human migrations, that generated the social ills from which the civil rights movement emerged to correct. It is represented by a democracy for the rich that depends, as viewed globally, on the disenfranchisement and impoverishment of a majority of the planet. It is operationally this amazingly creative machine that makes shiny stuff out of natural resources and human labor but does not take responsibility for its impact on the planet or costs in human life. “Free trade,” the liberal capitalist idea of cross cultural understanding, is a euphemism for: see, you give us raw materials and cheap labor and we will give you Coca-cola and some cell phones. Understand?! Right, Iran’s Mullahs’ are intolerant religious extremists— who rose to power in reaction to the 26 year long U.S. puppet dictatorship of the Shah, who jailed and/or executed any Iranian who opposed him. And, right, Kim Jong is a oppressive, violent, crackpot— who sees nuclear power as the last guarantor of national independence. If the U.S. wants to end nuclear proliferation then, as the country with the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, it needs to lead in eliminating nuclear weapons, of course. And yet, apparently, this is obvious to everyone except Americans.

Truth is most the action in Star Trek revolves around the apparent conflict between Kirk's guts and glory and Spock's emotionally wrought rationalism. But it's precisely this preoccupation with the unification of an Us against a cartoon, evil Them that grates politically. In all likelihood Nero and his angry Romulans, all miners, had probably been aware of the danger of the exploding star that ultimately destroyed their planet for some time and had been asking the powers that be, The Federation, for help and protection, which they did not receive. And as working class people, working for low pay, they did not have the means to move out of harms way but, instead, to provide for their families, they continued to work in these dangerous conditions. That would certainly present a more credible explanation for the maniacal revenge of Nero but it would also put the whole Star Trek mission in a different light.

Star Trek XI must have started production before Obama’s rise but still what timing. Our first black President. Civil rights, led by African Americans, peaked as a movement at a time when class and economic discussion in this country was polarized by Cold War propaganda. Almost 50 years later we live at a time of another civil rights milestone, almost 20 years after the end of the Cold War, and yet the old either-or discourse on economic issues still seems to prevail. Even Obama’s tepid efforts so far to reform a system of wrecklessly inefficient privatizing profit gouging, demonstrating degrees of wealth inequality not seen since the Gilded Age, are pilloried as socialism. Unions are more than ever regarded as shady unpatriotic special interests that hurt competition and are unwilling to make sacrifices for the good of the country. Meanwhile, corporate (let’s compare the criminal records of union’s and corporation’s some time, shall we?) and banking bad actors are lavished with hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts. Even when the evidence that we need economic reform screams out the reaction continues.

In an important way this is a struggle for the soul of America that goes back to the beginning of the republic and the Alien and Sedition Acts. Concerns over national security push back at efforts to mature, to walk the talk of American ideals, to reconcile civil rights with economic justice, in domestic and foreign affairs. Obama’s recent face off with Dick Cheney is the most recent case in point. To Cheney failing to fight fire with fire, failing to take the fight to our enemies, increases the chances of another 9/11, makes us less safe. In other words, torture and secret prisons and suspension of habeas corpus rights and crony capitalism and executive privilege (i.e., to decide who are our “enemies”) are just what it takes to stay free (meaning: rich). On Obama’s side, torture is a recruitment tool for our enemies, provides unreliable intelligence, and is a profound disrespect to our troops in harm’s way. Etc. And around we go… spinning off topic, democrats brainlessly puffing out their chests for fear of appearing weak on national security.

Civil rights progress is measured as slow, hard-won milestones against a, frustratingly, always receding horizon of full equality, and will do so as long as the causes of gross economic inequality go unexamined and unchecked. In contrast with the liberal capitalist dream, as Martin Luther King put it at the height of the Civil Rights era, it’s still racism, materialism, and militarism that we see tragically reinforcing each other in the modern era. It should be a national embarrassment that the U.S. refuses to participate in the International Criminal Court. In the American imperium, as in the Starfleet Federation, multicultural representation or not, there will always be Klingons and Romulans, terrorists and rogue states.

Currently playing: "Life In Marvelous Times," Mos Def

Corporate Frankensteins: The Final Conquest

By Ralph Nader. Democrats will never forgive him but, to me, he’s still an American hero. (One of only a few, by my count.) And still making a case that someday will seem, we can only hope, obvious to everyone.

Corporate Frankensteins

Currently playing:"For All The World To See," Death

Health Care Newsflash--

The profit motive drives up health care costs!

In addition, while increasing costs it frequently hurts the quality of health care.

(There are times since the “free market” bubble burst last fall it feels like waking from a bad dream. Or at least I hope it’s waking up and not just muttering in sleep.)

The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande

Currently playing:"Oh Lonesome Me," M.Ward & Lucinda Williams