Although this blog often publishes non-political pieces on the weekends, things rarely get very personal around here. This post will be different. I may not even hit the "Publish Post" button when I'm done. But sometimes, words start buzzing around your cranium and you just gotta write them down.
Just about everyone in my ladyfriend's family loves a certain animated show which appeals to both adults and children. I won't name it. About a week ago, I looked up the history of the show and discovered that one of the two creators is someone I knew fairly well back when I was thirteen.
His name is John. (At least, that's his name in this post.) I had forgotten all about him -- just as he has no doubt forgotten me. That fact now seems astonishing, since my younger brother and John were the best of friends. In fact, my brother practically lived at his apartment throughout much of 1972.
That became a huge problem.
John's mother was an archetypical free spirit -- an attractive, fair-haired hippie named Denny who didn't worry much about bread (or money, as you younguns would call it) because her father was a famous jazz bandleader who had made it big.
(A great guy, he was. Had the most amazing stereo system I had ever seen -- loudspeakers the size of billboards, built right into the wall.)
Denny was sweet and funny, and all of the kids in the neighborhood gravitated toward her. I both liked her and couldn't stand her.
When it came to raising kids, she had a strict no-strictness policy. Some of you may recall the song lyric: "Like a beautiful child, growing up free and wild..." Such was her philosophy of parenting. No rules, no punishments, no curfew, no criticism of any kind, no saying "no" to...well, to anything. If the boys had told her they wanted to try heroin, she probably would have said: "Okay, I'll see what I can score."
Her parenting approach did not arise from laziness or hedonism. She really believed in total freedom -- an idealized, reified, romanticized capital-F Freedom. In her opinion, discipline created all of the world's problems. The word of sin is Restriction. That's how Nixon became Nixon, y'know: His parents told him what to do.
Well, her kids would turn out different. They would be confident. Magical. Naturally brilliant. Free.
In Denny's world, there was a new project nearly every day -- some place to go, some grand scheme to fulfill, some adventure to live. Denny was Mary Poppins: There was always an amazing outing or someone cool to meet. There was fun.
For some unfathomable reason, Denny always tried to include me in these adventures, even though John was my brother's friend (not mine) and even though that woman had zero reason to like me. Maybe she fixated on me precisely because I was the only young person in the neighborhood who did not view her as the Coolest Mom Ever.
In fact, there were times when I loathed her, despite all the wonderful things she did for my brother and for me.
You must understand one thing: It was hardly my fault that I knew everything. I was, after all, thirteen. And if there was one fact of which I was certain, it was this: Denny's ethos of total freedom was a cosmic mistake.
The proof: John's brother.
(What the hell was the kid's name? I want to say Michael. Well, let's call him Michael in this essay.)
Michael was blonde, maybe five-ish. If you had seen him, you would compare him to an angel in a painting by Raphael. He was also the single brattiest kid ever to assail the planet.
The Cloverdale Monster had better manners. He said whatever he liked, however harmful or insulting, because his mom had taught him to be free and confident and outgoing and unrestricted and wild and free free free. If he wanted your food, he'd grab it. If you told him no, he'd scream like a banshee until Denny made sure that he got his way.
He was, in short, pure Id. And he was awful. Even when I had him on my shoulders to watch the fireworks at Disneyland, I couldn't help thinking: "God, what a terrible kid."
John was a good guy. Michael was Boy Satan.
And every day, every freaking day, there was that urge to tell Denny: "This is all your fault. You're raising this child all wrong. Your Freedom Philosophy is a proven loser."
She sensed my disapproving attitude. No doubt she wondered how a thirteen year old could get so uptight.
Come to think of it, that may be the reason she kept inviting me to those outings: She wanted to prove that her Freedom Philosophy was right. She wanted to score a conversion.
What she never comprehended was this: I came to loathe Denny not out of an aversion to the Hippie lifestyle, but because she had discredited that ethos. Her impossible younger son proved that hippie-ness was a failed experiment. Total Freedom produced human beasts.
For me, that one blonde brat killed the spirit of the 60s. That kid, and Charles Manson.
But even though Denny was annoying and infuriating, I also liked her. I'll always be grateful to her for inviting my asshole self to tag along on her extended family's various outings.
On one occasion, we made a trip to the Colorado river. John, my brother and I went innertubing down some very wild and picturesque tributaries, far from any other human being -- and totally unsupervised by adults. An unforgettable experience. Dangerous? Hell, yeah. No sane parent nowadays would allow his or her children to undergo such an excursion unattended. But Denny felt that supervision would have restricted our capital-F Freedom. (I think John may have acquired his nickname on that occasion.)
Denny had divorced her husband because he did not share her Freedom Ethos. There was an ugly custody dispute. I can't recall the details.
She was so caught up in her own Dennyness that she never quite realized that most of the other parents in our apartment building -- especially my mom -- had come to despise her. All of the neighboring kids made no secret of the fact that they preferred living the restriction-free, every-day-an-adventure Denny lifestyle to living at home. When my brother finally, reluctantly, returned home at the end of the day, he would be rude and sullen and insulting. My mom wasn't big on rules herself, but she did insist on having a few -- and once a kid had experienced life with Denny, he would make no secret of his preference for having no rules whatsoever. Just fun fun fun, each and every day.
One day, Denny moved away. I guess she finally understood that she had alienated too many people. In retrospect, I admire her persistence in standing up for her beliefs, even if I still cannot share those beliefs. She stood for something.
Is she is still alive? Dunno. Her father passed away in 2001.
God only knows what happened to Michael. Maybe he ended up in prison. Or maybe he's working as a henchman to Lloyd Blankfein. I will always consider him the Brat Who Killed the 60s.
His brother John, of course, is best-known for his animated show about two ten-year-old boys who come up with amazing new projects and adventures each and every day, despite the furious disapproval of an uptight 13-year-old sibling.
And the point of this reminiscence?
Maybe it's time to admit that my 13 year-old self might have been wrong to blame Denny. The brattiest kid I know now has a very conservative father. Maybe brattiness has nothing to do with the Freedom-vs-Discipline scale. Maybe our personality patterns are imprinted at birth -- at the moment of conception. Maybe we are who we are, for good or for evil, and no parenting strategy can change genetic destiny.
That's a depressing thought.
This narrative has another point: My brother and I had forgotten all about John, even though my brother was once practically a member of John's family. All of those ancient tape recordings were tossed into the deepest sub-basement of memory. At the age of thirteen, all experience seems incredibly vivid and intense -- yet as decades pass, we become alienated from our own history, like the Alzheimer's patient who talks to his own children as if they were strangers. In the end, we have no friends, no family, no loved ones. We are alone.
That, too, is a depressing thought.
This narrative has a final point. My 13-year-old self embarrasses me. I close my eyes and there he is -- and the sight is horrifying.
True, that young man had some admirable characteristics: He had creativity, self-assurance, a buoyancy which often segued into a sort of ecstasy. It would be nice, once again, to feel that all things were possible. Oh that magic feeling...oh, where'd it go?
Only in later years did the truth become clear: I was no world-conquering genius, just a solipsistic juvenile creep with some (but not enough) drawing ability. In a way, I was a bigger monster than Michael was. I certainly had no right to judge that kid. Or Denny. Or anyone else.
One longs to apologize to the ghosts of long ago, but one never can.
That is the most depressing thought of all.
All memories are sad. Even the happy memories are sad -- because they are only memories.
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"Maybe we are who we are, for good or for evil, and no parenting strategy can change genetic destiny."
I came to that conclusion. I now recognize that all a parent can do is love and give opportunities to the children. It's up to each child to figure out what to do with the opportunities and his/her life. DM
posted by Anonymous : 8:04 PM
"Maybe our personality patterns are imprinted at birth -- at the moment of conception."
No way! Given the right encouragement and guidance, the bratty kid could have learnt not to take other people's food.
How come 99.9% of 'people' brought up waited on by servants turn into adults who are selfish scum who swish past others as though they're not human beings? I can't swish past anyone like that. What's wrong with free-free-free is it's about me-me-me.
The hippy upsurge couldn't get to grips with the free development of each being the condition for the free development of all. It had massive potential to do so. Why didn't it? The ideology of the Cold War was one reason. So was the official US ideology of individualism. Abbie Hoffman used the five-pointed red star but still wanted to build a nation...in a stars-and-stripe shirt. Pathetic non-critique of commerce, brand, and other people's passivity. I don't argue that celebrities should have been more sussed (God forbid!), but such confusions were of the time.
Had they been gone beyond, we wouldn't be in this shit now.
b (trying and miserably failing to come up with any intense memories from age 0-15)
posted by b : 3:31 AM
b, you may be right. The problem with the counterculture ethos was that '60s hedonism segued into '70s narcissism which segued, inevitably, into '80s greed. And thus the hippie kids grew up to become monstrously hyperbolic versions of everything the counterculture had once opposed.
The "free spirit" parents of that age believed that guilt and shame were dirty words. This was a mistake. We shouldn't feel ashamed of shame or guilty about guilt. I've long felt that those two emotions were as useful as all the others.
Without shame we grow up to be shameless. Without guilt we grow up to be guilt-free. Not "guilt-free" in the sense of "perpetually innocent," but in the sense of "Fuck you; I'll do whatever I please and I don't care what you think about me."
If little Michael had understood the concepts of guilt and shame, he would not have grabbed other people's food.
And if little Lloyd Blankfein possessed a more keenly developed sense of guilt and shame...
That hippi thing was a monstrous (in)human experiment and You, in the tender age of thirteen have resisted it. In the very center of the beast, You have survived. Thanks to Your genes and thanks to residues of age-old traditions of resistance, however confused and distorted. Why are You not PROUD of THAT ? What You need to see is, that You are MANY. How could I be so sure? -By You telling your story I am confirmed in my story : It's a antagonistic to Your's to the extreme. You are confirming my hope, that one could survive the most monstrous attack on human nature (which I never had to experience, other than as a semi-conscious onlooker) And that in turn gives me strenght in the daily struggle NOW. Good experience. Keep on ! ->
posted by Anonymous : 4:43 AM
I enjoyed reading that - thank you! I didn't experience those American-style 60s in the UK - we heard about your version, read about it, heard songs about it, but for most of my own generation, outside of Carnaby Street, London, life proceeded on much as usual.
""Maybe our personality patterns are imprinted at birth." Even though I'm interested in astrology I don't believe this is totally true. We have a kind of blueprint, based on the cycles of time/space marked by posittion of planets etc. and we have genes/DNA inherited from our family bloodline. There's a whole vast range of potentialities springing from the combination of these, and from the background into which we emerge.
blah blah blah....
Anyway, Joseph - anytime you feel like writing more memories - we'll be all eyes! :-)
The Hindus--who don't sugarcoat things--maintain that consciousness itself is a form of suffering. It's not just memories--the whole consciousness thing is sad! That's why most of the paths to enlightenment in Hinduism involve "destroying the mind"--a markedly non-Western view of things.
As for the end of hippiedom, I don't think it came about through some flaw in hippy philosphy, or from massive sell-out by children of the 60s.
It came about because a very different cohort came of age in the 80s. These people disagreed with the Flower Children on just about everything--except possibly the righteousness of rock n roll. They were the Roundheads to the hippies' Cavaliers, and there were more of them than there were hippies. The 60s ended because of demography.
Inhuman is not a word (even with parentheses). And if you think that the hippies were all Jimi Hendrix and acid, then you're an imbecile. Ever heard of a guy called Steve Jobs? Stewart Brand? (Y'all tea baggers gotta love Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, no?) What about Mitch Kapor (Lotus123)? As anybody in Nashville who does anything of value what they think of "Farm Babies" and you will hear the most amazing stories about brilliant adults who were all infants on The Farm (the oldest hippie commune on the planet. And the birthplace of contemporary midwifery, and the first personal Geiger-counters).
The Hippies were for freedom, sure (and too bad they didn't add self-restraint to their educational platform for the kids), but more than that, they were the ones who said; "Ask not what your country can do for you. Do it yourself," (something all the tea bag dittoeheads ought to understand, though can hardly pass muster)
If you ask me, the most '(in)human experiment' was and is Levitown. That is the saddest thing to happen to America and why an idiot like Bachman might now become president.
Very moving little story, I too can't stand the insufferable little snot I was at 13, but I do believe that's what 13 is for. I also think that's the age where we begin to become judgemental of parenting.
Case in point, the Spawn has a 13 year old friend, and when she's at my house, all she can do is tell me how much better I am than her mom. I make brownies, buffalo chips, and scalloped potatoes from scratch, we are always play fighting and horseplaying, we throw insults at each other.
She tells me she wishes her mom were more like me, and that breaks my heart for her mom. Because I remember how I felt at 13, disapproving of my mother, and how it broke her heart.
As far as Michael, I think Denny can be partly to blame. Behavior is part nature, and so the nurture must be adapted for that, parenting is not a one size fits all scenario. It seems like Denny was a good fit for John, perhaps she should have let Michael go with his dad. That's what my sister decided to do, when she divorced and she realized the enormous gulf between herself and her youngest son, and I will say that all their lives are better for it. You can't be all things to all people, and it's a tragedy just to try.
Echoing Red Dragon, your "All memories are sad" comment really speaks to me.
"that '60s hedonism segued into '70s narcissism which segued, inevitably, into '80s greed" - yeah, I recognize this too, even though my self-identity is in substantial part that of an aging hippie. Another observation - a disproportionate number of the most creative and thoughtful people I know were raised by hippie parents, or schooled in hippie schools.
Regarding "Maybe we are who we are, for good or for evil, and no parenting strategy can change genetic destiny" - worth viewing this video (featuring psychopathy researcher James Fallon): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnV4RnWcmWo
posted by affinis : 4:27 PM
Angry Hippie : 1:36 PM "the oldest hippie commune on the planet" -> (Dis)appropriating the real things is what is the most disgusting aspect of the american personality.(maybe, not including some non-alienated Red-Indians) From top to bottom, or reverse : You people are so self assured, that it was You, who invented the water, or at least are the ones, who baptised it. Your Governors securely relie on Your willingnness to agree on that myth, whenever they offer it to You.-Creating a basic common secret agreement, that may under NO circumstances be questioned. Tabu. Free people are a bad thing in the rest of the world. They are utterly good, when they are in THE states. Only They may get that label and and only then what is good becomes good and is ripe for export. Your governors knew about movements in Germany as early as in the 19-twenties which were the forerunners of what they concocted as THE hippy"movement". Those were : "anarchist", socialists, "lefties".(echoing earlier tendencies..) The Nazies killed them.(mostly, but not the memory) with -at least support of Your oppressors. Then, when they thought it usefull to sack the anti-vietnam movement, they used that -albeit castrated and well supervised- natural human desire for freedom and injected it in USA. The rest of the world-Youth tried to follow.Partially forgetting their own traditions. Cultural Imperialism.Like is beeing done, right now using facebook, etc.. The short term is :Alienation, to (ab)use the good for the bad. Sometimes the victims, these puppets, get out of control and get (back) a life of their own.(negation of negation) Then things happen: John Lennon, Jimmi Hendrix, Morrisson, Manson..You name them.Suppose, You are better at THAT. Permanent controlled demolition of human nature "evoluting". Of course, this cannot and will not go on forever. ->
posted by Anonymous : 5:53 PM
My son loves the phineas, I dig the ferb.
Today is it. Make it how you like, but don't f123ing complain if you didn't even try because you're stuck on sh&t that you can't fix.
Well, unless that's how you want to spend today.
Proverbial 'you', royal 'we', etc.
posted by Aleealee : 8:31 PM
Poignant story.
Children react differently to the same form of parenting. Ms. D's parenting style seems to have worked well for John, perhaps not so well with Michael. If she were perfect (and who among us is?), she would have realized that her natural style was not working with Michael and adjusted. But he may have improved along the way.
Sounds like you were a sensible kid. Maybe she thought you would be a good role model for Michael. Maybe she just liked you.
djmm
posted by djmm : 9:51 PM
djimm: Sensible? I was awful. And I wish I could apologize to Denny, because I was damned ungrateful to her. But I don't even know if she is alive.
Anon:5:53 (w)ho (a)re you? Rolland freaking (B)arthes? So we "Americans" Invented Water (FWIW I'm a Canadian)? And b\ecause I have some sense of Pride in Hippiedom History, I am a revisionist tool of "The Governors"? Really?
Whatever fuels your hubris (and probably your awful poetic style) stinks like shit--- you think "american" hippies didn't know about the libertines? we knew damn well about John Wilmot and the Marquis (neither were hip)... we knew about William Morris and John Ruskin (what was that, 100 years before your anarchists? and so blow it out your ass already). We know that stuff... idiots like Anon4:40 (who can't even come up with a name ffs) can't list anything these folks have done (Anon553 you quote me about The Farm before... you know anyone who has made and marketed their own Geiger counters?? And yes The Farm is oldest RUNNING (still running) hippie commune (and no a kibbutz won't count). It's a hell of a lot older than Freetown Christiania, and infinitely more productive and not drug addeled (so cram that up your eurohole)
Though I will assume, Anon4:40 (who can't even come up with a name ffs), that you aren't even European. Too ignorant. You are pretending to be Eurotrash but you're not. No respectable European would talk about "anarchist" socialists, lefties" being the euro equivalent to the hippies (they would talk about Daniel Cohn- Bendit, May68, Goddard's La Chinoise) not some americano boogeyman terms taken from the mouth or O'Reilly.
You're not european Anon553-- you're out there in Montana maybe... definitely talking Kaczynskian, with a(n)(un)settling (st(yle th(a)t m(a)kes (no) se(n)se t(o) an(y)one e)l(se (but you). i.e. Crazy Land. Pop. 1
... says it ALL : Angry Hippie : 2:24 AM "Really" ... "1904, Mühsam withdrew from Neue Gemeinschaft and relocated temporarily to an artists commune in Ascona, Switzerland where vegetarianism was mixed with communism and socialism. -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_M%C3%BChsam PEACE AND LOVE -)> ... and no, I'm not an anarchist
(sorry, Josef, for causing trouble on Your compund, un-intentionally) PS:Cohn Bendit, I knew him really, caps up.
posted by Anonymous : 5:51 AM
Exasperating as they are, I miss free spirits. They are not possible any more in an era of crowdsourced oppression. Nowadays you make one parenting mistake and you're answering to the courts, CPS, the viewership of the Today Show, the readers of a thousand websites and the Twittersphere.
posted by ugsome : 2:33 PM
Most 13 year olds judge adults a bit too harshly. But you could recognize the damage being done (inadvertently) to Michael. That shows some good sense and I am not sure most 13 year olds would have noticed or made the connection.
These days if you wanted to find Denny to say "thanks for including me on the outings" (if she is among the living) it would probably not be that hard. If she is not still around or can't be found, you can always pay it forward. From what you describe about her, she might like that.
Great comments about shame and guilt. They can be healthy.
China may be wagging its collective finger at our financial difficulties, but China has huge problems of its own. So do many other nations. This fact gave me a great idea as to how we can repair the damage done by S&P's downgrade of U.S. Treasury yields.
All we need do is repackage U.S. Treasuries, mix in a whole bunch of currencies like the peso and the ringgit -- for exotic flavoring, y'know? -- and then create a completely new CDO. But call it something else. The result can then be re-rated AAA.
Is this a joke? You're proposing the "amero" ---- the fake new currency Corsi has been drumming up hysteria over for years? You could be joking....I can't tell.
No, I'm not proposing that. Yes, there is humor involved, although I wish you had not made me admit that. Funny stops being funny when it wears a label. Look up what CDOs were.
Here's further data to prove the point that food prices have risen not because of inflation but because the wheeler-dealers are doing to the commodities market what they did to real estate throughout the Bush presidency.
Some time ago, we talked about the National Inflation Association, the Libertarian scam run by penny stock newsletter pusher Jonathan Lebed. In fact, I made a movie about them. (A pretty good one, too -- if I do say so meself.) The NIA's shtick is to convince people that Weimar-style inflation is a-comin', so you had better buy the gold mine stocks that the NIA is peddling, because pretty soon gold will be the only thing worth anything, yada yada yada. You know the drill. These guys "proved" that inflation is a problem by pointing to price rises in commodities. But those rises were the result of speculators at work. What stuns me is that FOX New got into bed with the notorious Lebed and pushed the scam.
Inflation has not been a problem in ages. During the Bush era, we would have had disinflation if not for the go-go real estate market. But now? Well, interest rates may have to go up, due to the S&P downgrade. And higher interest rates should have an inflationary effect. The real question is: Will wages spiral upward? That seems unlikely, given our monstrously high unemployment.
Jesus. I've never seen such a bad economic situation.
It's starting to look like we're entering a pre-revolutionary period. Alas, given the infinitude of Libertarian propaganda foisted on the public, any revolution we're likely to have will be one that you don't want to see.
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"And higher interest rates should have an inflationary effect."
I think not. When Paul Volcker was Chairman of the Fed, interest rates went up and inflation went down. In times of high interest rates, less money is available for business ventures because bonds are less risky and provide a good return. A lower money supply ensues and hence lower inflation. DM
posted by Anonymous : 7:43 PM
It wouldn't wholly surprise me if an 'advanced' western country such as the US did suffer heavy inflation in the coming period - because of a drastic fall in production including of machinery and materials, and consequent large rise in production costs per item. This didn't happen in the US in the 1930s, but it did happen in Russia in the 1990s.
Not everything can be argued in terms of the availability of credit, which is what "supply-sidism" (a mindfucky name if ever there was one) boils down to.
A US Fed rate rise did lead to a fall in inflation in the early 1980s. This was a temporary solution to falling output, involving raising interest rates and borrowing massively from abroad. But today is different with the US being downgraded. This is the end of a 'boom' lasting generations, characterised by the insane dominance of finance capital and its ideology and assumptions. If finance capital (which represents capital as a whole) gets its way, we are talking not just falling output but famine as the only alternative to social revolution.
Pursuant to the dictates of the Conspiracy Theorist Full Employment Act of 2008, members of the SEAL team that raided the Bin Laden compound were themselves killed when a helicopter was brought down in Afghanistan.
As you know, many people asked many questions about that raid. Why did we originally read false reports that Bin Laden hid behind one of his wives? Why did the video feed allegedly cut out? What of the eyewitness accounts which say that Bin Laden, captured, was murdered at point-blank range? Why was the body buried at sea before a proper autopsy and objective identification?
Not to worry. We will soon have the the official Bin Laden Raid Comic Book, written and illustrated by a some fine creative people from the military. The comic won't give the names of the team members for security reasons.
I wonder if we will learn the names now.
Perhaps this post should have adopted a more mournful tone concerning the loss of life in that chopper. But with the reality of the situation so questionable, how can we know whether or not we are being fed a "Wag the Dog" scenario? How do we know what really happened? What if we are being asked to mourn fictional characters?
Personally, I would rather not be a professional conspiracy theorist. But it seems to be the only growth sector in today's jobs market.
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The article I read says the Navy SEALs killed were part of the same team as wacked bin Laden not the same ones. Once again seems someone went for sensationalism rather than journalism.
These things gain a life of their own so I can imagine that we will be hearing how Obama ordered the death of the team mambers because he was the one gave the orders to execute bin Laden.
posted by Mr. Mike : 1:19 PM
Joe, we've got to redeem the term "conspiracy theorist" or else find a less-dismissable synonym. To "conspire" means, literally, to breathe together--to plan with someone else. Countless things we accept as true, from the Confederate plot to kill Lincoln to the Al Qaeda plot on 9/11, are "conspiracies" because they involved more than one actor. Powerful people conspire with their peers all the time, from Arabian caves to American boardrooms; yet when the conspiracies are not proven to the satisfaction of the mainstream media or the lumpen proletariat, we ridicule investigators as "conspiracy theorists." There's no need to mock truth-seekers by lumping them all together. Some are whacked and some are wise. You, of course, are the latter, and those of us who are grateful for the return of your blog hope you keep digging without fear or self-consciousness.
posted by Trojan Joe : 2:20 PM
Killing the slaves that buried the Pharoah
This may be the first time I've ever seen you misspell a word. It's "pharaoh".
posted by Anonymous : 8:41 AM
ARRRRR! Thanks for the correction. I have fixed it.
I'm sure a lot of other people are going to point this out, but...you do know that the United States of America was just downgraded by the same agency that, not too many years ago, bestowed its much-coveted AAA rating on financial instruments backed by a whole bunch of crappy loans? You do know that S&P is being investigated for fraud, don't you?
Incidentally, it seems the rationale for the S&P downgrade is that they presume that the Republicans will not allow the Bush upper-class tax cuts to expire in 2012, as is currently the plan. S&P may be onto something there.
Haven't much time to write now, but when I do, perhaps we can talk about how Moody's and Standard & Poors are entirely subservient to the great Wall Street investment banks. That's the reason why the crap got treated like gold: The banks wanted it that way. So that must also be the reason why the U.S. was downgraded: The banks want it that way.
Either Goldman Sachs and its buddies want to end the American experiment, or, more likely, they want to end the Obama administration. It's a little hard for us too-liberal-for-Obama types to understand that the Wall Streeters despise Obama, but they do. This situation is not rational, but it is what it is.
The other scenario is that the Wall Streeters want to force the gummint to raise taxes. Well, raising taxes will solve the problem. But somehow I don't think that they have that endgame in mind.
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Maybe they're putting their money behind Romney? A Boston attorney who specializes in developing "wealth transfer strategies for private clients" just dissolved a phantom NYC company after it donated $1 million to the Romney-pac.
Apparently there were two more of those from Utah.
I remember the print and broadcast media blaming fund managers for buying Wall Street's crap paper backed securities, not the ratings agencies bogus approvals. Once again the media has failed to do it's job. Or it's doing the kind of job the corporate masters dictate.
posted by Mr. Mike : 7:00 AM
I like Max Keiser's explaination : "...traders on wall street want U.S. debt downgraded to junk status if possible - because you can make a lot more money trading junk." Spreads are too thin with AAA. http://maxkeiser.com/2011/08/06/downgraded/
We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process.
This is the thesis statement of the PDF published by Standard and Poor explaining why they downgraded the U.S. credit rating. Everyone who has some other idea is accusing Standard and Poor of lying about their rationale, an accusation that is probably political and certainly bears the burden of proof or is foolish.
Standard and Poor did not saying that rampant spending was the sole explanation. They said overspending without the support of revenue combined with a willingness to default was the cause. They suggested that we could cut spending to near 4 trillion dollars, or combine cuts with increased revenue, or, they implied, simply not put defaulting on the table as an option: "Our lowering of the rating was prompted by our view on the rising public debt burden and our perception of greater policy-making uncertainty, consistent with our criteria." After this they referenced: "Sovereign Government Rating Methodology and Assumptions."
The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy. What this all means is that if the Tea Party had cooperated with Obama, the credit rating would not have been lowered. If Obama had cooperated with the Tea Party, the credit rating would not have been lowered.
FOX says Standard and Poor downgraded our credit because we did not honor our pledge to cut 4 trillion dollars in spending. Various democrats say they cut our rating because we had a budget with no revenue. Standard and Poor says both sides are leaving out details:
Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. In addition, the plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.
In other words, Standard and Poor says spending without revenue to support the spending is a problem. They do not say that you must generate more revenue to solve the problem, they say you must generate more revenue or cut spending. That is common sense.
Additional spending cuts would have done the trick. Additional revenues added would have also done the trick. Taking us to the brink of default did not do the trick and made Standard and Poor's decision an obvious one.
Standard and Poor's John Chambers (head of ratings division) told FOX that we came "within a day of having cash flow problems," something he considers unacceptable for a AAA rated nation.
I agree with Standard and Poor’s decision. We are not a AAA credit-worthy nation.
OT #1 Joseph, not sure how it looks on your end, but there is a typo...a hotlink is inserted into the word "United states"
OT#2 Get ahead on the coming conspiracy....the elite team that killed bin laden just died in a helicopter crash. Sorry for no link but Newser has a nasty habit these days of linking back to themselves instead of the original story and I won't link to that condensed-news site.
Additional spending cuts would have done the trick...
Nonsense. The deficit is a problem relative to the overall size of the economy. If the economy grows, then the debt, relative to size of the economy, is less of a burden.
Government spending cuts at this time will mean fewer consumers, fewer taxpayers (to pay down the debt), and more people collecting benefits (at least until their benefits are cut, after which time there will be more thieves and rioters, and the state will need to pay for more police to protect the bankers. Also pay to build more prisons and hire more security guards. If the proles continue to be allowed access to Emergency rooms, that will be an additional cost.)
The deficit is a problem relative to the overall size of the economy. If the economy grows, then the debt, relative to size of the economy, is less of a burden.
This is true and I absolutely agree. However it in no way logically supports the predicate on which it was based.
The idea that spendings cuts don't reduce deficits is erroneous and obviously so.
I favor only very small spending cuts, however.
The Myste Budget uses mostly revenue to solve the problem, and it has the advantage of being somewhat workable.
John Myste, I believe you were responding to me when you wrote:
The idea that spendings cuts don't reduce deficits is erroneous and obviously so.
The idea that spending cuts don't necessarily reduce debt burden is freakin' obvious. I did NOT say "spending cuts don't reduce deficits." The issue is the burden of the debt: the size of the debt relative to the size of the economy.
Without additional stimulus (i.e. investment in America's rotting infrastructure), the economy is unlikely to grow much. In the absence of stimulus at this time, GDP could shrink. There could be a double-dip recession.
Spending cuts at this time can -- and probably will -- increase debt burden. Spending cuts might reduce the rate at which the national debt increases. However, if GDP growth slows, stalls, or declines because Uncle Sam won't spend enough, then the burden of the debt will increase. And debt burden is the thing that matters, not the amount owed!
Whether anyone's debt goes up or down is only meaningful relative to earnings. You'd be nuts to chop away at your debt irrespective of how this action impacts your earnings potential. But that's what they're doing.
The good news: Ralph Nader predicts that there will be a Democratic challenger to Obama.
The only question, he said, is the stature of that opponent and whether it will be either “an ex-senator or an ex-governor” or “an intellectual leader or an environmental leader.”
Does he have names in mind? He seems to...
Here's where he loses me:
Asked whether the Tea Party movement was responsible for an unsavory resolution to debt ceiling negotiations, Nader responded: “It’s not really a movement. It’s the conservative non-libertarian wing of the Republican Party.”
If the Tea Party is not a movement, what is? From my perspective, it's akin to a bowel movement. But still: A movement.
Second, where does he get this "non-libertarian" crap? All the TP websites I've seen push the gospel according to Ayn Rand. Nader goes on to draw a distinction between the terms "libertarian" and "corporatist." To me, that's like claiming to see a distinction between piss and urine.
Added note: Roseanne Barr says that she is running for President. Does she count as an "intellectual leader"?
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The accumulation of power invariably leads some private interests to have monopoly power in markets and exert influence over the state. That's where we are at today.
Libertarians claim that by making the state smaller, by having no state regulatory bodies, there won't be anything for big companies to capture and control. But then you're left with these private monopolies calling the shots. You get oily beaches but no fish, natural gas but no drinking water, cheap electricity but no air to breath. And none of this is theoretical, it's happening all around us!
I disagree that a libertarian is a corporatist. A corporatist doesn't mind government regulations if the regulations are beneficial to certain corporations/businesses, whereas a libertarian doesn't want government intervention at all. Nader has it right. Adam Smith is the ultimate libertarian. In Adam's Smith world, no matter how bad a corporations behaves, he'd say to let the market sort it out and lobbying would get nowhere. A corporatist would lobby to get subsidies and other goodies from government. DM
posted by Anonymous : 10:46 AM
Best bit of news I've seen today!
Why not several challengers - one from each category he mentions?
These come to mind: Feingold, Richardson, Spitzer, Gore.....can't think of an "intellectual leader" though, erm - Chomsky? He's much too old though.
The Tea Party is an astroturf campaign bought and paid for by rich right-wing families. It's on the decline as a pretense at a movement. http://www.thepajamapundit.com/2011/04/tea-party-popularity-declines.html
Ah, DM -- I'm always pleased to meet another Adam Smith apostle who has never read Adam Smith.
Don't be embarrassed; you can admit it. For decades, I was just like you -- I thought I knew all about Smith because I had read ABOUT him, especially back in the late 1970s when the right-wing newspaper pundits were promoting Smith as the anti-Marx.
Let's face it -- "The Wealth of Nations" is not the world's most entertaining book. Even "Capital" is more fun, if you follow Uncle Karl's advice and skip the first ten chapters.
But then there was a period when I was stuck in a motel room for a couple of weeks with no internet connection and nothing to read except -- I shit you not! -- an RSV Bible and a paperback edition of "Wealth of Nations." I had already read the Bible, so there was nothing for it. Eh wot?
Bottom line: Smith mistrusted what he called "joint stock corporations," which we modern folk would simply call "corporations." He thought (correctly) that they were anti-competitive and irresponsible. Without competition, the free market has nothing but bad to offer.
Here's a good summary (www.corporation2020.org/Papers_files/Chatham_Corp2020_keynote.pdf):
"Smith saw the propensities of corporations as central to forming and perpetuating monopolistic conditions, inclined to retain profits rather than invest them in innovation, and maintain monopolies through whatever means possible, including, as he put it, “intimidating the legislature.” He held a gloomy view of the shareholder-controlled corporation, believing that shareholder domination—versus the partnership corporations wherein the owner-manager relationship is continuous and closely interlinked at the operational level—was a recipe for profit-taking at the expense of the greater good. For Smith, the experience of the East India Company exemplified the inevitable anti-social behavior of unchecked corporate monopoly and power.
"In short, it is fair to say that Smith’s view of the role of the shareholder-dominated corporation was unflinching and grim. It is a view that, remarkably, rarely surfaces in the endless debates about the vices and virtues of market capitalism. While Smith’s brilliant insight regarding the invisible hand is accorded virtually divine status, his other equally seminal insights regarding the behaviors and consequences of joint stock corporations remain decidedly underplayed."
What I got out of Smith is that he was describing a bygone world, an agrarian economy. He could only dimly foresee the corporate world, and what he saw he did not like.
He was perfectly willing to have the Crown control the budding corporations of his day. While reading WoN, I found numerous instances in which Smith spoke of the need for gummint intervention. It came as quite a shock!
(I was also shocked that he favored the labor theory of value, which every libertarian presumes to be Marx's underlying technical mistake.)
Incidentally, the Founders of our own country also mistrusted corporations. They came THAT close to including a clause in the Constitution which would allow corporations to be formed only by permission of the government, and only under government control. They feuded over the nature of control, and they were bothered by the precedent of the East India company. So they tabled the matter for another day, and that day never came.
I am a Hamiltonian. Unlike (say) Madison and Jefferson, he believed in corporations. He saw America as an industrial power, not an agrarian nation. But he also believed in high tarrifs, strict control of trade, and government policies which would both prop up and regulate corporations.
For a devastating riposte to Smith on international trade, look to Ha-Joon Chang's "Bad Samaritans.'
Libertarians are corporatists because their rhetoric slyly erases the distinction between regulations by democratic government and regulation by totalitarian states. Smith was right: By forbidding democratic control, they grant Power the right to attain ever greater Power, until the corporations ultimately control the government. Smith foresaw that. That's where your "corporate socialism" comes in. It's an inevitable feature of libertarian ideology, howevermuch libertarians deny it.
("No! No! It can't be true! It's against our theory, therefore it CAN'T be true!")
The ultimate outcome of libertarianism is the end of democracy. Smith saw this -- dimly, far off, but he saw it. Most libertarians scream "NO NO NO NO, that's not it at all!" The honest libertarians, like Patri Friedman, admit this.
And yes, I know that there are factions within Libertarian land. Those faction fights may matter to you. Not to me.
Most Republicans are libertarian only on economics, if that. They like "free" markets and no regulations, although they also like tax breaks and giveaways to large corporations. Actually they just like money and power.
"The numbers suggest the Tea Party is rapidly sliding back into fringe status — yet its disproportionate influence over the political conversation is as strong as ever. It’s yet another way that the Congressional debate is way to the right of public opinion." http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-incredible-shrinking-tea-party/2011/03/03/gIQAJkxewI_blog.html
The labor theory of value was common sense knowledge among economists from the early days of rudimentary elements of post-mercantilist theory up until when Marx developed it and extended it to all its logical ramifications... then it became clear that to embrace that theory meant to recognize the fact that capitalism has an inherent tendency towards concentration of wealth and, consequently, of power. That's when the alternative perfect-information-utility-maximizing-rational-actor fictions began to be promoted in academic circles and among professional economists, and the rest is History.
posted by moshe : 5:19 PM
Joseph, You infer from my comment that I'm an Adam Smith disciple. Nothing could be further from the truth. There's no one position to describe my economic views, but socialism is the closest. I believe that human greed always wins out and that we need regulations and taxation to curb the natural greed. You are right that I'm not a student of Adam Smith, and what I know of his theories is what most students learn in a basic macro economics class. I also understand that the word "corporatist" is another name for fascist as advanced by Italian fascists. Today, most people avoid using fascim to describe a corporatist state. Looking at Paul's voting record and statements, I see him him as a libertarian. But he is not 100% true libertarian. For example, Paul believes in passing laws against abortion. DM
They’re telling you that tax hikes kill jobs. Oh, really? How come they didn’t kill jobs in the 90′s when Clinton was president? And we’re not talking about all tax hikes, just the ones on the rich.
This reminds me of something I heard on a liberal cable news show -- Maddow's, I think -- the other day. I didn't record the exact words, but they were along these lines: "Barack Obama deserves credit for enacting the largest middle class tax cut in history. That was the stimulus."
Credit...?
Well, I'm glad that someone else finally said it out loud: The stimulus was not a Keynesian job creation bill; rather, it was (to a large degree) a tax cut bill. So how can we say that Obama deserves credit? He simply proved that tax cuts don't work.
In 2008, Bush got his own "stimulus" package through -- a package that everyone now forgets. That too was a tax cut. The lesson: Tax cuts don't work.
Does Obama deserve credit for repeating Bush's mistake?
In recent times, there has been much debate as to whether Obama's sell-out of progressive principles stems from an innate conservatism or a blundering ineptitude. But in the end, is the question so very important? The result is what counts.
The more interesting question is whether a "good" Obama -- an Obama who more closely resembled the progressive that that Kos Kids thought they were voting for -- would have been able to accomplish anything worthwhile. Probably not.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our political superstars, but in ourselves, that we are propaganda's underlings.
Even a hypothesized "Obama the Good" might have gone the tax cut route, because tax cuts are easy to sell to Congress. The public has been incessantly brainwashed into believing that tax cuts create employment, even though there is no evidence for that notion. In 2008, we should have raised taxes on the wealthy and then use the money to create jobs. Obama the Bad (the actually existing Obama) did not do so. But even our imagined Obama the Good could not have accomplished that goal.
Politically, he would not have been able to get in front the cameras in order to tell the public: "I'm not going to lower taxes to restart the economy because tax cuts don't work. It would be irresponsible to raise taxes now. We're running such huge debts because we fought wars without paying for them."
What's killing us is not our leadership. It's the brainwashing.
Sixty-four percent believe that the president has increased taxes for most Americans, despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans got a tax cut under the Obama administration. Thirty-four percent of the general public says the president has raised taxes on most Americans.
A proposal: I'd like to see a Constitutional amendment stipulating that America cannot go to war unless a steeply progressive tax is imposed to pay for the costs. We'd have peace for generations.
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Considering that the Constitution already requires Congress to declare war, which hasn't stopped any warlike activities since the end of WWII, what makes you think this would do anything? I think you have to get real; no troops overseas for any purpose whatsoever without paying for it. Think of the good that one would do.
posted by CambridgeKnitter : 5:11 AM
The information is out there, if you search for it. But searching takes time and when you are working nine to ten hours a day including the commute then driving the children to and from places they need to be or doing house work you can't look for the truth. That's why most Americans rely on the print and broadcast media for their information and end up thinking Obama raised taxes.
Computer programmers have a saying, "Garbage in, garbage out" it applies to news media consumers too. When you have "journalists" at the cable news outlets and the "papers of record shoveling swill and tripe into our heads in lieu of real news how can anybody make a sane decision.
Granted, you have the thirty per-centers who think George W was a great president and joined the Tea Party that think the news media is a Liberal plot but that leaves seventy percent that will make the right decision given the facts.
posted by Mr. Mike : 7:40 AM
You're right, it was Maddow, but she was not claiming that tax cuts are an effective way of stimulating the economy. (She has made the case at other times that unemployment assistance is probably the most effective means of stimulus.)
Rather, she was indirectly pointing to the hypocrisy of people who applaud certain politicians for advocating tax cuts while criticizing Obama over taxes.
posted by Kurt : 8:36 AM
Yes, but wasn't that tax cut due to the decrease in SS/Medicare withholdings? I'd hardly consider that a win for Americans.
posted by Anonymous : 9:24 AM
Fun Fact:
In order to close the deficit gap, we must return to ALL the Clinton era tax rates. That includes those making less than 250K.
Dems are setting themselves up for a policy and political fail relying on the "tax the rich" framing.
*setting aside corporations, who I believe pay a REAL tax of around 18% when all is said and done, might be as high as 25%?
posted by willyjsimmons : 10:05 AM
Its your country. This land is your land and all that. Dont blame your news media. Do something about it. Stand for office. Write a letter. Go on a demonstration. Dont watch the media that is lying to your fellows.
If not you then who?
When this is all over, people will look for someone to blame. I mean just after the economy collapses due to dumb ass fiscal cuts and an idiot desire to pay speculators and bond holders whatever they claim they are owed. So eventually the economy collapses, and then they reverse policy, while we all whistle "brother can you spare me a dime".
When that day comes, probably best not to be Mexican. Somehow it will be all their fault.
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 10:47 AM
Commentors like Mr Mike really vitiate this blog's quality. Core Tea Party members abhor George Bush; Ron Paul fans began the initial Tea Party.
Israeli military-industrial complex Big Government whores like Bachmann and Rubio have little in common with the Ron Paul Tea Party core.
posted by Ken Hoop : 3:01 PM
Anonymous
You must support the Right Wing Big Biz Capitalists who are responsible for the cheap labor wage-depleting invasion of the Mexicans.
posted by Ken Hoop : 3:02 PM
Actually Ken I dont. I really dont support the "Big Biz Capitalists" in this country. I think they are whiners, cheats, unpatriotic, self interested, and not actually capitalists. Its not the owners of the companies doing the exploiting. Its the managers. And then they award themselves blocks of stock for nothing, stealing from the shareholders. Once again Nader is spot on, apart from the idea that splitting the opposition vote is a good thing.
But policy isnt even being organised for these people - the managerial capitalists. If it was, the stock market would not have suddenly taken a nose dive would it? No, policy is organised to benefit bond holders. Nothing like a good recession to drive down wages and push up bond values.
On the subject of the Mexicans, do you really compete in a wage segment with mexican workers? Do you work in agricultural labour provision? Or perhaps in textiles? Or light manufacturing? If not, I would suggest Mexicans havnt been driving down wages for you. Perhaps you should blame Indians in Bangalore or Canadians, but it aint Mexicans.
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 7:12 PM
Commentors like Mr Mike really vitiate this blog's quality.
Gosh, Ken, why couldn't you say, "Commenters like Mr Mike really stink up the joint."
But then your Word-A-Day desk calender would go to waste.
posted by Mr. Mike : 8:27 PM
Vitiate, my ass. Mr. Mike is spot on, regarding the media and the every day people who work way too many hours and have no time to read up for themselves. No one here cares about your little defense of either Tea Partiers or the EVEN WORSE Paulbots, Hoop. Throw them on the heap with Bush and regular Republicans. In fact, use them as kindling to burn both. Just today I was thinking how venal Libertarians were...how much worse than Republicans. You're certainly on the wrong site if you're looking to rehabilitate the Ron Paul cult. Your anti-Jew and anti-Mexican comments just frost the cake.
-> 05.Feb.2001 "Consider these, for we have condemned them; / Leaders to no sure land, guides their bearings lost / Or in league with robbers have reversed ..." www.swans.com/library/art7/xxx058.html
There's been some talk about Elizabeth Warren running for President. See, for example, bostonboomer's piece here:
Warren has nothing to lose–Obama already hates her guts and has publicly humiliated her multiple times. What more can he do to her? Running against Obama would give Warren a chance to turn the tables and represent the American people against the top enforcer of the oligarchy.
And just imagine the debates! Warren would wipe the floor with Obama, exposing his lack of moral values and his pitiful ignorance of basic economics. Obama would be horrified to once again have to compete with a brilliant, competent woman. He might even be forced to sneakily use his middle finger again or pull out his tired sexist remarks. This time more people might notice, now that the koolaid has worn off for so many former Obots.
Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism seems to have been the first voice to raise this cry. It's a realistic assessment:
The obvious defect of a Warren bid for the Presidency is that she won’t win. Obama is expected to raise $1 billion for his campaign, as his Republican opponent presumably will. Warren has been branded as a scourge of banks. Even though it should be common sense that selling exploding toasters is bad business, the fact that she talks repeatedly and persuasively about the need for rules to have markets work well makes her a threat to much of Corporate America. Note that their heated opposition to the idea of fair play reveals the importance of treating customers badly, looting the official coffers, or both to their business models.
So why should she bother? She has become a forceful, self appointed advocate for middle class American families...
So the logic of having her run would be to change the terms of discourse in this country. In case you have managed to miss it, ideas that might interfere with the perquisites of those at the top of the food chain and their hired hands are virtually banned from the mainstream media.
Just so. We need to get the message out: Obama does not represent us. Young people -- both on the right and and on the left -- look at Obama and think: That's what liberalism IS.
No. No, it is not.
We need a standard bearer who will look at Obama in the face and tell him that he's a Republican who campaigned as a progressive -- that he lied about NAFTA, about FISA, about the wars, about representing working Americans. He lied about being an alternative to Bush. Like Bush, he had but one real prescription for America's ills: Tax cuts and more tax cuts. Worse, Obama has gone overseas to South Korea and India in order to pave the way for more free trade and more job outsourcing.
For this, he was called a socialist!
We need someone who will remind the world what true liberalism stands for. No, it's not socialism. And no, it has nothing to do with anything Obama has had to offer. It's about making sure that working people have decent paying jobs. It's about borrowing money to get a stuck-at-the-bottom economy unstuck and then paying it back during good economic times -- the exact opposite of the Republican approach. It's about creating rules that protect the working class from the rapists and pillagers at the top of the economic heap.
For god's sake, why didn't he tell the Republicans at the beginning of the debt ceiling negotiations that he would sign no bill that did not include a tax increase for the affluent? He could have presented a plan which included a (very) modest tax cut for the working poor coupled with the reversion to the Clinton era's tax structure for the upper bracket. The reactions to Warren, both on the right and left, are becoming divorced from reality. She has assumed iconic status as a lone mediagenic figure in the officialdom who reliably speaks out for the average person, a Joan of Arc for the little guy. And she drives the right crazy because she is rock solid competent and plays their game better than they do. She sticks to simple, compelling soundbites and images without the benefit of Roger Ailes and Madison Avenue packaging, and she speaks to an even broader constituency, Americans done wrong by the banks, than they target. No wonder they want to burn her at the stake.
Yves goes on the point out that Warren is, to a great degree, still something of an unknown quantity. We don't know where she stands on many issues.
Well, we knew even less about Obama. A lot of people thought they knew about him -- but they were simply using him as a movie screen on which to project their dreams.
Matt Taibbi may have been the first to make this suggestion, back in October of 2009. His words then are still worth reading.
But I’d like to see it get talked about anyway. The way I look at it, the problem with the Democratic Party is not the voters, it’s the 19 or 20 people who are paying for the campaigns and sitting in at those meetings with Rahm and Billy Tauzin. We have to get rid of those people, herd them all to the edge of a very tall cliff and push them off and be done with it.
We need someone in there who is willing to run one this one issue: who owns the Democratic Party? Is it the voters, or is it Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and United Health Care? There are plenty of candidates out there who’d fit — Toledo’s Marcy Kaptur got a nice bounce from the Michael Moore movie, and Jan Schakowsky is another who comes to mind — but Warren to me makes the most sense for the simple reason that it will be virtually impossible for the Democratic Party hacks to dismiss her as a fringe character, given that they themselves gave her such a big public position as chief of the Congressional Oversight Panel.
This is a woman who understands the finance issues as well as we can hope to expect from any politician and moreover seems to connect the dots when it comes to dissecting the problems on Wall Street...
I think someone needs to put a scare into the Democratic Party leaders.
That last sentence sums up the case for Warren elegantly.
Despite his status as the incumbent and his $1 billion campaign war chest, President Obama could find himself voted out of office in 2012. When you consider the fact that the Republican Party candidates who are currently generating the most excitement are women (Bachmann and the undeclared Palin) just imagine how many voters might gravitate to a populist female candidate with substantially more brains than Obama.
The disillusionment factor afflicting Obama is not something which can be easily overlooked. The man I have referred to as the “Disappointer-In-Chief” since his third month in office has lost more than the enthusiasm of his “base” supporters – he has lost the false “progressive” image he had been able to portray.
I see no pressing reason for her to run against Scott Brown, whom I dislike less than I dislike Obama. Brown has shown some independence, while Obama has shown utter fealty to the Wall Streeters who despise him. How can anyone respect a dog who remains loyal to an abusive master?
Matt Stoller articulated the differences between Obama and Warren:
He won’t announce Social Security or Medicare cuts, he wants it to be part of a Grand Bargain for whom no one has to take responsibility. He demands an end to earmarks, or something, but we need an infrastructure bank or something. As a result, the Democratic Party is enmeshed right now in a guessing game about the true goals of their leader, paralyzed and unable to govern. When Warren is present, by contrast, the Republicans are able to argue strongly that they do not believe in government as an agent of good, while Democrats are able to articulate the opposite. It’s a real, open, honest debate. There’s no sliding around with 11 dimensional chess nonsense, it’s straight up democracy.
One last link. I'm not a Facebook fan by any stretch of the imagination -- but if you are a resident of that universe, go here.
Added note: In his address to the press today, Obama noted that -- among our other problems -- the Arab uprising led to "the rile in oil prices."
Methinks he made a miltake in reading from his teseprompter.
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The reality is the Democrat machine voters will line up behind Obama again like a battered spouse attacking the police officers responding to her domestic violence call. The Kossholes will go on another misogyny spree and Chris Matthews will get that old familiar tingle, probably because his thirty pieces of ABM silver wore a hole in his trouser pocket.
I just had a vision. The FDR Democrats piled in a Lincoln powered EAT ME cake float lurching toward Washington in 2012.
posted by Mr. Mike : 4:58 AM
I'll just say this: ceteris paribus, in the extremely unlikely event that Elizabeth Warren ever comes to occupy a position in which she has the power to effect real changes pertinent to what America has become, she'll quickly fall prey to the old mechanism of "death-by-lone-gunman". The FDR period has imprinted in the hearts and minds of the American Oligarchy: *never again*. Vide the '60s.
Alternative political figures is not what I think the American people needs - but then again I'm just a foreigner poking my nose around in interesting times...
posted by moshe : 8:09 AM
I really like Elizabeth Warren but I see this as just another pipe dream. I can't see Warren entering a race in which she has no realistic chance of winning. More a chance of being savaged by the same wolves that made it clear they wanted her out of DC. Even Yves over at Naked Capitalism said Warren would never make it out of the primaries. And the simple fact is: Obama needs to be dumped, completely.
But . . . if Warren were to throw herself in, knowing the risks and the stones being thrown to change the conversation then she would absolutely earn the title of Joan of Arc. And I would get on my knees and cross myself.
I'd like to believe that there's someone, a single brave, fierce person, out there who could grab the reins and change our course. But I'm coming to the conclusion that it's going to take more than one person. It's going to take an army of Americans, hitting the streets and screaming: NO MORE.
Well, the theory is NOT for her to actually win, (Yves expressly says she thinks Obama would still win the nomination).
Warren in the primary is just a means to try to move the overton window back to the left. (In theory, as stated, no one knows exactly what Warren would do outside of the financial area)
I think it would be equally as effective if she just went ahead and called Obama the liar I'm sure she knows he is. The 64K question is, is she willing to do so? Actually speak truth to power? Call people out?
posted by willyjsimmons : 10:08 AM
Primarying Obama would be great...except I'd hate to see the Obamacrats destroy another reputation.
Oh yes!!! She's our gal! Last summer I did a post about her at my blog, and said "never mind the CFPB, we need Elizabeth Warren in the White House". Haven't changed my mind - am even more certain now.
As the previous commenter said "we can dream" - and we'll probably have to because there'd be a phalanx of opposition from both right and left, impossible for a newcomer to overcome.
2016 - maybe. But even an unsuccessful run 2012 could open up conversations and let a bit of light in.
"Emanuel defends Obama on Republican criticism ahead of birthday fundraiser"
D*mn it, I hate to say it but Taibbi is quite right in his diagnosis. The problem is that the Democratic party does not actually represent anyone. Perhaps the same is true of the Republicans. They both simple hire themselves out to the highest bidder in the corporate lobbying world.
So of course Emmanuel defends Obama against Republican criticsm, while no one hears any Democrat criticism so they and the papers can maintain the fiction that there are two cliches fighting a class war.
This is clearly not true. There are two parties fighting a class war alright. But both parties are beating up on the same class.
So bless Warren. If I voted I would support her too. But its not about her being good is it? Its about Obama being one giant douche bag. I suppose we can try and apply pressure. But frankly Im sickened by him and his mates. Im so glad I dont vote here. Consider me excused from partipating in your farce of a democracy.
I prefer she run for the Senate and win, rather than run challenge Obama in a primary for President snd lose. The press will have a field day on her lack of foreign policy experience if she runs for president. And I doubt Obama would even deign to debate her. But she could win the Senate.
djmm
posted by djmm : 6:59 PM
Speaking as a Massachusetts resident and a member of my Democratic ward committee, as well as a female graduate of Harvard Law School, although I predate Professor Warren so I have no personal experience with her, I'm torn. I know one of the current Democratic candidates for senator, Bob Massie, and I think he'd make a great senator, so I'm distressed at the thought of Elizabeth Warren's stepping in and eclipsing everybody else (shades of Mitt Romney vs. Jane Swift, although I see a qualitative difference between Elizabeth Warren and Mitt Romney). At the same time, I really do get goosebumps at the thought of having someone in national office who seems to have her head screwed on straight and have a backbone underneath it.
posted by CambridgeKnitter : 9:52 PM
The fact is that what we see today is not what we will see in a month or six months. Elizabeth Warren could grow stronger because of the attacks that would be waged against her is a primary. Obama's billion could be his undoing. The country wants someone sensible who is truly interested in governing responsibly. Bachman, Palin, Obama, etc., have shown their fickle posturing. Given the choice between someone genuine and Obama I think genuine wins. Given the choice between Republican crazy and genuine, again genuine wins.
I'm so thoroughly pissed off about the whole debt ceiling business that I don't want to write about it. Not today, at least. Historians will soon agree that this self-inflicted crisis constitutes the worst disaster since the Depression, possibly since the Civil War.
Readers responding to the previous post seemed to favor turning our attentions elsewhere, as an expression of disdain for the current state of our political leadership.
Let us therefore turn to a more tolerable topic: Can dogs sense evil? In the video above, my ferocious hell-hound Bella is put to the test. And yes, the thing with the house is real. Just ask any of the kids in the neighborhood.
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I remember the argument that Obama might have had a "horse" pulling for him. Whoever controls him, they have no interest in the welfare of less wealth 80% of Americans. If he is not doing his masters bidding, then he is either an idiot (I dont dismiss this) or an outrageous hypocrite. I have no idea which one but we will find out when the election comes. If he gets his second term then Im sure everyone else's sacrifice will all have been worthwhile.
What a total w*nker.
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 4:57 AM
Pelosi secured the votes for the deal that finally came through. Why blame the Republicans or make them "evil"? It's been the Democrats, especially under Pelosi and Reid, that have voted for everything that the Republicans wanted. It's the same whether it's Bush or Obama. Both parties have the same goals. It's time to stop blaming the Republicans and make the Democrats responsible for their votes.
The left has been voting for the lesser of two evils and its support is taken for granted. The Republicans make their vote count. They are not afraid of the Democrats taking over for 2 or 4 or 6 years if in the end they can change the dynamics of their party by throwing out the people that don't vote their way.
posted by Anonymous : 5:20 AM
Enjoyed the video - well played, Joseph! I was playing with Windows Movie Maker myself yesterday to help avert my eyes from the debt ceiling debacle.
Bella is adorable !!! I suspect that dogs sense love first, and if that's present they'll tolerate some evil...as evidenced by the last frame of your video.
If this debt ceiling stuff pulls another brick out from Obama's wall, helps to bring him down - maybe all is not lost. (Trying to find something positive from the wreckage).
Love the video and beautiful Bella! (Is "beautiful Bella" redundant?) I think she came on the property to protect you. Was Smilin Jack ever prosecuted?
djmm
posted by djmm : 4:54 PM
The two parties are mirror images, facing each other, sometimes pretending to be different, wearing floating signs that dissimulate and/or mask the powerful totalitarian power they are welding. Elections are meaningless spectacles and we the domestic population are their targets. We are now under constant surveillance ad the fact that we expose them criticize them, confront them, only serves to make them stronger. This is Baudrillard, through Vija Kinski, in DeLillo's Cosmopolis. The solution is to push the system to its extremes in a excess of reality as Eric Packer does in Cosmopolis. Of course all the academics and reviewers interpret his actio as self-destructive, loser, manwhore etc. It is too dangerous a book to be take seriously. Let's hope Cronenberg and Pattinson do. I am. http://cosmopolisfilm2.blogspot.com
So... now we know that 80% of the voices of America are not present nor accounted for.
Ms. Vandal.
P.S. We're pretty lucky to have Bella in our lives. She makes it worth getting up in the morning for work. Not sure what we would have done without her. Well, one thing is for sure, Cannonfire wouldn't have a mascot!
