Sunday Brunch Link Buffet

Since last week was a high-stress affair at work—with as-yet-fully resolved negotiations on the future of my career as a climax—and then a much-needed escape out of town with Mrs F and the kids, blogging took a backseat. In fact, for several days I never even went online. So some of this is out of date, or not fully-realized... but here goes:

WAKE THE FUCK UP
Andrew Sullivan (among others) really need to decide to shit or get off the pot when it comes to Catholicism. Im not one for organized religion in any form at this point in my life, but my experience with both the Catholic and Episcopal churches isn't even close. For Sullivan to remain a part of a church that wants to literally cleanse him and those like him from existence is the height of self-loathing behavior.

RISING AGAIN?
Not exactly, but Kevin Drum better not hold his breath waiting for the South to learn its lesson or its place.

Always a Good Idea to Add Armed Allies

Steves at ATK turned me on to Gun Toting Liberal. His link to "How to Address an Issue Without Addressing the Issue" is a look at the behind-the-scenes amendment processon big legislation like the health care bill. It explains how the opposition party offers amendments to legislation they oppose—not to improve it, but to set up talking points and a win-win situation for them. This was part of what led to Rep. Wilson (R-rich, white suburbs of Charleston, SC) to his outburst during Obama's address.

Today, GTL has a post up on "The Republican Double Standard". It's mostly stuff you've heard about, but it's a nice recap to go with your coffee.

Adding to the blogroll... now.

UPDATE: That blogroll addition is provisionary. After spending a bit of time over there, not so sure about it...some good posts, but absurd guest posters, and the comment threads are worthless.

Fed Up

James K. Galbraith has an interesting review of a book about the bailout.

Paying It Forward.

Ezra Klein said simply, "Because it's Friday and I want you to have a good weekend, I insist you look at this unbelievably wonderful link.

He was absolutely correct. Enjoy.

Never Was a Blog So Aptly Titled (since this one anyway...)

I had a hard time whittling down a good blockquote from the excellent content on Jim Kunstler's blog Clusterfuck Nation. Let's start with this:

The Great Wish across America is to resume the life of comfort-and-convenience that seemed so nirvana-like just a few short years ago, when the very constellations of the heavens might have been renamed after heroic Atlanta realtors and Connecticut hedge fund warriors, and the boomer portfolios groaned with earnings, and millions of graying corporate salary mules dreamed of their approaching retirement to a satori of golf and Viagra, and the interior decorators grew so rich installing granite countertops that they could buy their own houses in the East Hampton, and every microcephalic parking valet in Las Vegas qualified for a bucket full of Ninja mortgages, and Lloyd Blankfein could dream of divorcing his wife to marry his cappuccino machine.

The choices now are stark and the kind of life on offer by the future is rather austere. The job of the current president, and the people who work with him, is to manage an epic contraction -- let's say, to land a very large, loaded defect-ridden airplane that has both run out of fuel and suffered grievous mechanical breakdown... and to bring down that vehicle in an unfamiliar country filled with angry savages. Sadly, the new president and his co-pilots just want to keep the plane up there, circling. The president's viziers are working round-the-clock to come up with some way, some toggle-switch, that might turn off the laws of gravity (which are not unrelated to the laws of thermodynamics). But all they seem to be able to come up with are mumbled prayers that are pale imitations of the algorithms once concocted by the Wall Street engineers who designed the aircraft they're riding in.

And get more specific with this:

The president is playing with fire on all this. The old economy is not going to recover, and so far he has not used his rhetorical talents to articulate what the next economy is likely to be about. It is reasonable to wonder whether he even really has a clear sense of it -- and, based on the fatuous utterances of his economic mandarins like Larry Summers and Austan Goolsby, this team is really behind the curve.

There are plenty of things you can state about the economy past and future with some confidence right now:

-- Cheap energy is over and our wishes for alt.energy are currently inconsistent with reality, meaning we have to live differently.

-- We have to downscale and re-localize our major economic activities: food production, commerce and manufacturing, banking, schooling, etc.

-- We can't hope to have a stable money system unless we allow a workout of unpayable debt to proceed.

-- Even if we can do this, universal easy credit is a thing of the past. From now on, we have to save for the things we want and run our businesses and households on accounts receivable.

-- Major demographic shifts are inevitable as it becomes necessary to let go of suburbia and reactivate our derelict towns and smaller cities (and allow our giant metroplexes to contract).

-- We have to face the truth that our major social contracts cannot be met, namely the continuation of social security as we know it and probably all pension arrangements. We'll probably have to change household arrangements to make up for these losses.

-- Health care will have to go through a revolution more comprehensive than just changing how we pay for it. Like everything else, it will have to downscale, re-localize, and become more rigorous.

We're not going to rescue the banks. The collateral for their loans is no good and it will only lose more value. All those tract houses on the cul-de-sacs of America and scattered on the out-parcels of our tragically subdivided farming landscape will only lose value, one way or another, in the years ahead. Right now they're simply losing inflated cash value -- and that has been bad enough to sink the banks. In the months and years ahead, they'll lose their sheer usefulness as the distances once mitigated by cheap gasoline loom larger again, and the jobs vanish and incomes with them, and the supermarket shelves cease to groan with eighty-seven different varieties of flavored coffee creamers, and one-by-one the national chain stores shutter, and the theme parks, and the Nascar ovals, and the malls, and the colossal superfluous cretin-cargo of consumer nonsense that we've been daydreaming in gets blown away in a hurricane of change that we were not ready to believe in.

Sobering stuff. While I think he's a bit of a curmudgeonly pessimist, I think his forecast is closer to reality than you'll hear from a politician or the media. They're all too heavily invested in a return to the old system, and will refuse to recognize the failure of its return even if we revert to living in caves—"build that new kitchen with a cave equity loan!"

The most disappointing thing in all of this is that surely Obama is smart enough to know this—and it is even more certain that the country as a whole is too fucking dumb to handle the truth.

Link Dump

BETTER DEMOCRATS, PLEASE
Harry Reid is a worthless sack of shit. The latest proof.
[h/t Angelos]

BECK, MUTATIONS
Matt Taibbi on the transformation of Glenn Beck from lesser-known, crazy right-wing asshole to...a-list, certifiable, apeshit-crazy, paranoid, crybaby nutjob in a frying pan and on steroids..

TORTURED LOGIC
I find myself falling neatly between Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald on the release of the torture memos. Yes, you can, Mr. President.

STFU
Daniel Larison pours Krauthammer and others on the right, a big ol' cup.

"RICH KID BLUES"
von, the conservative over at Obsidian Wings, tries to counter Ezra Klein's point about the tax burden of the wealthiest Americans...and fails miserably. The comments are awesome.

Worse Than Detroit*

Awhile back, I added Sweet Juniper! to the blogroll and gave particular love to the haunting photos taken by that blog's proprietor, James Griffioen. The latest installment is jdg's story of returning to one of the decaying abandoned schools in Detroit and salvaging some books for his daughter and trying to get SOMEONE to do something about the offices filled with confidential student records...

I am haunted by what I found in one office: hundreds of file folders containing student psychological examinations complete with social security numbers, addresses, and parent information. I sat and thumbed through them. Many contained detailed histories of physical and sexual abuse, stories of home lives so horrifying I still can't get them out of my head: sibling rape, torture, neglect that defies belief. The detailed reports explained emotional impairments, learning disabilities. There was another box full of IEPs. The dates revealed that many of these students are still in the school system somewhere. I found several of their faces in the 2007 yearbook.

These aren't 20-year-old files, this is a school that just closed at the end of the 2007 school year. The names and stories belong to still-little kids shuffled to some other Detroit school.

His photos and a brief essay documenting those schools in Detroit appear in the U.K. magazine, Vice.

--

This post tells about an afternoon James spent giving a TIME magazine reporter a tour of the city for a story...His Flickr page reveals that TIME then turned around and screwed him by hiring some NY photographer to come to Detroit and recreate his photographs. Assholes.

*Title of a fantastic Robert Plant song. After contemplating this story its hard for me to imagine a place that actually is...

Sunday Link Dump

THE DOCTOR IS IN OUT
The case for Howard Dean to replace Daschle at HHS—and why it will unfortunately never happen. [h/t Ezra, who goes down the shortlist of candidates]

A-ROID
Leaked test results from MLB reveal Alex Rodriguez used steroids in his 2003 MVP season. I'll have plenty more to say about this—and shockingly it will be in defense of A-Rod. [h/t Toast]

NORM-AL
When will Norm Coleman fucking concede already? This is now beyond ridiculous.

Worth the Wait

It wasn't out in time to make The Year in Review Review, but better late than never...

THE BEAST 50 MOST LOATHSOME PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 2008.

A sampling:

20. Joe the Plumber

Charges: The Che Guevara of bald, pissed off white men. In a lot of ways, Samuel Wurzelbacher really does represent the average American—basing economic opinions on unrealistic expectations of personal future success, blaming his failure to meet those expectations on minorities and old people, complaining about deadbeats getting his taxes when he isn’t actually paying his taxes, and advertising his own rudimentary historical and mathematical ignorance by warning of creeping socialism in a country whose highest income tax rate has dropped by half in thirty years. “Joe” indeed symbolizes the true American dream—to become undeservedly rich and famous through a dizzyingly improbable stroke of luck. As American folk heroes go, Wurzelbacher ranks somewhere between Hulk Hogan and Bernie Goetz.

Exhibit A: "Social Security is a joke...social security I've never believed in, don't like it. I hate that it's forced on me."

Sentence: After blowing his fifteen minutes and all his money on coke and Thai hookers, an infirm, elderly Joe finds that social security actually is a joke, and is finally forced to snake toilets for a living.

Sheer awesomeness. Mr Furious wants to be the Buffalo Beast when he grows up.

Link Dump

BETTER THAN EZRA? NOT THIS WEEK
Ezra Klein's on a roll. He had perhaps the best 20 column-inches of blogging I've seen in weeks the other day: Lieberman, Daschle, De-regulation, Global Warming, among others...

Today he has a good follow-up on Obama's options for Secretary of Agriculture. I'm still down on Vilsack, but he's not the worst guy up for the job. On the plus side, this guy looks interesting...

John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association. Boyd helped lead the fight to hold USDA accountable for its long history of stiffing black farmers; his nomination is being championed by the Congressional Black Caucus. Virginia-based Boyd himself runs a relatively small-scale farm; seems like his position as a USDA outsider might lead him to champion the interests of small farmers in an agency that's long been beholden to large industrial operations.

WAX ON
This and this make me feel even better about Waxman bouncing Dingell.

YOU BE THE JUDGE
Minnesota Public Radio has an awesome online ballot inspection test with real examples of contested ballots from the recount—how would you rule?

ENERGIZE
New "Star Trek" Trailer here. Looks excellent, except for the casting of Kirk—too young. Then again, who's fit to carry this guy's jock?

Miscellany

GUYS WHO WEAR $14,000 WATCHES WEIGH IN

Esquire Endorses Barack Obama for President
We thought this election would be a serious fight over the future of this country, but only one candidate showed up.

A good endorsement of Obama column from the editors of Esquire. They are justifiably critical, even harsh, regarding certain aspects of Obama's candidacy (ie: kissing the ring of Rick Warren). But they assemble a devastating indictment of the Bush Era and McCain's complete capitulation to, and eventual bear-hug of, the theocratic wing. Concluding with a compelling case regarding not just the Supreme Court—but ALL the Federal Courts. It's a column that's worth reading...

SPENCE SPEWS
Patton Oswald on the election, the candidates and what a good Ellroy novel it would make...


BLOGROLL UPDATE—IN:

SHAKESVILLE Now with 50% less PUMA! Still annoying (infuriating?) at times, but a near-daily stop for me with plenty of good stuff, or at least good debate.

DANIEL LARISON Heads up, that link takes you to The American Conservative—John Cole and Sullivan link to this guy often, and he's good. Perhaps less pertinent after the election—but, then again, important to keep things honest.


BLOGROLL UPDATE—OUT:

POSITIVE APE INDEX Site of the artist Coop. Infrequent posting, and too little art, design and hot rods in favor of too much wierd biker chick nudity (Angelos alert)

NEIL GAIMAN'S JOURNAL Seemed cool at first...I never go back there

Reading Listening Assignment

John Rogers at Kung-Fu Monkey has a post up containing links to two fantastic episodes of NPR's This American Life that explain in detail, yet complete clarity, everything about the current financial meltdown.

355: The Giant Pool of Money

365: Another Frightening Show About the Economy

I've only heard part of the second one, which I sat in my car for twenty minutes to finish, and I meant to go back and listen to both whole episodes and then blog it up, but this being a deadline week and all, I completely forgot.

Anyway, as Rogers puts it, it's your duty as a responsible and informed citizen to understand what the fuck is going on. (Unless you are a Republican, in which case you can go over to rushlimbaugh.com and continue to dissolve what's left of your atrophied brain.

Black and White

Awesome Very good column on 'white privilege' and quiet racism. Read it.

UPDATE: As Toast points out in the column, there is much of this that can be attributed to a conservative/liberal or GOP/Dem bias, but there is still plenty of food for thought in there, especially when you get past issues-related double standards and to the parts about Michelle Obama, etc.

Bailing Out the Bail-Out

NOW IS THE TIME
Publius at Obsidian Wings finally has electricity and internet back (he's in Houston) and his comeback post is a good one—The Progressive Moment

SHRINKAGE
Kos contributor Trapper John suggests a miniaturized version of the Paulson plan—Small Is Beautiful Can somebody give me a good reason why it wouldn't work?

Recommended Reading

The best breakdown of what happened to financial sector I've seen. Hilarious, but also breaks it down beautifully. Check it out...

Economic Disasters and Stupid Evil People

It's a thing of beauty.

Edwards Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

The Rude Pundit has perhaps the best analysis of this whole situation (he certainly has the most graphic and profane). The Rude One posits that the Party elders knew all about this shit, and there was never a real danger of Edwards becoming the nominee. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but he nails just about everything else—especially the bullshit of trying to tie this fiasco in any way to Obama or the Democraic brand.

The column is also the source to this article which features this absolutely clueless and completely self-absorbed quote from Rielle Hunter, the other woman...

Asked about Elizabeth Edwards, who is unusually well-liked by political operatives and reporters, Hunter told reporter Jonathan Darman, "She does not give off good energy. ... I've only met her once.... She didn't make eye contact with me."

Um, perhaps because you were fucking her husband?!?! And maybe having terminal cancer along with an unfaithful spouse was dragging down her "good energy."

Reading Assignment

I remember reading Charles P Pierce's Obama article in Esquire when it first came out—but, it was probably hurriedly, while in the library or something, and I didn't really absorb it.

So, I was doing some design research the other day in the library in Charleston, and I photocopied the article along with lots of other stuff from an array of well-designed magazines. I intended to re-read the piece, so I copied the whole thing...

I read it on the flight back to Michigan today, and I was positively blown away. No, not because I'm an Obama guy. After all, the piece does not extol Obama, nor is it really even about him. It is about us as a country. And it is fucking phenomenal.

Pierce is a great writer—always has been. Sports, politics, humor, whatever. He's one of the best. But this article isn't just the best political article I've read lately, it's probably the best writing I've read in years, period.

I don't know how I missed it the first time. Probably because my Obamania at the time was temporarily suppressing my cynicism...

The piece is simultaneously exhilarating and disillusioning in its brutally honest assessment of the state of politics in America.

The Cynic and Senator Obama.

Too good to excerpt. Read the whole thing.

Reading Assignment

Two fantastic posts that sum up the conflict over Obama and FISA. Conflict? Yes, the one within my head and the one playing out on the blogosphere...

First Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald should be everybody's go-to guy on all matters Constitutional and law-talkin'. A phenomenal legal mind, Greenwald can at times get bogged down in legal details and be a bit cumbersome to read. He also is perhaps a bit tin-eared on the politics at time as such a Constitutional purist. But when he's right, he's usually right, and he has been leading the charge on FISA. I've nodded along with everything he's had to say on this, but today he really hits it out of the park.

Greenwald argues that running to the "center" on national security is a flawed and outdated strategy—because where they're running is actually away from the center, and the Democrats have proof of that right in front of them...

In the 2006 midterm election, Karl Rove repeatedly made clear that the GOP strategy rested on making two National Security issues front and center in the midterm campaign: Democrats' opposition to warrantless eavesdropping and their opposition to "enhanced interrogation techniques" against Terrorists. Not only did the Democrats swat away those tactics, taking away control of both houses of Congress in 2006, but more unusually, not a single Democratic incumbent in either the House or Senate -- not one -- lost an election.

Not only did they not lose seats, they regained both Houses and kicked GOP incumbents to the curb in bright red districts. So what the fuck are they doing now? Read the whole thing.

--

Next is Digby at Hullaballoo. While Greenwald eviscerates the current strategy, the always insightful Digby starts to divine the "why." She posits that it has nothing to do with FISA or any particular issue, and agrees this isn't a move to the center—they're already right of the center—but alleges that it's really part of a larger repudiation of the liberal base.

DC Democrats, through an incestuous/symbiotic relationship with the media mistakenly treat people like Russert, Matthews and Dowd as the "Everyman/woman." And come general election-time, they all regard the party base as "elites" that the Democratic candidate needs to distance themselves from:

And that raises an important question: if these rich, pampered celebrities are spokesmen for the Everyman, then who are the elites? Well, they're us, the liberal base of the Democratic party. And that's what this "run to the center" is really all about --- putting as much distance between the politicians and us as they can. It's not about being "serious" on national security or crime or family values. It's not even about appealing to swing voters. It's about repudiating liberalism.

[...] Repudiating liberalism is a symbolic gesture required of Democrats by the political establishment to prove that they are not elitists. And it goes beyond mere posturing on gay marriage or abortion. The national security challenge is always not to appear to be "an appeaser." The way you prove that is by refusing to appease the Democratic base...The entire construct is based upon Democrats distancing themselves from their most ardent supporters (which is quite convenient for Republicans.

Exactly. For twenty-plus years the fucking dumb-ass Democrats have somehow decided that a show of "strength" is not standing up to the opposition and for what is right—but to adopt the enemy's framework and instead repudiate your die-hard supporters.

How they cannot escape this circle is beyond me. The media and the GOP are laughing all the way to the bank and into office, the Democratic base ends up kicked in the teeth again and the party as a whole ends up looking weak, indecisive and disorganized and find themselves further marginalized and out of power. The ONLY time this pattern did not occur was in 2006—as Greenwald mentioned—the year we avoided that trap and kicked ass.

They appear to have learned NOTHING from that. And as far as Pelosi, Reid, Hoyer and all the other losers I think that's correct. They cannot shake free from their Daschle/Gephartian cautiousness.

I think Obama IS aware of it, and like many of his supporters we look to him to shake the party out of this stupor. That's what makes his collapse on FISA so disappointing. First, here's Digby:

That being the case, I'm not sure it's ever been realistic to expect Barack Obama to be the guy to challenge all this. He carries with him the strongest cultural signifiers a Democrat can carry to make the political establishment freak out: he's young, he's from big city politics, he's elite educated and, of course, he's black. As much as the "Everymen" like to think of themselves as beyond something silly like race, unless a black person is a Republican like Powell or Rice, he is automatically suspect [...] Under the system as it exists today, you can hardly be surprised that the first black Democratic nominee would be reluctant to break much more new ground than he already has.

I think there is a lot to that. But I also think Obama's appeal and success is driven by his resistance to status quo, and he's giving too much ground with this—I don't think it gains him much in the wider electorate, and I KNOW it hurts the enthusiasm of his base. Sure you want to pass up that public financing, Senator?

Digby looks at at the bigger picture, and notes that Democrats are spending their political capital on a huge shift by nominating a black man, and there is a price to pay for that...

Democrats have decided to use some of their political advantage of the moment to advance something important: the full equality of African Americans. In America, with our history, the symbolism of that means something quite real. But there is a trade off involved. He has less freedom of movement than someone like a John Edwards might have had...

[...] We chose serious symbolic change that has deep cultural meaning over serious ideological change that has deep political meaning. There's nothing inherently wrong with that --- the effects of such things are far reaching and incredibly important for the advancement of our society. You can't forget that Barack himself was born at a time when Jim Crow was still enshrined in the south. This is huge. But nothing comes free and having a politically moderate president at a time when a more explicit progressivism might have gotten a boost is the price we pay. The Village will only tolerate so much change at one time. If we want real political change, it's time to change the Village.

I think that's a bit of a cop-out. Digby is right to a point, but I don't think it's that stark of a choice. Both can be had. At least on some issues, and this should be one of them. And I have to believe given his druthers, Obama agrees. He has been adept at negotiating just about every minefield thus far, and I think his rhetorical gifts would allow him to adjust the conventional wisdom on this issue in particular. But for some reason there is this abrupt reversal.

What Greenwald and Digby both fail to mention is what I believe is happening around Obama on the FISA issue. I don't think he wanted to deal with this now, nor do I think this is the position he wants to take, but he has no choice. Reid and Pelosi both had control of when this issue came up and they made it happen NOW, and both allowed the ground to shift beneath Obama's feet. Particularly in the House, which until last week, has always been the stopper on Telecom Immunity. There has to be a reason this is happening, and I suspect it is because certain Democratic leaders need the immunity as badly as the administration and the telecoms.

Obama is already tasked with piecing together the party after the bitter primary season, and he cannot run against John McCain AND the Democrats in Congress. He's screwed. There are others (Dodd, Feingold, etc) who are valiantly, but futilely fighting this, but I think Obama entered into a truce when the superdelegates stepped in to decide the nomination—and the cover his support would provide Congress was the price.

Am I absolving Obama? NO. In fact, I'm still working to change his mind, but I don't really believe it's going to work. It's the larger mindset around him that got us into this mess that needs changing.

Quote of the Day

John Scalzi:

Poor, rural, working-class white folks in Appalachia didn’t vote for the rich urban former law professor senator from Chicago. They went for the rich urban former law professor senator born in Chicago instead. But since the vote went so overwhelmingly in one direction rather than the other, and rich urban former law professor senators with Chicago ties are otherwise largely interchangeable, there has to be another controlling factor here. I can’t think what it might be, though. Maybe it will come to me if I think about it.

[h/t Sullivan]

Old...

...but still not nearly as old as John McCain