small things...

Real Misery Index

The economy realistically:

Bookforum: Stories about the financial crisis.

A new study just released on the current income gap: obscene beyond Reagan's wildest dreams.

But, at least Obama's out there explaining patiently how he doesn't plan to kill yer grandma.

Vermont Pride

Bernie Sanders:

Howard Dean:

...and Patrick Leahy

The facts are that over 72% of Americans want a government-run public choice for health care. You know, like something approaching what the rest of the developed world takes for granted (and we could easily have without higher taxes–just by revoking some of the latest welfare handouts for this country's blight of obscenely rich assholes).

self-healing chop blocks

Now's the time to buy! Everything's ON SALE until this Friday morning, when I take it with me to Vermont. Otherwise accepting orders for late August/early September...

The legacy of Geithner and Summers, thus far...

Glenn Greenwald has the details on why they should be fired immediately by Obama.

Or for those unable to read (fist via Matt Taibbi):

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Pyramid Economy
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

"new atheism"

For those following the debate: here's a popular argument more practical than either Terry Eagleton or Karen Armstrong.

Update: And here is Chris Knight. Finally, an actual philosopher. Thank God. Via.

"The President's Surveillance Plan"

Revealed to include a whole lot more than illegal wiretapping...

Or how to dump a story on a Friday. And in other potentially exciting news... Update, a whole week later: Digby on the embarrassment of the CIA finding "inspiration" in the TV show, "24."

US Health Insurance Cartel: Follow the Money

Adding to the list of people who don't want you to see how Michael Moore's film, "Sicko" "hits the nail on the head" according to US insurance insiders.

The Washington Post: Lawmakers Reveal Health-Care Investments:

Almost 30 key lawmakers helping draft landmark health-care legislation have financial holdings in the industry, totaling nearly $11 million worth of personal investments in a sector that could be dramatically reshaped by this summer's debate.
...and freshman Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), who holds at least $180,000 in investments in more than 20 health-care companies...

The Washington Post: Familiar Players in Health Bill Lobbying:

The nation's largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress....The hirings are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight, according to disclosure records.

Huffington Post launches "Lobby Blog."

Update: Hell yah.

UpdateII: Huffpo has more.

We want..we want...HEALTH CARE!

Wendell Potter, former Head of Corporate Communications at CIGNA (which provides health insurance to nearly 70 percent of the Fortune 100 companies) admits that, in fact, "Sicko" "hit the nail on the head" and told the real truth about how much better people in other countries have it when it comes to their health care...

...disinformation and attacks on Michael and the film were extensive and well-planned. Their job was to stop the movie from reaching a wide audience (and, more importantly, from having the widespread political impact the industry feared "Sicko" would have).

Watch the full Bill Moyers story here and especially here.

Kay Hagan and other cowardly, incoherent Blue Dogs attempt vaguely to conceal wildly unpopular selling-out to the health insurance cartel, update

Courtesy of Digby, here.

I can't afford health care. Apparently an industry/cartel with record prices and profits can still afford to buy politicians. I campaigned hard for Kay Hagan but I will campaign even harder to replace her with any-goddamn-one if she doesn't do the right thing here and support a public option. Here is her contact info.

Spalted Maple, Book-Matched

End grain, with 3/4 juice groove and side handles. 25" by 21" by 2". $285.







GreenRiverWoods.etsy.com

...also

willfully deaf ears

Incredible.

Obama still doesn't get it, needs to do more for the economy than cross the ultimate line with Goldman Sachs. Now.

speaking of Facebook...

For those infantile Narcissistic Personality Disorder types for whom actually speaking is an awkward affair:

"But in a statement posted on Palin's Facebook account, she suggested that she had bigger plans and a national agenda she planned to push after she resigns at the end of the month.

"I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint," she said.

Palin also cast herself as a victim and blasted the media, calling the response to her announcement "predictable" and out of touch.

"How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it's about country," the statement said. "And though it's honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make."

Palin's personal spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton, confirmed to The Associated Press that the Facebook posting was written by the governor."

...Pretending to run for President (on Facebook!) being at this point Palin's only way to defend her dignity ("the world is literally her oyster!"), the only friendly medium through which to vaguely spin her quitting in terms of anything but pure selfish avoidance, were that even possible...or as Maureen Dowd says this morning: "Sarah wanted everyone to know that she’s not having fun and people are being mean to her and she doesn’t feel like finishing her first term as governor."
Practical minds can only hope she stays out of prison long enough to pursue those "bigger plans."

sad songs

Worth the listening...(via)

Less sad: A Supposedly Fun Blog, which points to this old interview with David Foster Wallace:


He was on the show a year earlier as well:

Matt Taibbi strikes again: "The Great American Bubble Machine"

Oh, I'm a huge fan of this guy's investigative journalism, this time "on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression." (Cue emphatically vague, prosaic protests from the PR wing of Goldman Sachs.) Especially as at times he seems like the only one who is effectively doing this: translating our reality of in all but name only criminally-organized economic-apartheid/financier dictatorship to a popular audience, and with proper pathos of indignation. Taibbi may not have been possible without the likes of Chomsky, but he sure does a better job keeping us awake. (Needless to say, part of this work is holding otherwise sympathetic but obviously worn-down, increasingly platitudinous critics-become-automatons to a higher standard, which Taibbi also does pretty well.)

His conclusions are especially disturbing:

The collective message of all of this — the AIG bailout, the swift approval for its bank-holding conversion, the TARP funds — is that when it comes to Goldman Sachs, there isn't a free market at all. The government might let other players on the market die, but it simply will not allow Goldman to fail under any circumstances. Its edge in the market has suddenly become an open declaration of supreme privilege.

[...]

Fast-forward to today. It's early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs — its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign — sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.

Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm's co-head of finance.) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

Update: Strangely, TPM would rather talk about Mark Sanford.
Update II: Even more strangely, Rolling Stone, for whatever reason, apparently neglected to post the article online for over a month, until just a day before the "environmental"/carbon tax/let's make Golman Sachs even richer even more easily/Cap-and-Trade bill passed....

walnut, cherry end grain chopping block

Priced significantly better than these folks. (Plus I give artist, teacher and farmer discounts. Talk to me about my sliding scale for non-hedge-funders.)

custom cherry bed tray

Grain-matched and with walnut through spline:






Why my father (an English professor of 40 years) owned a tape measure with his initials on it is unclear to me.

MTR

Change the lobbies can easily believe in defeating, so far...

From nothing less than The Wall Street Journal (via the one who has the entire summary thus far):

If world-class lobbying could win a Stanley Cup, the credit-ratings caucus would be skating a victory lap this week. The Obama plan for financial re-regulation leaves unscathed this favored class of businesses whose fingerprints are all over the credit meltdown.

Update: NPR has begun this potentially very interesting project (via Digby), turning their cameras on the other faces in the rooms where "change" happens. More of this in the name of full spectacular truth, please.

Zizek on Iran

Copyright-free (via):

Will the Cart Above the Precipice Fall Down?
Slavoj Zizek

When an authoritarian regime approaches its final crisis, its dissolution as a rule follows two steps. Before its actual collapse, a mysterious rupture takes place: all of a sudden people know that the game is over, they are simply no longer afraid. It is not only that the regime loses its legitimacy, its exercise of power itself is perceived as an impotent panic reaction. We all know the classic scene from cartoons: the cat reaches a precipice, but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under its feet; it starts to fall only when it looks down and notices the abyss. When it loses its authority, the regime is like a cat above the precipice: in order to fall, it only has to be reminded to look down…

In Shah of Shahs, a classic account of the Khomeini revolution, Ryszard Kapuscinski located the precise moment of this rupture: at a Tehran crossroad, a single demonstrator refused to budge when a policeman shouted at him to move, and the embarrassed policeman simply withdrew; in a couple of hours, all Tehran knew about this incident, and although there were street fights going on for weeks, everyone somehow knew the game is over. Is something similar going on now?

There are many versions of the events in Tehran. Some see in the protests the culmination of the pro-Western “reform movement” along the lines of the “orange” revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, etc. – a secular reaction to the Khomeini revolution. They support the protests as the first step towards a new liberal-democratic secular Iran freed of Muslim fundamentalism. They are counteracted by skeptics who think that Ahmadinejad really won: he is the voice of the majority, while the support of Mousavi comes from the middle classes and their gilded youth. In short: let’s drop the illusions and face the fact that, in Ahmadinejad, Iran has a president it deserves. Then there are those who dismiss Mousavi as a member of the cleric establishment with merely cosmetic differences from Ahmadinejad: Mousavi also wants to continue the atomic energy program, he is against recognizing Israel, plus he enjoyed the full support of Khomeini as a prime minister in the years of the war with Iraq.

Finally, the saddest of them all are the Leftist supporters of Ahmadinejad: what is really at stake for them is Iranian independence. Ahmadinejad won because he stood up for the country’s independence, exposed elite corruption and used oil wealth to boost the incomes of the poor majority – this is, so we are told, the true Ahmadinejad beneath the Western-media image of a holocaust-denying fanatic. According to this view, what is effectively going on now in Iran is a repetition of the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh – a West-financed coup against the legitimate president. This view not only ignores facts: the high electoral participation – up from the usual 55% to 85% - can only be explained as a protest vote. It also displays its blindness for a genuine demonstration of popular will, patronizingly assuming that, for the backward Iranians, Ahmadinejad is good enough - they are not yet sufficiently mature to be ruled by a secular Left.

Opposed as they are, all these versions read the Iranian protests along the axis of Islamic hardliners versus pro-Western liberal reformists, which is why they find it so difficult to locate Mousavi: is he a Western-backed reformer who wants more personal freedom and market economy, or a member of the cleric establishment whose eventual victory would not affect in any serious way the nature of the regime? Such extreme oscillations demonstrate that they all miss the true nature of the protests.

The green color adopted by the Mousavi supporters, the cries of “Allah akbar!” that resonate from the roofs of Tehran in the evening darkness, clearly indicate that they see their activity as the repetition of the 1979 Khomeini revolution, as the return to its roots, the undoing of the revolution’s later corruption. This return to the roots is not only programmatic; it concerns even more the mode of activity of the crowds: the emphatic unity of the people, their all-encompassing solidarity, creative self-organization, improvising of the ways to articulate protest, the unique mixture of spontaneity and discipline, like the ominous march of thousands in complete silence. We are dealing with a genuine popular uprising of the deceived partisans of the Khomeini revolution.

There are a couple of crucial consequences to be drawn from this insight. First, Ahmadinejad is not the hero of the Islamist poor, but a genuine corrupted Islamo-Fascist populist, a kind of Iranian Berlusconi whose mixture of clownish posturing and ruthless power politics is causing unease even among the majority of ayatollahs. His demagogic distributing of crumbs to the poor should not deceive us: behind him are not only organs of police repression and a very Westernized PR apparatus, but also a strong new rich class, the result of the regime’s corruption (Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is not a working class militia, but a mega-corporation, the strongest center of wealth in the country).

Second, one should draw a clear difference between the two main candidates opposed to Ahmadinejad, Mehdi Karroubi and Mousavi. Karroubi effectively is a reformist, basically proposing the Iranian version of identity politics, promising favors to all particular groups. Mousavi is something entirely different: his name stands for the genuine resuscitation of the popular dream which sustained the Khomeini revolution. Even if this dream was a utopia, one should recognize in it the genuine utopia of the revolution itself. What this means is that the 1979 Khomeini revolution cannot be reduced to a hard line Islamist takeover – it was much more. Now is the time to remember the incredible effervescence of the first year after the revolution, with the breath-taking explosion of political and social creativity, organizational experiments and debates among students and ordinary people. The very fact that this explosion had to be stifled demonstrates that the Khomeini revolution was an authentic political event, a momentary opening that unleashed unheard-of forces of social transformation, a moment in which “everything seemed possible.” What followed was a gradual closing through the take-over of political control by the Islam establishment. To put it in Freudian terms, today’s protest movement is the “return of the repressed” of the Khomeini revolution.

And, last but not least, what this means is that there is a genuine liberating potential in Islam – to find a “good” Islam, one doesn’t have to go back to the 10th century, we have it right here, in front of our eyes.

The future is uncertain – in all probability, those in power will contain the popular explosion, and the cat will not fall into the precipice, but regain ground. However, it will no longer be the same regime, but just one corrupted authoritarian rule among others. Whatever the outcome, it is vitally important to keep in mind that we are witnessing a great emancipatory event which doesn’t fit the frame of the struggle between pro-Western liberals and anti-Western fundamentalists. If our cynical pragmatism will make us lose the capacity to recognize this emancipatory dimension, then we in the West are effectively entering a post-democratic era, getting ready for our own Ahmadinejads. Italians already know his name: Berlusconi. Others are waiting in line.

Iran

Two must-read pieces here, and here. Update 7/3: and here, from the streets.

Recommended reading

"The Case for Working With Your Hands"–Matthew Crawford in the NY Times.

Looking hard at you, Senator Kay Hagan

Kay Hagan, apparently still working for the insurance lobby and not her constituents, may not last long as a Senator.

Krugman:

The real risk is that health care reform will be undermined by “centrist” Democratic senators who either prevent the passage of a bill or insist on watering down key elements of reform. I use scare quotes around “centrist,” by the way, because if the center means the position held by most Americans, the self-proclaimed centrists are in fact way out in right field.

What the balking Democrats seem most determined to do is to kill the public option, either by eliminating it or by carrying out a bait-and-switch, replacing a true public option with something meaningless. For the record, neither regional health cooperatives nor state-level public plans, both of which have been proposed as alternatives, would have the financial stability and bargaining power needed to bring down health care costs.

Whatever may be motivating these Democrats, they don’t seem able to explain their reasons in public.

Thus Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska initially declared that the public option — which, remember, has overwhelming popular support — was a “deal-breaker.” Why? Because he didn’t think private insurers could compete: “At the end of the day, the public plan wins the day.” Um, isn’t the purpose of health care reform to protect American citizens, not insurance companies?

Mr. Nelson softened his stand after reform advocates began a public campaign targeting him for his position on the public option.

...Honestly, I don’t know what these Democrats are trying to achieve. Yes, some of the balking senators receive large campaign contributions from the medical-industrial complex — but who in politics doesn’t? If I had to guess, I’d say that what’s really going on is that relatively conservative Democrats still cling to the old dream of becoming kingmakers, of recreating the bipartisan center that used to run America.

If you live in North Carolina, now is the time to contact Kay Hagan:

The only place most of [North Carolinians] can go is one NC company – North Carolina Blue Cross Blue Shield...NC Blue insures 3.7 million people out of the 5 million with private health coverage in NC – and has a near monopoly on individual and small business coverage. We need more health insurance competition and options in NC, including a public option.

E-mail - http://www.hagan.senate.gov/?p=contact

WASHINGTON, DC OFFICE

521 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-6342
Fax: 202-228-2563

GREENSBORO OFFICE " STATE HEADQUARTERS

701 Green Valley Rd; Suite 201
Greensboro, NC 27408
Phone: 336-333-5311
Fax: 336-333-5331

RALEIGH OFFICE

310 New Bern Avenue
Raleigh, NC 27601
Phone: 919-856-4630
Fax: 919-856-4053

TOLL FREE FOR NORTH CAROLINIANS

P: 1-877-852-9462

Update: fuckers.

What

...exactly is the Department of Justice for if not protecting future Vice Presidents from the torture of satire?

...it means to monitor the rhetoric/reality gap.

A kind of pride

That the best friends of my particular generation, squashed somewhat uncomfortably in between the X and Y, seem to scorn and ignore–despite dull and repeated requests and duly notable lives–registering on...FACEBOOK (™). Fuck that infantilizing shit, indeed. You want to get in touch? You write a goddamn letter/email or activate your cell phone/implant and do some actual relating. People are not hard to find. Duly notable living has no need for a universal MTV-inspired pseudo-genericism, I don't care how "convenient" or "popular" it is. It reflects poorly.

It goes without saying that Facebook™ has nothing to do with getting in touch, everything to do with one's own image/dissemination/marketing/quantifying of one's 'self.' Also, how insulting to the memory of actual relations to be "friended" by anyone who matters or even pretend to desire to pose as "friend"-able. Click.

customers write, further

Receiving some pics of the island top safely in place at the home of John Criswell (former head of the DNC and friend of President Johnson).







Cheers to Mr. Criswell for being an excellently patient, appreciative man and for allowing me to post these.

More photos of the top before shipping, here, here and here

always nice to hear from loyal customers...

Illustrator Nick Dewar sends some photos of a tabletop I made last year from reclaimed timber, while pointing to this article featuring his home. All of the material in that piece has its own meaning for me, as weeks and months were passed working it, or on the site where it was salvaged. The piece conjures an acute, tactile 'site of memory,' you might say (and now clearly has a loving life all of its own):



Thanks to Nick for allowing me to publish these.

Obama in love with self on TV, not fighting our corporate owners hard enough

Elsewhere Huffington waxes skeptical of Obama's financial plan muscle.

the hell

is happening in Iran? An attempted coup, apparently.

the coming lobby wars

In which entrenched corporate interests are preparing to outspend the progressive opposition ten to one (but may still lose). A couple of essential articles from The Nation; the first on "Exacting Change" and the compromises thus far of the Obama administration; the second on "The Selling of School Reform," exposing questionable motives and financial backing of Sharpton/Gingrich/Bloomberg, et.al.

The AMA

"...is just as much a relic of a by-gone era as the little black bag."

the acceptable range of "interesting"

...still makes Obama look very good, granted:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
"i" on News
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More essential reading from Mike Lux:

Easily the most thoughtful pieces of all have been two recent pieces by members of the progressive movement themselves (both personal friends, so I'll admit my bias upfront). The first, by Gara LaMarche of Atlantic Philanthropies, was a thoughtful and nuanced discussion of the challenges of both Obama and progressives, and was fairly hopeful in general, both about Obama and about the relationship between him and the movement. The second, by Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, was a more frustrated discussion of the way progressive leaders aren't challenging Obama enough, and the distancing of Obama from progressives.

From my experience in the Obama transition as the Obama team's liaison to the progressive community, and in all my conversations with folks both inside and outside of Obamaland before and since, the tension between being hopeful about the possibilities and upset that better things aren't being realized will always be there. If managed right by both Obama and progressive leaders, it can be the kind of constructive, creative tension that leads to the kind of big breakthrough progressive changes we saw in this country at key moments in our history- the 1860s, the early 1900s, the 1930s, and the 1960s (the Big Change Moments I write about in my book, The Progressive Revolution). If managed poorly, it can lead to the kind of presidential meltdowns we saw with the LBJ and Jimmy Carter presidencies, and on the Republican side with the first Bush presidency: Presidencies that started with high hopes but ended with destructive conflicts between the base and the presidency, tough primary challenges, and lost re-election hopes.

So far, I'm feeling quite good about Obama's chances for the former.

[...]

1. We need each other. Progressives need to understand that our fates for several years to come are tied, fundamentally and completely, to Obama's success as president. If he loses his big legislative fights, we won't get another chance at winning them for a generation (see health care, 1993-94), and early losses will make the Democrats more cautious, not more bold (see health care, 1993-94). If Obama's popularity fades, Democrats will lose lots of seats in Congress. If he loses re-election, Republicans and the media will say he was a failed liberal and run against him for many elections to come, even if his actual policies are more centrist (see Jimmy Carter). But Obama's team needs to understand that they need a strong progressive movement as well, and as Jane alluded to, they haven't generally acted like they do. Without progressives' passion, activism, lobbying, and money, Obama can't win those incredibly challenging legislative battles. Just as Lincoln never would have won the civil war or ended slavery without the passion of the abolitionists, just as FDR never would have won the New Deal reforms without the labor and progressive movement, just as LBJ would never have passed civil rights bills without the civil rights movement, Obama can't win these big fights alone. And he can't win re-election either without the passion of his base: see LBJ, Ford, Carter, George H.W. Bush, and many other presidents for more info on that topic.

2. Obama needs a left flank. It is a natural tendency of any White House to be dismissive of criticism, and to play hardball when people disagree with you. The Obama team should not hesitate to defend itself when being pushed from the Left, but I would caution against playing too hard at hardball. The Obama team needs a vibrant and vocal Left flank, because the stronger their Left flank is, the more Obama seems solidly in the middle. The White House would be well-served to fully support and empower progressive groups, media, and bloggers -- even when they sometimes disagree with Obama.

3. There needs to be both an inside and an outside strategy for progressives. Progressive leaders who get jobs in the administration are sometimes derided as sell-outs, and progressive groups who are not openly critical of the Administration are sometimes criticized as being too cozy with those inside. At the same time, insiders get very worked up about "irresponsible" bloggers and outside activists who they say don't understand the system and the challenges they are facing.

Having been both on the inside and the outside, I see the grain of truth in both sides' perspective, but also respectfully disagree with both sides.

We need progressive people in government, even if the cost of that is that they have to trim their sails on issues where they disagree with administration policy. We need progressive groups in regular in-depth policy meetings with the administration, even if that means they have to soft-pedal their criticisms some of the time to keep that access. And we need outsiders who will push like crazy for doing the right thing now no matter what....

-Mike Lux

The problem with Obama's centrism

...is that the symbolic significance of strangely mature (if still vague) rhetoric aside (and this is not nothing, these days, but at the same time we are also overwhelmed, preoccupied to the point of sheer distraction with symbolism–future billions to be spent lobbying gay marriage, anyone?), his proposals for action both amount to corporatism and remain profoundly undemocratic. Which is not to say all corporatism is somehow magically avoidable. However the current structure could easily reflect a higher degree of democratic influence; this is what frustrates. With public opinion of fundamentalist capitalism being what it is now, if Obama cannot grow a pair, then when? Of course the resulting stability, quality of life and intelligence and god knows equality of opportunity wouldn't be bad either. Mike Lux makes the point with regard to health care. Meanwhile here in "conservative" North Carolina, 85% of the population feels strongly that the free-loading rich should be taxed higher (God forbid, even back to levels under Reagan!) before a single teacher position is cut, and class sizes raised to cover massive budget shortfalls and Obama's demand for budget cuts.

Are they listening? Of course not.

Meanwhile the teacher pseudo-union, NCAE, wasted precious months in brick-headed denial fighting tooth and nail against any potential temporary freeze on scheduled minimal pay increases, willfully blind to the larger reality, i.e., that any state employee still with a job at this point should simply count their blessings.

Was the NCAE drawing their long-term strategy from a keg, or what? This is worse than a John Updike novel.