My friend, Ron, said to me yesterday, “I read Mr. XX, and then Mr. XXX, and then Mr. XXXX, and then I read the NYT and then I read the WSJ: who am I supposed to believe? Who can I trust?”You’re asking ME?
Bill Maher asks, “Why can’t we just admit that we just don’t f@#*king know?”
Barbara and I watched a talented lawyer explain, on television, about the legality or potential illegality of AIG bonus contracts, then turned and looked at me, and asked, “Can you explain that to me?”
To which I said, “Huh?”
It is very apparent that we are all consumed by AIG and the economy, right now. (Some people are so consumed that they are sending death threats to AIG executives: ouch). Ron (see the guy above) said yesterday that he thinks we are all looking for the “next big bubble” to make everything OK, again. I think most of us are looking for a nice, simple, single answer to both a simple explanation and solution to a very complex mess.
Here is what Paul Krugman had to say this morning:
March 20, 2009, 9:05 am
AIG
Preliminary thoughts on the tax bill:
1. It’s not the way you should make policy — it’s clumsy, and it will punish some innocent parties while letting the most guilty off scot-free
2. But — there wasn’t much alternative at this point. And for that I blame the Obama people.
I’ll leave to others the question of who knew or should have known that the bonus firestorm was coming; but its part of a pattern. At every stage, Geithner et al have made it clear that they still have faith in the people who created the financial crisis — that they believe that all we have is a liquidity crisis that can be undone with a bit of financial engineering, that “governments do a bad job of running banks” (as opposed, presumably, to the wonderful job the private bankers have done), that financial bailouts and guarantees should come with no strings attached.
This was bad analysis, bad policy, and terrible politics. This administration, elected on the promise of change, has already managed, in an astonishingly short time, to create the impression that it’s owned by the wheeler-dealers. And that leaves it with no ability to counter crude populism.
Then there is this, from James Galbraith, who is NOT a populist economist:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Economy--No-Return-to-by-the-web-090319-85.html
I think we should listen more closely to him and less to many others???
Or try this one:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-I-G--A-National-Embarr-by-James-Raider-090318-537.html
I keep searching for a better word than embarrassment, but I cannot find one. Obscene, maybe?
Or maybe this observation:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090319_the_geithner_problem/
This article raises the question, “What did he know and when did he know it?” Last night, on CNN, Geithner said he knew about some “things”, a few days before the bonuses became public knowledge. These “things” sound very much like the “strings” the Governor of Texas says are attached to the unemployment funds for his state in the stimulus bill. He says these strings prevent him from accepting them, but he can’t seem to say what the ‘string things” are, exactly.
Meanwhile, Governor Palin (AK…remember her?) is declining funds as well. But in her case, she is threatening to decline those ‘earmarked” only for education: she says those “strings” in the legislation that require Alaska to “grow its’ government”. I would suppose that not educating the populace is one good way to guarantee that Alaska will not grow. And Governor Sanford (SC) has asked to use the education portion of that states’ share of the stimulus to pay down debt, thereby neglecting education and laying off 7000 teachers. I think he and Gov. Palin are just stringing us along. Or perhaps they knew “things” before Geithner did? (I just heard three political pundits call for Geithner’s head and two more explain the actions of Palin and Sanford as preparatory actions for elections in 2012. I fail to see the connections, but I’m confused.
Eric Cantor (OH) has been very resolute about being the voice of “no” about almost everything having to do with TARP, TALP and AIG, but when actually pressed on MSNBC about how he would vote about the bonus legislation, would not say. Later, in order to stay center stage but ideologically impure, he went Republican-Lite and voted for the anti-bonus actions. This is something like Senator Chris Dodd saying he did not put language into the AIG-related legislation right before he said he did. This is also something like John Kerry saying he was for something before he was against it, or Mrs. Clinton being against Barack Obama for President before she was for it as soon as she was named to be the SOS.
Are you confused yet? Are you feeling just a little like an Orwellian pig? Did you bring your lipstick? Are you tempted to fly? Or at least fly off the handle? Well, add this to your plate of imponderables:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/18/AR2009031802283.html?wpisrc=newsletter
The headline here is: “Fed to pump $1.2 trillion Into Markets”. This is, of course, another mind-boggling amount of money, coming right after a grandfatherly Bernanke told 60 Minutes that “we will not let the banks fail”. The next day the market rallied (Barbara said it was the Bernanke factor; I think it was because it was Monday and stocks [Geithnerian things] were cheap). Steven Pearlstein (WaPo) on MSNBC is just now telling me that it is obvious that “the depression is much worse than they thought” (they being the government?) and that we should be braced for much higher deficits. And the other “thing” I liked about the morning stories was this:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090319_a_government_of_men_not_laws/, wherein David Sirota sounds somewhat like Galbraith.
But this should make you uneasy as well:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/19/cnbc-rich-wall-street/. I really like this one. We are still some of us, anyway) hanging onto the notion that only the rich and greedy can manage money. But given the give-aways and short-sightedness that allowed us to give away billions of TARP funds (and now TALP…rhymes with SCALP) funds without accountability, I don’t think letting the government manage our money is such a hot idea, either. Would you give your money to Barney Frank? My father would call all of this rationalization of the rich being in charge “bass-ackwards thinking”. For once, I agree with him.
This next story is both confusing and transparent:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/19/financial-roundtable-lobbyists/. Having failed to engineer profits from attempting the defeat the stimulus bill, the lobby folks are trying to carve money out of the budget for special interests. We have no shame. Or integrity. Or logic.
All of which brings me to the congressional antics and how they all contribute to my confusion…and yours.
Over the last decade, the lasting effects of the great “uniter” have only added to our great “division” and bifurcation. The chasm between right and left, conservative and liberal, has just been growing. Beginning most recently (and openly) with the complete and total rejection of any Republican votes for the stimulus bill, and moving on from there, the most important issue being kept alive in Congress right now is NOT the welfare of the country, but whether or not you are a Democrat or a Republican and how loudly you can proclaim your allegiance.
Last week, the Republicans stated flatly, that their goal was to “bring down Democratic numbers”. Ideological purity has completely superseded the national economic welfare as the rule of the day.
Except when such ideological purity runs counter to your personal agenda (Google Maxine Waters and the President “keeping his facts straight”), your wallet or your political ambitions. Take, for example, the small group of “blue dog” democrats, deciding this week to establish a “secret” society, having joined forces to form a small sub-group in the Congress that would work closer with Republicans to thwart the economic policies of their own President and party. I wonder if they have a secret handshake? Do they understand the nature of “splinter groups”? Do they understand that splinters can get infected? This dedication to obstructive obstinacy seems endemic to, and symptomatic of, our nationally confused awareness of misplaced priorities.
(Former staffers of the Bush administration, perhaps 70% of them, have either abandoned ideological purity to write profitable tell-all books or have been unable to find jobs because of their prior devotion to that former Rovian moral ”high ground”. I can’t help but wonder if they are re-thinking their allegiances)
And then we have Sen. John McCain and other Republicans are opposing the appointment of Chris Hill to represent the U.S. in Afghanistan. General Petraeus thinks this is a good choice. Despite continued Republican calls to listen to the “generals on the ground”, because Hill is not “their boy” and not a staunch Republican, this group is opposing the appointment. This is silly and counter-productive, to say nothing of being hypocritical and not of much help in advancing the cause of peace in the region. But is all stubbornly ideologically pure. And no one in Congress seemed to care about the AIG and bank bonuses until the public got wind of it. Then, suddenly each side said it was the fault of the other (or of Bush and Paulson, or of Obama and Geithner), making a national economic crisis a political football. Then the House passed a bill (with sudden Republican participation) to eliminate, prevent or tax the bonuses. I will give them this: they finally displayed real transparency: were able to see right through their phony concern. Now that bill is off to the Senate, and I am hearing that the bill is potentially illegal, to the point of being unconstitutional. This means it may be scrapped, altogether. What a waste of time. I have called the recent behavior of Congress to be theater; Mr. Raider (in the earlier article) calls it “circus grandstanding”. In either case it has all been duplicitous or perhaps much ado about much of nothing. Except for the damn crisis.
Let’s confuse the issue, a little more:
The Congress is thinking about giving the corpse of Chryslers several more billions of dollars. Why?
Gordon E. Liddy, the AIG boss guy, is working for one dollar a year (really?) and is volunteering to sit before congress and be grilled, saying that the bonuses are distasteful but obligatory. He also says Bernanke and the Federal Reserve approved the bonus package long ago. (Geithner’s staff says the same thing).
Venerable General Electric Corp. is in trouble, having just lowered their annual dividend to pennies, to raise cash. They have also disclosed that their biggest portfolio item is the GE Capital group. And that that group has invested heavily in questionable real estate. Why? (And most of what they manufacture, they do so off-shore…except for the missile guidance systems for the DOD)
Crown Books is advancing $7M to George W Bush for a book of memoirs we don’t need or want to read. Why? (Maybe the folks in Calgary know “things” we don’t.)
J.P. Morgan and other banks, along with General Motors, is either declining further bail out monies or returning them, citing too many “strings”. After the last cash infusion, they are suddenly profitable (it makes you wonder whence came the crisis?), with Citibank claiming profits in the billions (and remodeling their executive offices).
And Michael Steele is, well…Michael Steele. Explain that one. He has even Rush stumped.
Oh, yes: Mr. Cheney, is that an assassination squad in your pocket or are you just happy to kill people?
I know full well that I have co-mingled TARP, TALP, stimulus funds, education, unemployment, economic advisors, political expediency and poor domestic policy, but I am confused. In the time it has taken to write this, I have found five or six more articles that I could have cited or quoted or referenced. But they have all been muddled and contradictory of each other. I had to turn off MSNBC. I was just getting more confused. If you think you can say all of this better, please do. I no longer know whether I should change my hopes or change my mind. I do know that a few more words of wisdom from the wise and I may lose my mind. I need a nap.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Stagecoach Driver, Economist, Bouncer
Once upon a time there was a stagecoach called “The United States of America”. The reins to the coach and the horse team were given over to a short, smirky, ex-town drunk from Texas, sometime around the year 2000. His name was Uncurious George, and he came from the town of Born Again Cistern. He and the guy riding shotgun, Dickless Dick, were supposed to get the coach through the next eight years without incident, no loss of life, no financial loss and no loss of dignity. And they were also not supposed to lose any luggage and to tell the truth about their pilgrim’s progress. They were supposed to deliver thee coach intact, in reasonably good shape and without harm to the passengers.
They were also supposed to take the coach and head west, from New York, for Los Angeles. They had about 280 million passengers in the coach, and a whole bunch of political ambulance chasers strapped up-top, who were along for the ride and slated to telegraph stories back their media folks as the coach travelled. Most of them were pretty main stream types, but there was one who was really Foxy, with bad eyesight and just a couple who wrote only with their left hands. Uncurious George would not speak to them “direkly” (in fact he could barely read or write), so he used spokespeople, who came and went through the revolving door at the rear of the stagecoach. The last one was an intellectually bleached blonde, Dana Peroxide, who served synthetic pablum laced with melamine from China for breakfast. Dickless Dick , given the slightest provocation, hid in an un-dick-closed location.
Before they could even leave NY, George and Dick got into a nasty bar fight down on Wall Street and took out two tall skyscrapers: when the cops arrived, George and Dickless denied even being there. They made lots of toxic dust, kept the NYFD busy and got their coach rates raised because they managed to ground all the airplanes.
The next several years were just more of the same. The next big event was a big bar fight in Iraq and then the two of them barely escaping with their goat skins in Afghanistan, spending like drunken sailors, ignoring the coach riders, feeding the pressers up-top bull shit, and signing checks from the surplus they got with the coach, as well as signing statements absolving themselves of any responsibilities for any calamity caused by their bad handling of the coach. They paid no attention to the passengers needs, stopped only at Chinese-owned Wal-Marts, performed no routine maintenance on the coach, the horses or the roads or bridges and told everyone that everything was OK because they had decided it was. They lost more luggage than anyone realized, and the closest they came to maintaining dignity, was the indignance they aroused in foreign countries from their lawless arrogance. They parked the stagecoach at prisons around the world, tortured the prisoners there and tortured the coach passengers with liable, lies and deceit.
After nearly eight years, with the wheels coming off the wagon, running on broken spokes and with broken down horses, the coach passengers were fed up: they had paid full fare for years and only gotten as far as Chicago. The pressers up-top were starting to discover they had a left ear as well as a right one, the check was NOT in the mail, and some guy back in the Wall St. rubble, named Paulson, had just joined the apocalyptic movement and announced that the end was perilously near, right around the corner, and everything really sucked…and he needed $700B, no questions asked. By the time the coach finally came to rest at the stop in Chicago, the passengers were looking for tar, feathers, rail and rope (they already had a jackass). They all got off the coach and stayed overnight in empty, foreclosed houses. And everyone was hoping that there might be a change in the works.
Just about everyone had decided that George would no longer be allowed to drive. In fact, some had even posited that he might be drinking again. Over the next several weeks and months, a search went underway for a new driver.
No one knows just exactly when the call came, but the rumor is that Mel Brooks called, and alerted everyone to the fact that there was dark-skinned renegade guy, staying at the bunkhouse in Chicago. He was known to be a straight-shooter and could handle a team. No one had ever had a minority driver before, but he looked so much better than George and Dickless (and nobody in the conservative camp had a Blackberry), that in almost no time (and several million dollars later) Kid Barack was given the reins and the roadmap (or what was left of it: about all that was left of the Constitution map was a few tatters. It turns out, Dickless had been using a secret paper shredder and never had any intentions of getting to Los Angeles. But that partially explained why they had always managed to find a place to stop for dinner where Dickless could get broiled Halliburton.
Eventually, some time around the middle of January, with The Kid at the reins, and a new guy riding shotgun (Big Bad Joe Bidenhammer, a former Amtrac conductor), the stagecoach left Chicago. Champagne flowed, Jesse Jackson tears flowed, everybody back in Washington balled everyone else and no one was able to tell, at least right at first, if that bright orange glow was the sun setting in the west or that it was just the radiance of Kid Barack. They had a new team of horses, new grease in the wheels and the smell of delusionary Obamanism was everywhere.
But the festivities and glee did not last long. To begin with, the old team of horses had only numbered four, and now Kid Barack had to handle eight. And three of the eight were Republicans, they pulled slowly and to the right and farted and Rushed around. Then, some of the people The Kid wanted to bring along to help, either couldn’t come along because they owed too much money to people back at Club Fed in Washington or had been sleeping around with too many stagecoach suppliers. Then the guy who was supposed to replace The Kid in the bunkhouse turned out to be a crypt keeper, and all of this meant that The Kid had to learn how to handle eight horses, keep the passengers happy (who all wanted to be in LA “yesterday”), handle his Blackberry, go find a birth certificate and get the pressers up-top top stop looking for scandals and start paying attention. That was all right after he found out that the checking account was over-drawn, the coachline’s credit limit was almost tapped out and Uncurious and Dickless had left some diplomatic, financial and foreign relations stink bombs in the back of the coach. (Did I mention that the coach had no brakes, either?)As quickly as everyone had become elated, many became deflated, just like the DOW Jones daily averages, and there was even talk of “let’s shoot the sheriff”. Mel Brooks urged patience: Blazing Saddles do not blaze forever. But the folks on the right started screaming socialistic treason and whining and the folks on the left started screaming for Kid Baracks’ head because he failed to turn water into wine. Eye of Newt was being hailed as the next millenium’s curative, to be possibly coiffed with some Alaskan mousse, and the right rang their Jindal bells but no one came to dinner except a Steele band from Jamaica, Queens. The progressives argued that there was no progress, the far out lefties, who are never satisfied how left anything gets, remained dissatisfied.
That is more or less where we are right now: the idio-ides of March. Just like we want everything else in America, instantaneously and right now and lots of it, with the help of the opportunistic pressers and the practitioners of naivite’, who have wanted to have their cake and eat it too (It doesn’t work that way),we are busily being anxious, schizophrenic children. Sooner or later, the horses will come under control and Kid Barack will learn how to better finesse them. (One or two from SC may need to be shot; they shoot horses’ asses, don’t they?), Rahm the man Emanuel, the team manager will fill out the ball team back at the office, stagecoach sales will pick up eventually and the passengers will realize they are a lot closer, perhaps, to Denver than they thought. They will learn to drink tap water and skip the Evian and the new holy trinity may well be Krugman, Reich and Galbraith. It will take awhile to know if Geithner can play ball if he ever comes out of his ivory clubhouse, and Kid Barack will learn to be a better economist. We will be able to take all of this to the bank…if we have one left.
I am very tired of the American desire for instant gratification, but I am equally tired of empty, childish, right-handed, obstructionist rhetoric. No matter how you mix up the letters from “tax cuts”, it does not spell nirvana. I am also tired of the new Obama team coming late to the party. This “after the horse is out of the barn, let’s close the AIG barn door” is ludicrous. He is the President, for crying out loud. Dickless is gone and Uncurious thumbed a ride to Dallas, where he can do us little harm. We can say anything bad about either of them we like. We paid for that with the full-fare rate we have been paying for the last decade. And maybe, once Kid Barack gets the horses under control, he will stop authorizing the use of the words “clarity” and “transparency”, since they ultimately mean nothing. That alone would make the stagecoach ride less bumpy and more comfortable. And if he will just lock Princess Pelosi up n the tower…
We could use a few good dogfights. It’s time to stop being nice. It’s time to kick some ass instead of kissing it. Obama may realize that he has the reins, but I wonder if he is also knows he is the bouncer at the entry door to this nightclub called “Reality”?
They were also supposed to take the coach and head west, from New York, for Los Angeles. They had about 280 million passengers in the coach, and a whole bunch of political ambulance chasers strapped up-top, who were along for the ride and slated to telegraph stories back their media folks as the coach travelled. Most of them were pretty main stream types, but there was one who was really Foxy, with bad eyesight and just a couple who wrote only with their left hands. Uncurious George would not speak to them “direkly” (in fact he could barely read or write), so he used spokespeople, who came and went through the revolving door at the rear of the stagecoach. The last one was an intellectually bleached blonde, Dana Peroxide, who served synthetic pablum laced with melamine from China for breakfast. Dickless Dick , given the slightest provocation, hid in an un-dick-closed location.
Before they could even leave NY, George and Dick got into a nasty bar fight down on Wall Street and took out two tall skyscrapers: when the cops arrived, George and Dickless denied even being there. They made lots of toxic dust, kept the NYFD busy and got their coach rates raised because they managed to ground all the airplanes.
The next several years were just more of the same. The next big event was a big bar fight in Iraq and then the two of them barely escaping with their goat skins in Afghanistan, spending like drunken sailors, ignoring the coach riders, feeding the pressers up-top bull shit, and signing checks from the surplus they got with the coach, as well as signing statements absolving themselves of any responsibilities for any calamity caused by their bad handling of the coach. They paid no attention to the passengers needs, stopped only at Chinese-owned Wal-Marts, performed no routine maintenance on the coach, the horses or the roads or bridges and told everyone that everything was OK because they had decided it was. They lost more luggage than anyone realized, and the closest they came to maintaining dignity, was the indignance they aroused in foreign countries from their lawless arrogance. They parked the stagecoach at prisons around the world, tortured the prisoners there and tortured the coach passengers with liable, lies and deceit.
After nearly eight years, with the wheels coming off the wagon, running on broken spokes and with broken down horses, the coach passengers were fed up: they had paid full fare for years and only gotten as far as Chicago. The pressers up-top were starting to discover they had a left ear as well as a right one, the check was NOT in the mail, and some guy back in the Wall St. rubble, named Paulson, had just joined the apocalyptic movement and announced that the end was perilously near, right around the corner, and everything really sucked…and he needed $700B, no questions asked. By the time the coach finally came to rest at the stop in Chicago, the passengers were looking for tar, feathers, rail and rope (they already had a jackass). They all got off the coach and stayed overnight in empty, foreclosed houses. And everyone was hoping that there might be a change in the works.
Just about everyone had decided that George would no longer be allowed to drive. In fact, some had even posited that he might be drinking again. Over the next several weeks and months, a search went underway for a new driver.
No one knows just exactly when the call came, but the rumor is that Mel Brooks called, and alerted everyone to the fact that there was dark-skinned renegade guy, staying at the bunkhouse in Chicago. He was known to be a straight-shooter and could handle a team. No one had ever had a minority driver before, but he looked so much better than George and Dickless (and nobody in the conservative camp had a Blackberry), that in almost no time (and several million dollars later) Kid Barack was given the reins and the roadmap (or what was left of it: about all that was left of the Constitution map was a few tatters. It turns out, Dickless had been using a secret paper shredder and never had any intentions of getting to Los Angeles. But that partially explained why they had always managed to find a place to stop for dinner where Dickless could get broiled Halliburton.
Eventually, some time around the middle of January, with The Kid at the reins, and a new guy riding shotgun (Big Bad Joe Bidenhammer, a former Amtrac conductor), the stagecoach left Chicago. Champagne flowed, Jesse Jackson tears flowed, everybody back in Washington balled everyone else and no one was able to tell, at least right at first, if that bright orange glow was the sun setting in the west or that it was just the radiance of Kid Barack. They had a new team of horses, new grease in the wheels and the smell of delusionary Obamanism was everywhere.
But the festivities and glee did not last long. To begin with, the old team of horses had only numbered four, and now Kid Barack had to handle eight. And three of the eight were Republicans, they pulled slowly and to the right and farted and Rushed around. Then, some of the people The Kid wanted to bring along to help, either couldn’t come along because they owed too much money to people back at Club Fed in Washington or had been sleeping around with too many stagecoach suppliers. Then the guy who was supposed to replace The Kid in the bunkhouse turned out to be a crypt keeper, and all of this meant that The Kid had to learn how to handle eight horses, keep the passengers happy (who all wanted to be in LA “yesterday”), handle his Blackberry, go find a birth certificate and get the pressers up-top top stop looking for scandals and start paying attention. That was all right after he found out that the checking account was over-drawn, the coachline’s credit limit was almost tapped out and Uncurious and Dickless had left some diplomatic, financial and foreign relations stink bombs in the back of the coach. (Did I mention that the coach had no brakes, either?)As quickly as everyone had become elated, many became deflated, just like the DOW Jones daily averages, and there was even talk of “let’s shoot the sheriff”. Mel Brooks urged patience: Blazing Saddles do not blaze forever. But the folks on the right started screaming socialistic treason and whining and the folks on the left started screaming for Kid Baracks’ head because he failed to turn water into wine. Eye of Newt was being hailed as the next millenium’s curative, to be possibly coiffed with some Alaskan mousse, and the right rang their Jindal bells but no one came to dinner except a Steele band from Jamaica, Queens. The progressives argued that there was no progress, the far out lefties, who are never satisfied how left anything gets, remained dissatisfied.
That is more or less where we are right now: the idio-ides of March. Just like we want everything else in America, instantaneously and right now and lots of it, with the help of the opportunistic pressers and the practitioners of naivite’, who have wanted to have their cake and eat it too (It doesn’t work that way),we are busily being anxious, schizophrenic children. Sooner or later, the horses will come under control and Kid Barack will learn how to better finesse them. (One or two from SC may need to be shot; they shoot horses’ asses, don’t they?), Rahm the man Emanuel, the team manager will fill out the ball team back at the office, stagecoach sales will pick up eventually and the passengers will realize they are a lot closer, perhaps, to Denver than they thought. They will learn to drink tap water and skip the Evian and the new holy trinity may well be Krugman, Reich and Galbraith. It will take awhile to know if Geithner can play ball if he ever comes out of his ivory clubhouse, and Kid Barack will learn to be a better economist. We will be able to take all of this to the bank…if we have one left.
I am very tired of the American desire for instant gratification, but I am equally tired of empty, childish, right-handed, obstructionist rhetoric. No matter how you mix up the letters from “tax cuts”, it does not spell nirvana. I am also tired of the new Obama team coming late to the party. This “after the horse is out of the barn, let’s close the AIG barn door” is ludicrous. He is the President, for crying out loud. Dickless is gone and Uncurious thumbed a ride to Dallas, where he can do us little harm. We can say anything bad about either of them we like. We paid for that with the full-fare rate we have been paying for the last decade. And maybe, once Kid Barack gets the horses under control, he will stop authorizing the use of the words “clarity” and “transparency”, since they ultimately mean nothing. That alone would make the stagecoach ride less bumpy and more comfortable. And if he will just lock Princess Pelosi up n the tower…
We could use a few good dogfights. It’s time to stop being nice. It’s time to kick some ass instead of kissing it. Obama may realize that he has the reins, but I wonder if he is also knows he is the bouncer at the entry door to this nightclub called “Reality”?
Thursday, March 12, 2009
I Would Like To Think
I would like to think
Like Noam Chomsky
But talk
Like Bill Maher.
If I could put
My thoughts together
The way the eastern sage
Chomsky chomps away at them,
Making finally and at last,
After too many words and paragraphs
That can leave me gasping for brain oxygen,
With the sense I need to
Make sense of what is often not,
And then at some other time,
Reconvene those thoughts,
Have them meet up
In Real Time
More Maher-like, curt,
Smarting , smart and pointed
Like bullets clearly
In the direction
Of some who then wish
They had not been in
The line of fire;
If I could coalesce like Chomsky
And reconnoiter like Maher,
If I could trap logic like the Noam
And grind up raw thought
Like the Billy gnome, gruff,
Then I would like to think
That I could write like…
I had thought to say
A Frost or a Hemmingway, but
I would probably just write
Like me
and
I would like to think
That would be
Just fine.
Like Noam Chomsky
But talk
Like Bill Maher.
If I could put
My thoughts together
The way the eastern sage
Chomsky chomps away at them,
Making finally and at last,
After too many words and paragraphs
That can leave me gasping for brain oxygen,
With the sense I need to
Make sense of what is often not,
And then at some other time,
Reconvene those thoughts,
Have them meet up
In Real Time
More Maher-like, curt,
Smarting , smart and pointed
Like bullets clearly
In the direction
Of some who then wish
They had not been in
The line of fire;
If I could coalesce like Chomsky
And reconnoiter like Maher,
If I could trap logic like the Noam
And grind up raw thought
Like the Billy gnome, gruff,
Then I would like to think
That I could write like…
I had thought to say
A Frost or a Hemmingway, but
I would probably just write
Like me
and
I would like to think
That would be
Just fine.
Social Injustice!
This should perhaps be a headline in The Onion...but it's not!
Iraqi Shoe-Thrower Gets Three Years in Prison!
Protesting journalist goes to jail for heaving a heel at a heel! Three years in prison for doing right is wrong! He should have gotten:
-Three years in the Caymans
-The use of a yacht
-At least some of those virgins I keep hearing about!
Iraqi Shoe-Thrower Gets Three Years in Prison!
Protesting journalist goes to jail for heaving a heel at a heel! Three years in prison for doing right is wrong! He should have gotten:
-Three years in the Caymans
-The use of a yacht
-At least some of those virgins I keep hearing about!
Monday, March 9, 2009
Threw the Glass darkly
The nation’s conservatives still seem to maintain an insatiable need for juvenile , pseudo-celebrity-like, temporarily spectacular diversions from the world in which the rest of us live. I think this is called “accident avoidance”: they are actually trying to accidentally avoid actually “thinking”. For instance, you have these annoying, recurrent anomalies:
-Rush ”I want Obama to fail” Limbaugh, bouncing up and down for 85 minutes in front of dazed and confused CPAC attendees; then he stayed on television, doing that for days for even more dazed and confused TV viewers;
-Karl “This economic mess is not George Bush’s fault” Rove, appearing almost everywhere on TV, almost all the time. Why is anyone still listening to him? He can do that but he can’t testify to Congress?
-Ann “I’m an anorexic asshole” Coulter, using up planetary oxygen for no discernible reason;
-Glenn “Stem cell research will lead to a master race” Beck, proving nightly that someone can repeatedly put together two sentences in the same paragraph that have nothing to do with one another. Yes, CNN really pays him to do this;
-Sarah “I can be as dumb as an Alaskan moose” Palin, who makes up both legalities and realities as she goes along, and is still seen as a heroine. I am just waiting for the revelation about heroin;
-A fourteen year-old talking ditto head who can rattle off conservative vapid talking points better and faster than
-Newt “I will run for President if it looks like it’s worth it and won’t if it don’t” Gingrich, who has not figured out that A) no one listening , B) no one gives a damn, and C) that nostalgia died with Ronald Reagan;
All of these appear to both resist and foil any attempts at serious thought. It is easier, I surmise, to pretend at thinking rather than actually do it.
Then there is the Pope: he is forgiving or excusing or absolutionizing (?) a holocaust denying priest and then says he is travelling to Israel and Palestine to pray for peace. I used to pray that pedophile priests would derail the catholic Church. That didn’t work, so maybe this obvious proof that papal infallibility is in fact complete absurdity will help the cause.
The Congress is battling over $8+B in earmarks which are “only a small %” of the total budget bill (but still $8+B, which we are not supposed to noti ce), which John McCain said he deplored during the campaign, then said were OK now that he was not the President. And of course Lindsey (“I am as dumb as a post”) Graham said they were horrible except for the ones that will fund his convention center in Myrtle Beach. And Obama and Enamuel think they are OK because they are “Bush’s earmarks” and not their fault. Maybe. Possibly.
And the fight over Prop 8 in CA is a mis-guided mal-a-prop-ism and a waste of time, money and energy. Even the venerable conservative George Will, on television, on Sunday morning, said that “homosexuality is about as interesting for most people as discovering that someone is left handed. Who cares?” That may be the only thought-provoking conservative thought I’ve heard in years. The end of times?
And “Daylight Savings Time” does not save any daylight: it is only supposed to save electricity. We can’t even freakin’ save energy in this country and get the terminology right. I only threw the glass darkly because I couldn’t see anymore…and neither could anybody else, apparently.
-Rush ”I want Obama to fail” Limbaugh, bouncing up and down for 85 minutes in front of dazed and confused CPAC attendees; then he stayed on television, doing that for days for even more dazed and confused TV viewers;
-Karl “This economic mess is not George Bush’s fault” Rove, appearing almost everywhere on TV, almost all the time. Why is anyone still listening to him? He can do that but he can’t testify to Congress?
-Ann “I’m an anorexic asshole” Coulter, using up planetary oxygen for no discernible reason;
-Glenn “Stem cell research will lead to a master race” Beck, proving nightly that someone can repeatedly put together two sentences in the same paragraph that have nothing to do with one another. Yes, CNN really pays him to do this;
-Sarah “I can be as dumb as an Alaskan moose” Palin, who makes up both legalities and realities as she goes along, and is still seen as a heroine. I am just waiting for the revelation about heroin;
-A fourteen year-old talking ditto head who can rattle off conservative vapid talking points better and faster than
-Newt “I will run for President if it looks like it’s worth it and won’t if it don’t” Gingrich, who has not figured out that A) no one listening , B) no one gives a damn, and C) that nostalgia died with Ronald Reagan;
All of these appear to both resist and foil any attempts at serious thought. It is easier, I surmise, to pretend at thinking rather than actually do it.
Then there is the Pope: he is forgiving or excusing or absolutionizing (?) a holocaust denying priest and then says he is travelling to Israel and Palestine to pray for peace. I used to pray that pedophile priests would derail the catholic Church. That didn’t work, so maybe this obvious proof that papal infallibility is in fact complete absurdity will help the cause.
The Congress is battling over $8+B in earmarks which are “only a small %” of the total budget bill (but still $8+B, which we are not supposed to noti ce), which John McCain said he deplored during the campaign, then said were OK now that he was not the President. And of course Lindsey (“I am as dumb as a post”) Graham said they were horrible except for the ones that will fund his convention center in Myrtle Beach. And Obama and Enamuel think they are OK because they are “Bush’s earmarks” and not their fault. Maybe. Possibly.
And the fight over Prop 8 in CA is a mis-guided mal-a-prop-ism and a waste of time, money and energy. Even the venerable conservative George Will, on television, on Sunday morning, said that “homosexuality is about as interesting for most people as discovering that someone is left handed. Who cares?” That may be the only thought-provoking conservative thought I’ve heard in years. The end of times?
And “Daylight Savings Time” does not save any daylight: it is only supposed to save electricity. We can’t even freakin’ save energy in this country and get the terminology right. I only threw the glass darkly because I couldn’t see anymore…and neither could anybody else, apparently.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Enough, already.
This was a very bad way to begin the day:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/129920/
Is Obama Bringing Too Much Religion into the White House?
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted March 5, 2009.
Our new President is trying my patience. As Obamaphoria has subsided somewhat and the celebratory smoke has cleared, as the clouds of bliss have wafted away and some of the ugliness of life’s realities have made themselves apparent, I am finding myself gasping for breath, as one disappointing revelation follows another. Getting smacked in the face with this headline, even before my obligatory coffee, so early this morning, is really pushing the edge of the envelope.
Firstly I am offended by the ghastly apparition of the Geithner/Summers series of economic brain farts. The worst part of these is not that they smell bad; they just don’t smell at all. Geithner needs to PLEASE go back from whence he came and calmer, more capable heads need to be brought to bear upon the travails at hand. I’m not terribly happy, either, with the strong hints that we may carry forward some torture practices around the world of our nefarious prisons and detention centers. And on March 4, the President single-handedly declared war on the wasteful spending of the military industrial complex. Optimism and progressive thinking is one thing, but naiveté’ and sticking your head into the mouth of a hungry lion without a safety net is something else. At the end of the classic movie, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, the two hapless heroes prepare to rush out into the courtyard and attempt an escape...against impossible odds. Obama (Butch) is in this one all alone (Joe Biden is no Sundance), like the Lone Ranger, and he has absolutely no idea how many Mexican/Indian/corporate armament-building moguls are perched with guns outside on the wall. Once again, while I can applaud forward thinking, I do not have much time to watch a poorly planned suicide. He is supposed to be more clever than that.
But this morning’s religious news threatens my total exasperation. In the first place, the United States was NEVER intended to be a Christian nation. The founding fathers fought and wrote and argued against that condition from the very onset of our fledgling nation. In one misguided step and after another, over a period of 200+ years, there have been moves afoot to impose, insert and infect American society and government with “Christian” inspired beliefs, mores and practices. Enough, already. I really had hoped that this ongoing use of the infiltration and poisoning of independent secular humanity with saccharine religiosity had reached its zenith during the Bush II administration, but the monster seems far from dead. This Alternet article would seem to indicate that we should brace for another round of government-religious foppery.
“Jesusology”, and its many offshoots and perversions (including those theistic step-children under the umbrella of AIPAC and modern Jewish militarism), have attempted, over the years, to either infiltrate, color, shade or camouflage the basic inter-dependent relationships between men and women in our society. They seek to lay claim to innocence for complicity in the world’s genocidal horrors, starvations, racial inequities and assorted hatreds, by simply invoking the word “God”. I have simply had it.
We have “In God We Trust” plastered all over government buildings, seals, coins and documents, inserted “under God” into the pledge of allegiance (which we periodically attempt to eliminate and regularly ignore), waste time and money arguing for and against placement of the twelve commandments and nativity scenes in public places, both take out of context and misquote “Christian” writings and utilize misappropriation of “Christian” beliefs to impugn, harass and discriminate against people of color, Muslims, Hindus, Zoroastrians, occasionally Jews on the wrong side of the political fence, and atheists and secularists, as well. Our “assumed”, God-given religious supremacy has warped most of our day-to-day perceptions of our fellows, their essential needs and how we choose to proceed or falter.
And Now Barack Obama wants to attend prayer breakfasts, make promises and continue to misuse, abuse and mal-manage monies associated with “faith-based” programs and initiatives. To invoke (God forgive me) Newt Gingrinch, “Does he think we are stupid?”
Apparently so. The religious right (if they have taken the time to read and pay any attention) should have discovered by now that George W. pandered to them for their votes, created a White House office for faith-based affairs, and then made sure it did nothing and remained unfunded. It created, propagated and sustained a belief that anything that was deemed “faith-based” was good, wholesome, Christian (not “Christ-like”) and somehow more beneficial than any other form of social intercession into poverty, racial hatred, social injustice or matters related to sex education or gender equality. For the record, I think that it is possible to have “faith” in the basic goodness of our fellow man and to make efforts to attend to his or her needs without having to make the special efforts to tie it to Jesus-oriented, guilt-ridden sympathies related to the misfortune of Jews or any other racial, ethnic or religious group that has fallen victim to holocausts, inquisitions or other forms of persecution. At least the lions on the Roman coliseum were non-discriminatory about who they devoured and decimated. We, however, by designating a program as “faith-based”, use our cultural ethos and its appropriated arrogance to name names and be particular about whom we single out to “help”(or not to), in order to symbolically wash away our sins of neglect, economic isolation, discrimination and social and gender estrangement.
I can (somewhat) excuse Rick Warren’s empty rhetoric. I can figure out a way to ignore and laugh at the likes of Rev. Wright. Hell, I’ve been tolerating Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for as long as I can remember. And despite the clamor to the contrary, Billy Graham is not and never has been the protestant Pope of the United States. This is all religious foolishness, used to offer distractions and divergences to Americans, used as sideshow entertainments and emotional panaceas to soothe and calm the American confused and somewhat schizophrenic humanitarian psyche.
When all else fails, it seems the best we can do is to throw logic to the wind, fall on our knees and pray, and hope the God we are praying to is the one most sympathetic to our plight. If we are really lucky, he/she/it will really get down on that lazy, feckless, faithless guy next door that we detest for his faithlessness. We are, after all, “faith-based” in our motivations and actions, and so very much better than he/she is. Perhaps we should contact the Center for Disease Control and see if they can find a vaccine for jesus-based infestations and faux good will. Perhaps addressing this ailment should be a new element of our universal healthcare. Perhaps we could wake up and smell the coffee and stop proliferating crucifixes.
And I think we should start collecting taxes on Church properties. Think what that would do for local budgets. I’ll bet I’ve really pissed of a bunch of folks, with this one. I need more coffee.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/129920/
Is Obama Bringing Too Much Religion into the White House?
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted March 5, 2009.
Our new President is trying my patience. As Obamaphoria has subsided somewhat and the celebratory smoke has cleared, as the clouds of bliss have wafted away and some of the ugliness of life’s realities have made themselves apparent, I am finding myself gasping for breath, as one disappointing revelation follows another. Getting smacked in the face with this headline, even before my obligatory coffee, so early this morning, is really pushing the edge of the envelope.
Firstly I am offended by the ghastly apparition of the Geithner/Summers series of economic brain farts. The worst part of these is not that they smell bad; they just don’t smell at all. Geithner needs to PLEASE go back from whence he came and calmer, more capable heads need to be brought to bear upon the travails at hand. I’m not terribly happy, either, with the strong hints that we may carry forward some torture practices around the world of our nefarious prisons and detention centers. And on March 4, the President single-handedly declared war on the wasteful spending of the military industrial complex. Optimism and progressive thinking is one thing, but naiveté’ and sticking your head into the mouth of a hungry lion without a safety net is something else. At the end of the classic movie, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, the two hapless heroes prepare to rush out into the courtyard and attempt an escape...against impossible odds. Obama (Butch) is in this one all alone (Joe Biden is no Sundance), like the Lone Ranger, and he has absolutely no idea how many Mexican/Indian/corporate armament-building moguls are perched with guns outside on the wall. Once again, while I can applaud forward thinking, I do not have much time to watch a poorly planned suicide. He is supposed to be more clever than that.
But this morning’s religious news threatens my total exasperation. In the first place, the United States was NEVER intended to be a Christian nation. The founding fathers fought and wrote and argued against that condition from the very onset of our fledgling nation. In one misguided step and after another, over a period of 200+ years, there have been moves afoot to impose, insert and infect American society and government with “Christian” inspired beliefs, mores and practices. Enough, already. I really had hoped that this ongoing use of the infiltration and poisoning of independent secular humanity with saccharine religiosity had reached its zenith during the Bush II administration, but the monster seems far from dead. This Alternet article would seem to indicate that we should brace for another round of government-religious foppery.
“Jesusology”, and its many offshoots and perversions (including those theistic step-children under the umbrella of AIPAC and modern Jewish militarism), have attempted, over the years, to either infiltrate, color, shade or camouflage the basic inter-dependent relationships between men and women in our society. They seek to lay claim to innocence for complicity in the world’s genocidal horrors, starvations, racial inequities and assorted hatreds, by simply invoking the word “God”. I have simply had it.
We have “In God We Trust” plastered all over government buildings, seals, coins and documents, inserted “under God” into the pledge of allegiance (which we periodically attempt to eliminate and regularly ignore), waste time and money arguing for and against placement of the twelve commandments and nativity scenes in public places, both take out of context and misquote “Christian” writings and utilize misappropriation of “Christian” beliefs to impugn, harass and discriminate against people of color, Muslims, Hindus, Zoroastrians, occasionally Jews on the wrong side of the political fence, and atheists and secularists, as well. Our “assumed”, God-given religious supremacy has warped most of our day-to-day perceptions of our fellows, their essential needs and how we choose to proceed or falter.
And Now Barack Obama wants to attend prayer breakfasts, make promises and continue to misuse, abuse and mal-manage monies associated with “faith-based” programs and initiatives. To invoke (God forgive me) Newt Gingrinch, “Does he think we are stupid?”
Apparently so. The religious right (if they have taken the time to read and pay any attention) should have discovered by now that George W. pandered to them for their votes, created a White House office for faith-based affairs, and then made sure it did nothing and remained unfunded. It created, propagated and sustained a belief that anything that was deemed “faith-based” was good, wholesome, Christian (not “Christ-like”) and somehow more beneficial than any other form of social intercession into poverty, racial hatred, social injustice or matters related to sex education or gender equality. For the record, I think that it is possible to have “faith” in the basic goodness of our fellow man and to make efforts to attend to his or her needs without having to make the special efforts to tie it to Jesus-oriented, guilt-ridden sympathies related to the misfortune of Jews or any other racial, ethnic or religious group that has fallen victim to holocausts, inquisitions or other forms of persecution. At least the lions on the Roman coliseum were non-discriminatory about who they devoured and decimated. We, however, by designating a program as “faith-based”, use our cultural ethos and its appropriated arrogance to name names and be particular about whom we single out to “help”(or not to), in order to symbolically wash away our sins of neglect, economic isolation, discrimination and social and gender estrangement.
I can (somewhat) excuse Rick Warren’s empty rhetoric. I can figure out a way to ignore and laugh at the likes of Rev. Wright. Hell, I’ve been tolerating Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for as long as I can remember. And despite the clamor to the contrary, Billy Graham is not and never has been the protestant Pope of the United States. This is all religious foolishness, used to offer distractions and divergences to Americans, used as sideshow entertainments and emotional panaceas to soothe and calm the American confused and somewhat schizophrenic humanitarian psyche.
When all else fails, it seems the best we can do is to throw logic to the wind, fall on our knees and pray, and hope the God we are praying to is the one most sympathetic to our plight. If we are really lucky, he/she/it will really get down on that lazy, feckless, faithless guy next door that we detest for his faithlessness. We are, after all, “faith-based” in our motivations and actions, and so very much better than he/she is. Perhaps we should contact the Center for Disease Control and see if they can find a vaccine for jesus-based infestations and faux good will. Perhaps addressing this ailment should be a new element of our universal healthcare. Perhaps we could wake up and smell the coffee and stop proliferating crucifixes.
And I think we should start collecting taxes on Church properties. Think what that would do for local budgets. I’ll bet I’ve really pissed of a bunch of folks, with this one. I need more coffee.
Monday, March 2, 2009
It's Not Clear, Either
Not long ago I took issue with the position of some Republican governors, that some of the funds available from the $787B stimulus package would impose distressing permanent legislation and policies on state governments, concerning future payments from entitlement funds, specifically unemployment benefits. As time has gone on, much of the mythology accompanying this has been dispelled, the waters are calming and quieter heads are prevailing.
However, in a manner much like using the term “transparent” to describe how President Obama would like the government to be about its’ financial affairs(it hasn’t been and probably will not be, despite the web sites available to track federal monies from taxpayers dollars) the latest word to be center stage in public discourse is, “clear”. Well, just as I suspected, many conditions that were claimed to be “permanent”, on second inspection, were not, and much of what the legislators claim as “transparent” turns out not be see-through at all. Add to those, now, nearly every time a politician or bureaucrat says:
-Let’s be clear here (or “about this”),
Or
I’d like to be clear on this,
Or
We should be clear, here,
Or
I want to make this crystal clear,
one can be very nearly completely almost assuredly possibly certain that whatever you are about be told is (or purported to be) clear, will not be. Clear, that is.
Along with being very nearly stunned in recalling the number of times then President-elect Obama used the word “clear” in his acceptance speech, on a Sunday morning political talk show, Peter Orzag, the new main man at the OMB, prefaced his responses to George Stephanopoulos with qualifying phrases about necessary clarity three times in five minutes. My friend Barbara, who is a much better student of human behavior than I am, reminded me that both Obama and Orzag probably were coached by the same handlers, urging them to use some variation on “I want to be clear” as a technique to give themselves both linguistic and mental breathing space before attempting a potentially taxing response.
This is all well and good, but in almost every instance, what follows the disclaimer about chrystallinity is usually something like this: “First all we will need to do this…”, then, “Secondly, our attention should be focused on…”, which if followed by, “And lastly, we should not lose sight of…”, and by then, any chance that any thing at all had any chance to be “clear” has been lost. And Sen. Harry Reid likes to be clear as well: what that usually means is that he about to make an excuse for something the Democratic congress failed to do or compromised on. I would just as soon he left that kind of clarity in Vegas. And if Harry’s explanations are not clear enough for you, Nancy Pelosi will make sure you get it later: she will stand behind a lectern, flanked by beaming dems and say, “Let’s be clear about this…”, and you will feel a kind of California warmness. She hopes. (In Orzag’s defense, he did illustrate that when someone like Bill Gates makes a $1000.00 donation to charity, after the current tax cuts expire, the Mr. Gates’ tax deduction will drop from $350.00 to $280.00. Clear. Precise. I can understand that. There is something to be said for economists sticking to numbers).
Conversely, showing no evidence whatsoever of coaching from democratic handlers, Secretary Gates, on Meet the Press the same day, made doubly sure (to my way of thinking) that nothing was clear, using a kind of unclear political double-speak when trying to answer David Gregory’s questions: queried about the residual forces announced for Iraq into the next several months and years, Gates did not explain or make clear anything, by saying that the proposed 50,000 troops to be left there will be a “transition force”, and a “way station” on the road to Iraqi independence. He also said that they would be re-named in a “different role”, for “a different kind of mission”. Really? This is, of course, bullshit. He said this residual force will make it “safer for those remaining” (And who is that, exactly?) As has been pointed out repeatedly, every one of the 50,000 combat ready troops are, in fact, truly combat ready. They march around in body armor, carry automatic weapons and hand grenades and kick in doors, looking for insurgents. The only reality which Mr. Gates made clear is that, despite the linguistic gymnastics, nothing will change (To his credit, when asked what might constitute “victory” in Iraq, he only offered that that would be for someone else to decide, later).
Along these same muddled lines, Congressman Cantor, when asked point blank, TWICE, by George Stephanopoulos, if Republicans were going to vote for the new proposed budget, Cantor completely dodged the question, TWICE, and even managed to make the discussion less clear, by inserting a dig about the stimulus bill, claiming it was “Speaker Pelosi’s bill”. It was not “Pelosi’s”, of course, and he offered no clear indications about the upcoming vote. Stephanopoulos finally gave up his search for any clarity. And in order to further his genuine lack of clarity on both the economy and the stimulus bill, Cantor said that we should be “preserving and protecting new jobs”, as the “focus on economic growth”. Now, I don’t know where Mr. Cantor has been hiding, but you cannot “preserve “a new job, and the task of “protecting” should be for existing jobs. And last I heard the stimulus bill was as much about “jobs” as anything to focus on economic growth…in addition to Republican tax cuts (which he earlier said did not exist). The only clear revelation here was that Cantor himself was not clear about the content of the bill. Had either Gates or Cantor told me up front that they were going to be “clear” in their remarks, I might have been more comforted. But telling me (Gates) that the “same-old, same-old” will have a new “role” as a “way station”, and having Cantor answer the voting question by saying that “people want results” and the Republican party is the party of ”new ideas” is all not very clear at all, but rather insulting and infuriating. Verbal contortionism does not for clarity make. Sam Watkins, a Republican strategist, said on MSNBC-TV this afternoon, that Republicans did not get re-elected in recent voting because they did not “talk the talk and walk the walk”: well, that’s pretty not clear. What the hell does that mean? And RNC chairman Steele has decided to reinvigorate the party by infusing it with hip hop and Michelle Bachman. Those are two truly new ideas. Are you clear on that? Traditional Republican should be clearly infuriated.
But there were some moments of clarity on Sunday…or at least moments of clear protestation. Katrina vanden Heuvel (The Nation) lashed out with clarity and precision when she told George Will and Karl Rove that the Republicans, since the days of Ronald Reagan, had been “starving the beast (government)” while “feeding the rich” though tax cuts. Clear enough. Karl Rove made it abundantly clear that while not complying with a subpoena to appear before Congress, but he was happy to show up at NBC to get paid to sit on a panel. Rove also used a variation on ”being clear”: he offered to “set the record straight”, at one point (whatever it was that he set the record straight on went right over my head…but with great clarity). Also last week, at CPAC, Sen. McConnel asked, “Who would you rather hang out with, guys like Krugman and Reich or Rush Limbaugh?” This made very clear the fact that he can really confuse apples and oranges. If you would like to draw a comparison here, in order to make something “clear”, you should at least find another economist to run up against Krugman or Reich: last time I looked, Limbaugh has no credentials as an economist. In fact, Limbaugh makes a career out of guaranteeing that nothing is clear except his girth and his bombast (As I think about it, I am much happier to “hang out” with Krugman, who says that the only thing we know for sure is that nobody knows anything for sure, and that the only reality which is clear is that there are almost no clear realities. Somehow, I prefer that nebulous innocence to the vacuous emotional tirades of Limbaughism). And Newt Gingrich asked the same CPAC group, “Do they (the democrats) think we are stupid?” Actually, Newt, the clearer reality may be that ever since trickle-down economics, voo-doo economics, “Read my lips: No new taxes” taxes, the desire to tinker (and wreck) social security and then cut taxes for the uber-rich( who can most afford to pay them…we do, after all, have a progressive income tax), the Republicans have been counting on our being stupid for years , while we continually fell for those lines of thinking which have put the United States in this current financial mess .
Speaking of which: After repeated promises of transparency and attempts to “be clear on this”, the new President reached into his hat and pulled out a rabbit named Geithner. Mr. Geithner (and his second in command, Larry Summers) were supposed to be clear about what we needed to do next, about the economy. Geithner has never used the word clear that I can find, has said and done (almost literally) nothing which I can see is clear in any way, and our economic situation seems only to deteriorate further every day. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/workplace/129574/
Geithner has thus far been so completely unclear that he is like a fogged-up mirror, in the least, and as permeable as a brick wall at the worst. And Larry Summers is sounding like he has used Cantor’s speech coach: if we are lucky, sometime this summer we might hear him say something which is helpful, forward looking and makes it ”clear” that he and Geithner are capable of and planning to do something for the good of the country besides give money to AIG and General Motors (talk about a couple guys who could use some new ideas). While it is “clear” (sorry about that) that the economies of scale at stake are enormous, the President told us…CLEARLY… that Geithner’s resume up to the task. I’m waiting. This Geithnerian drama lacks drama, and Bernanke and Summers are likely breathing the same rarified air and drinking from the same purified water: there is no substance, there are no minerals or supplements, and no impurities to be filtered out through discussion. Perhaps without substance, one does not need to ponder the need for clarity.
I hope you are clear on all of this, because I’m not. At the moment, unless something changes, all I see ahead is Rumsfeld’s long slog through the unclear mud of double-speak. While it used to be that “on a clear day you could see forever”…and even General Motors…despite repeated claims to the contrary, no one has made anything “perfectly clear”, at all. And we are not that stupid.
However, in a manner much like using the term “transparent” to describe how President Obama would like the government to be about its’ financial affairs(it hasn’t been and probably will not be, despite the web sites available to track federal monies from taxpayers dollars) the latest word to be center stage in public discourse is, “clear”. Well, just as I suspected, many conditions that were claimed to be “permanent”, on second inspection, were not, and much of what the legislators claim as “transparent” turns out not be see-through at all. Add to those, now, nearly every time a politician or bureaucrat says:
-Let’s be clear here (or “about this”),
Or
I’d like to be clear on this,
Or
We should be clear, here,
Or
I want to make this crystal clear,
one can be very nearly completely almost assuredly possibly certain that whatever you are about be told is (or purported to be) clear, will not be. Clear, that is.
Along with being very nearly stunned in recalling the number of times then President-elect Obama used the word “clear” in his acceptance speech, on a Sunday morning political talk show, Peter Orzag, the new main man at the OMB, prefaced his responses to George Stephanopoulos with qualifying phrases about necessary clarity three times in five minutes. My friend Barbara, who is a much better student of human behavior than I am, reminded me that both Obama and Orzag probably were coached by the same handlers, urging them to use some variation on “I want to be clear” as a technique to give themselves both linguistic and mental breathing space before attempting a potentially taxing response.
This is all well and good, but in almost every instance, what follows the disclaimer about chrystallinity is usually something like this: “First all we will need to do this…”, then, “Secondly, our attention should be focused on…”, which if followed by, “And lastly, we should not lose sight of…”, and by then, any chance that any thing at all had any chance to be “clear” has been lost. And Sen. Harry Reid likes to be clear as well: what that usually means is that he about to make an excuse for something the Democratic congress failed to do or compromised on. I would just as soon he left that kind of clarity in Vegas. And if Harry’s explanations are not clear enough for you, Nancy Pelosi will make sure you get it later: she will stand behind a lectern, flanked by beaming dems and say, “Let’s be clear about this…”, and you will feel a kind of California warmness. She hopes. (In Orzag’s defense, he did illustrate that when someone like Bill Gates makes a $1000.00 donation to charity, after the current tax cuts expire, the Mr. Gates’ tax deduction will drop from $350.00 to $280.00. Clear. Precise. I can understand that. There is something to be said for economists sticking to numbers).
Conversely, showing no evidence whatsoever of coaching from democratic handlers, Secretary Gates, on Meet the Press the same day, made doubly sure (to my way of thinking) that nothing was clear, using a kind of unclear political double-speak when trying to answer David Gregory’s questions: queried about the residual forces announced for Iraq into the next several months and years, Gates did not explain or make clear anything, by saying that the proposed 50,000 troops to be left there will be a “transition force”, and a “way station” on the road to Iraqi independence. He also said that they would be re-named in a “different role”, for “a different kind of mission”. Really? This is, of course, bullshit. He said this residual force will make it “safer for those remaining” (And who is that, exactly?) As has been pointed out repeatedly, every one of the 50,000 combat ready troops are, in fact, truly combat ready. They march around in body armor, carry automatic weapons and hand grenades and kick in doors, looking for insurgents. The only reality which Mr. Gates made clear is that, despite the linguistic gymnastics, nothing will change (To his credit, when asked what might constitute “victory” in Iraq, he only offered that that would be for someone else to decide, later).
Along these same muddled lines, Congressman Cantor, when asked point blank, TWICE, by George Stephanopoulos, if Republicans were going to vote for the new proposed budget, Cantor completely dodged the question, TWICE, and even managed to make the discussion less clear, by inserting a dig about the stimulus bill, claiming it was “Speaker Pelosi’s bill”. It was not “Pelosi’s”, of course, and he offered no clear indications about the upcoming vote. Stephanopoulos finally gave up his search for any clarity. And in order to further his genuine lack of clarity on both the economy and the stimulus bill, Cantor said that we should be “preserving and protecting new jobs”, as the “focus on economic growth”. Now, I don’t know where Mr. Cantor has been hiding, but you cannot “preserve “a new job, and the task of “protecting” should be for existing jobs. And last I heard the stimulus bill was as much about “jobs” as anything to focus on economic growth…in addition to Republican tax cuts (which he earlier said did not exist). The only clear revelation here was that Cantor himself was not clear about the content of the bill. Had either Gates or Cantor told me up front that they were going to be “clear” in their remarks, I might have been more comforted. But telling me (Gates) that the “same-old, same-old” will have a new “role” as a “way station”, and having Cantor answer the voting question by saying that “people want results” and the Republican party is the party of ”new ideas” is all not very clear at all, but rather insulting and infuriating. Verbal contortionism does not for clarity make. Sam Watkins, a Republican strategist, said on MSNBC-TV this afternoon, that Republicans did not get re-elected in recent voting because they did not “talk the talk and walk the walk”: well, that’s pretty not clear. What the hell does that mean? And RNC chairman Steele has decided to reinvigorate the party by infusing it with hip hop and Michelle Bachman. Those are two truly new ideas. Are you clear on that? Traditional Republican should be clearly infuriated.
But there were some moments of clarity on Sunday…or at least moments of clear protestation. Katrina vanden Heuvel (The Nation) lashed out with clarity and precision when she told George Will and Karl Rove that the Republicans, since the days of Ronald Reagan, had been “starving the beast (government)” while “feeding the rich” though tax cuts. Clear enough. Karl Rove made it abundantly clear that while not complying with a subpoena to appear before Congress, but he was happy to show up at NBC to get paid to sit on a panel. Rove also used a variation on ”being clear”: he offered to “set the record straight”, at one point (whatever it was that he set the record straight on went right over my head…but with great clarity). Also last week, at CPAC, Sen. McConnel asked, “Who would you rather hang out with, guys like Krugman and Reich or Rush Limbaugh?” This made very clear the fact that he can really confuse apples and oranges. If you would like to draw a comparison here, in order to make something “clear”, you should at least find another economist to run up against Krugman or Reich: last time I looked, Limbaugh has no credentials as an economist. In fact, Limbaugh makes a career out of guaranteeing that nothing is clear except his girth and his bombast (As I think about it, I am much happier to “hang out” with Krugman, who says that the only thing we know for sure is that nobody knows anything for sure, and that the only reality which is clear is that there are almost no clear realities. Somehow, I prefer that nebulous innocence to the vacuous emotional tirades of Limbaughism). And Newt Gingrich asked the same CPAC group, “Do they (the democrats) think we are stupid?” Actually, Newt, the clearer reality may be that ever since trickle-down economics, voo-doo economics, “Read my lips: No new taxes” taxes, the desire to tinker (and wreck) social security and then cut taxes for the uber-rich( who can most afford to pay them…we do, after all, have a progressive income tax), the Republicans have been counting on our being stupid for years , while we continually fell for those lines of thinking which have put the United States in this current financial mess .
Speaking of which: After repeated promises of transparency and attempts to “be clear on this”, the new President reached into his hat and pulled out a rabbit named Geithner. Mr. Geithner (and his second in command, Larry Summers) were supposed to be clear about what we needed to do next, about the economy. Geithner has never used the word clear that I can find, has said and done (almost literally) nothing which I can see is clear in any way, and our economic situation seems only to deteriorate further every day. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/workplace/129574/
Geithner has thus far been so completely unclear that he is like a fogged-up mirror, in the least, and as permeable as a brick wall at the worst. And Larry Summers is sounding like he has used Cantor’s speech coach: if we are lucky, sometime this summer we might hear him say something which is helpful, forward looking and makes it ”clear” that he and Geithner are capable of and planning to do something for the good of the country besides give money to AIG and General Motors (talk about a couple guys who could use some new ideas). While it is “clear” (sorry about that) that the economies of scale at stake are enormous, the President told us…CLEARLY… that Geithner’s resume up to the task. I’m waiting. This Geithnerian drama lacks drama, and Bernanke and Summers are likely breathing the same rarified air and drinking from the same purified water: there is no substance, there are no minerals or supplements, and no impurities to be filtered out through discussion. Perhaps without substance, one does not need to ponder the need for clarity.
I hope you are clear on all of this, because I’m not. At the moment, unless something changes, all I see ahead is Rumsfeld’s long slog through the unclear mud of double-speak. While it used to be that “on a clear day you could see forever”…and even General Motors…despite repeated claims to the contrary, no one has made anything “perfectly clear”, at all. And we are not that stupid.
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