The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Barth's picture

    What's about to happen and why

    By Barth on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 12:13pm |

    When we were young Joni Mitchell told us:

    you haven't really changed...
    It's just that now you're romanticizing some pain that's in your head
    You got tombs in your eyes but the songs you punched are dreamy
    Listen, they sing of love so sweet, love so sweet
    When you gonna get yourself back on your feet?
    Oh and love can be so sweet Love so sweet



    but after a decade of Reaganomics, that whole dreaming thing seemed a bit darker:

    The street was loud
    From an angry crowd and
    I thought of you, I
    thought of you
    Dreamer
    Land of the free
    No hungry bellies
    Impossible
    Impossible dreamer



    Have you spent the week wishing President Obama would stand up to the Republicans? Are you stupefied by the prospect of a Congress that won't extend unemployment benefits and continue a middle class tax cut, unless the wealthiest get an even bigger tax cut? Can you barely sit still for a Senate unable to ratify an utterly uncontroversial treaty required for a thousand a half reasons, but mostly to lessen the chances we we will all be blown away by some fool and nuclear weapons? Because the Senate has not extended tax cuts for the wealthy?

    Don't be.

    There was nothing President Obama could have done. This is the Congress we have elected. It is the Congress that comes forth in a country which auctions its legislature off to the highest bidder and prevents any change in such a perverse system by expressing a sudden devotion to the principles of the First Amendment. (Yes, the same First Amendment which permits radio stations to be fined if a someone says a "bad word" on it or allows Congress to regulate how music should be played on radio stations which archive their programs on the internet. It means nothing then, but is an iron shield against any regulation of campaign contributions.)

    Get used to this, my friends. John McCain has pointed out that elections have consequences and what we are seeing this week are just that. With the election of the Great Reagan in 1980, the dreams of those President Roosevelt called


    the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering



    to destroy the New Deal and the forward looking outlook that made it, and the great prosperity it brought with it, were realized. Government is bad, they told us, and we believed them.

    And, except for eight years when a moderate Republican masquerading as a Democrat served in the White House (though they impeached him), they held the White House for almost thirty years.

    President Obama, some thought, could just fix all of that with the snap of newly empowered fingers. Most of us knew better, but when he could not repair the damage of thirty years in just two, it was decided to go back to the exact way of thinking that has brought our country to its knees.

    The other day, Bob Schieffer tried desperately on Face the Nation to get distinguished biographers of two of our greatest presidents to reassure him and us that as before something will happen or someone will come to save the day. Neither historian would bite, however:

    RON CHERNOW (biographer of George Wahington in Washington: A Life)

     

    Well, Americans like to look back on the Founding Era as the golden age. And there are good reasons and bad reasons for doing that. Indeed the Founding Era had these men who were brilliant and erudite and fearless. We had in a country of three million people simultaneously active in American politics, a Benjamin Franklin, a George Washington, a Thomas Jefferson, a James Madison, a John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton and a John Jay.

    We would all be hard pressed to think of a single individual of the stature of any of those seven people even though the population today is one hundred times greater.



    EDMUND MORRIS (biographer of Theodore Roosevelt in Colonel Roosevelt):

    the progressive middle class movement ... volcanically erupted in 1910, exactly hundred years ago. And reached its peak in 1912, the campaign where Theodore Roosevelt became the almost third party candidate for the presidency and humiliated the sitting Republican President William Howard Taft and split the Republican vote and elected Woodrow Wilson...[based on a ] feeling of exclusion, exclusion from
    the privileged interplay of a conservative Congress, financial institutions-- ... the corporate elite, [wwhere] the middle class feels disenfranchised, angry, overtaxed and perplexed. And this anger is something quite formidable. And I would not be surprised if it doesn’t ... give us real trouble in 2012.



    We have, as Frank Rich explained last week, a bought and paid for Congress, out of touch with the issues facing our country and doing the bidding of elites who mean no good. This is what we elected and this is what we got.

    -----

    A brief word on today's events, happening as we type. When the Senate votes 53-36 to in essence, pass a middle class tax cut extension, they have not, as the Times has it right now, "rejected" the plan. They have failed to impose cloture which, under the new view of what the filibuster means, makes it impossible for the Senate to pass the bill. But a body does not "reject" something when 17 more of its members vote for it, than vote against it. In the Beltway, it may mean they "rejected" something, but not anywhere else.

    Comments

    I read your blog barth, but only so far as this:

    "There was nothing President Obama could have done."

    Unbelievable! There is simply no point engaging past that line of argument.

    Indeed, I'm reminded of another cartoon character of the same caliber as Obama:

    "They say that nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day!"
    - Winnie the Pooh

    I anxiously await his follow-up where there will be plenty of nothing he can do.


    by SleepinJeezus on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:15pm

    Comment rec'd; in emergencies like this, especially, Presidents act. 


    by we are stardust on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:20pm

    Only when they are allowed to act. Wall Street runs the show regardless of who is elected.


    by cmaukonen on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 5:19pm

    Rec'd X 2.


    by quinn esq on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 2:11pm

    What is it exactly that you think he can do?  They have decided to stonewall him.  It takes sixty votes now to pass anything int he Senate and even the cutie pies from Maine won't budge.

    Keep looking for a magician and you will always be disappointed.


    by Barth on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 4:21pm

    Barth, you ask: "What is it exactly that you think he can do?"  I would suggest a veto if they deliver legislation that doesn't serve our country's best interests, though I don't really expect him to do that.  Does that make my suggestion another wish for a pony?


    by miguelitoh2o on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 7:52pm

    It takes absolutely NO amount of imagination to begin to see what Obama could do differently.

    It begins with every good Democrat yelling "Hey! You! You're supposed to be on OUR side!"

    It begins most certainly with use of the bully pulpit Obama is afforded as President. We all saw his ability to stir the masses with his florid rhetoric on the campaign trail.  And now? {{Crickets}}. At a time we are so incredibly under assault by those who would make serfs of us all, he stands idly by, at best, or uses his opportunities in front of the camera to simply capitulate for no good reason, fer chrissakes, a la his recent unilateral surrender of federal employee wage increases seemingly "just because he felt like doing it."

    He has a model to use, if so inclined, of another President in another time that was very similar to our own:

    Of course, such leadership requires that you be willing to actually stand in opposition to the other side in this Class War.

    On matters involving the financial industry, Obama has shown he is willing to act like a Democrat only so far as Geithner and Summers and Goldman Sachs and the rest of Wall Street will allow.

    He has abandoned Keynesian economics in favor of something more in line with Grover Norquist's plan for America in a fashion that would make Hoover look like a goddammed socialist.

    On health care reform, he has shown that he is in favor of moving against the Insurance Industry and Big pHarma only to the extent that those industries will allow.

    On credit reform, he has advocated for every last measure of reform that CitiBank and others on Wall Street will allow. Nothing more.

    And now - in the search for some kind of fiscal sanity that recognizes the great disparity in wealth between the richest 2% and the rest of us - Obama stands tall to offer all the economic justice that the richest 2% will allow.

    There can be only one reason anyone would still defend this corrupted, compromised, poor example of leadership we elected into this position of President. It comes from having your head shoved up his ass for so long that you no longer even know what a breath of fresh air might smell like. Pull yourself away and really take a look at this guy, barth. See how he takes the opportunity of his failure to lead in this instance of the tax cuts fight to slip in yet another failure - late on a Friday night, no less! - like the Free-for-All Trade agreement with South Korea. Might as well consolidate the failures, he seems to suggest. It sure beats making an effort to get in the way of the wealthy oppressors who are determined to have their way with us all.

    Listen to FDR's speech. And then imagine how such a message would play with the public who today suffer 10% unemployment, the collapse of their wealth in the burst of the housing bubble, the pending assault on Social Security and other social safety nets, and all the other happenings of This Administration that are occurring with his tacit (and even sometimes active) approval.

    And then ask yourself why Obama is so incapable of "welcoming the hatred" of those who would do us harm. In that, you will find your answer.

    We need an alternative, and we'd do well to find one before the election in 2012. This act is growing so very old, and it's approaching an incredibly unsatisfying climax wherein the bad guys will most certainly win in the end. Time to revise the script and introduce some dramatic tension in this story before it's too late.


    by SleepinJeezus on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 8:55pm

    Thanks. You may have noted that the quote in my main post came from the same speech.  I wish President Obama was President Roosevelt.  He is not. FDR was our greatest president.  They don't grow them on trees.

    But these are different times.  People saw what was done to them, and how the New Deal was changing all of that.  The wind was at the President's back.  FOX and sons are blowing quite the other way.

    And, on the subject of 1933-1940:   there were many ups and downs then, too. The President even tried to support candidates against southern Democrats who were retarding the New Deal, but he lost that fight and many others.

     

     


    by Barth on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 8:48am

    "...he lost that fight..."

    Did you say fight? What a concept!


    by SleepinJeezus on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 9:01am

    Rec'd 3X


    by AmiBlue on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 5:23pm

    This is what we elected and this is what we got.

    Nuff said.


    by Richard Day on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:28pm

    No, Dick, not nearly enough said.  You can pretend to believe until the cows come home that "Your President" does not have any accountability in this madness, but I know that even you know that it's just.not.so.  I do have heart for your pain in this matter, believe me.  I share it.

    But when even Howard Fineman and Eugene Robinson and fucking David Stockman are crying "WTF?" it's time to wrestle with it: Obama ain't here to help us, or even to make decisions that make the best economic sense.  Period.  There are no possible 11-dimensional chess moves left for him to pull out of his Display Hankie Pocket.  We have to make some alternate plans, and he can come with us as a follower, or not.  Cuz he sure can't be counted on to lead us, more's the pity.


    by we are stardust on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 9:09pm

    wooooooooooooooooo tough stuff. How, I mean Howard Fineman!!! Howard who decided to end his hurrahs for the single biggest criminal ever to sit in the Oval Office five years after the lies began!!!

    Listen, carefully, Americans are the right wing that Joe Scarboough talks about every week day morning.

    I am with Barth's analysis on all of this for sure.

    They say: Give more speeches.

    Hell, our President preaches every single day.

    But so does beckerhead and rush and the other fascist pricks on the radio and on cable.

    The electorate decides.

    That is it.


    by Richard Day on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 9:17pm

    DDay, please read Krugman's latest in the NYT. (I'd link to it, but it seems to require a subscription. Hopefully somebody else here can offer an unimpeded link to it?)

    Krugman really lays it out in a short, but devastating piece. This guy is toast. It's a painful reality to confront, given where we were at during the celebration in Grant Park. But it's reality nonetheless, and I am anguished by it. The opportunity that has been squandered here is simply too great to abide any longer. Something's gotta give.


    by SleepinJeezus on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 10:29pm

    Dunno which one you want; I think you only have to register at the Times once; it seems to know my computer.  Or something...   ;o)

    Here's Krugman's page: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/  Sleep well; I'm off.


    by we are stardust on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 12:03am

    I was referring to his "Freezing Out Hope" column, which I accessed online at one point but can't seem to connect to now without a "log in." In it, Krugman asks "After the pummeling in the midterm elections, has President Obama suffered a moral collapse?"

    The answer isn't very encouraging.


    by SleepinJeezus on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 12:12am

    The answer is downright head-in-the-oven time, really.  And this is Paul Krugman, whom Obama had invited to the White House along with Joseph Stiglitz, to: a) show that he in fact DID listen to non-neo-Liberal economists, and b) schmooze the two to quit criticizing his economic team's f'ed up policies.  Didn't work for Stiglitz, but IMO Krugman came away with 'Oval Office Fever', and pulled his punches for a time.

    This one is from Dec. 2, and he's written a few since.  When the Prez froze the federal employees salaries, it made me stomping crazy; Krugman, too.  It was all about optics for Obama, as in: if I give this up, and call it a first step for coming hard choices to come for all, the R's will pat me on the head.  And it sucked, because he publicly bought into the fact that federal employees are paid too much (the worthless, lazy, gummint-tit scoundrels) PLUS it furthered the catastrophically ignorant notion that during depressions, deficits should be top-tier issues to wrestle with when looking at government spending on jobs and unemployment benefits, which return $1.60 for every dollar spent.

    He further points out that even Fed Chair Bernanke came pretty close to begging him and Congress for a jobs stimulus pacakge.  He seems to have little hope that his QEII move will have enough beneficial effects to help unemployment numbers.  That was even before the projected 93,000 expected jobs turned out to be a paltry 36,000, I think. 

    Krugman sees the game as O giving a gift to the R's before the economic summit, but the R leadership came out of the meeting announicng they weren't gonna buy into any of his legislative agenda until the tax-cut issue was 'solved',  F you!  And Obama apparently indicated that he 'hadn't reached out to the R's enough over the past two years!!!

    I disagree; I think there was a deal cut; you know, one of those Gentleman's Agreement thingies, wherein the R's said if he caved on the deficit-ballooning tax-cuts for millionaires and billionaires, extensions, that they'd agree to some extensions of unemployment benefits.  Whether or not that would be another Lucy/Charlie Brown football kick moment is anyone's guess.

    But where Paul gets down to it is here:

    "What’s even more puzzling is the apparent indifference of the Obama team to the effect of such gestures on their supporters. One would have expected a candidate who rode the enthusiasm of activists to an upset victory in the Democratic primary to realize that this enthusiasm was an important asset. Instead, however, Mr. Obama almost seems as if he’s trying, systematically, to disappoint his once-fervent supporters, to convince the people who put him where he is that they made an embarrassing mistake.

    Whatever is going on inside the White House, from the outside it looks like moral collapse — a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction.

    So what are Democrats to do? The answer, increasingly, seems to be that they’ll have to strike out on their own. In particular, Democrats in Congress still have the ability to put their opponents on the spot — as they did on Thursday when they forced a vote on extending middle-class tax cuts, putting Republicans in the awkward position of voting against the middle class to safeguard tax cuts for the rich.

    It would be much easier, of course, for Democrats to draw a line if Mr. Obama would do his part. But all indications are that the party will have to look elsewhere for the leadership it needs."

    I'd been thinking in terms of end-runs around him, too; but man; that would be One Tough Gig.   (I wrote all this in case people have trouble with accessing the column.)  ;o)

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/opinion/03krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss


    by we are stardust on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 7:27am

    Oh, faith and begorrah!  I just found this to show what insane asshats the Talking Heads are.  In announcing the Sunday Shows line-up:

    Chris Matthews: Andrea Mitchell, John Heillmann, Susan Davis, Andrew Sullivan. Topics: Will Obama Grab the Deficit Cause and Drive a National Movement for Shared Sacrifice?

    Ah, Tweety; always zeroing in on the bullshit memes of the day, aren't you?  Pretty funny, when I just read, and assume the numbers are right, that for the cost of one week for the wars (the costs they admit to), every unemployed person could get their UC checks for another week.

    And before I get scolded for rampant negativity, I'll say Congress did pass a food safety bill and a hungry kids bill, and the Prez will sign them.  ;o)


    by we are stardust on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 7:42am

    Star, I'm going to wait until I see what's in the package before I give up hope. I think Obama is focused on improving the unemployjment numbers without which no Dem is going to win in 2012. He will not sign any deal which does not include more unemployment benefits, and he may get some extra stimulus besides. I was surprised that the market didn't tank on the Friday numbers--tells me the overall trend for recovery is up, even though painfully slow. You'll hate this--Goldman Sachs says the S&P will be up 20% by the end of next year.  


    by Oxy Mora on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 9:17am

    I can't follow your logic, Oxy. A horrible jobs number is ... GOOD news? and good because the market doesn't care about US employment? I find the jobs number catastrophic, and the fact that the market doesn't care to be TERRIFYING.

    The performance of US large caps has nothing to do with the employment picture anymore. Why that is would be interesting to know. It might be that large caps have gained such a strong market position - cheap capital, concentrated markets - that they can pick of  the small fry and price their product as they please. Operating margins are going through the roof. It is partly also that many large-caps don't depend on the US market anymore, or for many of them, depend only on the expansion of the consumer habits of the top income decile (since they sell primarily positional goods). And that consumer is doing just dandy thankyeverymuch, and accounts for 50% of the consumer market at this point. The bottom 90%? Who gives a hoot...


    by Obey on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 9:31am


    Obey, I'm by no means an expert on statistics. However, the 93K number was the ADP report, a report separate from the gummit and focused on private sector employment. The 93K was the largest increase in three years--supposedly it includes medium and small sized companies. As for operating margins, the "sweet" profit spot for companies is when coming out of a recession--sales improve and they hold back on hiring, increasing hours of existing employees and whipping them with lashes--all of which increases margins. Sooner or later if things improve, they have to start hiring or they piss off customers with slow deliveries and lose market share. Also, 70% of GDP is the consumer. Consumer confidence was up by several percentage points which was a big move and that translates into "growth".

    Growth of what? Unfortunately for all of us who wanted to change this goddammed lopsided economic system, growth is very much a two edged sword. On the one hand it seems as if nothing has changed and on the other hand I for one am happy not to see my small business and even smaller retirement fund crater. So shit, Obama has gotten our lousy system back on track but a historic opportunity to change the system has been passed over. That's crazy-making.


    by Oxy Mora on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 10:23am

    There is always something a President can do, use the bully pulpit and get out some simple, coherent messages (if in fact Obama has any message beyond happily caving in to the thugs of the GOP mafia):

    Robert Reich:

    The President should propose that the Bush tax cuts be extended for EVERYONE — but only on their first $250,000 of income.

    Hey, wait a minute. That’s exactly what he is proposing. EVERYONE gets a continuation of the Bush tax cuts on the first $250,000 of their incomes. If your income is $251,000, you’ll get the Bush tax cut on $250,000 of it. Only $1,000 would be taxed at the higher Clinton rate.

    So why have Republicans been able to say Obama and the Democrats don’t want to extend the Bush tax cuts to everyone?

    Call it another White House and Democratic communications failure.

    and more from Robert Reich:

    Quiz: What’s responsible for the lousy economy most Americans continue to wallow in?

    A. Big government, bureaucrats, and the cultural and intellectual elites who back them.

    B. Big business, Wall Street, and the powerful and privileged who represent them.

    These are the two competing stories Americans are telling one another.......

    So B is closer to the truth.

    But A is the story Republicans and right-wingers tell. It’s a dangerous story because it deflects attention from the real problem and makes it harder for America to focus on the real solution – which is more widely shared prosperity. (I get into how we might do this in my new book, Aftershock.)

    A is also the story President Obama is telling, indirectly, through his deficit commission, his freeze on federal pay, his freeze on discretionary spending, and his waivering on extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich......

    Obama is the President, if he showed 1/10 as much conviction (to do right) as the lock-step GOP does (to do wrong) he would let the all tax cuts expire unless only for the middle class or poor, veto any extension that includes the wealthy, and to do so he would just need to line up 34 Democrats in the Senate to block an override of his veto.

    The Republicans would howl like scalded cats, but Obama would, for once, be fighting back at the bullies who have been beating up on him and his agenda since Jan. 21, 2009. Of course, either Obama does not have the conviction, the will, or the personality to wield the power he was given in being elected, and he has not brought 'real change to Wash. DC'.


    by NCD on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:29pm

    Well, sure he can, NCD; he can use his Bully Pulpit to score a NAFTA-style Korean Free Trade Agreement!  Look at the list of supporters there!  All the ones who are always lookin' out for the jobs American Workers might have had...if only...only...aw; fergeddit...

    http://firedoglake.com/2010/12/04/jamie-dimon-chamber-of-commerce-and-uaw-congratulate-president-obama-on-the-glorious-occasion-of-his-nafta-style-korea-trade-agreement/

    I always say I'm in favor of anything the CoC and them thar Big Bankers love.  They say (though I'm sure it's only a rumor) that Hilda Solis's folks were busy manning phones to convince the Unions to shut there yaps about it all...carrots, sticks, carrots, sticks....

     


    by we are stardust on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 2:06pm

    I read Reich and agree with much of what he said, but if you let those tax cuts expire you will start a screamathon which will not end until he is swept out of office.  ANd if you don't like it now, you will like President Romney or President Barbour a lot less.


    by Barth on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 4:17pm

    The Republicans would cave and REALLY negotiate if Obama said he would veto extending tax cuts for the rich. They would howl but they would have to give up something, like separating the dates of expiration of middle class and the rich tax cuts.

    The way Obama is going he might as well resign and let Biden take over, and we would be in no more trouble with Romney as President than with Obama, unless Obama finally walks the talk. Really, what is going to be much worse with Romney? I am frankly getting sick of Obama's happy talk on Afghanistan too, the guy is turning into another John McCain.


    by NCD on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 4:55pm

    well NCD, I disagree that things would be no worse.  We may get to find out, though.


    by Barth on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 8:52am

    So if I'm understanding this correctly, you're saying: yes, the country is going to hell, but we can find solace in the idea that the President is utterly blameless in this tragedy.

    Dunno, doesn't do it for me...


    by Obey on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 2:26pm

    Yer catchin' on now, dude!


    by we are stardust on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 3:26pm

    This kind of determinism is not helpful unless one wants to roll over and die of Couch Potato Syndrome. In addition to relieving Obama of any responsibility to stand up and use the bully pulpit, your argument, Barth, assigns a pre-ordained outcome to the recent election and (presumably) all future elections.

    This is the Congress we have elected. It is the Congress that comes forth in a country which auctions its legislature off to the highest bidder and prevents any change in such a perverse system by expressing a sudden devotion to the principles of the First Amendment.

    Gee, and I thought it was the Congress that came forth because too many despairing progressives stayed home thinking it couldn't get any worse than Obama's first two years. With posts like this as the intellectual starting point, no wonder. Why bother to ever vote?


    by Hey Wally on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 4:01pm

    You ask a good question.  We vote out of hope, but I am not sure it is not a dlusional one.


    by Barth on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 4:18pm

    I don't know, John McCain aside, why is it that only Democrats seem to believe that elections that don't go their way have consequences?  Shouldn't Republicans, if they believe it so fervently now, have believed it just as fervently in 2008?  They didn't then, they don't now. We're the schmucks. (Present company excluded, of course.)


    by MrSmith1 on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 5:40pm

    This President was elected only in reaction to the unbelievably miserable president who was then in office.  We thought we won a big victory, but we did not.


    by Barth on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 8:50am

    And just what, exactly, did Obama do to discredit and marginalize the "miserable President" and his policies and the equally ugly powers behind him that set us on our present course?

    End extraordinary rendition, torture, and indefinite detention and re-establish this overreach on Executive Power as being wholly illegal?

    Close Guantanamo? 

    End the wars?

    End DADT, which he firmly promised would be his first order of business upon assuming the Presidency?

    etc.

    If, as you say, he was elected "only in reaction to the unbelievably miserably president who was then in office," what does it say that the forces behind that "miserable president" are once again ascendant within two short years of his taking office?

    Sorry, barth, but if we accept your premise, it follows that Obama is a profound failure who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. I won't argue otherwise.


    by SleepinJeezus on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 9:13am

    If he truly can do nothing, then he should resign and turn his salary over to Congress to reallocate toward deficit reduction. 

    Otherwise, he and his family are freeloaders. 

    Which means I only have one thing to say to Obama - GET A JOB.


    by quinn esq on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 11:45am

    LOLOL!  Good one.


    by MrSmith1 on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 4:28pm