“In fact, now I come to think of it, do we decide questions at all? We decide answers, no doubt: but surely the questions decide us? It is the dog, you know, that wags the tail — not the tail that wags the dog.”
– Lewis Carroll
“Welcome to the conservative’s worst nightmare: The law of unintended consequences. Why? Nobody wants to admit it, folks, but the conservatives’ grand ideology is backfiring, actually turning the world’s greatest capitalistic democracy into the world’s newest socialist economy.”
– Paul B. Ferrell, “11 reasons America’s a new socialist economy,” MarketWatch, July 22, 2008.
“The US economy had better have luck on its side. Luck is about all it has left.”
– Clive Crook, “Only Luck Can Save America’s Economy,” Financial Times, Aug. 3, 2008.
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke are a couple of dimwitted chuckleheads who shouldn’t be in any position of authority related to solving this current GOP-generated economic catastrophe. Either Paulson and Bernanke didn’t see it coming, in which case they were asleep at the switch; or they did see it coming, and did nothing to stop it. Either way, they are useless at effecting a solution; both should be handed their walking papers. Good replacements might be Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research as Treasury Secretary – he appreciated the danger of the approaching tsunami years ago – and Princeton economist Paul Krugman for the Fed. NY Times columnist Krugman also had to brains to read the signs indicating that the bridge is out up ahead and we were entering the Twilight Zone financially long before most of the various Up with People-Eaters ‘experts’ on The Street realized we were cruising to sure doom. Paulson and Bernanke should exit quickly with their heads held in shame, lucky they haven’t been forced to walk the plank for their egregious ignorance and incompetence. Oh, and the Bush Boy? Keep making speeches about the economy you still don’t understand, Junior, and reminding voters why they don’t need another neoconservative Republican in the White House next year.
The current economic meltdown, which some of us left-wing nuts like Mike Whitney and yours truly have been predicting for years, is the direct result of neoconservative policies, starting with Ronald Reagan. When Reagan said government is the problem, he apparently forgot that the government of the United States is of, by and for the people, so he was actually saying that ‘we the people’ are the problem. And so we are – if not for our demands that rapacious corporations and the greedy wealthy obey the laws, pay us and treat us fairly, and otherwise conduct themselves with some modicum of decency, the Corprocracy could have a field day, in the same way the Mafia could prosper wildly if there weren’t any ‘regulations’ governing their activities. For the last 25 years, the neoconservative Republicans, and especially John McCain, have successfully done all that they could to deregulate banks, business and the markets and it has culminated in the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression, as even one of the ardent handmaidens of the collapse, flank-coverer Alan Greenspan, recently confessed. This is also a failure of F.A. von Hayek, Milton Friedman, Paul Wolfowitz, Grover Norquist and every other neoconservative jackass who has come down the pike banging the drum for the delusion of trickle-down wealth, the deception of free international trade, the hallucination of cheap privatized government services, and the myth of self-regulating markets.
Unions in peril in Wisconsin
Whether Obama realizes it or not, his political legacy will be at stake in Wisconsin next week because if a rookie Republican governor can cripple the union movement in his state, that will encourage other Republicans to make a similar effort to dismantle one of the last vestiges of the New Deal but if he manages to stop the Wisconsin facet of the continuing attack on his own political agenda that could provide him with a rallying cry for urging the Democrats to regain the political initiative in a way that might be compared to a key pass interception in a football game.
Sports announcers like to talk about the momentum in a football game and how one particular play in football can be (in retrospect) called pivotal. Since the President’s State of the Union Speech, the Republicans have continued their criticism of Obama’s health care bill, called attention in a negative fashion to the President’s response to the Crises in Egypt and will use any Republican success in Wisconsin as an indication that their dreams of completely dismantling the New Deal are attainable.
The fact that the Democratic strategy of hiding, which was also used by the Democrats in Texas some time ago, brings to mind the Schwarzenegger term “girly-men” isn’t very reassuring.
If a sports announcer were as continually biased as is the lineup of standup comedians at the entity called Faux News, the audience would feel duped. They would use the traditional lament: “Are you blind?” Conversely if things are not playing out as the Obama advisors had planned, then any harsh assessment would not be welcome in a group that craves enthusiastic liberal journalism. If the majority of Democrats prefer to avoid harsh analysis, perhaps future historians will see it as an attempt to avoid confronting reality and say that marked the point where the Party started to slip into dementia.
If Obama makes a speech and encourages the people of Wisconsin (and union member guests from other states?) to stand together and block the effort (a goal line defense for four consecutive downs?) future historians might well pick that as the moment when Obama “turned the game around” for the 2012 local, state, and national elections.
If the Republicans eventually “put points on the scoreboard” via the Wisconsin confrontation that will make Obama seem like a Democratic Party version of Vidkun Quisling or Marshal Philippe Pétain, which will delight the Republicans immensely.
Obama likes to portray himself as someone who goes the extra mile to extend the hand of bipartisan friendship to the Republicans. In war, executing civilians in retribution for the killing of troops is verboten. Lately Obama’s efforts to reach out to the Republicans has seemed like appeasement or perhaps a metaphorical attempt to negotiate the number of civilians who must be killed in retribution.
Political strategists think that in dire times, a strong candidate has the most voter appeal.
It makes things interesting if both candidates try to out-do each other on the macho appeal scale. (Did that bit of psychology work against Meg Witman?) How would a woman who shoots wolves from an airplane match up against a guy with (hypothetically) a PETA endorsement?
There is folk wisdom that advises the fastest and strongest don’t always win a competition but some smart-alecky guy added the codicil saying: “but that’s the way the smart betting usually goes.”
What would the next election be like if (hypothetically) next week Obama urges voters in Wisconsin to hold a “general strike” and additionally says that independent truckers should come to Madison and cause gridlock as a show of support?
What does it mean when a pro-union guy holding a baseball bat asks: “Which hand do you use when you urinate?” If they are really mean don’t they leave you with both hands in casts so that someone else would have to help you?
Pro-union people risked life and limb to get to their goal. Watching Obama piss away their efforts is a bit disappointing.
Back in the day, when a family member was killed in a mining accident, the company representatives who would leave the dead body on the front porch would often leave a note saying that their was a job opening and that the next oldest unemployed son should come to work the morning. It’s doubtful that Obama heard stories about that kind of exploitation when he was growing up. They just don’t mention things like that at Yale.
There is a story told by the people speaking at Horror Writers events about one of them, lady, who was traveling on a rural side road in Wisconsin (perhaps one of the major bridges had been washed out in a sever storm?) and got lost. She walked into a small general store and asked the man, who was busy stocking the shelves, for directions. A rather scary looking man turned around and advised her: “Run far, run fast.”
News from Wisconsin tends to have a difficult time getting onto the National News pages in newspapers published elsewhere, so we haven’t heard about what happened to Ed Gein’s farm after it was put on the real-estate market. Perhaps a New York Times reporter covering the union busing in Wisconsin next week, will try to impress his assignment editor by turning in an update on the fate of the Gein farm?
Didn’t one of the Boston based major league baseball teams move to Wisconsin about a half century ago?
On Thursday night, February 17, 2011, the ABC network evening news program used the plight of Wisconsin labor unions for its lead story.
If the events in Madison become the dominant story of the day (with the concomitant media circus presence), that will only increase the stakes for the workers and the President. Gee, if there’s a new chance to make the President seem weak and incompetent, won’t Rupert Murdock send his anchor man there for some “on the scene” broadcasts? They don’t do that do they? They just sit in New York City and do their impression of Jubba the Hut and send lesser personalities to do the remote reports.
Jimmy Hoffa has been quoted as saying: “I may have many faults, but being wrong ain’t one of them.”
Now the disk jockey will play Jerry Lee Lewis’s song “What made Milwaukee famous,” the Rolling (will their new tour ever get off the ground?) Stones’ “Rip this joint,” and Woodrow Guthrie’s “I’m stickin’ to the union.” We have to go check and see if Uncle Rushbo has to pay AFTRA dues. Have a “winner takes all” type week.