Quite the Foto

The payoff.

Meanie Novak Gives Near Death Interview

I should have written more about abortion and tax cuts!

Quite the epitath.

Read the interview here.

Finance Capital

The enormous growth of the financial sector is one of the wonders of our age. In the 1960s the business of banking, broking and insuring accounted for just 10 per cent of total corporate profits in most developed economies. By 2005, this proportion had swelled to nearly 35 per cent in the US and roughly the same in Britain—the two countries that host the world's largest financial centres. Last year a staggering one in five Britons earned their living in finance.

Liberals at Prospect Magazine are nervous about the monster they helped create.

How finance will remain in charge if Obama picks Lawrence Summers.

Only in America?

Heard of Fujimori, Disraeli or Daniel Arap Moi?

American exceptionalism and Obama.

Fidel Gets Religion

And a lousy one at that: Russian Orthodox!

From Fidel:

"The Church [i]s a spiritual force. It played a major role at critical times in the history of Russia. At the onset of the Great Russian War, after the treacherous Nazi attack, Stalin turned to her for support to the workers and peasants that the October Revolution had changed into the owners of factories and the land."


Read the entire dreadful article here.

Did Palin Do Her Job?

What is a running mate's job?

Jazz the base.
Win a region or state.
Attract swing voters.
Don't do harm.
Attract women this cycle.

Palin did none of these.

Core Republican turnout declined 1.3 percent compared to four years ago, the Republican share of the electorate dropped five points from 2004 — and the depression of conservative voters was amplified in key states such as Ohio, where Obama won despite earning almost the same number of votes as John F. Kerry. The difference is that 300,000 people who showed up for Bush/Cheney decided to stay home for McCain/Palin.

Read the entire article here.

5 Alternative Hair Styles for BO

Big City

From fivethirtyeight.com on the big city vote.

Big City Barack
One nugget from Pew Research that I'd missed earlier: Barack Obama performed 9 points better than John Kerry among urban whites. This was not by any means the most important factor in his election, but it helps to explain the large improvements that the Democratic ticket made in states like Colorado and Nevada, where a great deal of the population is concentrated in Denver and Las Vegas, respectively, and why Republicans were at best able to tread water by targeting the rural areas of Pennsylvania, while Obama waltzed his way to winning large majorities of white and black voters in Philadelphia.

This also attests, of course, to the stupidity of bashing big cities. Roughly 82 million Americans live in cities of 100,000 persons or more, including 40 million in cities of 500,000 persons or more. This does not count smaller cities or suburban areas, which account for another 150 million Americans or so. (Don't neglect the fact, also, that many Americans who do have their residence in big cities may nevertheless work or play in them, and therefore think well of them). By contrast, only about 60 million Americans live in rural areas.

The Bush-Rove team of 2000 and 2004 understood the importance of appealing to suburban voters ... that is a viable strategy. Pitching your appeal to rural voters, on the other hand, probably will not work. They're outnumbered by the city dwellers in the first place, and if your attacks are strident enough that the suburbanites start to side with the urbanites, you've given yourself a big problem.

David Brooks has a Dream

It's a balanced budget! What a visionary!

A Generational Moment

With the sight of Jessie Jackson weeping in Grant Park Tuesday night (can't a brother get a Backstage Pass?), as Barack Obama gave his first speech as President-elect, we witnessed the proverbial generational baton being passed for the progressive movement in the United States. Obama's victorious campaign delineates a break with the political and social movements of the previous generation because although Obama rhetorically embraced the versions of the civil rights, labor, anti-war, LGBT and environmental movements that emerged from the 1960's his campaign was primarily based on a liberal candidate, that happened to be mixed race, as opposed to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition approach to change that had at its center an African-American Civil Rights leader in alliance with the progressive movements of the day.

In Barack Obama's bid for the presidency merit and the American Dream were front and center, not an oppositional identity that was fighting for justice. This shift from a collective of identity/grievance/class to individualism and merit represents both promise and pitfalls for the left. For liberals it is in many ways the culmination of the American and French revolutions; all men truly equal before the law with equal opportunity. For those left of the liberals, class and social movements have always been the vehicle that pushed the liberal revolution from a system of liberty to a system of equality and justice. Working within the system they allied with labor or civil rights activists and tried to expose liberalism for what it is; an economic system of exploitation and a political system that gives the wealthy more access to the levers of power by design. This becomes more difficult when the leader of the system is an "oppressed" minority.

This moment is akin to the collapse of Stalinism when democratic leftists were freed from the ties to "actually existing socialism". It allowed a new model to be created but it also left a void of an existing model. With Obama's presidency leftists lose their critique of the liberal facade of equal opportunity but they also can now openly claim that liberalism is not enough. This moment creates an opportunity then for those of us who want more than public schools, a progressive income tax and a water utility owned by the city.

In this day after the election Obama has already put forward the name of Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff and floated Paul Volcker and Lawrence Summers as key economic advisors. To say these are cautious steps is an understatement. Emmanuel's major accomplishments are helping pass welfare reform and NAFTA for the Clinton's: Volcker's, the shock therapy of the early 1980's depression that helped destroy the industrial base of the upper Midwest and Summers a past World Bank President who once argued for the facility of dumping toxic waste in poor countries to maximize their comparative advantage. This cast of rogues is a harbinger of the extremely modest liberal platform of the new President.

If the left is to be at all relevant, a clear message must be agreed upon and stuck to. Universal health-care, pensions and union organizing are three that are winners and within the realm of accomplishment but will need to be fought for given the cautious centrism of the new President. Beyond this, a democratically controlled economy-socialism, building social movements is the proven tonic. And given that capitalism is now in true crisis, and both US political parties have come up with no answer except for throwing money at banks, the left's opportunity is now more then at any time in the last 40 years.

Liberalism's Apex?

From Orlando Paterson on the historic significance of an Obama presidency.

"Victory for Barack Obama on Nov. 4 would mark our democracy's triumph over half the problem of race in America. It would underscore the vitality of America's most distinctive and powerful master trend—assimilation, an invincible force that selects from, absorbs and integrates difference, not always kindly, but always to the profit of the nation's mainstream. But an Obama win would also highlight the stark paradox that is the other half of our racial problem: while black Americans have been fully incorporated into the nation's public life, they continue to be cut off from the private life of other Americans, a separation that accounts in good measure for blacks' besetting socioeconomic problems."

There's a lot of truth here but "a separation that accounts in good measure for blacks' besetting socioeconomic problems."?

The separation was not voluntary sir! Blaming the victim here?


"An Obama victory would mark, further, the completion of the process of mass democratic inclusion that began with the presidency of Andrew Jackson, another second-generation orphan, who came out of nowhere to lay the foundations of male, white suffrage on a historically unprecedented scale. What Jackson the slaveholder left undone, this historic election cycle has finished, whatever the outcome on Tuesday: it's now clear that blacks and women are ready, able and poised to lead the nation."

Thanks for the re-assurance!

A fine mind for sure, but always parsing for power, in this case white power.

Why not finish logically with moving forward with democracy into the economic sphere? We have won the liberal revolution, civil rights, now lets create a true democracy where all people share real power. Something Europe began 100 years ago.

The Forest

One of the pleasant aspects of crisis is that it helps clarify, which side your on. WWI was one of those moments as well as Vietnam, Iraq and recently the bailout of the banks (with hindsight as a crutch I am 3 for 4-I waffled on the bailout but now see it as a horrible idea). This election has also shown that Democrats basically want the status quo and the Right would like to de-regulate and de-tax more so that the entire civilization can crumble under debt and the "business cycle!" To many on the Right it all started to go bad with Roosevelt, Teddy that is and communism ensued with the New Deal.

Read this nugget from Michael Barone of the centrist faction taking on the New Deal. He's no Grover Norquist but it shows how even the mildest forms of social democracy are seen as a threat by the plutocracy.

Humanitarian Imperialism

Chomsky on US intervention since the end of the Cold War:

Jean Bricmont’s concept “humanitarian imperialism” succinctly captures a dilemma that has faced Western leaders and the Western intellectual community since the collapse of the Soviet Union. From the origins of the Cold War, there was a reflexive justification for every resort to force and terror, subversion and economic strangulation: the acts were undertaken in defense against what John F. Kennedy called “the monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” based in the Kremlin (or sometimes in Beijing), a force of unmitigated evil dedicated to extending its brutal sway over the entire world. The formula covered just about every imaginable case of intervention, no matter what the facts might be. But with the Soviet Union gone, either the policies would have to change, or new justifications would have to be devised. It became clear very quickly which course would be followed, casting new light on what had come before, and on the institutional basis of policy.

The entire article in Monthly Review.

Thomas Frank

Thomas Frank riffs on Joe the Plumber in this week's installment of his column in the Wall Street Journal. In it he describes how Nixon, Reagan, Newt, Palin and co. have made working class folk Red, White and Blue Republicans while at the time the GOP has driven down their wages, sent them off to war and left them holding the bill for the last 40 years of massive upward re-distribution of wealth.

The culture war that Joe the Plumber is a happy foot soldier in stands in the way of creating a decent society that we can easily achieve. It's the reason bright leaders like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama tack to the Right in every sentence and put forward policies that maintain the Empire and the plutocracy.

The ineptitude of the Bush Administration has put a crack in the edifice of the true blue. Here's an anecdote from Pennsylvania showing one of the hair line fractures.

"So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: 'We're voting for the n***er.'"

From fivethirtyeight.com.

The Choice

Excellent summary of the election from the New Yorker.

However!

I think the issues are deeper than the writers want to admit. Capitalism itself is in deep crisis, so is the empire. The use of US power-military, economic and political, has been a force for viscousness (Indonesia, Zaire, the Philipines, Haiti, Vietnam, Laos, Guatemala, Iran, Chile, I could go on...) for over 100 years at least and most people in the United States do not want to come to terms with the actual facts or our (the people) complicity. At home we have a system based on inequality and credit. The US decline will be faster than say Japan's because of this. The middling classes are leveraged to the hilt as well is the government, so there will be less consumer demand on the way down and more bankruptcy. The bill will have to be paid now, the bill collectors are now calling (China, Japan, et al...). How can this be done? By lowering wages or through inflation, or both or by shutting down the empire. The problem with both is that the voting classes are not in the mood for a reality check and they like the empire. They also benefit from it-the only real thing we make these days are planes, tanks and bombs, if we stop that we will have no industrial base.

Obama is a smart guy but even a cross between Nehru/Lincoln and Stephen J. Hawking can not get us out of this pickle.

I hope I am wrong.

Blaming Minorities for the Collapse of Capitalism

I have been wanting to write an article to this affect for some time but haven't had the skill. The market fundamentalists are looking for a scapegoat quick as their last barricade (really big government and Central Banks) bails them out by, uhm... market fundamentalists? It's been quite a sordid few months as Newt, McCain and the business press on down (some of the Right WIng blogs have become quite Hitlerish) have tried to pin the tail on the Donkey and minorities given that they worked so hard for the last 30 years to create the system that we now have. Not that the Donkey has not been part of the problem (overthrowing Glass-Steagall, cheering on Alan Greenspan's negative interest rates and ARM plans as well as protecting Fannie and Freddie) but blaming poor people and minority home owners for the meltdown of the financial system is like blaming a raindrop for the flood. It seems an extremely transparent ploy to divert attention from the roller coaster that is capitalism towards minorities and "big government" re. the part of government, in our case, that helps the poor and the oppressed as the culprits in the collapse.

Subprime Suspects
THE RIGHT BLAMES THE CREDIT CRISIS ON POOR MINORITY HOMEOWNERS. THIS IS NOT MERELY OFFENSIVE, BUT ENTIRELY WRONG.
Read the entire article.

Flo

Paul Oneil!

Yikes! Of all people, listen to PO in the video section of Race for the White House talk about the bailout and the future of the economy.

The amazing part about this whole crisis is that we are finally having a real debate, not at the presidential level however, about how the fundamentals of the economy actually work. If only we had a movement that had a program to take it in a progressive direction.

Populists on both the right and the left have been nibbling but the plan is certainly not out there.

What plan?
Democratic control of the economy by strengthening labor so that demand is up.

Real infrastructure investment: rail, strategic industries like energy and transportation.

Hard cash for engineers and science.

A national pension.

A universal, nonprofit health care system.

A massive crackdown on the paper economy-if you buy a home you need assets, ending all funny money such as derivatives, hedge funds, 2nd, 3rd mortgages.

A balance of trade.

By the way this is a fairly moderate plan. They do it in Germany, France, Sweden, Finland....

We Would Have Voted For It....

But she called us names!

Maybe one of the most pathetic moments in US political history.

The Dismal Science

"What we are witnessing, in the broadest sense, is the bankruptcy of modern economics. Its conceit has been that we had solved the problem of stability. Oh, there would be periodic recessions, but the prospects of a major economic collapse were negligible because we knew how the system worked and could take steps to prevent it. What's been so unsettling about the present crisis is that it has not conformed to the standard model of business cycles and has not submitted to familiar textbook solutions."

Robert Samuelson's entire article.