Legacy

Sometime around 1910, a Boston boy named Joseph Goode (above, left) began work at the Huntington Avenue Grounds. The Grounds, built in 1901 for $35,000, housed the Boston Red Sox baseball team, which had set up shop there in '01 as the Boston Pilgrims. While at work, Joe watched Babe Ruth pitch and Tris Speaker patrol center field and saw such visiting future Hall of Famers as Ty Cobb.

Players were approachable in those days, so Joe didn't think much of it when early in the 1911 season he ventured to ask a member of the Philadelphia Athletics if they had any promising rookies. The player pointed to a rangy 24-year old: "Him. He's going to be good." "Him" was Pete Alexander, who won 94 games from 1915-17 en route to a career record of 373-208 and the third-most wins of all time.

(The Huntington Avenue Grounds)

Joe raised his children to be Red Sox fans, and 10-year old Paul (top, right) caught the fever for good in 1938, twenty years after the Sox won the 1918 World Series -- a feat they wouldn't accomplish again for 86 years. Paul saw Joe DiMaggio, who had earlier signed a $100,000 contract, come off the DL in 1949 to lead the Yankees to a key mid-season win over the Sox in Fenway Park, their home since 1912. The Yankees swept a three-game series; they left Boston at the end of June with a 8-game lead, thus setting the stage for one the early letdowns experienced by Red Sox fans.

The Sox stormed back, and needed to win one of two final games in Yankee Stadium to clinch their first pennant since 1918. They lost both, and then lost a one-game playoff the next afternoon. After that, the Red Sox faded into mediocrity until The Impossible Dream year of 1967 changed the franchise's fortunes for good.

Paul saw Ted Williams -- the Splendid Splinter -- and Professor Dom DiMaggio on many afternoons and, for good measure, also went to Braves Field where he watched Warren Spahn hurl for Boston's National League franchise, and once saw Satchel Paige pitch for the Cleveland Indians.

(The Ted Williams swing was a thing of surpassing elegance and beauty.)

For better or worse, Paul passed the family legacy onto his children. In 1961, the same year that Joe Goode passed away, I went to my first game at Fenway park at age 6. A talented rookie left fielder named Carl Yastrzemski stood guard over the Green Monster, but the team had little else of note.

Nonetheless, I loved Red Sox. My parents would often have to fetch me from Sullivan's grocery store, where I stopped while walking home from school to listen to Curt Gowdy and Ned Martin call afternoon games on the radio. (Parents thought nothing of letting first-graders walk to and from school in those days.) At home, I perched on a kitchen stool and listened to summer games on the AM radio atop our refrigerator.

Ensconced in South Texas, I experienced the heady days of the Sox winning the greatest pennant race ever in 1967 with the happy naivete of youth. Losing the World Series in seven games wasn't so bad because, geez, that Bob Gibson was good. (Ever the Red Sox realist, Dad didn't think they could get past Gibson.) Next came the transcendent peaks Luis Tiant's corkscrew delivery, Dwight Evans' catch, and Carlton Fisk's home run, all of which nearly toppled the mighty Cincinnati Reds in 1975. In the end, these only served as heights from which to be cast after the horrors of 1978, 1986 and 2003. (The less said, the better.)

(The Evans catch and the Fisk homer. Watch Pudge gallop around the bags!)

My father called me after the '78 debacle, asked how much more we could take, then added philosophically that he had been taking it since 1938 and that he guessed he could handle a little more. Little did he know. Mercifully, he was in Italy for Grady Little's meltdown in 2003, and actually defended Little to the incredulous children and grandchildren who had not fled the country.

In 2004, confident Red Sox fans watch in dismay and disbelief as the hated Yankees leapt out to an impregnable three-games-to-none lead in the American League Championship Series. But the Sox did the impossible: Summoning the spirit of 1967, they won three close games to tie the series, then pummeled the Yankees 10-3 in Game 7 to become the only major league baseball team to win a series after being down 3-0.

Slumping center fielder Johnny Damon, sitting on a pitch if anyone ever was, put the seventh game out reach early with a third inning grand slam. Red Sox fans exulted, and the Sox went on to win their first World Series since 1918, when Joe Goode was 24 years old. One of my sons called me from school in London, where he had recruited a number of European Red Sox fans; the other cheered with me -- half in disbelief -- here at home.

(Damon's grand slam.)

A year later, in a move emblematic of the modern game, Johnny Damon signed a long-term contract with the Yankees even though he once said that he'd never play for them. Sox fans reacted angrily; a popular t-shirt said in reference to the hirsute, rag-armed Damon:

Looks like Jesus.
Throws like Mary.
Acts like Judas.

Now a Detroit Tiger, Damon returned to Boston yesterday amidst a debate as to whether he should be booed or cheered now that he's out of a Yankees uniform.

Me, I think of Joe Goode talking to an A's player about Pete Alexander almost a hundred years ago. I think about my father watching the Splendid Splinter in his salad days, when the team was never quite good enough. I think about him taking me to Fenway Park in 1961, and about celebrating my boys' high school graduation by taking them to Fenway for a Yankees series. I think about the fans in the Boston bar pulling together for one night whatever else their differences outside the bar. I think of the kind of joy that came only after 86 seasons of heartbreak. Only one player hit a grand slam to win the biggest game in franchise history, and I'm not going to let money keep me from cheering him.

There Are Setbacks and There Are Setbacks

The lead from this story illuminates exactly what is wrong with the MSM:

Senate Republicans blocked a bill to increase small business lending Thursday, dealing a setback to President Barack Obama's jobs agenda.

President Obama didn't suffer a setback -- he'll get over it. Small businesses suffered the setback, and they're suffering it because the Republican party -- to hear them tell it, the champion of small businesses -- put party politics ahead of the retailers and manufacturers that do half of the hiring in this country. Just what do the Republicans have against them, anyway?...

A week's worth of lowlights from the looneytunes Republican right. The different and effortless ways that these people can locate new bottoms of the barrel are truly amazing...

Prudential steals a piece of the rock from Afghanistan widows...

Mean Town Blues

It's a mean old town

To live in by yourself

-Johnny Winter, "Mean Town Blues"

The teabaggers have succeeded in one area: Without making much of an effort, the MSM and even much of the progressive media calls the 'baggers a "movement." Not Citizen K.

William Lloyd Garrison led a movement to abolish slavery. Susan B. Anthony formed a movement so that women could vote. John L. Lewis and Samuel Gompers helped lead movements that allowed millions of Americans to work in safe conditions for a decent wage. Martin Luther King led a movement that brought social and political equality to disenfranchised black Americans. The student leaders of the 60s helped end a costly and divisive war and created the moral climate for lowering the voting age to 18 and including young voters in the political process. ("Old enough to fight, old enough to vote.")

In each case, the movements in question enabled millions of people to seize political and economic rights from a system unwilling to give them up.

The teabaggers, though, represent nothing that I think of as a movement, unless a movement is a hysterical zero sum game in which I have mine and screw the rest of you. They are certainly not interested in living peaceably. Nor are they interested in any sort of equality: In fact, they're all about keeping what they have and denying it to everyone else. Their vision of the country -- the one that they keep saying that they love and want back -- is brutish and cramped, a struggle between races while their betters among the elite look on. And laugh...

Castles in the Air

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal continues to tout his sand berm scheme as a panacea for stopping the invasion of the Louisiana coastline by the BP/Halliburton Catastrophe. Others disagree with his assessment, and the evidence to date appears to bear them out. I'll leave it to the experts to debate the merits of the berms -- although Jindal scorns scientific expertise in particular -- but the entire notion has had a castles-in-the-air aura about it from the get-go.

Software development (which I do know something about) is not civil engineering, but I'd bet an investment banker's bonus that they share two key principles when it comes to scheduling and delivering:

1. Engineers will provide an overly optimistic delivery date based on confidence in their skills (a confidence that, in my experience, is usually justifiable), a strong desire to develop the project, and the natural optimism that infuses the beginning of any endeavor. However, all of this inevitably results in initial schedule estimates that to succeed require near perfect execution with few unanticipated impediments.
2. If the project has never been tried -- and on this scale, the berms have not been -- then all bets are off, and I mean all bets. The end result, if the project actually reaches completion, is as likely to be a counterproductive boondoggle as it is to accomplish anything positive. And in any case, it will not live up to its advance billing because the decision-makers will cut corners to avoid further delay.

The optimism of the engineers proposing the project is understandable: It's the nature of the beast. But Boob Bob Jindal has an obligation to be skeptical, to drill down (as it were) on the project milestones, to understand the pitfalls and push the engineers to prepare for them, to seek outside expertise, and -- above all -- to inject a note of realism into the proceedings. On these counts, he has failed dismally (although failure implies a degree of effort not evident in Boob Bob's approach to this project).

It's not like he hasn't been warned. Marine scientist Dr. Len Bahr has publicly questioned Jindal's the berm strategy on nine grounds:

1. Absence of science
2. Questionable justification
3. Opportunity cost
4. Environmental cost
5. Changes to natural flow regime: A technical argument that the berms could well suck oil into the estuaries they are designed to protect
6. Lengthy construction time
7. Fragility
8. Dubious benefits
9. Better use of funds

Jindal originally estimated that the berms could be completed within six-month; now, I believe they are talking about nine months. No matter: This project is a minimum of two years out.

Jindal will blame delays on the federal bureaucracy as surely as a liberal governor would blame BP. But the project itself is always the primary source of delays; that, too, is the nature of the beast. In the case of the berms, the likely source of delay is predictable: Boob Bob's Glenn Beck-like disparagement of science will come back to haunt him and the Louisiana coast.

For a project like the berms, marine scientists and ecologists must play an instrumental role in helping the engineers identify and prepare for setbacks. Jindal has dismissed their concerns. When these concerns are inevitably realized, the engineers will have no contingency plan in place or expertise to fall back on. They'll be groping in the dark, with all of the missteps and delays that that implies.

By then, Boob Bob won't care much, as he'll be too busy running for president to worry about something as insignificant as sand berms.

I Knew A Man, Bojangles

Mass Mobilization

One of the standard litany of complaints of the federal response to the BP/Halliburton Catastrophe claims that the government has not put enough boots on the ground. Why even talk about 40,000 people, commented one progressive, when a million are needed? A fisherman wondered where all of the help was when, he said, a million people were ready and willing to work or volunteer. (Amassing and deploying the work force is actually BP's responsibility, not the federal government's.)

Once again, however, events have born out the point of the government's methodical approach. This story describes the travails of one Louisiana town attempting to deal with an influx of workers. An atmosphere of racially charged suspicion hangs over the town, even though -- as usual -- there's no rational reason for that. Moreover, other towns on the coast simply don't have the infrastructure to take on any spill workers at all.

As I've written before, it's not easy to mobilize a massive amount of people, especially when they're not coming from an established reserve force. Mass mobilization means providing staff, management, infrastructure, support, and security. The work force necessary to pull this off will exceed that number of people who actually work on spill cleanup.

Like everything else in the spill response, mobilization requires time and persistence. That may not satisfy the people who want a response commensurate with the drama of the rig explosion, but it's hard to imagine what that response might look like. (The people who call for it the most loudly don't seem to know themselves.)

It would help if politicians like Louisiana governor Boob Bob Jindal would put the public interest ahead of their personal ambition. Boob Bob grabs headlines complaining about the government and boosting the snake oil island berms (another area in which the government's hesitancy looks increasingly justified), but seems to be doing little to help the communities of his state adjust to what is actually happening. But, Louisianans inexplicably love a guy whose brazen ladder climbing makes Sarah Palin look like an icon of self-effacement. Go figure...

Sunday Funnies & Arts

As always, click to enlarge...

Ain't I got all the fools in town on my side? And ain't that a majority in any town?...

No One Could Make This Up Dept: These two stooges -- apparently the Laurel and Hardy of journalism -- argue that President Obama can better handle the BP/Halliburton catastrophe by applying the corporate values that led to the gusher in the first place. Gentlemen: Corporate behavior is the problem, not the solution...

Big Government Sherriff of Nottingham separates liberatarian Robin Hood from family. Wife didn't know that her husband robbed banks:

In retrospect, I wish I had asked him some questions I never thought to ask.

How the other half heals:

I spent my early childhood in a trailer in Texas, so I thought I knew something about barriers to health-care access, and maybe even something about poverty. Then I became an emergency physician in Oakland...

If Senate Democrats can't stand by the administration and fight to kill to the Bush tax cut for the wealthy, they ought go ahead and elect Ben Nelson ("D"-NE) majority leader. Kent Conrad (ND) is a good man and I have no doubt that his reservations are genuine. But tax fairness has never yet hurt an economy; eliminating this odious handout for people who already have more than their share will be a step in the right direction. The implacable Republican opposition only serves to illustrate falsity of their crocodile tears about the deficit...

Chinese cock soccer and thinking off...

PUT A NICKEL IN THE JUKEBOX

Boz Scaggs had established a steady base of musically aware fans who appreciated his brand of rocking blue-eyed soul/R&B (including me). Scaggs broadened the base with the immensely successful Silk Degrees, which added disco to the mix and took advantage that genre's use of electronic drums and synthesizers. As a commercial decision, Scaggs hit a home run, and indeed Silk Degrees is an excellent album featuring some of his best material.

But the steely meticulousness of Silk Degrees sacrificed the warmth and looseness of the early albums, and his original fans missed the easy charm of Moments, And Band, My Time, and Slow Dancer. I've been listening to those old albums this week with delight at how well they hold up. The material can be a bit uneven, but at its best is irresistibly uplifting and romantic. The band cooks and it's always fun to hear an artist searching for a sound by tacking against the prevailing winds. Great stuff...

NOLA's gender-bending rap (thanks, Foxessa!)...

Blathering Fans Dept: Eight days down and 257 to go...

Peter Tibbles on Paul Kelly, one of Australia's best singer-songwriters...

PHOTO & ART GALLERY
All in all, it's just another brick in the wall...

Parking lot, fried chicken restaurant, St Claude Ave...

Holding pattern: Oil flow halted...

From February to July: Construction progress...

Asters in bloom...

Idaho grapes...

Crustacean 2000. Scroll down to see this; it's a beaut...

Tillie Gort's in 1977: "Best restaurant job ever"...

Stompin' at the Savoy in nineteen-ought-five...

Sharon Tate and Catherine Deneuve...

Who took this picture? Bob Dylan in 1966...

Jennie Wade, who died making biscuits at Gettysburg...

An epic guitar duel plus Van the Man looking like he's fresh from Irish pub. Performing a Pink Floyd classic with Levon Helm enjoying every second. It doesn't get much better than this:

The Enemies of Liberty

"Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies. From these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few...No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

-James Madison

It turns out that there is a long and dishonorable history of racism at the Department of Agriculture, just not the kinds that the right wing wants you to think exists. The big story looming over the right's manufactured "crises" regarding the NAACP and Shirley Sherrod is that they controlled the discourse by doing little more than endlessly and raucously repeating talking points. There's literally no substance to their claims of black racism, and yet they have progressives on the defensive over the proposition that racism is now about an embittered, ungrateful minority turning on its benefactors and somehow oppressing them...

A Thing of Beauty

(photo, Boston Globe)

You know how good these guys really are? Darnell McDonald is a baseball lifer -- a 31-year old journeyman who bounced around four big league teams since 2004, compiling a lifetime batting average of .252. And yet he swings a bat with confidence, balance, coordination, and power. The undisputed worst player in the majors would be an All-American playing college ball and might never make an out were he in high school. So, the next time you hear someone complaining that a certain player stinks, remember: Everything is relative...

The Truthers Are Out There...

The Daily Paul suspects that the BP/Halliburton catastrophe just might be a plot to...to...well, just enjoy the comments:

The blogger suggests it was an intentional drilling into the side of an asphalt volcano, which are plentiful in the Gulf, and which would release pressure like a shaken soda bottle. Great illusion, easy to control...problem-reaction-solution.

Is this alternative explanation viable? It sounds so to me...

The problem is that those I know personally (family members) who live in LA are being strangely silent about it...

All that is being questioned is the "source" of this damage. If it is a huge oil gusher then why hasn't more oil reached shore? Why is it "tar balls?" Tar balls make sense if an asphalt volcano, also referred to as a "tar volcano" was hit rather than an oil deposit...

Beware of YouTube. They know about it, and they are using it, and they are making "amateur videos" that look like "normal people" are making them, to influence you in certain ways. These NWO and gov't people are experts at propaganda. It's how they got where they are. Don't think that none of them can make videos that look like "normal people making a video". They know all about it, and how to make it look right, and how to insert their little subliminal messages into it. They live for psy-ops...

If we keep pressure on those actors and disinfo agents perpetuating the lie, things will get better in my opinion... there are probably 10-15 disinfo agents on the board here as well.. I'm just throwing out a number. Not sure how many.. but many of those you wouldn't suspect...

I wanted to bring up this subject on the DP several times but was afraid of ridicule. One should never feel reluctant to speak out. I am ashamed of myself. Thanks CKPAC for having the courage that I didn't have...

In my opinion I believe this is a grand hoax. Possibly a natural underground volcano is leaking something and maybe a few leaks somewhere else have been created. However I lean toward the theory that this is entirely fake.

9-11 was TV fakery in my opinion. Everything was set up by media and actors that still exist perpetrating a lie...

Yet we see this camera that to my eyes looks to be set on an endless loop cycle...

It still doesn't prove that the oil came from a wild well, or that it is still gushing. All we have to go on is the information THEY provide us...

Maybe you personally won't pay cap & trade, but its purpose is to fund the new global order which WILL affect you and all future generations... 

I have no proof but have a feeling that the way things went down this could be the case... 

We Rope 'Em and Brand 'Em

Is there a more powerless and disenfranchised group of people in this country than undocumented workers? And yet the right hates them, fears them, and demonizes them as a the threat to everything we hold dear. "Illegal" immigrants, it seems, are more dangerous than Islamicism. I read some random  comments on this story about evangelical pastors supporting immigration reform, and discovered a few things:

• Our ancestors are morally better because they came to America legally. I suppose that the slaves came here legally, but I wouldn't call that anything to brag about. Anyway, I figure that if Ireland shared a border with the United States, my forebears would have come here legally or illegally because the conditions of 19th C. Ireland would have forced it. In fact, I'd have more blood brothers and sisters because a shared border would have eliminated any reason for their ancestors to go to Liverpool or Australia.
• Undocumented workers are lazy parasites. You try working in a produce field for a few days before you sing that song.
• Round them up and deport them. Supposedly, there are all kinds of easy, inexpensive ways to send 11,000,000 people back to Mexico, such as making them leave by cutting off their benefits. Since their opportunities would still be better here, this would have the effect of making 11,000,000 poor people desperately poor, a petri dish for violent crime.

Then there was this gem: "They bread [sic] like rabbits..."

The Daily Meaux laments the subordination of science to business.

A Letter from Kathleen Sebelius

Many of us know women whose lives have been saved by breast cancer screening. Yet, one in five women over 50 hasn't received a mammogram in the last two years. Nothing is more important to us than the health of our children, but nearly one out of eight children hasn't seen a doctor in the last year.

For too long, our health care system has focused on treating the sick, and not on keeping people healthy. Preventive health care like cancer screenings, cholesterol tests and even flu shots saves lives and reduces health care costs, but too many Americans face a tough choice between paying for preventive care and putting food on the table for their families.

The Affordable Care Act is helping to change that by making it easier to access basic preventive care.

Last week, I joined the First Lady and Dr. Jill Biden -- two of our country's top health leaders -- to announce that starting in the fall, all new health insurance plans will be required to cover recommended preventive services with no deductible, copay or coinsurance.

The First Lady and Dr. Biden wanted to help raise awareness about this provision of the new law, so they made this video [above]. Please take a look and share it with your friends and family.

Nearly half of all Americans suffer from chronic disease, and seven out of 10 deaths in our country are due to chronic illness. Many of these illnesses can be prevented. By spending our resources on stopping chronic illness before it starts, we can keep more people healthy and reduce health care costs.

Starting in September, preventive services like blood pressure tests, many cancer screenings, well-baby and well-child visits will be free for millions of Americans. By giving people the tools they need to lead healthier lives, we’ll be putting our country’s health resources where they can have the most impact.

To learn more about Affordable Health Care Act's new rules on preventive care click here:

www.HealthCare.gov/preventiveservices/

Access to preventive care is just one of the ways the Affordable Care Act is making America healthier. To find out more about the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, visit HealthCare.gov.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Sebelius
Secretary of Health and Human Services


What victory in Iraq looks like...

I'm so sick and tired of this guy's brute violations of my personal values and beliefs that I find it impossible to summon up sympathy for him. But I'm not going to jeer, either. That would put me in the same horrid morass as those despicable people who took demonic joy in Teddy Kennedy's final illness and death...

They're No Good

Here's something I don't understand. The latest Republican excuse for not extending unemployment benefits is that people without work are lazy and shouldn't be encouraged to sit on their butts by getting princely sums like $250 a month in unemployment compensation. But, if these people are so indolent and undeserving, why do the Republicans carp about the unemployment rate? After all, if everyone who deserves a job already has one, what do the Republicans care about creating more jobs?

Sunday Funnies & Arts

As always, click to enlarge...

The stupidity and hypocrisy of the austerity movement...

The Mexican Revolution: Its past, present, and future. A lengthy but interesting Marxist perspective the last hundred years of Mexican history. A good way for the United States to foment revolution in Mexico would be to round up and deport 11,000,000 undocumented workers and to seal our borders...

She wuz robbed (sort of)...

Texas Republicans Pete Session and John Cornyn perform a tap dance that makes Ben Vereen look like a double amputee. Somehow, Cornyn maintains a straight face when claiming that Republicans oppose legislation "based on an ideological approach as opposed to let's solve the problem." If you think I'm making this up, jump ahead to 4:52...

ON THE JUKEBOX FOR A DIME
Peter Tibbles, who writes about music every Sunday on Time Goes By, and I discovered a mutual blathering infatuation with Emmylou Harris and have productively directed our energies into a fanblog called 365 Days of Emmylou Harris. The idea is to post something -- a video, a photo, cover art -- every day for a year. Check it out here...

Tears Go By Dept: Stu Sutcliffe and George Harrison in Hamburg, 1961...

Them old cotton fields at home...

The sigh of the weary...

PHOTO GALLERY

Uptown...

Location, Location, Location Dept: Sweet dreams are made of this. I swear, too much caffeine can kill you...

The mortgage crisis may have killed hopes a development of truck houses, but some folks in Lake Fork (ID) still have their dream home...

Holding pattern...

Ever wanted to know the difference between a trolley, a tram, a street car, a cable car, a funicular, a cog, and an interurban? The Daily Postcard explains it all for you, via her usual wonderful assortment of antique postcards...

One man's cool, rational explanation of decay is another man's epitaph...

Feed me (not a cat picture, either)...

Passion flowers...

The Elephant In The Room

NOTE: Apologies for the small font in the second half of today's entry; I have been unable to fix it. Use your browser's Zoom feature to make the type bigger and easier to read. -CK

The July 19/26 issue of The Nation features a series of brief essays on the economic theme of "Inequality in America and What to Do About It." The authors include Dean Baker, Jeff Madrick, Katherine Newman and David Pedulla, Orlando Patterson, Robert Reich, and Matt Yglesias. All are worth reading and make good -- if predictable -- recommendations such as raising the top marginal tax rate, taxing financial assets, additional stimulus, competitive trade policy, and financial aid to education. Reading the essays, though, I couldn't help but think of the poem about the blind men and the elephant: Each essay accurately described the animal, but none got to the true nature of the beast.

As a boy, I liked connect-the-dots puzzles. As the pictures emerged, I learned to discern patterns and trends. For example, consider the teabagger "movement":

• comprised almost exclusively of conservative whites
• reduces the Constitution to the 2nd and 10th Amendments (states' rights)
• refers to the president, clearly a mainstream liberal, in overwrought code words like "socialist"
• reacts with over-the-top hysteria to a health care bill grounded in old-school Republican policy
• dismisses the stimulus bill, which included tax cut for the middle-class, as "porkulus"
• blames the financial meltdown on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the people who took out predatory loans rather than the institutions that made them
• supports the Arizona anti-immigrant law and blames only President Obama for the undocumented workers in the country
• assumes as an article of faith that the president hates white people (including, presumably, his loving mother and grandparents)

When I connect the dots, I see a gang of whites angry that President Obama is (supposedly) transferring hard-earned white wealth to lazy, undeserving, and often illegal minorities. Moreover, they want to arm themselves to prepare for the virtual (in their minds) certainty that Obama's government will come after them. (Think about the Oklahoman who want to form an official state militia to fight off the government.)


Ronald Reagan, that master of coded language, told the American people that government had become the problem. He hearkened back to the Puritan ideal of a shining city on a hill, invoking a time when American life was simple and uncomplicated by vexing social issues. What he meant -- and what many unquestionably believed -- was that government had stopped working for the heirs of this America, and that it was only interested in spending their tax dollars on undeserving welfare queens. The solution, Reagan claimed, was to remove the government from everyday life by drastically reducing taxes and eliminating regulations on businesses that only meant well, leave the unworthy to their own devices, and let society take its natural course. All would benefit, especially the dependent poor who would learn to stand on their own two feet. "Poor," of course, was one of many conservative code words for "minority."

It's unquestionably true that Reaganism enabled a very few Americans have become obscenely wealthy on the backs of everyone else. But it also encouraged the gut conviction in a huge swath of white voters that anything the federal government does benefits minorities at someone else's expense. And, the right-wing media fosters and reinforces this conviction with an assortment of code words (like "socialist") and the cynical argument that it is liberals and minorities who are the real racists. These voters have become impervious to any argument that the rich are screwing them; rather than blame fellow whites, they'd rather believe that blacks and browns are at fault. This is the true legacy of Reaganism.

The Nation ennobles this repulsive development by blessing it as "populist rage," when in plain fact it is racism, that eternal scourge of the American Dream. Racism has taken a new form wherein the advantaged imagine oppression at the hands of the disenfranchised, but it's racism nonetheless. Psychologically subtle and twisted, perhaps, and galling, but as plain as the sneer on Glenn Beck's face.


Until and unless progressives shift the terrain of the public political dialogue from race to class, they'll have to settle for frustrating incremental gains. Right now, progressives are at a distinct disadvantage: Their most obvious asset -- the president -- symbolizes what Orlando Patterson calls African-American success in the public sphere; his existence contradicts the very idea of racism as most people understand it. Moreover, the right has become adept at throwing the racism argument back in progressive faces: It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to stick and distract, and be constant and loud. The endless pounding of the essentially the same specious comments on news stories and blogs reveals a concentrated effort to accomplish no less than a redefinition of the term "racism." 


I don't know how progressives change the discourse, or even if they can. For starters, though, it would help if those progressives who occupy their time attacking President Obama would figure out that the real enemy is on the right.  But in the end it comes down to this: Too many people in this country would rather be bigoted and anti-intellectual than better off economically. In fact they're proud of it. It's not a pretty picture, but it's what we've become...


Don't miss the Media Matters take on the ridiculous assertion that the Obama DOJ won't investigate black intimidation of white voters...


Robert Reich needs to get out more. He's a good man with an unmatched grasp of policy, but he regularly falls into the progressive trap of believing that good, rational ideas will inevitably carry the day because, as he writes in his Nation article, "...we are a sensible nation." On what does he base this assertion?...

Gosh, what a surprise...

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

Loan Me A Dime

Nothing I write can top this:




For the record, left to right you're watching Mr. Warren Haynes, Mr. Derek Trucks, and Mr. Boz Scaggs.

I Think I'm Gonna Cry 196 Thumbs Down

This article about the NAACP denouncing the teabaggers received the usual comments attacking the venerable civil rights organization as full of closet racists with the moral equivalency of the Ku Klux Klan. Just for grins, I offered this comment:

Come on, guys, you don't like minority groups. That's obvious from the snide remarks here. You think that that TARP, the stimulus, the health care law, and the lawsuit against Arizona are all part and parcel of a nefarious socialist plot to transfer the money earned by hard-working whites to lazy, undeserving minorities. 

This plus a few other shots I through in for good measure garnered a total of 196 thumbs down. A good day's work by any definition!

Some of my responses had to do with introducing a note of reality to the new Republican fantasy that they were somehow responsible for the civil rights legislation of the 60s. Can anyone explain how conservatives  can want to roll back the Great Society on the one hand and yet take credit for two of its signal legislative accomplishments on the other?

Oh, and my mother raised me well: I thanked everyone for their votes and nonsupport...

John Galt Sez...

On my way into the bank this afternoon, I walked past a van with two bumper stickers. One read "Don't Tread On Me" and featured the familiar serpent. The other said

I swear by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. -John Galt

My initial thought was to wonder what kind of fantasy world people like this live in, and I'm still wondering that.

In the first place, there is not and never has been a John Galt who swore on life, love, God, or anything else. He's a fiction -- a character in a novel who never actually risked anything, sacrificed anything, or did anything at all. He's an invention of Ayn Rand, a woman whose psychological well-being depended on acolytes who sat at her feet and nodded solemnly at every banal pronouncement she made.

Anyway, I wanted to tell the owner of this car, you live in something called a society, which by its very nature implies mutual interdependence. For example, you're depending on me not to punch you in the face because I don't like your stupid bumper sticker, and should I give you a right cross, you're dependent on societal good will to sanction me.

That van you're driving? It's safe because another man fought for safety standards.

Remember that first house you bought? In all likelihood, you purchased it through a government-sponsored lending program that limited your down payment, put a ceiling on your closing costs, and made a favorable interest rate available -- all enabling you to buy a better home in a nicer neighborhood than you would have otherwise.

Every day, poor people pay for the lifestyle you enjoy.

Do you have health insurance? Your co-payments are subsidized by the uninsured. Those nice suburban hospitals? You get to use them because health care is a zero-sum game, and the suburbs have modern, up-to-date facilities in part because inner city hospitals are falling apart.

Those clothes you're wearing? You couldn't afford them unless they were made by underpaid, exploited workers in a Chinese factory.

Same with the produce you eat: All harvested by underpaid, exploited migrant workers.

You like drinking and bathing in clean water? What about eating safe food? Or sleeping soundly at night? Other men and women serving as police officers, soldiers, and sailors protect you. What about your Constitutional rights? People have died so that you can fire your penis pistol at the local shooting range.

Do the world a favor: Grow up and stop the Nathan Hale wannabe thing. It's really quite pathetic.

Thanks, Guv'nor

Democrats spend eight years rightly criticizing the Bush administration's politicization of the Justice Department, then get weak-kneed when said department files suit against Arizona's Papers Please law during a tough election year. A Justice Department as far removed from the politics of the day is vital to the integrity of our legal system. If the Attorney General and the DOJ lawyers decide to file a lawsuit, they shouldn't have to get a thumbs up from the White House political advisor or gain permission from elected officials. In this administration, they don't have to, something for which we should be grateful.

Come on, governors: Grow a backbone and get some knee braces.

Sunday Funnies & Arts

As always, click to enlarge...

There Goes the Neighborhood Dept.: Outgoing South Carolina Republican representative Bob Inglis paid the price for calling a divisive fearmonger a divisive fearmonger...

It's 1921, and Australian Archbishop John Wakeford is arrested for staying at a hotel with a young woman not his wife. How times have changed: At least he was with an adult woman...

Our girl PWALLY charms Princess Grace...

Ayn Rand runs into the genes of altruism...

PHOTO ALBUM

Sidewalk mosaic, 1000 block of Decatur Street...

Rescue marks for the dead...

Leaves, buds, and blossoms...

White rose blossom in work space...

Streetcar tracks in turn-of-the-(20th)-century Pittsburgh...

Ghosts of Newport past with ox-eye daisies, black-eyed Susans, and day lilies...

Outlined against a blue July sky...

Elizabeth Hoyt. Marjorie Ken Kilpatrick. And two randy squirrels...

FROM THE JUKEBOX

Dolly Parton's tale of sexual envy and despair...

Peter Tibbles on the duets of Emmylou Harris...

I [heart] serendipity.

Early last week, I dropped by my local CD store to check out the new releases. The store sound system played an album by a singer with a plaintive baritone and a seemingly endless facility for hooks. The album was called A Crooked Road, and the singer's name was Darrell Scott. The CD cover portrayed a beat-up guitar, but was otherwise mute about who Scott might be. I bought the CD, and Premium T. and I have been listening to it over and over ever since.

It turns out that the 50-year Scott has been around Nashville for fifteen years as a session musician and songwriter for the likes of Suzy Bogguss, the Dixie Chicks, Guy Clark, Tim McGraw, Keb' Mo, and Travis Tritt. He's been recording on his own since 1997, and formed his own label in 2005. His songs are thoughtful, honest, and insightful. I can't recommend this CD enough.

It took me a while to track down Jazz a la Creole, the 1946 session from NOLA's Baby Dodds Trio, but I'm glad I did. Between Dodds' drumming, a pair of drum improvs, and the six Mardi Gras Indian songs, Jazz is like an aural Rosetta Stone for all future New Orleans music. The Neville Brothers, Big Sam, Trombone Shorty, the Meters, the Wild Magnolias, and many others can find their musical ancestry on these sides. The version of "My Indian Red" provided the soundtrack for a wonderful montage in the last episode of season 1 of Treme:

We don't bow down indeed!