Michelle Obama, we know how you felt

Posted on January 7, 2012 by oddmanout215

You felt disappointed, puzzled, flabbergasted, alarmed and, finally, betrayed. Isn’t that right, Michelle Obama?

If your husband had taken up with a bimbo – that sort of betrayal you could have done something about. But this was much worse. He was being bullied and bamboozled by the likes of Rahm Emmanuel and maybe Lawrence Summers, formidable sleazeballs, much too strong for you. Your husband ended up betraying himself, his own best qualities, or the qualities you’d thought he possessed. The qualities that presumably inspired all his noble rhetoric.

From The Raw Story:

A new book detailing life in the White House describes high tension under the tenure of Barack Obama as First Lady Michelle Obama struggled with his top aides over the direction of his presidency.

She “cherished the idea of her husband as a transformational figure” but battled with White House advisors on compromise deals he had cut with Republicans, growing frustrated that he was being viewed as an “ordinary politician,” according to the book out Tuesday by journalist Jodi Kantor…

…Crisis erupted, according to Kantor, from extracts of the book, in early 2010 when Michelle Obama felt the administration had cut too many deals compromising her husband’s signature health care reform legislation…

…Key to the first lady’s frustration was anxiety “about the gap between her vision of her husband’s presidency and the reality of what he could deliver,” Kantor wrote in the book, titled “The Obamas…”

Posted in history, humor, Obama, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Phrase of the month: stealth recall

Posted on January 6, 2012 by oddmanout215

Orson Welles as Harry Lime in "The Third Man," based on Graham Greene's novella

From Huffington Post:

A Washington state couple is suing Johnson & Johnson, alleging their toddler son was killed after taking defective Children’s Tylenol from a batch that had been recalled – part of the company’s continuing string of recalls of drugs and medical devices.

Daniel and Katy Moore of Ellensburg, Wash., claim 2-year-old River Moore was given Very Berry Strawberry flavored Children’s Tylenol for a slight fever late on July 22, 2010 and began spitting up blood 30 minutes later.

He was rushed to a hospital and died the next day of liver failure. The family’s lawyer, Joseph Messa of Philadelphia, said Thursday that the liquid medicine contained excessive acetaminophen that damaged the child’s liver, causing his death…

… Johnson & Johnson said in a statement that its 2010 recalls of children’s products were not related to the “serious adverse events or cases of overdose” alleged in the lawsuit. It said the New Brunswick, N.J.-based company promptly notified consumers, doctors, retailers and regulators about the recall…

Reading the story, I wondered about government oversight of pharmaceutical giants — I wondered when it ended, that is. And how could any government that actually works for the public good fail to bring charges against the big chiefs at corporations involved in the production and distribution of tainted drugs? I’ll bet there are heroin dealers who have more scruples.

…The recall was one of more than two dozen that J&J has issued since September 2009, for products ranging from adult and children’s nonprescription Tylenol, Motrin, Benadryl and other medicines to prescription drugs for HIV and seizures, defective hip implants that caused severe pain and contact lenses that irritated the eyes…

…The number of recalls and the company’s handling of them – including a 2008 “stealth recall” in which J&J paid another company to secretly buy up defective Motrin packets from stores – have generated investigations by Congress and the Food and Drug Administration…

Investigations? Anyone who would authorize an ultra-risky “stealth recall” is worse than Harry Lime, who sold watered-down penicillin on the black market in The Third Man. At least Lime didn’t pretend to be an upstanding citizen. If I were religious, I’d wonder how the people responsible for the kid’s death can live with themselves.

For you classicists out there: To which circle of hell would Dante’s god have consigned corporate chiefs who repeatedly produce — and sometimes don’t manage to recall — potentially lethal “medicine?”

Posted in health care, Philadelphia, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

‘Nausea’

Posted on January 5, 2012 by oddmanout215

This could be about overexposure to presidential primaries, or about the playlist of your typical “alt-rock” station:

First verse:

Now I’m a seasick sailor
On a ship of noise
I got my maps all backwards
And my instincts poisoned
In a truth blown gutter
Full of wasted years
Like blown-out speakers
Ringin’ in my ears

Oh it’s nausea, oh nausea
And we’re gone

Posted in arts, humor, Politics, pop music, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Orwell as antidote to Obama

Posted on January 4, 2012 by oddmanout215

Last week I posted this in regard to Barack Obama’s profoundly ineffectual performance as president. Next time I feel exasperated, I’ll re-read Russ Baker’s words:

…But why should people be surprised by Obama? The system only lets “system types” thrive and get to the top. The only system types who shake things up are those who derive the confidence to do so from their own privileged background, like FDR and JFK. Obama himself was merely the representative of the fact that certain “acceptable” people of mixed race with proper demeanor and “credentials” would now be welcomed to the feast if they behaved properly. He never really established a track record of leadership or boldness prior to running for president. People just fell in love with their projection of what “Yes we can” meant…

To see the truth spelled out in common-sense terms is a reminder that Obama was a disaster we should have seen coming, if only because the promises he made in his speeches always proceeded from the facile notion that “democracy” would magically solve the country’s daunting problems. This is from an Obama press conference in 2009:

The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose.

Pretty words, but I prefer what Baker wrote, and George Orwell’s clarity in “Politics and the English Language”:

…In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way…

Posted in Congress, history, mainstream media, Obama, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

For New Year’s, maybe I’ll shoot you

Posted on January 3, 2012 by oddmanout215

Thanks, sweetie, just what I wanted for Christmas – a Glock 23 with an extended magazine that holds 33 rounds.

Where would we be without our right to bear arms and pretend we’re homesteaders, defending our sod houses against surprise attacks by West Indians and gangsta rappers? From The Telegraph UK:

According to the FBI, over 1.5 million background checks on customers were requested by gun dealers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in December. Nearly 500,000 of those were in the six days before Christmas. It was the highest number ever in a single month, surpassing the previous record set in November.

On Dec 23 alone there were 102,222 background checks, making it the second busiest single day for buying guns in history. The actual number of guns bought may have been even higher if individual customers took home more than one each.

Explanations for America’s surge in gun buying include that it is a response to the stalled economy with people fearing crime waves. Another theory is that buyers are rushing to gun shops because they believe tighter firearms laws will be introduced in the future.

The National Rifle Association said people were concerned about self defence because police officer numbers were declining. A spokesman said: “I think there’s an increased realisation that when something bad occurs it’s going to be between them and the criminal.”

But anti-gun campaigners said those who already owned weapons were simply hoarding more of them due to “fear-mongering” by the NRA.

I honestly don’t know who’s crazier, the nuts who say we need hand cannons, even though crime rates are down and cops are armed like Army Rangers in Iraq, or the poor-schmuck liberals who count on cops, and the rule of law in general, even though our cops and laws are becoming increasingly oppressive. Here’s Constitution scholar Jonathan Turley on Barack Obama’s lame excuses for signing the National Defense Authorization Act:

You do not “support our troops” by denying the principles for which they are fighting. They are not fighting to consolidate authoritarian powers in the President. The “American way of life” is defined by our Constitution and specifically the Bill of Rights. Moreover, the insistence that you do not intend to use authoritarian powers does not alter the fact that you just signed an authoritarian measure. It is not the use but the right to use such powers that defines authoritarian systems.

Posted in Congress, mainstream media, Obama, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Beset by wenches at S. Philly parade

Posted on January 2, 2012 by oddmanout215

I forgot about the Mummers Parade yesterday, as I do every New Year’s, until I literally ran into it while jogging at midday. A dense crowd on the sidewalks at Broad and Washington was cheering, sort of, for a string band that was marching, sort of, toward City Hall. The band had stopped playing and come to a halt, and was waiting until its floats and other motorized props passed it and were in place, like an infantry squad waiting for the tanks to get in front.

It’s the same every year. The string bands stand around, march for a bit, stand around again. What they don’t do much of is parade, not until they get to City Hall, where the judges are waiting to assess their performances and choose the prizewinning bands.

I’m not badmouthing the event. Sax-and-banjo music is not my bag, it sounds like a blizzard of hornets, but the Mummers are hard-working, they’re trying to keep alive a primitive tradition.

One minute you’re in gray Philly and the next in some pagan outpost where wenches — young men in skirts and fools’ caps and face paint, with beers and parasols — are walking in broad daylight on a balmy winter day toward the post-parade party on “Two Street,” where there would be more beer and brawling and puking into the wee hours.

The balmy weather held last night, so Two Street must have looked like a bizarro world. I stayed in my own ‘hood after dark and saw trails of streamers and cardboard hats discarded by Mummers fans who’d marched through. It rained a little and there was a sheen on the streets that reminded me of the film noir Pushover. I half-expected to see Kim Novak in a black fur coat, standing on a streetcorner, waiting for her partner in treachery.

The Mummers have their bizarro world, I have mine.

Posted in humor, livable cities, Philadelphia | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

It’s 2012, and the frauds are still free

Posted on January 2, 2012 by oddmanout215

I wonder if the old Stones’ song “I’m Free” is on Lloyd Blankfein’s iPod?

The song crossed my mind while reading Danny Schechter’s article about the media’s “lack of any real investigation of Wall Street crimes, and the indictments of wrongdoers.” It’s not as if the evidence of high-level malfeasance isn’t there, or that high-powered news organizations don’t know where to look for the evidence:

… The barely exposed chain of criminality that started in some salon of securitisation and then rippled across the world… has its origins in Wall Street, where three industries colluded as a cabal to sell fraudulent subprime loans and then transfer fees and foreclosures from poor and middle class Americans to themselves.

Where is the examination of the pillars of our “FIRE” economy – Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. They became the interconnected cogs in a leverage machine to enrich themselves while plundering the rest of us.

So far, this story affecting so many millions has not really crashed through in the 1 per cent media machine, with a few exceptions here and there…

Schechter notes the connection between the corporate media’s indifference to Wall Street fraud and its indifference to signs of even bigger trouble ahead:

Just as many outlets did not warn us about the coming market meltdown, most are not warning us today about what will happen if the depression we are already sinking into deepens.

The military is making contingency plans as things get worse; reports the Telegraph, “The military planning work has come to light after The Daily Telegraph disclosed last month that British embassies in the eurozone have been told to prepare emergency plans for the demise of the euro and the possible civil disorder that could follow.”

This could be one reason for the passage of the new NDAA defence authorisation bill that provides for rounding up dissidents branded as terrorists while suspending legal protections.

Read the whole story to see Schechter’s short list of media people who are on the case regarding Wall Street fraud.

Posted in economic collapse, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, Occupy Wall Street, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Obama’s see-no-evil supporters

Posted on January 1, 2012 by oddmanout215

Happy New Year, Glenn Greenwald. Thank you for firing back at “progressives” who rightly attack Ron Paul for some of his views but ignore the fact that Paul, not Barack Obama, “advocates policy views on issues that liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial.”

One of Greenwald’s points is that progressives who vote for Obama should at least admit their complicity in Obama’s betrayal of these crucial views, which wouldn’t even be addressed if Paul wasn’t a candidate:

…There are very few political priorities, if there are any, more imperative than having an actual debate on issues of America’s imperialism; the suffocating secrecy of its government; the destruction of civil liberties which uniquely targets Muslims, including American Muslims; the corrupt role of the Fed; corporate control of government institutions by the nation’s oligarchs; its destructive blind support for Israel, and its failed and sadistic Drug War. More than anything, it’s crucial that choice be given to the electorate by subverting the two parties’ full-scale embrace of these hideous programs…

Read the whole article. Greenwald isn’t saying vote for Paul. (Neither am I.) He’s expressing his well-reasoned disgust with Dems in denial about the fact that their party has largely disowned the principles that made it distinguishable from the GOP. Isn’t it high time the rest of us expressed our disgust by exploring alternatives to the dead-end two-party system?

Footnote: On Saturday Obama signed the NDAA, allowing for indefinite detention of people who are deemed enemies of the state. True to form, he all but apologized for signing the bill into law, but he signed it. Ron Paul opposed the NDAA.

Posted in Congress, Great Recession, mainstream media, Obama, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

‘The Apartment’

Posted on December 31, 2011 by oddmanout215

The best-ever New Year’s Eve movie is a dark comedy, but director/writer Billy Wilder knew exactly when to lighten it up, even during the attempted-suicide scene.

Jack Lemmon plays a bachelor with a dismal office job who curries the favor of his bosses by lending his apartment to them so they can be entertained by their girlfriends there. One of the girlfriends is Shirley MacClaine, who flips out when Fred MacMurray, the company’s big chief, tells her he has no intention of ditching his wife to be with her full-time.

Wilder made The Apartment, which you can watch on YouTube, a year or so after another of his classics, Some Like It Hot. I’d argue that his best movie ever is Ace In the Hole, definitely not a comedy.

Posted in arts, movies | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

‘Matchbox’

Posted on December 31, 2011 by oddmanout215

Yeah I’m sitting here wondering,
would a matchbox hold my clothes…

I hope I didn’t insult the memory of the late Carl Perkins by using lyrics from “Matchbox” in connection with the Republican dogs, big and small, mentioned in my previous post. Here’s the classic song, recorded in 1957, on the same day Perkins made impromptu recordings with other Sun Records greats — Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Perkins, probably the best of the rockabilly songwriters, also wrote and recorded the big hit “Don’t Step On My Blue Suede Shoes,” allegedly after witnessing a man in a barroom cuss his girlfriend for scuffing up his blue suede shoes while they danced. Elvis’s recording of the song, also a hit, is better known but not better than Perkins’ version. The Beatles recorded Perkins’ “Honey Don’t” and “Glad All Over.”

The Wikipedia entry about Perkins is full of good info. His autobiography Go Cat, Go and much of his music can be purchased online, including Original Sun Greatest Hits.

Footnote: Check out Greil Marcus’s insightful book Mystery Train for a transcript of the guilt-ridden Lewis arguing with Sun Records chief Sam Phillips about the devil’s influence on rock & roll — or something like that. This was when Lewis almost refused to record “Great Balls of Fire.”

Posted in arts, pop music, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment