‘There ain’t no Sanity Clause!’

Posted on December 26, 2011 by oddmanout215

Chico tells Groucho he won’t be fooled in A Night at the Opera:

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Happy Third Day After the Solstice

Posted on December 25, 2011 by oddmanout215

Bernini’s St. Theresa in Ecstasy is in the Cornaro Chapel (Santa Maria Vittoria). Which means nothing to me, but the act of writing down the address for future reference seems constructive, especially with all the thinking I’m doing about Rome, a city I must see now that I’ve read Ingrid Rowland’s review of Robert Hughes’ new book.

I couldn’t get the book review out of my head as I jogged past Squalor and Ruin streets in South Philly on this perfect Third Day After the Solstice. A mile farther on, at Washington and Passyunk, I spotted what looked like a leftover Halloween scarecrow sitting in a deck chair outside a row house. It was a middle-aged woman wrapped in bright red and wearing sunglasses, facing the low but unobstructed sunlight beaming from the south.

I slowed to make sure she was alive and noticed she was a ringer for Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. She took off her glasses, gave me an ecstatic look, and said, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Odd Man.”

Just kidding, she didn’t say anything, not even after I wished her a Happy Solstice.

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Joe Conason, meet Karl Rove

Posted on December 24, 2011 by oddmanout215

A resolution for 2012: Don’t read opinion pieces by knee-jerk Obama supporters who profess to be liberals. Their stuff is as propagandistic as the garbage that streams from the right in support of Newt and Mitt and the dimmer Republican presidential wannabes.

No more Joe Conason, for example, whose recent rabid attack on libertarian eccentric Ron Paul was off-target and manifestly unfair:

The latest evidence of simmering racial resentment on the American political fringe showed up Monday in a Facebook post by a California man who urged the assassination of the president and his two daughters in obscene, racist language. Aside from the Secret Service, there was little reason for most of us to pay attention to this sick boob—except that he was identified as a local political leader of the tea party and an avid supporter of Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who now seems likely to place first in the Iowa presidential caucuses.

To those who have followed Paul’s long career as a failed presidential candidate—these campaigns have become a family business—the appearance of yet another racist nut job in his orbit is scarcely news. The newsletters that earned millions of dollars for him from gullible subscribers over the decades were often soiled with vile invectives against blacks and other minorities…

Very classy stuff, worthy of Karl Rove. Some ugly-minded wing-nut who calls himself a Paul supporter urges a heinous crime, and Conason immediately smears Paul with the guilt-by-association argument. As further evidence that Paul and the nut are on the same page, Conason mentions racist language in newsletters from which Paul made money. Case closed.

The trouble with guys such as Conason is they can’t imagine a world where the good guys often aren’t very good and the bad guys sometimes have a few redeeming features. Paul appears to be more competent and honest than the other Republicans, and he makes more sense than Obama on many issues.

Clarification: I would never vote for Ron Paul and disagree with much of what he purports to believe in, although I love watching the other Republican candidates squirm at Paul’s lucid putdowns of the Federal Reserve and American imperialism. (Obama would squirm, too, if he had to debate Paul on these issues.)

The politicians whose ideas appeal to me, and to many other disillusioned Dems, include people like Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders, both of whom are as independent as Paul but don’t share his right-wing views on issues such as abortion. But I’m sure Conason would only smirk at those two, because neither would have anything to do with the corrupt Democratic machine that elected the faux-Democrat Obama.

Posted in mainstream media, Mitt Romney, Obama, Politics, Wall Street, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

‘Blue Christmas’

Posted on December 24, 2011 by oddmanout215

Elvis Presley had been knocked sideways by the British Invasion, by new styles in America, and by a long series of crappy music and movie-starring choices, but his 1968 Comeback Special silenced critics and breathed new life into his career.

On videos from the show, Elvis looks eerily handsome and strikes a perfect balance between bravado and self-parody. You can see the intelligence in his eyes and his smile. It’s as if he knows he’s at the top of his game, and at the same time realizes the game is bullshit, no one stays on top of anything, not for long.

Footnote: I love the moment in “Blue Christmas” when Elvis or Scotty Moore bends an E string and someone off-camera yells “Play It Dirty” and a woman in the small studio audience screams. This is one of the rare Christmas songs that doesn’t make me feel blue.

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Chase’s Jaime Dimon — too big to fail

Posted on December 23, 2011 by oddmanout215

Here’s Matt Taibbi shedding more light, in his inimitable way, on how Wall Street executives, with the help of the D.C. establishment, cheat and bribe their way to a level of wealth and privilege few of us can even imagine:

J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon – the man the New York Times once called “Obama’s favorite banker” – had an excellent method of guaranteeing that the Federal Reserve system’s doors would always be open to him. What he did was, he served as the Chairman of the Board of the New York Fed.

And in 2008, in that moonlighting capacity, he orchestrated a deal in which the Fed provided $29 billion in assistance to help his own bank, Chase, buy up the teetering investment firm Bear Stearns. You read that right: Jamie Dimon helped give himself a bailout. Who needs to worry about good government, when you are the government?

Dimon, incidentally, is another one of those bankers who’s complaining now about the unfair criticism… Is Dimon right? Do people hate him just because he’s rich and successful…? Maybe we should ask the people of Jefferson County, Alabama, what they think.

That particular locality is now in bankruptcy proceedings primarily because Dimon’s bank, Chase, used middlemen to bribe local officials – literally bribe, with cash and watches and new suits – to sign on to a series of onerous interest-rate swap deals that vastly expanded the county’s debt burden.

Essentially, Jamie Dimon handed Birmingham, Alabama a Chase credit card and then bribed its local officials to run up a gigantic balance, leaving future residents and those residents’ children with the bill. As a result, the citizens of Jefferson County will now be making payments to Chase until the end of time.

…People like Jamie Dimon aren’t really citizens of any country. They live in their own gated archipelago, and the rest of the world is a dumping ground.

Footnote: Read Taibbi’s article for information on other thieving CEOs. I excerpted the stuff about Dimon because Chase is the monster bank that owns my house, and because of the disgustingly sympathetic piece about Dimon that ran last year in NYT Magazine.

Posted in economic collapse, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, New York Times, Obama, Politics, The New Depression, Wall Street | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Rejoice, fellow pagans

Posted on December 22, 2011 by oddmanout215

The winter solstice is here, marking for me the crossroads of dread and hope. Dread because it’s the shortest day of the year, when you can’t walk down the street without being reminded of consumerism’s holy of holies, Christmas Day. Hope because I know each day forward will bring a bit more daylight and some sense of progress toward the spring and the disappearance of Christmas decorations.

No offense to Christians, but acknowledging the solstice as a literal turning point — when the North Pole is tilted 23.5 degrees away from the sun, as far as it will get — makes more sense than celebrating the notion of a Jewish guy founding an anti-materialist (and, later, anti-Semitic) religion, then returning centuries later as Santa Claus, the poster boy for materialism.

So which is it, Christians — the Jew who was nailed to a board, or the jolly goy in the red suit? You can’t have it both ways, no matter what the ad copywriters say.

Keep your pale imitation of Saturnalia, thanks. I’ll take my materialism straight up, without the doubletalk. If I get a yen for spirituality I’ll consult with a card reader or make a pilgrimage to the Dalai Lama’s house. At least he knows what a joke is.

But I digress, as usual. Just wanted to send best wishes to pagans, Christians and everyone else. As Irving Berlin put it, “May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be goyish.” Or something like that.

Update: I just put solstice lights in my front window, the twinkly kind, to keep the darkness at bay. Christians and pagans are on the same page sometimes, but we like different stories.

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‘Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto’

Posted on December 22, 2011 by oddmanout215

If anyone wanna know,
Tell him James Brown sent you.

You know I know what you will see
Because that was once… me.
Hit it! Hit it!

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EPA to power plants: Stop poisoning people

Posted on December 22, 2011 by oddmanout215

David Roberts of Grist does a nice job of summing up the importance of the new EPA rule regarding the emission of mercury and other toxins from coal- and oil-fired power plants:

… This one is a Big Deal. It’s worth lifting our heads out of the news cycle and taking a moment to appreciate that history is being made. Finally controlling mercury and toxics will be an advance on par with getting lead out of gasoline. It will save save tens of thousands of lives every year and prevent birth defects, learning disabilities, and respiratory diseases. It will make America a more decent, just, and humane place to live.

Paul Krugman posted the Grist item and added this:

The point that strikes me most, however, is that this shows that it matters who holds the White House. You can complain about Obama’s lack of a strong progressive agenda, which I sometimes do, or wonder what good it is to hold the White House when the other side blocks every attempt to do good through legislation. But mercury regulation would not have happened if John McCain were president.

OK, Paul, I can’t argue with that. Even the worst Democratic president — and I think Obama’s performance in office so far would almost qualify him for that title — is preferable to the Republicans who are vying for the job.

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‘Holiday Affair’

Posted on December 22, 2011 by oddmanout215

A low-key romantic comedy set at Christmastime and starring Robert Mitchum in a more-or-less wholesome role, wooing the very young Janet Leigh. The role seemed a good career move at the time (1949), as Mitchum was trying to recover from bad publicity regarding a marijuana bust.

The star plays it ultra-cool, as always, but this time there’s no femme fatale lurking in the background, waiting to bring out his dark side. Instead, his secret friend is a squirrel he feeds on a bench in Central Park.

It’s better than I’m making it sound. The dialogue is sharp and the resolution of Leigh’s romantic dilemma is satisfying.

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PA’s frackin’ Scrooge of the Year

Posted on December 21, 2011 by oddmanout215

James Carville noted years ago that, from the standpoint of political strategists, “Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and Alabama in between,” or words to that effect. He has been pilloried by critics on the left and right for his remark, but I think he was accurate in this respect: A cold-hearted reactionary such as Tom Corbett couldn’t have been elected governor without overwhelming help from “low-information” voters — the sort of people who vote against their own interests — in the mostly rural counties that make up most of PA.

Moveon.org paid tribute to Corbett this week:

Governor Corbett is hands down our Scrooge of the Year in PA. “Ebenezer” Corbett’s budget bestows homelessness and ill health on PA’s Bob and Emily Cratchits by terminating the PA Housing Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program (HEMAP) that kept tens of thousands of families in their homes, and by eliminating the Adult Basic Health Insurance that helped keep 41,000 subscribers alive. Corbett saved his cruelest cuts for Tiny Tim and the youngest Pennsylvanians, slicing $900 million from public schools and $245 million from state universities.

Except that MoveOn was being too kind to Tom Corbett, who has been turning tricks for the Marcellus Shale drillers since he took office. Corbett has ignored environmentalists who warn that fracking — the process of drilling to access natural gas deposits — will cause widespread contamination of PA’s freshwater supply. It’s easy to picture him taking bids on which company gets exclusive rights to distribute bottled waters in contaminated areas. Not so fast, Tiny Tim, that pint of water will cost you five bucks.

MoveOn will rally outside Corbett’s Philly office tomorrow.

Posted in environmentalism, Great Recession, history, mainstream media, Philadelphia, Politics, The New Depression | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment