The Commentariat -- Dec. 6, 2012
News Flash: Michael O'Brien of NBC News: "South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, an influential Republican who has helped prod his party rightward, will step down from his seat in January to become the next director of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank."
Cliff Notes
Quinnipiac University: "American voters give President Barack Obama a 53 - 40 percent job approval rating - his best score in three years - and by a wider 53 - 36 percent they trust the president and Democrats more than Republicans to avoid the 'Fiscal Cliff,' according to a Quinnipiac University poll...."
Devin Dwyer, et al., of ABC News: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, "President Obama's lead negotiator in the 'fiscal cliff' talks, said the administration is 'absolutely' willing to allow the package of deep automatic spending cuts and across-the-board tax hikes to take effect Jan. 1, unless Republicans drop their opposition to higher income tax rates on the wealthy."
Josh Marshall of TPM: "House Republicans are saying they'll regroup around the debt limit and force the president's hands when they have all the power -- probably late next month or in early February. This assumes a replay of 2011.. But the President says he won't negotiate under any circumstances. And his top advisors say he&'s adamant on the point -- not just because of the current impasse but to take hostage taking over the national debt off the table for good."
Molly Hooper of The Hill: "Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) warned his conference on Wednesday that leaders are 'watching' how the rank and file vote to determine committee assignments, according to sources in a closed-door meeting. Boehner addressed the firestorm over the removal of four lawmakers from plum committee assignments at the weekly GOP conference meeting."
Lori Montgomery & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "A growing chorus of Republicans is urging House leaders to abandon their staunch opposition to higher tax rates for the wealthy with the aim of clearing the way for a broad deal that would also rein in the cost of federal health and retirement programs." CW: sounds choreographed to me.
Dana Milbank: "Right now, [Speaker Boehner] is hoping to lead his fractious GOP to an orderly surrender. The question is no longer whether Republicans will give on taxes; they already have. All that remains to be negotiated is how they will increase taxes, and whether they will do it before or after the government reaches the 'fiscal cliff.'" Read it and gloat.
Here's Frank Rich on the fake fiscal cliff, etc. He seems to be hoping that at his next stay at a Marriott, Mitt Romney will be the concierge & Ann Romney will bring him fluffier towels. Hey, it could be good for the Romney marriage -- a little hanky-panky in Room 207, etc. Ann could learn that one need not be Leader of the Free World to have fun. Thanks to MAG for the link.
If you don't like Rich's take on the fiscal cliff, here's Montgomery Burns (no relation) to give you the rich person's perspective:
... But some top CEOs are breaking with Mr. Burns & supporting a tax hike for the wealthy, as Ryan Grim & Sabrina Sidiqui of the Huffington Post report. ...
... Here's President Obama, pitching his deficit reduction plan to some of those CEOs & urging them to pressure their Republican friends not to create another debt ceiling crisis:
... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Through phone calls, White House invitations and old-fashioned political flattery, Mr. Obama has dispensed with some of the populist language of the campaign trail to appeal to corporate America's palpable desire for certainty. In groups and one by one, the president is making a case to business leaders that siding with him will put the nation back on a firm fiscal footing and unleash the economy.... White House officials have been encouraged by what they describe as a more positive reaction than expected."
Sahil Kapur of TPM: "The possibility that Democratic and Republican leaders will agree to slowly increase the Medicare eligibility age to 67 is creating strange bedfellows: liberals -- both in and out of Congress -- and the health insurance industry. The reason: hiking the Medicare eligibility age would throw seniors aged 65 and 66 off Medicare and into the private market, forcing insurers, who will soon be required to cover all consumers regardless of health status, to care for a sicker, more expensive crop of patients."
Gail Collins on Republican Senators who voted down the disabilities treaty: "The big worry was, of course, offending the Tea Party. The same Tea Party that pounded Mitt Romney into the presidential candidate we came to know and reject over the past election season. The same Tea Party that keeps threatening to wage primaries against incumbents who don't do what they're told. The Tea Party who made those threats work so well in the last election that Indiana now has a totally unforeseen Democratic senator. The threat the Republicans need to worry about isn't in the United Nations." ...
Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "For the first time in U.S. history, white men are in the minority of the House Democratic caucus and Nancy Pelosi doesn't want you to forget that." ...
... Oh, let's take one more look at the House GOP leadership:
In response to criticism, Boehner later appointed a white lady to head up the secretaries' pool or something like that. ...
... Erik Loomis of Lawyers, Guns & Money on "the coming Republican coalition" and how Republicans are going out of their way to win over -- well, maybe crazy white Christian bigots. Hard to say.
The Democratic Governors Association celebrates, well, themselves. They did have a few surprising wins in November:
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) likes the middle class. He said so in a speech Wednesday night. Thirty-five times, by Dave Weigel's count. But, also according to Weigel, everything Rubio said about helping the middle class was already on the regular GOP menu. ...
... Oh, and now Marco believes in science, too. Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times: "On Wednesday, Mr. Rubio told Mike Allen of Politico: 'There is no scientific debate on the age of the earth. I mean, it's established pretty definitively, it's at least 4.5 billion years old.'" Then he does an Olympics-class backtracking pretzel flip, where he pretends he didn't say what he said a few weeks ago. CW: most of the news agencies that covered Marco's marvelous move called the word from Marco the Science Guy a "clarification."
New York Times Editors: states should invest in citizens, not big corporations. "... targeted [corporate] incentives ... are little more than transfers of wealth to a handful of powerful corporations from all other taxpayers, including other businesses. If the problem is excessive tax burdens on businesses in general, then the solution is broad tax reform that also benefits small business owners, who are more likely to stick around ... and who are unlikely to hopscotch around the country in search of a bigger tax break."
Ryan Reilly of TPM: "Sen. Barbara Boxer plans to introduce an election reform bill designed to prevent long lines at polling places on Wednesday... The LINE Act ... would require the attorney general to set national standards for a minimum number of voting machines, poll workers and other resources during federal elections by Jan. 1, 2014. The goal would to be prevent voters from having to wait more than an hour to vote at any polling place in the country."
MAG is right. Charles Pierce writes a fierce & funny putdown of Brother Ross Douthat.
James Risen, et al., of the New York Times: "The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats.... The experience in Libya has taken on new urgency as the administration considers whether to play a direct role in arming rebels in Syria, where weapons are flowing in from Qatar and other countries."
Paul Waldman of American Prospect: "It ain't easy being Fox.... It needs to simultaneously cater to the establishment, to the Tea Party, to the elite, to the base, and to everyone in between. That can be a difficult juggling act. Fox plays a much more central role in the conservative movement than MSNBC does in the liberal movement, which is good for business, but it also brings complications. But don't worry about Karl Rove. He'll be back on the air before you know it, telling conservatives why their victory is inevitable."
Local News
Scott Keyes of Think Progress: Two Democratic Florida legislators have introduced bills to extend early voting to 14 days -- which is what it was before Gov. Rick Scott (RTP) took over -- and to allow local elections officials to extend hours & voting venues. Republicans control the state legislature, so good luck with that. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Resignations rocked the government of President Mohamed Morsi on Thursday as tanks from the special presidential guard took up positions around his palace and the state television headquarters after a night of street fighting between his Islamist supporters and their secular opponents that left at least 6 dead and 450 wounded." ...
... Reuters: "Egypt's Republican Guard restored order around the presidential palace on Thursday after fierce overnight clashes killed seven people, but passions ran high in a struggle over the country's future. The Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, criticised by his opponents for his silence in the last few days, was due to address the nation later in the day, state television said."
New York Times: "A new round of diplomacy on the conflict in Syria will begin on Thursday afternoon when Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy, hosts an unusual three-way meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov."
Washington Post: "Afghanistan's national intelligence director [Asadullah Khalid] was badly wounded in a brazen suicide bombing in the Afghan capital Thursday afternoon. Officials described the attack as an assassination attempt and said the bomb exploded as the director was greeting a visitor at his private guest house."
New York Times: "For the first time in years, Apple will manufacture [some] computers in the United States, the chief executive of Apple, Timothy D. Cook, said in interviews with NBC and Bloomberg Businessweek."
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Reader Comments (18)
"...none of your goddamn business what we do with our genitals, you little fop." —from Charlie Pierce
Read more: Ross Douthat Clarifies Column - Ross Douthat Explains Himself - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/ross-douthat-explains-column-120512#ixzz2EEScm8lA
My biological parents, jazz elitists of the first order, were convinced that Bach, had he lived during their time, would be a "jazz man." "Jazz is the most real music there is,"my mom once said to me after I suggested otherwise. My parents clearly expected my Classical piano lessons to train me to more deeply "dig" Dizzy, Billie, and Art (Tatum), but instead I became hooked on Chopin preludes and waltzes--and horrified them by developing an intense interest in all the wrong kinds of music, such as 20s dance band, church hymns, Victor Herbert and Stephen Foster tunes, light concert music, polkas, etc.
Brubeck, of course, was a major figure in those days, a time when jazz fulfilled the class-marking function that "secularism" does today--a means of separating the washed from the unwashed, the hip (or was it "hep"?) from the hopeless. Having heard way too much of it as a kid, thanks to my parents' hi fi, I find myself able to mostly live without it. Its early history, however, is quite fascinating, since it was more or less an outgrowth of the music played by "plantation orchestras" in the 19th century. Far from being an offshoot and/or combination of blues, spirituals, and ragtime, it was initially one other style on the African-American musical menu. Also fascinating is its transition from a type of pepped-up ragtime to a music based in (highly structured) improvisation.
Brubeck pioneered the era of jazz as telephone-hold music.
Thanks for the thought-provoking Brubeck quote. It made me think of another quote regarding the roots of jazz music by the infamous Normal Mailer. I searched for the quote on Google but the search Gods weren't kind to me today, so I'll just have to sum it up. It came from a great documentary I saw called, "Norman Mailer, histoires d'Amérique."
In speaking about the post-war era and the intensification of segregation throughout American society, the interviewer asked Norman Mailer how he came to understand the polarizing changes within the country. He responded saying that he had read the right books and talked to the main actors involved, thus taking an intellectual approach, yet he still couldn't grasp the raw reality of the situation. He then said that it was jazz music that completed the picture. Through listening deeply to the emotions spoken through jazz, he learned more about segregation and the position of African Americans than by reading any number of academic books and articles. A Chicago School sociological approach brought him full circle in comprehending the social dynamics.
Think about that while you listen next time to one of Jazz's founders. Hear the cries of segregation in the screech of the saxophone; the defiance in the trumpet. The whole story is there, laid bare before your ears.
Marie, your post of the photos of the 'leadership' of the two parties in the House says all that needs to be said about the real America and what the Republicans are really all about.
And let us not forget that Dave Brubeck stood up for 'mixed race' bands when that was a seriously dangerous thing to do. Interesting how Brubeck's life story fits in with the House leadership photos. I am pretty sure Dave was a Democrat.
Well, I see Scambliss gave me one more reason to despise him with his vote against the UN treaty. As a 100% disabled veteran, I'd like for him to try my life for awhile. That pond scum Santorum isn't any better than Scambiss, if not worse. I was a Republican many years ago, but that party is gone, perhaps forever.
Scambliss is worried he'll get primaried. If he does, ain't karma a bitch?
@ Safari: Enjoyed your comments. I discovered jazz in high school introduced to me by a boy friend of mine whose passion besides me was jazz. I was at the time a Stan Kenton, Peggy Lee, show tune kind of girl. Years later when I lived in Michigan and frequented the great hot spots of Jazz in Detroit I was in my glory. Brubeck was one of my favorites.
Interesting that the first talking picture brought to us in glorious Vita phone was "The Jazz Singer." Al Jolson, the Jew in black face––amazing to think of that now.
And if I'm not mistaken the precursor to Jazz was blues––Blind Willie Johnson–-Skip James––Robert Johnson's "Oh, won't somebody tell me, tell me if you can, where in the body is the soul of a man."
This on my computer machine as I booted it up this AM. A little right wing humor from my obscenely rich brother in law--especially for P.E. Pepe:
..."Washington State voted & approved both....Ha!
Subject: Leviticus 20:13
It all makes sense now. Gay marriage and marijuana being legalized
on the same day. Leviticus 20:13 - "if a man lays with another man he should
be stoned." We've just been interpreting it wrong all along."
PD,
Robert Johnson, aside from his unique approach to his instrument and to blues structure, re-formed the standards of blues lyrics with exquisite turns of phrases and use of lyrical concepts that would leave many detractors of the "race records" of the time on the floor.
A couple of my favorite lines from Johnson's work:
"When the train left the station it had two lights on behind.
Well the blue light was my blues, and the red light was my mind.
All my love's in vain."
and the title of another, a triumph of metaphysical imagination:
"If I had Possession Over Judgement Day"
As great a wish as one could imagine.
Count me as a fan of Brubeck as well. John Coltrane and Art Tatum too (love to hear Art Tatum while waiting on some robo phone connection), but also Stephen Foster and Chopin (especially the nocturnes). And Bix Beiderbecke, Wagner, Schubert, Tom Waits, Bing Crosby, Mac Rebennack, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Elly Ameling, Renata Tebaldi, Tito Gobbi, Dinah Washington, Leon Redbone, Sons of the Pioneers, the King's Singers, Pierre Bensusan (love those DADGAD tunings), Ry Cooder, Dave Grisman, Esperanza Spalding,...hey, we could be here all day...
Great music is great music. We get too locked into genres sometimes.
@Ak: I agree––my taste is also eclectic––love all sorts. Had to laugh that you included Leon Redbone in your list–– I tend to forget some of these good ones. The other great Leon––Russell––is someone I just went goofy over–-but when I first heard him I thought otherwise. I find I listen to more classical nowadays––those violins correspond to my soaring passion and frequent weeping.
@Kate: what can I say, but the guy has a keen sense of humor––that's really very funny.
Good news about Jim (Despicable He) De Mint. Apparently he was going to wait a few years before leaving the senate to befoul somewhere else, but after getting his ass kicked (via the rejection of the two upstanding geniuses he supported, the Rape Brothers, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock) in the recent election, he has decided to tuck tail and run.
Straight into the leadership role at the Heritage Stink Tank. If I were one of those Heritage researchers, I'd start looking for a new job. He'll bury the place in a couple of years. Either that or they'll be turning out screeds on why the reproductive organs of wives actually belong, through some long lost piece of scriptural scrapdoodle, to their husbands. No doubt there'll be a few "academic" papers on why slavery wasn't such a bad thing after all for blah people. Whiners.
In any event, we can all count it as a good day when the end is in sight for the only asshole in congress who voted against helping veterans get jobs, deeming it a "Democratic trick. Grrrrrrrrrr"
A brand new teabag decorated propeller hat (to replace his current, well worn one) awaits when he takes over at Heritage.
Creep.
Cory Booker: One politician who's willing to put his mouth where his money is. Here's what's happening half way through his week on food stamps:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/06/cory-booker-food-stamp-challenge_n_2250692.html
My initial reaction to DeMint leaving the Senate was unbridled glee. Get the bilge pump and rid the Senate of the putrid swamp water he left behind. After I got over my personal fizz bang in not having to hear or see him anymore - I settled into feeling like "oh oh", what I have missed.
I think DeMint has correctly identified the states as the true battlegrounds for extreme wingnutery . From his Heritage perch on top of all that corporate, Koch and John Bircher money he has an infinite playground. His movement to the Heritage Foundation should sound a very loud alarm bell that we have a lot of work to do at the state and local levels before 2014. Arguably, turnout for the midterms could be more critical than the recent Presidential election. I hope Dems can put aside the silly speculation on 2016 and focus on the midterms. The danger target has shifted from national politics to state/local.
Speaking of turnout, I just sent an atta woman to Boxer for her LINE act bill, the significantly superior of my 2 Senators. I'd gladly turnover Feinstein's vote to Bernie Sanders.
@Kate gotta love the Leviticus reference.
What's it mean when the leader of the Senate anti-deluvians blows off "public service" for about a ten-fold increase in pay? Not only that, he likes South Carolina so much he's going to live in Washington D.C. An esthete he certainly is not. And a "public servant" he was never.
If anything, the fact that DeMint was elected by a popular ballot, shows the diminished capacity to discern fact from fraud among our fellow citizens. Maybe dictatorship really is the natural inclination of the masses.
The low-information-voter, brought about by 48 hour work weeks, two-earner families, higher local and state taxes and the single fear of having community "leaders" ship your job to some faceless overseas person, is a grave disservice to democracy when DeMint is elected. When I think electing dolts is a Southern thing, I think of Conrad Burns, or Ben Nelson, or Larry Craig all of whom where elected in the Northern fly-over states. Ignorance knows no bounds.
Just to clarify the post on the Heritage Foundation, there is no such thing as a Republican 'think' anything. 'Tank' on the other hand can fit, especially if it a verb.
Diane and Citizen625,
Another thing about DeMint's quickened two-step out of the senate and into the waiting arms of Heritage Hacks is that, while raising (momentarily, and only slightly) the status of the senate by his absence, he diminishes whatever status the Heritage had as a "serious" hatchery for support of right-wing nutjobbery.
But the more I think about it, what it really displays is the essential illegitimacy of Heritage. If that organization had any claims to serious scholarship and research it would never have embraced such a out-of-control, intemperate, petulant wingnut whose entire career has been based on some of the farthest of right-wing demagoguery. How a guy like that fits in with an academic mission is beyond me.The whole thing is just a farce. So really, he doesn't diminish the Heritage as much as provide incontrovertible evidence of its place as a cog in the machinery of right-wing hackdom.
Same with American Enterprise. They all erupted from Lewis Powell's 1971 memo in which he outlined how the right could shore up even its most cuckoo, un-American initiatives by creating think tanks and dragooning conservative academics into writing supportive materials for every nutbag idea that blew out their asses.
So that hasn't been a real secret. There never has been any kind of unbiased basis for the work spewing out, like toxic ejecta, of these organizations. But up until now, Heritage and the AEI and other wingnut outfits routinely had their hacks invited on to national news programs where other unqualified, dim hacks like Fuzzy Gregory and Chuckie Todd could tongue bathe their feet. At the very least it provided some measure of cover and legitimacy.
Not anymore.
Hiring DeMint to oversee the work of the Heritage Foundation is like appointing Jaime Dimon to run the SEC, hiring Ted Kaczynski to run the ATF, or John Bolton to....to...well, hell, to do any fucking thing except play with the straps on his restraints.
A joke.
So a sweet sayonara to Jim DeMint. Just two questions: Is it possible for the S.C. governor to pick someone to Demented's Right as his temporary replacement, a question that includes both curiosity about the governor's state of mind and S.C. political possibility?
And what happens now to all those millions in donations from the nation's dumb clucks that the soon-to-be-ex senator has collected in the name of saving the union? Or should I say more properly, in the name of seceding from it?
Thanks for the discussion. My music-history perspective is a little different--I'm an archivist. I've taken pains (though, actually, it's proved to be quite easy in the long haul) to not "interpret" music sociologically or politically. Art is art, first and foremost, not social or political statement. Besides, the meaning we impose on--er, extract from--blues, jazz, rock, etc. is determined by our cultural perspective, by our cultural expectations. To wit, we expect the blues to be protest, hence we interpret, for ex., "I'm gonna ride my baby" as a political statement, when it's just the usual expression of male sexuality. Blues lyrics are about sex and domestic scenes. The singer is either bragging about the size of his rooster and/or his back door antics, or he's griping that his baby stole (read: kept, after kicking him out) his clothes.
Blues speak, and in a narrow fashion, to a black male audience. It tells truths about gender relationships, about sex, about problems paying the rent, about women, and about sex. (Did I mention sex?) To that extent, it's a sociological statement. One meaningful to the core audience. But because blues lyrics, divorced from their bone-simple context, seem highly abstract and poetic, we white folk forget that they're simply real-life snapshots, and pretty repetitious ones, at that.
And, though it's an idea etched in stone, blues are not the musical roots of jazz. Jazz, initially, existed side by side with other African-American vernacular forms, breaking out on its own only after the "jubilee" era of the latter 1800s. It used the blues form from time to time, just as rock and roll has and does, but it wasn't built on blues. "Roots"-wise, jazz is an primarily an offshot of ragtime, which existed in at least two distinct forms: New Orleans, march-derived ragtime (James Reese Europe), and the more polyphonic, string-band type (examples of which do not abound on recordings), both of which merged (in the 1910s) in the music of white bandleaders like Art Hickman, Earl Fuller, Paul Whiteman, etc. The modern myth of jazz as a melting pot of blues, ragtime, etc. was invented in the late 1930s by folks eager to make jazz "respectable," which is code for white-middle-class-accessible. This is not to say there isn't a line from heterophonic African chant to early blues and black spirituals to ragtime to jazz, etc., but none of it happened as popularly marketed. After all, the goal of NPR, Rolling Stone, NYT, et al. is to reinvent African-American music history so that it "speaks" to their primary audience--whites. Hence, our "dem bones" concept of jazz genesis--this and that style latching together to make the great and powerful jazz.
The chief point about my biological parents' worship of jazz is that, as a result, I hear Brubeck-era jazz as a rather snotty statement of hipness. And, as someone highly interested in old, old music, I find much of jazz too (believe it or not) modern. Re racial integration, so can Paul Whiteman and Benny Goodman be credited for actively breaking down color barriers in the music biz, and that was the 20s and 30s. And Brubeck's brand of serious jazz, just like Kenton's, follows a line back to the very early dance and jazz bands who "jazzed" Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Ponchielli, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Of course, everytime someone "combines" this or that, it's treated as the first instance. In our pop culture, music history=music marketing.
Led Zepp ruined Robert Johnson for me via their ridiculous apings; the Stones almost ruined Howlin' Wolf, too.
Raul:
I'm sure that blues speak to audiences and maybe only black audiences; but I definitely know that blues don't only speak to black males. F'rinstance: Koko Taylor's very funny put downs of various men in her blues songs. They definitely speak to women.