Open the jails/ Let those we threw away trample the polite/ Open the purse/ Bribe the poor, the mad, the pathologically dispossessed/ Give them clubs, bullwhips, petrol bombs/ Demand obedience/ All plainclothes police, NDP footsoldiers, oil company thugs/ Run the risk of documentation/ Firearms below the waist/ Aim for the knees, the calves, the thighs/ Never glance at the camera/ This is what Mubarak looked like/ Open diplomatic channels/ Let the Weasel Errand Boy from Goldman Sachs construct the political calculus/ Mubarak=Sulieman=Netanyahu=hegemony/ Let the “caretakers” bury Tahir Square

ALL POWER TO THE “FACEBOOKERS”/ FIRST THE BURNING LEAVES/ THEN THE CLEANSING FIRE                                                               – rmgg53

   I first saw Alex Chilton perform live at the Decade on Atwood St. near the University of Pittsburgh in late spring ‘86. Like most people who grew up in the late ’60’s I’d heard the BOX TOPS  on Top 40 radio ad infinitum (I mistakenly thought Chilton wrote the songs, although if that was true he’d never have had to play dive bars in Pittsburgh) but BIG STAR ’s records were all but unknown to me ’till 1983-84. In the mid-70’s I’d seen promo ads and read glowing reviews about this Fab Four-influenced Memphis quartet/trio but the records themselves were unavailable. Finally the frontman of a band I was in let me hear Radio City and Sister Lovers and I was hooked for life. But the ultra-casual, spiky-haired guy in bermuda shorts I saw onstage  bore little resemblance to the power-pop genius we all so revered. Neither did the music his trio (Chilton on guitar and vocals, Doug Garrison-drums, Rene Coman-bass) played that night Instead of Big Star classics like “You Can’t Have Me”, “Daisy Glaze”, or “Back Of A Car” Alex played obscure Memphis soul covers, some equally unknown blues tunes, “In The Street” to placate old devotees, and of all things, “Volare”, a song my dad used to sing in the shower when he’d been drinking. This was disappointing, but me and my aging (early 30’s) hipster clique pretended to take it in stride. For the encore some obnoxious a**hole from the local Stooges sound-alike ensemble made Alex sing “The Letter”, which he clearly despised. It took me a while to realize that Chilton’s refusal to play up to expectations was indeed what made him so unique.  Instead of regurgitating an oldies set,  Alex re-invented his musical persona in real time, wether you liked it or not. In later years he refined this approach to become a constantly evolving  pop musicologist, who’d play Bach chorales, Gary Stewart weepers, and T Rex’s “Baby Strange” back-to-back. Although Big Star eventually did reform,with Ken Stringfellow and John Auer from The Posies brought in as ringers, recordings (the abysmal In Space CD) and videos reveal Alex grudgingly going along with it because the money was too good to pass up. In fact Big Star was scheduled to play South By Southwest today, March 20th. I bet Alex would have sung his heart out on “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”, anyway.

    On Salon.com’s Wednesday edition of “War Room”, writer Alex Koppleman, MSNBC Countdown host (and former DNC chairman) Lawrence O’Donnel, and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas proceeded to bludgeon Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich over his impending  “No” vote on President Obama’s healthcare reform bill.  Kucinich has repeatedly stated that unless health care reform includes a robust public option plus an ERISA waiver to enable individual states to enact their own single-payer systems  he would not support the bill. Moulitsas compared Kucinich with Ralph Nader, invoking the tired old fable that Nader’s candidacy cost Al Gore the 2000 election. Funny, I thought it had been established through post-election recounts sponsored by the New York Times and other media outlets that Gore had won Florida only to have the election stolen from him via the Supreme Court’s precedent-smashing Bush vs. Gore decision. The Daily Kos founder also indirectly accused Kucinich of something approching genocide, personally blaming him for the 40,000 people a year who perish due to lack of health insurance coverage. Considering that Obama’s reforms won’t be enacted until 2013, and possibly even longer if a Republican wins in 2012, this puts Kucinich’s “murderous” veto into Vlad The Impaler territory.  O’Donnel and Koppleman chipped in with snipes at Kucinich’s lack of realpolitik credentials, pointing out that his proposed legislation generally goes nowhere, while invoking the spectre of a well-funded centrist challenger who will finally jettison this utopian socialist star-gazer for good. Let me humbly point out that Kucinich has been serving his Cleveland congressional district for seven consecutive terms, so his constituents apparently must think he’s a very effective legislator. Or maybe they’re all utopian socialists too. Moulitsas’s liberal boilerplate b.s. must play well in the blogoshere, but in the real world it smacks of Karl Rove-style  hyperbole and slander. It’s beyond sad to watch liberals bloggers straining to appease Obama’s political apparatchiks in order to defend a health care bill that guarantees private insurers $350 billion over 10 years without universal coverage, caps on premiums and co-pays, no public option, and restrictive abortion language that may well obliterate a woman’s right to choose.

    Reading the Alternet headlines this morning I was intrigued to see that Rabbi Michael Lerner had written a response to Chris Hedges’ recent critique Ralph Nader Was Right About Barack Obama, a scathing polemic which your humble guttersnipe felt was spot-on. First off let me state that I have immense respect for Rabbi Lerner; I still keep a copy of  Tikkun’s A Resolution For Middle East Peace taped to the door of my food pantry for that document is one of the most reasoned and compassionate propositons for settling the Israel-Palestine conflict that I’ve ever read. But Rabbi Lerner’s rambling and half-measured denunciation of Hedges’s article misses the point. You can go on at length, as Rabbi Lerner does, about Hedges’ disrespect of the common humanity and spiritual worth of Obama and his minions in respect to Israel and the “little people” in the Democratic Party, but respectful consideration of opposing points of view doesn’t transform reality. Even at his most “progressive” moments during the presidential campaign Obama made an art form out of hedging his bets; for every specific promise there were 5 indistinct and ephemeral allusions to “change” that lacked any substance. In countless conversations with fellow “progressives” I would warn people to stay grounded; Obama was a centrist Democrat from a state long known for an intrinsically corrupt political culture; he’d been in the national spotlight for a very short time and had no track record for progressive initiatives; and yes, on both emotional and intellectual fronts he seemed leagues beyond the befuddled McCain and his fascist sidekick, but would those virtues translate to enlightened public policy? I think after a year of disappointment and betrayal we have our answer. Obama’s administration will forever be known for abandoning the American middle class to the whims of a “too-big-to-fail” financial elite interested solely in never-ending gargantuan renumeration; this era will be remembered as the epoch when exporting capital and labor overseas to realize obscene profits trumped all “spiritual” and philosophical considerations. Even the most cynical and politically uninformed among us can see that for 99% of the population late-stage capitalism is a sucker’s bet that spares no one. And to think that the “Dennis Kucinich” wing of the Democratic Party stands a chance to roll back the tide is to openly court insanity. For the evils that befall the United States are far beyond the grasp of a tepid political charlatan like Barack Obama. America in 2010 is a debtor state poised on the brink of fiscal insolvency with a rapidly-expanding,  jobless proletariat increasingly left to devour itself while our throughly corrupt and debased political class will NEVER in its’ present incarnation pass ANY meaningful health care, employment, or climate change legislation. I completely agree with Mr. Hedges that our only hope is to mobilize outside of the obviously paralyzed 2-party system. And with all due respect to Rabbi Lerner: Sir, I’m sure you live in a nice house, possess a sizeable bank account and have excellent health care. My advice is to toss away the comforts of your world and come down to street-level to engage head-on with those you profess to champion, where you’ll find that “respect” and “spiritual compassion” might get you a small coffee at Mickey D’s, provided you possess $1.16.

   Sadly, as the Chilean people struggle to survive in the aftermath of one the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history, an axis-tilting armaggeddon 500 times more powerful than the quake that reduced Haiti to unimaginable misery, the Chilean military’s response seems to mirror the United States’ “boots on the ground” lockdown in Port-au-Prince and other afflicted Haitian cities. NPR reported this morning that although some residents of Concepcion’ and other totally ravaged Chilean shore-line communities rejoiced at the military’s arrival, they brought only the promise of security without precious foodstuffs or any other type of assistance. There were the usual promises of swift action to arrest “looters” and criminal gangs taking deadly advantage of the absence of authority, but pray tell, what is the difference between a completely traumatized people suddenly bereft of the basic necessities of life breaking into grocery stores and other businesses in order to feed themselves and their families and base evildoers intent on profiting from anarchy and who makes the call?

       Initially Chilean President Michele Bachelet was hesitant to request aid from neighboring countries and first-tier nations, mistakenly asserting that Chile could cope with the monster quake’s widespread devastation, a stance she has since recanted. Perhaps her caution in requesting help reveals an all-too- knowing comprehension of the price to be paid. Chile is not that far removed from its’ woeful designation as a neoliberal labratory for “structural adjustment” which decimated its’ economy and caused untold suffering and death. Even now one might envision the IMF, World Bank, and a host of multinational corporations voraciously awaiting new opportunities for “re-investment”  in what will be a $25 billion recovery effort that could entail draconian realignment of Chileans’ economic lives. I’m sure both Milton Friedman and Naomi Klein could attest to the potential validity of this assessment. After all, it’s the way the world works.

    The Huffington Post reported today that Kentucky senator Jim Bunning, who is not running for re-election, staged a 1-man filibuster and would not give his consent to extending Federal unemployment benefits for a 30-day period until Congress can pass more detailed unemployment extension legislation. The GOP leadership did not support Bunning in his crusade to keep $10 billion from being added to the Federal deficit. This will not stand, of course, but in the interim state governments who collectively are facing a $250 billion shortfall will have to make up the difference. To top off this inexplicable act of cruelty Bunning complained about missing a basketball game. Didn’t he get a chance to call his bookie? I guess the chance to play President Bunning for at least one evening was just too enticing to pass up. Even with the American people suffering through daily examples of a totally broken legislative process this perfidious act of “fiscal discipline” strains the cerebral cortex. Jim Bunning, All-American asshole! And he sucked when he pitched for the Pirates too!

    For 7/1/2 hours on Thursday President Obama argued with Republican leaders over a heatlh care reform bill that leaves 23 million uninsured, places no caps on premiums for older Americans plus those with pre-existing conditions, enacts a 40% excise tax on individuals with top-shelf  health insurance plans worth $24,000/yr or more, makes it nearly impossible for women to get abortions through private insurance coverage, and quite likely includes cuts in popular Medicare programs.  Single-payer and public option advocates were not invited to the table.  My question to the Republican leadership is what’s there not to like? Obama taking credit for this travesty? Of course! This is the result of a bought-off Congress taking $1.4 million a day from private-insurer lobbyists for months on end pretending to cross swords over the best way to deliver tens of billions of dollars in profit to the existing  health care monopoly. I actually agree with the GOP that the bill should be scrapped, but not for piece-meal legislation that will do nothing to stop the Wellpoints of the world from raising premiums by 39% because of “soaring costs” while their top executives take a cue from the financial services industry and receive hundreds of millions in undeserved bonuses.  Apparently “bonus envy”  is a supreme motivating factor among our corporate elites, all jockeying for recognition by Obama the Private-Insurer King as great guys who deserve over-the-top compensation just like baseball players. What has our inverted totalitarian debt- state come to? Hopefully a sizeable protion of the sentient public can see this bullshit for what it is even if we’re all just riding on the Titanic.

      As that Peoples’ Soviet-smasher V.I. Lenin used to say, “What Is To Be Done?” Shake off your lethargy, America!  Scream, Rant and Rave at your senators and reps, let them know you’re in on the scam and next year a new corporate-approved toady will be souring the milk of  late-stage capitalism! Above all, you in the middle-class, Lie, Cheat and Steal to get the best health care you can for you and your loved ones. Me, I’m poor; I’ll get mine!

  This past week I was surprised to learn that reports of the death of the “Public Option” seem to be wildly exaggerated. Written off as progressive pie-in-the-sky by mainstream punditry (and more importantly, Rahm Emanuel) little more than a month ago, as of this writing 18 senators have gotten religion and word is that the increasingly cautious Barack Obama will give his blessing if Harry Reid signs on. What’s going on here? One difference-maker has to be the Scott Brown Effect; anti-incumbency resulting from bi-partisan populist rage directed toward Obama’s coddling of the financial sector has sent Democrats scurrying to find a mea culpa to satisfy the “little people”.  Liberal elite consensus seems to have momentarily spurned the private insurance industry and its massive lobbying warchest;  even so the public option is not exactly Medicare For All. As previously envisioned, this program will enroll at most 9 million people and will not begin until 2013; by then a newly elected republican administration would obviously do everything in its’ power to derail it, so it’s not exactly political suicide to support the public option NOW. In its’ last-gasp previous incarnation the P.O. had been emasculated to the point of where the program would have been privately run anyway so insurers would not be out of the loop. And  with Obama finally realizing that budgetary reconciliation is the only option left for saving his agenda,  the mere hope that a public option will be part of the solution will be seen as enough to shore up his increasingly dispirited base.  After all, 18 senators is way short of the majority needed to pass this “socialist” program that so rankles Democratic corporate contributors.

    President Obama’s latest miscalculation of the mood of the average American mid-term voter is absolutely SHOCKING in its innate cluelessness, but let’s get real here; Rahm Emanuel has obviously calculated that keeping at least some of the financial industry’s monstrous campaign contributions in the Democratic fold trumps any sort of populist posturing. After all, with SCOTUS’s recent decision to open the floodgates for corporate political donations tilting the playing field sideways, and considering recent reports that the banking industry will throw mid-term financial support back to the GOP, the new corporatist party had to do something. I can just imagine the conversation:

          Obama: well gee, I don’t know Rahm, I have been doing the FDR thing to death recently. Don’t you think this Bloomberg interview will make me look two-faced and out-of-touch with the voters?

          Emanuel: I don’t give a fuck how it makes you look, Barry! We’re gonna get slaughtered anyway! Do you wanna lose majorities in both houses, or do you wanna congratulate that bitch Palin in February 2013?

         Obama: I certainly want to be re-elected!

          Emanuel: Well then kiss Lolyd Blankfein’s ass! Jesus, what a retard!

    Paul Krugman’s correct; we are doomed, but since Sept. 2008 we’ve been doomed anyway. The deterioration of our democracy into a completely inverted and privatized totalitarian state will make the fall of Rome look like a burnt matchstick.

    Words fail to describe the incompetent, error-filled, and nearly inhuman snail’s-pace response of the Pittsburgh Public Works Department to “Snowmaggedon 2010″, the extraordinary weather event that absolutely ravaged Western Pennsylvania this past weekend. From my unique vantagepoint as a Pittsburgh cab driver, ferociously dedicated to filling a stranded public’s tranportation needs throughout the disaster, I can personally attest to the city’s complete lack of preparedness for the blizzard. In the winter of 1978 we experienced a similar storm which dumped 12 inches of snow one day, followed by 13 inches 24 hours later.  Even in the midst of that catastrophe the buses still ran while salt trucks and snowplows were out in force all over Allegheny county. This time around there was NO coordinated response whatsoever until Monday morning  Feb. 8th, almost 48 hours after the snow stopped falling. Obviously the buck stops at the desk of our boy-wonder mayor, the “honorable” Luke Ravenstahl, a pathetically lame throwback to the Democratic “machine” politicians who ran Pittsburgh for decades. An inside source who will remain anonymous clued me in to the fact that Luke the Drifter spent the weekend of the blizzard partying at a central Pennsylvania resort complex while the city was paralyzed. This is consistent with Mayor Ravenstahl’s other recent  “initiatives”,  which include spending well over $1 million to import security personnel (police units from as far away as Arizona plus the National Guard) to fend off anarchists and “protestors” (the arch-enemies of all God-fearing yinzers) at September’s G-20 Summit. Trouble was, there were so few dissenters to repress that said security forces wound up instigating a police riot at the University of Pittsburgh, where totally innocent not to mention completely apolitical students were tear-gassed, beaten, and in some cases arrested for the crime of stepping outside their dorms and apartments at the wrong time of day. More recently Mayor Ravenstahl demonstrated his compassion for the working class by vetoing a living-wage provision for Pittsburgh janitors and maintenance personnel on New Year’s Eve after signalling that he would support the measure. But this chicanery pales in the face of endangering the most vulnerable sectors of the populace (the elderly, the handicapped, the underclass and the working poor) who are absolutely dependent on city services and especially public transportation during a mega-blizzard. A completely unscientific sampling of the public mood (i.e. bitching with my customers) reveals a complete unanimity of disgust. In short, IMPEACH LUKE RAVENSTAHL!!!