Back in late August I wrote that this blog would sit out the presidential election. To be frank, at that time the whole thing was just too painful for my inner girlie-man to handle. Since then, however, things have changed: The prospect of a Palin-Wurzelbacher regime seems increasingly remote, my work on the No on 8 campaign has reinvigorated my sense of citizenry, and I got a job as a reporter for a great website (which lifted me into Sally Field territory).

So, two thoughts on next week's election. I'll skip the obvious observations about how McCain has (thankfully) alienated independents with his stridency, how Obama has positioned himself well for post-election big-tenting with his relatively low attack level, and how Sarah Palin has proven herself to be, in the words of one perspicacious McCain staffer, a "whack job."

Instead, I'll offer one reason why it's important to elect Obama and another why doing so is not that big a deal.

Meltdown Machiavelianism The financial world is in shambles. It's inarguable that the current panic offers a full-on repudiation of the no-holds-barred corporatism of the past thirty years - an analysis brought into stark relief by Alan Greenspan's recent disavowal of his Ayn Randian belief system. More darkly, however, it's also a colossal opportunity for free-market ideologues to bend things to their favor.

According to the well-respected thinking of Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine, in which she carefully and solidly builds her theory of "disaster capitalism," which avers that whenever there's a significant disruption of the status quo - such as the period into which we are now descending - the "loosing of the moorings" has been used by free-market ideologues to advance their agendas of lower taxes, union busting, entitlement cuts, the repression of civil rights, and the selective elimination of government regulation of business (notice that I said business, not finance).

We're entering into such a period of disruption right now. Mark my words: Free-market corporatists will attempt to use the economic meltdown to justify the loosening of trade and employee-protection legislation, the trimming of entitlement programs ("We can't afford to coddle the unproductive in this time of national crisis!") and, of course, as a justification for more tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.

And the electorate, in shock from the disappearance of their retirement funds, their jobs, and the futures of their children, may very well believe them.

And so, during a period in which the corporatists will be lobbying long and hard to remake a shattered economic system in a way that's to their benefit, whom would you prefer to be in the Oval Office, a former community organizer or a tool?

Jesus Ain't Here Yet That said, don't expect Obama to be a strong supporter of progressive causes. He's not a progressive; he's merely a step or 1,500 ahead of the angry Neanderthal and his tiny-brained harpy.

As much as I admire Obama for attempting to stay somewhat above the mudslinging and thus position himself for future attempts at uniting this heinously divided country, I don't admire many of his positions.

How about the GWOT? (My favorite current acronym, aka Bush's "Global War on Terror.")
I haven't heard even a whisper from Obama that possibly bin Laden was telling the truth when he said that his actions were politically and not culturally motivated. Obama hasn't displayed any understanding that our international actions are the cause of "terrorism," not the specious belief that "They hate our freedoms." I don't foresee Obama changing the United States' neocolonial policies, nor do I see him developing a truly cooperative rather than an imperial foreign policy.

Then there's his unquestioning support of Israel. That brutal occupier has held us by the electoral short hairs for so long that we no long realize that, yes, we do have leverage - both economic and political - over their actions. Obama, however, has chosen to follow every other American leader and supplicate himself to them.

Then there was his caving in on Bush's wiretapping schemes, his re-upping of the Patriot Act, his breaking of his public-financing pledge, and his pandering to his state's coal interests. Oh, and gay marriage? Ha! Supporting that would have taken courage.

Yes, I'm going to vote for him, and yes, he'll be a better president than either the current Joke in Chief or that old guy who thinks he can run the world's mightiest military power because he managed to crash three planes 40 years ago. But I won't be voting with much enthusiasm.

Obama will be an improvement - a big one - but we still have a long, long way to go. [back to top]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

For most of us, hard times are either here or on the way. The economy is cratering, we're all working harder than we used to, and our elected "public servants" are more interested in rewarding their corporate supporters than in helping the Average Joe™. So, what's the solution to this national malaise?

Chicken livers!

You're working too many hours, so you have don't have time to cook. Your "compensation level" is well below that of megadickhead Larry Ellison, who recently rewarded himself with a raise to a cool $72 million a year. How can you rise above your downtrodden state?

Chicken livers!

Here's an embarrassingly simple pasta sauce that takes mere minutes to cook, uses cheap-ass ingredients, and tastes damn good. Besides, it's based on chicken livers, one of the totemic ingredients used by Jewish Mothers - and you know they only want what's best for you, right, bubbulah? Right.

Oh, and this recipe serves two - what, with the current financial panic you're inviting over friends?

INGREDIENTS:
• one half of a smallish onion, coarsely chopped - Sweet onions would be best, but they tend to be more expensive than regular, garden-variety yellow onions. Obey your wallet.
• six good-sized button mushrooms - This recipe would probably be better with morel or lobster mushrooms, but have you seen how much those are going for these days? Stay with the pallid American classic - just chop them into four to six pieces per 'shroom, depending upon their size.
• one-half pound of fresh chicken livers - Safeway is selling them for $2.49 a pound; do the math. Trim off the fat, cut them into smallish bite-sized pieces, and pat them dry.
• a third of a cup of cheap white wine - Remember in an earlier post when I said that you should never cook with wine you didn't want to drink? Fuggedaboutit - this is no time for gustatory niceties.
• a splash of mirin - It's completely optional to toss in a generous splash of this sweet Japanese cooking wine. Being a latte-sipping liberal, I of course have a bottle hanging around my kitchen. Sarah Palin's Mr. Sixpack probably doesn't - but gee-golly, that's no problem for that ol' soul-of-America Joe, you betcha!
• two cloves of garlic - just peel 'em and crush 'em.
• a tablespoon-plus of cooking oil - olive oil's good, but canola's okay - just don't use anything too flavorful, such as corn oil. But if that's all you've got, that's all you've got.
• pasta - I made this last night with a prepackaged Buitoni chicken-and-garlic ravioli, but if that's too up-scale for your down-sized budget, any low-rent spaghetti will do just fine.
• a pinch or three of parsley - fresh is better; dried is cheaper - guess which one I'm recommending today?
• salt and pepper to taste - You still have these two essentials kicking around your kitchen, right? If not, well, tough - apply for a federal bailout.

PREPARATION:
Start the pasta water boiling - preparing this sauce is so fast that cooking the pasta may be the most time-consuming part of the preparation. Drink a cup or three of the cooking wine while lamenting the evaporation of your 401K.

When the pasta water is just about ready, dump the oil and garlic into a saucepan, heat it to medium-high, then drop in the chicken livers. Stir them constantly until they're all lightly browned, then transfer them to a coverable bowl. Cover it.

Put the pasta on to cook, then - in the same saucepan that you browned the chicken livers - saute the onions on medium until they start to turn translucent, then add the mushrooms. After three to five minutes, the mushrooms and onions should be quite done, so dump in the wine and splash in the mirin. When the sauce starts to simmer, add the browned chicken livers. Bring the whole concoction back to a simmer, then let it simmer gently for three to five minutes while you drain the pasta.

Dump the pasta into serving bowls, stir in the sauce, salt and pepper it to taste, sprinkle on some parsley, then enjoy your buck-fifty plateful while you and your dinner partner plot the overthrow of the capitalist system. [back to top]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Last weekend, NPR's excellent This American Life had a thoroughly interesting, well-researched, and even entertaining show about the current financial meltdown entitled, appropriately enough, "Another Frightening Show About the Economy." If you haven't already listened to it, I highly recommend that you do so.

During the last ten minutes of the show, host Ira Glass and NPR reporter Adam Davidson discuss the $700 billion "bailout," and whether it was a good or a bad idea. Among the topics they bring up is an alternative to the original Paulson plan - an alternative that they claim is favored by many economists.

In this alternate plan, instead of buying struggling banks' crappy loans, the government would buy big chunks of the banks themselves, thus plowing billions of bucks into frozen credit markets while remaining protected from undervaluing the loans that they'd buy back under the original plan - and, of course, also being protected from the crappy loans themselves.

Thus, if the banks manage to pull themselves out of their current fiscal shit-hole, the government would be holding a ton of rejuvenated bank securities (preferred stock, naturally), and might even make a decent net profit on the deal - it might take years, but hey, we're not going anywhere.

This alternate method wasn't in Paulson's original plan, nor was it in the massively porkified Congressional version - at least at first. However, at the last minute, someone somehow snuck it into the final Congressionally passed version of the bill as an alternative to the original plan's "buy up all the crap" methodology.

Needless to say, the banks hate this buy-big-stakes-in-the-banks-themselves alternate plan - which is no surprise. If you were a banker, which would you prefer? The government buying up your crappy loans and letting you keep your bank (free money! free money!), or the government buying up big chunks of your bank while still expecting you to manage your bad loans - or maybe tossing you and your fellow execs out onto the sidewalk and bringing in new management? Or, even worse, the government might invest heavily in your competitor's bank, leaving you with a full portfolio of crappy loans and no help from the government - your bank would likely fail, your stock options would be worthless, and you'd be out onto the aforementioned sidewalk. No, the banks aren't overly fond of the securities-purchase plan.

Now guess what today's news brings? Well, it seems that Paulson may be coming around to the idea that buying a big bag-o-crap might not be as attractive a deal as buying a big bag-o-bank securities. What's more, the bank-security purchase plan can be accomplished far faster than the original toxic-asset acquisition plan. Sure, it's a partial nationalization of the banking system, but during a crisis like this one, even a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist like Paulson might reach for (become?) a socialist tool if it could help save the economy's bacon.

Needless to say, financial-industry lobbyists are soiling their Armani suits at this development - which, along with the fact that the alternate plan has a chance of being implemented, is the first bit of good news from the financial sector that I've heard in a while.

10/10/08, 5:20 PM PST - Update: It's official: "US to buy stake in banks, first since Depression." However, the bars in lower Manhattan that cater to the financial crowd won't have to brace too hard for a rowdily grumpy Friday night. As the linked-to article above says, "The government's stock purchases will be of nonvoting shares so it will not have power to run the companies." I guess that all those financial-services lobbyists managed to wrangle a compromise. [back to top]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Oddly enough, today's post has nothing to do with the stock markets diving after the $700 billion "bailout" was signed, nor that faux-folksy Alaskan accusing a certain senator of hangin' with "terrists," nor even the beloved Cubbies being spanked by The Hated Dodgers™.

No, today, as this blog begins its second year, I'd like to lighten things up a bit and introduce you to a little word game that Marilyn and I began playing a couple of days ago. This game has no winners or loser, just - hopefully - a few chuckles at how our language changes over the years.

The trick is to think of a phrase which consists of a modifier and a noun, in which the noun formerly could stand alone, but which now needs the modifier to distinguish it from its more-modern incarnation. It started when one of us realized that "manual typewriter" would have made no sense whatsoever to someone 100 or so years ago, when a typewriter was a typewriter was a typewriter.

Within minutes we had developed the list you see below. Some may be arguable and some may be obscure, but we think you might be amused. If you have any to contribute, send 'em along and I'll add them to the list.

manual typewriter
live music
acoustic guitar
film camera
grand piano
heirloom tomato
broadcast TV
AM radio
organic food
natural fibers
analog recording
wired network
single-core microprocessor
draft beer
Christian church
leather-soled shoes
round-wound bass-guitar strings
wild salmon
hardcover book
solid-core door
metal garbage can
stay-at-home mom
working fireplace
straight couple
wooden baseball bat
homemade cookies
tube amp
command-line interface
free-range chicken
grass-fed beef
black-and-white movie
standard transmission
New York Stock Exchange
unfiltered cigarette

We sorta petered out at that point, but I can only assume you can come up with more - especially if you rummage around in your hard-copy dictionary.

It's a helluva language, isn't it?

10-05-08 - Jeff Carlock writes: "I was going to call you on a 'land line' to join in the game, but then I thought I would just send you some 'snail mail' instead, but then I just couldn't wait." [back to top]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As I write this, word comes that the House has passed their version of the $700 billion bailout/liquidity-infusion bill that recently passed in the Senate. I haven't yet perused the House bill, but at first glance it appears to be identical to the Senate version.

And the Senate version is a doozy. Remember the original bill that Paulson proposed a week or so ago? I faulted it for its extreme brevity and "give me the money and I'll do as I please with it!" lack of accountability. It was a mere 840 words in length; the bill the Senate passed contained over 84,000 words of governmentalese. Part of that 100-times growth was legitimate detailing of the provisions of the bailout plan, including far better accountability and review. That effort, however, ended on page 113 of the 451-page tome. The remaining pages contained pure Senatorial sausage-making.

As with the making of sausage, you don't really want to know exactly how they pieced together the votes for this beast. However, a glance at the tables of contents for the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008 (pages 113 to 261) and the Tax Extenders and Minimum Tax Relief section (pages 261 to 451) will give you an insight into how Washington works.

They certainly opened my naive eyes.

Rather than overburden this page with copies of those tables of contents, I've put them on separate pages. You can find the Energy Improvement section here, and the Tax Extenders section here. I suggest you take a moment to scan them, if only to discover how wildly inappropriate some of the measures are to the bill's stated task at hand - namely, providing emergency liquidity to the American financial system.

Let me just give you the titles of some of the more intriguing items to be found buried in the bill. In the Energy Improvement section, for example, there's:
• Sec. 114. Special rules for refund of the coal excise tax to certain coal producers and exporters.
• Sec. 206. Exclusion from heavy truck tax for idling reduction units and advanced insulation.
• Sec. 402. Elimination of the different treatment of foreign oil and gas extraction income and foreign oil related income for purposes of the foreign tax credit.

In the Tax Extenders section, you can puzzle over:
• Sec. 305. Extension of 15-year straight-line cost recovery for qualified leasehold improvements and qualified restaurant improvements.
• Sec. 308. Increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
• Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility.

Then there's my personal favorite:
• Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.

And finally, two ominous sleepers:
• Sec. 401. Permanent authority for undercover operations.
• Sec. 402. Permanent authority for disclosure of information relating to terrorist activities.

My purpose in bringing this up isn't to argue for or against the value of any of these provisions, it's rather to make two simple, if obvious, points.

My first point is that bills are passed vote-by-vote, and that each lawmaker's vote is secured by larding that bill with provisions important to that individual lawmaker, no matter how wildly disconnected those provisions may be to the central purpose of that bill. As you may have read, this practice - although it has been a pork-perk since the beginning of the republic - has dramatically skyrocketed during the current administration.

My second point is that I'd be willing to bet my pocket copy of the Constitution of the United States that it's the rare lawmaker who reads the totality of any bill for which he or she votes. Don't believe me? Then give your Senator a call and ask her exactly what's meant by "Permanent authority for undercover operations," or why she just voted to remove excise taxes on only certain wooden arrows used by children. [back to top]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -