BTW- Read Kay’s post on Wisconsin and the full DWS remarks at CNN, and it is clear that once again, I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground. Your bloghost, clueless as ever. Some things really never change.

A description on Amazon:

An unprecedented tidal wave of racial violence is sweeping America.

In more than 50 cities on hundreds of occasions in the last two years, groups of black people have robbed, looted, vandalized, stolen even raped and murdered.

The reality is that crime is down in the United States over the past few years, and over the past 20 years in total, especially in cities.

It’s awful that some right-wingers are spewing this bullshit.

(1) Paul Fussell:

“Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.”

(2) A post on the subject from Wonkette that I like.

(3) Steve M is right: Chris Hayes is full of shit to avoid the word “heroes”. People who serve in war are heroes precisely because war is terrible. The fact that the right wants the 101st Chairborne to whack off to Lee Greenwood over it doesn’t make war any less terrible and it doesn’t make those who serve any less heroic. Remember: though elites start fights in jest, working-class people get shot in earnest. Update. People say I need to listen to Hayes in full context to understand, so maybe he’s not full of shit.

Dayton, Ohio, August 7th, 1865. Printed in the New York Tribune, August 22nd, 1865. To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. (“Henry”) Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir:

I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson), and the children, Milly, Jane and Grundy, go to school and are learning well; the teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday- School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, “The colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, to call you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free-papers in 1864 from the Provost- Marshal- General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly—and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve and die if it comes to that than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood, the great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

P.S.—Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson

[via]

Here’s Joe Biden addressing families brought together by the Tragedy Assistance Program Program for Survivors, a non-profit that helps families and friends of deceased military men and women. It’s twenty minutes off the cuff about his experience with death and grief, and it’s riveting.

I have to say that I’ve changed my mind pretty completely on Biden. When Obama picked him, I wondered what the hell he was thinking putting a bloviator and serial gaffe monster like this guy on the ticket. But he’s been a pretty good VP, and he’s a more genuine human being than the average politician, despite his appearance.

Here’s to more picnics and fewer wars.

But since this is a political blog, Adam Weinstein at Mother Jones has a list of “9 Progressive Vets to Watch in the Battle for Congress”—anybody here from any of these districts want to give us the local viewpoint? Should we be setting up ActBlue page for one or more of these candidates?

And what else is on the agenda for this (American) holiday Monday?

After nearly two weeks of heated debate over whether President Obama should attack Republican Mitt Romney’s tenure at a private-equity firm, Democratic leaders across the country say they are largely united behind the strategy, even as some concede an uncertain outcome and new polls show Obama has lost ground nationally.

The Democratic leaders, in numerous interviews over the last week, said they are hearing little or no resistance among the party faithful in their states to a strategy that Republicans have characterized as anti-capitalist. And Obama has no plans to back off; his campaign will roll out more stories in the coming weeks that advisers said will again show Bain Capital as a corporate menace that protects profits at the expense of people and jobs.

“He wanted to have this conversation,” Jim Burn, chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, said of Romney, the likely GOP nominee. “We’re going to have it. There should be no hesi­ta­tion or equivocation.”

I’m sure the Snooze Hour and Sunday morning crews won’t be happy, but how many divisions do they have?

Top Wisconsin Democrats are furious with the national party — and the Democratic National Committee in particular — for refusing their request for a major investment in the battle to recall Scott Walker, I’m told. The failure to put up the money Wisconsin Dems need to execute their recall plan comes at a time when the national Republican Party is sinking big money into defending Walker, raising fears that the DNC’s reluctance could help tip the race his way. “We are frustrated by the lack of support from the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Governors Association,” a top Wisconsin Democratic Party official tells me. “Scott Walker has the full support and backing of the Republican Party and all its tentacles. We are not getting similar support.”
According to the Wisconsin Dem, the party has asked the DNC for $500,000 to help with its massive field operation. While the DNC has made generally supportive noises, the money has not been forthcoming, the official says — with less than a month until the June 5th recall election. The DNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This idea that labor has unlimited resources is a fantasy,” the Wisconsin Dem says. “Our needs go well beyond that.”
UPDATE: Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Mike Tate goes on record about the dispute in a statement:
“Having received absolute support from the Democratic Governors Association, we also are in conversation with the Democratic National Committee to help in this battle against Scott Walker, a right-wing diva who has the full backing of the national corporate Tea Party movement.”
UPDATE II: Wisconsin Dems say the problem isn’t with the Democratic Governors Association, which has already committed more to the recall fight than they’ve ever committed to a Wisconsin gubernatorial election in recent history. Still no comment from the DNC.

A lot of “top Wisconsin Democrats” but no names.

Here’s CNN:

The DGA says that the new expenditure brings to over $3 million the amount the organization has spent in Wisconsin, which they say is more than what they spent in the state in both the 2006 and 2010 gubernatorial contests, and “underscores our commitment to highlighting Scott Walker’s worst-in-the-nation record on job creation.”

The DNC has directed $1.4 million to Wisconsin so far in the 2012 cycle with $800,000 of that coming since November, according to figures provided to the Fix. Nearly a quarter million of those dollars have been directed to the state party.
DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is headed to the state to raise money for Barrett later this month. And, Obama for America state director Tripp Wellde is also working on the recall effort.
“We are completely committed to electing Tom Barrett,” said DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse. “Any suggestion of a lack of commitment or engagement on the part of the DNC/OFA is off the mark and does nothing more than play into the hands of Scott Walker and his billionaire buddies who launched their frontal assault on working families in Wisconsin.”
Added Wisconsin Democratic state party executive director Maggie Brickerman: “The Democratic Party of Wisconsin has always had and will continue to have a strong relationship with the DNC and OFA.”

This is also from the Washington Post, and it’s closer to my take on this than John’s take:

So, what’s the truth amid all of this spin? That depends on where you stand.
From the DNC perspective, they have made investments well in excess of the $500,000 that was requested and have made other contributions — man hours and the use of various Obama for America voters lists — that make clear how big a priority recalling Walker is for them.
DNC allies note that with such a tiny portion of the electorate genuinely undecided, the work they are doing to identify and turnout pro-Barrett (or anti-Walker) votes is invaluable to increasing the party’s chances of winning on June 5.

As always in major spin wars like this one, there is also some level of butt-covering at work. If Walker does wind up winning, it will be a major blow to organized labor nationally and will be cast as a sign that the President is vulnerable in the state. With stakes that high, everyone within the Democratic party is making sure they have plausible deniability about whose feet a loss should/would/could be laid.

If they win, Walker will be only the third governor in US history to be recalled. This really is unusual, and no one really knows the effect of all that Citizens money, and we probably shouldn’t look at it as an ordinary race. Anyway, I am pulling for them.

Under our current FDA laws, FDA says if you want to market prune juice, you can’t say that it cures constipation.

You can’t make a health claim about a food supplement or about a vitamin, you can do it about a pharmaceutical, but you’re not allowed to do it about a health supplement.

I think this should change. There have been several court cases that show this goes against not only the spirit but the letter of the law of the First Amendment. So this amendment would change that.

This amendment would stop the FDA from censoring claims about curative, mitigative effects of dietary supplements. It would also stop the FDA from prohibiting distribution of scientific articles and publications regarding the role of nutrients in protecting against disease. Despite four court orders condemning the practice as a violation of the First Amendment, the FDA continues to suppress consumers’ right to be informed and to make informed choices by denying them this particular information. It’s time for Congress to put an end to FDA censorship.

Freedom to be fleeced for everybody!  What’s more American than that?

In recent years, there’s been a curious rhetorical move developed by prominent neoliberals: the pretense that they don’t understand the term “neoliberal,” the pose that they literally don’t understand what the term means when leftist critics use it. I’ll be upfront: I think that this is a dodge, an act. I don’t believe that there’s a single neoliberal political mind that has ever actually been ignorant of how we mean the term when we use it. I think it’s a part of a neoliberal tactic to marginalize and silence leftist dissent, which I’ll get to later. Neoliberalism is no more vague, complicated, or ill-defined than any other conventional political ideologies, which are by nature shaggy beasts. But since I keep hearing this claim, I thought, hey, let’s define.

There are lots of consequences and complications that stem from its basic definition, as there are with any political ideology. But the fundamental meachanisms aren’t complicated. To put it simply,  neoliberalism is the pursuit of traditionally liberal ends through traditionally conservative means, with the important corollary that when faced with a conflict between those liberal ends and those conservative means, neoliberals will always choose the means. In practice, this means that neoliberals prefer redistributive economic justice, but only insofar as it is achieved through “market” mechanisms. So let’s posit that traditional leftists and neoliberals both want better living conditions for the working class. A traditional leftist pushes for worker organization and collective bargaining, which enables them to secure their own best interests, such as higher wages and better benefits. Additionally, traditional leftists push for legal protections in the workplace against predatory employers and in favor of fair, equitable, safe, and clean working conditions. In contrast, neoliberals hope to advance the conditions of those same workers by making conditions better for employers, by dismantling regulation, lowering tax burdens, and facilitating growth. Economic growth, then, will “raise all boats,” raising worker wages and allowing them to buy iPhones, soda, and sneakers. Both traditional leftists and neoliberals tend to favor redistributive social programs, although the correct degree of redistribution and the programs that achieve it are subject to contentious debate.

The essential point, of course, is that neoliberals supports establishment power—corporations, financiers, and the wealthy—while traditional leftism opposes it.

There are a few important realities to understand. First, neoliberalism is the West’s dominant policy platform, and has essentially been so for 30 years. Democrats and Republicans differ greatly on both social issues and on the necessity of redistributive social programs, and these are hugely important distinctions, but on the question of dismantling the regulatory state and worker protections, there’s been remarkable continuity since the Reaganite-Thatcherite turn. The reason for this success with elites is straightforward. Neoliberalism provides intellectual cover for economic policies that benefit the wealthiest and most powerful. The wealthiest and most powerful control our policy apparatus.

Despite this success with elites, neoliberalism has been a profound political failure. By that I mean that neoliberalism has failed to develop an enduring political consistency among voters. The ideology is very much one of the elite, political writers and thinkers and philosophers, people who work at think tanks, “wonks,” etc. It’s an affluent constituency. Indeed, this is one of the major intellectual failures of the ideology: it is made up almost exclusively of those who will never suffer due to the trade offs that it prefers. The political bloggers who advocate neoliberalism don’t work in factories (and may never have met anyone who does), so it is very easy for them to call for, say, dismantling work place safety protections. When your own workplace involves nothing more dangerous than a Macbook, such protections seem antiquated. When you never have to change in a workplace locker room, your interest in preserving labor laws that provide workers with a way to confront sexual assault or its threat is muted. When there is no chance of your boss insisting that you work hours you will not be compensated for, or be fired, you don’t see the need for unions. Etc.

Why has neoliberalism failed to resonate with those outside of the educated political elite? Because it turns out that people don’t want to be wards of the state. They want self-determination, meaningful work, and the confidence that comes from knowing you have power to secure your own interests. This is the failure of pity charity liberalism. Even in its purely theoretical form, neoliberalism has little to offer workers beyond the promise of higher monetary compensation. (You sometimes hear neoliberals say that full employment will give workers the ability to quit if their work life becomes untenable, but of course we have observed systematic exploitation of labor even in times of full employment.) Because  of this, neoliberals constantly advance a “currency exchange uber alles” mentality, a philosophy dependent on the notion that there are essentially no human goods other than economic goods. This is what compels neoliberals to look for “markets in everything,” to reduce every aspect of human welfare to monetary terms, and to insist that GDP and growth are the only meaningful metrics of human flourishing. But people want more, as well they should.

Consider a middle aged worker living in a factory town in the suburbs of Cincinnati. You were able to work at a local plant and provide more for your family than your own parents were able to provide for you. Thanks to a powerful union, the conditions at your plant were safe, mechanisms were in place to redress grievances, and you earned a living wage. The local community flourished. The neoliberal policy apparatus pushed to remove any structural incentive for corporations to keep the plant going. It closed. Now you are forced to consider shitty jobs with bad benefits, no chance of union representation, and no security of any kind. There are no pensions, only 401(k)s that are subject to the vicissitudes of the market. Your children are unable to find work. The local community has been devastated. For your town, the result has been nothing but bad. Yes, as the neoliberals constantly remind us, you can buy an iPhone if you can afford one. But these material goods do nothing to make you more feel more secure or fulfilled, and don’t help in a culture that (for good or ill) associates a meaningful life with meaningful work.

Neoliberals not only refuse to recognize the human tragedy of all of this, referring to it as “creative destruction” and the necessity of capitalism. (Note, again, that as they are employed at magazines, think tanks, and universities, and thus don’t live with the consequences of these changes, creative destruction is an entirely academic concept.) They not only refuse to define costs and benefits in any terms but monetary ones, and thus pointedly ignore your suffering. They actually insult you for thinking that the situation sucks. They call you fundamentally irrational, nativist, populist, and probably racist. Openly. This is the fundamental political dynamic of our time: working and middle class people have had their working conditions systematically destroyed, and in the face of this, neoliberal elites have reacted with callous disregard. This failure to respond to genuine need has opened up space for conservative ideologues to play on their insecurities and resentments, leading to a political nightmare that makes liberal governance impossible. I don’t excuse the ruinous decisions of those who have turned to the GOP out of feelings of desperation and anger, but you simply cannot understand the dominance of conservatism and the rise of the Tea Party without understanding the failure of neoliberal policy elites to respond to real economic devastation.

(Why can’t we get the appropriate Keynesian countercyclical response to the current depression? We don’t have a political constituency that can fight elite resistance to such a response.)

For all of these reasons, for conservatives neoliberals are the ultimate useful idiots: they support deregulation and attacks on workers’ rights, which also enjoy conservative support, while their redistributive preferences are easily defeated. Liberalism and leftism face long odds under the best of times: the rich and corporations get what they want by default. By lending their political efforts to both the conservative preference for laissez faire economics, which enjoys the support of reactionary power, and to the liberal preference for redistributive social programs, neoliberals essentially ensure that they will get the former and not the latter.

I find it totally uncontroversial to say that in recent decade efforts to deregulate, globalize, and attack the power of labor have been vastly more successful than efforts to expand the social welfare state. There is this notion of a neoliberal grand bargain, wherein corporations and the financial class get the continued dismantling of worker protections and the lower classes get more wealth redistributed to them. I wouldn’t support such a bargain anyway, as I believe in worker power and self-determination. But ultimately it’s irrelevant; what neoliberals have achieved is the widespread dismantling of worker protections without a proportionate expansion of the welfare state.

Consider PPACA. (Obamacare.) While a compromise, and not sufficient, it’s an incredibly important and necessary bill, and the record will show that I argued for it vociferously when it was under debate. But consider the conditions. You’re talking about a unique political moment, with a new party and president replacing a deeply unpopular president, where the president’s party controlled both houses of Congress and where the president had run on an explicit promise of passing health care reform. Despite all of that, a watered-down compromise bill passed by only the thinnest of margins. The law remains in considerable jeopardy, from both judicial and legislative threat. (Again, a problem with pity-charity liberalism: it ensures that the material conditions of the lower classes will be subject to the whims of a cyclical political system.) Is that, truly, the best that can be hoped for, when we have bargained away so much of the regulatory state? It amazes me, the plainly self-aggrandizing way in which neoliberals speak about their project, when you look at the acres of failure that the project has wrought.

This speaks to a simple reality: neoliberalism is immune to reality. Neoliberals have dominated the economic policy apparatus of the West for three decades. I could point out that the rise of neoliberalism in the early 80s tracks stagnant wages and spiraling inequality almost perfectly. Or just look at where we are. Look at the uncertainty, the loss, the human devastation. The US government, the leadership of the European Union, the IMF, the World Bank—each has unequivocally embraced the neoliberal platform. Our conditions are what they are. But the discourse remains one that assumes the superior seriousness of neoliberals. My alternative is driven by strong unions, powerful protections for workers, a robust regulatory regime, large-scale redistribution of wealth, nationalization of the banking system, socialized health care, and strict checks on the power of corporations and the wealthiest, up to and including tax rates that essentially cap the resources an individual can control. To suggest such an alternative does not invite just disagreement but contempt.

And that leads to my final point, which is that neoliberals argue with those on their left solely through an idiom of disrespect. This is not an intrinsic part of the ideology, but I suppose an enculturated artifact of those who are most prominent within neoliberal circles. I have argued with neoliberals for my entire adult life. I can count on two hands the number of times that my interlocutors engaged without snark, dismissal, or sarcasm. Consider, again, the pose that a neoliberal doesn’t know what neoliberalism is. Typically, this pretense is dropped as soon as they meet with an actual response, and they reveal that they never really cared in the first place. The typical neoliberal argues against both conservatives and leftists, but he reserves his contempt for the latter. We are not met just with derision but with the bullying insistence that there is no alternative. We are consigned to political nonexistence.

We are all of us living in the shadow of a terrible financial crisis, one which was unambiguously the fault of the wealthiest and one which has wrecked economic devastation on the bottom. To spend political capital complaining about interior decorator licensing in such a context is obscene. Now is the time to speak the clear truth, which is that for America to be the nation that we want, we have to make things for those at the top worse. They can afford it. Perhaps that’s the greatest sin of all of it: the notion that what’s good for the wealthiest is good for the poorest. If we derive any wisdom from this terrible crisis, let’s start by acknowledging the obvious: that different classes are in fact natural antagonists, that sometimes we need to support one against the other, and that when those on top have too much power and too much money, it has to be clawed back, by the people, in a way that some won’t like. No more lies about rising tides, but instead the reality of class conflict.

Are we going to get that? Probably not; the rich and powerful tend to get what they want, and they can ensure that the always have pet philosophers, ready to defend their interests with the pretense of humanitarianism. And so much the worse for us.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Sunday classified Democratic efforts in the Wisconsin recall election as a “test run” for the presidential race.

“It’s given the Obama for America operation an opportunity to do the dry run we need of our massive, significant dynamic grassroots presidential campaign,” the Florida representative said of the battleground state on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Wasserman Schultz, who is scheduled to campaign with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett on Tuesday, said he has a “real opportunity” to oust incumbent Republican Gov. Scott Walker in the June 5 election. But she was quick to add it will also test the Obama re-election campaign and the grassroots operation in the state.

You’re just the guinea pigs, guys. This is a test run. A rehearsal. Sure, you have an “opportunity” to win, but what really matters is the big show.

Can someone make her stop talking about Wisconsin, please?

Watch:

Over to the snarling mass.  Y’all know who you are.

*also the man behind the Annals of Improbable Research.

“For heaven’s sake, you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he’ll defeat you,” [Simpson] added. “He can’t murder you. He can’t burn your house. The only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we’re in extremity, you shouldn’t even be in Congress.”

...

“If you want to be a purist, go somewhere on a mountaintop and praise the East or something. But if you want to be in politics, you learn to compromise. And you learn to compromise on the issue without compromising yourself. Show me a guy who won’t compromise and I’ll show you a guy with rock for brains.”

Simpson admits that such heresies mark him as a RINO —which is truly amazing considering his actual politics over decades.  But there we are.  We have one centrist political party, and one gang of rocks-for-brains political suicide bombers.  And there is a non-trivial chance that said feral sociopathic children may control both houses of Congress and the White House next January.

We have a ton of work to do ‘twixt now and then, folks.

Image:  Albert Bierstadt, Farallon Islands, before 1902.  (Me mum loved Bierstadt, as do I.)

“I do not understand the cost-benefit here,” Will said. “The costs are clear. The benefits – what voter is going to vote for him because he’s seen with Donald Trump? The cost of appearing with this bloviating ignoramus is obvious, it seems to me. Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low, and you can still intrude into American politics.”

I’d only add that this observation could be applied to less public buffoons currently weighing in on the GOPster side.  (I’m pleased to see that Joe Ricketts seems in the process of cursing the Cubbies (w. a losing streak now up to 11!) more thoroughly than ever did Mr. Wills pretentious fandom.)

More clear thinking from unexpected to sources to come…

Image:  F. A. Phillips, Child with a Punch puppet, 1878.  ( I must say that I’ve rarely seen such a perfect representation of the Romney-Trump relationship….)