Friday, July 15, 2011

The Applause from the Talk Shows and Game Shows Washed Out the Propped-Open Door Like Distant Rain

It is interesting, said Thursday Night Pints' special guest W, a presidential historian, that there is ZERO effective push back from the Left on the gutting of progressive programs Obama is proposing. Every time Eric Cantor throws a shit fit Obama throws a shit fit about Cantor's shit fit and then moves right towards Cantor who then moves further right.

God bless Eric Cantor, I said, the skeevy motherfucker. Suppose, for giggles, Cantor has gone off-script and thoroughly pissed-off Corporate, wrecked Corporate's storyboard, wouldn't that be great? Too bad it's a motherfucking work.

Do you think Cantor's on- or off-script, D asked W. He's the trial balloon, said W. There's three weeks of drama to go before the August 3 deadline, watch how his string is played out and wrung back. Note what Cantor is demanding today to what Obama concedes by August 3.

Everything's a work, I said. I work you, you work me; we like or dislike each other over the way we work each other. Huh, asked W. He proposes the same fucking equation every week, said L. I bought her a scotch, she bought me a beer.













SONG OF YES AND NO [COFFEE & DOLLS]

April Bernard

It was a storefront for a small-time numbers runner, 
pretending to be some sort of grocery. Coffeemakers 
and Bustello cans populated the shelves, sparsely. 
Who was fooled. The boxes bleached in the sun, 
the old guys sat inside on summer lawn chairs, 
watching tv. The applause from the talk shows and game shows 
washed out the propped-open door like distant rain.

It closed for a few months. The slick sedan disappeared. 
One spring day, it reopened, and this time a sign 
decorated the window: COFFEE & DOLLS. 
Yarn-haired, gingham-dressed floppy dolls
lolled among the coffee cans. A mastiff puppy, 
the size and shape of a tipped-over fire hydrant, 
guarded as the sedan and the old guys returned.

I don't know about you, but I've been looking
for a narrative in which suffering makes sense.
I mean, the high wail of the woman holding her dead child,
the wail that filled the street. I mean the sudden
fatal blooms on golden skin. I mean the crack deaths,
I mean the ice-cream truck that cruised the alphabets
and sold crack to the same deedle-dee-dee tune as fudgsicles.
I mean the raw scabs of the beaten mastiff, and many other 
   things.



10 comments:

  1. Krugman's obamapostasy will never be ready:

    Seems to me that calling him 'Barack Herbert Hoover Obama' qualifies, BDR.
    ~

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  2. "Fiction's digressive powers" beat plot any day.

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  3. Yup. And I hear The Recognitions calling me. It's been five years or so, I've run out of steam in the Sorokin and can't find anything else that gets me going. Time again.

    Thunder, until Krugman concedes that Obama is choosing his policies with the assistance of GOP crazy (as opposed to *because* of GOP crazy) I'll consider his obamapostasy as never forthcoming.

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  4. I miss when we used to simply bomb our way to success by bombing others into submission. Can't we start a fourth (fifth? sixth? seventh?) war already?

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  5. The presidential historian is naive.

    There's not any "moving right" going on.

    Obama's not "moving to" anything. He'd have to start from a position to the left in order to move right.

    And he's not starting from there.

    Utter fail by the "presidential historian."

    Embarrassing, really.

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  6. Well, since I already put words in his mouth here, let me put more: I think he meant that Obama is able to move as far right politically as he is philosophically because of the cover both Cantor and the pussiness of the American Left provide. I don't believe he's as naive as I may have accidentally made him appear.

    I barely know him (he's a GW professor who's a friend of D), though I'll email this post to D and ask him forward it to W to see if he wants to respond.

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  7. I can't get bent out of shape about whether someone's moving right or left. My frame of reference is rationality. Ideology is not rational (tho' to implement it must utilize same). Is there a rational way out of whatever debt issues this country has? Is there a rational way to deal with the debt ceiling? Is there a rational way to put people to work? Who's being rational? What is the rationality behind their actions?

    If Boehner, as I suspect he is, is using Cantor as a stalking horse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking_horse, Obama is trying to pin Boehner onto Cantor's saddle. That is rational negotiation. Boehner doesn't want that. Mitchell is trying to keep out of the way, retain [if you will] dignity.

    No rational negotiator commits until he first knows whom he is negotiating with/against. The R's are indeed working him.

    When the President speaks, you know he can deliver (Sanders & Kucinich notwithstanding). So, the President must remain cautious. "Nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to." He can offer, knowing that a divided R can't accept any kind of deal with an illegitimate, half-breed Dem.

    It is up to the Krugmans to threaten Obamapostasy. To apply Cantor pressure, even tho' they're not in the room—if only to alert the Rs that O is facing some pressure from his left.

    Re: Corporate. Corporate is so broad, so flexible, it will adapt to most any scenario in such a fashion as to look like it planned it that way—cause it's not an it. It's a they. And they are locked in a truly Darwinian struggle for profit. Some will go up w/ an O victory, others will decline. Some will go up w/ an R victory, some will decline. And there's overlap in either case.

    The question is: is it more rational to pursue individual interests or societal interests? D rhetoric says the latter; R the former. Corporate says theory doesn't matter, we'll take what we can get—and they've got the money/muscle to back it up.

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  8. Every damn one of you (including your pint buddies) are ignoring the fact that Cantor really is as dumb as a bag of rocks. Somebody says a sentence to him and he just repeats it until he grabs onto a new sentence ... often a matter of months. You're giving him and Boehner much too much credit.

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  9. Republicans are automatically against anything the president wants, even if they have supported similar proposals in the past. So why don't the Dim's call them out on this fuckery more often? OBama does it all the time, and I give him kudo's for that as logically it makes NO friggin sense..of course the voters, who have the attention span of a gnat, don't notice this hypocritical addition to the GOP bs.

    Oh, and that is such a cute kitteh pic..did you take it or filch if off the intertoobs? Reminds me of one of my fat house cats Scooter Lee..who always gets a vote or three during the local elections here in Redneckistan.

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  10. Donna Edwards is a Libya hawk and also she voted for this, the largest defense spending bill in history:

    http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll532.xml

    She deserves nobody's vote. Of course, the Washington Post is fine with her.

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