Iranian Funk

Wow, this looks like some great lost music.

Also, it's fantastic that 70s album covers in Iran were as ridiculous as in the U.S.

Music Festivals

Sasha Frere-Jones is making sense:

I don’t go to lots of music festivals. If I need to lie on a big field with my friends, drink beer, and see into the eye of the universe, I can usually pull it off without the help of AEG Live. As for hearing music outside, the signal coming out of a big P.A. system faces many obstacles. Amplified sound has to battle with nature (noisily fertile wheat fields, rain) and man (cars being dismantled by meth-heads, talking). How can you deliver decent sound to all those people dispersed over a big, variegated area full of dead spots? Live sound engineers are brave and admirable people.

Sound is one reason I find it hard to love music festivals. The other reason is a logical take on the cost-benefit ratio. Bands who play these festivals also appear at indoor venues where sound is more easily managed; the particular bills of particular festivals never seem like magical opportunities. What’s the point of suffering through unpredictable sound, short sets, and spinners if you can spend less time and money seeing your band of choice in a venue designed for live music? (I can wait the extra months.) I like music and I like sunshine and I like people (within reason) but music festivals have led me to rethink these positions.

I feel exactly the same way. Is there anything good about music festivals? I guess you see a lot of acts for a relatively little bit of money. But you barely see them. They play for 40 minutes and you are 1/2 a mile away. It's usually hot or rainy. The sound usually sucks. You get bleedover from other stages.

Meanwhile, I could see these bands play when they come to town, get awesome sound, be 20 (or at least 200) feet from the stage, and get a 2 hour set. I know which sounds better to me.

Major Changes in the AFL-CIO--Progressive Blogosphere Doesn't Care

The AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh has produced one seismic change and one significant change in the labor movement.

First, the fourteen year reign of John Sweeney as AFL-CIO president has ended. I think Sweeney deserves a good bit of credit for moving labor from the staid Cold War consensus years of George Meany and Layne Kirkland and focusing more heavily on organizing. But labor continues to struggle with deeply entrenched leadership. Sweeney did everything he was going to do by 2000, but has stuck around for almost ten more years. Moreover, Sweeney was unable to stop labor's decline in the U.S., but I don't think he deserves much blame for this--the conditions for organized labor in the United States are worse now than any time before the Civil War. Even when the government actively oppressed labor, at least workers understood all the great things unions could do for them. Today, they don't. The anti-union brainwashing of the past sixty years has proven incredibly effective.

His replacement is Richard Trumka. I generally like Trumka. He's the former Steelworkers president. I met him in 2000 and found him to be personable, energetic, and committed to working-class people. He was a big player behind the federation's recommitment to organizing. I am a bit concerned with his commitment to decentralized leadership, given that he's been the heir apparent for the entire Sweeney regime. To what extent will he represent new ideas? And given that he's 60 years old, will he stay in power for 15 or 20 years as well? One hopes not.

Nonetheless, Trumka's opening speech was certainly positive. He wants to push for even more organizers, adjust to a service-based economy, organize people of color and women, and have a big focus on immigrants. Moreover, he sees the need for a true international union and wants to organize workers in the developing world.

Well, that's certainly an ambitious agenda. And probably not attainable. But it's also important that the AFL-CIO maintain an active role in American life during the economic downturn. Assuming the recession hangs around awhile and assuming Americans actually learn any lessons from it, perhaps we may a resurgence in unions as workers realize that unregulated capitalism has failed them on multiple levels.

The other big piece of news is the return of UNITE HERE to the AFL-CIO. In 2005, the union left the federation as part of the Change to Win Coalition, a group of unions ironically led by SEIU, Sweeney's own organization, that were frustrated with labor's decline and Sweeney's lack of action to solve labor's problems. While I supported this at the time, mostly because I figured it couldn't hurt, Change to Win has done approximately nothing to improve labor's situation. I don't think it's hurt, but SEIU and Change to Win leader Andy Stern hasn't shown any more ability than Sweeney to solve these intractable problems. Whether UNITE HERE's defection from Change to Win and return to the AFL-CIO is directly related to Trumka's coronation, I do not know. But UNITE HERE also split itself earlier in the year over philosophical issues that arose out of UNITE and HERE merging several years ago. Many left to join SEIU. But clearly Change to Win has little reason to exist at this point. United labor is probably more useful than split labor, though again, it may not matter a whole lot either way.

Finally, it's somewhat disheartening that these events have received virtually no coverage in the progressive blogosphere, outside of labor blogs. Nothing from leading individual bloggers like Yglesias and Klein, nothing from TPM, nothing on Kos, nothing on Huffington Post, nothing at Think Progress. If I've missed something, let me know, but these key events in liberal politics are receiving absolutely zero coverage from people that should care deeply. I know that health care is dominating the agenda, and well it should. But it's hardly the only thing people are talking about and there's really no excuse for this--except to say that the progressive blogosphere seems as indifferent to organized labor as most of the rest of America. Nothing makes me feel more pessimistic about labor's future than this; even its allies don't care about it. Unless they need a check.

Note: if I have missed any coverage from the major blogs on this, please let me know. But I don't think I have.

The Myth of Bipartisanship

As Lemieux suggests (and as he's stated more directly elsewhere), the whole idea of New Deal and Great Society programs passing with bipartisan support entails a willful misunderstanding of the politics of those times. First, the post-civil rights party realignment completely shifted the playing field--before this both parties had both pro and anti-civil rights members, based largely but not entirely on region. Bipartisanship took place in this context because it was incredibly difficult to get all members of either party to agree with each other. Politicians had more in common with members of the other party who were from their region than with their fellow party members from across the country. Johnson could pass civil rights legislation with bipartisan support because northern Republicans and northern Democrats would vote for it, even if southern Democrats and some western Republicans would not.

Conservative commentators misinterpret this history to talk about how no legislation should pass without bipartisan support, but partisanship meant something quite different in 1935 or 1965.

Moreover, the one unique thing in American history about the modern Republican Party is its nihilism. Never before have we had a political party want to destroy the other side simply for the sake of its destruction, offering absolutely nothing or no alternatives in return. That doesn't mean that political parties haven't hated each other before--the Whigs pretty much only agreed that they hated Jacksonians, but in reality that led to intensive intra-party infighting. This is a unified opposition that has only one goal: destroy Obama. The closest thing we've seen to this in the past was pre-Civil War southern fireeating Democrats. But despite their northern lackeys like James Buchanan, Lewis Cass, Franklin Pierce, and Stephen Douglas, ultimately this extremist wing was dominated by southerners. This eventually tore the Democratic Party apart. The Republicans are definitely not in this position.

Expanding the House?

So, conservative activists are filing a lawsuit to expand the House of Representatives in order to ensure truly equal representation for all people. Because representation is decided on proportional population per state, some people get underrepresented. A problem? Perhaps. But this is a fantastically bad idea:

That 400,000-person disparity between top and bottom has generated a federal court challenge that is set to be filed Thursday in Mississippi, charging that the system effectively disenfranchises people in certain states. The lawsuit asks the courts to order the House to fix the problem by increasing its size from 435 seats to at least 932, or perhaps as many as 1,761. That way, the plaintiffs argue, every state can have districts that are close to parity.

“When you look at the data, those are pretty wide disparities,” said Scott Scharpen, a former health care financial consultant from California who has organized the court challenge. “As an American looking at it objectively, how can we continue with a system where certain voters’ voting power is substantially smaller than others’?”

Of course, a larger House may not thrill Americans who are tired of Congress, and may make an already unwieldy body more so. “You may create a more equitable system that’s less governable, and I’m not sure the country comes out ahead,” said Kenneth Prewitt, a former Census director who now teaches at Columbia University.

Prewitt is clearly correct. You know, America is basically ungovernable today. Putting another 500 or 1300 members into Congress is only going to make things worse.

I did find it interesting to find out why Congress actually stopped growing in size in the 1910s: too many immigrants that rural states did not want to see represented. Racism works in strange ways.

Colbert on Corporations and the 14th Amendment

In one of the greatest episodes of Colbert I've ever seen (from Tuesday), he explains the 1886 decision to give corporations the same rights as people under the 14th Amendment and what that means in regard to the soon to be announced Supreme Court decision throwing all out corporate limits in campaign spending. It's probably the most succinct, and of course funniest, explanation of these issues I've ever heard.

I highly recommend checking it out.

Historical Image of the Day

Food and drink menu from United States Hotel, Washington, 1852. The dinner was dedicated to the election of Franklin Pierce as president.

If I were at Franklin Pierce's inauguration, I think I'd be having some saddle of venison from the tenth legion Virginia, ornamented beef tongue, terrapins stewed in diadem, and partridges in pair French style. I mean if the country is going to hell, why not eat? But the real question I would have trouble answering is whether to have celery dressed or celery in stalk. How can one make such a difficult decision?

I also like that it wasn't an open bar.

In truth, if I was at the Franklin Pierce inauguration, I'd probably be trying to feed him poison, but that's for another post.

Connecticut Smackdown?

This is amusing. Linda McMahon, The CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment and wife of fake sports impresario Vince McMahon, is throwing her hat into the GOP primary race for Connecticut Senator. The winner will face 5-term Senator Chris Dodd.

This is interesting to me because of the precedent-- looking at the roster of celebrities that have dabbled in politics, it seems rather one-sided in that they tend to be conservatives. I live a scant 40 minutes from Palm Springs, the stomping grounds of the late Sonny Bono, a Republican mayor and congressman. Of course, Californians are contending with our celebrity GOP governor as well. NFL Hall of Famer Lynn Swann was the Republican nominee for PA governor in 2006, and is rumored to be considering challenging Arlen Specter. Clint Eastwood was the mayor of Carmel, having run and won as a Republican. The most obvious parallel is Jessie Ventura's tenure as governor of Minnesota.

For the left, we have Al Franken, after a tooth-and-nail fight with Norm Coleman. Jerry Springer doesn't really count, as he was a politician before he was a celebrity, and he isn't in politics anymore. I know I'm missing likely a lot of examples, but it seems on the face of it, the GOP has more celebrities involved in politics than the left. In many ways, George W. Bush was something of a celebrity, in that he was the son of a president with no accomplishments of note when he defeated Ann Richards for the Texas governorship.

This is all of little consequence, though I find it odd that there is this refrain in the discourse about out of touch celebrities (elitist Hollywood liberals, etc.) coming from the right. As far as the Connecticut senate race goes, I hope Linda McMahon wins the primary; Dodd is by some measure vulnerable, but I can't see salt of the earth New Englanders voting for the CEO of the WWE.

Japan Forced to Confront Its Eating Habits

Japan is freaking out because the world's fish are disappearing. To be specific, the numbers of bluefin tuna that the Japanese love for sushi are declining rapidly, largely, though not entirely, because of the insatiable Japanese market for them. Of course, the Japanese are going to do nothing except demand that no measures are taken to change this. They wouldn't want to give up their fish for 5 years in order so that they can eat them for longer after that period!

This shortsightedness is hardly a Japanese characteristic. We are no different except that most of our meat comes from land-based mammals. However, our own love for Filet-o-Fish at McDonald's is sending other species near extinction. Within 15 to 20 years, we will have very few choices for eating fish. I wonder what our reaction will be? Anger at the past for not dealing with the problem? Probably. But we'll probably have the same habits in 20 years and will be rapidly ending the existence of any number of other species.

Drought, Climate Change, and Societal Problems

The problems Kenya faces right now are probably indicative of common situations the world will have to face as the century winds on.

Kenya is in the middle of a terrible drought. This happens from time to time, though certainly climate change can make droughts worse. There are lots of people and cattle in Kenya as well, putting too much pressure on the limited resources of the country. When drought hits, people start killing each other over control to resources. In the last week, more than 30 Kenyans have died in tribal raids to steal cattle in order to replenish depleted herds.

We can't blame any one drought or hurricane or natural disaster on climate change, even though they are likely to become more common. But we can directly link climate change to melting glaciers, a situation which is making Kenya's water supplies even more threatened. Right now, with the drought combined with dwlindling glacial melt, there isn't enough water to run the nation's power plants. People are getting increasingly desperate and turning to violence as a result.

It's going to be a real worldwide challenge to deal with these conflicts in coming decades, both within and between nations.

Fighting Malaria Without DDT

There's been a lot of talk over the last few years about the need to use DDT to fight malaria. The argument goes like this--"First world environmentalists are putting birds ahead of people. DDT kills mosquitoes that kill people. We need to use DDT to save people's lives."

The problem with this calculation is that buys whole-hog into the technology fetish of American (and Western) culture that has been prominent for the last 200 years. We constantly believe technology can solve all our problems. If there are mosquitoes giving people malaria, let's use powerful pesticides to kill them, regardless of the consequences. If we need more water, let's build a bigger dam. If it's too hard to fry an egg, let's get one of those microwave egg cooker deals.

Not only do these technologies have unintended consequences (such, as say, sending birds to extinction), but they are often unnecessary. The World Health Organization has announced that they can fight malaria without DDT. A pilot project in Mexico and Central America has led to a drastic reduction in malaria over the past few years through a variety of methods that do not require poisons.

Not only is this a great thing because it saves lives, but it's also great because it challenges the technology fetish. This is a great piece of evidence in support of creative thinking and policy planning and against a reflexive reliance on chemical technologies.

We Are Not a Nation Founded on Christian Principles

Yet another piece of evidence to this fact:

The Treaty of Tripoli. Passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams in 1797.

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

Via Helmut.

Panic Blogging: 1857

By request, a discussion of the Panic of 1857.

The boom and bust cycle of the pre-Depression American economy is remarkable. Every 15 to 20 years there was a huge bust: 1817, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, 1907, 1929. And a few smaller ones in between like 1883. Exuberance, get rich quick schemes, and shoddy financial policy, followed by bankruptcy and mass suffering was the American way.

It's possible that the Panic of 1857 holds a few lessons for today. This was a rapid but relatively brief downturn, which is different than the long-term depressions caused in 1837, 1873, 1893, and 1929. But recovery was slow (a jobless recovery one might say). Ultimately, little changed in the economic system because of this depression, but the political outcome was significant. In the end, ramping up production to fight the Civil War pulled the nation out of the slump.

The actual reasons for the boom came from the huge riches of the California Gold Rush, which began in earnest in 1849 and rapidly increased the monetary supply in the United States, leading to loose credit and high inflation. In addition, the problems with railroad overbuilding and speculation that would plague America in its later depressions was a problem here as well; a lot of people lost their shirts when those investments fell through. On top of all of this, American agricultural exports to Europe collapsed with the end of the Crimean War, drastically lowering prices in that sector.

The political impact had to do with the fact that the South had very few railroad investments, because they mostly decided they didn't want anything to do with American industrial or transportation technology. If anything, Southern railroad infrastructure was far underbuilt in 1857. In time, the South would rue these decisions as the northern industrial force crushed the Confederacy. But in 1857, Southern fireeaters laughed at the North and claimed that the Panic and the South's lack of suffering from it was proof that the slave-based plantation economy was far superior. This only emboldened Southern radicals more, convincing them that they could survive as their own nation.

What kind of long-term political implications the Panic of 2008 will cause I do not know. We clearly have learned nothing on the economic side of things; the entire economic system is racing their engines, ready to continue the dubious practices of inflated commodity prices, rapidly rising home prices, and credit-based consumer spending that blew the economy up in the first place. It's possible that a longer-term recession will create a real crisis of confidence in the corporate-dominated political system of modern America, but I find this quite unlikely. Only if voter anger over these issues convinces the hordes of Reagan and Clinton era Democrats who are beholden to corporate donations to reject Friedmanite economics will a major political shift take place.

Historical Image of the Day

Mrs. S.L. Skilton's Eating House, Boston, 1860

Today, I believe I'll have some tripe (cooked very rare), some calf's head, and some lettuce on the side.

The Bolivian Environment

Linda Farthing has an excellent article on the environmental challenges Bolivia faces. A lot of the nation's history can be summed up by extractive industry and the problems therein.

When Evo Morales was elected, giving indigenous people the first leader who cared about them in the nation's history, there was hope that he would pay some attention to environmental issues. But the problem is vast. Farthing points out many important issues. First, how do you tell people not to pollute or deforest lands when they are so incredibly poor? Second, the entire history of the country has been defined by wealthy people ignoring the law for their own benefit. Not surprisingly, that's seeped down to the poor. Third, Bolivia's only economic resources are extractive in nature--mining, natural gas, cocaine. Fourth, American demand for cocaine while at the same time trying to eradicate it has led to mobile processing labs that pollute like crazy without any supervision at all. Fifth, Bolivia's people understandably are demanding development projects that help them.

What to do? Latin American leftist leaders have traditionally organized around issues of land reform and resource redistribution. But as I've pointed out repeatedly, this is usually a disaster for the environment while not really making people any wealthier. Still, how can I as a privileged first-world environmentalist tell the deeply impoverished people of Bolivia that they can't have what I have? To do so would be environmental imperialism. Yet, I also feel pretty strongly that these development projects aren't going to help people live more comfortable lives.

The Fringe Backbenchers Get Scrutinized

As I pointed out earlier today, a real benefit of Joe Wilson's outburst is that we have a reason to examine the true fringe of the Republican Party. What we find out is that these people aren't really even Republicans. They have only a marginal allegiance to the party unless they can take it over. The Republicans know this and thus allow the wingnuts to run the show so the party doesn't collapse.

Joe Wilson's closet friend in the House is Florida congressman Jeff Miller. Miller has proudly put up a pro-Wilson sign in his office. I've been searching to see what connections Miller might have with neo-Confederate ideology. So far I haven't found any, but he is closely connected to the Constitution Party. This is a right-wing extremist party that exists along the Buchananite-Fallwellian wing of the party. In fact, Miller was a featured speaker at 2004 Constitutional Party Chuck Baldwin's megachurch early in the decade (and maybe since then, I'm just not sure). Among other speakers have been Buchanan and Falwell, Roy Moore, Fob James, Howard Phillips, and Joe Scarbourough, among other lunatics.

The Muppet Show

Jon Gutierrez lays out the 10 weirdest moments in Muppet Show history. And he gets the utterly bizarre nature of the show right:

How the hell did The Muppet Show ever get on the air? Imagine it from a TV executive's point of view: a weekly variety show, in an old vaudeville theater, featuring puppets, and a mix of A, B and C-list celebrities that catered to both kids and adults. That's not a pitch... it's a just list of random words that don't go together

You should check out the top 10, but here's a few of my favorites.

Here's Miss Piggy sexually harassing Rudolf Nureyev:



Vincent Price covers James Taylor:



Peter Sellers musing on identity and the comedian before reciting Richard III and squeezing chickens at the same time:



And Alice Cooper trying to get Kermit to enter into a Faustian bargain:



I can't imagine any show assuming knowledge of Faust in 2009, not to mention a show ostensibly for kids. It's my feeling though that no one knew what that meant in the 1970s either, but TV writers engaged in sort of cultural uplift during this period until executives told them to knock it off.

Via Edge of the American West

Film Review: 500 Days of Summer

I had pretty high hopes for 500 Days of Summer. And no, I'm not putting the "500" in parentheses, which is stupid and pretentious. But the pretension of the parentheses actually resembles the film itself.

I have a complex relationship with romantic films. Although people are often surprised when they hear this, I actually love a good romance. If done correctly, it can be wonderful. I look for films that delve into real human emotions, witty conversation, humor, telling both sides of the story, or some combination of the above. Sadly, few American romantic films do any of this. The brilliance of Annie Hall and Manhattan aren't their jokes, though of course these are great. It's the beauty of the romantic stories Woody Allen could tell at this point in his career. It's hardly fair to compare other films to these, or to the great films of Eric Rohmer for example, but those are the gold standard. One would like to see romantic films at least try.

And I thought 500 Days of Summer would try. Instead, it relies on cliche after cliche in its effort to tell a hipster love story. The hipster part is central; in fact, this seems to be the point of the film. The use of split screens on multiple occasions, the retro dresses Zooey Deschanel wears, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's skinny ties, the construction of Ikea as the ultimate cool place to shop, the music, the use of non-white people as silent backgrounds for their romance, this is painful stuff. Director Marc Webb even updates the Annie Hall-style monologues to the camera, but to utterly pointless effect. Moreover, the cliches don't stop in the realm of hipsterism. The film also suffers from cliches of the lazy filmmaker, which is even less forgivable. The tired use of a narrative for background is a prime example. Many commentators have complained that Gordon-Levitt's little sister calling him a "pussy" feels false and unnecessarily crude. I totally disagree with this, but what I do find problematic is the old device of relying on a child to be a wise advice-dispensing psychologist. How many times have we seen this?

The film is not a complete failure. Some of the scenes work really well, particularly those heavy in dialogue. The actors are generally fine, even though the episodic nature of the script leaves parts of the romance quite underdeveloped. The script also undermines the power of the romance. It was hard to be anything more than a distant observer of what Gordon-Levitt felt because the script was superficial too often.

Finally, a real weakness of the film is that it is only told from one perspective. Deschanel comes in and out of the story, but you never get much of a sense of her character as a person, except for one really annoying black and white piece with narration, a total failure of a scene for which she is not to blame. Why can't writers and directors tell these stories from a woman's perspective? Or both parties equally? She seemed at least as sympathetic as him, but we don't really know in the end. Instead, it was another story where a woman breaks a man's heart and he struggles to get over it. This is a rich mine of film, but there's great gender imbalance in these stories. Of course, there's an entirely other genre of romantic comedy related to this, but these movies almost try to be terrible; certainly there's little as witty as Annie Hall or Knocked Up or even 500 Days of Summer coming from a woman's perspective. This is no small reason why Juno is so freaking great--women are the heroes in a movie that tells a smart and funny story.

Shorter Republicans: Treason in Defense of Slavery Should Be Honored

One thing about the Joe Wilson outburst is that it's bringing race and the racism Obama facies into the sunlight for all to examine. I don't know that the outcome of this will turn out positive, but it's real interesting in any case.

Certainly, it's giving Republicans every chance they want to defend the Confederate flag and other symbols of treason. We know now that Joe Wilson is a neo-Confederate. He is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, one of the most racist organizations in the country. He was one of only seven legislators in South Carolina to vow to keep the Confederate flag over the state capitol of that state, a venerable tradition that goes all the way back to 1962.

Attacks on Wilson for his boorish behavior have upset fellow wingnuts. Increasingly, his defenders are also upset that his history as a supporter of treason in defense of slavery have come attack. Take Iowa congressman Steve King. King is really upset because, you know, Obama hates white men. As a white male, I should feel oppressed let me tell you... But anyway, here's King's own words on the matter:

“Instead of marching forward and following the principles of Martin Luther King Jr., [Obama] has set up a political system of delivering political favoritism to minority-serving groups. It divides Americans, and it insults us,” King said.

“There’s been legislation that’s been brought through this House that sets aside benefits for women and minorities. The only people that it excludes are white men,” he added. “Pretty soon, white men are going to notice they are the ones being excluded.”

Yeah, well. Now King's defense of oppressed white men extends to Joe Wilson:

“He is an officer and a gentleman and everyone who knows him knows that…being a son of the South puts you in a different position when it comes to the Confederate flag. It means something entirely different to the people who have ancestors who fought in the Civil War on the south side of the Mason-Dixon line. So I think Maureen Dowd is trying to whip this up and I also know she’s trying to put race into it. I didn’t know what race she was talking about when I first read her line on that.”

A son of the South does put you in a different position when talking about the Confederate flag. Just ask such sons of the South as Martin Luther King, Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis, and, I don't know, every single other black person who grew up there. Not to mention a not tiny group of whites who reject the racism the Confederate flag stands for.

But Wilson, King, and others want a race war. They want power back and they think that stirring up racism is the way to do it. I'm not sure that they won't succeed.

Via Andrea Nill

Historical Image of the Day

Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York City, October 19, 1903

Anyone for an appetizer of cromesqui of terrapin a la Baltimore, a main course of boiled ham and spinach, with some mashed turnips for veggies? I didn't think so.