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Photos by: joanneleon. September, 2013.
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Monday Morning
Well today, the really big show should begin with wild rides in the markets and god only knows what else.
Culture of Truth does a Bobblespeak post, translating and summarizing what happened on Meet the Press. A bit of the Durbin bobblespeak (the reason why Jay Acroyd, over at Atrios' site just sums it up as Zombie Grand Bargain:
Gregory: Republicans want to cut Social
Security and Democrats want to raise taxes
Durbin: Simpson-Bowles got it right!
Gregory: I agree
Durbin: let's all agree to cut Social Security
and close some of the worst tax loopholes
Democrats really really really don't want to take the blame for cutting entitlements, especially since there are no real tax revenue increases coming from the other side of the bargain.
Is somebody expecting something extra delicious for Wall Street soon? In any case, big movements in the market and the drama is a hedge fund's dream, I guess. If you have a good sense of what's going on with the politics, maybe a heads up or two, I guess it could even more fun. What ever happened with those trading rules for Congress and their aides?
I don't think that this elaborate crisis was arranged just to get a temporary extension on the debt ceiling and an agreement to negotiate. I think Social Security and/or Medicare are getting cut this week. There may be an agreement for longer term negotiation on "tax reform" or something else, maybe more entitlement cuts and pension "reform" and immigration and the other things in the mix. But I think they trade reversing some of the sequester cuts for Social Security and/or Medicare. Now. I hope I'm wrong. It's incredibly, incredibly sad, but look at the lengths they are going to, to make this happen. I don't see how we get out of this without the entitlement cuts that Wall Street and their pals in Washington want.
If the markets go crazy, we'll have the same situation that we had with TARP. People will be scared to death of losing their life savings (those who have anything substantial left) and their retirement money. Some huge % of the country were against the TARP bill and the whole country was calling into Congress and the White House. After the markets took a dive and they "broke the buck" in the money markets, ... ugh. You know the rest.
Again, I hope I'm wrong. But just remember how this whole thing got started. The Obama administration designed the sequester to force the Democrats to come to the table to cut Social Security and Medicare. It was designed to do exactly this. It was also designed to force Republicans to come to the table to increase revenue. But now it seems that a conservative wet dream "tax reform" is going to satisfy that requirement. Grand Betrayal really isn't a strong enough term. It's even worse than that.
And though anyone with half a brain and a shred of honesty could see this coming because it was hidden in plain sight, where are the Left Grassroots on this? Where is the AARP and the Social Security Defenders and everyone else? Oh, I guess they were all fooled by this kabuki. Where are the Great Progressives?
February, 2013
The Woodward, Sperling emails
POLITICO’s “Behind the Curtain” column last night quoted Bob Woodward as saying that a senior White House official has told him in an email he would “regret” questioning White House statements on the origins of sequestration.
[...]
[Gene Sperling:] The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand barain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios — but that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.)
Woodward had accused the Dems of moving the goalposts in asking for revenue. Sperling goes to great lengths to show Woodward that no, it was an understanding between the White House and the leadership of both parties. The sequester was designed by the White House and both parties knew the deal. It was in the DNA.
The best thing that could possibly happen is if these Tea Party idiots screw the whole thing up again and that despite the best laid plans, the White House and leadership of both parties can't make it happen.
Update: hat tip to bobswern for these links.
That nagging feeling that some of us have had about all of this being part of something much bigger? Interesting time for insolvent banks to come clean. October is an infamous month for major crashes.
The following is from this comment by bobswern:
First off...The New York Federal Reserve Branch and the Bank of International Settlements trading desks have both been called in for an emergency overnight session.<<em>a And, I believe it has a lot more to do with what's being reported below, than what's going on in D.C. However, I'm SURE that there will be plenty of MSM bullshit out there in the upcoming news cycle which will misreport and conflate that greater truth. For instance...two developments/nightmares in last few hrs... Europe's about to announce that the Italian and Spanish banks, ALONE, are well over $300 billion into insolvency-land. Part of their solution includes the raiding of citizens' bank accounts, which didn't exactly go over too well in Cyprus, not too long ago. Reuters: "Europe prepares to come clean on hidden bank losses"
Additionally, U.S. banks and the Federal Reserve are still heavily-invested and/or supporting the European banks, although much of this reality won't receive too much coverage in the MSM (of course). (U.S. banks have most of their money in British, German, French and Scandinavian banks; it's those banks that have their money in Spain and Italy, etc. The ?derivatives/swaps market's where this deal's going to get real toxic, real fast. Perhaps in HOURS.) I've published many pieces here (and Stiglitz, and many others have commented upon it extensively, too) on this obfuscated reality over the years.
In China, the Xinhua news agency (basically, the official mouthpiece for the Chinese government), has issued a major/milestone statement calling for global (the inevitable) hegemony that will, for all intents and purposes (at some point over the next 5+- years, if not a lot sooner), do more to undermine the U.S. economy than anything that's happened in a long, long, long time. (Like: "forever.")
Xinhua: "U.S. fiscal failure warrants a de-Americanized world"
Update 9:55am: At least two members of the Simpson-Bowles Catfood Commission were on TV/radio this morning. Erskine Bowles and Alice Rivlin. Both are from the Dem side, I believe. Bowles says we only need $1 of new revenue for every $4 or $5 in spending cuts. That number keeps growing and growing. Soon it will be no new revenue, all spending cuts, or kabuki revenue and real spending cuts.
Erskine Bowles (of Simpson-Bowles catfood commission) was on CNBC this morning.
Sunday Evening
Kabuki from the red clowns in the Shutdown Circus was dialed up to 11 on Sunday and they paired up the lead crazy clowns, Cruz and Palin, for a PR stunt and put another one out on the stage too, Lindsey Graham. If you ever watch Graham in hearings and such, he can hardly contain himself when he's putting on the crazy hat. He really enjoys it. They really want to convince the world that they're crazy enough to carry this past the debt ceiling deadline, so that the Democrats will cave and give away the farm again and so that the American people will kind of say, just give them what they want because the media tells us it will cause doom and the apocalypse (yes the media is really using terms like that, in true Shock Doctrine form).
If our creditors lose faith in US Treasury bonds, yes, really bad things will happen, but the apocalypse? And the certainty that these guys will really do it? And the certainty that the president would allow that to happen and have no other extraordinary measures via his executive powers or the powers of the Fed? Cataclysmic? Come on. The House GOP showed their cards a bit last week when they tried to make a deal where they put something or other on the table and another term of the deal was that the president would use no extraordinary measures to manage the debt ceiling deadline.
I'm not trying to play down the seriousness of undermining confidence in the US Treasury. But take a look at the US debt infographic again too, to put things in perspective. Wall Street and the invisible hand will really go into action this week. Last Monday's market dip was "a shot across the bow", according to the talking heads. If there's no deal tonight and the crazies are still suggesting that they'll take us past the deadline with no deal then be prepared for a big fuss when the US markets open at 9:30 am Eastern, and of course we're not the only markets in the world so a lot of other markets will have opened by then.
The next Treasury auctions:
Sunday Afternoon
A game changer? Pushed through barriers? This is a big, wide open, outdoor monument. Using veterans as pawns? Everybody is using the veterans as pawns even though they objected to it more than a week ago. This is absurd. If you can stomach it, go look at the photo on this article.
Protesters reopen World War II Memorial on National Mall that’s closed for gov’t shutdown
WASHINGTON — A crowd of people has converged on the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, pushing through barriers to protest the memorial’s closing under the government shutdown.
WTOP Radio (http://bit.ly/... ) reports Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas were among those who gathered Sunday morning, along with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Cruz says President Barack Obama is using veterans as pawns in the government shutdown.
Eyeroll.
Costa is calling this a new "snag" to any deal.
Graham Threatens to ‘Object’ to Deal, Demands Vote on Vitter Amendment
Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) tells me he will “object” to any pending fiscal deal, unless the Senate concurrently votes on the Vitter amendment, which would end federal contributions to congresional health-care plans.
Is the Collins deal really dead?
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A sequester refresher/explainer. I've excerpted a bit about the Pentagon and a few other things but there is a lot more detail in the article.
Everything We Know About What’s Happened Under Sequestration
[...]$1.2 trillion worth of cuts to the federal budget over the next decade. If they failed, a package of automatic cuts designed to slash funding to programs dear to both parties (military spending, in the Republicans’ case, and Medicare and other domestic programs in the Democrats’) would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2013.
[...]
Sequestration was one element of the so-called “fiscal cliff,” which also included a number of other spending cuts and tax increases. Congress passed a last-minute deal Jan. 1 to blunt the cliff’s impact, which included pushing back the effective date for sequestration to March 1. While Obama and members of Congress spoke out against sequestration in February — Senate Democrats announced a plan to put it off for another 10 months — those efforts failed to stop the cuts.
[...]
[...]sequestration would have “a rolling impact, an effect that will build and build and build.”
Congress passed a bill, signed by Obama on March 26, to spare a few programs from cuts this year, including an infant nutrition program, the nuclear weapons program and funding for security at U.S. embassies abroad — a sensitive area since the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, last September. The bill also gave some agencies, including the Pentagon, more flexibility in carrying out the sequester. And last week, Congress quickly passed (and Obama signed) a bill allowing the F.A.A. to scrap its furloughs of air traffic controllers, which had been blamed for long flight delays. But neither bill reduced the total amount the government is required to cut — $85 billion, or about 2.3 percent of the $3.6 trillion federal budget — by the end of the fiscal year in October.
[...]
The Pentagon:
Despite the bill Obama signed in March giving the Pentagon more flexibility in carrying out the sequester, it still must cut $41 billion from its budget this year, which Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described as “the steepest decline in our budget ever.” (The Pentagon has been asked to cut more before, but never halfway through the fiscal year.)
Hundreds of thousands of civilian Defense Department employees will likely have to take 14 furlough days by October, though it’s unclear which branches will face them. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has said that everything from salaries and benefits to the number of generals and admirals could be cut.
[Emphasis added]
This is a terrible thing under any circumstances, but given that the chemical weapons workers are in Syria trying to remove and destroy CW, it's even more dangerous.
Seven Red Cross workers kipnapped by gunmen in northern Syria
Abduction of six International Committee of the Red Cross workers and one volunteer took place in Idlib province
Gunmen kidnapped a team of seven workers from the International Committee of the Red Cross after stopping their convoy early on Sunday along a roadside in northern Syria, a spokesman said.
Simon Schorno, a spokesman for the ICRC in Damascus, said the abduction took place near the town of Saraqeb in Idlib province at about 11.30am local time (08.30 GMT) as the team was returning to Damascus. Six of the people kidnapped are ICRC staff and one is a volunteer from the Syrian Red Crescent, he said.
[...]
Syria's state news agency, quoting an anonymous official, said the gunmen opened fire on the ICRC team's four vehicles before seizing the Red Cross workers. The news agency blamed terrorists, a term the government uses to refer to those opposed to President Bashar al-Assad.
More Syria rebel groups leave U.S.-backed command amid worry ‘moderates’ will be shut out
BEIRUT — The moderate rebel command at the center of U.S. policy in Syria is becoming increasingly marginalized as dozens of militias peel away to form rival, Islamist alliances in a move that could leave the Obama administration with no battlefield partner in the fight to topple President Bashar Assad.
The Supreme Military Command and its forces, known collectively as the Free Syrian Army, are reeling as 40 or more affiliates this month have signed onto two new umbrella groups, both with agendas that are at odds with the U.S.-backed opposition’s long-stated vision of a democratic, pluralistic Syria.
[...]
The two emerging Islamist umbrella groups are known as the Azzaz Declaration Signatories in the north and, in the capital, Damascus, as the Army of Islam. Though both groups are nascent, their arrival hardens the conflict’s turn from an anti-authoritarian rebellion to a Sunni Muslim campaign to overthrow a regime led by the minority Alawite sect and replace it with a government “consistent with the principles of Islamic law.”
That’s a far cry from the U.S.-backed opposition’s vision of a secular democracy with protection of minority rights.
Wow, I guess it's a good thing we didn't take out Assad last month..... And by the way, check out the
picture of John Kerry in Bali that Moon of Alabama featured last week.
Syria: Turkey Blamed For "Regime Change" Failure
Ten days ago the Guardian was the first "western" media to report on a massacre U.S supported insurgents and terrorists had committed back in August in Syria's Latakia governate. U.S. media did not follow up on this. But now Human Rights Watch, a U.S. influenced para-government organization which has intensely propagandized against the Syrian government, is publishing a report on Executions, Unlawful Killings, and Hostage Taking by Opposition Forces in Latakia Countryside.
The fact that such a report is now published by HRW can be interpreted as a sign that U.S. policies on Syria are changing sides and will now, slowly slowly, turn against the insurgents and in favor of the Syrian government. While this will not yet change U.S. calls for "Assad must go" it is a significant change of the direction the winds are blowing.
Our humanitarian efforts in Libya have led to people choosing to set out on the sea in boats that are deathtraps rather than stay in Libya. Italy is seeking help with this and the Generous Germans say oh, they're just looking for a country where they can get a better deal. Just gold diggers, I guess. The German government should team up with our right-wing cutthroats and maybe some of those New Labour up and comers in the UK. I'm starting to wish that some kind of deal could be made where like minded people who want a kinder, fairer government could form a country. Then the ruthless cutthroats would not have any bleeding heart liberals or socialists to worry about and they could just starve each other to death and we could take a stab at the kind of society that we want somewhere else.
EU urged to tackle boat people crisis in Mediterranean
Italy and Malta demand aid to avert more deaths as figures show acceleration in those risking all in death-trap vessels from Libya
According to UNHCR figures, 2013 represents one of the largest movements of migrants across the Mediterranean, with the numbers accelerating fast. More than 4,600 left Libya in September, compared to 755 in the same month last year. Of the 32,000 who have landed in Italy this year so far, 7,500 are Syrian and a further 7,500 Eritrean.
[...]
EU leaders will confront the issue at the summit on 24 October. French president François Hollande has insisted that the issue be given top priority on the basis of "prevention, protection and solidarity".
But a draft of the concluding statement from the summit, obtained by the Guardian, makes no mention of the crisis. There is little appetite among Europe's national governments for any surrender to Brussels of authority over immigration policies. With far-right anti-immigration parties on the rise across large parts of Europe, governments are also little inclined to shift to more open or generous policies.
[...]
Rome, arguing that this is a European and not an Italian problem, is clamouring for help. The Letta government conferred posthumous Italian citizenship on the drowned off Lampedusa. But the survivors of the tragedy are held in an island containment centre and face prosecution, meaning possible fines or deportation, for illegal entry. The German government maintains that the bulk of the boat people are "economic migrants" seeking to benefit from more generous European welfare and social security payments.
This article has been unlocked by David Sirota until Tuesday around noon. This story came as a surprise to me, especially since a number of A-List progressive bloggers seemed to be friends with him.
It's a Bird, It's a Plane... It's Cap’n Kochsplainer!
To the Koch brothers, Slate's Dave Weigel must seem like some kind of comic book superhero.
By day, Weigel is a mild-mannered wonk, blogging the daily ins and outs in American politics. But when the Koch brothers find themselves in a public relations pickle, Weigel has an uncanny way of appearing on the scene assuring everyone there’s no story here, look the other way now, keep moving along.
Maybe it has to do with the training Weigel received at the Institute for Humane Studies (Charles Koch recently celebrated the 50 year anniversary of the IHS, Koch’s premiere libertarian think-tank); or the lessons Weigel learned during his years at the Kochs’ Reason magazine, or his internship at the Koch-funded anti-affirmative action attack dog outfit, the Center for Individual Rights; or how Weigel's first journalism job at USA Today was "sponsored" by the Koch-funded College Network....
Ezra Klein. I'm worried about the markets too but not just because of stupid and corrupt politicians. I'm worried because some of the people who predicted a crash the last time have been saying that another one is inevitable and I just wonder about the people who were ready to exploit this latest budget impasse and debt ceiling. I'll leave it at that.
Is America a bubble?
Why are markets not yet in a panic? “Markets are quite relaxed about all this, and for an unfortunate reason,” wrote Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co. “They have been conditioned to expect headline-grabbing political posturing, extreme rhetoric, and seemingly-endless drama from Capitol Hill.”
[...]
A scary possibility is that the market price on the U.S. political system doesn’t reflect what market participants are coming to believe about it: that a once capable and reliable system is now dysfunctional and unpredictable. That raises the possibility that a pivotal event could move markets dramatically because traders are prepared to believe, and to begin trading on, a much more pessimistic assessment of America’s political system. If everyone were moved to act on that belief simultaneously -- by a debt-ceiling crisis, for example -- the results could be earthshaking.
[...]
As chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Simon Johnson saw more than a few countries disappoint global markets and pay dearly for it. He’s more sanguine about the U.S. “The key thing is the relative comparison,” he said. “If they don’t like the U.S., where will they take their reserve access and rainy day holdings? We’re so big we have this extra element, which is, where else will you put your stuff?”
[...]
The markets’ current complacency is contributing to rising political risk. Just as an overabundance of confidence in Greek debt permitted Greece’s problems to fester, becoming far larger than would otherwise have been possible, the markets’ enduring confidence in the U.S. political system has allowed dysfunction to metastasize.
“Without market discipline,” said Nouriel Roubini, chairman of Roubini Global Economics LLC, “there’s no pressure to do anything because you can continue to finance yourself cheaply.”
How can we reconcile #1 (September, 2012) with #2 & #3 (May, 2011). And also, if Obamacare was designed to bring down the overall cost of healthcare and the bulk of Obamacare has not even been implemented yet, why would it make any sense to cut Medicare now as part of "entitlement reform"? Why would we not wait some number of years until the Obamacare program has a chance to do what the designers claim it would do, then reassess the situation and see what it would take to keep the program strong for future retirees? The baby boomers are not going to be in retirement forever. The large increase in the number of retirees is a temporary spike. I've read that we only need to get through about 20 years of "spike", which makes sense. We need some leaders who are going to be straight with the people about this and not use the baby boom generation (who have already paid extra for their retirement for 30 years, which is why we have a $3 trillion surplus sitting in treasury bonds) as an excuse to cut "entitlements" because of the real problematic spike which is the spike in war and intelligence spending.
War and intelligence spending has doubled since Bush took office and the Democrats have made no real effort to rein that in. In fact, Obama brags about the fact that he hasn't cut defense spending. Since when have the people of the United States decided to completely change our priorities and sacrifice a decent retirement and social programs for a bloated Defense Department and a huge increase in contractors who are paid obscene amounts of money leeching off the government, and an increase in the number of wars, overt and covert, that we endlessly fight? I don't think anybody voted for that after 9/11. We understood that there would be some retaliation and increase in defense against terrorism, but nobody signed up for fighting 80 simultaneous covert wars plus several endless overt wars, or a trillion dollars spent on converting the country into a police state and converting the country into a surveillance state.
But getting back on topic, what's the real deal with the Democrats and the Republicans on Medicare, Social Security, and entitlements? Digby mentioned in a recent post that some Democratic senators have dodged the question when asked about entitlement cuts and that Sherrod Brown, considered one of the most liberal senators, did not defend against those cuts.
#1 "Bill Clinton Takes On Paul Ryan's Medicare Lies: 'It Takes Some Brass'"
#2 "May 2011: Rep. Paul Ryan Talks With Bill Clinton on Entitlement Reform"
#3 Bill Clinton at the same event as #2, on stage instead of backstage.
Banksy hits New York City, but the city hits back
Acclaimed street artist Banksy has crossed the pond from his native UK, and is now leaving his marks all around New York City. Since October 1st, he's created upwards of 10 pieces as part of his monthlong "residency" (to borrow a term from the professional art world), titled "Better Out Than In." Banksy's playful work often offers social or political commentary, and he hasn't limited himself to sidewalks and walls in New York — he's already created two mobile pieces on trucks. Many of the New York pieces include mock audio guides that poke fun at the recorded messages offered to museum-goers, which are also available online.
Speaking of Dave Weigel (article above), he wrote an article about Ted Cruz and his days on the Princeton Debate team, so I'll have to send this to my son. Austan Goolsbee also debated in the American Parliamentary Debate Assoc. Seems that some people on the ivy debate circuit end up on the political circuit.
"Ted Couldn't Help Himself From Taking the Shots"
I talked to some Yale debate team alumni who competed with Cruz in college—Yale and Princeton have a decades-spanning, Crips/Bloods sort of debate team rivalry. Slate's own Dahlia Lithwick faced off against Cruz in college tournaments, and remembers his high-minded rhetoric. "He wasn’t ‘creepy’ on the debate circuit—he was a phenom," she said. "When Ted was 19 people knew he’d run for president."
This is the Daily Beast article that Weigel referred to. It's no longer the case that Princeton and Yale are like Crips/Bloods in the
APDA rankings for COTY - College of the Year in 2012. Rutgers (3rd in College of the Year) beat Princeton (10th) in the national rankings by a mile and outranked Harvard (5th) too last year. Just sayin' :) And Yale (1st) beats everybody by a mile, though this year they are lagging behind Brandeis and Harvard, and only 20 points ahead of Rutgers. But it's early yet.
Ted Cruz at Princeton: Creepy, Sometimes Well Liked, and Exactly the Same
Can a master debater who wore a paisley bathrobe to creepily stroll by the women’s wing of the dorm be the next president? Patricia Murphy talks to Ted Cruz’s college roommates about his stint at Princeton.
When Craig Mazin first met his freshman roommate, Rafael Edward Cruz, he knew the 17-year-old Texan was not like other students at Princeton, or probably anywhere else for that matter.
[...]
“It was my distinct impression that Ted had nothing to learn from anyone else,” said Erik Leitch, who lived in Butler College with Cruz. Leitch said he remembers Cruz as someone who wanted to argue over anything or nothing, just for the exercise of arguing. “The only point of Ted talking to you was to convince you of the rightness of his views."
In addition to Mazin and Leitch, several fellow classmates who asked that their names not be used described the young Cruz with words like “abrasive,” "intense," “strident,” “crank,” and “arrogant." Four independently offered the word “creepy,” with some pointing to Cruz’s habit of donning a paisley bathrobe and walking to the opposite end of their dorm’s hallway where the female students lived.
[...]
Cruz and Panton debated together for four years at Princeton and came to dominate the collegiate parliamentary debate circuit, winning the North American championships in 1992 and being named the top two collegiate debaters in the country (Cruz was No. 1). The competitive debate world also gave Cruz a different social circle, with fellow debaters congregating in his room to hang out and play Super Mario Bros. Debate weekends included Friday night parties that Cruz often attended, where he was remembered to be "sort of a stud" with girls on the debate circuit. Princeton debaters also said he spent extra time mentoring them to improve their skills, even though they competed against each other.
I know just how the author feels in this article.
Reelin’ in the Years
Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen writes a portrait of the artist as a grumpy old man.
Late last summer, I noticed that Donald Fagen—one half of the 1970s fusion-rock duo Steely Dan—was playing at the Beacon Theater in New York. I bought a pair of tickets and invited my friend Pete. Pete had first turned me on to the delights of the Dan—the complex harmonies, the precise musicianship, the world-weary lyrics—our freshman year of high school. Somehow, the group’s portraits of slit-eyed urban drifters struck a chord with a pair of apple-cheeked AP students. I’m pretty sure Pete and I listened to the Dan together, with great ceremony, the first time we both smoked weed.
[...]
Now come these annals from Fagen, another rock hero born, like Dylan and Richards, in the 1940s. He’s nowhere near the star those other two fellows are. But to a small, proud band of aficionados—those with a yen for jazzy 13th chords and waggish drollery—he’s a colossus all the same. I’d hoped this book might confirm my notion of Fagen as a dark lord of nebbishy cool. I eagerly anticipated dish about Fagen groupies (surely a unique, beguiling breed of woman) and tales of dissipated, sun-bleached, ‘70s California angst.
[...]
Now it’s me who’s being churlish. Yes, Eminent Hipsters is a gust of disillusionment—bearing the unwelcome revelation that my one-time musical hero has turned into a whiny crackpot with bad kidneys. Yet even as this less cool image of Fagen emerges, the book also manages to remind me what it was about the guy that wowed me back when I was 14. As off-putting as he can be when delving into his own gripes, Fagen is utterly charming when he celebrates other performers. He defends TV and film composer Henry Mancini from charges of fuddy-duddyness: “The sides you carved were strictly, like, young.” He gives Ray Charles’ “Georgia on My Mind” its due, asserting that the song—“square-ass backup singers and all—just may have been the most beautiful three minutes and thirty-nine seconds in all of twentieth century music.”
Action
October 26th, 2013 in Washington, D.C.
A Rally Against Mass Surveillance
Right now the NSA is spying on everyone's personal communications, and they’re operating without any meaningful oversight. Since the Snowden leaks started, more than 571,000 people from all walks of life have signed the StopWatching.us petition telling the U.S. Congress that we want them to rein in the NSA.
On October 26th, the 12th anniversary of the signing of the US Patriot Act, we're taking the next step and holding the largest rally yet against NSA surveillance. We’ll be handing the half-million petitions to Congress to remind them that they work for us -- and we won’t tolerate mass surveillance any longer.
12pm Eastern, Saturday October 26th
Gather at Columbus Circle in front of Union Station, then march to the Capitol Reflecting Pool
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