A Window, A Light...

Ok, it's December and that means it's the start of the Christmas season. For one reason or another, I frequently rue this time of year. If it's not because I'm working retail, it's because I've got no gig at all. I'll go on the record and say that my last two years were the best I've had in about a decade, but I'm back in the slump again. It's a tough month to not be able to afford presents and it kind of sucks to be in that situation and hoping for Christmas money from relatives because it'll go to making sure they don't cart my automobile away. 

Don't worry, though. I'm not in hysterics about the situation like I was last time. This is the more pragmatic look at the situation, but it's the same for me as it is for thousands of Americans throughout the country. I was a guy who, even if he wasn't always excited about it, went to work every day and took pride in doing a good job for a passable wage. The corporation who made that happened in the first place took a large number of solid-but-unremarkable jobs and turned them into below-living-wage jobs. Dell, basically, gets to pocket the remainder, so that's your microcosm for why the economy looks like it does. 

Anyway, that was actually not what I was coming here for. There was something else that I keep meaning to go on about and never got around to it. In this period of economic downturn, it frequently gets relegated to a 'future issue' that's tangential and in the effort of keeping shit focused around here (which I clearly already do a poor job of), it gets left out. But. Ahem.

First of all, realize that I read the article a while ago and don't even know who hosted it. I don't have a citation, so you'll have to take my word for it. You don't have to if you don't want to, but if you're the kind of person who wouldn't, I'll point out that you're reading a political post on LiveJournal. Not quite the hallmark of robust journalism and punditry, this. What I had read was a paleo-conservatives take on OWS; a man right out of the Nixon-to-Regan era talking about the protesters and how it's no surprise that they're unhappy.

However, he went on to say, they're treating wealth like a zero-sum game and it's not. We can always, he went on, produce more things. All the things. As much as anyone could ever want. All we have to do is make that happen. We don't have to take from the rich, and it doesn't matter if there's a huge wealth discrepancy as long as everyone has plenty of stuff. 

There, that's what we're talking about, today. And it's a very reasoned and solid talking point from a reasonable fellow. It's also totally and completely a) wrong and b) missing the point. 

The wealth discrepancy exists and anyone who tries to tell you differently is either terribly mislead (if it's on the street) or in someones pocket (if it's on television). There are a million charts and graphs that will tell you this, and most of them are right. The problem isn't that the 99% don't have enough stuff. It's that they can't afford what they need. Pro-One Percenter's will tell you that we're practically overflowing with things, which is probably true. But a television, smart phone, or game station is cheap. They're the circuses that go along with our McBread. It's gas, cars, houses, and groceries. Saying everyone has a cell phone is obfuscation. We don't want cell phones. We don't want stuff. We don't have security.

More then that, though, the truth is that we actually can't make a never ending stream of useless crap. There's a limited amount of oil for gas and plastics, there's a decaying infrastructure that we're ignoring, and there's the fact that Americans are gobbling up the production of an entire planet. But these are things that can and will run out.

I love 'process' as much as the next guy. It's a fun myth that makes us feel pretty good about ourselves and how we live in the 'future'. And I'll be honest and say that the things we can do amaze me, excite me, and make me feel positive about a hypothetical future. That said, we've intentionally developed an economy that we insist needs to keep growing. It's a consumer economy and that's what capitalism is based on. If we had a never ending supply of material to go with a never ending growth rate of new consumers, that'd be fine. We don't. And that's it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

Our stuff is designed to break because that means we buy more stuff when we don't have to. The lessons we're taught about being frugal and buying things to last all tank our economy and our economy is a construct to facilitate the wealth of our nation. But if you want to know the end lesson of our economic goals, let me tell you that we're already doing it right. This is the end result. This is the economy working as intended. It's basically slave labor and shit that breaks in a closed cycle. And if you think that's a bad thing, you have to re-think capitalism, because we can't afford it. Eventually scarcity is going to be a thing. And peak oil is already here. You can see it from the end of your driveway.

We must become accustomed to the idea that we have limited resources. It only seems like we don't because we've been taking from everyone else. If you want the absolute truth, I've been told that if we spread around the wealth into a number where everyone's got the same number of resources, they'd be scant indeed. I don't know what the number is, to be honest with you, but the argument was against a perceived idea of 'fairness'. They were saying, 'look, if you really wanted to be fair, this is what you'd have. now shut up and go back to your first world problems, because you're the global 1%.' All that tells me is that we're still doing it wrong.

There's never enough time even if you're extremely diligent and on the ball so I guess it's easy to imagine how I would be looking at my short term to-do list and still notice that I'm going to come up lacking something by the end of the day. I mean, I feel like that every day. I'm just saying there's a good reason for it.

I did end up finishing Dragon Age II. It's better then Dragon Age : Origins, which was a fine game in its own right, but it's not without its own quirks, problems, and attendant issues. I'd prefer to talk about that tomorrow in its own separate post.

Obviously, you're still seeing the Occupy stuff on the news, the internet, or really anywhere you opt to look. Step one, if you'd have asked me, is to get your voice hear. Occupy the media, if you will. You can't really even begin to start speaking until you get someones attention. As far as that goes, I think there has already been a lot of people speaking to the accusations that the Occupy groups are unclear or simply have nothing substantial to say, but other rebukes to that aside, you're really not going to get thousands of people across the nation, not to mention the globe, without having - if not one specific issue - a broad base of issues that fall under a general heading of 'inequality'. I don't know if I have a lot to say about it specifically, anymore, except to continue to voice my support, but I'll let you know if something concrete comes up.

Briefly, our Exalted game continues to run. Unlike Occupy, I have a lot to say about this, but I'm trying to determine if any of it is actually new and if any of it is actually useful. One thing I can say in definite terms is that one of the problems I've mentioned in the past, which I've mentally dubbed 'The Tyranny of an Agenda' continues to dominate the game. We're in such a rush to get 'through the game' that a lot of the individual bits are actually just washed out.

By way of example, there was a zombie uprising in a town spread by illness. We actually saved villagers in a montage of all the fucking things and didn't roll any dice at all in order to do it. I rolled to pilot our airship and actually had our ST turn to look at me and go, "What are you doing?"
"Rolling to see how well you pilot the airship."
"There's no need." and then he told us what we did to rescue the few survivors who we unceremoniously dumped into an adjacent field. The only attention they received was the coin I insisted I give them - an act that was not just ignored by the ST, but by our entire group. We then went to a show down with a characters old mentor where nothing happened but us receiving a part of a prophecy that showed us something our old characters had done several years ago in a plot point that had yet to occur in this game.

Result of a 5 hour game? Nothing happened at all. There was one dice roll that had any effect. Let me tell you that this was not a fun game. It wasn't a game at all. The end.

There, looks like you got a rant anyhow. I apologize, but I guess I needed to get that frustration off my chest. I literally could have not showed up and asked for a recap when we were done and had exactly as much of an effect on the proceedings. It feels like I'm playing the character in a JRPG who gets left on the airship while the others players do stuff and my guess is I feel like that because it is literally what happens every single game.

To be 100% clear, myself and one other person went to the Occupy St Louis location downtown for only about three hours. We brought several gallons of water, a store case of pop tarts, a dozen hard-boiled eggs, and a roll of heavy duty garbage bags. I've still got one more week of work and Katie's recently been employed, so there's no question about us being able to even stay late, but it seemed disingenuous to both of us to support the movement but not do anything at all to further it.

It wasn't a lot, but it's the amount we were able to contribute.

Occupy STL was small. Much smaller then I'd prefer to see it. Around 125 or so when it's more populous and about 50 or so during periods when people leave to run errands, go to work, ect, et al. The group seems to enjoy support from a lot of people who can't really 'occupy' as much as 'turn up' - kind of like myself.

The larger the group, the messier it gets. Occupy St Louis was exceptionally clean, though. There were some complaints by protesters (as opposed to the city or police) that they weren't keeping the place as clean as was possible but when we ran a sweep, there wasn't much to pick up but old cigarette butts.

Votes and agenda where achieved through consensus, and was really very orderly. Health, safety, and politeness were the top issues along with education. Bystanders were largely supportive or silent. I think there were a total of maybe two people who yelled at us to go home or get jobs through the windows of passing cars, and everyone seemed to be aware that it would really only take one particularly bad act to spoil a generally good thing.

I'll probably be talking about this a lot more in the near future.

Obama to GOP : Pass this Bill

So, the above link doesn't tell us anything new, but it does highlight something we've come to understand; regarding spending bills, we're incredibly torn on the left. For someone like me, it's a little like watching someone repeatedly bang their head against a wall while the well-meaning neighbor looks on in morbid, horrified amusement.

Contrast : Obama's Plan Isn't Enough

What's amusing with this isn't that the article that complains about the proposed bill being too modest isn't right, because it is. It's that the bill is pretty large, but it's modest compared to the scope of the problem, but the top article is still correct - it's not going to get passed.

Let's distill this issue to the roots, because it's not quite as simple as Republican House Majority Wins (RHMW), though it's pretty close.

RHMW gives them the votes, and they've got remarkable party cohesion in the very short term. This, like the lockstep majority of the Bush II administration is something of a gamble, but it's a gamble that gives them the ability to block Obama. The goal's to make him a one term president.

The article kind of highlights that, but I think what it's missing is that not only is Obama not really going to get the votes on this, but that he doesn't have a reasonable chance of getting the votes on anything that isn't already 100% GOP. The House simply isn't operating in good faith. They're literally operating under a no-compromise agenda.

It's pretty bad, everyone. I mean, it's pretty difficult even to satirize at this point.

Contrast The Onion with : Rick Perry Cuts Firefighting, Requests Federal Aid

If you stripped The Onion's name off the first article, I'd believe it was the real thing.

I remember when G.W. was president, and the Boondock's would pretty much just draw Huey listening to Bush on television with an actual quote. Considering that we've just gotten crazier since then, it's hard to know what to write, or if we can just get our humor from FOX News and pretend it's satire.

Ahem. I've gone off on a tangent. Anyhow, given the situation, Obama doesn't have a whole lot to lose by proposing something akin to real legislation before it gets shot down and the Republicans counter with whatever programs they intend to cut in order to do whatever it is they pretend their proposal will do. Save jobs or liquidate the poor or something. I don't even know.

RHMW is, like I said, a gamble. The Bush administration decided to get realpolitick and between eight years of that and McCain selecting Palin as his running mate, Obama got elected with a solid majority. The radicals got the nod, and the Tea Party got funded, and instead of moving to the middle, the Right decided to double down on the crazy. I guess we'll see how people feel about that later.

Blah blah, debt ceiling.

Yesterday, I casually posted this to my Facebook feed. And now this morning, I read this.

What are these? First of all, go ahead and read 'em, if you're not familiar with 'em. The first link is something like a Russian Doll of additional links explaining the proposition floated by McConnell of Tribe Republican, which might be best explained as a proposal to let Obama lift the debt ceiling without involving Republican votes.

My first impulse was to think that there are still Republicans that are still fueled by a sense of rational self-interest. That is, they've got something to lose if businesses go under, because that's the teat that they're milking. Defaulting pretty much helps tank an already struggling economy. Even if I think they're all wrong on tax cuts for the very wealthy, this is one of those easy consensus votes.

"McConnell is drawing praise for being a grownup, and that's fair, but only in the sense that it's mature for a child to punt to her parents."* Well, I don't know who's calling him 'grownup', but I'll take Rauch at his word. I'm sure it's out there somewhere. I'm not sure if I agree with even this kind of back-handed almost-compliment, though because if the House Republicans weren't so utterly insane, I'd say that it was the most craven kind of politics - the kind of politics where you're willing to risk lighting the city afire so that you get your fiddle practice in.

Tough to say though. I mean, it's tough in that it's difficult to tell if the House Republicans are actually insane or just indifferent to the fate of the country as long as they 'win'. I'm not really sure what's worse, if it's simply a combination of not knowing, having never cared, and the taste of fame and adulation. Freshman House Republicans like Joe Walsh and Michele Bachmann are outright accusing the President of lying to Senate members and the American people**, which is hardly necessary, because Democrats know it, many Republicans know it, businesses know it, other countries know it; like I said before, this isn't the complicated calculus.

The rift between senior Republicans and younger Republicans continues to grow.

This is a natural extension of the direction taken by the Bush administration, exemplified by a quote now attributed to Karl Rove. To whit, "..And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''***

As much as I disliked the Bush administration, this new crop is even worse. Now, the Tea Party people have always been there. They're the people with a fear of a national census that still want the government to stay away from... the government entitlements that they're actively using. They're the group that believes that privilege and rights are a zero-sum game. They're also the group that has so little to worry about that they're actively worried about someone richer's taxes going up.

They'd be a farce if you only looked at their understanding of policy, but they're very loud and they're very active. They hijacked enough local elections to get a bunch of new people into the House who are either True Believers or they're willing to pretend to be in order to grab Discord's golden apple.

Unlike during the Bush administration, where the greatest strength of the Republicans was that they could act in total lockstep, during the Obama administration, they're undergoing almost apocalyptic fallout from the repercussions of that. Now the writing is on the wall - the Republicans created a tiger in Fox News, riled it up with fear and loathing, then grabbed its tail, assuming that they could let it eat the Democrats, it'd get full and sleepy, and they'd be able to let go only to discover that the tiger'll eat anything it can grab. Now, we're hoping that they're just new to realpolitik, but what we hoped isn't true. These people literally want everything to go sideways. They're nihilists. They're willing to burn our economy to ashes because their team will literally cheer while it goes up because they think that's good.

 I said that the Republicans could punt the tiger and take the momentary hit, or they can let it eat us. They are lunatics and conspiracy theorists. They're more then happy to eat you alive.

* It May Be Desperate, But At Least It's Juvenile - Rauch
** Debt-Ceiling Deal? 'Hell, No Caucas' Stands Firm - Welna
*** The panning of 'the reality-based community' is well known by now, but the article is originally from 2004. Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency of George W. Bush by Suskind. It's still worth reading as a historical article at this point. Study that reality; judiciously, as you will.

I didn't watch the whole address. It was 70 minutes long, and I had to get up to refill my drink from time to time; that's how it goes.
For the record, I thought it was a fine speech. I enjoyed it, and taken by itself, it's probably really inspirational. My reservations are severe though. Obama has a, if we're being charitable, lackluster record for GLBT rights. He can't seem to energize his side of the aisle in Congress despite having had a supermajority. It's depressing.

I expected the Republicans to dig their feet in. The Democrats swept the House and Senate, and everyone left are from states so Red that planes stop in mid-air over them waiting for favorably traffic signals. The only thing I can assume, and I understand that assumptions can cause problems, is that Democrats feel they have something to gain by not pushing bills through.

The reasons are varied but not unusual. Pathetic, but not weird. It's not entirely a matter of corruption, or anything like that, though we are kinda, sorta in the pocked of our mighty corporate and banking overlords; it's more an issue of a typically low turnover rate in Congress. Instead of being civil servants, Congress-critters are career politicians. In a year where there were record turnovers, Democrats don't want to lose their seats by shaking the boat. This seems counter-intuitive, since a desire for change sent record Democrats to their seats in the first place, but politicians are nothing if not reactionary.

I guess the other issue are the Blue Dogs and the Liebermans. This is an example of people who feel they have something to gain by waffling on their vote. They're playing politics because they know that the Democratic majority will do almost anything to ensure that they're on board. They get to look moderate and bipartisan while hitting the Dems up for everything they've got. They have a disproportionate degree of pull in national matters because of it, and it doesn't matter that we can't really get anything done. 

So, here's a small part of the problem as I see it. The Democrats had a super majority and wouldn't act on it. They lost a single seat to a Republican in Mass. and decided that it wasn't going to be possible to push legistlation through because they won't act in concert. One seat short of unprecendented, and they throw in the towel. There's got to be a reason for that, but it's a spineless and craven one.

...on my training left over, so I'll go into this thing that I've been thinking briefly, because everyone is talking about the stimulus package and the unsurprisingly Republican response to it. By now, I'm sure everyone has taken their sides and are working with that shovel to entrench themselves before the other sides bullets mow us over, so I'll just go in for the political situation.

Matt already talked about this, but he just lurks, and he's not going to present a post on LJ about it. He mentioned it on his blog mattschmidt.blogspot.com, and he draws a link to an earlier post. We talked about this when I was back in Fairview, and he's right, but I'm surprised more people didn't see it coming. The Republicans are going fight any compromise, and they're going to try to sink every bill. It's starting here, but it certainly won't end here, and nobody should claim to be surprised.

I appreciated the overtures of bi-partisenship that the Obama administration was making and, indeed, you can play political hardball without being rude about it. After all, it's all in how you vote. But to be clear, the Republicans will take anything the Democrats give them, and they'll never conceed in inch, no matter how civil the administration is. As long as the red team doesn't conceed a single senator, they can stonewall and even if they don't, they can make life exceedingly difficult.

And they're going to.

I'm shocked that the bank bailouts haven't been more successful in providing an atmosphere where consumers are confident and banks will give loans again. In a move nobody could really predict, it turns out that much of the money has just vanished, that the small entry-level sum of 350 billion dollars has become difficult to account for, and that banks have not really changed their highly-successful MO.

I'm not really sure what the cause of this is, because the attitude and culture of our financial institutions are particularly healthy and their spending habits are historically transparent and free of fraud. I'm sure that once they get into the next 350 billion, things will surely turn around, and I'm hoping that the Bush administration gets the permission to dispense that early. Everyone, we can't stop now, otherwise the starter funds will be a waste. We'll need to funnel that full amount in there as soon as possible, and possibly lobby for additional funds to be spent on the faltering financial complex.

I understand the hesitancy of banks to provide loans to the American public at this time, because the long-term prospects just arn't what we need at this time, but I'm hoping that the institutions will find it in their hearts to use some of this tax money they've received for the good of the public, even though I don't feel they've got any particular obligation to do so. After all, they've already poured so much money into financing the American political process over the years out of humble charity that they've surely paid their debt several times over. In addition, I realize that the initial 350 billion dollars is kind of a small sum. It's difficult to shore anything up with a number like that, and I understand that many government institutions would wither on the vine with that kind of marginal bailout. The education system, for example would scoff at the mention of 700 billion dollars, not to mention a paltry half-sum like 350. It's basically pocket change, but it's the number the government could spare without causing long-term financial issues for the nation at large. We can at least rest assured that this isn't something that's going to hurt us in the long run.

I don't think that anybody who knows me has any suspicion how I feel about the infamous Prop. 8, but this is the internet where everyone gets to have a say and I also believe that the more people that speak up and make their feelings known, the better. When it comes to local politics, I don't quite know where to turn, since I'm not sure what makes me a citizen of Washington or Illinois, I just know that I've got a mailing address here but I'm not registered to vote, and I am in IL. I think that means that I send a letter to Springfield, but anyhow.

Prop. 8 is a California thing, but it makes national news because it's a loaded topic that's on the nation's mind. There are a lot of people that supported the measure, and it got a lot of fairly dubious funding. Regardless of the interests that funded it, people still got the vote out in support of it, which means that the citizens of the state voted in favor of it, if barely. California's laws are different from most other states in that it only takes a simple majority of voters as opposed to a clear majority to pass, and that's actually good news from where I'm sitting.

No, not good news overall. Good news would have seen the proposition crushed under a locomotive. I will have to take what I can get.

California passed a measure to allow gay men and women to marry, and now a proposition is passed that they cannot. This is indicative of a larger struggle in the national mindset where this issue has become something people will talk about and vote over. That is went through the first time is a landmark, albeit a small one. That a proposition needed to be massively funded and barely passed demonstrates, to me, that this last ditch effort to stymie the tide of progressiveness.

It won't work. It's out of the bag now. This right, once given voice on the national stage, will never allow itself to be put back in the box. It will take some time, but we really must dedicate ourselves to sticking by our rights, as fellow humans, to create a better world for ourselves and others. Bills may be passed, but it is keeping the ideal in our minds and living it on a day to day level that eventually changes things and we're not about to go away.

This is politics, not of a particularly mean sort, but you know how it goes.

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