Unquote” West

The Tank became a fan of social commentator and author Cornel West after reading an article on the former Black Panther and campaign advisor to President Obama in a recent issue of “Rolling Stone.”

Here is an excerpt by journalist Jeff Sharlet:

“The future, [West] says — the democracy he dreams of, the democracy we have yet to achieve — demands prophecy, piety ‘and the poetic. And by poetic I don’t mean a person who writes verses.’ He draws the word out like an English don. ‘I mean all those who exercise imagination and get us outside of our egocentric predicament! Give us a sense of awe and wonder! So we become concerned about something outside of our own little bubbles, our own little slices of reality, our own little professional managerial spots‘ — West makes that sound like a filthy word, then pulls up in a hard pause, hunches down to the edge of the stage and whispers slowly: ‘our own little iron cages.’ He stands. ‘There’s a lot of material toys in the cages. But you’re still in prison. And poets allow us to shatter those bars.’ “

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Becoming top-of-mind

Daily intelligence briefings presented to the president by military generals in uniforms adorned with stars and pins curry respect and attention because of its formal approach and routine.

Health and Human Services officials should mimic the military’s approach and get in front of the president on a daily basis.

Wearing their own starched and pressed uniforms with smiley-face pins signifying healthy children and broccoli-head lapels to represent soup-kitchen meals served, health officials would present the president with a daily status on America’s social well being.

Monday’s health briefing would include Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto to cut state-funded health care for up to 35,000 poor and childless Minnesotans.

Intelligence like that could really raise the priority of our social status.

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Can’t get more apt than that

As soon as stories are written about a website outlining outrageous things Michele Bachmann has said, the Republican congresswoman from Minnesota provided added fodder. (As if the site was starved for content.)

The nut-job said it was a “interesting coincidence” that the swine flu epidemics of 1976 and 2009 both occurred under Democratic presidents. First off, she’s wrong. (Republican Gerald Ford was president during the first swine flu outbreak.) Secondly, since HIV happened while Ronald Reagan was in office and SARS took place under George W. Bush, is that also an “interesting coincidence?”

Probably not, huh, Bachmann?

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Parallel example

Political campaigns in Lebanon are going to the highest bidder, The New York Times reported Thursday. Politicians are paying off voters to gain office.

A parallel example can be shown right here in the U.S. Take this sentence from the Times’ story as a starting point: 

“…Mostly the political machines work through local patriarchs known as ‘electoral keys,’ who can deliver the votes of an entire clan in exchange for money or services — scholarships, a hospital, repaved roads and so on.”

All you have to do is switch a few words – and roles – to make it relevant here.

“…Mostly the political machines work through local leaders known as ‘union bosses,’ who can deliver the votes of an entire group in exchange for money or services — a higher minimum wage, a bailout, and so on.”

Lebanon is extreme, but the U.S. showed similar tendencies with the dismissal of the public financing in the 2008 presidential election that turned it into another race for cash.

This is an loose example, the Tank admits, but a look in the mirror is necessary here. A key counterargument to my claim is that Barack Obama garnered support from a bunch of small donations from the middle class, but it was the big ticket endorsements of the AFL-CIO labor union and other left-leaning executives that propelled him to the Oval Office.

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Unquote” Updike

After award-winning author John Updike died in January, the Tank wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

After reading Updike’s prudent prose in his classic novel “Rabbit, Run,” the Tank will now add to the fuss. ”Rabbit Run” is the first of three books on Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom in which Updike brilliantly wrote about the innermost feelings and doubts of the fictional Rabbit.

As a young father with unrealized dreams, Rabbit felt lost and left his pregnant wife and son to find what was missing. We pick it up when Rabbit returns after his wife, Janice, has given birth to their daughter at the hospital. Harry, mired in the waiting room, is asking Dr. Crowe if he can leave see his wife.

“‘Harry asks, “Can I see her?”

“Who?”

Who? That “her” is a forked word now startles him. The world is thickening. “My, my wife.”

“Of course, surely.” Crowe seems in his mild way puzzled that Harry asks for permission. He must know the facts, yet seems unaware of the gap of guilt between Harry and humanity. “I thought you might mean the baby. I’d rather you waited until visiting hours tomorrow for that; there’s not a nurse to show her right now. But your wife is conscious, as I say. We’ve given her some Equanil. That’s just a tranquillizer. Meprobamate. “Tell me” — he moves closer gently, pink skin and clean cloth — “is it all right if her mother sees her for a moment? She’s been on our necks all night.” He’s asking him, him, the runner, the fornicator, the monster. He must be blind. Or maybe just being a father makes everyone forgive you, because after all it’s the only sure thing we’re here for.

“Sure. She can go in.”

Updike makes you hate Rabbit for the way he ditched his family, but Updike also has you love Rabbit for his vulnerability, his raw self loathing.

John Updike in 1995.

We continue at the beginning of the book where Rabbit, a former high school basketball star, comes across six kids playing hoops as he makes his way home from the office.

“The ball, rocketing off the crotch of the rim, leaps over the heads of the six and lands at at the feet of the one. He catches it on the short bounce with a quickness that startles them. As they stare hushed he sights squinting through the blue clouds of weed smoke, a suddenly dark silhouette like a smokestack against the afternoon spring sky, setting his feet with care, wiggling the ball with nervousness in front of his chest, one widespread white hand on top of the ball and the other underneath, jiggling it patiently to get some adjustment in the air itself. The cuticle moons on his fingernails are big. Then the ball seems to ride up the right lapel of his coat and comes off his shoulder as his knees dip down, and it appears the ball will miss because though he shot from an angle the ball is not going toward the backboard. It was not aimed there. It drops into the circle of the rim, whipping the net with a ladylike whisper.

“Hey!” he shouts in pride.

“Luck,” one of the kids says.

“Skill,” he answers, and asks “Hey. O.K. if I play?”

Updike then weaves in Rabbit’s smooth style on the hardwood court of years past. Rabbit now 26 has a wife, job, son and another kid on the way. You want to scream, “Rabbit, grow up!” Yet Updike has you cheering for the lost man as he navigates tragedy — some self-inflicted, some his own doing. He cannot make up his mind and irrevocably damages relationships. It’s like a vicious car wreck that you can’t take your eyes off, in part, because it’s so eloquently written.

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Return on investment

Where can you get a 22,000 percent rate of return?

Congress.

About 800 companies got $220 for every dollar they spent on lobbying lawmakers in 2004 for the passage of a tax break, reports the Washington Post on a University of Kansas study into the unbelievable rewards of lobbying.

The companies pocketed about $100 billion in the reduction of tax rates on profits earned oversees, and more importantly, showed who runs Washington D.C.

Legislation runs like so: The companies fund the campaigns of the congressmen in order to get their cooperation in the corruption once in office. Big business banks profits without warrant; congressmen get re-elected. It’s no shock lobbying has become a $3 billion business.

The effects of lobbying make the resulting legislating and regulation laughable. Remember when bank executives testified before congressional committees about the need for bailouts to unfreeze credit markets?

Those executives contributed millions to the very congressmen who sat on the committee. No wonder tracking TARP has been nonexistent.

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Hailing Holine, Whistling Ward, Flaunting Floyd

New-to-me music from Kiersten Holine, an acoustic guitarist/songwriter in the Bon Iver ilk.

More new-to-me music from M. Ward, who produces a sound similar to Iron and Wine.

No matter how much time passes or other music I consume, I cannot get this Pink Floyd song out of my dome.

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Vampire slayer finds darkness

TV anchor Dylan Ratigan spit the truth on the economic crisis before CNBC spit him out.

One of the fiercest critics of Wall Street left the financial network last week, but not before he called bankers “vampires” and their actions “stealing.” Ratigan said it was a match between “idiot bankers and moronic lending standards.”

Here’s a poignant video clip about how increases in leveraging risk went from 15-1 (15 times the risk to the amount of reserves) to a whopping 40-1:

Hope to see you soon elsewhere, vampire slayer.

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The other shoe?

The relative peace in Iraq comes with a deadly caveat – what happens when former Sunni insurgents stop getting payments from the U.S. governments and aren’t hired into the Iraqi military?

When that shoe drops, the big picture in Iraq will come into focus.

Members of the Sunni Awakening were bribed into the nationalistic Shiite government years ago to help stop the rampant sectarian violence. Now, with only five percent being placed in the military, the Sunnis have voiced disappointment with being left out of the government, according to Tuesday’s New York Times.

If the Sunnis return to fighting the Shiites, all assumed progress in the war – and reason for the removal of American troops in 2011 – is lost.

In another sign of assumed progress in Iraq, Baghdad will become a “walled fortress,” with four major and 18 minor checkpoints entering the capital, said Thursday’s New York Times.

A bright spot – across the Atlantic

Once British troops leave Iraq in July, a government inquiry into the justification for entering the war will commence, BBC radio reported Wednesday.

The Tank welcomes vetting of the Iraq war – if only it could happen on this side of the Atlantic.

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My shit is stuff!

The military industrial congressional complex showed its pull is location, location, location.

U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who voted against the 2003 Iraq war resolution, has succumbed to the complex. Once one of the staunchest critics of the war, Feingold trumpeted $37 million economic stimulus dollars Sunday for improvements to Army facilities in his home state.

 As George Carlin once said about earmarks, “Your stuff is shit. My shit is stuff!“

When money is spent on military issues in your state and employs your constituents, it, duh, becomes harder to vote against expanding and growing militaristic endeavours. Granted, it’s difficult for politicians to disagree with job creation and retention, but overarching morality should trump the pervasive nature of ”national defense.” 

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