A Pelosi Pity Party

Mitt Romney was rightly castigated for his "binders full of women" remark at the same town hall presidential debate in which the binding and gagging of two female Green Party candidates precluded any real discussion of human rights.

 And now there's the trumped-up angst over Barack Obama keeping his own female Democratic minority leader in such a bind. For it is now Nancy Pelosi's onerous task to become loyal marionette to the martinet in the Oval Office. She has accepted the challenge to lead the Party of FDR over a right-wing cliff.

Her current job description: getting her caucus to cut Social Security earned benefits and still get away with pretending they're on the side of the same people that they will condemn to pain and an earlier death. Will Democrats win votes by reasonableness? Does compromise with nihilist Republicans trump the well-being of Grandma? Is anybody questioning why such a question is even being asked?

Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or, in multimillionaire Nancy's case, a diamond and a continuing seat at the Obamian Wall Street Roundtable.

The Grand Bargain for the Grandees puts her in such a difficult situation, commiserates Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who very centristically balances loyalty for his fabulously wealthy friend with his concern for his own struggling constituents. Instead of outright condemning a Grand Betrayal, he is in ruminating mode: "The question is, are you going to balance the budget on the backs of seniors who have already paid into the system?" he mused. From The Hill,

Cummings also noted a political advantage in the openness of Obama and Pelosi on the chained CPI: “They're trying to show that they are being reasonable,” he said. “It shows the public that if a deal is not struck, it's not our fault.”

Cummings said, despite liberals' reservations about the chained CPI, there's near-unanimous faith in Pelosi to protect the Democrats' ideals.

"She finds a way to bring her party to some type of consensus," he said. "It may not be 100 percent, but consensus."

These clowns are still operating under the false impression that the public gives a crap about whether an elite group of One Percenters can strike a deal among themselves. More than 90% of Americans, according to polls, do not want Social Security benefits decreased, tweaked, protected or improved -- unless it is to raise or scrap the cap on currently regressive FICA contributions. But you wouldn't know it from the corporate coverage, framing the issue around the professional juggling act of an obscenely rich politician who has already and very truthfully allowed that she, personally, can "live with" chained CPI.

Of course, making the story about personalities rather than the real issues makes it easier for the plutocracy-funded media functionaries to function. The fact that Social Security has added not one penny to the deficit, and should not even be included in budget talks, is a secondary sidebar in typical coverage of the political theater.

To further illustrate how far right the Democrats have gone in the Age of Obama is today's New York Times editorial praising Senate Democrats for their own deficit-hawkish, conservative milquetoast of a budget and totally ignoring the more liberal document released by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Readers' comments rightly castigated the Times for this glaring oversight. 

And while Paul Krugman, the lone token liberal voice at the newspaper, did mention the jobs-promoting progressive budget in his last column, he failed utterly to mention the president's role in steering his party into Republicanville. I corrected this obviously inadvertent oversight in my own comment:

President Obama is not impressed with any plan, whether by moderate Democrats or progressive Democrats, that does not include gratuitous cuts to the social safety net.

As Dean Baker points out, Obama's deficit-cultish "balanced approach" does, in fact. favor the wealthy. His chained CPI plan would slash Social Security benefits by 6% after 20 years. For the average retiree, whose benefits amount to two-thirds of her total income, this amounts to a 2% total net reduction in cash flow. But for a couple earning over $450,000, the hit will only be .07% of total income, based on the fiscal cliff tax plan enacted at the beginning of the year. The poor, in effect, will be sacrificing at triple the rate of the rich.

Paul Ryan's plan may be a pathological joke, but he is simply playing his extremist part of court jester in the class war. Obama, on the other hand, is deadly serious as he pressures his own party to join him in what can only be described as a narcissistic exercise in presidential legacy-burnishing.

He seems to be maligning our great social insurance programs as addictive candy that the Democratic children simply must give up for Lent. This, despite the fact that chronic and unaddressed joblessness means that more minor dependents and their surviving parents, veterans, and retirees are falling into poverty.  

(this is the part where I say Obama is full of shit, in censorproof Times-speak) Politicians who persist in calling Social Security a "sacred cow" in this time of economic trouble are not only insulting and cruel. They're full of bull.
 

Meanwhile, about that progressive Back to Work Budget: I tend to agree with John Stauber, the (retired) founder of the Center for Media and Democracy, that this is just the latest going-nowhere-fast manifesto which, along with the new Organizing for Action Obama astroturf slush fund, is just one more empty, slippery aspirational straw for the veal pen inmates to suck on, just a convenient cover for the real corporate movers and shakers of the Democratic establishment to rake in cash and pursue their Wall Street-enabling agenda. Stauber's recent piece in CounterPunch is well worth a read.

Real change only comes from the outside. Rights are not going to be bestowed upon us by any group of politicians, no matter how progressive the message. Rights are something to be grabbed, something that we must bestow upon ourselves. 
 

Assisi Dove vs Austerian Hawk

I'll admit it. I indulged myself in a spate of silly cynicism as I watched CNN's coverage of the Pope-a-Palooza yesterday afternoon. I even started humming "The March of the Flying Monkeys" from The Wizard of Oz as the Swiss Guard strutted around St. Peter's Square.  I mused over the possible genetic origins of Chris Cuomo's speech patterns (he sounds just like his dad, Mario and a more refined version of his guv bro, Andy) while I paid no attention to what he was actually blathering on about.  

Then my ears perked up when they announced the name that the new Argentinian pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, had chosen: Francis. I at first assumed it had to be an homage to fellow Jesuit Francis Xavier, of the elitist class of xenophobe, proselytizer and inquisitor saints. Then came confirmation that Bergoglio had taken his name after that most radical leftist of Christian saints, Francis of Assisi. Then came news that, while a typical hardliner in matters of contraception and gay rights, the new pope is both a champion of poor people and a foe of government austerity for poor people. And given that popes, despite all the well-deserved bad press the Church has gotten lately, are news-makers and that what they say always gets covered in the corporate press, that just maybe the deficit hysteria possessing not only this country but most of Europe, will finally get a much-needed exorcism. 

Dylan Matthews, an economics writer at the Washington Post, has written an interesting piece on the new pope's macroeconomic philosophy, which is more Keynes/Krugman than Milton Friedman and disaster capitalism Chicago school. Bergoglio, unfortunately, is not so radically humanitarian as to have been a supporter of South America's Liberation Theology movement; he was even implicated in the "disappearance" of two politically active Jesuits during a right-wing junta in 1976. But at least, the new pope and his fellow bishops did fight back against the Argentinian government when it mulled the imposition of austerity during its own economic meltdown in 2002. A free-market neoliberal the new pope most certainly is not:

A paper by Thomas Trebat, “Argentina, the Church, and Debt,” details the church’s role in the crisis’s resolution. Argentine bishops, including Francis, had long criticized the laissez-faire policies of Carlos Menem, who was president from 1989 to 1999. “The bishops were critical of the economic model as a generator of poverty and unemployment, notwithstanding the stability it had brought to the country,” Trebat wrote.

And when the debt crisis hit in 2002, the church called in strong terms for a debt restructuring to take place which privileged social programs above debt repayment. They argued that the true problems in the Argentinian economy were, in their words, “social exclusion, a growing gap between rich and poor, insecurity, corruption, social and family violence, serious deficiencies in the educational system and in public health, the negative consequences of globalization and the tyranny of the markets.”

I guess you can tell how far to the right this whole capitalist world has swung when we can rejoice when a new pope chooses a symbolic name that does not glorify rich people. No Pope Lloyds yet, even though Blankfein is infallible and and immune, and has publicly declared he is doing God's work and lightning did not strike. Jorge/Francis has got a whole lot of his own Vatican bank chicanery to clean up as it is. And as Charles Pierce astutely points out, the new guy is an old guy and thus a convenient place-holder for the real guys in charge. Plus, he has only one lung.
 
Joe Biden is reportedly going to attend the anti-bling pope's coronation. Maybe Jorge/Francis can whisper a little sermonette into the the VP's ear on the evils of austerity, the class war, income disparity and sequestration. Maybe Joe Biden will undergo another epiphany and can once again "get out ahead of his skis" like he did on marriage equality and shoot his mouth off on national television about the need for Medicare for All. Maybe the corporate media will develop some honesty about the cruelty of not only Paul Ryan's latest Randian manifesto, but also about President Obama's own war against older people. Dean Baker has crunched the numbers, and proven what we already knew:  Obama's so-called "balanced approach" of cuts and revenues actually does punish retirees in a cruelly lopsided way:

Paul Ryan, meanwhile, is reprising his supporting role in the continuing saga known as American Austerity Theater. He is the useful idiot of the Deficit Brigade, acting out ever more extreme Randian fantasies. He is the indestructible Rasputin cast against the centrist Democrats' phony Franciscan monastery. He is a parody of himself at this point. Even the negative attention he is getting from the usual purveyors of progressive outrage is misplaced, because it merely serves to make the similarly cruel Obama seem reasonable. Ryan, as he rails against food stamps and medical care for the poor, looks like the devil incarnate. Obama, as he flashes his boyish, aren't-I-adorable grin, is the devil in disguise.

Francis of Assisi repudiated riches and lived to serve the downtrodden. Ryan and Obama have repudiated the downtrodden and live to serve the rich. May the spirit of St. Francis rise again, and become a continuous thorn in both their sides.

Light vs Blight

Is it someone's idea of a joke to celebrate Sunshine Week at the same time the geniuses in charge keep pretending that Daylight Saving Time magically bestows an extra hour of wonderful sleep-deprived glare upon us?

This is the dreaded Monday to end all Mondays, when more heart attacks happen, and traffic accidents skyrocket, and "cyberloafing" at work becomes epidemic. So let us ponder, through our untimely snores and our bleary eyes and our snickering cynicism, this blinding ephemera known as Open Government. Some history:

Sunshine Week naturally got its start in Florida, the Sunshine State. According to the official shiny website run by the brightness brigade,

The Florida Society of Newspaper Editors launched Sunshine Sunday in 2002 in response to efforts by some Florida legislators to create scores of new exemptions to the state’s public records law. FSNE estimates that some 300 exemptions to open government laws were defeated in the legislative sessions that followed its three Sunshine Sundays, because of the increased public and legislative awareness that resulted from the Sunshine Sunday reports and commentary.

Several states followed Florida’s lead, and in June 2003, ASNE hosted a Freedom of Information Summit in Washington where the seeds for Sunshine Week were planted.

(snip)

Though created by journalists, Sunshine Week is about the public’s right to know what its government is doing, and why.

Sunshine Week seeks to enlighten and empower people to play an active role in their government at all levels, and to give them access to information that makes their lives better and their communities stronger.

Participants include news media, government officials at all levels, schools and universities, libraries and archives, individuals, non-profit and civic organizations, historians and anyone with an interest in open government.

I don't know about you, but whenever somebody I don't know tells me I can become empowered and enlightened, I get very, very cranky. For example, I got very grumpy when tax-exempt billionaire Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg went on 60 Minutes last night to tell me to "lean in" in order to get ahead in life. And the fact that Sunshine Week is made possible, in part, by a grant from Bloomberg LLP does not help my mood. Mayor Mike Bloomberg is now 10th richest billionaire on the entire planet, and he's against the minimum wage and he wanted to fingerprint food stamp applicants and now he wants to ban earbuds to prevent the deafness that will close our ears to his harangues against sugary soft drinks.

Plus, the Sunshiners got the bright idea of giving President Obama a transparency award behind closed doors a couple of years ago, even though he was already well on his way to becoming the most opaque president in history. It's not just that he makes secret laws pretending to justify secret assassinations and has prosecuted more whistleblowers than in any previous administration. According to the AP, the Obama government is now actually censoring public records at an even faster clip since the beginning of his second term:

The administration cited exceptions built into the law to avoid turning over materials more than 479,000 times, a roughly 22 percent increase over the previous year. In many cases, more than one of the law's exceptions was cited in each request for information.

In a year of intense public interest over deadly U.S. drones, the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, terror threats and more, the government cited national security to withhold information at least 5,223 times — a jump over 4,243 such cases in 2011 and 3,805 cases in Obama's first year in office. The secretive CIA last year became even more secretive: Nearly 60 percent of 3,586 requests for files were withheld or censored for that reason last year, compared with 49 percent a year earlier.

Other federal agencies that invoked the national security exception included the Pentagon, Director of National Intelligence, NASA, Office of Management and Budget, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Communications Commission and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, State, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.

All told, the government is now refusing to comply with fully one-third of all requests under the Freedom of Information law. And it's taking a lot longer to get the information:

Some agencies, such as the Health and Human Services Department, took less time than the previous year to turn over files. But at the State Department, for example, even urgent requests submitted under a fast-track system covering breaking news or events when a person's life was at stake took an average two years to wait for files.

Journalists and others who need information quickly to report breaking news, for example, fared worse last year. The rate at which the government granted so-called expedited processing, which moves an urgent request to the front of the line for a speedy answer, fell from 24 percent in 2011 to 17 percent last year. The CIA denied every such request last year.
 

Flying in the face of all fact, the White House itself hilariously claims to be celebrating its own week-long extravaganza of openness. Obama does the usual doublespeak routine, promising to be transparent about the need for transparency and setting aside a Very Special Week to Have a Conversation about Transparency. And the Good Ship Lollipop is a sweet trip to the candy shop.

Feeling depressed yet? Right after you write your letter to the government asking for your Aunt Sally's immigration records from the Year Zero, my prescription is to drop everything and go take a nap. As a matter of fact, I strongly suggest that you set your clock back an hour to really screw with the establishment. I actually did once get away (accidentally of course) with imparting this same advice on the front page of the first newspaper I ever worked for. (If this story sounds familiar, it's because I told it in my Reader Comment to Maureen Dowd's column yesterday. I've been telling it every year to my long-suffering family and friends, and now I am sharing it again with my long-suffering blog readers):

(This column) reminded me of my own first week at my first newspaper job. I was assigned to write an innocuous story reminding readers about Daylight Saving Time. I somehow managed to totally botch the piece by advising people to set their clocks back an hour, instead of ahead.

Sure that I would be fired before I even got started, I was pleasantly shocked to discover that my gaffe had inspired spasms of newsroom hilarity. It turned out the editors were all hardened atheists as well as hardened boozehounds, and they got much satisfaction dealing with all the irate readers calling to complain that they'd missed church because of me.

That paper, of course, was one of hundreds that have long since folded. Independent local journalism has been largely replaced by a concentration of national media power in fewer and fewer plutocratic hands. (i.e. Rupert Murdoch). This is hardly conducive to a healthy democracy.

As Maureen says, good writing is good writing regardless of whether it's in print or in pixels, or in the case of the NYT, both. Even George Orwell's diary has been transformed into an internet blog. For every issue of People Magazine, there are hundreds of news blogs worth reading, including one from our very own Paul Krugman. Good journalists are not only valuable, they are absolutely essential.

Before closing, I'd like to redeem myself and remind everyone to set your clocks ahead if you haven't already done so. Spring ahead, because hope springs eternal. I hope.

The Weekly Dog Whistle to the Plutocrats

 

(A/k/a The Weekly Presidential Address)

 

Hi, everybody. My top priority as President is making sure we do everything we can to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class.

 

There will be a continuous topping off of your corporate tanks by the U.S. Treasury. While the oligarchic engine thrums, its premium gas is producing the toxic by-product of deficit hysteria. Like all things shitty, it flows downhill, eventually igniting into a final conflagration destroying what little is left of the middle class. This, my fellow plutocrats Americans, is the power of creative destruction. But as the serfs in our midst suffer through this endless, needless depression, we'll just keep reminding them of the Greek myth of the phoenix rising from the ashes. We'll keep intimating that poor people still reside in the middle class. Let the mellifluous magical-thinking presidential oratory sink deep into their tired, benumbed brains. 

 

Yesterday, we received some welcome news on the class war of the plutes against the proles  that front. We learned that our businesses added nearly 250,000 new jobs last month. The unemployment rate fell to 7.7% – still too high, but now lower than it was when I took office.

 

The stats, of course, do not count the chronically unemployed, those who have simply given up and fallen into the permanent underclass. They also do not mention the fact that many of the jobs being added are part-time, temporary, low-wage and no-benefit. No mention of the fact that the average CEO earns more than 300 times as much as the average worker. SSSHHH.... must not mention the fact that the Swiss are moving to cap executive pay and the European Union is mulling a financial transaction tax on high speed trades.

Our businesses have created jobs every month for three years straight – nearly 6.4 million new jobs in all. Our manufacturers are bringing jobs back to America. Our stock market has rebounded. New homes are being built cheaply and sold at a faster pace. And we need to do everything we can to keep that momentum going.

 

Here is where your president honors public-private cronyism as though it were a form of American patriotism that simply does not exist in the real world of "free" trade and transglobalism. By using the first person plural, he glosses over the fact that the government itself has cut jobs and wages. He tacitly admits that a kind of fascism, or at least corporatism, has taken over. We have bribed corporations to bring a small number of manufacturing jobs back to "right to work" (anti-union) states by offering corporations even more welfare, via tax breaks -- and even tax rebates based on the fraudulent losses they claim to have suffered through some token reverse-offshoring. Damned straight that the stock market is rebounding, because all the wealth continues being sucked up by those at the extreme pinnacle. And the apparent resurgence of the housing market is largely due to vulture capitalists buying up the inventory of foreclosed homes and the deliberate ploy of keeping excess inventory off the market to further inflate another real estate bubble. Thanks to the toothlessness of Dodd-Frank financial "reform", the taxpayers have guaranteed they will bail out the banksters when yet another inevitable bursting occurs. Even now, banks are getting back-door bailouts through the gaping, unguarded window of the Treasury.

That means asking ourselves three questions every day: How do we make America a magnet for new jobs? How do we equip more of our people with the skills those jobs require? And how do we make sure that your hard work leads to a decent living?

 

So now it's the Power of Three, huh? Holy Holy Trinity, Batman! And 3X3=9, the same magical number as that glorious Obamian minimum wage suggestion for those futuristic and ephemeral non-union low-paying tech jobs requiring the expertise of an advanced engineering degree. Otherwise, this paragraph is simply for rhetorical purposes. Your president is in musing mode, not bothering to answer his own questions.

That has to be our driving focus – our North Star. And at a time when our businesses are gaining a little more traction, the last thing we should do is allow Washington politics to get in the way. You deserve better than the same political gridlock and refusal to compromise that has too often passed for serious debate over the last few years.

 

Just when the plutocracy stands poised to have it all, Washington politics is getting in the way of Obama's grandiose bargain for the grandees. When he says "you deserve better" he is dog-whistling directly to the Fix the Debt deficit scolds and their compromised media hacks, who as far as we know, are the only people kvetching about political gridlock. Have you noticed that Our North Star has become the latest hackneyed phrase in the presidential repertoire? It is Newspeak for the aggregation of the national wealth at the very pinnacle of the stratosphere, evoking a self-righteous Biblical image of the Three Wise Men searching out salvation in the form of Mammon. Meh. Their bright is our blight. 

 



Ka-Ching Went the Beat of Their Blessed Little Hearts



 

That’s why I’ve been reaching out to Republicans and Democrats to see if we can untangle some of the gridlock. Earlier this week, I met with some Republican Senators to see if there were smarter ways to grow our economy and reduce our deficits than the arbitrary cuts and the so-called “sequester” that recently went into place. We had an open and honest conversation about critical issues like immigration reform and gun violence, and other areas where we can work together to move this country forward. And next week, I’ll attend both the Democratic and Republican party meetings in the Capitol to continue those discussions.

 

See previous post about that deliciously decadent deficit dinner party. And, by the way, the president is very deliberately not reaching out to the Progressive Caucus. Their ideas (such as raising the FICA contribution cap) may be serious, but they are very deliberately being blackballed from admission to the Very Serious People Country Club. (see every blogpost and column ever written by Paul Krugman, especially this one published today about the disappearing deficit that Obama insists, apparently under orders from Wall Street, still needs shrinking.)

The fact is, America is a nation of different beliefs and different points of view. That’s what makes us strong, and frankly, makes our democratic debates messy and often frustrating. But ultimately what makes us special is when we summon the ability to see past those differences, and come together around the belief that what binds us together will always be more powerful than what drives us apart.

 

The two political parties of the plutonomy both work for the same masters of the universe. Money is the tie that binds all of the millionaires and billionaires together. It is more powerful than all the pretend ideologies in the world, combined. The "gridlock mess" is a big sham anyway. It is a smokescreen giving the lobbyists more time to bribe and the politicians more time to be bribed. Filibuster reform didn't happen, because the Senate leaders didn't want it to happen. A series of fake crisis gridlock dramas provides the perfect smokescreen for the infliction of a whole mess of pain on the masses.

As Democrats and Republicans, we may disagree on the best way to achieve our goals, but I’m confident we can agree on what those goals should be. A strong and vibrant middle class. An economy that allows businesses to grow and thrive. An education system that gives more Americans the skills they need to compete for the jobs of the future. An immigration system that actually works for families and businesses. Stronger communities and safer streets for our children.

 

Insert the usual bromides as this latest weekly address draws to a close. Mention middle class again. Check. Tout deregulation for businesses so they may confidently hoard ever greater piles of cash and create a few low wage jobs. Check. Tout the technocratization of education for the enrichment of profiteers, with a concentration on teaching narrow technical skills for the jobs of the future which, of course, do not exist in the here and now. Check. Tout immigration policies that are heavy on business benefits and light on human rights protections. Check. Tout Strength and Safety, evoking visions of armored Homeland Security tanks and paramilitary police forces to protect the Corporate State and to stifle the inevitable populist dissent arising from increasing wealth inequality. Check.

Making progress on these issues won’t be easy. In the months ahead, there will be more contentious debate and honest disagreement between principled people who want what’s best for this country. But I still believe that compromise is possible. I still believe we can come together to do big things. And I know there are leaders on the other side who share that belief.

 

Barry just had a very hard slog of a catered lunch with Paul Ryan -- that principled other half of RomRy the Democrats used to pretend to hate because he wants to voucherize Medicare --  but now all of a sudden he wants whatever is best for this country. (Newspeak for whatever is best for the ruling class, which runs the country.) Obama is desperate for a grand bargain of safety net cuts by the end of July, the optimal time (after Christmas) to ram another 2,000-page disaster capitalism bill through Congress. Everybody will be in a big hurry to escape the Beltway Swamp, go on vacation, and fund-raise. Big things, by the way, is Newspeak for gutting Social Security and making FDR turn in his grave. Big things is Orwellian code for Austerity.

So I’ll keep fighting to solve the real challenges facing middle-class families. And I’ll enlist anyone who is willing to help. That’s what this country needs now – and that’s what you deserve.

 

Simpson & Bowles and the Centrist cult of Fix the Debt tycoons will keep doing the Sunday shows sponsored by your corporate largesse.... the oil and gas industry, the big banks, the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance leech brigade, the defense contractors. Your placeholder president understands your needs, my liege lords. You deserve every last ounce of flesh, every last drop of blood. 

Thanks.

 

 

 

The Way, the Truth, the Life

Last night, while you were perhaps trying to decide between paying your electric bill or splurging on that long-delayed expensive medical checkup, Blessed Barack and the new Twelve Disciples of the Republican Party were stuffing themselves on terrine de foie gras and Lobster Thermidor as they mulled putting old people on a cat food diet and other creative ways to make your lives even more miserable.

The president had invited a dozen Senators to the exclusive Plume Restaurant at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington in hopes of forging a new testament to safety net cuts in order to appease the heavenly fathers of Wall Street. Far from being a Last Supper, it looks to be the first of many soirees that our demigod president will host in an effort to burnish his legacy. "Do this in remembrance of Me" appears to be the motive of Obama's longed-for Grand Sacrificial Bargain. Jesus knew that one of his own disciples would betray him. But in this perverted Biblical tableau, it is Barry and the Dirty Dozen who would just love to betray all of us. That is their way, that is their truth, that is the purpose of their political lives.

They broke the ice, they broke the bread, they preached austerity, and their zombie ideas will go forth and multiply in the corporate media churches of the nation. From The Hill:

“I think really what he is trying to do is start a discussion and kind of break the ice and that was appreciated,” said Sen. Mike Johanns (Neb.), one of twelve Republicans who broke bread with Obama. “Most of the meeting was spent on budget and [finding] a way forward. His goal is ours. We want to stop careening from crisis to crisis.”

Johanns said he is more optimistic of reaching a broad deficit-reduction deal this Congress.

“I think he’s very sincere. I think he wants to try to figure something out. Today was a good step and we’ll see what happens now,” he said.

As they gorged themselves on expensive food and slugged down wine priced as high as $1,000 a bottle, the politicians reportedly did not once mention the suffering they have gratuitously imposed on the nation's most vulnerable citizens in the latest bout of austerity known as the Sequester. Although Congress is already moving to restore cuts of the Defense Budget, the cuts to Head Start, the mother/child nutrition program known as WIC, programs for battered women, and low income housing and heating assistance will be allowed to stand. Meanwhile, Obama and his cohort haggle over the destruction of the New Deal in exchange for a few token and meaningless bits of revenue from the rich.

Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who has already proposed such "painful" cuts to Medicare that they rival those of the Randian Paul Ryan, confirmed to The Hill that The Sequester was not discussed. The decadent dining experience was merely an appetizer for the main feast, the orgy of mass cannibalism-by-plutocrat. "I think meetings like this are helpful and I think they build relationships," Corker added. “It was as social a meeting as you would find anywhere."

And well it should be. To go with the Lobster Thermidor, the senators were treated to sides of White Wine Saffron Gllacage (menu typo, or is this an actual food product?) and Herbed Fingerlings. If they are real red meat Republicans and chose the prime rib, they got an extra helping of beef marrow to go along with it. No word about whether they picked over Skin-in-the-Game canapes. But the sound of sucking the life out of our bones was certainly echoing through the darkness of the Beltway Swamp last night.

And you thought the saga of New York City's Cannibal Cop was disgusting? He's got nothing on the flesh-eaters in suits residing in the lower depths of the Acela Corridor.

Popes & Planes & Plutocrats

The Beanie Boys have been sequestered! The Vatican has ordered the Cardinals in Rome for the Pick-a-Pope-alooza to stifle themselves. And that goes for you too, Timmy Dolan, who has brought the art of avuncular clerical schmoozing with the media to whole new heights, even inviting journalists to their own special Mass over the weekend. Dolan, always surrounded by a gaggle of reporters, has finally been gagged. Hallelujah.

And while the Cardinals are jamming in the Sistine Chapel, the Holy See has made sure that outsiders will not see or hear anything. They have installed a special jamming device in the inner sanctum. But not to worry. The whole shebang is apparently so boring that officials have not only issued a press gag order, they have also effectively muzzled the chatterboxes even within their own august company: 

Today cardinals participating in closed-door deliberations ahead of the conclave adopted a five minute rule to limit the length of speeches. So far, 51 cardinals from five continents have addressed the group.

At least one participant reportedly expressed his frustration with some of the speeches.

"No matter how brilliant you may think your speech is, do we really need it?" (a soon-to-be-muzzled) Nigerian Cardinal John Oneiyekan told the National Catholic Reporter.

Meanwhile, since that other Sequester is predicted to engender miserable long lines at TSA-depleted airports, the TSA has finally decided to just admit defeat. You are now invited to bring your small knives onto planes, as well as those other travel essentials -- hockey sticks and toy baseball bats, pool cues and golf clubs. Flight attendants are said to be ticked off because space on planes is so limited to begin with. Just imagine how hard it will be to practice your drives and line up your billiards shots in those crappy cramped aisles in business class.

So thank god that shaving in airplane bathrooms will still be impossible, due to the continuing ban on razors. Ditto for box cutters. In the best tradition of Newspeak, TSA has provided a perfectly cogent, clear and sensible explanation of its thinking processes for you:

TSA continues to evolve and strengthen its multi-layered approach to aviation security – through better technology, expanded data analysis capabilities and an enhanced understanding of current intelligence. The decision to permit certain items in carry-on luggage was made as part of TSA’s overall risk-based security approach and aligns TSA with International Civil Aviation Organization Standards and our European counterparts.

If it's more luxuriously spacey travel that you crave, reservations will soon be accepted for the maiden voyage of the Titanic II, brainchild of Australian billionaire Clive Palmer. Rest assured that class divisions will prevail as the Chinese-manufactured exact replica of the ill-fated luxury liner sets sail. According to The Guardian,

Palmer's current plans seem aimed at creating an Edwardian theme park on the waves where passengers will have the option of wearing period dress. In an odd move, Palmer aims to replicate the class structure of the Titanic – right down to the steerage class inhabited by poor immigrants on their way to a new life in America.

But then you realise that Palmer – who is the son of Australian silent movie star George Palmer – appears to be in love with James Cameron's movie Titanic as much as the historical ship. Instead of talking about the Titanic disaster, with its class-ridden horrors as the rich saved themselves and the poor drowned, Palmer speaks of Titanic II as a symbol of love and togetherness as if Cameron's doomed movie lovers Rose and Jack were real people.

"Titanic II is an opportunity for people all over the glove to come together with an idea. That idea of course is one of love and understanding. It emphasises the things that we have got in common, rather than our differences. A family, you know, someone to fall in love with in our lives as we travel together through time," he said.

Just like in the movie, first class passengers will be encouraged to go slumming in third class, but only if they first purchase a special golden ticket. They can even mingle in Second Class amongst the dwindling middle. But the steerage peasants, in fantasy as in reality, will not be allowed to bother the plutocrats. And now as then, they will remain huddled, since Titanic II will provide only narrow, hard single occupany bunks.

Update: via Jim Romanesko, via Barry Blitt, comes this New Yorker cover of Joe Ratzinger lolling in the entitled hammock of ecclesiastical retirement: 

 

Look closely at the placement of Joey's right hand, advises an astute tipster. He seems to be holding on to something other than his copy of L'Osservatore Romano, no? Asked for comment, Blitt remarked: "Oy vey!"

Sequestration: SVU

There's a new crime show playing in America. It's called Sequestration: Special Victims Unit.

It incorporates a trite Good Cop/Bad Cop gimmick so unoriginal that it should have lost its ability to fool people by the time Dragnet went off the air last century. But since this hackneyed device retains its uncanny ability to fool most of the people some of the time, or at least some of the people all of the time, the propaganda hacks will only give up their tried and true technique over your dead bodies.

Here's the newest version of the stale corporate plot:

President Obama and his boys and girls in blue (as in Dog) join forces with a group of out-of-control, sadistic, and eminently useful Republican renegades to sweep up a huge swath of the tired, the poor, and the massively huddled in an indiscriminate budgetary dragnet.

Obama and the Democrats then play Good Cop, pretending to want to help the same people they've just arrested, bringing them a rickety folding chair to sit on, a few liberal crumbs from the rusted-out vending machine down the hall, promises of a better tomorrow, tomorrow -- if they will only cooperate with the authorities, and give up Grandma and Grandpa as part of a Grand Plea Bargain. It seems the ultimate goal of Sequestration was always to forcibly wean people from their anti-capitalist addiction to Social Security and Medicare.

Obama lieutenant Gene Sperling admitted as much on the Sunday talk shows. The kids being kicked out of Head Start are the unfortunate but necessary decoys being used to entrap the real criminals: seniors greedily sucking up all that medical care, and daring to collect on the retirement insurance programs they've paid into all of their working lives. Regular people could be rendered so much more lucrative if only Wall Street could get its lunch-hooks onto the great social programs of the 30s and 60s. 

The Republicans, meanwhile, perform their role of Bad Cop with abandon. They offer no deals. Instead, they flagrantly wield their whips, their chains, their brass knuckles, their vocal derision. They don't even bother pretending they're not under the direct control of the plutocrats. They don't attempt to hide the relish with which they will grind the poor, the tired, the huddled masses into one giant steaming puddle of bug-splat.

Obama and the good cops, of course, are not taking the humane course of simply letting their special victims go free without any punishment or further ado. For the foreseeable future, the collateral damage will remain sequestered in the holding cell of austerity.

As the New York Times reports, the Good Cop Democrats and the Bad Cop Republicans have agreed to extend funding for the federal government at the post-sequester level, i.e., minus $85 billion, until the end of the current fiscal year (Sept. 30) “most likely allow(ing) the across-the-board spending reductions to remain in place for months if not years.”

In other words, an open-ended jail sentence for those caught up in the indiscriminate dragnet, with only the faintest hope for parole. Meanwhile, the too-big-to-fail banks are not only immune from prosecution, they are still being gifted with billions of dollars in backdoor bailouts, paid for by the very same people who are being victimized all over again by Sequestration.

So, where is the outrage? Oh, I forgot. Good Cop Obama really, really feels for the victims. He calls their punishment "dumb" at press conferences far away from scene of the crime. He is not, he says, a dictator, so what can he do? But meanwhile, you can donate to his legacy-burnishing slush fund social welfare group known as Organizing for Action. If you can raise $500,000 he will even grace you with four private chitchat sessions a year. And it's all perfectly, corruptly, disgustingly legal.

Meanwhile, freeze!  Put your hands in the air, legs wide apart, anything you say or do will be used against you, and if you don't have a lawyer or a lobbyist, tough shit. You're all under arrest.