Eve Of Destruction-- Handsome Dick Manitoba

Earlier I mentioned that the House subpoena for Mick Mulvaney is for this Friday. He won't show up. Who really cares though-- especially because something much more relevant is absolutely showing up on that day: the first solo album, Born In The Bronx, by Handsome Dick Manitoba, formerly lead singer of the legendary Dictators. On a personal note, the very last red (in in this case, pink) meat I ever ate was with the Dictators at a White Castle when they were shooting this picture for the inner sleeve of The Dictators Go Girl Crazy:

P.F. Sloan wrote "The Eve of Destruction" in 1964 and it was a #1 hit (in the U.S. and Canada and #3 in the U.K.) when it was released by Barry McGuire the following year, despite it being banned by many conservative radio station owners for giving aid and comfort to America's enemies in Vietnam. Among the bands that subsequently covered the song, before Handsome Dick, were The Turtles, Jan and Dean, the Grass Roots, Tiny Tim, John Thunders, The Dickies (a punk version on white or yellow vinyl), The Undead, DOA, Public Enemy, Christian rockers Crashdog and Larry Norman, and (not Christian rockers)  Psychic TV.

The eastern world it is explodin'
Violence flarin', bullets loadin'
You're old enough to kill but not for votin'
You don't believe in war, what's that gun you're totin'
And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin'
But you tell me over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction

Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?
Can't you see the fears that I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no running away
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave
Take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction

Yeah, my blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin'
I'm sittin' here, just contemplatin'
I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation
Handful of Senators don't pass legislation,
And marches alone can't bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin'
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin'
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction

Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama!
Ah, you may leave here, for four days in space
But when you return, it's the same old place
The poundin' of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace
Hate your next-door-neighbour, but don't forget to say grace
And you tell me over and over and over and over again my friend
You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction
No no you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction

Jon Tiven, who's playing organ on the Handsome Dick version, produced it and used PF Sloan's background vocals. Here's the version the Red Rockers did for my label, 415 Records, on their album Good As Gold in 1983, which was produced by David Kahne who I believe was the one who suggested the band cover the song. Sounds great, right? And the video looks good, but CBS, which had bought my label by then, ignored it the same way the DCCC ignores all the good congressional candidates. Exactly the same way.

Welcome To The Weekend--And Don't Forget: Biden Is Better Than Trump, Biden Is Better Than Trump, Biden Is Better Than Trump, Biden Is Better Than Trump

The visceral hatred most people I know have for Trump sometime drives them crazy. I'm not joking. People I would have never expected it from wish him dead. They wish his family dead. The reactions shock me-- and I'm the one who's supposed to be the furthest left! Almost all of them are so infuriated by Trump that they're actually willing to entertain helping elect the worst possible Democratic alternative, Status Quo Joe Biden. That's a real shame, since it was a series of essentially worthless presidents very much like Biden that drove desperate voters to saddle the country with Trump.

Among historians, the 5 great American presidents are George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson-- all transformational presidents. There is also a consensus about some extraordinarily bad presidents: Trump, Warren G. Harding (the Biden of his day), Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce. But mostly there were mediocrities-- lots and lots and lots of mediocrities: Richard Nixon, Calvin Coolidge, Gerald Ford, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter...

Among Democrats today, at least according to one shaky source, Obama is more popular than Jesus. And, unfortunately, for these involved souls, God plucked a rib out of Obama and created Status Quo Joe in 2008. He didn't exist before 2008-- none of the ugly racism, the disgusting misogyny, the lying, the sucking up to corporate interests... there was no Joe Biden the war monger, no Joe Biden the arch conservative, no Joe Biden the corrupt corporate whore, no Joe Biden the man whose instincts get everything wrong every single time... No, for them there is just OBAMA's disciple. Maybe they're not as stupid as a Trump supporter; or maybe they are.





Biden has no reason to be president of the United States except he's a life-long politician-- in his case a really, really bad one with a long putrid record--and that being president is what he's wanted his whole life. What's the opposite of transformational. Biden would be that. Will be be disastrous as a president-- another Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Warren G. Harding or, worse yet, Trump? Or merely another mediocrity. Mediocrity is what we can hope for from Biden. I suspect worse. Even Biden's moron supporters use the Warren Harding campaign there-- a "back to normalcy"-- to describe their man.

Bernie's the opposite; he's driven by ideas, not by ego. "I understand that our campaign is unique in the sense that we're going to try to win the Democratic primary, that we are going to try to beat Trump, but you know what else we're going to try to do? We're going to try to transform the United States of America... So our campaign has a different goal. It's to transform this country, and we're taking on the entire establishment when we do that." That establishment he's taking on very much includes Status Quo Joe and the garbage Democrats behind him.

A week ago, Status Quo Joe told his supporters at a rally in Philadelphia, "I'm going to say something outrageous: I know how to make government work... I helped make this government work before. And I can make it work again. To me, our principles must never be compromised. But compromise itself is not a dirty word. Consensus is not a weakness-- it's a necessity. It's how this government was designed to work." Work for who? The credit card companies? Corporate America? The political class? Work to accomplish what? Biden knows how to make government work in a way that drove tens of millions of voters to such despair that we now have a genuine fascist in the White House. We elected a fucking fascist because people like Biden thought they knew how to compromise and make government work... for someone.

There's only one thing stupider than a Biden supporter among the Democratic coalition-- an identity politics supporter. Snd those are the 3 lanes: the progressive, fundamental transformative change lane (Bernie and Elizabeth Warren), the status quo, conservative lane (Biden)and the identity politics lane (Kamala Harris, McKinsey Pete).

Lookin' forward to the debates? They could change everything... I'm told.

Are You Having A Nice Weekend?

Everybody likes inoffensive, friendly, old Tom Petri, right? He's the 4th most senior Republican in the House-- having beaten Tommy Thompson for an open GOP seat back in 1979. His central Wisconsin district is a swing district that leans red. Obama eked out the narrowest of victories there in 2008 and lost to Romney in 2012. A former member of Steve Israel's Center Aisle Caucus for mainstream conservative Republicans and conservative Democrats, the GOP has consistently passed over Petri for a committee chair but the Democrats have just as consistently given him a free pass to reelection. They never challenge him-- never, not even in a Democratic wave election year. Steve Israel has pledged to never challenge any of his old Center Aisle frat brothers and Petri knows he can sit back and never worry about reelection as long as Steve Israel has anything to say about it.

But then, late last year, MoveOn.org hired PPP to poll WI-06 (Oshkosh, Sheboygan, Manitowoc, Fond Du Lac, the Wisconsin Dells and the conservative, white suburbs north of Milwaukee). The results-- right after Petri voted with the crazy extremists in his party to shut down the government-- surprised everyone. His job approval ratings were underwater, only 37% of his constituents approving and, by a narrow, margin favoring replacing him with a Democrat. Take a look for yourself:

Israel, of course, ignored the poll and ignored the district, preferring to use precious and limited DCCC resources not against Petri in the R+5 district, but trying to get Bue Dogs and other conservative fake-Dems elected in more prohibitive and much deeper red districts-- like the execrable Jennifer Garrison (R+8), Patrick Henry Hays (R+8), James Lee Witt (R+15), Jackie McPherson (R+14), and Nick Casey (R+11). Of course Israel isn't allowing the DCCC to challenge any of the Republican incumbents in Wisconsin this cycle, even in the swing districts like WI-01 (Paul Ryan) and WI-07 (Sean Duffy), where there are very strong progressive candidates in the race, respectively, Rob Zerban and Kelly Westlund.

But not everybody ignored Petri's growing vulnerability. Way on the far right fringes of the Republican Party, West Bend extremist Glenn Grothman, the furthest right whack-job in the Wisconsin state Senate, sensed an opportunity to advance himself and his insane agenda. And his insane agenda goes beyond just the standard fare of the far right. Sure, he wrote the concealed carry legislation that Scott Walker signed into law in 2011 and he has been an outspoken opponent of equal pay for women, a fanatic opponent of LGBT equality and an advocate for tobacco companies-- all pretty standard Republican Party fare these days-- but that's where it gets bizarre. Grothman is the anti-chlorination nut (every legislature needs at least one) and the guy who obsesses over unpasteurized milk. He's also the guy who wants to abolish Martin Luther King Day as a holiday for state employees. And the weekend… yes, Glenn Grothman is another reactionary, union-hating Republican who wants to take the U.S. back to the "good old days" when workers had no right to even one day off for a weekend.

One of his colleagues in the state Senate laughed when I told him Grothman was running against Petri last week. "Let DC take him… He's caused nothing but problems for Wisconsin since he was elected to the Assembly in the early '90s… I don't think West Bend, where he lives, is even in Petri's district but everyone in Madison will be hoping to never hear from him again… He's really the quintessential ALEC puppet."

A Democratic congressional staffer from Wisconsin was less sanguine at the prospect of Grothman in Washington. "It's radical right asshats like Glenn Grothman that make serious legislators hate Washington so much and want to leave. You can't ever get any common ground between the two parties with extremist ideologues like him. I never studied more psychology than Psych 101 and 102 but I am confident in saying that the man is insane-- and a danger to democracy." Delusional Tea Party members and the Club for Growth are celebrating already.

Wisconites tired of relaxing on weekends and staying home on federal holidays are in luck: On Thursday, GOP state Sen. Glenn Grothman announced his challenge to 17-term moderate Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.). In a conservative district that went to Mitt Romney by seven points in 2012, Grothman hopes to channel dissatisfaction with Republicans in Congress whom he believes haven't done enough to slow down the Obama administration's policy agenda. But he comes with some baggage of his own.

In January, Grothman introduced legislation to eliminate a state requirement that workers get at least one day off per week. "Right now in Wisconsin, you're not supposed to work seven days in a row, which is a little ridiculous because all sorts of people want to work seven days a week," he told the Huffington Post. Eliminating days off is a long-running campaign from Grothman. Three years earlier, he argued that public employees should have to work on Martin Luther King Day. "Let's be honest, giving government employees off has nothing to do with honoring Martin Luther King Day and it's just about giving state employees another day off," he told the Wisconsin State Journal. It would be one thing if people were using their day off to do something productive, but Grothman said he would be "shocked if you can find anybody doing service."

MLK Day and "Saturday" aren't the only holidays Grothman opposes. At a town hall in 2013, he took on Kwanzaa, which he said "almost no black people today care about" and was being propped up by "white left-wingers who try to shove this down black people's throats in an effort to divide Americans."

When he's not advocating for people to spend more time working, Grothman has gotten in trouble for advocating that (some) people be paid less. "You could argue that money is more important for men," he told the Daily Beast's Michelle Goldberg, after pushing through a repeal of the state's equal pay bill. And he has pushed to pare back a program that provided free birth control, while floating a bill that would have labeled single parenthood, "a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect." Grothman justified the bill by contending that women choose to become single mothers and call their pregnancies "unplanned" only because it's what people want to hear. "I think people are trained to say that 'this is a surprise to me,' because there's still enough of a stigma that they're supposed to say this," he said in 2012.

Enjoy the weekend.

Grothman pointedly keeps his state office open on Martin Luther King Day, always eager to send a message of divisiveness, hated and racism. Although Scott Walker announced he is staying neutral, Paul Ryan has already issued a statement endorsing Petri against Grothman. That's not slowing Grothman down of course: "I don't think Congressman Petri in particular or the Republicans in general have been aggressive enough at all in [addressing] the increasing culture of dependency in this country and that culture has led to the breakdown of the family and this huge deficit… I think these programs have to be fundamentally changed to remove the marriage penalty and to remove the disincentive to work."

There is speculation that Grothman's challenge is making Petri, a multimillionaire many times over, reconsider whether or not he'll even run for reelection, although he told the press "I will run a strong campaign and I expect to win in August and November." Well, Steve Israel will take care of November for him again, but August… I guess it depends on whether Wisconinites are looking for another Joe McCarthy or not.

Will this be Grothman's top campaign issue?

UPDATE: And, Indeed, Petri Is Retiring

He'll make it formal on Monday but he's already told everyone he knows. Maybe someone should tell Steve Israel.

Just Give Me A SOPA!

Every time I used to hear the term "SOPA," the above Dictators song would always come into my mind. I know, sick. But it's an amazing song that predated the Ramones and Pistols in terms of punk. Wednesday, though, SOPA burst onto the national stage with millions of kids complaining to their parents that they couldn't do their homework because Wikipedia was down. Wikipedia said 162 million people saw its page asking users to find out about the proposed legislation and contact their representatives about it. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said via Twitter that that compares to about 25 to 30 million visitors on a normal day.

Wednesday night Rachel Maddow and Chris Hays discussed how incredibly successful the SOPA online protests were-- and you can watch them discussing it below. One of the measurements of the success was how many Republican sponsors of the legislation jumped ship and declared themselves not co-sponsors but opponents of SOPA. Here's the list of the co-sponsors: assholes. Rachel reads off a long list of congressmembers and senators who are no longer supporters, mostly Republicans.

But Republicans aren't the only ones running scared. Reactionary Blue Dogs who almost always go along with the worst right-wing ideas, especially when they smell corporate cash on the other end of a vote, were big SOPA supporters. Five Blue Dogs-- including two of the most corrupt in the kennel, John Barrow (GA) and Tim Holden (PA)-- were also co-sponsors. But now Holden has a progressive primary challenger, Matt Cartwright, and he's running scared. His new district is solidly blue, and his hideous right-wing voting record is indefensible. One attack from Cartwright, a prominent SOPA opponent, and Holden went running for the exit. "In my opinion," wrote Cartwright on Monday, "SOPA is a bill so riddled with unconstitutional infringements on free speech and unconstitutionally vague criminalization of conduct that it is hard to believe its authors ever even read the one document that they swore to protect and defend."

Meanwhile, though, the real movers and shakers behind SOPA in the Democratic Party are congressmembers on the entertainment-industry gravy train, especially Howard Berman (CA), Adam Schiff (Blue Dog-CA), Brad Sherman (CA) and, worst of all, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Even after President Obama and House Minority Leader Pelosi signaled they oppose the bill, Wasserman Schultz hung on. Even after internet pornographer Ben Quayle (R-AZ) withdrew his sponsorship of the bill, Debbie Wasserman Schultz hung on. She seems to feel more passionately about destroying the Internet than anything since she supported, as DCCC Red to Blue chair, three right-wing Republicans against the Democrats she was supposed to help get elected a few years back.

And people ask why voters don't embrace the Democratic Party?

Another Labor Day Perspective-- Bill Hedrick Tells Us Where We Go From Here

Bill Hedrick was one of the first candidates Blue America endorsed this cycle. He's running for the southern California seat currently held by serial real estate swindler Ken Calvert. Bill reminds us that Labor Day isn't just about Hot dogs and hamburgers, barbeques, beer, parades and picnics. Since 1894 it's been a day off from work specifically to honor American labor. He writes that "today, working families in California’s 44th District need more than holiday honors. Parades and picnics are not going to change the reality in which we live. Free trade agreements like NAFTA have destroyed jobs and opportunity and gutted our economy. Un-American corporations, quietly working against our national interest, have exported jobs of working families. Manufacturing in the United States is on economic life support, as are our families whose salaries are eroded and benefits battered to swell the corporate 'bottom line'.”

To get us back on track, we need more than Labor Day good wishes-- we need a plan.  The economic agenda for 2010 must be recovery and reinvestment in America. To accomplish this, I propose an aggressive, multifaceted solution:

• Tax credits for private sector job creation

• Tax credits for companies that maintain an American workforce

• Reconstruction of our infrastructure, including roads, bridges, water and sewer systems

• Public/private partnerships to vastly expand and improve efficiency of clean energy technologies

• Mitigate entrepreneurial risk to spur development of the innovation economy


Further reform of the banking/credit system:

• Break up institutions that are “too big to fail”

• Reintroduce firewalls between securities, insurance and lending institutions

• Tax speculative financial transactions

• Pass a 15% cap on credit card interest

Stop bleeding jobs:

• Withdrawal from and/or dramatic renegotiation of trade agreements (NAFTA, WTO, etc.) that favor wealthy and corporate interests at the expense of the middle class and working families

• Create fair trade agreements with partners who support appropriate labor and environmental standards

• Rebuild important manufacturing sectors in America-- stop off-shoring manufacturing that undermines our national security.

A good way to celebrate Labor Day-- above and beyond the picnics and parades... contributing to replacing Ken Calvert with Bill Hedrick. You can do it right here at Blue America.

Maybe President Obama is paying attention to what Bill has been saying-- or maybe someone just stuffed a rag in Tiny Tim Geithner's face-- but according to this morning's NYTimes, the president is about to propose a massive, long-overdue public works program to pump "as much as $50 billion in government spending to start up a long-term public works plan emphasizing transportation projects-- roads, rail and airport runways." This is exactly what hard-pressed areas like the Inland Empire districts need and yet while you have local leaders like Bill Hedrick, Beth Krom, Steve Pougnet and Pat Meagher applauding the effort, Washington political hacks like Ken Calvert, John Campbell, Mary Bono-Mack and Jerry Lewis are reflexively attacking it. Obstructionist orange golfer John Boehner put right-wing opposition into words, posturing: "As the American people, facing near double-digit unemployment, mark Labor Day by asking, where are the jobs, the White House has chosen to double-down on more of the same failed ‘stimulus’ spending... We don’t need more government ‘stimulus’ spending-– we need to end Washington Democrats’ out-of-control spending spree, stop their tax hikes, and create jobs by eliminating the job-killing uncertainty that is hampering our small businesses.”

Mr. Obama’s plan would call for investment over six years, the White House says it would be front-loaded with an initial investment of $50 billion in taxpayer money, to help create jobs in as early as next year. The administration says it would work with Congress to find ways to pay for the plan, so that it would not add to the nation’s rising deficit. One possibility would be to cut existing subsidies for oil and gas exploration and production. Historically, transportation projects have been paid for largely with dedicated taxes such as those on gasoline.

White House officials said Mr. Obama wanted to rebuild 15,000 miles of roads, construct and maintain 4,000 miles of railway – enough track to span the continent-- and rehabilitate or reconstruct 150 miles of airport runways while putting in place a system that would reduce travel time and airport delays.

The president will also call for what the White House is describing as an “infrastructure bank” that would focus on paying for national and regional transportation projects.

The $787 billion economic recovery act passed by Congress at the beginning of Mr. Obama’s presidency already included considerable spending on roads and other transportation infrastructure. But the White House says Mr. Obama’s new plan is different, because it would focus on a “long-term vision” as well as create jobs in the near term.

Since the end of last year, when the long-term surface transportation legislation expired, infrastructure investments have been continued on a temporary basis, even as a trust fund that finances them has fallen into insolvency, the White House said. Mr. Obama’s plan would call on Congress to enact a long-term reauthorization of that bill.

UPDATE: Weekends

God created a day of rest so it was hard for the ruling elite to fight it-- but they certainly did fight against the concept of a 2-day weekend. Labor unions beat them back. Do you like weekends? Vote for union-friendly candidates like Bill Hedrick. Or just give me a sopor: