Heartache With Hard Work

Fairytale Of New York – The Pogues

Christmas is a borderlands between memory and imagination.  It is a time for reminiscence, for thoughts about those who have passed, for simple mornings full of wonder and anticipation.

It’s a beautiful day because it allows us to look backwards on our past selves: who were straining desperately against the bonds of time to push forward into the great unknown. Having now traversed that space, we could so easily turn a cynical eye on the whole thing.  There is so much pain to come, so much ill-understood.  The innocence of that past joy could be darkened by wizened understanding.

But the beauty of human beings is that we can somehow escape that spiral.  There is something outside of the terrible dialectic of nostalgia (sophomoric and insipid) and cynicism (nihilistic and cold).  Where pain that lies ahead is accepted, without allowing that knowledge to dull the memory of our hopefulness.

Merry Happy, everyone.

Let’s Not Talk About It – The Mendoza Line

Filibuster reform is on the agenda. Since I’ve talked at length about my frustration with the modern Senate (with the filibuster as the worst offender), I wanted to make a couple of points here.

First, I want to make sure to register my disappointment with the scale of supposed ‘reform.’ For all of the back and forth about talking filibusters and what precisely they can be used for, and so on, it’s just worth mentioning that no one seems to support the most basic (and best) type of reform. Namely: if 51 Senators support a bill, it passes.

Our system is full of veto-points already and I just don’t see the value of imposing a supermajority requirement in the Senate. It’s already an anti-democratic institution, which grants far more power to citizens who live in small states than those who live in more populous ones. When you combine that with the House, a president who can veto, and the severe restrictions on the power of the national government imposed by our federal system, you’ve got a bunch of gum in the works already.

In the long term, I have a hard time believing that the de facto 60-vote requirement for bills getting out of the Senate has any chance of lasting. It’s an artifact of the past two decades and unsustainable in the long term. Given that, I support getting rid of the incoherent interregnum and simply doing away with it immediately.

But if you’re looking for halfway points (as the Democrats in the Senate appear to be), the ‘talking’ filibuster is really not the way to go. The notion that forcing them to talk will somehow improve things seems to rest on a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between filibusters-for-delay and filibuster-as-de-facto-supermajority-requirement.

To explain: the romantic version of the filibuster (Mr. Smith, Sen. Stackhouse on the West Wing, etc.) is all about one person trying to hold up business by refusing to stop talking. That is: they talk in order to shut down the normal order of business – to make a point – to delay. The goal of the modern filibuster, however, is simply to prevent bills from passing.

Making people talk will have zero effect on their ability to achieve their goal (preventing the bill from passing). Not only that, it will eat up floor time – which is actually kind of important. The whole reason the Senate adopted ‘dual tracking’ was to enable the majority to get on with their business while the minority was filibustering one bill.

Forcing ‘live’ filibusters just returns things to that state of affairs. The minority gets to eat away valuable time that could have been spent on other things. Again, it’s not a Jimmy Stewart situation. It won’t be one guy standing there for months. It will be a rotating cast of 40+ people, all happy to take a turn on the stage for an hour to recite ttalking points. They will have no shortage of stuff to talk about, and even if they all repeat themselves, who cares? Meanwhile the majority has to sit there while the cameras endlessly film the opposition.

Why this is supposed to deter filibusters, I have no idea.  For a far more extensive discussion of what would happen, see this excellent post by Jonathan Bernstein.

The basic problem here is that it all ultimately comes down to what it actually takes to pass a bill. If you’re not willing to change the 60-vote requirement (that has become the de facto rule in the last couple decades, and particularly in the Obama administration), then any other change is going to be pretty meaningless.

That said, here’s my personal filibuster reform idea: when you file cloture, you count the Yes votes. If you get more than 50%, those votes are then banked for the rest of the Congressional term. At any point, the majority leader can attempt to ‘end debate’ on the bill, and the minority is responsible for getting the 41 votes together to prevent cloture.

The effect: you can indefinitely filibuster something if you really want. But in order to do so, you have to commit to keeping at least 41 votes in DC at all times. You want to kill the bill? You can do it, you just don’t get to go home to see your constituents.

The House That Heaven Built – The Japandroids

Records like this don’t come along very often. For all the simplicity of rock and roll, it’s somehow exceptionally difficult to harness its raw power without getting caught up in the pageantry. Rock so easily gets bloated, falls victim to its own clichés. So it’s the rarest of things to hear a band who can lay everything on the table without the slightest hint of pretense or doubt.

On the aptly-titled Celebration Rock, the Japandroids do precisely that. This is a record for the ages.

I’m now at a point in my life where I can really understand how Pitchfork went all-in on the And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead album 10 years ago. Some folks scoffed at the idea that a simple rock record could be a perfect 10.0. That rating, they thought, was reserved for Abbey Road or Let It Bleed or Blood on the Tracks.  Maybe Radiohead.

But that’s wrong. Perfection doesn’t always have to mean flawless, or transcendental. It doesn’t have to mean chiseled with the precision of Michelangelo’s David. There are moments of perfection that you get from imperfect situations. This record is perfect in the same way that stepping into a brisk night feels perfect after being trapped in a stuffy room. Or the way that a first kiss is perfect, even if you don’t end up spending your life with that person.

The first time I heard this record, I knew within the first 20 seconds of the first track (the stomping/shouting explosion that is “The Nights of Wine and Roses”) that this was going to be a contender for album of the year. And things only continue upward from there. “Fire’s Highway” is a thunderbolt of a song. It cuts through the ether and sets fire where it connects. And, long after the initial strike, the reverberations rumble around you.

Rounding out the opening trio of songs is “Evil’s Sway” which is a dirty little piece of garage rock. At the heart of the song is about as straightforward a piece of rock and roll lyricism as you’ll ever find (with a shoutout to Tom Petty): “oh yeah, alright. On the last and lashing out, it’s evil’s sway tonight.”

“Adrenaline Nightshift” is probably the most straightforward rock song on the record, driven by a very simple riff and the power of love and youth and boundless energy.  And “Younger Us” touches on the same themes with just a touch less effect.  These are songs to care about, to feel deep in your marrow, to drink deeply.

Still, for all the great stuff up to this point, it’s the final two tracks that completely steal the show.  If Celebration Rock is a perfect piece of rock and roll, then the tip of the spear which drives this point home is “The House That Heaven Built.” Addressed to a departed love, it combines the dense imagery of a walk through the remnants of a civilization with the most explosively straightforward, plaintive, and heart-wrenching chorus I can ever remember hearing:

When they love you (and they will)
Tell ’em all they’ll love in my shadow
And if they try to slow you down
Tell ’em all to go to hell

And the sound of it all.  Oh god, the sound.  This song taps into every conceivable reservoir of rock and roll power you can imagine. The drums are insistent, marching along with implacable resolve.  There is a single stomping beat that drives everything forward faster and faster.  And then there is a backbeat, the clashing of cymbals, and the ever-rising sense of explosive potential.

But the essence of this song is found in the pauses and spaces in between the noise.  Those moments when the drums fall out are poised on a knife’s edge.  And when the tornado strikes again it feels like it might very well be Judgment Day.  See 3:25 for the finest example of this.  This is a song to build empires around.

After that sort of intensity, you’re going to have to take a breath.  Fortunately, the album closer “Continuous Thunder” allows you to do precisely that.  Though with this band, even the ‘low-key’ songs pack an enormous punch. It condenses the whole album into one glorious question: “Would we love with a legendary fire?” as the guitars swirl around and build, and build, and build.  And there really is nothing but continuous thunder.

It seems almost beside the point to call this the best record of the year (though it certainly is).  Celebration Rock simply brushes past the need for analysis or comparison.  Just listen to it.  You’ll be happy you did.

A very good point from the Democracy in America blog at the Economist:

My feeling is that what we’re seeing here are inherent political weaknesses in the anti-austerity message itself. Asking voters to embrace that message means asking them to approve of the government borrowing money which will add to their repayment burden as taxpayers, and then spend that money on other people. … A neo-Keynesian will say that these are the unsentimental measures needed to restore economic health: you get the most creditworthy entities, the national governments at the core of the dollar and the euro, to leverage up while everybody else in the economy deleverages, so that not everyone is ruinously trying to deleverage at the same time. But citizens do not ordinarily understand things this way; to most people, more debt is more debt, regardless of whether it’s held by government or the private sector, and it scares them.

This ties in with the point I made yesterday (that the public tends to worry a lot about ‘debt’ in the abstract as a stand-in for general concerns about the economy). It is intrinsically difficult to sell people on the value of Keynesian stimulus because it doesn’t sound right. If you’re talking about personal finances, being in debt is pretty bad.

However, I’m not convinced this is really so out of line with the ‘normal’ lives of people.

Let’s say you are unemployed. But you’ve got a really great job offer. The only problem is, it’s about 10 miles away from where you live. Rather than just giving up on the job, it might be perfectly reasonable to borrow some money and buy a car. After all, getting steady employment is far more important to your long term economic situation than the precise amount of money that you owe. With the job, you will have the money to PAY OFF the debt. And you’ll have a job.

What’s more, in this hypothetical, let’s imagine that you somehow have a top-notch credit score and can borrow the money for the car at close to zero interest. Your decision just got even easier!

Anyone who borrows money to go to school is making the same investment decision. Anyone with a mortgage. They’re all in debt, too. The only difference is that the US government is a way better credit risk and so can borrow at way cheaper rates.

Now, if you think the government is fundamentally untrustworthy, you’ll be inclined to see a different analogy: the person who maxes out a bunch of credit cards to pay off other credit cards.  That is: someone who is running ever-escalating cycles of debt.  The problem with that picture is that there’s plenty of evidence that the government can cut its debt when the time is well-suited to it.  See: the 1990s.

The point is not that debt is great. There are genuine long-term problems with consistently running deficits. But they’re not really all terrible, particularly when the basic problem with our economy is a lack of movement.  I think, with some real effort devoted to drawing these connections, you could start to get people to see that.

The Cliffs Of Insanity – Mark Knopfler (from his wonderful soundtrack to The Princess Bride)

Jonathan Bernstein makes a great point on Twitter:

Disappointed that WaPo poll didn’t ask effect on deficit if no fiscal cliff agreement reached. Suspect “increase” would be >25%, maybe >50%.

I don’t have a lot to add here. I am certain that his numbers are correct. Or, if anything, they might be too conservative. I really do think it’s important to keep reminding ourselves just how little people actually understand the economy and how much concern about “the deficit” is simply a stand-in for general worries about the economy. The Fiscal Cliff sounds terrifying, ergo: it must expand the deficit.

Now, this isn’t quite as big of a problem as it might initially appear. The language that people employ doesn’t ultimately matter that much. This is so because, despite the framing of deficits as essential, the public doesn’t tend to vote that way. Rather, they vote based on retrospective economic conditions – which actually tends to produce fairly solid representative incentives.

So the danger is not really that the public is forcing politicians to make terrible decisions based on a failure to understand fairly simple economic issues. The danger is that politicians listen to the LANGUAGE and choose poor representational strategies which damage the economy.

This ‘fiscal cliff’ stuff suggests that they all pretty much understand this. Despite all the freak outs about the deficit, there is basically no one who is enthusiastic about simply ‘going over the cliff’ even though this would be the single best way to massively cut the deficit.

Now, I understand journalists feel obliged to cover the story, but if the public isn’t really talking about the deficit, and if politicians aren’t ACTING like they care about the deficit, maybe it’s worth considering what the story really is.

So here’s my call to those reporting on this stuff: when we hear from the budget scolds over the next few years, please remember to point out how few of them were actually on board with cutting the deficit when it was on the table. And, if you’re really enterprising, you might want to notice that the Republicans really REALLY don’t care about deficits and (in fact) just care a whole LOT about reducing tax rates. Meanwhile, Democrats do care about cutting deficits (too much, in my opinion). Clinton helped generate a surplus (in good economic times, when it made sense) and Obama seems committed to cutting deficits (in terrible economic times, when it’s actually pretty crazy to be focused on this).

Danko/Manuel (live) – Jason Isbell

Every new thing I hear from Jason Isbell leaves me more and more impressed. His work with the Drive-By Truckers in the mid-2000s was fantastic—his membership with the band coincides perfectly with their best work. Since going solo, he has turned out a series of records that step far beyond the ‘southern rock opera’ ethos.

He tells stories about family, about the legacy of history, about lost loves and broken hearts, about drinking away the pain. And he tells stories about the people who live in the midst of all the madness. It’s introspective and honest, a celebration of the South not in spite of its blemishes but because of them.

This all hit a crescendo last year with his wonderful record Here We Rest, which contained “Alabama Pines,” my favorite song of 2011.

So I was pretty excited to find out that he was coming out with a live record this year. Now, live albums are always a bit of a risk. It’s hard to capture the energy of a live performance, and you often end up just hearing slightly less polished versions of the same songs you already know.

Fortunately, that is not remotely a problem here. The best songs on Live from Alabama don’t just expand on the studio versions; they completely redefine the songs. This is most prominent on some of Isbell’s old Truckers songs, which are given new life and freedom to breathe, and simply explode out of the speakers.

“Decoration Day” was a wonderful story and a nice song. Now, it’s a revelation. “Goddamn Lonely Love” has always displayed passion and pain, but those feelings are now visceral.

In its original form “Outfit” felt like a letter being put to song. Now, Isbell’s voice is expansive, the accent is set free, and the guitar sings. You can feel the longing in the father’s voice, the hope for his son, and the deep concern. It’s a mixture of paternal love, of warning, of concern that his son will surpass him, and of soaring hope…that his son will surpass him.  And better than pretty much any song out there, it conveys what the South means to those who love it: a deep passion, tinged with a sense of humor about how badly they want to escape sometimes.

The best song on the album is “Danko/Manuel” – another Truckers-era song that has always been good but is now transcendent. I always felt like the aspirations of this song exceeded its capacity to tell the story. The homage to Danko and Manuel seemed a little bit untethered, the ghost of an idea rather than the manifestation. I see now that this was wrong. The lack of detail in the story is precisely the point. It’s simply the architecture for the sound – for those ethereal horns, for Isbell’s croon on the chorus, for the insistent drums. It’s a song about what it means to sing and play – and the impossibility of making it about anything more specific is precisely the point.

A good live album should give you something new. By that standard Live from Alabama is a glorious success. In quite a few cases, these live performances have now become the definitive version for me. This is not just a record for an Isbell completist; it’s a record for anyone who loves good music.

So, there’s been a fair amount of soul-searching in the Republican Party about its stance on immigration. The biggest questions seems to be whether they want to actually change their policy position or whether it’s simply a matter of tone.

All of which reminds me of this classic bit from Not the Nine O’Clock News, just as the Thatcher government was coming into power:

You should watch the video because Rowan Atkinson is hilarious. But here’s the relevant bit:

Firstly, immigration. Now, people really do get this party wrong every time on this issue, don’t they. We don’t think immigrants are animals, for God’s sake! I know a lot of immigrants personally, and they’re perfectly nice people. They’re Black, of course, which is a shame. But honestly, some of them can do some jobs almost as well as White people…and we acknowledge this. Now, a lot of immigrants are Indians and Pakistanis for instance, and…I like curry, I do! But now that we’ve got the recipes, is there really any need for them to stay? Conservatives understand these problems, you see.

All of which is to say: this is not some kind of new problem. And it’s going to take some serious work to convince people you despise that they should vote for you.

At the National Review, Wesley J. Smith speculates on some possible fixes to Obamacare:

If President Obama is serious about wanting to help the middle class, he will work with Republicans to refashion the law–understanding that he will never agree to a repeal–so that it is less likely to claim working stiff victims. But since he is the reincarnation of Huey Long, I suspect instead that he and his minions will demonize companies for making rational business decisions. Part of the problem, of course, is that the president doesn’t understand the concept of rational business decisions.

I assure you, the Obama administration would love it if the Republicans in Congress decided to work with them to improve Obamacare. In the construction of the bill, the GOP minority adopted a policy of absolute obstruction.  That meant, weirdly, that the policy ended up being more liberal than you might have expected.  Because they didn’t participate, they were not able to extract any concessions to provide the stamp of bipartisanship.  And since then, they’ve passed about 579 bills to repeal it but that’s about it.  If they have specific complaints, those have not been addressed except via the insistence on blanket repeal.

However, if they want to shift their focus, they can definitely play an important role: as a watchdog on the policy constructed by the majority.  Since Obamacare isn’t one single bill but is a huge mass of collected bills, it is absolutely guaranteed that some of it is not perfect. If the Republicans decide to accept its basic existence and shift their role to helping police its implementation…that would be fantastic.

Now, Mr. Smith doesn’t identify any specific things to complain about. So I expect what he really means by ‘refashioning’ the bill is basically just killing it. But if other voices on the right do have specific small-bore complaints, I encourage them to represent their constituents by helping to improve this legislation that will be implemented over the next couple years!

I Don’t Feel Young – Wye Oak

Here’s an awkward article. E.J. Graff is uncomfortable with the relationship between Kevin Clash (the voice of Elmo) and a young man. Here’s why:

But the Elmo puppeteer story does bother me. In case you missed it, Kevin Clash is a six-foot-tall African-American man, now 52, who does the voice of the Sesame Street icon. Earlier this week, word came out that a young man, now 23, accused Clash of getting involved with him when the accuser was 16 years old—under the age of consent. Sesame Street put Clash on a leave of absence while it investigated. The accuser has since recanted, saying he was an adult and that the entire relationship was consensual.

But it still makes me queasy. Why is a 45-ish-year-old man having sex with a teenager? If the 18- or 19-year-old were female, I would be appalled at the probable power imbalance, assuming that a creepy middle-aged man was manipulating a youngster’s immaturity to use her sexually, to soak up the admiration of youth, promising (implicitly or explicitly) things that a more mature adult would know were lies. Why should my attitude be different if the youngster is male?

A couple things here.

First, why on earth is it important that Clash is “a six-foot-tall African-American man”? Is there any way to read this other than a squeamishness over scary big black guys?

Second, the categorical refusal to accept the validity of such relationships seems pretty dogmatic to me. Obviously there are potential power issues. But there are potential power issues in a lot of places. That’s not usually a reason to completely reject the principle of a relationship but rather to make sure those imbalances are taken seriously.

I’ll reference Dan Savage and his ‘campsite rule’ on this question. That is, the older partner should leave the younger “in better condition than they found them.”

Sure, someone who is 18 most likely is not emotionally mature yet. But a caring and considerate older partner can certainly contribute to their emotional growth. And an emotionally manipulative jerk can do serious damage regardless of his/her age.

Look, I’m not unaware of the significance of probabilities. And sure, if you know nothing else about a 45 year old man except that he is dating someone barely over 18, that should trigger a warning for you. But at the same time, I’m aware of the fact that the vast majority of outrage in our society about this sort of thing comes at the expense of older gay men. Which feeds into the narrative that being gay is equivalent to pedophilia. And that does a tremendous disservice to those who quite legitimately participate in caring age-divergent relationships.

If you’re old enough to drive, old enough to vote, old enough to work, you’re old enough to be given some level of trust in your relationships.  ‘Trust’ doesn’t mean categorical approval, but it does mean starting from the assumption that these people are subjects who deserve the dignity of their own choices.

The Corpses Of Our Motivations– The Lawrence Arms

Up through the election, we heard paeans to Silver, hilarious jokes about the fools who tried to ‘unskew’ the polls, and the general triumph of reality-based analysis.

Then Silver returned to his old stomping grounds and wrote a pretty straightforward post explaining why Mike Trout is (rather obviously) the correct choice for MVP. And out came the crazy. The comments section on the article reads like a greatest hits of all the stupid things people on the right said about Silver in regards to the election.

But, the Tigers made the playoffs (despite winning less games than the Angels, and playing in a terrible division). And, your analysis didn’t account for the fact that Cabrera volunteered to move to third (in fact, it does account for that – because the replacement level for third base is higher than first base. Cabrera struck out less than Trout (totally irrelevant information). Cabrera led in total base, slugging percentage, homeruns, and OPS (all of which measure much the same thing – and no one is contesting that Cabrera had a narrowly better offensive season). RBIs (which are a function of opportunity, and Trout scored more Runs). It’s pretty much impossible to measure defense (it is difficult, but it’s difficult in the same way that single polls are never perfectly accurate. But they sure do provide some information).

The point here is that people were absolutely willing to walk through fire to defend Silver’s secret sauce, his commitment to objectivity, etc. But once his opinion began to differ from the preconceived value of his fans, he became just another media fool incapable of correctly assessing the situation.

The attitude of ‘I’ve been watching baseball for decades; you’re not going to convince me that the Triple Crown doesn’t = MVP with some supposed facts’ is strikingly similar to ‘I’ve been watching political campaigns for a long time and it feels like Romney has momentum.’

Suddenly everyone is an expert and Nate Silver is just a rube.

Motivated reasoning is a powerful thing.