Bring on your Wrecking Ball

Holy goodness, is it nice outside this week! I'm about to go out back and work on a grant proposal from my lawnchair. That sounds about right.

I've gotten progressively worse at blogging. I wish I hadn't. I just seem to have less to type these days, but just as much to say.

We recently had a big fun construction/renovation project at home. Ken and Gale (Kristin's folks) and my dad came here for a long weekend, and we ripped out the whole staircase and wall separating the foyer from the bathroom. Then we constructed a new staircase, much roomier and safer than the previous.
When I say "we" I mean Ken did all of the brain work, planning out what needed to be done and designing the new stairs. Dad and I were grunts, cutting boards and whatnot, and Gale and Kristin were the true backbone of the operation, getting the lumber, taking care of our messes, cooking delicious meals and all of the essential things.

We're very excited that we now have a staircase that is not insanely narrow and steep. We're getting bids on some drywall and trim work, and hopefully will have our frames all nice and walled up soon. It will look great.

We are super-lucky to have such great parents who do stuff like this for us. They are wonderful.

Last Saturday we went to see Abby's play, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. She had the role of Lucy, which is a big, physical comedy role. She really knocked it out of the park! There was no mistaking that she was by far the most talented person on stage ---- she was funny, she sang in character, she was all Lucy all the time. Very, very impressive.

So here's some new Bruce for you. The first is a great gospel track, "Rocky Ground," that is divisive in that some people loathe it and some people can't stop listening to it. I happen to love it. Some hardcore Bruce fans are shocked that there's a rap solo on it, but I think it's all for the best.
The second track is a stomper, "Death To My Hometown," that I also love. It's very Celtic-styled, with a certain 1860s feel, but clearly aimed at the vampires at Goldman, Lehman, etc.




Rocky Ground




Death To My Hometown




As you know, I await the arrival of a new Springsteen record with great joy and anticipation. In October 2007, I ripped open my copy of Magic, and listened to it every day, multiple times, for a few weeks.
In early 2009, I did the same for my copy of Working On a Dream, and was immediately disheartened. I tried to get into it, but it just didn't take. A few of the songs could stand on their own, but the album had nothing to tie them together. They were mostly loose ends compiled into an album. And a lot of the loose ends were no good.

So it was with an anxious set of ears that, early Tuesday, I popped my CD of Wrecking Ball into the stereo, turned it up to 11, and began to listen.

It's really something. It still sounds like a Springsteen album, but different. It's timeless stories of anger, greed, hope, and redemption, done in a folky, New Orleans, Civil War style, mixed with samples, electronic drums, and loads of gospel.


I especially appreciate the linkage of struggles from the Civil War to fighting against robber barons to civil rights to the modern-day immigrants struggles. Bruce does a good job stringing these together throughout the album, creating a very historically-conscious sense that these things have happened before, and they're happening now, and they'll keep happening, and we need to keep fighting.

Goodness, what else is going on? Work is going very well, I'm probably enjoying it more now than at any time since I've had my job. I've been bringing in more grant money, getting more comfortable at piping up on any issue, and generally being myself more than I have before. My boss seems to appreciate this, so I guess I'll keep doing it.

Ok, enough for now. Take care!

nuts and bolts about insurance and contraception (fair and balanced, until the end)

This entire contraception controversy stems from the initial need for what health wonks like to call "guaranteed issue."

Guaranteed issue means that everyone has the ability to buy a health insurance policy, regardless of a pre-existing condition. This is a problem for many people who lose jobs/lose insurance/etc. If they have have a chronic illness and try to get a policy, they are rejected.

So: Obamacare says that everyone can buy an insurance policy, regardless of their health.

Ah, but this will cause everyone's costs to skyrocket, because people will wait until they get sick, and then purchase their insurance. This will cause the dreaded "death spiral" of insurance costs, and health care insurance will be unaffordable.

So Obamacare has the "mandate." Everyone must carry a health insurance policy. If you cannot afford one, the government will either enroll you in Medicaid, or provide sliding-scale subsidies so that you can buy private insurance. This will make sure that everyone has insurance, and there is no "death spiral" caused by free riders.

But insurance policies suck! If we are going to have everyone carry insurance, and provide millions of new customers to private companies, let's have a baseline of minimum standards so that people can be sure that their insurance doesn't suck. Obamacare says that the Secretary of HHS will determine what the baseline is.

What's cheap and healthy? Preventative care. It's better for everyone.
Well, then we'd better make sure that part of our bare-minimum standard for insurance policies is that they cover preventative care.

What's the most common and effective preventative medication for women? Oral contraceptives. What's the best way to eliminate unwanted pregnancies, and thus stop abortions? Oral contraceptives.

Well, we'd better make sure that we don't leave out the most effective and most-used preventative medicine for women. HHS says "insurance plans must cover contraception."

But wait. What if an employer doesn't want to pay for a policy from a second party (the insurance company) that will pay for a third party (the doctor) to send a prescription to a fourth party (the pharmacist), and then give it to a fifth party (the patient) who will then take the pill herself? (and yes, I stole that sequence from someone).

Okay, fine, man, then to assuage your fifth-degree-removed conscience, we'll just have the insurer pay for it directly. You, Mr. Employer, don't have to pay for any contraceptive you don't like. President Obama will bend over backwards to assuage your demands, even though legally (through both Smith AND the Religious Freedom Restoration Act) he was on completely solid ground.

But, since the bishops are mendacious fools, they won't take yes for an answer.

That's where we are now.

Garry Wills brings the pain, hard, in this recent post. And it's Garry Wills. He's smarter than you, me, and all of the bishops combined.

This weekend we were pretty low-key, which was not too bad, even though I tend to get a bit stir-crazy when I’m bored at home on a weekend. The days of calling up the boys for last-minute Saturday-afternoon beers are mostly past ---- Brian and Nate have children, Marty moved and has kids, Jay’s bartending in Colorado (wtf!), and Ben was out of town.


So Kristin and I ended up watching a LOT of movies this weekend.
And because you are so incredibly interested, this is my take on them.

The Help:
This was much better than I expected. I tend to have the standard liberal dislike of Hollywood civil rights movies, because they always require a white hero to help the black folks. This was no different.
But the acting was excellent, the story entertaining, and it wasn’t offensively naïve, just normally naïve. Viola Davis was great, as was Octavia Spencer, and I especially enjoyed seeing Jessica Chastain as a much different character than her Tree of Life mother.
Honestly, though it wasn’t civil-rights related, the most well-acted scene was when Jessica Chastain shows up to play bridge at Bryce Howard’s house and the women all hide from her. That was raw.



The Hangover Part II
Have you seen the original Hangover? Then you’ve seen the sequel, too. Nothing to write home about ( or blog home about), except for Zack Galifinakis throwing the anchor off the boat at the end. After he drove it ashore. Hilarious.


Ides of March
Is it possible to be too cynically naïve? This movie pulls that off. Somehow we have super-manipulative campaign directors doing triple-backflips because Ryan Gosling sat down at a bar with an opponent’s campaign director. They do that all the time. Who cares.
Also, Clooney, as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, gives speeches that Aaron Sorkin in his clumsiest moments wouldn’t have first-drafted. They end up reflecting poorly on Clooney himself, since he’s clearly saying things that he himself wishes Democrats would say.
Overall though, good solid movie. Paul Giamatti up against Phillip Seymour Hoffman, both up against Ryan Gosling? Can’t-miss.


No Strings Attached/Friends With Benefits
These are the same script, the same movie, and everything you expect to happen will happen in precisely that way. It was streaming, anyway
I'd say that Justin Timberlake is better than Ashton Kutcher, but Kutcher's character was better than Timberlake. And Mila Kunis is almost always better than Natalie Portman.


On another note, our basement and garage are looking much nicer these days. This is almost all due to Kristin, of course. She has set up shop in the basement with her sewing machine, and with things hanging and rugs on the floor, it is starting to look less scary. Someone might even want to sleep on the bed there someday!

We also are now drivers of a very nice 2010 Corolla, which we bought from my folks. I found myself actively wanting to "take a drive", so last week on a slow afternoon I just cruised Lakeshore drive south to Hyde Park, then drove around there a bit past Jackson and Washington Park, then back up north on Lakeshore until I hit the end of the city, and then headed back. It was great! That car drives like a dream.

Since we have a car that I want to take good care of, I cleared out the garage a bit, hung up an old license plate on the wall, stuff like that. A car needs a clean home.

Might have to take another drive soon. . .. it's supposed to be 52 degrees tomorrow.

We Take Care of Our Own

The new single from Bruce's new record, "We Take Care of Our Own."

Well, this is some incredibly serious dramatic irony from the most important artist in my life.
I'm guessing that folks will hear this as "We look out for each other," but I'm pretty sure it's intended as "Americans abandon their needy and only look out for their own."
The line "from the shotgun shacks to the Superdome" is pretty biting.

Glad to see Bruce back in fighting shape. It gets me back into fighting shape too.

gotta keep the fire burning

“There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.”

---- Annie Proulx in Brokeback Mountain

2011 Streeties

Movie:


This. Was. Hilarious.


Album: Eric Church, Chief
This is probably the first and only Nashville-country album I've been able to really enjoy, wire to wire. Church uses a lot of the genre's cliches but he doesn't rely on them ---- there's a decent amount of "ice cold beer/old girlfriend/Night Moves-ripoff nostaligia" throughout the record, but not enough to drown it.

The production is pretty decent (and I'm grading on a heavy, heavy curve here. Nashville production is pretty much based on a template of 80s hair rock combined with mandolins).

The absolute killer for me on this record is the wordplay. Co-writing all of his songs (again, for Nashville that's a big deal), Church fits in little contradictions left and right without emphasizing them too heavily, so that you catch them on a third listen and chuckle a bit. "You looked at me and I was done, but we were just getting started." "I'm tired of this seesaw merry-go-round, so Mary you can go to hell." "Here's to all us haters of old lover' new last names."
Even the little touches are enjoyable ---- the sung guitar chords to kick off the album, or the "back when I was gasoline" line in 'Springsteen.'

Oddly enough, I've listened to this album far more than anything else this year.





Song: Wilco, "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)

Glad to see Wilco return to form.






Television: Parks and Recreation

Pretty much what my work environment is like, on a good day.




Book: The Hunger Games. Yeah, I know they've been out for a while, but I read them just this summer, and the first book is the best of the three. Frankly, I enjoyed it better than any of the other books I read this year, fiction or non-fiction, though Too Big To Fail was an interesting case study on the world of assholes.

Thomas Friedman is worse than a stopped clock.

I think I'm going to introduce a new feature here on T-Street, devoted to 'fisking' Thomas Friedman's columns. He's unique amongst columnists in that he does some excellent field research, talks to a lot of knowledgeable people, travels well, and then comes up with conclusions that ignore all of it.

So let's have fun with today's, shall we?

The Next First (and Only) 100 Days.

I’VE been saying this for a while, but now it feels even more acute: America’s democracy has shrunken to “the only 100 days.” Since F.D.R., we’ve measured presidents by their “first 100 days.” But now it’s really “the only 100 days.” Presidents lately seem to have just those 100 days to lay down a transformational agenda and get it passed in their first year — before they have to tailor their politics to the midterm elections — and then, if, as often happens, their party loses the midterms they have to focus on the next presidential election. China has five-year plans. We have 100 days every four. So all I’m thinking about now is how we get the most out of the first 100 days of 2013 — our next quadrennial chance to make serious policy (barring a crisis that forces our hand).

Except for the most transformational piece of legislation of the past few decades, known colloquially as "Obamacare," which was passed in early 2010, after more than a year of slogging through a legislative morass. Oh, also Dodd-Frank, which was passed in mid-2010. But if you ignore the most important thing that happened in the last four years, then the 100-day theory works just fine.

[Thomas then goes on for five hundred words calling for the president, or a third-party challenger, to run on. . .wait for it. . . a stimulus package to help the economy].

If we had a stimulus focused on 21st-century jobs, and a credible long-term fiscal reform plan, it would unlock the scale of investment we need to revive the employment market today and address the future. If Obama ran on that big plan, he would win and have an electoral mandate to implement it in his only 100 days. Sadly, he seems intent on playing small ball. He is capable of, and the country needs, much bolder leadership.

Oh, well. There’s always the first 100 days of 2017.

Yep. Thomas Friedman's big plan for bold leadership is for the president to. . .continue doing what he's been trying to do for the past three years. But since he'll have a 'mandate', the GOP will be forced by magical pixie dust to pass his new stimulus plan. Barack Obama is playing 'small ball.' Because he's not running on a new stimulus plan. A stimulus plan!

The New York Times op-ed section is the best piece of real estate in American journalism. I can't believe it's being filled by this clown.