Grandstand acts

Here’s the grandstand schedule for Aug 27 – Sep 7:

Bonnie Raitt & Taj Mahal

Jason Aldean

Kid Rock & Lynyrd Skynyrd

Kelly Clarkson with Eric Hutchinson

Jackson Browne

Randy Travis with Joe Nichols

O.A.R. wiht Brett Dennen

A Prairie Home Companion

REO Speedwagon and Styx with 38 Special

Amateur Talent Contest Finals

Jeff Dunham

I am so not going to the State Fair again this year.

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It came up last night and I do think of Detroit at times, although for me Detroit is short-hand for the entire auto industry of which tirebuilding was an integral part. Building tires was a good job when I started, less so when I left a decade later. I don’t think anyone born after ’65 can possibly understand how reassuring a locked in, guaranteed-pension, good wages blue collar job used to be.

Knowing you would always have enough is in fact enough for most. Those pensions were locked in and prepaid for. Each benefit purchased by wage increases not taken. Idiots don’t build good cars (or tires), and the auto industry’s work force was generally one fuck of a lot brighter than the pension-stealing bastards like to admit.

Until Reagan took office, I was a winner. I was making more money and had a more solid future than my buddies who went to college. Then everything started to change and the “wisdom” of going to college became apparent so I went back to college, but everything changed again before I got out.

Boomers ruined everything. Not just any Boomers, but the college-educated captains of industry and Wall Street. If things had stayed the same, I’d be retiring to Arizona with about the same pension and life earnings as a branch bank manager. 

All that college education was used to game the system, not improve our economy. The legacy of the Boomers will forevermore be that of the Roaring 20s — our culture will be our legacy, our finances our shame. The million-dollar bar mitzvahs/first confirmations? Paid for with autoworkers’ pension funds. McMansions? They were the reward for middle level financial services management who stole IRAs out from under workers.

Working men and women have to earn everything twice. Once for themselves, and once for the thieving bastards who grind you down with surcharges, fine print and other trickery. Wall Street doesn’t pay taxes, and only cares about your taxes because the more you’re taxed, the less there is for them to steal.

There is no getting rich quick unless you’re a thief. The color of your collar is no assurance of success, and white collar workers have no right to steal from people whose collars are pink or blue or fast food circus sized.

Obama won’t enrich workers, but if he can make Wall Street steal less, he will become our greatest President ever.

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Christine Todd Whitman, the former Jersey guv who used to pat down traffic offenders for kicks and who lied to 9/11 survivors about their air quality, lectures all of us on why Specter’s party switch is a bad thing.

No, Christie Todd Whitman is a bad thing. Specter just accomplished one of the few decent things in his career.

There are no moderates left in the Republican party, just fascists in pantyhose posing alongside the oreos.

Besides, didn’t Whitman run Hewlett-Packard into the ground a while ago…or was that eBay?

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Back to O and his critics on the left. The NYTimes editorializes about the 9th Circuit Appeals Court decision:

Of the many ways that the Bush administration sought to evade accountability for its violations of the law and the Constitution under the cover of battling terrorism, one of the most appalling was its attempt to use inflated claims of state secrecy to slam shut the doors of the nation’s courthouses.

Sadly, the Obama administration also embraced this tactic, even though President Obama criticized the cult of secrecy while running for office, leaving it to the courts to stand up for transparency and accountability.

And that is just what a panel of the federal appeals court in San Francisco did on Tuesday by firmly rejecting the claim that the government can prevent a judge from even hearing those who say they were hurt by federal polices and actions.

The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated a civil lawsuit brought against a government contractor by five victims of the extraordinary rendition program, under which foreigners were kidnapped and flown to other countries for interrogation and torture.

So let me get this straight. The court just ruled the way Jane Hamsher, Big Tent Democrat and Glenn Greenwald wanted them to. Had the Obama administration simply asserted they were right in the first place, what precedent would have been set? All we would have had was Bush-Cheney saying yes, Obama-Biden saying no. Future administrations could have picked their precedent. Now they have to do what the 9th Circuit said. 

That or they can eat a Supreme Court ruling. 

I’d say Holder and Obama are doing exactly what they should be. Surely no one thinks they appealed to the frickin’ 9th Circuit expecting to win, do they?

Better still, the court process eats up time and helps O avoid the perception that he’s changing everything instantly overnight. Our government was designed to move slowly, and undoing Bush-Cheney’s lawlessness won’t be easy or quickly done.

Slow and steady, and the real measure of this presidency will come in 2012 when Obama-Biden turns Sarah Palin into a national laughing stock a la George McGovern or Alf Landon.

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Nick Kristoff doesn’t connect the dots, but I think it’s safe to say that American women who are raped rarely get justice because law enforcement is too busy conducting their precious little war on drugs.

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If there’s anything you should take from the first 100 Days, it’s that presidentin’ is serious business best left to serious people. Change is coming, but change comes slowly in a Constitutional democracy. At least it does when you play by the rules.

No, Obama’s not pressing for prosecutions. That’s our job, and how much more powerful a president will Obama prove to be if we do his dirty work for him? Knights in shiny armor on white horses need armor polishers and stable hands. I don’t think you need me to tell you where the job openings are.

 

• Arlen Specter
• Detroit
• due process
• Minnesota State Fair
• rape