of poverty and desperation in the US, a world that most of our elected representatives seem to have no comprehension of, let alone concern for.
A stirring editorial in the Guardian by Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, where she describes our culture of “victimizing the most marginal.”
Is today’s Democratic Party the most defeatist in history?
With the Republicans now in an even more weakened state, Democratic [?] Rep. Steve King calls for MORE “compromise” (read: capitulation) from Obama!!! I’m not going to link because it’s too pathetic to get into in any more detail.
Fortunately, there are a few actual Democrats left in the party, and they’ve been lining up against the Presidents plan to cut Social Security
And even Nancy Pelosi was walking it back a little, after we had the disheartening spectacle of seeing her perform biologically impossible semantic contortions to sell Obama’s stinking sell out.
How can Obama live with himself for putting 70+-year-old Pelosi in this type of compromising position in the final years of her political career? And how could someone of her savvy and experience decide to walk the plank?
Pelosi certainly was reared in the ethos of party loyalty above all else, but what do you do when the party leader has no committment to the ostensible party platform?
Now that Boehner has completely unforced-error-himself, it’s time for Obama to rescind that dreadful offer he made two nights ago and begin anew Jan. 2.
George Jackson emailed with a comment about the lineage between Balanchine’s Symphony in C and Lifar’s Suite en Blanc that I discuss in the new Ballet Review:
“In terms of tracing sources, it may have been minor or forgotten works that influenced those that have survived. Max Glasemann’s ‘Chopiniana’ and Josef Hassreiter’s ‘Chopin’s Dances’ preceded the first version of Fokine’s Chopiniana/Sylphides by only a few years and similarities are striking. Likewise, there were ‘suites’ by such as Ivan Clustine, Nicola Guerra and Leo Staats in regular repertory and being done at school recitals in Paris that have technical and formal resemblance to Lifar’s ‘Suite en blanc’ and Balanchine’s ‘Palais de crystal.'”
I caught the Met’s 2 hour English language Barber of Seville last night.
Lovely to look at, to hear, to watch maneuver the stage with farcical
reality, Isabel Leonard uses her warm, straightforward mezzo winningly.
Rodion Pogossov as Figaro has a genuinely wacky sense of comedy – even
some corny gay-hairdresser shtick, when Dr. Bartolo resists Figaro’s
unwanted shave and demands that he come back tomorrow, doesn’t show
its age. (Although Warren Beatty in Shampoo did it just as well nearly
forty years ago.) To similar effect, I really laughed at his boom-box treatment of Papageno’s magic chimes a couple of seasons back.
Like Leonard, Pogossov has a sound, solid technique. “Juste” would be the word in French.
Alek Shrader is a bit of a cipher: this natural talent somehow hasn’t entirely lost his apprentice standing. His mezza-voice is sweet and confidently negotiated, but he is both overly cautious (not yet projecting that penetrating, metallic sound of a coloratura tenor) and a bit reckless (lunging for top notes). His roulades were respectable but he remains
a work-in progress.
The cuts – though necessary for a children’s production – render the drama at time incomprehensible and manage to drain Bartlett Sher’s Barber of some magic.
But the kids were there and it was charming to see and hear it through their eyes. How nice to sit in a quiet auditorium a week before Christmas and watch a bunch of grown-ups act so silly! These holiday shows are a notable tradition-in-the-making.
“Yup, this is insanity,” Kos writes at DailyKos.com.
“Not only is it brain dead stupid with regards to Republicans, but also betrays his own vice president and congressional caucus—which had promised several times that Social Security (among other things) was off the table.”
Jane Hamsher at firedoglake.com presents the full, irrefutable chronology.
Pelosi can forget about ever getting that ghavel back, and frankly she doesn’t deserve it. She is fundamentally nothing more than a party hack. But what’s so very strange is that no one in the Demoratic would-be brain trust realizes that it’s political suicide for the Democrats.
As Jon Walker writes, also at firedoglake:
“If you thought during the 2010 campaign the Republicans ads run against Democrats for “cutting Medicare” were devastating, just wait until 2014 when they run ads against Democrats for cutting Social Security.”
She’s on board with Social Security benefit cuts. Are we surprised?
Primary the scoundrels!
The question is whether House and Senate Democratic leaders, or someone like Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Keith Ellison, can succeed in pulling Obama back from the real cliff: his own abject desire to propitiate his enemies.
This is a president who won reelection in a landslide five weeks ago because he espoused views that were diametrically different than his opponent’s. And now he is avid to repudiate those views and betray the electorate who supports them.
Every time Obama and Boehner go head to head, Obama gets his clock cleaned. Why is this enabled again and again?
If they really do think he won’t pay an enormous political price for doing what GW Bush couldn’t–cutting Social Security. These guys ran a pretty good campaign, but that is all.
He will in fact, have shot himself and the Democratic party in the foot, as well as inflicting yet more pain on the working people of this country. It is stupid, cowardly, completely unnecessary and immoral.
It may not be much of a second term after all.
