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These are highly unusual and distressing times. There is a loose cannon in the White House that only half the populations sees. I can't begin to fathom what the remaining half is looking at.

The half that sees a raging megalomaniac intent only on bending the country to his puerile and selfish will wants desperately to remove him from office.

Unfortunately, Democrats want so much more than that.

Take me. I don't particularly cotton to Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg, reason being they strike me as the same type of centrist, Republican appeasers we had in Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Clinton removed the effective restraints placed on Wall Street after the Great Depression and unleashed our corporate banks at the same time he opened the door to corporate consolidation of our media via the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Of course, this gift-wrapped whoring-out of a major slab of the economy to swill like Rupert Murdoch, Hank Paulson, Dick Fuld and Vikram Pandit went largely unnoticed by Republicans, who hurled every epithet available at the Commander-in-Chief anyway.

Sadly, this lesson was lost on Obama. Given the opportunity to clean up the mess of Clinton's deregulation, he mostly declined. Wall Street and our corporate banks were let off the hook with only a slap on the wrist and a request to behave.

Naturally, this too failed to endear him to Republicans, who subjected Obama to unheard-of levels of obduration and disrespect. It grew so bad I wrote on this blog that Obama could have invented sex and Republicans would only say they got screwed.

Acting like battered spouses by the end of their terms, Clinton and Obama sought only to avoid pissing-off Republicans lest they be subjected to another round of conservative rancor.

Which explains my faint enthusiasm for Biden and Buttigeig.

But in my dislike of centrist Democrats, I may well be part of Democrat's problem.

When I say I want to see Donald Trump and the GOP bitch-slapped into submission and gutted like a freshly-caught trout, I am acting on a personal bias that ignores larger issues, like how do we suss out the candidate who can remove Donald Trump from the White House?

While my favorite candidate fulfills my angry Democrat fantasy, the most-effective candidate may well be a centrist named Buttigeig or Biden or Amy Klobuchar.

And this is where Democrats face a great big challenge. If my candidate doesn't get the nod and my desires recede into the background, what do I do? Dissolve into petulance and sit this election out? Vote for the Trump-whore out of spite? What?

Democrats need to put aside their personal agendas and vote for the candidate who gets the nomination—even if in my case they seem unlikely to toss Trump into a meat-grinder. Or a wood chipper.

Democrats need to be Republicans. The party of far-flung diversity needs to consolidate. It needs to learn how to move en masse. March in lockstep. Act as a single entity hellbent on achieving one single, solitary goal.

Whether it's Buttigeig or Bernie Sanders, we need to line up behind them, endorse them and—most-importantly—vote for them. While the resultant democracy may not unfold in precisely the fashion we wish it to, at least there will be one.

The option is to allow the re-election of Donald Trump, a nakedly greedy, nakedly corrupt and nakedly megalomaniacal monster. Left to the Man-Child-in-Chief and the spineless sycophants who cower in fear of him, we are done. Toast. Ready for the fork-stick.

Which is why Democrats need to unite and vote their collective ass off.

If this is insufficient motivation, remember we have all complained at one point or another that too often we end up not voting for someone, but against them. So if you can't vote for a Democrat, vote against a Republican.

In 2020, that would be an honor worthy of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Political Science the Square Peg Way

62,985,106. Wow. That's a lot—of anything.

In this case, that would be t-shirts. Yep. T-shirts. The Square Peg is determined to cut through the acrid campaigning already infesting our nation as an election still sixteen months and change away looms like a poisonous, dark cloud.

After months of rigorous scientific research, our staff has determined that the best way to accomplish this is via humor. Mirth. T-shirts.

It is with this in mind that we have placed the largest t-shirt order in history. Too large for any one manufacturer, several firms have stepped up and offered us remarkable volume discounts.

(We would be remiss if we didn't add that without these generous discounts, this project would well nigh be impossible. Especially considering licensing fees, distribution costs, etc.)

OK. On to the project itself.

We aim to distribute over sixty-two million copies of the t-shirt pictured below to each Republican governor, Republican representative, Republican senator and each of the 62,984,828 folk who saw fit to vote for Donald Trump in 2016.

Then we propose to send the shirt pictured below to the current occupant of the White House: 

 

Lots of people think we as a nation need to lighten up. The Square Peg is the blog actually doing something about it.

Valentine's Day in March

Dear Elizabeth Warren,

I just heard you speak on The Rachel Maddow Show about Wall Street and about the corporate banks which are slowly but surely doing to us what parasitic jungle vines do to trees.

When politics doesn't resemble a tightly-scripted TV show, it's busy aping PR releases. And hearing you call out the trolls, the bullies and the vermin who infest our financial sector in your simple and direct manner was refreshing in a way I can't quite describe.

I don't remember the last time I heard a politician speak who wasn't seduced by the bottomless campaign contributions with which Wall Street routinely purchases our elected representation.

It bordered on the revelatory.

Ditto the realization that the only senator in Washington DC with the balls to stand up to them is a woman.

Look. I know it's forty-something days past Valentine's Day, but if you won't be my president will you at least be my Valentine?


Love,

La Piazza Gancio

Reasons to Be Cheerful

OK. I admit it. It's not all climate change deniers and distracted drivers and a government hellbent on sucking Wall Street's penis to the exclusion of legislating and leading in a semi-responsible way.

There are, in the words of the immortal Ian Dury, reasons to be cheerful.

1.) I was able to locate a liquor department stocking New Belgium Brewing Company's Frambozen, a brown ale and raspberry concoction far better-tasting than you might be inclined to believe.

Upon my first taste of the stuff, I wasn't especially impressed and relegated it to the “interesting” category. But by bottle number-six, I was on the verge of proposing marriage.

So yes, I search high and low for Frambozen at Christmastime. You should, too.

2.) The New York Knicks are 5 and 27. The Los Angeles Lakers 10 and 21.

Nothing like seeing the league's most-dysfunctional franchise continue to flounder under its Hall of Fame slash opportunist GM. The realization that former GM Isiah Thomas couldn't make things any worse than they already were at Madison Square Garden is staggering.

And the Lakers? I confess to getting a kick out of watching the league's most-entitled team suffer the ravages of old age and free-agent defection. 

As a card-carrying member of N.C.F.K. (Never cared for Kobe), I'm not shedding any tears at the sight of Bryant starring in the role of former superstar hobbled by injuries and in the twilight of his career.

True, the record will show that Bryant scored more points than M. Jordan, but another will show that insofar as championships were concerned, the Black Mamba did less with more.

3.) The 2014/15 Chicago Bulls, custodians of a tidy 22 and 10 record which places them atop the Central Division.

After impressive victories over Memphis, Toronto and Washington and another Christmas Day over the Los Angeles franchise formerly known as contenders, the Bulls appear to be rounding into shape.

Best of all, Derrick Rose looks like his old self, driving the lane and giving the once-anemic offense options. With free-agent acquisition Pau Gasol playing like he's in his mid-twenties and the bench once again full of characters ready, willing and able to defend and even pad leads, the Bulls look awesome and formidable.

4.) Finally, there is the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

I don't see much live music anymore, which is mostly a byproduct of my limited income. But even if things were different I'm still not sure I'd be plopping down three-hundred bucks to see the likes of U2 circa 2014.

So as an early X-mas gift to my mate, I bought a pair of tickets to the CSO and we made the trip downtown to Orchestra Hall to see a program featuring Haydn (93^rd symphony), Strauss (Don Juan) and Beethoven (7^th symphony).

Let me first say that classical music benefits more than any other when heard live. I'm still waiting for the recording that captures the transparency and richness of an orchestra in full flower.

Whew.

Of course, great seats don't hurt. Neither does a little Ludwig Van (as Alex in A Clockwork Orange was wont to call the estimable Mr. Beethoven).

Without the vocabulary and experience of a seasoned listener, I'll just say it was wondrous, with textures, sounds and melodies that enchanted and excited and got my soul righted.

More than any other piece performed that night, Beethoven's seventh was an orgy of mood and sound, fully animated by what is still one of the world's leading orchestras. I was agog.

And a post-concert walk through Millennium Park, with its backdrop of skyscrapers and Christmas lights, was a silent night-styled treat. It was the perfect coda to an evening of powerful music.

So life could be worse.

I remain grateful for Stand 'N Stuff taco shells. Express check-out lanes. The chime that goes off when I leave my headlights on. The fact that I am not legally or biologically related to anyone named Kardashian. Elizabeth Warren. And the continued functioning of my overworked and much-abused ears.

But life could be a great deal better, also. Which is what I'm hoping the next calendar holds for me and you.

Happy New Year.

Am I the Only One Who Sees the Ghost?

Dear readers, I'm going to ask you for a favor.

I want you to go to the biggest, most opulent homes in your community and leave $10,000.00 on each of their doorsteps.

That's right. $10,000.00. On the doorstep.

Then I want you to write out a check to the following: Google, Goldman-Sachs, Exxon, British Petroleum, Apple, Microsoft and Citibank for—you guessed it—10K.

Stay with me. Just one more step.

Could you please petition your congressional representation (yes, you still have some—sort of) and the president to imbue the nation's largest and most powerful corporations with absolute power?

Thank you.

OK. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? 

At your most-civil, you might be thinking, well, what's he thinking? Did he have a bowl of bad chili? Forget to take his meds? Tell me he's not experimenting with meth! 

At your most uncivil, you're speculating into which bodily orifice I've inserted my head.

Fair enough.

Suffice to say I'm in a bad way. Let me tell you why.

In 2008, our economy collapsed after years of abuse and neglect. It wasn't because of ignorance, as you could rightly claim with the 1929 crash that kick-started the Great Depression.

No, this crash was premeditated. Enacted with malice aforethought. It was manufactured by jackals who purchased the prostitutes which inhabit the U.S. Congress.

Seduced with promises of unlimited campaign financing, our mealy-mouthed elected representation then repealed the very legislation meant to protect us from the ravages of unregulated bankers and drooling Wall Street carnivores.

Before being neutered in 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act had protect the American economy for sixty-six years. But it also kept Wall Street in shackles. 

Dozens of billions were made instead of hundreds of billions. Some chief executive officers were forced to drive two-year-old Ferraris. Bonuses that rendered Major League Baseball payrolls chump change weren't even a glimmer in Wall Street's eye.

You can see why something had to change.

It shouldn't be a surprise that a Republican, Phil Gramm of Texas, introduced the bill that would play such a large part in unraveling our economy. Two more Republicans, Jim Leach of Iowa and Thomas Bliley, Jr. of Virginia, quickly co-sponsored it.

After tossing the public a bone which amounted to bringing the woman you've just raped a bouquet of roses, the Senate and House passed the final version of the Financial Services Modernization Act that November, with President Clinton signing it into law on November 12, 1999.

Do you remember what you did on that date? Ironic how an event which will one day upend your life can pass by practically unnoticed, isn't it?

It's worth noting that the bill received very little opposition. 

In the Senate, 98.1% of voting Republicans and 84.4% of voting Democrats favored the bill. It was much the same story in the House, with 97.6% and 75.2% of voting Republicans and Democrats, respectively, approving.

Only Michigan Democrat John Dingell voiced concern, exhibiting an uncanny prescience when he stated on C-SPAN that after creating too-big-to-fail banks, passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill would one day necessitate a federal bailout.

It is remarkable that so few questioned legislation which would undo protections enacted in the aftermath of the worst financial crisis in American history. Protections whose effectiveness was measured in the six-decade absence of home-wrecking financial cataclysms since they became law.

Combined with the Riegel-Neal Act of 1994 (also signed into law by President Clinton—who says Democrats aren't business-friendly?), the environment in which banks and financial services entities operated in was changing rapidly. 

Everyone was going to get bigger and richer and less-regulated. Yay!

Banks and investment houses no longer had to adhere to bothersome restrictions dictating how and with whom they did business. They could co-mingle in any way they pleased. At its essence, the Financial Services Modernization Act meant that banks and investments firms didn't have to bother with condoms any more.

By the ninth anniversary of its passage, the U.S. economy was in a shambles. An unholy trinity of mortgage brokers, investment firms and gargantuan banks, let off the leash of regulation, had sodomized anything and everything they could lay their hands—and other body parts—on.

The economic equivalent of unwanted pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases came with an enormous price tag—one which was borne by the tax-paying public. Congress fixed Wall Street in a single weekend, earmarking 700 billion dollars to bail out the very firms whose deregulation-inspired recklessness had destroyed the economy.

(Permit me a moment to point out how cries of “socialism!” accompany such aid when it is directed at individuals, but an amount which would fund the SNAP program for a decade was given away in a matter of days without so much as a syllable of protest.)

Fast forward to Fall, 2014 and the creation of a new national budget. 

With the nation still mired in a slow-motion recovery, Wall Street feels put-upon. This despite a robust four-year run that finds the DOW, which bottomed-out in March of 2009 at 6,626, having more than doubled, closing on December 5^th at 17,958.

For the mathematically-challenged, that's an increase of 63.1%. Clearly, their economy is doing just fine.

But it's not enough.

The creation of a consumer protection agency and the Dodd-Frank financial reform left Wall Street and our corporate banks feeling picked-on. Unloved. Unappreciated. Why haven't we cuddled them and kissed them goodnight?

Never mind that the consumer protection agency isn't headed by firebrand Elizabeth Warren because the banks and Wall Street were afraid she might actually do something, or that the Dodd-Frank bill was drastically watered-down to ensure quick passage by an obstreperous Congress.

No, the petulant and entitled product of unbridled wealth and privilege wants more.

Step number-one is the removal of safeguards which were designed to limit our liability in the event Wall Street and Citibank couldn't control themselves. Translated, we (that's you and me) are now liable if Wall Street and our ginormous banks get too much slobber on the steering wheel and lose control of the car.

I'll let CNN explain:

“At the center of the dispute are arcane financial instruments known as loan swaps. Those are contracts between banks used to spread the risk in their loans and trades.

A rule that would have limited the use of those swaps by commercial banks (think Citigroup (C) or JPMorgan Chase (JPM)) was essentially stripped out of the law during budget negotiations in recent days.

Swaps were ground zero of the 2008 meltdown of the global financial system. That's because banks had bundled risky mortgage loans and sold them as bonds. And to make the bonds more appetizing to investors, swaps were created as a form of insurance that the bonds would pay as promised.

So when the housing bubble burst and so many people couldn't afford their mortgage payments anymore, those bonds blew up. And the banks and firms like AIG (AIG) that held the suddenly-toxic swaps contracts needed bailouts.”

And later:

“One provision of Dodd-Frank to protect taxpayers was a rule saying major banks couldn't use their normal commercial banking operation to create, buy or trade these kinds of swap contracts. Instead those contracts had to be held by separate entities whose assets were not insured by the Federal Reserve or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

"If Wall Street banks want to gamble, Congress should force them to pay for their losses, and not put the taxpayers on the hook for another bailout," said a letter signed this week by both one of the most conservative senators, David Vitter, and one of the most liberal, Sherrod Brown.

Even though Dodd-Frank was signed into law more than four years ago, the rules to limit banks gambling with taxpayer-backed money are not yet completely in place.”

So. You get this, right? 

If Citibank and Wall Street fuck-up, it's on us. Their losses will be insured by the same people who insure your bank account—the taxpayer-funded FDIC. Which is another way of saying we the people are on the hook for it.

It's called gaming the system. Casino-owners in Las Vegas will throw you out on your ass and put you on their permanent shit list if they catch you doing this, but in Washington D.C. it amounts to following best practice.  

I'd be fine with this if we also shared in Wall Street's gains. But strangely enough, those will remain in the private sector. Only their losses will find their way to the public sector. 

Privatized gains, publicized losses. Still think the President runs the country?

Call America what you want. Just don't call it a democracy.

Streaming Thoughts

I’m stuck. I start a post, and after a paragraph or two lose all focus and sense of direction.

Doesn’t matter if it’s about Mitch McConnell and John McCain and the remarkable athletic ability they display while leaping from one position to another, the especially fine Dylan bootleg I downloaded last week or my ongoing unemployment.

My posts just sputter to a stop like a car out of gas.

And that’s another topic: rising gas prices. Where’s the deflation economists were so worried about last year? Demand remains flat, the non-Wall Street economy is still on life support, yet gas prices continue to rise. Why isn’t the dynamic of supply and demand coming into play?

Did it pull a groin or something?

I thought the gravity of low demand kept prices down. Is everything we learned in Economics 101 wrong?

Then there’s the pending reform of Wall Street.

I’m not holding my breath, and neither should you. Like our recent health care reform, the financial re-do will be gentle. Corporate-friendly. It will be faint like the light from a distant star.

Despite the valiant efforts of people like Elizabeth Warren, there’s just too much campaign cash at stake. Too many golf junkets. Too many days to turn into Christmas for our pocket-stuffing congressional representation.

Ironic that the public has no choice but to ask the town drunk to watch the liquor cabinet, isn’t it?

Despite the questionable covers and reportage on personalities like Justin Bieber that make me feel like I wandered into a copy of Young Miss, Rolling Stone continues to do an excellent job of reporting on the farce that passes for governance in the United States of Whatever.

And it doesn’t matter from which side of the aisle the farce originates; Democrats and Republicans alike are stripped of pomp and PR when deserving. Matt Taibbi’s writing deserves Pulitzers.

Considering the subject matter, he must take a lot of showers.

Oh yeah. And then there’s the Dylan show. Re-invigorated by a near-fatal bout with pericarditis and the release of the stellar Time Out of Mind, Dylan is in prime form here.

His is one of a handful of voices actually enhanced by age, not diminished by it. Its gravelly texture only adds resonance to songs of faded love and longing. And the band is expert; responsive, empathetic and supple, providing shading and sparks as needed.

Playing with arrangements, experimenting with phrasing, Dylan is one of rock music’s most challenging (on a bad night) and arresting (on a good one) performers. Here, at the Irving Plaza in New York City on the evening of December 8, 1997, he is very definitely one of the latter.

Sweet Jesus.

Finally, a shout-out to my friends whose music blogs have been snuffed out. It’s funny—now that I can’t download the music they shared I suddenly have the cash to purchase $16.99 CDs at the local big box store and support global giants like Sony and Universal and Bertelsmann.

Or so the powers that be must think.

Long live David. Death to Goliath.