Backsliding Barry

On the surface, it looks like the Republicans have won this battle, as Obama is once again willing to put "entitlements" on the table in an effort to reach a grand compromise on the budget. As Scarborough noted in his op-ed piece, $85 billion is a drop in the bucket when you consider the overall $3.8 trillion budget that was requested for 2013, and the only place it will be really felt is in defense, which needs to be cut anyway, even if it means losing a few jobs in the greater Washington DC metro area. But, it seems our President still thinks he can work with the Republicans even after four years of stonewalling and renewed cries for massive budget cuts.

What I don't get is how Social Security and Medicare even figure into these budget cuts, as they come out of a whole separate tax system, FICA, not income tax, and haven't figured into the manufactured "debt crisis." In fact, the federal government has been borrowing against Social Security to meet its revenue shortfalls over the past 12 years. However, Obama got the brilliant idea to cut FICA in an effort to get businesses to hire, and so now the federal government is whittling away at SS and Medicare from both ends.

It doesn't take a Ph.D in Economics to figure out this is a recipe for disaster. Obama had the high ground in this battle, but has once again conceded to the Republicans over short term budget deals that do nothing to improve the economy, but only feed into their overall attempt to chip away at social programs, while they continue to defend the bloated defense budget, homeland security and other security-related budget items that take up to 40% of the overall budget.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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