Big Skies

As I walked towards BAM this evening to see Howard Hawks’ The Big Sky, which didn't suck, I saw that the north was dark and lowering, and I realized it was stormy over Wall Street. How wonderfully portentous! The Dow bombed today after Goldman Sachs’ boy Henry Paulson’s bail-out for the speculators was voted down in Congress. Shockingly, it was the GOP that put the kabosh on the rotten plan. Once again (again!), the Democrats were rolled by the lame-duck and universally loathed (except for a few million psychopaths) Bush. Only 95 of the House Democrats voted against it in the House, as FDR turned over in this grave in shame for the majority party that carries his standard. Here are some great takes on this crisis, from voices you won’t hear in the business-cheerleading pages and the stooge/entertainers on television. Our economy, in its fundamentals, as Bush and McPalin call 'em, is a bubble-casino that channels money upwards, ravaging democracy, indebting the citizenry with the pernicious engine of earth-destroying consumerism. Enough of this shit already! A golden opportunity to take up a progressive, populist, neo-New Deal has been presented to Barack Obama, but he is cowering in fear of upsetting the bankers who run his party (little skin off their ass if McCain wins, after all). (Let’s not forget it was Clinton who signed the death warrant of Glass-Steagall, which prevented the banks from becoming the casinos they now are.) Change, baby, change! McPalin’s cribbing the best lines, all quite hollow in their case, of course, but even rhetoric does better than nothing, or worse than nothing, the wishy-washy reformism the Democratic's champion is floating. Change, baby, change! Look up, Senator Obama: the sky is so much wider than the cramped overcast of the predatory capitalism of neoliberalism.