The Puke Blog

Hey everybody,

Been awhile since I posted here, hope you enjoyed the silence. It's Christmas Day and the connections re-made on holidays like this can sometimes cause unapologetic cynics like old Uncle Pukie to get a little soft along the edges and re-visit old friends and followers in the hopes of...what. Who knows what triggers these little spasms of reaching out? Too much dark chocolate? 

Whatever the reason, change is in the wind here in Pukeville. There's a new puppie in the house, Dottie the Sheltie has altered old routines and brought gales of laughter along with her. As someone correctly observed, the only thing that could possibly make dogs any cooler would be if they high-fived you after you farted. This dog is a great new little friend who's inordinately curious, fiercely alive, athletic, and extremely intelligent. We didn't think anybody could replace the legendary Winnie, but Dottie is filling her space with a gusto that convinces me that Mrs. Winnie Cuddle Bunny Pants has miraculously returned in a similar if slightly more manic form. 

The 2011 festival season was a booming success, all three of our major shows had big attendance figures. We added a few weekends in Chippewa Falls working with the legendary renfest promoter and director John Mills, one of those rare gentlemen in this business who can do a contract with you on a handshake. And even though the Wisconsin crowds were small, the audiences were certainly glad to see us and more than willing to listen to us work on some new material. 

John (Snot) and I recorded a CD at the Colorado festival in July and hope to have it available online by early February, the current working title of which is EXTREMELY PUKE AND INCREDIBLY SNOT. It will be a compilation of virtually everything Gamok and I are currently doing onstage, with the exception of his scenes as the Mayor of Munchkin Land in the WIZARD OF OZ at the Minneapolis Children's Theater Company. The man simply cannot take some time off and just relax. For those of you unfamiliar with the Large New Version of Thomas Snot, check out John's bio on the fresh and exciting new P & S web site. Lots of new merchandise you can order if you have anything left to spend after the holidays.

The bizarre and clown-like lineup of republican presidential candidates is proving to be a gift of immense proportions to those of us who work in comedy for a living, although it can be frustrating when the candidates say and do things that make satire irrelevant. The Herman Cain Gift, for instance. Not much you can do with that except sit back with a bowl of popcorn and watch. But the continued "candidacy" of Newt Gingrich promises to provide free material for another month or two at least, thank you Newton. I would have thought that the GOP wanted control of the House for more than two years. But I guess they're pursuing a different strategy.

I intend to find enough time to post funny, controversial and occasionally informative writing in this space in 2012, it looks like it's going to be a wonderful year for comedy. The only rule is that there are no rules. And no peeing in the shower.

 

If you're not a Michael Moore fan, you might want to click out of this right now. I am a fan. I think Moore is a patriot, a real one. An excellent writer, thinker, and a damn good film maker. I've heard all the criticism, but I have yet to see anyone demonstrate where he's ever got it wrong. From SICKO to FAHRENHEIT 911 to CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, Moore makes his case with numbers, evidence, history, and humanity. And I particularly like his take on the killing of bin Laden and the country's reaction to it. Read on.

"The Nazis killed tens of MILLIONS. They got a trial. Why? Because we're not like them. We're Americans. We roll different." – Michael Moore in an interview last week

by Hunter for DAILY KOS

Dean Baker is a macroeconomist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. This is a post that puts an exclamation point on the Taibbi piece I posted yesterday.

This dangerous and little understood “proposal” by Rep. Paul Ryan needs to be exposed. It’s only “serious” in the sense that it attempts to finally put an end to the social contract we’ve lived by in this country since FDR pulled us out of the Great Depression. There's a small, nasty part of me that hopes the republicans run the 2012 campaign on this proposal. The democrats will beat them like a bad piece of meat.

Government by People Who Hate You

Monday 11 April 2011

by: Dean Baker, Truthout

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan put out a budget proposal last week that will leave the vast majority of future retirees without decent health care by ending Medicare as we know it. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis, most middle-income retirees would have to pay almost half of their income to purchase a Medicare equivalent insurance package by 2030. They would be paying much more than half of their income in later years.

This sort of broadside against the living standards of the middle class might have been expected to draw an outraged response in a nation that exalts the lifestyle and values of the middle class. Instead, the punditry rallied around Mr. Ryan's plan to deal with the problem of runaway entitlement spending, crediting it for being "serious" even if they did not embrace all the details.

If there is any doubt that our political system is controlled by an elite who is completely removed from the bulk of the population, this response to the Ryan plan ended it. There is nothing at all serious about the Ryan plan. It is a naked attempt to redistribute yet more money to the country's rich at the expense of everyone else.

The proposal to end Medicare relies on market efficiencies to get health care costs under control, as though we had not tried this before. Has Representative Ryan never heard of Medicare Advantage or Medicare Plus Choice? Doesn't he know that we already have the opportunity to see the effectiveness of private insurers in containing health care costs in the vast non-Medicare insurance market?

Based on this extensive experience, we know that the private insurance market does not control costs. This is why the CBO calculated that Ryan's plan would hugely raise the cost of health care for seniors. If every senior got a Medicare equivalent policy under Representative Ryan's plan (which most will not be able to afford), the added cost of his system would be more than $20 trillion over the next 75 years.

This comes to more than $60,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. That would be money out of the pocket of ordinary workers and retirees that will go to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, highly paid medical specialists, and other health care providers.

When it comes to redistributing money upward, the bar for intellectual coherence is set very low. Pundits from across the political spectrum had a hard time containing their enthusiasm for Ryan's plan even if few were willing to embrace it in its entirety. And if there was not enough substance over which to get excited, then there was always the 37 footnotes which Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer trumpeted last week.

In principle, the country's elite should be laying low right now. After all, their greed and ineptitude has given us the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. But after getting the Wall Street banks back on their feet with trillions of dollars of government subsidized loans, the elite are once again making a full-frontal assault on the living standards of the middle class. Last week it was Medicare, but they promise to be back to attack Social Security in the not too distant future.

The ostensible rationale for this attack is the country's huge budget deficit. This is garbage. As all the pundits know, the country has a huge deficit today because the Wall Street boys drove the economy off a cliff. If the government deficit were not propping up the economy, we would be looking at 11 or 12 percent unemployment, rather than 8.9 percent. Spending creates jobs, and at this point, it is not coming from the private sector, so the government must fill the hole.

Over the longer term, the projections of huge deficits are driven by the projected explosion in health care costs. President Obama's health care reform took steps toward constraining these costs, although probably not enough. Remarkably, Ryan's plan abandons these cost control measures, virtually guaranteeing that quality health care becomes unaffordable for all but a small elite.

And the pundits call Ryan's plan "serious." Yes, it is very serious. It is a serious plan for taking tens of trillions of dollars from low-income and middle-income people and giving them away as tax breaks to the rich and to the health care industry. It is about as serious as a robber with a gun pointed at your head.

If you haven't read read Matt Taibbi's book GRIFTOPIA: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America, I urge you to run out and get a copy now. Get off the sofa, lug your guts down to Barnes and Noble, and get the real story on the most audacious power grab in American history. Taibbi unravels the whole fiendish story of the grifter class, the network of looters who sit at the nexus of American political and economic power. It isn't pretty, and it might piss you off. But it's an important story, and he's tracked down the major players and the felons who are still in business bankrupting the country. Besides, any book with a chapter entitled "The Biggest Asshole In The Universe" should at the very least be checked out to see what other delights might await the unsuspecting reader. And who, exactly, that might be.

Tax Cuts for the Rich on the Backs of the Middle Class; or, Paul Ryan Has Balls 

 by Matt Taibbi

Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s latest entrant in the seemingly endless series of young, prickish, over-coiffed, anal-retentive deficit Robespierres they’ve sent to the political center stage in the last decade or so, has come out with his new budget plan. All of these smug little jerks look alike to me – from Ralph Reed to Eric Cantor to Jeb Hensarling to Rand Paul and now to Ryan, they all look like overgrown kids who got nipple-twisted in the halls in high school, worked as Applebee’s shift managers in college, and are now taking revenge on the world as grownups by defunding hospice care and student loans and Sesame Street. They all look like they sleep with their ties on, and keep their feet in dress socks when doing their bi-monthly duty with their wives.

Every few years or so, the Republicans trot out one of these little whippersnappers, who offer proposals to hack away at the federal budget. Each successive whippersnapper inevitably tries, rhetorically, to out-mean the previous one, and their proposals are inevitably couched as the boldest and most ambitious deficit-reduction plans ever seen. Each time, we are told that these plans mark the end of the budgetary reign of terror long ago imposed by the entitlement system begun by FDR and furthered by LBJ.

Never mind that each time the Republicans actually come into power, federal deficit spending explodes and these whippersnappers somehow never get around to touching Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. The key is that for the many years before that moment of truth, before these buffoons actually get a chance to put their money where their lipless little mouths are, they will stomp their feet and scream about how entitlements are bringing us to the edge of apocalypse.

The reason for this is always the same: the Republicans, quite smartly, recognize that there is great political hay to be made in the appearance of deficit reduction, and that white middle class voters will respond with overwhelming enthusiasm to any call for reductions in the “welfare state,” a term which said voters will instantly associate with black welfare moms and Mexicans sneaking over the border to visit American emergency rooms.

The problem, of course, is that to actually make significant cuts in what is left of the “welfare state,” one has to cut Medicare and Medicaid, programs overwhelmingly patronized by white people, and particularly white seniors. So when the time comes to actually pull the trigger on the proposed reductions, the whippersnappers are quietly removed from the stage and life goes on as usual, i.e. with massive deficit spending on defense, upper-class tax cuts, bailouts, corporate subsidies, and big handouts to Pharma and the insurance industries.

This is a political game that gets played out in the media over and over again, and everyone in Washington knows how it works. Which is why it’s nauseating (but not surprising) to see so many commentators falling over themselves with praise for Ryan’s “bold” budget proposal, which is supposedly a ballsy piece of politics because it proposes backdoor cuts in Medicare and Medicaid by redounding their appropriations to the states and to block grants. Ryan is being praised for thusly taking on seniors, a traditionally untouchable political demographic . Here is how old friend David Brooks, taking a break from his authorship of breathless master-race treatises, put it in a recent column called “Moment of Truth”:

Over the past few weeks, a number of groups, including the ex-chairmen of the Council of Economic Advisers and 64 prominent budget experts, have issued letters arguing that the debt situation is so dire that doing nothing is not a survivable option. What they lacked was courageous political leadership — a powerful elected official willing to issue a proposal, willing to take a stand, willing to face the political perils.

The country lacked that leadership until today. Today, Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is scheduled to release the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes…

Brooks sums up the Ryan proposals this way:

The Ryan budget will put all future arguments in the proper context: The current welfare state is simply unsustainable and anybody who is serious, on left or right, has to have a new vision of the social contract. The initial coverage will talk about Ryan’s top number — the cuts of more than $4 trillion over the next decade. But the important thing is the way Ryan would reform programs…

Brooks then goes on to slobber over all of Ryan’s ostensibly daring proposals, from the Medicare block grants to the more obnoxious Medicare voucher program (replacing Medicare benefits with vouchers to buy overpriced private insurance, which Brooks calls the government “giving you a sum of money” to choose from “a regulated menu of insurance options”).

What he doesn’t mention is that Ryan’s proposal also includes dropping the top tax rate for rich people from 35 percent to 25 percent. All by itself, that one change means that the government would be collecting over $4 trillion less over the next ten years.

Since Brooks himself is talking about Ryan’s plan cutting $4 trillion over the next ten years (some say that number is higher), what we’re really talking about here is an ambitious program to cut taxes for people like… well, people like me and David Brooks, and paying for it by “consolidating job-training programs” and forcing old people to accept reduced Medicare benefits.

We are in the middle of a major national disagreement over budget priorities, and that debate is going to turn into a full-scale cultural shooting war once the 2012 presidential election season comes around. It is obvious that we have a debt problem in this country and that something needs to be done about it. But a huge part of the blame for the confusion and the national angst over our budget issues has to be laid at the feet of media assholes like Brooks, who continually misrepresent what is actually happening with national spending.

The last ten years or so have seen the government send massive amounts of money to people in the top tax brackets, mainly through two methods: huge tax cuts, and financial bailouts. The government has spent trillions of our national treasure bailing out Wall Street, which has resulted directly in enormous, record profit numbers – nearly $100 billion in the last three years (and that doesn’t even count the tens of billions more in inflated compensation and bonuses that came more or less directly from government aid). Add to that the $700 billion or so the Obama tax cuts added to the national debt over the next two years, and we’re looking at a trillion dollars of lost revenue in just a few years.

You push a policy like that in the middle of a shaky economy, of course we’re going to have debt problems. But the issue is being presented as if the debt comes entirely from growth in entitlement spending. It’s bad enough that middle-class taxpayers have been forced in the last few years to subsidize the vacations and beach houses of the idiots who caused the financial crisis, and it’s doubly insulting that they’re now being blamed for the budget mess.

But the icing on the cake comes when a guy like David Brooks – like me a coddled, overcompensated media yuppie whose idea of sacrifice is raking one’s own leaves – comes out and calls Paul Ryan courageous for having the guts to ask seniors to cut back on their health care in order to pay for our tax breaks.

The absurd thing is that Ryan’s act isn’t even politically courageous. It’s canny calculation, but courage it is not. It would be courageous if Ryan were, say, the president of the United States, and leaning on that budget with his full might. But Ryan is proposing a budget he knows would have no chance of passing in the Senate. He is simply playing out a part, a non-candidate for the presidency pushing a rhetorical flank for an out-of-power party leading into a presidential campaign year. If the budget is a hit with the public, the 2012 Republican candidate can run on it. If it isn’t, the Republican candidate can triangulate Ryan’s ass back into the obscurity from whence it came, and be done with him. 

No matter what, Ryan’s gambit, ultimately, is all about trying to get middle-class voters to swallow paying for tax cuts for rich people. It takes chutzpah to try such a thing, but having a lot of balls is not the same as having courage.

I've been thinking about what's funny and what isn't. And why. The best essay I've ever read on the subject was written a few years ago by a friend of mine, an actor and director here in the Twin Cities. It appeared in the Star Tribune, and I'm re-posting it for your enjoyment.  

I've worked with Peter in various productions since the early 90s, he's one of the smartest guys I know. And he tells a joke like few people I've ever met. One of my most cherished times in the theater was the couple of months I spent with Peter and Allen Hamilton in a Mixed Blood Theater production of SPINNING INTO BUTTER some years ago. Every rehearsal, every night during the run, I couldn't wait to get to the dressing room to listen to Peter and Allen top each other with the best jokes and stories I'd ever heard. And I've heard millions. And on the rare occasion I came up with a story that either one of them hadn't heard, and they liked it, I felt like a rookie who'd just been given a pat on the back by a couple of Hall of Famers. 

Peter's rules have become my personal guidelines for what's funny, what's not, and why. I introduced them to a famous friend of mine in the sports world who likes to send me email jokes and stories that I often found not only unfunny, but offensive. I asked him to consult the rules before he sent me any more, and he still does. Sometimes he sends me a joke that he thinks might walk the line, but he still asks me if I think it conforms to the "rules." 

So, here's  How to be funny without being offensive. 

By Peter Moore   

As an inveterate joke teller, I've been following the whole Imus vs. Rutgers debate with great interest. I'm a middle-aged white guy, about whom there are very few jokes. But I'm also half Jewish; consequently I always tell people that I'm not really one of the Chosen People, but I am an Alternate. So as a member in good standing of both the majority and the minority, and as such possessing the ability to oppress myself, I feel I'm qualified to clear up the questions people have been raising about humor, double standards and political incorrectness that have been the hot topic of late. So here are My Rules For Jokes Involving People Who Aren't Like Me.

Rule 1    If you're a member of an ethnic group, you can tell any joke you want about that group.

Jews can tell Jewish jokes, African-Americans can tell black jokes, gays can tell gay jokes. One time a group of us actors was waiting for one of the African-American guys in the cast who was late, and one of the other black guys said, "He's on BMT - Black Man Time." We all laughed, but if I had said it, then it's ignorant, not funny. It's OK to make fun of your own. 

Rule 2    If you aren't a member of the ethnic group involved in the joke, it's OK to tell it if it doesn't involve a mean stereotype.

Remember - there's a difference between racist jokes and jokes about race. Example: Two old Jewish guys sitting on a park bench. One says, "Oy!" The other one says, "I thought we weren't going to talk about the kids!" Or here's another: What do you call a black guy being chased by a bunch of white guys with clubs? The PGA Tour. Or this: Is it easier to be black or gay? Black - you don't have to tell your parents. These are jokes about race and minorities, but they're sweet and silly (and in the case of the Tiger Woods joke, even a little triumphant). Any jokes about drunken Indians or cheap Jews or lazy Mexicans, any jokes where the point is to show a particular group in a bad light - don't tell 'em. I've yet to hear one that was funny. Here's a good rule of thumb: If you look over your shoulder furtively to see who's around before you tell a joke, you're better off swallowing it unsaid.

Rule 3    The people in power can be made fun of without being able to hit back.

This addresses the whole minorities-make-fun-of-whites-but-we-can't-make-fun-of-them-what-a-double-standard-wahhh! issue. The fact is, white people still have the power in this country, and the price we pay for it is being made fun of. So when I hear people say, "Well, if such-and-such a joke/play/comment had been about Asians/women/Muslims instead of whites/Christians/rich people, there'd be outrage all around," I say, "That's right, and there should be." Sorry, fair or not, that's the way it is. A small price to pay for world domination, I think.

Rule 4    Anyone, and I mean anyone, gets to tell Ole and Lena jokes.

My favorite: Lena goes to the town newspaper after Ole dies to run his obituary. "Just put, 'Ole died.'-" she tells the editor. "Well, Lena," says the editor, "there's a five-word minimum." She thinks for a second and says, "OK - put 'Ole died. Boat for sale.'-" I've never met a Scandinavian who was offended by these jokes (and even if they were, how would you know? Sorry). And believe it or not, blonde jokes, Polish jokes, Iowa jokes, drummer jokes and model jokes (Did you hear about the model who was so dumb that some of the other models noticed?) are OK, too. They're all the Little Moron jokes from 50 years ago, and they're all so interchangeable and innocuous ("Gosh! I guess that group of people is really dumb!"), it's hard to be offended by them. And not to put too fine a point on it, but those jokes are mostly about white people again. See Rule 3.

I hope these simple rules will be a useful guide as you make your comedy- styling choices. But if you're still confused, just remember:

Rule 5    If you're unsure whether to tell a certain joke, don't.

Tell this one instead: Two Englishmen are talking. One says to the other, "I understand you've just returned from darkest Africa." "Yes, I did," says the first one. "And did you have any adventures there?" "As a matter of fact, I did. I was walking down a jungle path, and all of a sudden this huge lion leapt out at me. RAAHHR! I wet my pants!" "Well, I should think so, if a huge lion leapt out at you." "No, no, just now, when I went RAAHHR!" Tell that joke to anyone, anywhere, and you'll get two things: a big laugh and a clear conscience.

Hot tip for everybody: check out ROGUE VALLEY, the best band you've never heard of, unless you know me personally and have been unlucky enough to be around me when I launch into another long description of their music and how it makes me feel. 

Full disclosure: my son Pete plays and sings with this band. I've thought of ordering that wonderful Onion tee shirt that says MY SON IS A MEMBER OF A PROMINENT LOCAL BAND. But even if he wasn't, this would still be my favorite music, even supplanting the Boss and Tom Petty on the list of what I first reach for when I settle into my rental car. I have friends my age that have told me the same thing. The demographic appeal is wide and deep. 

 Go to lostinroguevalley.com, listen to a couple of cuts, order all their stuff. You will thank me again and again. The driving artistic force behind Rogue Valley, Chris Koza, is a song-writing Shakespeare. He's got hooks and lyrics coming out his ears, every song he writes is somehow better than the one he wrote the day before, and each of them would, for most musicians, be a stand alone work to be proud of forever. Koza seems to be able to produce these songs like a magician produces doves, one after another until you're laughing with surprise and amazement. 

 I just listened once more this morning to all three of the albums released as part of their current monster project, four seasonal albums in one year. The fourth will be revealed April 1st at a live show at the Varsity here in Minneapolis. The output is unprecedented, unheard of, and crazily, the quality grows with each new album. Here's what City Pages, the local Twin Cities alternative newspaper had to say about them last spring when they were about to release their first CD in this series:

 As band goals go, the one Chris Koza set roughly 18 months ago—to release four full-length albums tied to the changing seasons in one calendar year—takes the word "daunting" to new heights. It's the sort of preposterously ambitious plan that musicians hatch over too many beers, only to abandon when clearer heads prevail come morning. The whole endeavor would smack of hubris if Koza and his compatriots hadn't already proven themselves among the most consistently engaging and impressively dynamic acts on the local scene over the previous five years. During that time Koza's brainy folk-pop ascended from free weeknight gigs at the now defunct Dinkytowner to headlining First Avenue's mainroom.

The motivation behind the epic project for Koza and his bandmates, however, wasn't thoughts of catching the ever-fickle ear of the web so much as reclaiming the reasons they make music. "It just feels like a much more effective way to spend our time than driving around the country playing shows again," admits Koza, who logged multiple coast-spanning tours with his bandmates in the latter half of the 2000s. "It's kind of depressing and exhausting to find yourself in situations where you drive hours and hours just to be like, 'Well, here we are in Sacramento sitting at a bar famous for selling the most 24-ounce PBRs in the region.' This was a way for us to spend time working on music and improve together in a way that felt more constructive than that."While they've become a hot local quantity, breakout success on the national level has thus far proved elusive, which has nothing to do with the appeal of their music and everything to do with the vagaries of the fractured modern music industry. If there's any justice in the blogosphere,Crater Lake—the first album in the series, which is being released under the new full band nom de plume Rogue Valley—will go a long way toward elevating the group's national profile.

Crater Lake's dozen songs nicely encapsulate the traits that have already made Koza's band a beloved Minnesota music fixture (Koza's clear and winning tenor, literate but playful lyricism, mid-tempo tunes whose deceptively poppy guitar hooks sink their teeth in with repeated listening), while simultaneously pointing in exciting new directions (the slide-guitar-driven album closer "El-Ay" finds Koza channeling his inner Tom Pettyfor the first time, to tasty results). While The Dark, Delirious Morning embraced the studio as its own instrument, layering synthesizers, drum programming, strings, and horns at seemingly every turn, Crater Lake opts for a more organic approach. Human voices provide its primary flourishes, with Koza, longtime guitarist Peter Sieve, drummer Luke Anderson, and bassist/secret vocal weapon Linnea Mohn joining forces on nearly every chorus, and gorgeous harmonies providing added punch throughout.

  "Stripping back the sound somewhat was an entirely conscious choice," explains Koza. "It was really a reaction to getting out there and playing shows behind The Dark, Delirious Morning and realizing that some of the songs just weren't the same without those key elements on the record that we couldn't replicate live. I wanted to make sure this time that if we did have any extra instrumentation, it was more complementary to the arrangement and not central. I didn't want to use any horns or strings. The rule of thumb I've been going from now is, if we can't play it I don't want to put it on the record."

With a purposeful shift in sound, new name, and new modus operandi (nonstop recording replacing nonstop touring), the band is clearly relishing its reinvention. "I don't think it works to keep doing something the same way and expect different results," claims Koza. "The thing to do is try it differently and be okay with not knowing exactly what's going to come from it. That's a better way to keep us all interested." 

"I feel like we're ratcheting up the world's tallest roller coaster right now, and once [the Crater Lake CD-release] show happens we're off and going and there's no looking back," offers Mohn. "We're already on to working on the summer album. We can't really take the time to parse out the details of the present too much because there's so much work left to do." 

"We always talk about how great real albums are as opposed to a string of disposable tunes you can just cherry pick," says Sieve as our conversation winds down. "It's nice to be making something meant to be consumed like a giant novel that will be more rewarding when taken in as a whole. It feels great to have so much work to look forward to and know what we'll be doing for the next year. We've laid out a path, now we just have to walk it."

Since this was written, CRATER LAKE, THE BOOKSELLER'S HOUSE, and GEESE IN THE FLYWAY have appeared like clockwork at four month intervals. The dedication, sweat and time this kind of work demands is extraordinary, and the results are equally so. Can't wait till FALSE FLOORS joins these outrageously good albums in my collection. April 1st at the Varsity. Get a ticket, I'll be there, and by the end of the evening you, my friend, will have become a ROGUE VALLEY fan. 

The following essay by George Lakoff is the best and clearest explanation of the dramatic difference between liberal and conservative political points of view and what the stakes are for the good old U S of A in the current faceoff that's happening in Wisconsin and, soon, all over the country. I have been a union guy all my life, from teacher's unions to actor's unions. I believe the Founding Fathers were union guys, since they first wrote "We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union..." Unions built the middle class in America, and up until the early 80s when Ronald Reagan declared all out war on them, were the key to this country's becoming the dominant world economic power after World War 2. Unions gave people a chance to share fully in the nation's prosperity, when a man or woman said  "Yes, I'll give you thirty years of my life and labor, General Motors, if you will guarantee that I can support my family, educate my kids, and retire without hardship." And it worked. The middle class thrived, the economy thrived, millionaires thrived, everybody was proud to be working toward the same goals. 

 We all thought.

But something has gone frighteningly wrong with that social contract that served us so well. And I believe that something is greed and a conservative mindset that Lakoff describes so accurately in this piece. See if you agree with him.

(Photo: Patrick Feller / The New York Times)