I haven’t the foggiest idea what this means in the traditional sense, but musically, there is no question. What on earth do the words to this piece really mean? Musically, it does evoke an emotional response in me.

I do like the first clip better because k. d. lang has such a great voice that I always enjoy. I do not like the second clip quite as much because the voice of the soloist is not as good in some respects that I cannot describe in words. The accompaniment in both selections is excellent. The one in the second clip might even be a little better than the one in the first clip, again for reasons that I cannot describe in words.

Even though Leonard Cohen may have written this piece, the poetry (or at least the rhyme) comes out better in k. d. lang’s rendition.

If you have a dislike for either or both performers, then please skip over the one or ones you dislike.

I hope my introductory remarks didn’t spoil the music for you. Some of my readers require explicit explanations of all posts.

Maureen Dowd’s August 10th column is Don’t Send In the Clones.

As you leave behind high school to redefine and even reinvent yourself as adult, you need exposure to an array of different ideas, backgrounds and perspectives — not a cordon of clones.

I am not a fan of Maureen Dowd as I used to be, but she can still write an occasional column that reminds me why I used to be a fan.

I think this column is very much in tune with President Obama’s address to which I link in the post Obama: Muslim’s Right To Build A Manhattan Mosque

This is an excellent example of how President Obama carries out his oath of office.

Presidential Oath of Office

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

William Greider has written the article Elizabeth Warren Uncovered What the Govt. Did to ‘Rescue’ AIG, and It Ain’t Pretty.

The subheading is The government’s $182 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG should be seen as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the financial crisis and its costly aftermath.

The article is very long, so I can save you some trouble by cutting to the chase.

Lots of ordinary citizens have figured this out. If some banks are too big to fail, then government should compel them to become smaller banks. The harsh reality is that our bloated financial sector is too large for the economy it serves, its power too concentrated at the top. Neither the president nor either political party is yet ready to face the imperative of breaking up the mega-banks. Until they do, the system will remain unstable and prone to excesses, maybe worse.

Notice no mention of the favorite secondary players against whom Faux Noise likes to whip up public outrage.  If they keep the outrage misfocused this way,  the primary players can go unblamed.

With post after post, I have been trying to shift  the public’s view of  the blame for the financial crisis from Dodd and Frank and from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to The Fed, Goldman Sachs, and the mortgage lenders.

Do not make the mistake of thinking I am doing this to absolve Dodd, Frank, Fannie, and Freddie from their rightful share of the blame.

I am doing this because a focus on the secondary players causes us to lose focus on the primary players.  If we don’t fix the problems with the primary players first, then fixing the problems with the secondary players leaves us vulnerable to a bigger collapse than the one we just saw.

Help me figure out how to phrase the problem so that people will finally understand what is at stake.  It is fun to beat up on our favorite villains, but we cannot afford to miss who the real trouble makers are.

Put politics aside, and solve the real problem.  After that, if there is any energy left, play all the politics you want.  Blame it on big Government, blame it on Dodd, and Frank.  Why should I worry about the fairness of it all, if the world is saved from having to live through a catastrophic financial collapse?

Barney Frank phobia is running rampant among the commenters on the Worcester T & G comment boards.  For the latest example, see the comments about Editorial cartoon by David Hitch.

The premise of these people is that the recent economic crash was primarily created by Senator Dodd and Representative Frank.

In answer to this propaganda, I always present the case that the crash was primarily caused by the banks who were happy to give mortgages to people who had no hope of paying them off.  The banks only held the mortgages long enough to sell them to unwary investors.  The banks were assuring the investors and the ratings agencies that these were high quality mortgages that met all standards even though the loans were called “Liar Loans” in the trade.  They got this name because the mortgage brokers encouraged the mortgage applicants to lie about their ability to pay the monthly payments.  The banks were touting the fact that nothing on the application form would be verified by the bank.  The banks just wanted mortgage paper that they could sell at a huge profit to investors.

I finally goaded one of the Barneyphobes to post a video of proof that it was Frank’s fault.

It seemed pretty likely that this video played the same trick that they played on Shirley Sherrod to make it look like she was saying the opposite of what she had really said.

I couldn’t find the C-SPAN video of Frank’s full speech in 2005 that was cherry picked in the above video. I did find a C-SPAN video of an interview with Barney Frank recorded on Sunday, November 26, 2006. At that time he was incoming chairman House Financial Services Committee. To me it seemed pretty clear that the edited video was unlikely to have represented his ideas in a fair manner.

More over, I had previously given a link to an article in The Wall Street Journal about a Harvard BA Thesis that corroborates my take on the recent crash. Any opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal is likely to be as extreme right wing as one could possibly get. If even they think that the bankers and insurance companies (like AIG) were primarily responsible for the crash, I would have thought even a Worcester T & G reader might accept the idea.  (Well, I would have thought that for only a nanosecond.)

Any way, I only report. You, dear reader, can decide for yourself.

You might want to read my post about the book 13 Bankers. In that post I have a number of quotes from the book that explains who did what to whom to bring about the financial crisis. In the book, Fannie Mae and Freddie Max are not blameless, but they are not the prime movers.

The article by Stephen Crockett is actually headlined GOP Eyes Big Gains Over the Economy.

The article is another restatement of the economics that makes the Republican plan so bad for the country.  The more different ways this can be explained, the more the chance that enough people will finally get it.  If enough people finally understand what the Republicans are doing, then the predicted Democratic losses in November will not happen.

Some of the paragraphs of wisdom include:

Jobs are not created by just having large pools of investment money available. There must be the opportunity to invest in a business that will have customers who can buy the goods and services before the investment money flows into job creation activities.

And this:

Tax cuts for the wealthy create huge investment money pools but not jobs. The United States has plenty of money sitting idle in corporate and personal coffers. Corporations have almost a trillion dollars sitting essentially idle in corporate accounts at this time.

And this:

The former middle class disposable income now controlled by the economic elite funds speculation and unsound “bubbles” in the economy instead of a healthy economy because sound businesses now lack paying customers.
Deregulation helps corporations charge excessive prices. Not enforcing anti-monopoly laws permits price gouging. Not capping interest rates concentrates wealth and reduces consumer spending.

And more.  Read the whole article.

Sign Al Franken’s PETITION: STAND WITH ME TO SAVE NET NEUTRALITY AND STOP THE CORPORATE TAKEOVER OF OUR MEDIA

Bob Herbert’s column in The New York Tines is under the headline A Sin and a Shame.

The treatment of workers by American corporations has been worse — far more treacherous — than most of the population realizes. There was no need for so many men and women to be forced out of their jobs in the downturn known as the great recession.

Many of those workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers. And that cruel, irresponsible, shortsighted policy has resulted in widespread human suffering and is doing great harm to the economy.

He further goes on to say:

Productivity tells the story. Increases in the productivity of American workers are supposed to go hand in hand with improvements in their standard of living. That’s how capitalism is supposed to work. That’s how the economic pie expands, and we’re all supposed to have a fair share of that expansion.

What a way to misunderstand the world of capitalism.  Where is it written that the invisible hand will make capitalist private companies hire workers that they don’t need?

In no description of capitalism have I seen a rule that says it is good for companies to run inefficiently by employing people that they don’t need.  The whole point of competition is that it drives companies to become more efficient.

There used to be other factors that made it sensible for companies to pay decent wages to the workers that they needed. See the blog post Are the American people obsolete? Of course we used to have strong labor unions too.  Companies that were not unionized felt compelled to treat their workers well, lest they decide to form a union.  Now that the pressure of unions has diminished greatly, we see what unfettered capitalism can do.

If you cannot understand how a system works in a way that is consistent with its own internal driving forces, then you won’t ever be able to figure out what external forces to apply to fix it.  By trial and error you may be able to find something that seems to have a short term benefit, but why depend on luck?  Why not study capitalism and economics without a preconceived notion of “how it ought to work?”

Lauren French of McClatchy Newspapers wrote the article Justice Lawyers Plan Crackdown On Sex Offenders.

The Department of Justice released its first-ever national strategy to combat child exploitation and abuse Monday, which calls for a crackdown on the most dangerous sex offenders in the country.

Besides applauding this worthy effort, I highlight this effort to make a connection to political thought.  After all, this is a political blog.

It has recently come to my attention the possible connection between extreme right wing and libertarian points of view and the suffering of childhood sexual abuse.  The shattering of the bond of trust by what should be a respected adult may lead to a lifetime of mistrust of all authority figures.

Barbara Shelly of The Kansas City Star has written the commentary Freeloading On Health Care Isn’t Freedom Of Choice.

The Missouri Hospital Association is nothing if not persistent. It keeps pushing this crazy idea that people should have health insurance.

The article goes on to describe how insistent are the Republicans in the Missouri House of Representatives in cutting off their nose to spite their face (or in this case to spite President Obama).