Friday Morning Music Café with Miles Davis

Here's Miles Davis performing "No Blues"

...and "Footprints"

How a cult hijacked American politics.

Flight of the Wingnuts
by Jonathan Chait

At that moment, there were a few points that Cheney might have made in response. First, he could have noted that the Laffer Curve was not, strictly speaking, correct. Yes, a zero tax rate would obviously produce zero revenue, but the assumption that a 100-percent tax rate would also produce zero revenue was, just as obviously, false. Surely Cheney was familiar with communist states such as the Soviet Union, with its 100 percent tax rate. The Soviet revenue scheme may not have represented the cutting edge in economic efficiency, but it nonetheless managed to collect enough revenue to maintain an enormous military, enslave Eastern Europe, fund ambitious projects such as Sputnik, and so on. Second, Cheney could have pointed out that, even if the Laffer Curve was correct in theory, there was no evidence that the U.S. income tax was on the downward slope of the curve--that is, that rates were then high enough that tax cuts would produce higher revenue.

The significance of the evening was not the conversion of Cheney but the creation of a powerful symbol that could spread the word of supply-side economics. If you try to discuss economic theory with most politicians, their eyes will glaze over. But the Curve explained it all. There in that sloping parabola was the magical promise of that elusive politician's nirvana, a cost-free path to prosperity: lower taxes, higher revenues. It was beautiful, irresistible.

Read entire article here.

American Dreamer

American Dreamer
by Paul Goldberger September 2007

If Lauren's vision of America was invented out of whole cloth—no pun intended—that hardly matters. Today, his odes to American style are American style to the rest of the world. Polo Ralph Lauren is the one American brand that has a significant international presence, on a par with Prada, Gucci, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton. The only American name that comes close to Lauren as a global luxury icon is Tiffany, and it doesn't make clothes. Ralph Lauren makes pretty much everything, and you can buy his products as easily on New Bond Street, in London, and in the Ginza, in Tokyo, as in Chicago and Dallas. Lauren's stores in Jidda, Riyadh, Kuwait City, Dubai, and Tel Aviv—not to mention Munich, Athens, and Shanghai—are the best advertisements for America that you could ask for. Ralph Lauren should get an award from the State Department, since he has done more for this country's image than the Voice of America. When you walk into the Polo Ralph Lauren shop on Place de la Madeleine, in Paris, you don't think of the United States as the country that invaded Iraq. You think of it as the country that made it possible for everyone to be rich, or at least to have some of the trappings of the good life.

Peter Daou,THE TRIANGLE: Limits of Blog Power:

"Looking at the political landscape, one proposition seems unambiguous: blog power on both the right and left is a function of the relationship of the netroots to the media and the political establishment. Forming a triangle of blogs, media, and the political establishment is an essential step…"

2008 will be a great election for Democrats in the Senate.

Red Dawn
by John B. Judis
Only at TNR Online | Post date 08.31.07

verall, the Democrats will have an advantage in 2008 in having to defend far fewer seats than the Republicans. Only twelve seats held by Democrats will be up compared to 22 for Republicans. And several of those Republicans were elected during the peculiar post-9/11 circumstances of the 2002 election, when President Bush used his immense popularity and the threat of a terrorist attack to boost the chances of several Republican underdogs.

Going, going, Gonzales

The Economist provides a nice concise recap on the AG resignation and related issues.

The battle over Mr Gonzales was one of the most bitter of Mr Bush's second term, inflaming relations between Congress and the White House, eating up weeks of congressional time and leaving the Department of Justice a dysfunctional shell, with several of its top posts empty and the professional staff more demoralised than at any time since Watergate.

Captain America

In his first major newspaper interview since arriving in the US, David Beckham talks about life in the celebrity circus and his mission to make America fall in love with football

Tom Watt
Sunday September 2, 2007
Observer Sport Monthly

It is a Tuesday evening at the end of July. The Galaxy are playing Pachuca in Superliga, a fledgling tournament based loosely on the Champions League, with four teams each from the States and Mexico. It is, in part, an obvious attempt to connect with what should be a natural audience for the game in the US. The whole country is becoming more Hispanic as immigration from Central America, in particular, continues. More people now speak Spanish as a first language in Los Angeles than speak English. The migrant population bring a traditional football culture with them, though they are yet to be convinced by MLS.

The week that followed was, if anything, more intense: the build-up to Beckham's first scheduled appearance in a Galaxy shirt, a friendly against Chelsea on 21 July. The stadium was sold out; celebrities such as Sharon Stone and Arnold Schwarzenegger squeezed into pitchside seats and executive boxes all round the ground. Photographers fixed their lenses on the substitutes' bench, where Beckham, nursing an ankle injury, sat watching his new team-mates until making an appearance with 13 minutes left in his new team's 1-0 defeat. An overflow press box had to be set up to accommodate the sports journalists and gossip writers. The host broadcaster, ESPN, used an unprecedented 19 cameras to cover an event that rewarded their investment with the best-ever viewing figures for a game involving an MLS club.

But for all the season tickets sold - there were 5,000 new registrations within two days of Beckham's move being confirmed - he believes the HDC crowd around us represents a unique opportunity within the local community. 'It's always been said football can bring people together all around the world. I think something special can go on in this stadium and in this city as well. Look around tonight: there's people from everywhere: black, white; Mexican, South American, Korean, Chinese, European. People from all the different communities, all the different neighbourhoods, they're all here together for the football.'