DEVO: Chicago, the Vic. 11.13.2009, 8 PM Night Two-Freedom of Choice (review)

Chicago, Illinois--Last night's Chicago performance was a barn burner for the many Midwestern fans of DEVO, itself being a Midwestern band going back to the early 1970s. As a matter of fact, the members of DEVO met at Kent State University during the Vietnam War era, some were members of SDS, and bassist Gerald Casale helped organize the antiwar demonstration in the spring of 1970 in which the infamous shootings took place. If you stay in the Midwest long enough, you get as weird as these guys or weirder, mostly from boredom.

Far from being "nerds," or "yuppies," DEVO began as a multimedia arts collective and still operates as one to this day. The real irony in all of this is that they never broke up and have continued to record in their Sunset Strip "Mutato" studio doing soundtrack and commercial work, the most well known being with director Wes Anderson.

Like several other old school punk and postpunk bands that have been touring this year--like the Pixies and even R.E.M.--the spuds were doing entire albums live and in their original running order. Night one was "Are We Not Men?" from 1978 (a punk classic) which sold out so quickly that another night was added to their Chicago appearance. Night two brought the entire "Freedom of Choice" LP from 1980, and yes, "Whip It" was in full bloom with all of its punch and glory. The music hasn't aged and the entire original lineup looked healthier and happier than they have in--well--over a decade, and the mood was celebratory, even for Chicago. From the opening guitar-riffs of "Girl U Want" to the more obscured album cuts like "Gates of Steel" and Mr. B's Ballroom," there was a real sense that this music hasn't aged at all...which was interesting since there were probably no more than maybe two dozen twenty-somethings to be seen. The majority of the crowd was 30-and-up, and with the bar, it was an 18-and-older show. But what the hell, people are broke all over the place these days! The audience was more fun than people watching at Wal-Mart. The icing on the cake was the gorgeous Bettie Page-style model coming out with her boxing-round cards emblazoned with "Track 1," and so on.

Some of the best times I had was looking at all of the former New Wave glam queens, now in their forties and early fifties, but still looking pretty good! Many concertgoers literally hadn't seen the group since the 1980s, or if they were like this writer it was their first time ever. The merchandising will be legendary, but there was nothing especially crass about it and it all appeared to have been made in America. All said, it was exactly what you would have wanted out of a DEVO concert and that includes Mark Mothersbaugh coming out onstage and singing "Beautiful World" in the second set dressed as the utterly grotesque "Boojie Boy," then regaling the audience in a totally surreal account of DEVO's trek to Los Angeles and meeting Michael Jackson, that he was dead, and how great it would be if he could rise from the grave like in the video "Thriller" to tell us all "what a beautiful world it truly is." The brutal truth was that there was no irony to be had!

But really, having been a budding teenager listening to Freedom of Choice when it was new, this was just a real road to Mecca moment, pure bliss. Not only is DEVO still great, they're professional and can still stop on a dime. Most of these guys are hitting their sixties, but the joy and the appreciation were so palpable that Mark Mothersbaugh, and even Gerald Casale, could only smile along with the rest of us and enjoy a very special tour in a very unique cultural moment. One of the greatest surprises of the evening was the dusting-off of a very old DEVO song, "Be Stiff," going back to the mid-1970s, almost one of the earliest songs that they ever did. Hey, they weren't going to do "Oh No! It's DEVO!" (1982) or "Shout!" (1984). Here's to art and crowd pleasers! Whoever said you can't have both in art was wrong.

Republican Rep. Steve Austria is perhaps the stupidest human being drawing breath on this rock called earth

Ohio--Is there something in the water in the state of Ohio? Is it a bad gene pool? Are human beings really this unimaginably--just wait, it can get worse--stupid? If you're a Republican who holds this utterly bizarre viewpoint that flies-in-the-face of accepted reality, you might be a victim of being an Ohioan and a Midwesterner who breathes through their mouth in public.

Austria doesn't have all of these excuses to hide behind, however, and since I assume that he can eat without stabbing himself in the face with his fork every time, so he must have been lying, the curse of the GOP, its wont.

The problem is, not everyone is as stupid as the GOP's core-base...well, what's left of it, meaning religious lunatics, racists, free market extremists, and others in the ranks of the hopelessly irrational and confused. Don't get me wrong, we have this kind of moron living in Indiana and other parts where completely irrational people live, right here in these here U-nited States.

Austria (not the country) spake:

"When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression," Austria said. "He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history." ("U.S. Rep Austria blames Depression on Roosevelt," Columbus Dispatch, 02.10.2009)

What's astounding is that freshman Rep. Austria told this to the editorial board of the Columbus Dispatch. But really: does anyone believe that FDR caused the Great Depression...really? I don't think so, not really. They might say that they do, but they don't, just like the flat-earthers and liars trying to prey on the truly desperate and ignorant poor, the subproletariat. Illiterate rednecks and Oakies. This is odd, since most of them don't vote...

But that's why Austria back-peddled the very same day:

"I did not mean to imply in any way that President Roosevelt was responsible for putting us into the Depression, but rather was trying to make the point that Roosevelt's attempt to use significant spending to get us out of the Depression did not have the desired effect. Roosevelt did not put us into the Depression, but rather his policies could not pull the nation out of the recession." ("Rep. Austria gets right with history: FDR didn't start Depression," Columbus Dispatch, 02.11.2009)

Actually, he's wrong again--we were still in a Depression until we entered WWII. New Deal policies continued during and after the war, even after being under vicious attack from the Republican Party, the national Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, etc., during the immediate postwar era and McCarthyism.

LBJ expanded New Deal programs significantly during his time in office, and the American dream as we know it was able to grow under the Bretton-Woods system. WWII took us out of the Great Depression? Fine, but that's also Keynesianism, military Keynesianism. We know from decades of an already bloated military budget that that route isn't going to work, and that there is no one panacea that's going to fix things.

If we weren't one of the most powerful nations on earth, this would merely be laughable, a real hoot. To some extent it is, but this moron can actually vote on legislation that affects us all, including the authorization for war.

Small wonder that we're still bogged-down in the Middle East in pointless occupation, our economy is collapsing thanks to a lack of proper oversight and regulation of the financial and business sectors, our schools, bridges, roads, and health care system are collapsing, we cannot compete internationally in business like we once did, when ethically challenged morons elect ethically challeneged morons. The mess we're in couldn't have happened without representatives like Steve Austria, the 6 trillion dollar man, a man barely alive.

The good news? These particular morons are becoming isolated demographically and by the objective, real world failure of their most cherished beliefs and ideologies. This is the end of Reaganism, the end of faux conservatism and neoliberalism. The game is over, and even a moral imbecile like Steve Austria understands that not only isn't history on his side, the facts aren't either.

This kind of desperation is symptomatic of a dying party, the Republican Party, a party without any identity, answers, or ideology left. But they all have one thing left from the good old days, after everything has been scraped-away by the events of this historical moment: bunch of hollow, self-serving arguments that a ten-year-old could deconstruct and dismantle in around 30 seconds flat.

If you don't like it in America, then go back to Austria, he'll steer you wrong. That'll learn 'ya.

"U.S. Rep Austria blames Depression on Roosevelt," Columbus Dispatch, 02.10.2009: http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/02/10/copy/caproos.html?adsec=politics&sid=101

"Rep. Austria gets right with history: FDR didn't start Depression," Columbus Dispatch, 02.11.2009: http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/02/11/copy/AUSTRIA_RECANTS.ART_ART_02-11-09_B8_0PCS8TG.html?adsec=politics&sid=101

Joe (really Sam, but "Joe" sounds more iconic, so he ran with it) the plumber butt

" 'I’m kind of like Britney Spears having a headache. ...Everybody wants to know about it.' ” --Faux Ohio plumber Samuel Wurzelbacher shooting his mouth off again on Thursday. (AP)

Holland, Ohio--Poor Joe. He won't pay his taxes, he doesn't really have the legal right to work as a plumber in and around Toledo (making him an unqualified scab), and he couldn't stop and think about these facts when he opened his big mouth towards presidential candidate Barack Obama. This would all be due to the fact that he's clearly unintelligent, making him a Republican by-default.

The Obama campaign was doing door-to-door meetings with voters in Joe's neighborhood, and it was entirely coincidental--but very likely, it being Ohio--that they brushed-up against a very silly and stupid man named Samuel Wurzelbacher, who likes to go by the name of "Joe." Or was it a coincidence?

Wurzelbacher finally had his "chance" at his own fifteen minutes of fame, and now he wishes that he hadn't taken it. He's now ducking any and all media outlets. But all the lapdog press has been doing is balancing him with the reality of his statements about the candidate, his platform, and Wurzelbacher's claims about himself. Unsurprisingly, they don't match-up with objective reality, but since when has that ever stopped a wrong-headed American from shooting their mouth off in a way that can only hurt themselves? Ahem.

As we all know by now, Wurzelbacher questioned Obama's tax plan, echoing baseless GOP attacks that we're all--all of us--going to be taxed higher, even the rest of us who make under $250,000 a year, like "Joe." Except "Joe" doesn't make what the rest of us do, he makes significantly more, at least $100,000-a-year. Yes, I feel so sorry for everyone who makes that much a year, but they shouldn't be so afraid of Obama, he's got their tax-cheat backs more than they or Wurzelbacher might suspect. Even the late DC Madam paid her taxes properly.

Not ever wanting to look into someone's background, as in the case of VP candidate Sarah Palin, John McCain's campaign grabbed for any straw man they could. McCain went on to mention that he was fighting for "the Joes out there" during the final presidential debate, the name being a kind of catch-all for the "everyman," the working man.

The problem is, it's not 1951 anymore, and by that point the ladies were part of the workforce anyway. Women don't figure highly in the McCain campaign's rhetoric, Palin aside, and the implications that they favor a male-dominated nuclear family as a social model are obvious. "Joe" (Sam) personifies this ossified model of wrong-headed patriarchal pacification of the rest of us. Hasn't it worked wonders for the economy and our rights these last eight years? How about the breadth of our history?

Never mind all that, Joe doesn't want to pay taxes, and he told Obama this squarely: “Do you believe in the American dream? I'm being taxed more and more for fulfilling the American dream. ...I’m getting ready to buy a company that makes $250,000 to $280,000 a year. ...Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?” [emphasis added] Yes, it's hard to feel sorry for someone ostensibly poised to make a quarter million a year who doesn't want to pay their share of taxes. These were just some of the loaded questions in which Wurzelbacher neglected to provide the full-context of who he is and where he's been--he's practically a partner in the "firm" he works for with one Al Newell, and that's for starters. Do both of them split the money evenly? We don't know. I don't believe in the American Dream, that's a myth, it's crap.

Even if they did split their business's income previously, Obama's tax plan wouldn't cause a rise in their taxes, and Wurzelbacher knew this when he hit the candidate with the question. It gets worse regarding taxes for Sam.

... And Mr. Wurzelbacher has provided only vague information on his and the company’s finances since talking to Mr. Obama. But if the plumbing business remained a two-person company and the net proceeds — after deductions for business expenses — were shared by the two men, both incomes would most likely fall well below the top tax brackets on which Mr. Obama wants to raise rates, as would the company itself.

... According to public records, Mr. Wurzelbacher has been subject to two liens, each over $1,100 [Ed.--According to Ohio state websites, his state income tax lien is $1, 182.98.]. One, with a hospital, has been settled, but a tax lien with the State of Ohio is still outstanding. ("Real Deal on 'Joe the Plumber' Reveals New Slant," The New York Times, 10.16.2008)

Why would Mr. Newell and Wurzelbacher be so coy about their financial arrangements? Questions directed at candidate Obama were by "Joe" were skewed and loaded regarding his own actual situation, which begs numerous others.

Even if the faux-plumber buys-out Newell's share of the plumbing firm it's unlikely that he'll be paying more taxes under the Obama plan, and he probably understood this when he confronted the presidential candidate. Perhaps he just had a lot to hide? There are other facts regarding the business he works for that he wasn't exactly upfront about, though it's becoming clear that he has problems with mathematics (don't we all?) in many areas.

According to an analysis by Dun & Bradstreet on Wurzelbacher's employer, A. W. Newell Corp., the plumbing and heating contractor has annual sales of $510,000.

If Wurzelbacher bought the company, by the time he took proper business deductions, Bankler said, he'd be left with between $150,000 and $200,000 in taxable income and wouldn't be affected by Obama's proposed increase in the top rates. (" 'Joe the Plumber,' Obama Tax-Plan Critic Owes Taxes (Update 2)," Bloomberg, 10.16.2008)

And so, either Mr. Newell isn't being forthcoming with his "employee," Wurtzelbacher is simply poor at math, or one or both of them isn't being very honest. To be sure, we'll all be finding out very soon who he really is and what their company is really up to.

Then, there are other troubling possibilities, such as the fact that Wurzelbacher lived at 1960 W. Keating Dr., Mesa, Arizona, part of a sprawling apartment subdivision (Dobson Ranch) constructed during the 1970s by the Savings and Loan corruption scandal figure of almost twenty-years-ago. Keating is connected to McCain from that time, and even earlier, and Wurzelbacher's connections to the former perp could be quite intimate.

Maybe these are just coincidences, but one fact is particularly bizarre: it appears that Wurzelbacher purchased his current residence in August of this year. It's either one of an incredible series of coincidences, or it isn't, yet it has all the markings of a Karl Rove job, including possible past break-ins and/or infiltration of the Obama campaign by various GOP operatives. It's possible that Mr. Wurzelbacher is one himself.

At the very least, his 13-year-old kid, his ex-wife, former in-laws, and every person he's ever snubbed or offended now have a new stick to hit Wurzelbacher with for the rest of his natural life. When Obama suggested he wanted to "spread the wealth," Wurzelbacher retorted the standard line of "That's Socialism." Why yes, it is, and it's coming, Sammie. Not tomorrow, but today, now, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. That's how history works sometimes.

" 'Joe the Plumber,' Obama Tax-Plan Critic Owes Taxes (Update 2)," Bloomberg, 10.16.2008: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aC4j3T5.s_eQ&refer=home

"Real Deal on 'Joe the Plumber' Reveals New Slant," The New York Times, 10.16.2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/us/politics/17joe.html

More on (moron) Sam J. Wurzelbacher (might need to be pasted): http://www.privateeye.com/Search/SearchResults.aspx?vw=people&input=name&fn=Samuel&mn=&ln=Wurzelbacher&city=&state=OH&criteria=Samuel;;;;Wurzelbacher;;;;OH;;;;;;

Wurzelbacher's August 2008 purchase of his current residence: http://apps.co.lucas.oh.us/areissummary/report.aspx?Parcel=6562411

Bob Ney resigns today

Washington D.C.--Today was Bob Ney's (R-Oh.) last day as a congressman.

It's a mixed-bag situation: Ney is one of three Republicans in Congress who voted-against the Patriot Act in 2001.

Ney also voted against normalizing trade relations with China in 2000.

All-in-all, he's a moderate Republican in an ocean of GOP-Bolshevism. But, he's still corrupt. He's the one member of Congress so far who has admitted criminal acts in the Abramoff scandal involving illegal lobbying. One has to wonder if he's the fall-guy they needed, enabling the others (less-moderate incumbents?) in the GOP who haven't been served a subpoena to breath free-air a little longer.

Or at least long enough to keep protecting George W. Bush and his administration as well as all the other crooks in Congress (counting Democrats too) who are obstructing justice by not seriously investigating the rampant criminality that has been a hallmark of this presidency. I'm hoping several Lieberman-like Democrats get caught in the Abramoff net, like Hillary Clinton.

The timing of Ney's resignation is strange, it must have been touch-and-go whether the Bush administration would still need him to retain a majority after November. Apparently, they know something at the GOP that we all don't (a different tactic to steal the elections again?). Maybe they expect a domestic insurrection over this election? The third time's a charm.

WHY HASN'T OHIO REP. BOB NEY RESIGNED YET?

Washington D.C.--That's a rhetorical question.

The answer is obvious: the GOP will do anything, and I mean anything to keep their majority. Why? To continue shielding the Bush administration. The Democrats don't really want a genuine house-cleaning either because most of them are dirty too.

They are all basically complicit with the Bush administration, and bipartisan goof on their part. Cold busted. The Bush years will be remembered in history for being the time when the public finally had the scales fall from its collective-eyes, and discovered that their political system needed an overhaul.

Ney isn't resigning because Bush and Cheney need him for that margin majority. They have to have to avoid prison, and the fear is becoming palpable throughout the political culture. Even the pundits and ideologues like Bill O'Reilly seem more restrained lately. That's because they had better shut-up. Washington DC's culture has always been one of blackmail, and this whole affair with Foley is a cream dream for politics junkies. Why it didn't occur during Clinton is beyond me, but who cares? It's happening now.