Wow! You like us! You really like us! The numbers for Episode 1 of The Popdose Podcast were so high that we knew we had to come back for a second episode. (In all honesty, we were coming back regardless. We had too much fun last time, and none of us know how to take a hint anyway.)
With Halloween just a week away at the time of this recording, we decided to ask ourselves: what scared the crap out of us as children? Although our therapy bills this week have definitely skyrocketed, we hope you’ll find our confessions entertaining — and if not, you can count on plenty — plenty! — of digressions into other topics on the way.
So listen away! You can download here, or subscribe in iTunes (link below). Please leave us your thoughts in the comments, and if you like the show, please leave a review on iTunes. Enjoy!
The Popdose Podcast, Episode 2: Dixie Carter’s Laundry (1:01:36, 56.5 MB), featuring Jeff Giles, Jason Hare, and Dave Lifton. Download from You can also subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed.
Show Notes
0:00 Intro, including an unfortunate digression into having sex with soup.
Theme: Things That Scared the Crap Out of Us as Children (more…)
Given the massive Federal deficit, it’s a sure bet that taxes are going up sooner rather than later. Before the Teabaggaz start posting, I think we can all agree that cutting taxes while starting a war is a bad idea. Stuff costs money, whether we’re talking about body armor for our warfighters in Afghanistan or Under Armour shirts. But the problem is what to do about it, because we have to fund our deficit somehow. However, we also have a really fragile economy. If the government raises taxes, will it crowd out the investment and spending needed to create jobs?
The idea behind cutting taxes in the Reagan era was that if less money went to taxes, more would be used for private sector investing, and that the private-sector investing would generate so much economic growth that the loss in revenue from the tax cut would be short-lived. Eventually the economy would expand so much that more taxes would come in at the lower rate because of the larger base. Private-sector investing did increase; the U.S. remains the strongest capital market in the world. It didn’t increase by enough to offset the tax cuts, and part of Reagan’s economic legacy was an increased Federal deficit.
Money can be spent on taxes, consumption, savings, and investment. (Paying down debt is a form of savings.) Money that goes to one purpose cannot be used for another. Â Money that the government takes in from taxes can also be used for consumption, savings, or investment. War and Medicare are examples of government consumption spending (which may be on behalf of citizens). Paying down debt is a form of savings, and goodness knows that the government at all levels has plenty of debt to pay off. The government invests when it spends money on bridges, schools, airports, and the like. For accounting purposes, this is handled like consumption. (more…)
Did you know that one home is foreclosed every 7 1/2 seconds in the United States? Or that millions of unsuspecting Americans have secret life insurance policies taken out on them by the very companies they work for? If you didn’t, Michael Moore is here to tell you all about it in his new film Capitalism: A Love Story. So sit back and prepare for history class…
It’s been 20 years since Michael Moore burst onto the film scene with his first documentary, Roger & Me. Although his films have gotten bigger in budget and broader in scope, one thing hasn’t changed: Moore’s decisive uphill battle to point out what he perceives as the ills which face this country, and possible ways to correct them. All of this dedication comes to the fore in Capitalism: A Love Story, which details not just the history of capitalism itself, but how much the dream has changed from an idealistic vision that could have allowed us to live in a financial utopia, to a nightmarish quagmire that threatens to collapse our economy at any moment, based on the insatiable avaricious behavior of the 1% rich that unfortunately hold power over all of us. (more…)
There has never been a doubt in my mind that Sign ‘o’ the Times (that ‘o’ is stylized as a peace sign in the title) is the best Prince album. For me, it represents The Artist at his peak, showcasing all of the styles that he’s proficient in. Though it is very much an album of its time, in this case 1987, with references to the AIDS pandemic, the Challenger disaster, Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program, and the crack epidemic, it still sounds as fresh as today’s newspaper — or, given the state of the newspaper business, maybe I should say the most recent website update.
The album opens with the title track. The sound of a sequencer creates a water dripping effect and Prince takes on the role of a herald, chronicling the events of the day, while warning of the peril ahead:
“In France a skinny man
Died of a big disease with a little name.
By chance his girlfriend came across a needle
And soon she did the same.
At home there are seventeen-year-old boys
And their idea of fun,
Is being in a gang called the Disciples
High on crack, toting a machine gun.” (more…)
Yesterday was the first day of school, that annual ritual that’s as tough on some parents as it is their kids. We began the morning with French toast and  the flurry of activities we hadn’t done in three months: ironing clothes, packing lunches, Jake doing his CF breathing treatments; Sophie tinkling the keys of the piano; brushing teeth and taking the traditional “first day of school” photo in front of our fireplace. Everything went so smoothly I even had time to water the front bushes. With a short lull before the big walk to school I turned on Sophie’s iPod to play some of the kids’ favorite songs. It didn’t take long until the Ramones’ “My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)” began and we were all bopping our heads up and down.
For those of you who may think I’m an ultra-hip parent trying to cultivate his children with great protest songs from the ’80s, hold off. This Ramones song, one of our family favorites, is known as the “School of Rock song,” thanks to director Richard Linklater, who used it so expertly in the Jack Black film during the “coming together” montage. (more…)
It’s been a giggle this week watching Democrats paint Rush Limbaugh as the “bloated, drug-addled” head of the Republican Party, as Paul Begala put it the other day. It’s been even more of a giggle watching Republicans contort themselves into rhetorical knots as they try to deny Limbaugh’s stature without offending the man himself.
Democrats have been playing a lot of winning hands lately, and this is another one. They’ve learned the trick that Republicans used throughout the Bush years: When there’s a leadership vacuum in the opposing party, focus your attention on the person whom voters will find most unpalatable. Hillary, then Nancy Pelosi were the GOP’s bogeywomen. Now, since positively no one is afraid of Mitch McConnell or John Boehner, since no one has yet stopped laughing at Michael Steele or Sarah Palin, and since Bobby Jindal still needs to find a grown-up first name (if not a persona to match), Democrats smartly have anointed Rush as (to borrow a phrase) The One.
To the extent that the Dems can encourage Americans to equate Limbaugh with opposition to President Obama’s grand schemes – and to the extent that they can keep us more disgusted with Limbaugh’s oft-stated hope that “Obama fails” than we are concerned about the fiscal ramifications of Obama’s potential success – they will have played this game of misdirection brilliantly. But let’s not pretend that it’s anything more than a game. (more…)
“Wow, these grapes are sour!” A fitting epitaph for Republicans as they try to grab the spotlight to bitch and moan about Obama, the Democrats, and spending while really only offering one policy prescription for the economic dire straits we’re in: tax cuts. And tax cuts they got! Even a casual glance at both bills reveals that when it comes to spending, both houses of congress aren’t too far apart. The Senate bill is the one where you wonder what happened to the party that advocates for states. The sizable tax cuts, the lack of local spending for states’ local governments, and the glaring gap between the House’s bill on infrastructure spending makes me question some Republican’s love for the states and localities that comprise these United States. Yeah, we’ve heard the old saw about this stimulus bill being the proverbial “Democratic Christmas Tree” when it comes to spending, but c’mon! The idea is to get people back to work so they have money to spend on products and services that come from private businesses — and that won’t come from tax cuts alone.
It doesn’t take much effort to realize that every day private industry is shedding jobs, that unemployment rolls are growing, and consumption is falling. In short, people are not spending money, and private industries are doing the same. Credit is tight, people are saving their dollars, businesses are cutting and slashing budgets to weather this storm. It’s batten down the hatches time, folks. It’s a natural response when times are tough. But what force turns fear into optimism? What entity has the kind of power and resources to “prime the pump,” shock the system out of the current doldrums and restore large scale trust? Government. In fairness, tax cuts do have a stimulative effect at times, but they take a long time to work. What’s needed are spending programs (yes, spending) that will increase GDP.
Government spending on programs and projects will lead the way to create stable jobs that will allow individuals to feel optimistic about buying products and services that private businesses provide. However, unbridled consumption is something that comes with consequences to our environment and even to our psyche. I have long been critical of society’s fixation on “things,” and I am in no way saying that we need to go back to a yuppie ideology. Rather, since we’ve already tried variations of the kind of Reagan-inspired economic policies hardcore Republicans have embraced for over a generation — and those polices have clearly shown their limits and their failures — it’s time to see if the democratic pragmatism Obama embodies works. (more…)
Last night I had a dream … of long-faded memories, and basic-cable infomercials:
Voiceover:Remember…this? John McCain: “Who is Barack Obama?”
VO:That’s right … they’re the hits you’ve come to know and love… McCain: “He believes in redistributing wealth!”
VO:Here, together, for one last time – the very best of the Republican Party, performed as only McCain-Palin can! Sarah Palin: “He’s not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.”
VO:Yes, they’re all here, all in one place, assembled just for you. You’ll get favorites like these:
(scrolling onscreen)
“That’s the extreme pro-abortion position – ‘health.’”
“We need to know the full extent of that relationship.”
“I’m very concerned that he may have anti-American views.”
“Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon…”
Palin: “…These wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America…” VO: You’ll want to act now to preserve these precious memories, because in two weeks this priceless collection of favorite GOP attacks from across the decades will be gone – and some of these hits may never come back! McCain: “His plan sounds a lot like socialism!”
VO:How much do you expect to pay for a package like this? McCain: “How about 100?” VO:Well, for two weeks only, you can have this fantastic collection on three 24-hour news channels – all for just $42.50! That’s equal to the McCain campaign’s poll numbers! McCain: “That’s not a tax cut – that’s welfare!”
(scrolling onscreen)
“…Palling around with terrorists…”
“Obama and his fellow Democrats got caught putting Hollywood above America…”
“…trying to give liberal judges the power to decide whether criminals are sent to jail or set free.”
“…legislation to teach comprehensive sex education – to kindergarteners.”
VO:So call the number on your screen now, while there’s still time! Operators are standing by… McCain: “…Maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”
As the McCain campaign has pulled out all the nasty rhetorical stops the last couple weeks, its desperate gasps have come to sound distinctly like a death rattle for the vaunted Republican Attack Machine. Careening from one corner to another like a punch-drunk boxer, McCain-Palin has tried (so far unsuccessfully) every counterpunch in the GOP playbook – a book that dates not just to 2000, or 1988, or even 1968, but all the way back to 1948 … or maybe even 1920. (more…)
If you were a conservative back in the days of the New Deal, lobbing verbal grenades like “A traitor to his class” at Franklin Roosevelt was as common as clearing your throat. Indeed, the political right in the U.S. spent a good many years in the proverbial wilderness as WWII, the post-war boom, and the collective embrace of modernism ascended. By the time Barry Goldwater took the political stage to demand “a choice, and not an echo,” many within his own party saw him as a crank.Â
New Deal liberalism was the dominant paradigm (to use a fancy-pants term), the middle class — a good many of whom were ensconced in suburban bliss – were happy to vote for Republicans who were basically “Democrat-lite,” and big business groomed and nurtured company men who would enter the “system” as eager drones, and exit with a pension and a golden retirement.  “Pleasantville” for some? “Happy Days” for the fortunate?  Maybe so, but the culture within this paradigm was clearly no haven for those who inhabited it. If it were, there wouldn’t have been the rebellion of the mid-to-late ‘60s. Sure, the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement had a great deal to do with the rebellious ‘60s, but they also gave Goldwater conservatives an opportunity to revolutionize their party. (more…)
I’ve been reading The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 by Sean Wilentz, and it covers historical ground that most historians don’t want to touch for a good 30 years. Having spent a good deal of time with U.S. historians, the old adage that “history is argument without end” is fairly accurate when it comes to the interpretation of what constitutes historical fact. But historians like to wait for a good chunk of time to pass before digging into the archives of events. That’s why it’s surprising that a noted historian like Wilentz ends his study of the recent past by talking about the present. He may be premature, but Wilentz is ready to bookend “The Age of Reagan” with the end of the George W. Bush’s presidency rather than wait and see who becomes the next president. Just as New Deal liberalism had pretty much crumbled by the beginning of the 1970s, Wilentz thinks that Reagan Republicanism is now in its twilight. This bodes well for a resurgence of liberalism in the future, but it’s instructive to see how a revamped GOP was able become a dominant force in American politics from mid ’70s to the present.
Having a few large-scale events befall the GOP’s political opponents was extremely helpful in the rise of Reagan (i.e., Vietnam, civil rights movements, the counterculture, student protests, and urban riots). But it took a long-term palace revolt within the GOP during the ’60s and ’70s to slough off some of the Midwest and east coast Republicanism that kept the party center-right for a long time — far too long for those who were in love with Barry Goldwater’s ideology. In a way, Goldwater Republicans were cut from the same cloth as their New Left counterparts. The same “no compromise” attitude pervaded both camps, and while the New Left (a loose amalgamation of groups who could never really unite under a shared ideology) imploded by the beginning of the ’70s, “Phase II” of the countercultural revolution pushed forward until the mid ’70s (i.e., “Women’s Lib,” gay rights, the ecology movement, and sexual liberalization). Standing athwart history yelling “Stop!”* was the other counterculture: the New Right. Like I said, these two movements were cut from the same cloth, but while the New Left and its scions pointed out the injustices in the United States and sought to address them through protest, policy, and legislation, the New Right proclaimed their undying love for the United States while actively trying to destroy the very governmental institutions that helped to create the post WW II affluence they grew up in. In short, there was a tremendous amount of resentment in both camps, but the New Right used that resentment in a much more effective way — politically speaking, that is. (more…)
Did you know that one home is foreclosed every 7 1/2 seconds in the United States? Or that millions of unsuspecting Americans have secret life insurance policies taken out on them by the very companies they work for? If you didn’t, Michael Moore is here to tell you all about it in his new film Capitalism: A Love Story. So sit back and prepare for history class…
There has never been a doubt in my mind that 
Yesterday was the first day of school, that annual ritual that’s as tough on some parents as it is their kids. We began the morning with French toast and  the flurry of activities we hadn’t done in three months: ironing clothes, packing lunches, Jake doing his CF breathing treatments; Sophie tinkling the keys of the piano; brushing teeth and taking the traditional “first day of school” photo in front of our fireplace. Everything went so smoothly I even had time to water the front bushes. With a short lull before the big walk to school I turned on Sophie’s iPod to play some of the kids’ favorite songs. It didn’t take long until the Ramones’ 
VO: Yes, they’re all here, all in one place, assembled just for you. You’ll get favorites like these:
VO: How much do you expect to pay for a package like this?
