Brian Deese — The Musical Tribute Continues

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I first heard of Brian Deese during the Obama administration, when he was appointed as one of the ‘Czars’ for the auto industry…and I was inspired to write this little song.   (with apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan)

I see that Mr Deese–now the Director of the National Economic Council–is much in the news lately, most recently for this interchange:

CNN: “What do you say to those families that say, ‘listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years?'”
BIDEN ADVISOR BRIAN DEESE: “This is about the future of the Liberal World Order and we have to stand firm.”

So, I saw no alternative other than to resort again to a musical form of expression.   Here, to be sung to the tune of “I’ve been working on the railroad”, is the next song in my continuing tribute to Mr. Deese:

I’ve been workin’ up at Blackrock
All the livelong day
Hung out there during the Trump years
Yeah, I really liked the pay!

Had to package those investments
Rise up so early in the morn
Hear the other partners shouting
‘Brian, blow our ESG horn’

Now I’m back here in the government
Washington, DC
Surely speaks well for Joe Biden
That he’s impressed with me

I explain that economic problems
Are surely not our fault at all
Whatever it may be the numbers say
Or those charts up on the wall

Someone’s in the kitchen with the data
Someone’s in the kitchen I know-o-0-0
Someone’s in the kitchen with data
Watching the inflation quickly grow

And singing
Fee-Fi-Fiddly-I-O
CPI and PPI up wo-wo-wo-wo
Fee-Fi-Fidly-I-O
Watching the inflation quickly grow

What you going to do about it, Brian?
What are you and Biden going to about it woo-woo-woo-woo
What you going to do about infla-tion
Seems like the folks are getting a clue

They’re singing
Fee-Fi-Fiddly-I-O
Can’t afford to drive or eat wo-wo-wo-wo
Can’t afford to pay our rent or mort-gage
Watching the inflation quickly grow

Need to polish up that narrative
Why there’s nothing we could do
Have to let the prices rocket up
Or the Liberal World Order is so screwed

We’re singing
Fee-Fi-Fiddly-I-O
Nothing we could do about it wo-wo-wo-wo
Fee-Fi-Fiddly-I-O
It’s best to let those energy prices grow

Advanced Incompetence

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The grim and cynical judgment is that advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from deliberate malice. I am certain that grimmer and more cynical commenters than me have long since concluded that the advanced and mind-boggling incompetence of the Biden Administration is indeed indistinguishable from deliberate malice, at least as far as results are concerned. The staggering increase in the price of gas at the pump is the one thing that almost everyone, save the impossibly-out-of-sight-rich are feeling. When the price leapfrogs twenty cents a gallon from one day to the next, it excites notice from ordinary people, who need to drive to the jobs that they still have. And what is the barely sentient vegetable in the White House, or the individuals who are manipulating his strings doing about all that? Essentially nothing, save lip service and pointless gestures.

They want gas prices to go sky-high. No, that’s the take-away. In their fantasy-world, having the price at the pump be equivalent to prices at European pumps will move us all gently, painlessly, and inexorably towards driving electric cars, (and living in high-rise prole cubes in big cities, and eating protein derived from bugs) never mind that the tech and infrastructure to support that kind of thing isn’t even remotely possible, now or ever.

Nope the Biden administration wants us unbiddable red-state, fly-over proles to suffer, to grind us all into the dirt. They want this, they are panting for it, orgasmically. Mostly because we don’t and won’t do what they order us to do, and so we must be punished for disobedience.

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Where We Spent Today

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It was a lovely day – we got there early, so as to be assured of a place to set out the umbrella and the blanket. We expected to beat a large crowd, which never really materialized. There were mostly families, setting up on the beach, or on the levels above the little cove, children and their parents, splashing about in the shallow water. The day pass is only good up until 6 PM, which probably cuts down on the rowdiness. The Air Force and the Army recreation services have a slice of recreation area on Canyon Lake, which is a short drive from San Antonio. The recreation area encompasses a small beach with picnic grounds adjacent, a dock and anchorage for small boats, rental cabins and cottages and RV spaces. Next year, we are thinking of renting one of the cottages for the 4th. Depends on how everything goes. We hope that things will go on in the Shire, as they always have, from day to day.

Shall It Be Sustained?

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As a July 4th tradition, I’ve posted an excerpt from Stephen Vincent Benet’s poem Listen to the People.  The title I originally used for these posts was It Shall Be Sustained, which is from the last line of Benet’s poem.

Narrator:

This is Independence Day,
Fourth of July, the day we mean to keep,
Whatever happens and whatever falls
Out of a sky grown strange;
This is firecracker day for sunburnt kids,
The day of the parade,
Slambanging down the street.
Listen to the parade!
There’s J. K. Burney’s float,
Red-white-and-blue crepe-paper on the wheels,
The Fire Department and the local Grange,
There are the pretty girls with their hair curled
Who represent the Thirteen Colonies,
The Spirit of East Greenwich, Betsy Ross,
Democracy, or just some pretty girls.
There are the veterans and the Legion Post
(Their feet are going to hurt when they get home),
The band, the flag, the band, the usual crowd,
Good-humored, watching, hot,
Silent a second as the flag goes by,
Kidding the local cop and eating popsicles,
Jack Brown and Rosie Shapiro and Dan Shay,
Paul Bunchick and the Greek who runs the Greek’s,
The black-eyed children out of Sicily,
The girls who giggle and the boys who push,
All of them there and all of them a nation.
And, afterwards,
There’ll be ice-cream and fireworks and a speech
By somebody the Honorable Who,
The lovers will pair off in the kind dark
And Tessie Jones, our honor-graduate,
Will read the declaration.
That’s how it is. It’s always been that way.
That’s our Fourth of July, through war and peace,
That’s our fourth of July.

And a lean farmer on a stony farm
Came home from mowing, buttoned up his shirt
And walked ten miles to town.
Musket in hand.
He didn’t know the sky was falling down
And, it may be, he didn’t know so much.
But people oughtn’t to be pushed around
By kings or any such.
A workman in the city dropped his tools.
An ordinary, small-town kind of man
Found himself standing in the April sun,
One of a ragged line
Against the skilled professionals of war,
The matchless infantry who could not fail,
Not for the profit, not to conquer worlds,
Not for the pomp or the heroic tale
But first, and principally, since he was sore.
They could do things in quite a lot of places.
They shouldn’t do them here, in Lexington.

He looked around and saw his neighbors’ faces

The poem is very long, and is worth reading in full. The full text was published in Life Magazine; it is online  here. The Life text may be a little difficult to read; I posted an excerpt which is considerably longer than the above  here.

Benet’s poem ends with these words:

We made it and we make it and it’s ours
We shall maintain it. It shall be sustained

But shall it?

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