The grass is always greener in someone else’s past

Note: Editorial interpolations are in italics.

As compiled by conservative blogger Pitcairn, this conservative gripe/wish list is by turns touching, offensive, baffling, and just plain silly. But what really grabs attention is Pitcairn’s shocking offer: He promises to become the Democrats’ bitch if only they will make America like it was in his parents’ prime.

Unfortunately, Pitcairn doesn’t bother to specify when his parents’ prime was, but we can safely conclude it was before the rise of rap music, the fall of Old Europe, and the mysterious disappearance of Scotts Turf Builder from every Home Depot in a 100-mile radius….

Give me green-grass neighborhoods and places where children can thrive, free of child molesters and black rap “artists” and homeless solicitors. A place where families can take the time to be families and can cherish the ideal of the European-based society that America has always been, and forever, should be.

And once the hip-hopping, child-molesting, homeless solicitors -- presumably not unemployed British lawyers -- have been disappeared from his neighborhood, Pitcairn really lets his dreams take flight….

Give me a chance to go on vacation and time to take off work -- even though I am always yelling that union members are anti-Christs in-waiting and stroked out when the Family and Medical Leave Act was passed....

To see my children earn awards from a public school for real academic achievement and from a place where they learned about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, except the naughty bits about slave-holding and miscegenation....

And those men that stormed the beaches at Gold and Utah but not those men that stormed the beaches of the China Sea and the sand dunes of Iraq because, well, things didn't quite go as planned.

A sense that, perhaps, they have been taught the same values and morals and ethics as their grandparents, who got theirs back and more from Social Security and Medicare even though they screamed about ponzi schemes and communism until the day they turned 65.

An environment free of multi-cultural sex at 14. Unicultural sex is okay as long as it doesn’t involve my daughters, condoms, oral contraceptives, Plan B, abortion or same-sex sex not involving Catholic priests.

And a learning environment that is not cowardly bereft of instilling strict discipline because these days you can strip search students and randomly drug-test them but for some reason you‘re not allowed to hit them.

Give me clean streets and orderly surroundings but don’t raise my taxes, you bastards; and a good work environment with no meddling OSHA or EOE oversight, where hard work is rewarded and appreciated as long as it doesn’t conflict with whatever God’s own free market will bear....

Where the boss does not have to instinctively feed upon his workers by eliminating benefits to fund the cultural protections -- little jail time for big white-collar crime -- that [he] now needs to live the life of his parents because the kleptocractic pie is shrinking.

Give me God and Church and time to honor The Almighty, not just when I find time (usually only on Sundays and only when there isn’t a good game on) but also when walking the streets of my town at Christmas and at Easter—free to see a crèche or statue of Christ and not ask my children to turn their heads away because somebody’s cluttered up the display with a menorah and some Kwanzaa doodad.

Allow my family the right to be a Christian American citizen without the stigma of social inferiority, which should be strictly reserved for non-Christians and non-Americans....

Or berated for our belief that Life -- especially my life and that of my family and their unborn babies and the unborn babies of their unborn babies -- should be socially sacred, but not Life in those culturally inferior regions where families and their unborn babies and the unborn babies of their unborn babies are too ignorant not to live in the bombing zones of predator drones.

Even though I constantly make fun of the French because those weenies get the entire month of August off for vacation, give me the right to time. Time to enjoy and contribute to my community by joining the Minuteman Movement and monitoring the Mexican border.

Time to talk to my neighbors and warn them that ACORN is taking over the country and have a beer with fellow veterans at the VFW and explain to them that only Republican car dealerships are being closed.

Give me time to play cards at the Knights of Columbus or lead my local community center by passing around petitions demanding to see Obama‘s real birth certificate.

Give me the right to hunt and fish, which I currently have but like to pretend is at all times imperiled, and enjoy the nature for which America has been so blessed without feeling that I am some out-of-touch reactionary survivalist because I shoot deer using an assault rifle and catch fish using underwater munitions.

Give me an America with secure borders and immigration policies and a confidence that the same will preserve the European-cultural base, by which I mean all European countries that are England, Scotland, and Ireland, upon which America was founded.

Give me the sense but not the reality that life is more than just work; where my own children will inherit a nation -- with no death tax! -- that their parents once thought indestructible, like Formica kitchen tables and linoleum flooring.

The murder of Dr. George Tiller: The captivity drama updated

Excerpted from Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, by Susan Faludi. Emphasis added.

[T]he oldest American male myth, the original protection racket, [is] the captivity narrative. In that formative genre, conceived in the pre-colonial days and enshrined in American literature, a basic script pertains: a young woman is “captured” by raiding Indians who attempt to strip her of her whiteness. The pioneersman’s mission is to search out and rescue her before she “goes native,” which is to say, before she has sex with an Indian…. Certainly by the close of the twentieth century, the [captivity] narrative was painfully threadbare as a workable masculine drama. Few women, even the most conservative, were interested in exchanging independence for protection.

Men who were determined to keep the fantasy going had to range far to find a viable pretext, which may be one explanation for the remarkably consistent correlation between militia membership and anti-abortion zealotry. Both “movements” are about protection -- and the silent fetus, unlike the unpredictable modern woman, is one captive who can’t reject a protection offer. No wonder that fetuses in anti-abortion literature are most often depicted as little girls…. But even rescuing the captive fetus has its problems. The fetus’s captor, after all, is a woman. Even here, then, the men found themselves back in battle with their true nemesis: the independent woman.

Life Lesson No. 3

Via the whimsically fractured Jon Lajoie.

Frontal lobe ping pong: The Sotomayor nomination

It’s not just the stupidity … like a guy named Krikorian declaring that the wonderfully lyrical Sotomayor is too difficult for America to pronounce correctly, it‘s also the endless sniping … like the gnarly G. Gordon Liddy fretting about Sonia‘s monthlies, and the freaking … like the snakey Tom Tancredo claiming that Sotomayor is a part of the Latino KKK, and the hissy-fitting.

Oh and did John Derbeyshire do some classic hissy-fitting on The Corner!

Judge Sotomayor was raised in public housing? So was I. Her mother was a nurse working late shifts? So was mine. When did white working poor people disappear off the face of the earth? Where are the eager listeners to their "compelling stories"?

I bet he even stamped his feet as he typed that.

But Derbyshire’s story is not nearly as compelling as he thinks. Growing up in a semi-detached counsel house in Northampton, England, is not the same as growing up in the Soundview project in the Bronx by any stretch of imagination, other than John Derbeyshire’s.

Judge for yourself. The top photo is of Derbyshire’s counsel house in Northampton. The bottom photo is of one of the Soundview buildings, before and after renovation.






[h/t to Instaputz.]

Live by the petty, die by the petty

In a Right Pundits column bizarrely accusing Obama of being a bad speller (is there nothing that man can do right?!), the accuser inevitably screws up and misspells a word. Asswhole.

Click image to enlarge.

The point at which I stopped reading

Will Obama’s Exotic Excesses Bring Back the Boring White Guys?

America is dating a new, dashing man of the world. Sure, she knows he is driving his motorcycle way too fast, in the rain, at night. But still, it is really exciting and our girl has her arms tight around his waist and is squealing with delight at all the fun.

Columnist Bill Dupray doesn’t get very far -- just the second paragraph -- before stripping the gears on this metaphor.

Our girl knows her dad is not all that crazy about this new beau. The kid talks a great game and cleans up nice, but dad has this Eddie Haskell feeling about the guy.

Huh? If the smitten girl is America, then just who is America’s disapproving Daddy?

Bonus awfulness: Dupray actually refers to the dangerous boyfriend as “the young buck.”

Aaden, sweetie, I’d love to adopt you -- and don't worry about going to Notre Dame

Sorry, I’ve been too distressed over the high-order multiple fissures in Jon and Kate Gosselin’s marriage -- Is Jon screwing a 23 year old? Is Kate screwing her bodyguard? -- to focus on things like torture, torture photos, torture memos, torture briefings, Dick Cheney‘s fondness of torture, Rush Limbaugh’s failing kidneys, the massive closings of Chrysler and GM dealerships, and the rise of the Amazing Renminbi, which is not a reference to a magician.

But today is the day that Obama will say a few words to the graduating class of Notre Dame University, and the cable newsers have gotten my attention because they’ve done everything but plastered a countdown clock in the lower righthand corner (at least, last I checked) for The Most Controversial Speech Ever in College Commencement Speech History.

Except that people not hobbled by massive retrograde amnesia and willful historical ignorance know this is not true, especially in Notre Dame’s brief history of presidential commencement addresses. Why, there were even some spoilsports who didn’t approve of Saint Ronnie Reagan’s appearance (and honorary degree-getting) at Notre Dame. Not because Reagan had been divorced (the guy was a Protestant after all) but because he was gung ho about guns and capital punishment and a Latin America policy that was getting a lot of nuns and priests killed.

But somebody’s got to go to Hell over Obama’s invitation to speak, and the early betting is on Father John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame University.

LifeSiteNews reports that Fr. Jenkins “sits on the board of directors of Millennium Promise, an organization dedicated to fighting poverty in Africa that promotes contraceptives and abortion.”

Commented Patrick Reilly of the Cardinal Newman Society: "Any Catholic university that supports a program to reduce poverty by eliminating poor children has a serious problem."

I don’t think that came out the way he intended it. Then again, maybe it did.

Things I Just Learned I Didn't Know

Thanks to the good people at KemTech, I can buy my very own Forensic Blood Spatter Kit from Amazon. This works out nicely since I’m planning on updating the look of the downstairs powder room.

Ahem

Excerpted from the NYT Obituaries, Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American Flier Tortured in a Chinese Prison, Dies at 83.

Click image to enlarge.

This would work just swell on the Garden State Parkway

One of the whimsical works of inventor/author/cartoonist/former urban planner Steven M. Johnson, as highlighted in this NYT article, Searching for Value in Ludicrous Ideas.

Regularly scheduled programming to resume shortly

Amalgamated Products

Interesting discussions going on over at Roy’s place about school reading lists (yes, including Bill Bennett’s musty and prissy old list). Amazingly, no one’s brought up this newly re-imagined masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Post-tweeners of all genders should love the classic regency romance -- now with ultraviolent zombie mayhem!

Mike (Should’ve Asked Me) Markovitz explores why Saturday Joe Scarborough would hate Monday Joe Scarborough.

And this week’s Public Domain Theater presentation is the 1959 workplace gender issues romp, The Trouble With Women, or in today’s terminology, Why Brad Is a Douchenozzle.

Also sprach Lynndie England

[This post was first published on March 19, 2008.]

I’m not sure how sorry I feel for Lynndie England, but I feel tremendously sorry for the idea of Lynndie England.

England was released from military jail about a year ago after serving 521 days of a 3-year sentence. Officially England was found guilty of one count of conspiracy, four counts of maltreating detainees, and one count of committing an indecent act in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Unofficially England was found guilty of being stupid enough to let herself be photographed abusing prisoners. Oh, and for looking the way Lynndie England looks.

She recently gave an English-language interview with the German paper Stern.* And because God has a wicked sense of humor, the interview coincided with Bush’s veto of HR2082, which would have outlawed waterboarding and seven other interrogation techniques.

Q. The former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, called you and your colleagues the "rotten apples" of the military. Bush claimed to be ashamed of what you did.

A. Well, back then I thought: How can they say that when it was happening all over Iraq. The same thing is happening in Guantanamo now and other places. We knew that our officers knew about it and our sergeants. We thought if they know then somebody else knows. And I really do still think that Rumsfeld knew what was going on. I mean he had been there while I was there at that prison. And if he was there I know he knew what was going on. How could he have not known? And Bush? He's the headman.

England is unemployed, living in a trailer in West Virginia, undergoing psychotherapy, and taking antidepressants and antianxiety medications. She sometimes fears for her safety.

Donald Rumsfeld is living very, very comfortably somewhere, but has been pretty much erased from the memory banks.

The headman himself, George W. Bush, is hoping his ass is safely out of the White House before the total collapse of the American empire.


*Definitely read the complete Stern interview. The various AP and UPI rewrites are bastardized.

The utility of historical ignorance

From the NYT’s “In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No look at Past Use”

Regarding the recent unpleasantness

Mr. Trend over at Alterdestiny is calling for the impeachment of Torture Memos co-author Jay Bybee, currently a judge on the Ninth Circuit of the Federal Court of Appeals. Mr. Trend’s letter to his senator (Chuck Schumer) is an excellent template to follow should you be inclined to write to your senators in support of Bybee’s impeachment. I’m definitely adopting this paragraph and putting it in 36-point boldface type.

Mr. Bybee's appointment to the Federal Court system has put American citizens like myself at the risk of having our fates decided by his legal logic, a logic that has already defended the use of torture. This kind of behavior and these legal positions cannot and should not be allowed on any court bench, much less a Federal Court bench. It is for this reason that I am asking you, as one of the two Senators from the great state of New York, to please join the efforts to impeach Mr. Bybee, so that his legal reasoning can never affect the lives of American citizens in the way it has already affected the lives of those who were tortured in Guantanamo. Thank you.

Bordering on thinking too much

Once gain I’ve been informed that I think too much, which could explain why I’m always bouncing off plate glass patio doors and getting my hair stuck in automobile parts. This time it’s in response to a query I had about this Quin Hillyer column in The American Spectator, as cited by Dr. Dave.

Let's cut through all of Barack Obama's baloney. His speech on the economy at Georgetown University on Tuesday was a testament to the massive ego of a callow leader with grandiose pretensions bordering on megalomania.

I'm stunned. This is The American Spectator after all, the high-quality journalistic institution that couldn’t stop itself from accusing the Clintons of committing various rapes and murders as well as running a very profitable cocaine distribution center out of a small Mena, Arkansas, airport. And here’s Hillyer pulling his megalomania punch. What gives?

So I asked Dr. Dave:

Why only bordering? I wonder why Hillyer shied away from citing full-blown megalomania. I wonder what clinical criteria were met that kept Obama (so far) on one side of megalomania and not on the other. I find this all very intriguing.

Just think about it. Hillyer had three options: (1) Not mention megalomania at all. (2) Assert that Obama suffers from borderline megalomania. (3) Assert that Obama suffers from full-blown megalomania. Let’s assume Hillyer’s familiarity with and inerrant application of the current diagnostic criteria for megalomania. At some point, Hillyer determined that Obama’s actions did not quite reach the level of a confirmed diagnosis -- unfortunately, he doesn‘t tell us why.

I’d really like to know: Why do the President’s grandiose pretensions and delusions of power fail to satisfy DSM-IV-R criteria for megalomania?*

Dr. Dave’s response: “Sometimes I think you think way TOO much, Grace.”

Or maybe I think way TOO much for the crap published in The American Spectator.


*Of course I’ve sent an email to non-Dr. Hillyer for an explanation.

And they said it wouldn't last

Happy anniversary to Basil and Sybil Fawlty of Torquay, Devon, England, married 51 years ago on 17 April 1958.

The all-purpose, hoist-anywhere political placard

This sign, spotted at the Ocala, Florida, Tea Party, is perfect for all political occasions. No one from the right, left, or center is ever going to dispute it, and thus it’s ideal signage for anyone who wants to infiltrate any political event. If I had any paranoid tendencies at all, I’d suspect that this distinguished gentleman -- perhaps a retired FBI or ATF agent? -- is scoping out the crowd. FOXNews might want to investigate. Wink wink nudge nudge.

Ding Ding Ding

From the rightwing blog Political Castaway….

Did the Obamas Steal Their Dog?

Not exactly of the same import as economic or foreign policy, but…. this President -- the one who felt it was appropriate that the President of the United States could dictate compensation policy at U.S. banks and determine who should run American automakers -- may have commandeered his dog from another owner.

Here's the story, as it is being reported. Bo was sold to a D.C. resident late last year or early this year. Another dog out of the same litter was sold to Ted Kennedy. Bo was returned to the breeder in March and was sent directly to the Kennedy's dog trainer in Northern Virginia. From there, he is to become the newest White House resident.

Reading between the lines, is it difficult to imagine a typical D.C. power play here? The Kennedys, because they are the Kennedys, saw an opportunity to do a favor for the White House. They arranged for the unnamed third party to "return" his dog to the breeder (itself an unusual occurence short of health concerns for the puppy) so that the Kennedys could become the heroes in locating just the perfect dog for the Obamas.

I can't wait until we find out who the third party was and how he was compensated. Any takers on a bet that he has his own political agenda that was likely accommodated?

I wouldn't put any of this past the Obamas.

You know, I’m starting to miss the Lesbo-Hillary Clinton-Killed-Her-Lover-Vince Foster-While-Slick Willy-Ran-Columbian Drug Cartels-in-Mena stories.

Doug Giles is a thin white rent boy who loves snipe hunting

God so loved America that He gave us the truly misbegotten Doug Giles.

This one is going into the scrapbook.

In his Christ-Has-Risen Easter Sunday column for Town Hall, respectfully titled America’s Not a Christian Nation -- And I’m a Fat Black Lesbian Who Hates Hunting, Pastor Doug Giles visits his tender mercies upon not only non-thin, non-white, non-heterosexual, non-hunters but also the Dixie Chicks, the French, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Tai Chi, and Stevie Wonder. Oh, and Jews.

Sure, Giles uses the term Judeo-Christian (exactly twice, and mainly to keep Joe Lieberman from crying) but other than that, it’s Christ America Christ America Christ America Christ America Christ America Christ America Christ America Christ America.

We’re the United States of Jesus Christ, people!

I like to think that Jesus would be appalled.

See to it that things end well

This is a hoot. Someone unearthed an old advertorial pamphlet, Life 101, that AIG issued to help recent graduates transition into the world of responsible adulthood. Exactly 101 pearls of wisdom are offered -- wise advice that AIG itself either ignored or wickedly turned upside down and inside out. Here are some of my favorites, plus a 102nd pearl of wisdom I've added for the sake of completeness.

#12 Gain people’s goodwill.

# 14 Use, but do not abuse, cunning.

# 18 See to it that things end well.

# 25 Obtain and preserve a reputation.

# 46 Know how to get your price for things.

# 53 Know how to rely on yourself.

# 55 In all things keep something in reserve.

# 78 Do not turn one blunder into two.

# 87 Know how to ask.

# 93 Never let matters come to a breaking point.

#101 In times of prosperity, prepare for adversity.

Public Domain Theater

Today’s feature, The Relaxed Wife (1957), is a surrealistic public service presentation via Roerig and Pfizer. Just think of Mr. Bean, freaked by his Dali-esque living conditions, discovering that he can achieve ataraxia by taking a substance that looks suspiciously like crystal meth but is really a tranquilizer. Oh, and wifey gets hooked first.

Of all the states throughout this nation,
the happiest by far
is the state of relaxation.

They’ll be fewer breakdowns and insomniacs
when more of us
have learned to be relaxed.

Remember: If you have tension problems, discuss them with your doctor.

At the conclusion of tonight's feature presentation, please exit the theater using the rear exit doors, depositing all trash in the receptacles located next to each exit door and in the main lobby. Thank you!

Make your own Mrs. Sen. Larry Craig jokes

Alterna-Budging is hard work

Here’s one of the helpful illustrations accompanying Bob Cesca’s HuffPo article deconstructing the insane alterna-budget offered by insane Republicans. The blue line, of course, denotes Democratic proposals. Also, the Republicans very thoughtfully carried out their projections to the year 2080.



And here’s the plan in a wingnut shell:

Not only does the Republican plan freeze discretionary spending for five years in the midst of a recession which, by most accounts and proved by history, will countermand any sort of economic recovery, but it also cuts taxes by 10 percent for the same Wall Street executives whose actions largely got us into this economic mess in the first place.

In other words: Congratulations, Republicans, you just released a budget that rewards wealthy corporate executives while blocking any attempt to dig us out of the economic catastrophe they created.

How to save $18 billion a year (circa 1999)

Time makes fools of us all eventually, except in this case Sen. Byron Dorgan, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, and a few others.

This contemporaneous NYT article on the passage of the great and glorious bill known as Phil Gramm’s Baby, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, yields some very expensive groaners.

The Times observed that the bill’s passage “followed a rich Congressional debate about the history of finance in America in this century, the causes of the banking crisis of the 1930's, the globalization of banking and the future of the nation's economy….”

I bet C-SPAN‘s ratings soared as hundreds of supersized charts and graphs were paraded forth and placed, always slightly askew, on giant easels.

…. and the Times continued to gush: “[The bill] would become one of the most significant achievements this year by the White House and the Republicans leading the 106th Congress.”

Significant, yes. Achievement, no.

Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex) went all Braveheart/get government off our balance sheets -- “Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer.''

Then Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers stared confidently into the future -- ''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century…. This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

Just to clarify, the new economy is the one where the size ($64 trillion) of the infuriatingly amorphous credit default swaps (CDS) market is larger than the combined world GDP ($56 trillion).

Anyway, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) got all turf-conscious -- ''If we don't pass this bill, we could find London or Frankfurt or years down the road Shanghai becoming the financial capital of the world.

A quietly exasperated Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Nebraska) rebuffed the drama queens -- ''The concerns that we will have a meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown.''

And finally, my personal favorite, the Clinton Administration tally of all the wonderful savings the little people would enjoy -- “The White House has estimated the legislation could save consumers as much as $18 billion a year as new financial conglomerates gain economies of scale and cut costs.”

Goin' Klute

My head is sore. Not my brain but my scalp. It’s been the victim of yet another one of those doofus mishaps that seem to happen only to me and which amuse my friends and family to no end.

I had loaded the groceries into the car trunk, slid into the driver’s seat, closed the door, and buckled up the seat belt. That’s when the fun started. Somehow, some of my fine Irish hair got entangled with the sliding shoulder-belt adjuster. I unbuckled the waist-belt portion, which gave me a little more maneuverability, but my hair was still snagged.

Let’s see. What are my options here. Call 911? Too embarrassing, and tangled hair might seem too frivolous for a 911 call. Plus, there was the risk that the audio of the call would wind up being featured in one of those jokey dumb-things-people-call-911-about news segments. I could call AAA. At best that’s a 30- to 40-minute wait, and the frozen foods would start to thaw.

Well, it’s not a huge chunk of hair. Maybe I should just cut myself free. But with what? Maybe I could flag down a cartboy or shopper and ask for a boxcutter or scissors or even nail clippers. Two or three minutes tick by, but no one passes near enough to call to.

Right. House keys is it. I blindly grope around in my purse, find the keyring, and choose the key with the deepest, jaggiest cuts. Some hair got cut, some sawn through, and some pretty much got plucked, but I did free my head from the shoulder belt.

On the left side of my head, there’s an obvious mangled section of hair that’s 4, 5, 6 inches shorter than the rest of my lustrous mane. When Mr. Nearing first sees it, he just turns away without comment (silently laughing, I‘m sure*). Just for that, I refuse to tell him what happened for an entire day. Now for a new hairdo. I’d really like to try for punk-spiky, but I’ll probably have to settle for a modified shag cut. I’m thinking Jane Fonda in Klute.


*To be fair to Mr. N., this wasn’t my first auto/hair disaster. The others involved windows. My other major hair disaster involved the metal frame of a sofa bed.

iz2Laf

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has some
illustrative fun with the Republican Road to Recovery, a/k/a The Republican Budget Pamphlet. And the Fark Political Brigade has been busy shredding and regluing Boehner’s Blue Binder. If you get a chance, scroll through the thread for some fun artwork.

Things I just learned I didn't know

Dopey is the only one of Snow White’s dwarfs without a beard. I had to look that up in order to finish yesterday’s NYT crossword puzzle. All the minutiae I’ve struggled to learn -- Latin, Spanish, French, and German expressions, calculus using Roman numerals, international currencies, river boundaries, Elfish -- in order to puzzle proficiently and Dopey trips me up.

Interestingly, among potential dwarf names that were rejected by Disney were Shifty, Awful, Chesty, Dirty, Goopy, Hoppy, Neurtsy, Sniffy, Strutty, Titsy, and Tubby, as well as Tipsy, Burpy, Cranky, Scrappy, Sleazy, Jumpy, Dizzy, Weepy, and Tearful.

Just in case this info’s needed for a future puzzle, these are the names of the Seven Duffs working at the Duff Gardens Theme Park in The Simpsons: Tipsy, Queasy, Surly, Sleazy, Edgy, Dizzy, and Remorseful.

Yeah, capitalism’s a bitch. Deal with it.

A reader’s response to today’s NYT OP/ED contribution: a reprint of a letter of resignation submitted by Jake DeSantis, Executive Vice President of AIG-Financial Products.

Lately, a lot of people have been experiencing a version of the distress, frustration and anger Mr. DeSantis describes. You work hard; you do nothing wrong; your company tanks because other people were stupid or wasteful; your own employment and income prospects turn dark. You are asked to continue working, to help save the company, but there are no guarantees . . .

Unless the taxpayers are underwriting your million dollar contractually guaranteed bonus!

Few workers have been offered that kind of safety net, because few work for private businesses funded with public dollars. That seems to be the part of the puzzle that Mr. DeSantis and his colleagues have not figured out. They are basically civil servants now, and their contracts for continued employment should have been negotiated to accept that reality: neither asking anyone to work for $1 nor guaranteeing anyone that the dollar would turn into millions at some future date.

I have nothing against Mr. DeSantis personally. I applaud his decision to donate his post-tax bonus to charity. I agree that he and his co-workers did not deserve to be publically heckled and I would not expect any of them to work for free. But he's not just the victim of "politics" or "Washington." He's the victim of a form of denial that seems to afflict many in institutions that have received federal funds.

When the big profits disappeared, so did the big incomes. Deal with it.

We better get our heads straight about it

From No Return to Normal,
James Kenneth Galbraith

Geithner’s banking plan would prolong the state of denial…. Delay is not innocuous. When a bank’s insolvency is ignored, the incentives for normal prudent banking collapse. Management has nothing to lose. It may take big new risks, in volatile markets like commodities, in the hope of salvation before the regulators close in. Or it may loot the institution—nomenklatura privatization, as the Russians would say—through unjustified bonuses, dividends, and options. It will never fully disclose the extent of insolvency on its own.

The most likely scenario, should the Geithner plan go through, is a combination of looting, fraud, and a renewed speculation in volatile commodity markets such as oil. Ultimately the losses fall on the public anyway, since deposits are largely insured. There is no chance that the banks will simply resume normal long-term lending. To whom would they lend? For what? Against what collateral? And if banks are recapitalized without changing their management, why should we expect them to change the behavior that caused the insolvency in the first place?

From Forget About Recovery,
James Howard Kuntsler

At the risk of confirming my critics' dumbest charge -- that I am a "doomer" -- the mandate of clarity requires me to ask: to what state of affairs do we expect to recover? If the answer is a return to an economy based on building ever more suburban sprawl, on credit card over-spending, on routine securitized debt shenanigans in banking, and on consistently lying to ourselves about what reality demands of us, then we are a mortally deluded nation. We're done with that, we're beyond that now, we've crossed the frontier and left that all behind, and we'd better get our heads straight about it.

I’m guessing disgusting stains for $75 billion, Tim

Okay. I’ve read (1) the press release for Timothy Geithner’s PPPIP Legacy Plan (“Flounder”); as well as (2) the handy list of legacy securities terminology (no more toxemia); and (3) the requisite application forms to join in the scavenger hunt fun (Press Hard-Duplicates; Do Not Sign in Red Ink; Use Swingline Staplers Only).

I’ve read it all and I’ve reached the following conclusion: This is just a big-ticket, high-stakes version of one of those auctions your neighbor goes to at the local self-storage company when they try to unload abandoned stuff. Only this time he’s going with great big flippin’ wads of your cash in his pockets. If he’s lucky, he gets a digital television or a stereo system with undersized speakers or a stash of vintage baseball cards. If he’s not lucky, you get stuck with some disgusting stained mattresses and a crumpled old Valtrex prescription for Paris Hilton.

Taking all the fun out of it

Just don’t get it, do they? From the Neal Boortz column, “Tea Parties -- Give Me a Break.”

A funny thing happened while the CIA was busy elsewhere…

Via Bad Attitudes comes this bit of delicious snark: Reagan’s Dream of a Leftist El Salvador Finally Realized.

Reading this WaPo editorial puts it all in context.

Just think, in 2030, when the Iraqis finally vote in the leaders of their choice, the Washington Post will editorialize thusly: The election result could be the consolidation of the political system the United States was aiming for after it intervened in Iraq in 2003.

Sex and other stuff

Tucker Carlson bitches that Jon Stewart refuses to play by the gentleman’s rules of cable news theatrics. The bastard. (I mean Carlson.)*

Teen Sex and Insanity sounds pretty damn good, but resident Town Hall anhedonia sufferer Rebecca Hagelin prunes up. Plus she’s outraged that liberal slut Anna Quindlen wants kids to know that sex is pleasurable. Come on Becky -- we’ve robbed these kids of just about everything but their genitals. Let them play on.

In case you’ve been too busy to notice, “it's over — we're officially, royally fucked.” Matt Taibbi provides a straightforward explanation and chronology of the financial crisis. I don’t know why, but American writers have grown excellent at forensic reconstructions over the past decade.

Finally, Michael over at Should’ve Asked Me asks a critically important question about men and lipstick.

*h/t to WTF!?! Is It Now.

Now just read this as Inspector Clousseau

Trust me, it doesn’t really matter what the hell Erik Erickson is actually talking about. In fact, it’s funnier if you don’t.

The Red State blogger is all excited because he thinks he’s convicted David Shuster of being either a journalist or an activist or an invitee to Andrea Mitchell’s Spring Cotillion.

This is Erickson responding to an email from Shuster -- OMFG! a real, live TV-type person wrote to a lowly blogger -- who basically says WTF dude? Just read it out loud, doing your best Peter Sellers-as-Inspector Clousseau impersonation.

I’ve got credible people who have knowledge of the leest telling me you are on the leest. I believe you are on the leest. Put another way, I believe you have more incentive to lie about not being on the leest than those telling me you are on the leest have incentive to lie to me.

And if they have gotten confused as to which leest you are on, then you aren’t on the journalist leest, but the activist leest.

Oh, but there’s more.

Ezra Klein emails to say Shuster is not on the leest and the person telling me Shuster is on the leest is lying to me. How about we get a leest of who all is on the leest and we’ll know for sure who is leesting lying?

Tbogg does that Tbogg thing he does so well with this.

Beckheads of the world, unite!

Libby Spencer chronicles recent Beckhead activities over at The Impolitic. Apparently, thousands hundreds dozens of concerned citizens around the country joined together to intimidate the rest of us by pointing out they surround us, or something. In reality they only surrounded large-screen televisions featuring Glenn Beck’s performance art. They huddled together in places such as the Rex Theater in Wyoming, the Holiday Inn of Asheville, a Bassett Furniture showroom somewhere in Colorado, and the Magic Mighty Mushroom in Broward County (photo below).



Meanwhile Ace of Spades and his poker studs try really hard to imagine what a liberal wedding and reception must be like, in this case the upcoming nuptials of Jessica Valenti.

This is what commenter CTD envisions for the Valenti wedding reception.

No kegs. No open bar. No dancing.

Instead, the wedding party will perform the Vagina Monologues until all the victims guests have bled out through their ears.

Well I couldn’t let that go unanswered, could I?

CTD: And I've heard the groomsmen will be performing Penis Puppetry. Come to think of it, I'm going to try to wrangle an invitation to the reception.

The lone virgin at the orgy

So Jim “Mad Money” Cramer got it good on The Daily Show. While Jon Stewart took pains to explain he was not singling out Cramer but was criticizing CNBC and pretty much the entire business press for their total cluelessness and/or epic malfeasance, Cramer kept insisting that he, former hedge fund manager extraordinaire, had been lied to by big-name CEOs, former colleagues, and assorted others as he did “research” for his shows.

It seems Jim Cramer was the lone virgin at the orgy.

But sweet Jesus there’s always a tape. This one, a two-year-old interview on Wall Street Confidential, features Cramer candidly discussing his use of “fomenting” and other forms of market manipulation back in his hedge fund days.

So much for the virginity defense.

I don’t hold out much hope for the emergence of robust mainstream reporting on business and economics in the United Corporations of America. People will just have to look elsewhere. Here is an excellent place to start. I also highly recommend their Fianancial Crisis for Beginners.

Okay now nobody move

I'm still updating and revising the blogroll. Please, people, stop switching back and forth between Blogger and Wordpress. Stay put!

Tontine Barbie

This was definitely one of those times when you had to see the print edition rather than the online version of a publication to fully appreciate the editors’ stupidity. On Monday, the NYT devoted pretty much half of its Op/Ed page to a column about the Barbie doll. What really ticked me off was that the editors didn’t make the huge illustration that accompanied the piece suitable for coloring and eventual display on a refrigerator door.

That and the fact that some of the precious remaining Op/Ed space was used for a column promoting healthcare tontines for those pesky 19 to 29 year olds who consider themselves invincible and refuse to pay for health insurance.

The authors, two lawyers, dismiss universal healthcare out of hand, saying that it’s just too costly. So there. Besides, what America really needs is yet another hybrid financial/insurance product that’s extremely complicated (how complicated? just read the column) and with the potential to accumulate tons of cash just waiting to be prudently reinvested in rock-solid, AAA-grade, collateralized debt obligations and other never-fail securitized instruments.

Why aren’t tontines available today? Because they’re illegal. Why are they illegal? Well....

Sadly, this kind of insurance isn’t on the table, due to the failure of tontine life insurance in the late 19th century (“tontine,” by the way, derives from the name of the Italian banker who invented the system). Tontine life insurance paid a deferred dividend to policy holders who survived and faithfully paid their insurance premiums for a defined period, usually 20 years.

Things went sour when tontine life insurance companies became economic titans, buying and selling stocks on a scale that would make Warren Buffett blush. Unfortunately their leaders did not show Mr. Buffett’s personal restraint. Their extravagance and influence-peddling prompted a political backlash that led to laws in 1906 reorganizing the insurance business and regulating its management of surplus funds.

Nonetheless, the authors remain enthusiastic. Such things could never happen today.

The life insurance tontine experience seem to make health insurers leery of trying such an experiment again. But they shouldn’t be. Health insurance tontines would not produce the same level of corrupting fortunes.

Maybe the Times should have skipped the column on healthcare tontines and expanded the Barbie illustration to include Ken and Skipper too.

Tweaking

The good news is I've finally installed that nifty feed reading sidebar widget. The bad news is I've lost Haloscan. The good news is I finally got rid of those annoying Read more! links. The bad news is ... well you get the idea. I'm still updating my blogroll list, so look for some new and some old friends to be appearing in the sidebar. Okay, I think I've pushed my techno-luck for one night....

In which I tried not to look aghast

The snow from the last nor’easter melted over the weekend, and the neighbors held the usual post-storm swap meet, bringing forth the various items that got blown around and buried in random yards. (Sadly, our window shutter has not been found, and at this point I’m assuming it’s floating around in the Atlantic). As I was redistributing various soccer balls, basketballs, and street hockey goal nets, I had a chance to chat with the three-doors-over neighbor. And what a tale he had to tell.

Last I heard in December, he and his wife had just bought a house on Florida’s Gulf Coast, a vacation home and eventually the place where they’ll retire to. I was a little surprised that someone in our exceedingly modest development was buying a second home in this economy but, hey, I didn‘t know anything about these people’s personal finances. They’re fifty-ish and their kids are grown and married. For all I knew, they own everything free and clear and they’ve got great big flippin’ wads of cash in CDs and T-bills and secure retirement funds.

Except they don’t.

By mid-January, the husband lost his job when the car dealership he worked for went out of business. (Apparently nobody saw that coming.) His 401k is, like everyone else’s, a 201k. The couple now has two mortgages to pay plus two car loans. The wife works only part-time, and the couple is now without health insurance. They’ve decided to put the Jersey house up for sale. Good luck with that. There are homes in our development that have been on the market for over a year.

Whatever were they thinking?

Two to nothing esé! Two to nothing!

No no! If you cheat and fail, you’re a cheater. If you cheat and succeed, you’re savvy.

Not a great sign when a South Park episode triggers an epiphany, but I take’em where I find’em.

As the perfect antidote to all the endless yapping and snarling about the economy, bailouts, and stimulus packages, I switched channels and caught a semi-recent South Park episode. It features a cheeky send-up of Stand and Deliver with Cartman doing a superb Edward James Olmos.

Through a series of plot twists, Cartman ends up as an inspirational special student-teacher at Jim Davis High School, a gritty inner-city school where all the students are getting left behind. As Mr. Eric Cartmenez, he sets out to teach the no-hopers the power of cheating, as exemplified in this 2008 episode by Bill Belichick; however, as you’ll see, the concept is flexible enough to embrace the current inhabitants of the entire Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) sector of the US economy.



LESSON ONE

[Jim Davis High school class room. Cartman is starting to do his job.]

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) Okay, everyone take a syllabus, and pass it to the amigo behind you.

Student 2: Hey man, what the hell do you think you’re doing?

Student 3: Yeah!

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) Mr. Cartmenez is here to make sure you all get into college.

Student 4: Getting into college? Man, we ain’t get into no college! Fuck you! [the other students agree with this]

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) *sigh* How do I reach these kids? The reason that you think you can’t get into college, is because you haven’t been taught... How to cheat. Properly! How do you think white people always get ahead? Because we cheat all the time – I mean because they cheat all the time. [brings out a picture of Bill Belichick] This is Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots. He’s won three Super Bowls. How? He cheated. He even got caught cheating, and nobody cared. Bill Belichick proved that in America it’s okay to cheat, as long as you cheat your way to the top!

Student 5: Hey, I don’t wanna be called a cheater!

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) No no! If you cheat and fail, you’re a cheater. If you cheat and succeed, you’re savvy.

Student 6: This is bullshit! I don’t wanna waste my time learning to cheat!

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) Go ahead, the door’s right here, bye bye have fun, we will miss you. [waves to the kid while looking the other way. The kid leaves.] *sigh* How do I reach these kids?

LESSON TWO

[Jim Davis High school, day. Student 6 (the kid who ran out of the class before) is shooting baskets. He misses, and the ball rolls away, ending up at Cartman’s feet.]

Cartman: [picking up the ball] (in a Mexican accent)Nice form, compadre!

Student 6: Hey I walked out of your class, teacher! Look I don’t wanna argue with you about the merits of cheating!

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) Who wants to argue on a nice day like this? How about a little pickup game? [whistles to a kid sitting by the scoreboard reading a book] Hey Petano! Can you keep score for us?

Petano: Sure thing, Mr. C! [he gets up]

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) Okay, you start on defence amigo! [tosses the ball to Student 6. Cartman bounces the ball for a few seconds, then gets past Student 6... by smacking him on the leg with a teacher’s pointer. He sinks the basket, and Petano changes the score to 1 - 0] Oh, that’s one to nothing amigo!

Student 6: You cheated!

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) What’s the score, Jefe? Okay lets go, your turn! [Student 6 tries to get past Cartman, but again gets whacked by the teacher’s pointer. Cartman steals the ball and sinks another basket. Petano changes the score to 2 - 0] That’s two to nothing, amigo!

Student 6: Fuck you man! You can’t do that!

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) Look at the scoreboard, amigo. No matter how many times you say I cheated, the scoreboard says two, nothing. [tosses the ball to Student 6]

Student 6: I know what you’re trying to say. But I still don’t agree with it. [throws the ball away and limps away]

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) (yells after Student 6) Two to nothing esé! Two to nothing! *sigh* How do I reach these kids?

LESSON THREE

[Jim Davis High school, day. Cartman has managed to get the kids to pay attention, and they are writing down the things he is telling them.]

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) Today we will discuss one of the fundamental ways to cheat: getting material ahead of time. When Bill Belichick cheated for the Patriots, what did he do? He videotaped the opposing team’s defence. Think of the defence as your test. When taking a test you must also videotape, the defence. Learn what’s on the test before they give it to you. And that way you can – [stops. Student 6 has quietly entered the classroom.]

Student 6: [looks around guiltily.] I thought that... Well maybe I can give cheating a try.

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) Have a seat amigo. Good to have you back. [Student 6 sits down] Alright. When Bill Belichick got caught with his, camera, he did not panic; he simply said what every good white cheater says when caught: “I misinterpreted the rules”. It’s what you must also say when caught cheating: “I misinterpreted the rules”. Say it with me.

Cartman and the class: “I misinterpreted the rules”

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) Good! Again!

Cartman and the class: (with more enthusiasm) “I misinterpreted the rules”

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) Again!

Cartman and the class: (Student 6 joins in) “I misinterpreted the rules”

Cartman: (in a Mexican accent) Now you sound like white people!

The class: (shouting excitedly) “I misinterpreted the rules!”

END OF LESSONS

Gone medieval

Waiting out the snow and wind bombings of the last nor’easter, I was reading Mysteries of the Middle Ages when I came across a wonderful passage that with only minor tweaking yields an extraordinary description of today’s conservative Republicans.

In all the time conservative Republicans were in power, nothing of real consequence had been created or improved while much of real consequence had been destroyed or weakened…. Shackled in ideology, disciplined by fear, and sheathed in arrogant certitude, conservative Republicans trudged into the 21st century in the clumsy, hunched, pigeon-toed gait of mindless obsequients, their vacant faces turned blindly toward the future they thought they knew -- gullible, pitiful innocents who were about to be swept up in the most powerful, incomprehensible, irresistible vortex: the election of a black Democrat president willing to give the majority what it wants.

Just as a precaution, I’ve had all the estrogen drained from my body

This is truly horrifying.

In anticipation of his Female Summit, Limbaugh has begun running promotional spots on his own nationally syndicated radio program: "Are you woman enough to kindly listen to his rants and score prescription drugs for him? Are you woman enough to lie to his face and tell him that he isn't getting fat again? If you ever watched Baron Harkonen in Dune and fantasized about laying in bed stroking his third chin and telling him how wonderful he is, then maybe you're woman enough for Rush Limbaugh."

Although Limbaugh's Female Summit is little more than speed dating for one, there is an intellectual component as well, including a series of symposiums with topics like "What's The Deal with Woman? Is It Entirely Due to Menstruation and Biology or Are They Simply Choosing to Be That Way?" With any luck, the messages of the summit will endure far beyond the weekend and start an open-ended dialogue about why women are so wrong on nearly every subject, especially when it comes to liking or not liking Rush Limbaugh.

Fun with charts

For absolutely goofy charts and lunatic data, no one does it better than the self-proclaimed Evil Conservative, Patrick Gibson. In this freakout post about inflation, “Inflation Starting -- Biggest Inflation Jump in Six Months,” Gibson blames the recently passed Stimulus Package. The Evil Conservative accurately quotes recent inflation statistics from a Yahoo Finance article but then rather suspiciously omits this key sentence: “Despite the big jump in wholesale prices in January, economists do not believe inflation is on the verge of becoming a problem, given the country's deep recession.”

Oops.

For good measure, Gibson includes a horrifying chart of multinational inflation trends filled with colorful upswinging arcs. One big problem though: the most recent data featured in the chart is for 2005.

Oops.

Compared to the Japs, we’re wusses

Shorter Thomas Sowell

Despair Sets in With America on a Fatal Arc
IBD Editorials
February 23, 2009

Stop whining that CEOs are overpaid (they’re not, they‘re not, they‘re not) and you’ve lost both your job and your medical insurance and your IRA has lost 227% of its value and you’ve fallen behind on the mortgage to your “under water” house. George Washington got frost-nipped toes at Valley Forge and besides does anyone imagine that we will care what anyone's paycheck is when we see an American city in radioactive ruins?

"Shorter" concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. I am aware of all most Internet traditions.

Animal pancreases, a meat grinder, alcohol, and ice

Glenn Beck has been really cranking up the apocalypt-o-meter lately. Allapundit considers that certain something about Beck in “The end of America is nigh, maybe.”

[I]f you’d asked me which media star’s most likely to turn survivalist, move to the mountains, and start doing his show from a lead-lined bunker, there’s no doubt what the answer would have been. There’s something “off” about Beck in a way that’s not true of other chat-show hosts, although that’s not necessarily a criticism….

Nothing [Beck and his guests are ] saying is terribly implausible, frankly — except maybe the idea that in five years NYC will look like Mexico City or Baghdad — but because the tone of Beck’s show is always somewhat febrile, it’s hard to know how seriously to take any of it.

I know at least two people who are taking it very seriously. One is the guy who bought 81 Cans of Spam in preparation for a terrorist attack. The other is a terrified mother by the name of Marie who posted a query about making homemade insulin at Free Republic.

I'm sure most of us are thinking along the lines of survival lately and doing our best to prepare for the worst (while praying that the worst doesn't happen).

Along those lines, I have a serious problem to face if our western civilization ceases to be civilized.

My son is a Type 1 diabetic. He needs insulin to survive. Period. It cannot be controlled with herbs, exercise or diet. It's an autoimmune disease which has killed off his insulin-producing cells. Even if he ate nothing, his blood sugar would scream out of the normal range.

There's a story called "Cheating Destiny" about a diabetic woman who survived a Japanese internment camp by her husband making home-made insulin. For two years he made insulin and ended up saving many more lives than just that of his wife.

Does ANYONE here know how he did it? Don't get me wrong: I don't want to know the complicated, requiring-specialized-equipment way to make insulin. I want to know the details of how Banting and Best did it with nothing but animal pancreases, a meat grinder, alcohol and ice.… I'm never going to feel secure until I know how to do this.

That’s just so cruel. Glenn Beck makes millions by airing his febrile delusions and scaring people like poor Marie, who is now so frightened about the post-apocalypse availability of insulin that she's determined to learn how to distill insulin from animal pancreases, just in case.

Das Gesetz der Verschlechtigung aller Dinge (The Law of the Deterioration of Everything)

I’ve been reading and rereading Charles Kindleberger’s Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises to better understand why we do what we do to our economies. The short answer is: we do what we do to our economies because that’s what we always do to our economies. I’m not being cryptic either. Over the past several centuries, we have gone manic, bubbled, panicked, and crashed our economies repeatedly. We never learn. So here is my incomplete, half-assed, non-chronologic list of things we never learned from.

Manly guns for the unmanned

From Arthur’s Hall of Viking Manliness -- be sure to stop by the Viking Clothing Shop for all your non-chafing Viking Manliness needs -- comes a detailed, thoughtful, and well-illustrated list of 10 More Manly Guns. Just in case you were wondering.

Previously I compiled a list of the Ten Manliest Firearms.* I noted that variations on the list were certainly acceptable, but still ran into a bunch of grief from non-men who were unable to read, nor to grasp that real men don't care if other real men disagree with them. Still, there are a LOT of guns out there, so I figured it was time to compile another list. You should own all of these guns before Zero takes office, and then buy more until he wets his pants and blubbers like the wuss he is….

*[That] was a hard piece to write, because guns by definition are manly, except for Berettas, gold-plated TEC9s, .25 caliber pistols or anything made by the French.

Don’t scoff (well, you can if you want to)

The standard of living in America began decreasing with the rise of self-service gas stations. This startling report reveals why.

Compare and contrast

Blogger d-day offers a thoughtful analysis of stress testing US banks and the potential nationalization of those at risk.

Meanwhile, Red State has come up with a very simple cure for all our economic woes.

The most radical, and effective, thing we could do for the economy right now is this: Stop collecting all forms of Federal business, income and payroll tax. EVERY PENNY OF IT. RIGHT NOW.

John Cole and commenters have fun with that one.

Guess which number Mr. Nearing is...

That’s right, the 94,001st. It has been about a year in coming, but the decision became final yesterday. All I am going to say is that there are a large number of prattling pundits and damned-to-hell Republicans I’d like to smash in the mouth.

Sunday funnies

Tired of contemplating what taking up residence in a giant cardboard box positioned over a steam grate will be like? Then head on over to Joey DeVilla‘s The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century and smile again. This week’s treats include:

A Teddy Bear for Your Hipster Lifestyle

The Sad Man’s Kama Sutra

1960’s Style Covers for Movie Novelizations, featuring artwork created by Spacesick

This is how Spacesick envisions Willy Wonka as a Japanese novelization, Wonka-san! Just Punisher of Coddled Children.

BADer blogs

Julia Grey’s Pharisees and Philistines, which, as Julia points out, is everything you don’t want to be.

The International Journal of Inactivism, a scholarly journal dedicated to inactivism, inactivists, inaction, and inactionology, especially with regard to global warming and mitigating it. It’s also very witty.

Watergate Summer, written by Enigma4Ever, the self-described heartbroken wandering refugee intuitive halfblind truthseeking scorched whistleblower mom nurse, newsjunkie, research fiend.

Buzz Twang, who’s been jammin’ the mediascape since 2001 and somehow has not lost his mind.

Further adventures in agnotology

Agnotology -- the study of culturally induced ignorance.

If this story, excerpted here, were just some amateur’s blog post, I’d probably shrug it off. But it’s not an amateur’s blog post. It’s a professionally written story posted on the website of NBC4, the Los Angeles affiliate of NBC.

Dumber by the day

From The New York Times, where evidently neither the op/ed writer, the copy editor, nor the proofreader has a fundamental understanding of human anatomy and physiology.

Correction: February 5, 2009

An Op-Ed article on Wednesday, about the Heimlich maneuver, incorrectly described the technique. The person administering the maneuver pushes under the choking victim’s diaphragm, not above it. The article also misidentified the part of the body food travels through to the stomach. It is the esophagus, not the trachea.

Abstinence pledges for GOP govs (socialism, sillies, not sex)

As former Sen. Bill (She does respond) Frist (R-Tenn) learned at the cost of his mind, soul, and national political aspirations, never cater to ideologues. Inevitably, you’ll be deemed ideologically impure by the ideologues and too ideologically pure by the non-ideologues. Either way, in the words of Edie McClurg: You’re fucked.

Now the fun’s afoot over at NRO, Free Republic, and other bastions of conservativism uber alles as the ideologues assess the comparative purity of Republican governors regarding stimulus money. Will they or won’t they be seduced by Obama’s socialism?

In a bravura performance of actual journalism, NRO Cornerite Mark Hemingway telephoned all 21 Republican governors' offices in the country to determine who are most likely to remain chaste. Here’s my working tally so far:

Total sluts: Crist (Florida), Schwarzenegger (California), Douglas (Vermont), Rell (Connecticut), Gibbons (Nevada)

Having impure thoughts: Perdue (Georgia), Jindal (Louisiana), Pawlenty (Minnesota), Daniels (Indiana)

Cockteaser but virgo intacto: Palin (Alaska)

Asexual (so far): Otter (Idaho), Heinemann (Nebraska), Rounds (South Dakota)

Unsullied virgins: Perry (Texas), Sanford (South Carolina)

Don’t scoff. The conservative base is definitely taking this purity ball seriously. But I wonder: If a Republican governor blocks or inhibits his or her state's receipt of stimulus money, might not the governor be subject to recall or impeachment for incompetence or malfeasance?

Happy Blogroll Amnesty Day!

Okay, here’s my first list of good B.A.D. blogs to visit. Also: If you have any long overdue blogrolls to return to the NYC library, now’s the time or else Mr. Bookman will stalk you to the ends of the earth, or at least to the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Worn out by all the yada yada yada? Go visit Oh Noes!! Politikz in ’Merica Iz Rly Redonk. Give the text-processing center of your brain a rest and your optic nerves a treat.



Over at Pere Ubu’s Debraining Machine, Pere Ubu himself surgically debrains Harvard economist Jeffrey Mirron, who recommends moremoremore tax cuts and lesslessless regulation as a cure for what ails us.

When Michael Markowitz says Should’ve Asked Me, he means it. Among the things we should have asked him about recently are auto insurance commercials, The Wrestler, Hillary Swank and Jessica Alba, American Idol, Joe Scarborough, The Coolest Guy in the World, and the saddest ad ever.

The point at which I stopped reading

Jed Babbin, “Fastest Failure Ever?”
Human Events #

Slouching towards… destination unknown

Ever wonder what happens when it’s the investment bankers and real estate moguls who go postal and not the low-wage worker in the mail distribution center?

This NYT article describes some of the psychic dislocations being experienced by some members of the upper and upper-middle classes in the NY metro area as the economy in general and Wall Street and real estate in particular crap out. It successfully manages to trigger both contempt and compassion. Contempt because the people profiled are very unlikely to go without food, shelter, or healthcare; compassion because anxiety, depression, psychosis, and suicidal ideation are terrifying things to experience.

[Dr.] Paula Eagle, an associate professor at Columbia University, said that investment bankers in her private therapy practice, suffering from paranoia, have described mordant-humor fantasies circulating among their colleagues that the collapse of the financial markets would lead to New York City going broke and martial law being declared.

“They were going to buy guns and rafts and float down the Hudson River,” Dr. Eagle said. “It stirred up a lot of 9/11 kinds of feelings — this is disaster time and we have to be prepared to run for cover.”

I wonder what bin Laden's take on this would be.

One Manhattan real estate investor, diagnosed with major depression, generalized anxiety, and psychotic features, had convinced himself that Pakistan would annihilate the world with a nuclear bomb (interesting choice since nuclear annihilation automatically resets everyone’s account balance to zero). Maybe it was the psychotherapy, maybe it was the drugs, or maybe it was that one last big sale, which got his finances back in order, but he no longer thinks nuclear armageddon is at hand.

Said the newly non-psychotic investor: “I’ve been through recessions before… [b]ut this was nuts.”