the defeatists!

Not a lot to say...

When the spouse came home this evening, she informed me that the Marines were laying off over 350 people at a local logistics center -- 350 "accelerated hires" that they desperately had to hire this past summer. Ouch. Effective date of layoff is...tomorrow. Interesting approach; she coordinates Workers Comp at this place, and I told her expect a lot of people to claim they were hurt today, yesterday and tomorrow. For my friends who are thinking about the WARN notices that should have gone out, I'm not sure they apply to the government. Civil Service HR is weirder than regular HR. So...who knows.

Had to drive out to the installation to pick up drugs -- old soldier drugs, not fun drugs -- and get mail. Post office decided to make the installation post office a one person station at the front. Poor gal was going insane. I get out there about every ten days, and I could see she was being slammed. Hospital was done to one person at the pharmacy, and no supervising pharmacist. Seeing a trend here?

And, although I planned on not watching "the speech" it was the most interesting thing on and I had a headache, so reading wasn't really an option. It was a logical and rational discussion, the sort of logical and rational discussion that should have happened years and years ago. I notice that the upper classmen in the audience, the TAC Officers and NCOs, and folks in civvies were all pretty intently following what he had to say. They got it. The guys with bare blouses or 1 ribbon only, the lower classmen, were the ones who were having trouble staying awake. Frankly, given the West Point regime, most of those kids are either up to their noses in homework at 8PM or asleep. Or, doing push-ups. I was struck by the number of Combat Infantry Badges I saw -- indicated that the wearer had gotten shot at. For real. Probably went to the West Point Prep School after an enlisted tour. In general, good quality.

But, the speech made a lot of sense, starting from the point of view that Afghanistan is critical to our national interests. Is it? Not sure. I do know that the last 8 years haven't been terribly successful. I also know that the cost is beyond reason. Granted, the repayment by BOA of $45 billion in TARP money is nice, but I don't feel a lot better about things based on that.

Well, we'll see. Unfortunately, a modern Army can't ditty mao out of a country overnight. I'd hate to be the last guy to try and get out of Bagram. Or Kabul. Or across the bridge into AZERBAIJAN, if it still exists. I'm just tired of posting gloomy Russian soldier ballads and thinking about Afghanistan. What's happening in Iraq? Same thing that happened in Vietnam in 1973-75. Some other set of assholes are running the place, but it's still run by assholes fighting other assholes about money, power and religion. Afghanistan will ultimately go the same way, I suspect. We'll stabilize it, declare victory, get out relatively unmolested and it'll go to shit in 2014 or so. And so it goes...

Enough? Not enough? Too much? There there be monsters...

The news that the President has decided to prepare a dog's breakfast for Bo out of the lives of American Soldiers and Marines and their families is not surprising. If it turns out to be less than 40K, that will be interesting. The challenges of supply and support in Afghanistan make it difficult where in Iraq it is not so difficult. Not that it's easy in Iraq -- it's just that the challenges are not driven by terrain, altitude and weather on a daily basis. If you have a sandstorm in Iraq, everything stops until the sand stops blowing. It's always very hot. It's always very humid. Our shit works fine there. It's generally flat, although in some places there is terrain that looks a lot of Nevada. Or, Fort Irwin.

Afghanistan is a whole 'nother country, and it's not Texas. The weather varies from hot and dry to wet and rainy to "MOTHERFUCKER, IT"S MOTHERFUCKING COLD, MOTHERFUCKER. The terrain is largely vertical. And the bad guys are a lot more ferocious than the bad guys in Iraq. So, if there are 30 thousand combat and direct support types on the ground, there are going to be a lot of indirect support types keeping them fed, watered, healthy and supplied. The ratio is smaller than it used to be, but it'll probably be 2:3 grunts/supporters.

That said, is this enough to win? Well, somebody needs to define win. Good luck with that...the win was going to be getting bin Laden. It's now morphed into something undefined, perhaps indefinable. And, Mr. Nuanced Civility is going to try to measure up to the MacArthur "the Corps...the Corps...the Corps" tradition. An old friend of mine from Europe had been a cadet at West Point at the time they filmed Gregory Peck doing that speech, and he said that people were in tears and the enthusiasm of the applause and everything associated with it was incredible. Well, this will be a bit more complex...

Now, lest anyone think I'm implying that the cadets at West Point aren't bright, you are obviously not getting it. They're incredibly bright. As a senior NCO, I preferred dealing with West Pointers as opposed to ROTC types most of the time, although the tail end of my career was spent largely with ROTC -educated logisticians.  The are lots of dumbasses in uniform, just as there are in all fields. And, the automatic Republicanism of the corps is not something that can be counted on. I suspect at the moment most soldiers are moderate conservatives and the corps probably mirrors that. Since there are no Republican moderate conservatives, most of them are probably classifying themselves as Independents.

No, if Obama sat down with a bunch of First Class Cadets, seniors as it were, and discussed his vision and plans, they'd get it. They might not agree with it, but they'd get it. In this case, he's going to be addressing the nation, using the Corps as props. I resent using soldiers as props. The nation is fucked up enough that there are 20% of the people who think Sister"Gosh darn it, I'm special, not as special as Trig, but I'm still special enough to be President!" is fit for office. Hell, 15% of the people in the country supposedly approve of Mitch McConnell. Town hall rally types oppose federal health care at the same time as they draw Medicare. There are a fair amount of people in this country who are dumbasses...and, then there are those who are entirely too bright. They'll want more nuance, and more nuance...trigger points and firewalls.

Whether this is enough really depends on the Afghans. Given their track record, the AXE is not sanguine about this policy, or that policy, or any other policy. Define victory -- if it's Jeffersonian democracy and the establishment of a branch campus of Mount Holy Oak in Khandahar, it's not going to happen. If it's a somewhat restrained narco-kleptocracy, well, that's possible. It's also what they had after Russia pulled out before the Taliban took over. What would have been victory was the capture of bin Laden and the boys, although I personally would have preferred they all died. We'll see how this turns out.

So what is victory? What are the Afghans going to do? Obama owes the cadets, who will largely be fighting there, and the rest of us a definition and a reasonable expectation of a thus defined success. I suspect that we're headed for victory lite. That's the best anyone has ever done in that hellhole.

Enthusiasm gap? How'd that work in Berlin in 1928?

The revealed truth appears to be that the Obama administration and the Democrats are doomed, doomed, doomed because a lot of self-identified Democrats aren't going to the polls in 2010 because they lack enthusiasm. I would have thought the futility of the Obama administration and the president's inability to recognize that you can't get people who don't want to reconcile to reconcile or people who want to be disruptive and uncivil to be constructive and civil by listening might have a bit more to do with it.

It is always easier to get people to be against something as opposed to for something...and, Democrats in today's political cess-pool are in fact far less ideologically pure than Republicans. Who appear to have annointed  Sister "Gosh darn it, I'm special! Not Like Trig is Special, but Special!" as a spokesperson.

If there ever was a time to run a "give 'em hell, Harry" style effort, this is the time. However, while his name doesn't come up all that much, Obama is tied to Marshall McLuhan's view of media. Television is a "cool" media; the internet and blogosphere is a hot media. One of the aspects of a cool media is a certain level of dispassion; the blogosphere is nothing if not passionate. In addition, the administration in particular and the congress as well isn't able to respond. I'm not thinking Bush, I'm thinking Weimar...the mainstream politicians and press became irrelevant while the Nazis and the Commies and the various nutcases became the mainstream.

Well, outside of running Springsteen for New Jersey governor, how the hell do the Dems connect? They need to have a bit of party unity, and they need to scapegoat the Republicans where they bastards are vulnerable -- like Maine, for example. Rural health care in Maine is a joke, but Snowe and Collins have blown the chance to make history. Joe Lieberman needs to be invited out of the Democratic caucus, immediately, with Lincoln, Landrau and Nelson to follow. Let them be ideologically pure...somewhere else.

If they Dems pass health care, 2010 will not be a debacle. If they don't, or what ends up passing is a disaster, then a lot of Dems won't show up. In 1934, the Nazis showed up. They were evil, wrong, and totally unconnected to reality. But, damn, they were enthusiasm personified. What I suspect happens in 2010 is that who ever wins, we lose.
Kurt Weil and Berthold Brecht and the new decadence...

I bow to the master...David Horsey

I've said it before; I miss the old Catholic, grammar school God. Doesn't exist, of course, but the singularity I chose to call Tiffany is less attractive than Grandfather in the Sky with his boy Jesus and the Pet Bird.

We're probably too hard on God because of all the crap that those who worship him do to others. As an Apostate, I look at Catholicism and shake my head -- the beauty, the brilliance and the absolute, bat-shit nonsense that evolved. Protestantism is worse -- same crap, only carried either to more logical absurdity or else into an illogical set of nonsense. Human beings are supposed to be thinking animals -- the Camus quote, "Freedom is nothing but the opportunity to be better!" either spins off into the Rapture or into some other form of babbitry.

David Horsey really nails it. As usual. This is all  that is necessary to understand the problem with organized religion. Man is the problem with organized religion. God - Jesus, Zeus, Mithra, Zororaster, Allah, Buddha, Odin -- has not a goddamn thing to do with it.

Comparisons are odious, but...that's the way we think. Damn humans...

There's a story I read years ago that I can't find, but I remember the punch line really well. Once upon a time there was a kingdom. And, the king got on the bad side of the gods. And the gods fucked him over, along with the entire kingdom and eveyone in it. Plague, pox, pestilence, famine, fire, floods, crop failures, balding sheep, eggless hens, milkless cows and so on. As the scene descended into something y Hieronymus Bosch, the kind turned to his son and said, "Just think of it, my boy. Someday this will all be yours." History does not record what the prince said, but one can only guess...

Few American officials know the Soviets' bitter Afghan predicament better than Mr. Gates. In the 1980s, he was the deputy director of the CIA, overseeing a massive U.S. effort to fund, train and equip the Islamic insurgents, called mujahedeen, who fought the Soviet army to a standstill. Now some of the most prominent of these insurgents, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, are allied against America with the Taliban and al Qaeda. Almost daily their men are killing Western troops, who often operate from former Soviet bases and use Soviet-drawn military maps with faint Cyrillic markings. "It's an eerie sense of deja vu," said Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution scholar who headed the Obama administration's Afghan policy review in the spring and who in the 1980s worked under Mr. Gates as a CIA officer in the region. "America," he said, "is in the rare position of fighting the same war twice in one generation, from opposite sides. And it's easier to be the insurgents." (AXE emphasis.)

The Wall Street Journal has a real problem with schizophrenia. Particularly under Murdoch, the editorial page is one step from either complete lunacy or the American Spectator. However, the journalism is exceptional. This piece, on how we ended up where we are going to be in Afghanistan, is a marvelous example. We're not the Russians. We're also fucked. I tend to agree with both...however, one point needs to continue to be made...

Mr. Gates's knowledge of how the Soviet occupation and its brutalities inflamed local anger contributed to his initial skepticism about a U.S. surge. "I worry a great deal about the size of the foreign military footprint in Afghanistan," he told a Senate hearing in April. "Soviets were in there with 110,000 troops, didn't care about civilian casualties and couldn't win." Gen. McChrystal, at his meeting with Mr. Gates in Belgium, managed to persuade the defense chief that the U.S., unlike the Soviets, is still welcomed by most Afghans. The general argued that certain tactics such as using Afghan rather than American soldiers for house searches could further blunt perceptions of the U.S. as an occupier and put the momentum in America's favor.( AXE emphasis and snark: Who says generals can't be PR weasels? If that isn't spin...)

 I really fail to get excited about a policy of "well, what the fuck do we do now? Ok, let's try a bit of this and bit of that and hope that they all die from a fucking plague!!" Trust me, if that would work, the Russians would have tried it! And probably wiped out a division of their own Army but hey, omelets and eggs.

Eagle probably tastes like chicken...just like snake, gator and lizard

Ah, Thanksgiving. Gail Collins of the NY Times does a marvelous job skewering some of our traditions as she mocks Courage, the Grand Marshall of The Disneyland Thanksgiving Parade, and ponders the cosmos. Courage is of course, a turkey. Obama seems to be becoming more ironic as the year wears on, commenting at the National Turkey Pardoning that “There are certain days that remind me of why I ran for this office. And then there are moments like this, where I pardon the turkey and send it to Disneyland." For Dispheet de la Dweeb, this was always the high point of his year.

You know, I wonder if the inspiration for DEVO, and certainly the best example of the justice behind the concept of devolution might not be the turkey. Franklin, who was probably drunk, advocated the American Wild Turkey as the national bird. Collins has some thoughts on it...

The National Turkey Federation named the bird Courage, perhaps in memory of Benjamin Franklin’s contention that the bald eagle was a bird of bad moral character while the turkey was “though a little vain and silly, a bird of courage.” If Franklin’s argument had prevailed and the turkey, rather than the bald eagle, had become the national symbol, would we still be eating them? Would the turkey farmers still be in business?

Now, they are just silly, stupid and held upside down to be de-blooded while Sarah Palin cheers. Oh, the AXE dislikes turkey. At the Catholic West Point, we had turkey a lot. Also, tuna fish. I had more than enough of the stuff. Mrs. AXE one year decided that capon would be a nice compromise. Nope. It was awful in its own way. I do prefer a nice bit of hobbit, with some fava beans and San Pelligrino...

They're either incredibly stupid or incredibly stupid...or retarded.

Pity the previous president. His sycophants are already forgetting the high point of his reign, besides T-Ball... Ok, there was the 9/11 thing but that happened only 9 months and change after inauguration, so what the hell? And then there was the anthrax stuff, but what the hell; bio-terrorism doesn't really count, does it?

I've been wanting to write something about the Senate vote on health care but I'm finding I really am unmotivated about it. I tried to rise to a level of indignation over Beckenbaugh's comparison of Mary Landrau to a whore, but shit, she's a politician from Louisiana. At least she's only a metaphorical whore, although her family has been kingmakers in Louisiana since before the Kingfish himself and Jimmy Rogers. She comes from a long line of whores and pimps and thieves and such. However, her vote counts. And, she'll get something for it. All Davvy Vitter will bring back to the Bayou is going to be a paper bag over his head and several bails of Pampers.

Back to Landrau and Glrush Beckenbaugh. In a state where finding a Mojo woman who'll take food stamps is what counts as health care, a few more free clinics in the outlying areas and the arrival of a van with vitamins for rickets and pellagra and pills for intestinal worms will be really popular. I'm not sure I see how this works out, but I keep thinking about the Churchill line, when a woman at a party told him he was drunk. " Yes, and you are ugly. Tomorrow, I'll be sober, and you'll still be ugly."

But, back to the lead. Dana Perino or Perrino or Perrier or whatever her name is not only hasn't taken her husband's name, maybe because he's British. And thus, either a football hooligan or an illegal alien. Or gay. Or all three. Probably in the Taliban. She is not following the Wingnut way, the whole subservient to man thing. Of course, according to Wikki, she hasn't bred yet, which is a good thing. I was wondering where she went to school, and while I nothing nothing at all about her undergraduate school which has rebranded itself as something else, she has a Masters. In Communications. From a real school in a real state. Granted, she's originally from Wyoming, but she grew up in Colorado. She has no excuse for being this goddamn dumb.

"there's nothing wrong, that wasn't wrong before"

“And while I will never hesitate to use force to protect the American people or our vital interests, I also promise you this — and this is very important as we consider our next steps in Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said. “I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm’s way.”

 

I recall looking through Newsweek as a kid and getting freaked the fuck out looking at pictures from the war in Afghanistan. Afghani fighters pushed back the Soviet Union forces! well there was one iconic picture of a dead Afghani soldier with bare hands and a gun (AK 47? aXe?), and the caption, as I recall, was that the dude's hands had frozen to the metal of the gun once he had passed. it's not a vivid memory, kind of a tonal thing in my mind right now. it's not quite real to me. these images aren't. it is, in effect, not a pipe.  

I always click on the image. do you click?

You gotta love England...but I'm not always sure why.

The London Times has a list of the top 100 albums. I actually found ten that I either like or that I might be interested enough to listen to...Rick Rubin has a couple, Bruuuuuucccceeee has a couple, and the highest rated one I know and like is the Robert Plant-Allison Krause collaboration. But, sheesh...one of the Rick Rubin things was the one with Neil Diamond. Amy Winehouse and Britney Spears were in the top 5. What the hell...

Well, they're British. They did mention a new Nick Cave thing that sounded kind of interesting. But, in general it's probably all about taste and the fact that most new music is crap. One of the comments at the Times was about "where are Belle and Sebastian?' Hmm...good question. Lots of other ones...

Of course, when taste is debated, we all look and seem stupid. However, I thought I'd just throw up a couple of videos that indicate that someone should probably have been listening toin London. I don't claim that these are in top 100 --  just a fuck of a lot better than the most of the absolute crap the Times listed.

This is not snarky...really.

Seriously. The only one of my Defeatist brothers and associates that I've physically encountered is Commandante Agi. Agi is an interesting and talented guy, who appears to be aging rapidly, based on a recent picture. Of him holding his newborn daughter, Julia. The doctors were planning on inducing labor on Turkey day, but the kid shows the creativity of her parents already and decided to get it done...I don't suspect she'll be having any turkey this year, but I envision her chomping away on the stuff along with pumpkin pie and trying to cadge a microbrew off Dad sometime in the next year or so...

Congratulations to Christina, who did all the work, and to Jonathan who actually moved from a Strat to a Grodin nylon string to sooth Christina. I'm sure we're going to see great things from this kid. I'm not going to plaster Agi's picture or the baby's here...we need some mystery about ourselves, and the googoogachoo we'd be facing from our readers would be painful indeed.

There are reasons for a bit of Defeatist hope. We need to remember that institutions, organizations, government and movements are amoral and evil; those who sell themselves to those things give up part of their soul. But, people can be marvelous...here's to some marvelous people!

Well, I can't get too sentimental. Doesn't fit...I really do not like the original  band at all, but it's the only thing I can think of at the moment...I did find a Korean cover, and this clown who uses hand farts to play, but this is probably the most appropriately inappropriate...

Carrie Underwood - Sweet Child O' Mine cover en Yahoo! Video

And, Gray Davis and Pat Brown can't be far behind...

What a lovely place, what a lovely place...

Flash news gang! Courtney Love will serve as music director for the Milli Vanilli California Reunion Tour. Or something like that. Go California...As Arhnuld says on the visit California commercials that run incessantly on LA TV -- GFF that! -- "We always have room at the top..." so you can fall on your ass and slide all the way down.

Well, he probably doesn't care all that much, but...

Albert Camus died in a car accident and was buried. The guy who wrote The Stranger and supposedly inspired George Bush to buy an dictionary so he could read it so he could pretend to have some depth, and who along with Holden Caufield inspired a generation of Catholic high school intellectual wannabes, and who looks better philosophically every day, wrote novels, articles, and philosophical treatises.  By all accounts, he was a decent guy. A good writer. A honest man. He split with Sartre and Le Temps Modern over all that commie crap. He was neither left nor right...a true libertarian.

And now Sarkozy wants to dig up the poor bastard and move his grave to the Pantheon, the great mausoleum of French Intelligentsia. Jean Camus, the son, thinks it's a lousy idea and would piss off the old man; the daughter manages the estate, and it's ok with him. Sarkozy supposedly is really in favor of it, and is waiting for the family to tell him to bring in the bulldozer, and the French are being French. In a good way...

“What do we have to do to transfer Camus to the Panthéon?” asked one reader on the Web site of Le Figaro, a daily that is generally supportive of Mr. Sarkozy. “The son doesn’t agree: It’s Sarkozy who proposed it, so it’s suspect! Ah, the day that the left proposes it, then it will be different. Let’s leave Albert where he is while we wait.” Jean Daniel, editor of the newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur, told Le Monde: “The crushing character of the consecration appears contrary to the ideas for which Camus is famous.” “For me, Camus is the author of ‘The Rebel,’ who spoke of the heroism of moderation,” Mr. Daniel said. “I don’t see the Panthéon glorifying that kind of heroism. Camus was totally libertarian. Never did the rejection of totalitarianism lead him to join either the center or the right.”

Well, the AXE has a slightly different take on this. I believe that Camus would find it ironic and absurd. If he were to be sitting around in the Elysian Fields overlooking the left bank with Sartre, Malraux, de Beauvoir, Kierkegaard, Jim Morrison, John Lennon and Edith Piaf, smoking Gauloises and cigars, drinking Pastis and espresso, they'd probably be having a good old time talking about it and laughing. Lennon and Piaf would be doing a chorus of Working Class hero while Morrison and and de Beauvoir dance and Sartre, Kierkegaard, Malraux and Camus argue about God, Life, and so on. Levi-Strauss might wander in for a chat, bringing along some raw and cooked stuff to snack on. Celine might wander in, glance around, and when they all stop talking, stare scarily until Piaf goes over and leads him to back, where she gives him a blow job. Lennon then offers guitar lessons...

The only real reason to move the guy is to increase the sale of books and memorabilia. "Je suis allé au Panthéon et tout que j'ai obtenu était ce t-shirt moche de Camus." While glancing at some of them, I came on these things, and they sum it up for me quite well...
and this one...

And this...which was on a flimsy T-shirt but if you wanted a good shirt, the price went up very fast. I think the man would have appreciated the irony...and, of course, an unsupported mime...

Freedom is nothing but the chance to be better...

So, AXE's take is simple...it's always better to do nothing than something unless you need to do something. In this case, let the bones rest; put up a plaque at the Pantheon on an empty tomb, saying something along the lines of

"Camus a diminué, se sentant il avait été jeté hors de meilleurs endroits que ceci…"

The audacity of hope, the timidity of success, the certainty of absolute fucking failure

Without change. When the change candidate doesn't deliver, what the hell are you supposed to think? Once more into the breach, dear friends? Or, what the fuck?

I have been thinking about the "Fire Geithner!" movement for a while and not commenting because one bureaucratic-white-shoed -dipshit in a suit looks a lot like another. However, there has been a swell of interest in some quarters, reflected in the Huffington Post, to fire the guy and replace him with Robert Reich. Personally, I'd like to replace Obama with Robert Reich, but what the hell...however, Paul Krugman makes a series of excellent points today, and   he's convinced me. He's not a fire Geitner guy, so far as I can tell, but he's certainly taking aim at the administration's lack of testicular fortitude in the face of what Wall Street is telling Obama as opposed to what mainstream economists are telling him. Since Wall Street and the bankers got us into this mess in the first place, going to them for advice on how to get out of it is a bizarre approach. I believe the right term is reinforcing failure.

As far as I can tell, the analysts now warning about soaring interest rates tend to be the same people who insisted, months after the Great Recession began, that the biggest threat facing the economy was inflation. And let’s not forget that Wall Street — which somehow failed to recognize the biggest housing bubble in history — has a less than stellar record at predicting market behavior.

Still, let’s grant that there is some risk that doing more about double-digit unemployment would undermine confidence in the bond markets. This risk must be set against the certainty of mass suffering if we don’t do more — and the possibility, as I said, of a collapse of confidence among ordinary workers and businesses.

Being a defeatist means being disappointed but in a rational way. Right now I'd be more likely to follow Bo into the Rose Garden than Obama to Starbucks. I wasn't enraptured of him -- wasn't all that enraptured with anybody -- but he seemed to have some reasonable chops as a leader, was certainly brighter than hell, and seemed to show class and balls at the same time. Well, fuck me blind. Don't cry for me Argentina...grow some, get a goat transplant, do something that shows actual audacity. I'm pretty sure most of Wall Street didn't vote for him. I'm pretty sure that if this continues, I'll vote a write-in in 2012 for Jesse Ventura. And, so will a lot of people.

Seek to maximize the insolence zone...

I was talking to a friend of mine...

I don't like to talk politics with friends. We either sit there in an orgy of intellectual negative masturbation (accomplishes nothing, doesn't feel good) or I realize that they are complete fucking idiots. However, I'll talk culture and social science until the cows are butchered by Pig's guard duck and Sarah Palin because she got all the moose. Case in point, one of my buddies and I went out for lunch yesterday, stumbling on a barbecue place that appears to be a small SOCAL chain called Johnny Reb's. (Strongly recommend it, by the way. Get the brisket and the hotlinks combo plate, paying extra for some sweet potato fries, and have it with collard greens. If you want the pinto beans, make certain you get the cornbread and crumble it into the beans. They're great, but it has more of a soupy texture. The cornbread will add some consistency. I'm going to fast for my next visit, especially since they have something called a Hereshie's Chocolate Cobbler on the desert menu, which sounds scarey...) Anyway, in the space of our conversation which revolved around what's happening to my former employer GINORMOUS, he admitted to watching O'Reilly and expecting him to tear into Sarah Palin. I said something along the lines of "What the fuck you talkin' about, Willis?" Somehow, he thought O'Reilly was kind of moderate conservative. This is a smart guy, and a good friend. But, Brother, I know what you're getting for Christmas...a copy of The Federalist Papers and the Constitution.

While that kind of floored me, we agreed on the substance...the country is in serious trouble, and while it's nice that our various stock accounts, retirement accounts and so on are all doing so well after the late unpleasantness, it's all imaginary. There's no reason to think the markets are based on anything other than the itching hemorrhoids of the traders. He asked me to explain derivatives,  which indicates that there is some hope. We're both pissed off at Obama for lack of testicular fortitude -- imagine the fun that JFK, RFK, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan or my favorite, Franklin Roosevelt, would have had right there at the podium with ole Congressman Joe Wilson. Obama looked offended and stared hard...I watched Ted Kennedy gut the Republicans in 1970 by ignoring them and pumping up a candidate from the Left Fringe (which in 1970 Massachusetts could be pretty fringey) and turning the race into something between Liberals and Loonies...the Republicans got their 35% of the vote, and Teddy got the rest. The fall after Chappaquiddick. Obama needs to find his inner rat or hire a better guard duck.

And, on Sarah "dangit, I'm special" we agreed. There's no there there, and we don't get it. Well, Matt Taibbi does and I bow to the master . He sees it in a larger context, but she really is more representative of where 30% of the country reside. It doesn't matter that there's no there there...to a large extent, that's really what it's all about.

It doesn’t matter what the argument is about. What’s important is that once the argument starts, the two sides will automatically coalesce around the various instant-cocoa talking points and scream at each other until they’re blue in the face, or until the next argument starts...And while some of us are old enough to remember that once upon a time, these arguments always had at least some sort of ideological flavor to them, i.e. the throwdowns were at least rooted in some sort of real political issue (war, taxes, immigration, etc.) we’ve now got a whole generation that is accustomed to screaming at cultural enemies as an end in itself, for the sheer dismal fun of it. Start fighting first, figure out the reasons later.

What amazes the AXE is that he's nailed it. Politics was once about ideas...policy...direction...doing things. Now it's about a short news cycle and who can scream the loudest. And, most people don't relate to ideas, policy, direction, doing things. They want to sit there, shoving cheetoes into their pie hole and bitching about the assholes. Who're the assholes...everybody.

Complaining about the assholes we interact with on a daily basis is the #1 eternal pastime of the human race. We all do it, and we get to do it every day, because the world is full of assholes. Me personally, I waste an enormous amount of time seething over people who get onto crowded subway cars with big backpacks on and/or talk in the Amtrak quiet car and/or drive 57 mph in the fast lane or, my personal favorite, walking with glacial slowness in a horizontal row four overweight tourists across on a New York City sidewalk. We all get into furious arguments at work that make us want to explode in self-righteous fury (in my office dramas I always realize I was actually the asshole a day or so later) and when we get home from work, this is usually what our loved ones hear about for at least the first hour or so.

Not health care, not financial regulatory reform, not Iraq or Afghanistan, but — assholes.

What can I say...he nailed it. I expect the 2012 campaign to be about whether or not we should all drink Gatorade because it has electolytes, and the 2016 to be decided by a Monster Truck contest.

Where's Mario Savio when you need him?

Police arrested 52 students protesting a tuition hike Thursday at the University of California-Davis and held them in jail overnight without food. One was reportedly beaten by police, a source close to the incident tells Raw Story...The incident took place in the midst of widespread protests at several University of California campuses, in response to the Board of Regents' decision this week to hike tuition fees by 32 percent starting next academic year.

Yeah, I know...Mario who? Lanza? The Nintendo guy? Well, back in the early 60s, prior to Vietnam and Freedom Marchers, Berkeley had something called a Free Speech Movement and Mario was the best known of the leaders.  I read something by the then Chancellor of the University System years ago, and I wanted to bitchslap the guy even though he was dead. Mario appears to have cared a lot, and died 36 years after coming to prominence. Of heart failure.

Fast foward to today. California is tanking, as we all know; the universities are headed down the old clockwise rotating clusterbowl along with just about everything else. They decided to raise the cost of tuition by 36% -- really? I suspect costs have risen at least 36% over the last ten years or so, but according to the Wall Street Journal, the average loan load for students graduating is $23K, up 10 grand since 1996. Bear in mind, that includes ALL THE STUDENT DEBT for tuition, books, room and board and so on. Most students work, most borrow, most are twitching in fear that their parents will lose their jobs or have lost their jobs, and are all living with feelings of impending doom and dread. Well as they should; the journal goes all supply and demand a bit later, speculating that the availability of loans contributes to the costs, as students compete for seats. Charging outrageous prices for something is the best way of rationing it.

The new numbers highlight how debt has become commonplace in paying for higher education. Today, two-thirds of college students borrow to pay for college, and their average debt load is $23,186 by the time they graduate, according to an analysis of the government's National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, conducted by financial-aid expert Mark Kantrowitz. Only a dozen years earlier, according to the study, 58% of students borrowed to pay for college, and the average amount borrowed was $13,172.

On the other hand, Crusader AXE has in fact argued pretty strongly that an elementary knowledge of math is required for informed comment. While the imbalance between rich and poor is growing, most of the folks borrowing a lot of the money are not poor, but middle class. If you're really poor and smart enough, the money is there in the form of scholarships, need-based financial aid, and more heavily subsidized loans. If you're rich, shit...who cares. It's the "middle class" that's getting hit...instead of aspiring to go to UCAL Davis, a worker's daughter will be dreaming of going to Barstow Community College; the kid who could have gone to Harvey Mudd will be siting around at Davis. Supply, demand and cost...very cold calculus. Unless you bitchslap the sytem and make fundamental changes.

There have been discussions over the years about the difference between the student movement in the 60s in the US and in France. Well, as with quality of life in general, France's student movement did in fact result in changes. In the US, we elected Richard Nixon as a backlash; in France, Charles de Gaulle was forced to resign. There's something about a level of passion when something hits viscerally as opposed to intellectually. Pocketbooks and mortgaging the future for forever are pretty visceral. We'll see how this turns out, but my guess is that the bottom rung will suffer severely indeed.  Poorer students will be forced out, smaller schools may be shuttered. And, we'll import more folks with degrees from places like Mobai and Guangzhou. The middle class will become more of an afterthought and we'll see what happens next. Looks in a lot of ways though to this old Hegelian that the Universal Spirit is unfolding itself dialectically and headed for the next stage. Or, to use Marxist language, capitalism is revealing it's contradictions and we're headed for a clash between the American Dream or the American ideology and economic reality; a new omelet will be created, and eggs will be broken.

Took several months back in the early 60s for the cops to break out the teargas. This time, happened basically the same day. We'll see what's next...

Optimism

Charlotte Gainsbourg "Heaven Can Wait"
by charlottegainsbourg

Playing Palin, she thinks she freaking Madonna...

Divas do not make good politicians. I know people who have worked in the Senate, for example, and behind the scenes guys like Chris Dodd and Chuck Schumer are total dickweeds. Teddy Kennedy, except for the drunken Irishman schtick and the cockhoundness before his remarriage, was a fairly decent guy. The Alaska delegation seemed to have a fixation on assholes, although Begich has yet to offend anyone the way Ted Stevens offended all sentient beings. Bill Frist was supposedly a fairly nice guy; Trent Lott was charming; Bob Dole had an extraordinary sense of humor. In fact, I suspect Dole could join the Defeatists as Cato and make all our stuff here and at the outlier sites -- or sites of which we are outliers -- a lot better. His wife, on the other hand, makes dildoes look warm and cuddly. However, they were all invariably polite to people who demonstrate that they love them. Until now...



So, Sarah Palin is showing her true colors. Not that anyone needs to be surprised but...the AXE figures that she'll blame her self-induced flashing of the true Sarah on the liberal media somehow.

"We gave up our entire workday, stayed in the cold, my kids were crying," one man was quoted saying. "They went home with my wife. She was out here in the freezing cold all day. I feel like I don't want to support Sarah."...Another woman told Indy Channel, "We bought two books from Borders to have our receipt and our wristband to get it signed tonight. My books are going back to Borders tomorrow." The angry crowd turned on Palin as she returned to her "Going Rogue" tour bus. (Emphasis added)

First of all,  The Typepad is not recognizing Palin as a proper noun as I draft this, which means Michael Palin should sue. Next when a crowd of ignorant assholes turns from cheering and orgasmic moaning to booing and catcalls, that's pretty tame behavior. Wonder how many of these twits were carrying guns? If they'd shot the tires out and torched the goddamn bus while making her sign the books and their various body parts, and then barbecuing the kid, then they would have turned. Here, some dipshits got a comeuppance...delivered by the Moose-slaughterer Profundis herself...

This makes the John Stewart bit even more relevant. Seriously, if the candidate for whatever is this oblivious, this tone deaf, then all I can say is that Mitt-Plastic-Fantastic-Romney might have a chance. Huckabee is supposed to actually care about people, even though he gets his economic theory from Malthus. The more Palin shows that she's just a self-centered, baby-popping, ignorant cunt from the backwoods, the better their chances. However, neither MPFR nor Huckleberry can get the crowds riled up and the base enthralled. If I were the Dems, I'd stockpile this footage and play it often.

" The motive is not clear..."

I'm not sure what that says about police, California, or journalism, but the motive is pretty goddamn clear to me! He's Rick Santorum! Or, he's been paid by Rick Santorum. The money in question is such that it sounds like something the sexually frustrated right wing nuts would fund to defeat the defeat of Prop 8 or some such thing. Oh, I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok!

Have I mentioned lately that I hate California? And, if Crusader Ukelele of the Goddamn Happy Bubble is whom I think it is, I miss you all a lot too, and you should do Prom Dress Thursday in memory of me. And, do everything you can to hire this guy, because he could add some class to the operation...

If things are getting worse less quickly, they're still getting worse, you fucking moron!

GM only lost $1.15 million in the latest reporting period as opposed to the $1.5 billion I wrote yesterday. Ok -- I was typing faster than I was thinking or thinking faster than I was typing or, and I expect that this is really what I think, they have no fucking idea how much money they lost. They took a swag. "Somewhere between $1 and 2B, not sure, call it $1.15. Oh, and tell them we're going to pay off the government sooner than later. And, talk about the Hybrid Camaro we're going to make..." The Department of the Army announces that while they expect to top the total number of suicides this year, the actual rate at which soldiers are killing themselves is declining. That is definitely great, great news.

This is why statistical intelligence matters, folks. The fact that the slope of the line is changing doesn't mean that the general direction has changed. And, how much has the slope changed?  We might have a jobs bill now by Christmas? If they can get Ben Nelson on board?  Meanwhile, I dread answering the phone or even going out because I'm expecting to see folks or hear from folks who have just lost their jobs and need help. And, since I left mine so long ago, there's a real limit to the help I can give them. A limit that at times breaks my heart. Wonder if it breaks Ben Nelson's heart? Or Mitch McConnell's heart? Or, for that matter, Barrack Obama's heart? I suspect that these folks either intentionally or inevitably see only a Potemkin village of America, where everything is just humming along.

Well, gang, it's not. It's rapidly not humming along. Now, when our buddies the Bushies and the Ronnettes were running things, we could hope that if the Democrats got back in, things would get better. Instead, they get worse, only slower. Is less worse better? This isn't the Princess Bride, assholes, where you can be mostly dead. Although, we're mostly there...

Makes a fellow proud to be...WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN????

Wolfe Tones - Lough Sheelin Eviction
by irishimport

Sometimes the thing itself is the thing itself...so, here it is, in all it's glory. A simple statement of fact: WE SUCK AS A NATION!

The number of Americans who lacked reliable access to sufficient food shot up last year to its highest point since the government began surveying in 1995, the Agriculture Department reported on Monday.

In its annual report on hunger, the department said that 17 million American households, or 14.6 percent of the total, “had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year.” That was an increase from 13 million households, or 11.1 percent, the previous year.

The results provided a more human sense of the costs of a recession that has officially ended but continues to take a daily toll on households; it describes the plight not of a faceless General Motors or A.I.G. but of families with too little food on their children’s plates.

Definite confusion...Peel me a nanner, toss me a peanut and a chevy!

Fritz Henderson, CEO of GM greets a pal!


My Google homepage has a widget that proclaims daily quotes, and another that provides useless facts.

The useless fact part today announced that Capuchin monkeys will show pleasure at the arrival of a pal by displaying an erection. The quotes part today cited Plato as saying, "they certainly give strange names to diseases." So, when the CEO of GM which has been threatening...promising... an IPO sometime soon announces great news, they only lost 1.5 BILLION dollars and can start paying the government back for all the money we shoveled into their maw, I have to wonder if he had a hard-on under his desk, assuming this was on a conference call. If it was a speech, did the podium move? And, the big shots in business give really strange names to failure. 

And now, for something completely different, yet strangely apropos...

Note to self: There is no such thing as a small ammunition fire...

While I'm pretty sure that we'll never know a lot more than we do now about the Russian debacle/fireworks show/ etc., we need to recall that this is kinda, sorta something they seem to do periodically. And, shudder a bit. I've spent a lot of time around ammunition and demolitions, and it's rare to have a bunch of that crap just blow up. Screw up, and it'll happen in a heartbeat. Don't screw up, pay attention and the stuff is pretty safe.

Now, of course, that's American ammo and NATO ammo. The Russian crap seems to blow at a moments notice. We have a minor vent at 3 Mile Island and the world ends; that was and probably is a daily event in their weapons and power industry. The reason why this is worth more than a giggle is simple -- Nukes are just as flakey. You don't need a detonation to have issues with nuclear arms--all you need to do is drop one and break the casing. Happens more frequently than anyone will admit...hell, soldiers, airmen, sailors are human beings, and Murphy will bite given half a chance.

So, then we look at the various loonies around the world who want Nukes, or have chemical weapons or just piles of ammo sitting around untended. The whole fucking third world is one big ammo dump, waiting for someone to not pay attention and short circuit a pile of electric detonators they temporaily stocked on the dynamite because, well, they were due for their mid-day prayer and hashish break.

 

So, what exactly do Paul Simon, Ozzie Osborne and Megadeath have in common with Amy Grant?

Sometimes the best snark is to let the snarkettes just talk for themselves. We can try, and thanks Wonkette and Right Wing Watch for trying. But, besides the news that it's illegal to burn paper in North Carolina --Not crosses? -- the thing itself is...the thing. 

That's Not A Rose

"My life don't mean a hell of a lot to me, but if I can make it mean something to somebody else, that's my endeavor." - the elderly terrorist in the above video

what evil lies in the hearts of men?  what aberrant, alien and vicious ideology could spawn such self-effacement?  such self-denial?  such self-annihilation?  it's like his targets don't even matter, like he's completely outside of the ends/means rationality that most of nearly all of us operate within.  it's a total expression, utterly without the gravities of reality.  where does this guy come from?    

one can only wonder.