the defeatists!

Mickishness and vaguely errotic techie stuff beat out boobs and fisting

At one point, a great American predicted we would be an important blog. We tried to have him committed. Well, shit fuck eat out Batman, we appear to be on our way!  Not sure that there are any Irish guys in Minnesota to speak of, and the cable plug male- female thing is a little scary -- someone finds that erotic? or confused us with Fry's?--but the fact that  something about the Catholic West Point beat out Britney and boob sucking on our site as a search phrase is gratifying. Except, of course, that our numbers are down. With our numbers down, no one will buy crap from Amazon or Pajamas and we won't get the latte's we're all banking on. I invite all Defeatists to just post random comments of babbling idiocy, pornography and conspiracy to plump up the numbers. It's not for the AXE, but AGI and El S need the fully loaded banana triple shot mochas to train for disrupting the Olympic trials...

Not to forget Einstein, Ezra Pound and Cinderella

January 31, 2008 -- with apologies To Eliot and Auden

.If we are hollow men, these are hollow times indeed...   

"Hi-tech Dubai has been hit hard by an Internet outage apparently caused by a cut undersea cable.
One major telecommunications provider blamed the outage, which started Wednesday, on a major undersea cable failure in the Mediterranean.India's Internet bandwidth has been sliced in half, The Associated Press reported, leaving its lucrative outsourcing industry trying to reroute traffic to satellites and other cables through Asia.Reports say that Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain are also experiencing severe problems.Nations that have been spared the chaos include Israel -- whose traffic uses a different route -- and Lebanon and Iraq. Many Middle East governments have backup satellite systems in case of cable failure.There were contradictory reports on the real cause behind the disruption, but Du, a state-owned Dubai telecom provider, attributed it to an undersea cable cut between Alexandria, Egypt and Palermo, Italy.--CNN"

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow 
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- A police motorcade the length of a football field escorted troubled pop star Britney Spears to a Los Angeles hospital early Thursday to get her some help, a law-enforcement official told CNN.

Police motorcycles join a motorcade leaving singer Britney Spears' Los Angeles home Thursday. 
This is the second hospital visit for Spears this month, coming after her psychologist called the police, according to the Los Angeles Times. She was removed from her home for a "mental evaluation hold," according to the L.A. Times. The North Hollywood Police Department sent about eight officers to Spears' hilltop house in Studio City, California, about 12:55 a.m. Thursday, according to the law enforcement official, who asked not to be identified because he's not authorized to comment publicly.The group at Spears' house included plainclothes officers, motorcycle police, ambulance crews and some police "brass," the official said

 

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                For Life is very long  

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AP) -- A deputy coroner testified Wednesday that she was delayed in getting to a public suicide victim because she had to make personal deliveries for her high-profile boss, who is being tried on suspicion of using county staff to benefit his lucrative private practice. 

Cyril Wecht is on trial, charged with 41 counts of fraud and related offenses.
Darlene Craig said a supervisor told her to deliver documents or other items for then-Coroner Cyril Wecht as she left for the suicide call, which was a half-hour drive from the coroner's downtown office.
"So I made those three deliveries before I actually went to the hanging," Craig testified. "And the body was hanging outside.""Literally hanging?" Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Stallings asked.
"Yes," Craig said. Wecht, 76, built a multimillion-dollar practice that has spawned books and television appearances by inquiring into the deaths of Elvis Presley, JonBenet Ramsey and Vincent Foster, among others.

Between the desire 
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

"By Dana Priest

 

Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside, a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who was waiting for the Army to decide whether to court-martial her for endangering another soldier and turning a gun on herself last year in Iraq, attempted to kill herself Monday evening. In so doing, the 25-year-old Army reservist joined a record number of soldiers who have committed or tried to commit suicide after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan."I'm very disappointed with the Army," Whiteside wrote in a note before swallowing dozens of antidepressants and other pills. "Hopefully this will help other soldiers." She was taken to the emergency room early Tuesday. Whiteside, who is now in stable physical condition, learned yesterday that the charges against her had been dismissed.

                                For thine is the kingdom  

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but with a whimper 

 

" Bridge safety leaped to the top of the agenda of federal highway administrator J. Richard Capka in August, when 13 people died in the collapse of a bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.

But even before the disaster, it would have been a personal concern if Capka had examined the bridges on the shortest drive from his home in suburban Virginia to his office in Washington, D.C. On the day the Minneapolis bridge fell, three of those bridges were overdue for their safety inspections.

The inattention to the bridges on the highway administrator's commute is not unique, according to an msnbc.com analysis of newly released records from the National Bridge Inventory. The records, which include inspections through 2006, show several failures in federal oversight of the system designed to ensure the safety of travelers crossing the nation's bridges:"

The Muses of History play with our minds, Or, Matt Groenig for President!!!

Our Nominee for Procurator of Mesopotamia? Uh, no...

Slapping the terrorists as in the global war on terrorism is like playing whack a mole. Iraq has fallen off the  front pages, which I find interesting. It's fallen off the news, for the most part. Between the Rodent, McCain, Batboy and Bobblehead, we know that we're going to be in that cesspit for the foreseeable future. There are some places smart invaders stay the hell out of -- Mesopotamia, Afghanistan and Russia. While I doubt that some future American president will be defeated on the field of battle and have molten uranium poured down his throat a la Crassus during his effort to prove himself the military equal of Caesar and Pompey;  nor, do I expect POTUS to be captured and used a  footstool although stranger things have happened. While Tiffany heads our Pantheon, the muses of history resembles a coven of  Comic Book Guy , George Will  Gore Vidal and Hannah Arendt . History is a bitch, and the American electorate is being bitch slapped..

Now, if we re-institute the office of Censor, this guy could do a decent Cato...

I say this knowing that the change in the political landscape is intriguing and somewhat disappointing. I was hoping that RugyG would hang in there, so that the entire world could learn to despise him and the whole America;s Mayor bullshit. However, he appears to have had an attack of whatever put him out of the 2000 contest against Bobblehead. I don;t mean prostate cancer -- I mean realization that his act doesn't play well. I find the departure of John Edwards sad. He had the most substance of the Democratic candidates, and couldn't connect with the Democrats. Of course, it's hard to gain support from the money changers in the temple when a large part of your stomp speech advocates eviscerating and stuffing them with their own gold. Still, Batboy's pitch about change is interesting -- it's like Doctor Phil only in the political arena, including Oprah. Frankly, I suspect that Batboy wants to be president for laudable reasons; but, there's really nothing there that I can see. Actually, I tend to agree with Stephen Colbert, who points out that he was polling in double digits before the rug was yanked out from under him in South Caolina. Frankly, a lot fo the idealistic white kids who flock to Obama could as easily gone for Colbert. If Batboy drops 10% in South Carolina, well, then things are less exciting. And, despite the piling on, Billl Clinton is absolutely right about the results. South Carolina's Democratic party demographics looks a helluva lot like the vote totals.

For Pontifex Maximus...You really need an atheist
Why do people keep calling Florida cosmopolitan?  Or diverse? Frankly, it's diversity is interesting to me -- strong indigenous white trash/cracker population living without air conditioning and complaining about them outsiders make up the central core except for Orlando which is dominated by the Kingdom of the Rat, traffic jams and cheap housing sold expensively. At the top of the state, a crosspiece of similar types, only less concerned about tourists and outsiders since nobody really wants to live there except Joe Scarborough. Lots of poor blacks, living in shotgun shacks without air conditioning and running water. Often just off main street. Miami -- which has the intellectual depth of Las Vegas combined with Cuban coffee, Haitian religious practices, Columbian drug lords, and a huge concentration of New Yorkers who moved there so they could bitch about the heat and the inability to get a nice piece of white fish. (My mom had the experience of going into a fish market and looking for haddock or cod, only to be told "Them's Yankee fish! We gots grouper!" Lots of military retirees, a space program and what exactly is the purpose of the place? Here's a question -- Jacksonville? I like Jacksonville, it's a real city. Now, what the fuck do they do there? Yeah, they have a NFL team -- why is it there? Tampa Bay was too weird for Lou Pinella, and he endured the Mariners front office that managed to not keep Ken Griffey, Randy Johnson, and bunches of other people. Outside of some good seafood places, Key West, Carl Hiassen , Dave Barry  and Tim Dorsey , I can conceive of no reason for the place to exist if it didn't.

For Chief Vestal...

So, on to California. I always had a lot of respect for John McCain but he's batshit. Seriously, the dude is 72, looks 62 but what exactly is he talking about? Staying the course, the surge worked (whack a mole!)and don't know much about economics, so...Romney claims to have been in the job creation business. The real economy. Well, the real economy in this country has been the military-industrial complex and its supporting structures. Remember, the interstate highway system was built as a defense  program. And, one Harvard MBA president is probably enough for a while...even though I suspect Romney got better grades.  When I listened to Romney's speech last night,  he started babbling about  how the Republican  party should own the issue of letting parents  decide where to send their children to school. I have no goddamn idea what that was about --  he wants to put  all schools on an equal financial footing?  Public, private,  parochial, charter?  Or,  is this a de facto appeal to racism?  Or what?  I  went to a  diocesan  high school  back in Syracuse.  The  Church realized that the model of k-12  parish schools was no longer economically supportable. The local parish schools that survived for a while , and some still do, ended up with a poorer, blacker, less likely to go to a four year college group. The prep schools run by the religious orders became economically prohibitive to most people. Costs have continued to escalate -- it appears that the diocese closed at least one of the schools. Hey, I got a good education there. I don't think people are hearing about Sartre in freshman year in most of Rodent's model schools. But, the model doesn't work without infusions of cash. Where the fuck is the cash going to come from?

So, now they're headed west. I feel so lucky. The debates will have smaller fields and maybe they'll actually have to say something. Probably not. We are probably looking at the possibility of a McCain-Huckleberry administration with Rudy as a member of the kitchen cabinet if not attorney general. (Although, if I were Chief Justice, I'd worry a lot if Rudy were lurking around. I'm sure he considers those robes a babe magnet.) On the Democratic side, we're looking at a mess. Of the one's left standing, I prefer Bobblehead to Batboy, but only because she knows enough not to bring a hymnal to a knife fight. However, the Washington-K street establishment has got to be sweating this outcome.

Empirical evidence that Tiffany is She Who Is

The eye surgery went well in that I am not blind nor have become addicted to painkillers. However, the surgeon presented me a choice -- he could do conventional lasik on the left eye and not hte new, super-duper high tech stuff saving that for the right eye, or he could do LASEK which involves basically a chemical peel of the cornea's outer layer and then do the super duper high tech stuff. There was no downside except an extended convalescence Which I have spent basically unable to see. Morning trips from the Crossroads of Opportunity to the Optamologist's are totture since I've been reacting to light sort of like Christopher Lee in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. Having Mrs. AXE drive me down I-15 with a towel over my head has been amusing, because I have visions of odd calls to the Highway Patrol.

Anyway, I can see well enough to read with difficulty today, and one of my brothers sent me this. A woman claims divine calling to go backstage at American Idol and minister to the contestants. Now, if that's the thing that the singularity we chose to call Tiffany choses to devote her time to, then, damn, I'm a fucking prophet. What's stranger, of course, is that someone actually put it in a newspaper. The OC Register is a real newspaper. Batboy has yet to grace it's pages, although I think Jeff from Protein Wisdon had a nude shot a couple of years ago. At least, AGI has led me to believe he did a tasteful thing with a head of lettuce and a blender...

Giacometti's Dog

Crusader AXE spent the day in union negotiations. Since we have a lawyer leading our side, there isn't much for me to do except stay awake and look wise. Or, awake. Anyway, to keep from going insane with boredom as they argued about the placement of commas versus semi-colons, I started to reflect. The great IOZ recently discussed the advantages of being involved  managing finance and accounting with an undergraduate education in something utterly not finance or accounting. He did English; I did Philosophy. Both are critical to life, I think; they are also somewhat irrelevant to making a living. That is what grad school is for, of course. And the Army.

Anyway, his starting point, that those most expert in an area are sometimes least able to function in it's practical application seemed brilliant, commonplace and illuminating. Now, I spend some of my time playing with numbers, but I spend a lot of time with people, trying to resolve issues and problems that are ultimately those of an adult day care center. Most employee issues seem ultimately to involve either money -- which can be quantified -- or the failure to adequately demonstrate love to the little bastards. And, if you try, you tend to be blamed by both sides in the issue. There are things more thankless than being a human resources person, but not many. However, it is a great place to hang out if you are fascinated by people and their irrationality.

So, I have some other insights. Since I'm having Lasik tomorrow -- even surgery is preferable to contract negotiations -- I probably won't feel like being profound, or humorous. So, to fill up the hours until then --
William Barrett  is a dead American philosopher who focuses on the history of modern Philosophy while trying to provide some context to the thought behind the pages. His best known work, and the one that had the most impact on me, is Irrational Man.  Barrett tried to explain existentialism, but at the same time put it into the historical, cultural and spiritual context of the times. One of the things that I recall is the idea that understanding the world from a rational point of view is in itself an irrational endeavor.

If being a rational person means anything, it means trying to understand the world in a logically consistent, evidence-based and consistent manner. Science, logic and evidence are critical. However, the world is not rational -- aspects can be measured, of course. But, there are things that can not be measured, managed or understood. Some of this is irrational -- emotions, feelings, predjudices, intuitions and so on. But, there is another level, perhaps a-rational, that lies beyond the rational and the irrational. We have no way of framing this adequately -- the concept of God is an example. I refer a lot to Tiffany, our deity here at Defeatist Central. However, we begin by admitting that Tiffany is a construct. I do not believe that the underlying cause of the universe is a somewhat illiterate teenage girl with a weight problem and a vibrator. Maybe it should be, but it isn't. Any attempt to frame the issue in a rational way is irrational -- any attempt to frame it in an irrational way is absurd or trite. There are other questions, issues and concerns that are equally a-rational. You can't approach them in a way that is logically consistent, evidence-based or consistent. You can't approach them at all...Some of it you can accept -- the sum of the squares of the sides of right triangle are equal to the square of the hypotenuse is an example. Don't ask why, it just is.

Most human interactions are not rational; issues of love, honor, respect and the impact of them on people and societies can be described, but you can't always explain them. Why do the Sunnis and the Shi'ites hate each other? Why do we need to know that Dennis Kucinich  has dropped out of the Democratic contest? Why do we feel compelled to joke about death? Why not? What makes a song sit in your head like a worm eating your brain and why is it usually something by the Beegees or the Archies?

Thus, it really makes no sense to try and be rational. The rational man is irrational. And, the sound of one hand clapping is a cat. So, if IOZ is correct, and the specialist is unable to function well because of their specialization, and I am right about the disadvantage adhering to the rational man in an irrational world, then exactly what am I saying? Perhaps the sound of one hand clapping is a cat that is a dog...

The paperback of Barrett's Irrational Man I used in Metaphysics class in 1970 had a Giacometti statue on the cover..today's version has some cubist thing, but I think that Giacometti's statue was a better a representative, of the cat that is a dog. And, the other way around...

Been there, done some of that, skipped the t-shirt

Wonkette's 24/7 coverage of L.Ron Paul and his 'tards is kind of amusing, especially since the Paulist Zealots have felt provoked and keep trying to screw with the Wonks...However, the news that they parked the RP Blip at the New Smyrna Airfield and then blocked traffic on the Dixie Highway brought back memories...bad memories.

Daddy AXE and Mom left the relative civilization of upstate New York to join the hordes of northerners who are compelled to leave their homes and families at retirement and move someplace with no roots, no family, no friends and cockroaches the size of poodles. I've been to the state five times -- the first on my way to Germany in winter after finishing my first extended stay in the Shire of Ectopia. It was warm. I liked it -- the nascent arthritis stopped hurting. The second time, I was coming back from Germany, in winter, with the arthritis really kicking in. I made noises about maybe moving to the place after I retired from the Army. My father looked at me, shook his head like he always did when I said something existentially stupid, and said, "Don't do it. It's hotter than hell, the state bird is the mosquito, there are no jobs excepts waitressing and selling t-shirts, there are no services, the schools suck and the only reason to come here is to die." Next time was pick up an award from my professional hobbit association, and then a week later, to bury Dad. Next time was to bury Mom. They lived in Edgewater, which is southern New Smyrna. The municipal airport is silly, but it fronts the Dixie Highway.

Ok, Florida sucks. Andy Jackson did some great things, but Spain should be forced to take the fucking place back. However, if Ron Paul knocks RudeeG out of the race because of the passion of his iklettes, I'll think differently about the place. Not kindly, but  differently.

Say wha? Like, this is a critical issue in South Carolina...

Have you noticed that the state with the longest border with Mexico, Texas, seems to have the least concern about illegal immigrants. Now, the Mexicans regarded Austin et al as basically wetbacks from across the Sabine and the Red rivers, but there seems to be a direct relationship between the social services offered in the state and the degree of anger about illegals. Texas treats its own people like dogshit, so whaddacare about some more dogshit people to treat like dogshit? California has lousy services at a high cost, so what the hell? New Mexico and Arizona actually try to take care of their people, so they have issues and are interested in doing something. That said, Huckleberry's ringing endorsement from the Minutemen (thanks, Wonkette!!) really is so silly as to need no comment. Last I looked, his plan for illegals had to do with Trevette and Walker saddlin' up for some Texas style whoopass...

(This version CORRECTS that Lee and King streets do NOT intersect in Little Rock.)

Well, they are both worthy men. However, this does  really prove that the new South is sorta like new Coke. Which, a significant number of our readers won't recognize as a reference to a  bad idea.  What I find particularly interesting is that Marse Robert probably didn't worry all that much about Arkansas except as source of cannon fodder to help protect Virginia. While I'd personally probably prefer to hang out with Lee and his lieutenants, if there is hope for our collective future, Dr. King is the avatar.

Batboy panders to the Reaganites and people fail to notice

Despite the resemblance, not Paul Krugman...

Paul Krugman is curious about the dog that didn't bark in the night. Hell, it didn't roar, howl, piss itself or tear big bloody chunks out of the fence holding it in. Except for a brief sighting of John Edwards saying he'd never say anything like that, the moment passed. Basically, the dog woffed, licked its balls and went back to sleep. Batboy checked the box of endorsing an evil fantasy while the  unions failed to pull their endorsements, neither JJ Jackson nor big Al Sharpton woodshedded the guy, things progressed swimingly...

I refer to the endorsement of Ronald Reagan as savior which is patently absurd when Dick Cheney says it and is more absurd when Batboy said it. If Ronnie had had his way, Batboy would be holding a horse in front of the mansion. Krugman points out that

I understand why conservatives want to rewrite history and pretend that these good things happened while a Republican was in office — or claim, implausibly, that the 1981 Reagan tax cut somehow deserves credit for positive economic developments that didn’t happen until 14 or more years had passed. (Does Richard Nixon get credit for “Morning in America”?)But why would a self-proclaimed progressive say anything that lends credibility to this rewriting of history — particularly right now, when Reaganomics has just failed all over again?

Krugman goes on to say that the big failure of the Clinton years was the failure to change the narrative.

Well, I’d say that the great failure of the Clinton administration — more important even than its failure to achieve health care reform, though the two failures were closely related — was the fact that it didn’t change the narrative, a fact demonstrated by the way Republicans are still claiming to be the next Ronald Reagan.

First clue -- Not Ronald Reagan because less blowdyed, not greasy kid stuff...

If the previous twelve years had been reframed as an example of bad economic policy combined with disastrous foreign policy but with a smiling laxative salesman as a front man. We should probably remind ourselves that Bush I was in the White House when the Berlin Wall came down. If anyone in the US deserves credit for the fall of the Soviet Union, it's probably Charlie Wilson. Krugman has a tendency toward anticlimax in his writing at times which isn't terribly surprising, I guess, for an Princeton economist and text book author turned pundit. Most of us could stand a tough year being lectured and forced to exercise on the The Art of Rhetoric and The Poetics  and The Nicomachean Ethics Still, when he nails it, he really nails it:

Not Barrack Obama, at least not yet...

"Like Ronald Reagan, President Bush began his term in office with big tax cuts for the rich and promises that the benefits would trickle down to the middle class. Like Reagan, he also began his term with an economic slump, then claimed that the recovery from that slump proved the success of his policies. And like Reaganomics — but more quickly — Bushonomics has ended in grief. The public mood today is as grim as it was in 1992. Wages are lagging behind inflation. Employment growth in the Bush years has been pathetic compared with job creation in the Clinton era. Even if we don’t have a formal recession — and the odds now are that we will — the optimism of the 1990s has evaporated.This is, in short, a time when progressives ought to be driving home the idea that the right’s ideas don’t work, and never have."

Of course, Batboy Obama is running on the idea of change. Caesar supposedly returned from Gaul to save the Republic. Bill Clinton didn't have sex with that woman. The whole thing is horseshit. It's going to take a lot of people who are willing to stay on message to change the narrative -- Reagan wasn't just a snake oil salesman, he didn't just use it on his hair, he bathed in the stuff. Instead, our "progressives" make nice with the ghost of mediocrity, failure and senility. I worry about Alzheimer's when I miss some spelling errors. (I don't worry a lot -- unlike a lot of instruments, Hobbitslicer is not all that precise a tool). Has anyone noticed that Reagan was diagnosed in 1994 with Alzheimer's disease? He slept through most of his presidency.

So, Crusader AXE is now channeling Crispin "Mad-dog" Sartwell on John Kerry where Batboy is concerned. What can I do to today to keep him from being the Democratic nominee?