"I think they are all homosexual communists in Satan's army...I espect as well they all live together and bathe together every morning and have the anal sex with one another, with the fisting and the guinea pigs." - Manuel Estimulo
"I can never quite tell if the defeatists are conservative satirists poking fun at the left or simply retards. Or both. Retarded satire, perhaps?" - Kyle
"You're an effete fucktard" - Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom
"This is the most pathetic blog ever..." - Ames Tiedeman
"You two [the Rev and el Comandante] make an erudite pair. I guess it beats thinking." - Matt Cunningham (aka Jubal) of OC Blog
"Can someone please explain to me what the point is behind that roving gang of douchebags? I’m being serious here. It’s not funny, and doesn’t really make anything that qualifies as logical argument. Paint huffers? Drunken high school chess geeks?" - rickinstl
Years ago, when I was spending three years in College Station, Texas working with a group of modern day re-enactors, the Army Reserve, one of the officers asked if I would like to take a day and go visit a project he was working on the Extension Service. There was this monstrous Chicken Farm up by Luck, and they were trying to figure out what to do with the methane produced by the chickenshit...they had giant fans, but in east-central Texas, all that chickenshit in the summer was just impossibly odiferous, so to speak, and the ammonia-methane-ambiance was having lots of unintended consequences...among other things, it was killing the chickens. I passed. Actually, the other active duty guy and I looked at each other, looked at our uniforms, and told him to take his straw cowboy hat and go the fuck away...
You know, at times in my life, I've demonstrated the intellectual curiousity of, well, George Bush. I didn't go to the Beijing Opera in Shanghai. I didn't go to the official Catholic services in the old Jesuit church in Shanghai. And, I didn't go to the fucking chicken farm. I've also avoided whorehouses, opium dens, self-help seminars and Mormons. Saw two of the bastards wandering the streets of Barstow yesterday evening...bet they're having some interesting conversations. The problem with not saying,"Yeah, OK, what the fuck..." to every offer of a new experience is that you may avoid social diseases, addiction and Mormons, but you miss out on things you might want to describe to someone as being kinda cool or interesting in a scarey way, or world changing. By passing up Roy Childers invitation to see the chickenshit factory, I missed an opportunity to see something that was going to develop into something ultimately world changing. We're not just drowning in Bullshit a la Twitshit de la Dweeb; it's also bullshit, pigshit and ultimately chicken shit.
Ever get pissed at some asshole for blaring his damn stereo so loud three cars away that you feel like you're inside the woofer? There appears to be a good. Not sure which would be worse, or closer to cruel and unusual punishment, but I like the concept...kind of a reverse Noriega, where instead of death metal you play this...
or this:
This bit of Grand Guigol on the other hand, is just repulsive. I particularly find the bit about the Temp Agency a bit of gratuitous assholedry...
I'm working tomorrow. Actually, I'm going to go in, take a class on export control that really doesn't have anything to do with me, and fiddle around with some stuff. May hang some new art in the office, possibly bring along a guitar and jam by myself, read crap. Dinner last night was breakfast at Cocos...I find it odd that they have sold more Harvest pies this year than the total pies they sold last year. I had a lobster asparagus omlet, which substituted brocoli for the asparagus...figure that one out. Anyway, they had run out of pumpkin for their pies by 6PM; is it just the Crossroads of Opportunity that decided to splurge on pie this year? Or are people cutting back on heating things like oven? Lots of turkey TV dinners, maybe?
I've been thinking about a lot of nonsense. However, the Hegelian in me is coming out -- the inherent contradictions of whatever you want to call our economic-government-political system are spiraling. Had a long talk with my sister this morning; she said that in Michigan, the autoworkers are going around in tears, and really getting pissed. They watched the entire congressional hearings, and it appears that Carl Levin had a moment or two, as did the President of the UAW going up against Shelby of Alabamdama...seems that Alabama paid over $175K per worker for training for the four foriegn car companies that set up shop in Alabama. Where the hell did that come from? Taxes on Crimson Tide T-shirts? I know a guy who is in Workforce Development in Alabama, and he described the training for the Hyundai plant -- they basically put people on the state rolls and trained them completely so that the day the plant opened, all the workers were already so well trained they knew exactly where to go and what to do...So, to listen to the radicalization of my lifetime Republican sister and brother-in-law is both enraging and interesting. It is not gratifying...being right about how badly the country has been run in this right-center-right way since 1980 doesn't gratify me. Schadenfreude, perhaps, but not a lot...
I then flipped on the TV. Obviously nothing, but I did catch the last half of Standing in the Shadows of Motown. I was really amazed; I knew that the band was hot, but it was a three guitar band, which I had never realized. While I never liked My Girl, I had never been able to play the rif...which is a classic and iconic rif, right up there with Louie Louie and Beethoven's Fifth. Incredibly simple, since the guy who played it showed about three times. His name was Robert White, and he died in 1992. Shortly before his death, he had dinner with another musician, and that rif started playing on the Muzak. He started to tell the waiter that that was him, and then stopped. When asked by the musician why he didn't say that it had been him, he said that he was just an old loser, and the waiter would never have believed him...Sad stories abound in this film...
The latest violent protest to rock China's export machine was still simmering Wednesday at the massive plant, which makes Nerf toys for the U.S. company Hasbro Inc. ...The volatility underscored the urgency of China's efforts to keep stoking an economy weakened by the global financial crisis...To protect jobs and social stability, the government recently signed off on a multibillion-dollar stimulus plan. Officials have also been urging factories to avoid large layoffs and to try retraining employees to keep them off the streets..."When times are bad economically, a small incident can rapidly become a big one," said local Communist Party official Guo Chenming, who was monitoring the situation Wednesday outside the toy factory in Dongguan.
It's not like Dongguan is a big tourism site. "Dongguan is a must-pass-by locality from Guangzhou to Hong Kong by road or waterway." It does have a pretty cool bridge and is right on the Pearl River...but, most Americans including probably Hasbro haven't heard of it. Oh, it has 7 fucking million people...
So, oddities abound. I wonder if the rioting workers threw nerf balls at the cops...
Well, again, we do have inherent contradictions here at Defeatist Central...
So, the world is still ending and I get a call from my mortgage broker --- they can refinance my loan. Opps, no they can't...there's money to borrow, but everybody's so upside down on equity that it really doesn't help. Ok, I understand numbers...here's an even more exciting piece of flying feces though ---- Muslim and Indian assholes (The dickless Hobbits of Typepad's new setup doesn't want to embed the link so here. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/world/asia/27mumbai.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink) ...err, extremists are going at each other in India, trying to convince by violence that God hates bacon or loves cows, indiscriminately. You gotta love it! Nutcases in a nuclear armed country are shooting at each other, and there's a history of the Pakistani army and security services trying to fuck things up in India. Can anyone say Kashmir? ...And another $800B for bad paper?
Hate to say it, but this handoff is starting to remind me of the climax of a movie that ended well with some great bits by De Niro...Substitute Barrack for Brashear and there we are, audacious and hopeful, on one leg wearing 300 pounds of weight...
In case you're not clear, the table represents a visitor's table in a jail house, and the card was drawn by a kid from a local grade school. I'd like to think it was just the Crossroads of Opportunity, but since the USA is the world's biggest jailer...
"I'd like to have the faith to believe...but, I have thoughts. And thoughts can really fuck up the whole faith thing...just ask any Catholic priest." -- Lewis Black
Spouse decided to go off to San Diego for the day to some Women's Group Diabetes thingee...and had to leave at 5:30. AM. So, after dropping her off, I wandered over to the central hub of the Center of Opportunity, went to Starbucks and got a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and paid entirely too much for it. However, it'll taste excellent later...
However, before going back to the rack, there are a few things that might help others. Think of it as Crusader AXE's way of sharing wisdom that keeps him up at night pondering...
Why is deflation a bad thing? As I was passing the gas station I use most often, I saw that gas is now well below half what it was in September. Yea! Fuck the oil companies! USAUSAUSA! Well, it doesn't quite work that way. Think of the money supply as a star, as the sun so to speak. Ideally it's dynamically doing it's whole continuous nuclear reaction thing, but in a steady state providing energy that, at least at our distance from the center, supports life. However, if the sun starts to grow, to become a supernova, bad things can happen. That's inflation. Inflation is good if you have a lot of debt, because it takes less work to pay off the debt. There's a fine line between unsupportable inflation and supportable, in fact, desireable inflation. Growth requires some small level of inflation; T-bills, for example, pay their holders based on an estimate -- the old marketplace thing -- of the cost of inflation over the life of the bond and the "liquidity" premium -- how much you could have made investing the money elsewhere, or how much fun you could have had spending it. If I invest in a $10K note, my risk is minimal if not non-existent; however, the US government is paying rent, as it were, on the ability to hold my money. If the maket thinks the inflation rate is going to be high, the inflation premium and the liquidity premium will be higher; if lower, then lower. Well, as people flee the stock market for bonds, the price of bonds is bid
down...it costs less and less for the government to borrow, or to "rent" your money, because you have fewer or fewer desireable alternatives. You may be unwilling to invest in Starbucks stock, for example; and, you are less willing to spend the discretionary money for two lattes and a goat cheese/portobello mushroom sandwich every day. Starbucks has to lower it's prices to keep sales up enough to support it's financial structures -- supplies, wages, debt and dividends -- but can't lower it too much. Suppliers are the first to be squeezed; then wages rapidly stagnate if not decline; there are efforts to renegotiate debt, either having some of it forgiven or to drastically lower rates; and shareholders suffer because earnings are lower. If runaway inflation is the sun going super nova, think of runaway deflation as the star becoming a black hole...
Bubbles and crashes are examples of isolated sectors -- internet, housing, tulip bulbs -- going nova or becoming black holes. Sustainable growth in the economy avoids bubbles and crashes. However, that means human beings avoid greed, speculation and stupidity. There's no difference in someone making $50K a year buying a house for no money down and a negative equity than the same person going to Vegas and putting it all on black at a roulette wheel...odds initially are probably a lot better, so long as you get in early in the bubble than at the tail end, but the principle is the same. In casino terms, you're betting on the come in craps, and it's a sucker bet. Sarah Palin and the turkey. As far as I can see, everybody is the loser on this one except the turkey she pardoned...and even then, I have to wonder, what happened to the Turkey? Did they release it to the wild? Turn the dogs on it? Or, was it killed and processed after the photo op? I think the "oh, let's do this in front of the killing floor, that's some local Alaska color" indicates the utter lack of any situational awareness on the part of the woman and her team...which at this point must be the First Dude and Levi... And, as Mudflats points out, she lies too. As for the media and the reaction of those of us who were shocked, shocked that turkey day requires killing the goddamn things, well, our adopted brother IOZ nails the hypocrisy. I must say though, Palin really appears to be Tiffany incarnate...clueless, oblivious, not all that bright, and incredibly self-centered.
If I'm wrong about the existence of God, is that really a bad thing? Or, if Christians and Jews are right, is that a good thing? Lewis Black put it better than I can...Hey Abraham, bring your kid, we'll barbecue him!
In the Carter Administration, Trudeau responded to Jimmy Carter's reference to Bob Dylan with "Jimmy Thudpucker," a sort of John Denver/Jackson Browne figure who was hanging out with Bob. Asking Bob how he felt about being labeled "an authentic American Voice" by Carter, the off-strip figure responds, "I was just trying to make it rhyme, man..." Probably that's the best way to become an authentic American voice...
So, it's with glee that I read that Joe Wurtzelbacker has a book deal. Joe is rapidly becoming the symbol of all that is wrong with the "working class American Reagan Republican" mythos. He's a fraud, and he's got a big mouth. I wouldn't hire him to run a lemonaide stand...and, on his own, I doubt he could finance one. So, with crotch shots of Caribou Barbie and Joe's new tome, I think we're in for multiple treats over the remainder of the Bush administration. Hopefully, nobody on the Obama team will do something worthy of indictment for a bit after the inauguration, and these folk can go back to doing their own thing.
Crusader AXE is unhappy with Sirius/XM. When I want to listen to Alt Country music, I don't want to listen to Mojo Nixon or Johnny Knoxville droning on and on about the size of Porter Waggoner's member. Hank Williams Jr is not an outlaw. He's a drunk. And on and on...XM used to have some exceptional programming that was accessible --Wednesday was all day Bobby Dylan and Thursday was all day Tom Petty. Now, who knows when they are on.
Anyway, of Dylan's theme a while back was Presidents. He had some "song poems" about Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon. Song poems are what happens when you have a frustrated wannabe writer and an add for "setting your words to music." Probably going to go the way of the great speckled bird given our current technology, but a group of studio musicians would put down a groove and sing the thing. They work is pretty cynical; think vanity press sort of cynicism. The one about Nixon began with the title of this piece.
While I think it's pretty obvious that among the areas in which Twitshit de la Dweeb has been a disaster includes science, obviously other people have different ideas. Bush's thinking is more "magical" than scientific. Hell, this administration has surpassed the "trees cause pollution/ketchup is a vegtable" nonsense of the Reagan years. But, in much the same way as the author of the God gave us Nixon song, Bush's science adviser published something with a different take in Physics World
"Today, the scientific enterprise in the US is strong, highly productive and significantly greater than it was eight years ago. Contrary to popular mythology, President Bush has devoted more attention to science and technology in his official actions than most of his predecessors. Strains and imbalances exist among the various research fields, but the Bush administration has initiated programmes to address many of these on a prioritized basis. However, despite the magnitude of competing national needs and fiscal constraints affecting all domestic federal programmes, science in the US has moved forward substantially during the Bush years. "
While the commentators at Physics World aren't quite as feisty as those at less "Physics-y" sites, the link to Discover is interesting.
So, are these morons delusional or do they really believe that we're stupid? The Fox Commentator who suggested that Obama take rhetoric lessons from Twitshit was probably sincere. But, come on, gang. The best thing you can say about Bush and science is that he hasn't burned any witches. Is this just some very broad satire , as Improbable Research suggests? Probably not; on the other hand, the guy has a Stanford PhD in Physics and was President of SUNY-Stoney Brook which is probably the best school in the New York state system, especially in sciences. So, I'm wondering. He's about ten years older than I am-- perhaps the Bush administration reached out and found academics with early onset Alzheimer's to fill these roles?
Speaking of Improbable Research, it's a non-guilty pleasure. One of the AXE's profs at the Catholic West Point said that an educated individual should be able to read The Scientific American and understand it. Well, I struggle with it, but I think Dr. Wilson was absolutely correct. For your viewing pleasure...
Last night, I heard Ariana Huffington suggest as one Oxbridge PhD to another that she and Rachel Maddow be put in charge of rehabilitating the Republican party because they both are committed to a two party system and because they are women and therefore more compassionate. I thought that was hilarious, but in the cold light of morning, it looks pretty good. Frankly, somebody has got to do something with these assholes.
I'm not talking about Batshit McCrazy. As the testosterone induced high of competition settled down, he's taken a look at what he's done, shuddered metaphysically, and is moving on to do what he has tried to do in his various incarnations -- serve the nation. I'm talking about a particular class of Republicans, a lot of whom seem to be tied to Dixie. We are seeing a bit of regional "Drop Dead" from these guys, and the psuedo-populism aside, I find it instructive. And, maddening -- at times, it strikes me that some of the Republicans are locked into a Pickett's Charge Mentality, only they have no Lee to say, "It's all my fault. We must gather our wounded and return to Virginia..." They have nothing but battle maddened reactionaries, babbling insanely about charging the hill again. If at times in the past 44 years the Democratic party has resembled the Children's Crusade, the party of the rich and powerful have been driven by a "God Wills It!" approach that is bloodier and more destructive but ultimately no less futile.
As I was driving around the installation yesterday, coming back from a government franchised Starbucks that isn't quite for lunch, my buddy and I started talking about my next car. I had been thinking about a Challenger, or maybe one of the new Camaros, or possibly the newest version of the Mustang in 2010. It was kind of sad to think that a muscle car guy had to now think about...BMWs. "Maybe an older 911." "No, but I make enough to easily handle a Boxster.." But, damnit, I don't want a goodamn Boxster! For everything wrong about the US, and anyone who's reading this knows that I'm pretty vocal about that aspect of things, I'm an American. And, if they have something I'd like to drive, I'd rather drive an American car. Frankly, looking forward to driving a Boxster excites me about as much as listening to a Swedish Band covering the Standells...speaking of which, for your viewing pleasure..
You see, they do it well, but they just don't quite get it...
The attitude toward the bailout for the car countries is instuctive. The center-left coalition that is the mainstream of the Democrats is interested in saving the economy from itself, but is not excited about status quo ante. The conservative-extremist-flat earth-troglodyte coalition that appears to be the ruling mob in the Republican party is interested in preaching it's ideology. Bob Herbert has a lovely (in the very Irish sense of the word, see Barry Fitzgerald discussing the burning of the Squire's house in The Quiet Man )characterization of the Big Three in today's column:
It’s easy to demonize the American auto industry. It has behaved with
the foresight of a crack addict for years. But even when people set
their own houses on fire, we still dial 9-1-1, hoping to save lives,
salvage what we can and protect the rest of the neighborhood. (AXE emphasis)
Now, a great many of the ideologically driven Republicans are really pissed off at the Bush administration's utterly upgefucked leadership and handling of the $700 billion dollar bailout, and equally pissed off at the indications that they put us incrementally on the hook for a lot more. Well, I don't blame them. However, while I find the banking industry and the finance industry interestingly awful in so many ways, that doesn't really translate to this. I can't feel too sad for the poor bastards at Merrill Lynch who lost a lot of paper wealth; I can feel really bad for some guy in a Detroit blue collar neighborhood who's worked for GM for 40 years and now watches his health care, pension and pride go away...I can feel really bad for the guy in Barstow who's a lead mechanic at the GM dealer who watches his subordinates get laid off and is told he has to take a 20% pay cut. (True story -- guy could come work for me, by the way -- except he has to have a high school degree. He has 20 current ASE certifications, which aren't easy to get. But, 30 years ago he dropped out of school and went to work. Worked hard. Saved his money. Did everything he was supposed to do...and now this.)
Hey, I'll stipulate that I have some self-interest here. My brother-in-law is an autoworker. He gets up at 3:30 in the morning, drives two hours to Romulus and then works as many hours as he can; he drives home, kisses my sister and goes to sleep. He's been doing this since the early 70s; suffered through layoffs until he got some seniority; relocated to Michigan when they closed the factory in Syracuse; has raised a couple of really good kids and gotten them through college and launched on careers. He did everything he's supposed to do...and with almost 40 years seniority and close to retirement, he's sweating about things that the power structure told him not to sweat about. He's been a life-long Republican, trying to hang on to the American dream of being in the middle-class. And, he feels abused and violated, and angry. Yet, he's still proud to make engines. He's excited about some of the innovation. He's disgusted that Pontiac has looked to fucking Australia for its rear wheel drive salvation.His only gripe with me is that I have never used the Friends and Family discount program through his benefits...and, he's proud of his company's products.
Shelby et al do have a possible dog in this hunt. There are a lot of cars manufactured in Alabama, for example. They just aren't made by the big 3 -- they're made by Honda, Hyundai, and Mercedes among others. These companies pay well, because they are using economics to keep the UAW out. They went to places like Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina to avoid the UAW. In talking to acquaintances in work force development from Alabama, Honda really has to pay a premium because of the way their company culture conflicts with the Alabamian (the resemblance to Albanian just struck me) culture. Both white and black workers are made to feel inferior to the mighty Japanese. But, the Koreans and the Germans get along fine with the workers...so, I could picture some local boosters saying, hey if GM goes, we'll profit.
Yeah. Well, that's just stupid. Not surprisingly short sighted of course -- the Babbits of the world, the Sarah Palins and the Grover Norquists and the Alan Greenspans are as fucked up as the big 3 have been. The foresight of crack addicts is a marvelous line...ideologues are very close to crack addicts. From Tim McVie or Trotsky Palin or Norquist isn't a big jump. But the flow from Buckley and Goldwater to Palin and Norquist is almost infinite. They say the words, but the words don't mean the same things.
Herbert begins his column with a discussion of the famous "Ford to city: DROP DEAD" approach to NYC fiscal crisis in the mid-70s. It took a woodshedding by world leaders to wake him up; there is a connection between the country and it's largest and most important city. If one fails, the other suffers. Well, in much the same way, there is a connection between our biggest manufacturing industry and the rest of the country. If it fails, then we're probably going to really suffer.
There is an opportunity here but in the financial realm and the manufacturing realm. Equity stakes are not the same as "nationalization." For the loans already outstanding and being misused, call the notes back and take serious equity stakes and conditions that serve the national interests. For manufacturing, equity stakes and serious, serious efforts to focus again on the national interests. Which, I think, are jobs that pay well, innovation, and technological leadership. Herbert's summation is clear and reasonable...
That means dragging the industry (kicking and screaming, no doubt)
into the 21st century by insisting on ironclad commitments to design
and develop vehicles that make sense economically and that serve the
nation’s long-term energy security requirements.
What I would
like to see is creative thinking on both ends of the bargain. Let the
smartest minds design a bailout that sparks a creative revolution in
the industry. Think of it as project synergy. (AXE emphasis: But, I am starting to get a little concerned about the whole Best and the Brightest trend. People who cite it ought to re-read Halberstram's book. It wasn't exactly positive...humility would be a good idea.)
Time’s wasting.( AXE Comment:And, the vultures are circling...)
7:25am - Wake up to alarm. Hit snooze as wife hits the shower. 7:34am - Get up. Brush teeth, wash face, comb hair, apply deodorant, get dressed. 7:45am - Make lunch for the day. Pack breakfast. Apply helmet or coat and hat. 7:55am - Kiss wife goodbye for the day. Bike to work. Avoid homeless. Discover previously undetected city smell. 8:10am - Settle into chair at work. Note again how bad this set up is for my posture. Check Pastis. 8:55am - Finish breakfast. Try to avoid making eye contact with those that pass by my cube. 8:57am - Ignore my office "buddy" who won't leave me alone, is uncomfortably friendly, is always too loud in the morning, and when he has a bad day, mopes so that you're forced to ask him about it. Spare me from these people, please. 9:55am - Finish reading google reader posts and updating Facebook. Think about what it was I was doing for work before I left the night before. 10:55am - Settle into the "work groove" - basically scour the Internet, check Facebook, daydream, look at the project I'm billing this time to, make intentionally furrowed brow faces, and point-n-click at a faster rate when anyone passes by my cube that has any authority whatsoever. 10:56am - Get up to make tea. Eat my snack apple. 11:35am - Is it lunch time yet? 11:59am - Make fun of something or someone at Monsieur's "place." 12:01pm - Lebowski reference dropped at Monsieur's "place." 12:15pm - Ask my Direct Boss what I should do next. 12:30pm - Lunch time: feverishly scour the Internet and hope for some interesting links or something funny from the GFA51 or Defeatist Central gang. 1:30pm - Take that dump I've been waiting out on all morning, right as lunch ends, to avoid the 1:50pm post lunch bowel purge backup in the Men's Room. Apparently there is a lot of undiagnosed IBS going on around here. (ed. - at 2:30pm today, all 8 stalls were filled with 8 dumping engineers.) 2:05pm - Post lunch coma peak. 2:55pm - Oh shit, it's only 3:00pm. Frantically scour the Internet looking for something, anything to take my mind away, far far away from this place. 3:25pm - The Superficial just uploaded some hot Angelie Jolie pics - SCORE! 3:35pm - Mild arousal dissipates. Have similar thought from yesterday: google reader doesn't update fast enough. 3:40pm - Drop another Lebowski quotation at Monsieur's "place." 4:10pm - Step out the back of the office for a breathe of fresh air. Remind self what it's like to feel sunshine and be human. 4:16pm - Grimace concernedly at computer as VP walks by. Click mouse louder. 4:21pm - Ignore phone call from my mother. Thank company for caller ID. 4:35pm - Discover problem with project. Agree with selves to remind Direct Boss first thing tomorrow morning. 4:55pm - Get into heated argument on some blog. Ramp cynicism to maximum, belittle other slave, reminding them without an ounce of self-awareness that this is in fact, just the Internet. Continue blogging. 5:00pm - Engrossed in blog post comment battle, I forget to leave. 5:15pm - Save blog comment in gmail and head home to work on it later. 5:25pm - Arrive at home, pet cats, kiss wife. Go for bike ride.
Listen folks, this is blogging, on the Internet. It is the farthest (furthest) thing possible from actual work. If you are at home all day and consider yourself a blogger, or a professional blogger, we've got news for you: you are in fact an unemployment number.
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