the defeatists!

LIfe sucks when you will your own extinction...

Shot in the ass, the hero crawled away into the brush--"The Boss is Crazy Too: The Story of a Boy and his Dog of a Boss, Mel Lazarus, 1963

]

Republican Candidate Vetting Process 2012

George Will made a comment concerning gay marriage this morning on his weekly attempt to pretend his baseball writing isn't the only thing anyone will remember him for to the effect that the opposition to gay marriage is literally dying. Mitt Romney went to a boxing match and jinxed the guy who lost by encouraging him. Common Cause and the Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives filed suit against the Senate for using the filabuster.  As absentee ballots and provisional ballots continue to be counted, Romney appears to have lost by more...

Well, life sucks if you're willing yourself extinct. If you've been reading my stuff, you know that I have an unrequitted, secret love for Maureen Dowd. We're about the same age, same ethnciity, same cultural bias, same religious roots -- although I suspect she's still a practicing Catholic as opposed to an anti-theist -- and we both like words, wit and traditional Catholic social values. She went to Catholic University, I went to Holy Cross. She graduated and went off to become a practicing political reporter, then occasional columnist and then anchor columnist on Sunday and Wednesday for the Times. Me, I joined the Army so I could extend my adolescence for another 23 years, playing with guns, working out, blowing things up...I think in a lot of ways, I got the better deal.

 

But damn, she writes well. When she's really off her game, she's pretty good. When she's good, she's very good indeed. When she's really good, DAMN. This is one of those columns. Her thesis, not all that different from Will's insight, is that the Republicans are going willfully extinct as a national party. She begins with an interesting anecdote:

My college roommates and I used to grocery shop and cook together. The only food we seemed to agree on was corn, so we ate a lot of corn. My mom would periodically call to warn me in a dire tone, “Do you know why the Incas are extinct?” Her maize hazing left me with a deeply ingrained fear of being part of a civilization that was obliviously engaging in behavior that would lead to its extinction. Too bad the Republican Party didn’t have my mom to keep it on its toes. Then it might not have gone all Apocalypto on us — becoming the first civilization in modern history to spiral the way of the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans. The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys.

While there were a lot of contributing factors in 2012, there are moments when you just had to stand there and wonder WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY THINKING?  The only really viable candidates nationally were probably Pawlenty and Huntsman and only Huntsman had a vision that didn't seem to involve hiring a witch hunter profundis and taking us all back to the dark ages. So, Pawlenty and Huntsman were gone very early. A pizza magnate, a menopausal madwoman who confused John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy when announcing her candidacy, a ego-drunk sack of hypocritical yesteryears claiming with some justification to being the intellectual center of the Republican world, W.2 -- a tall Aggie who was meaner, dumber and in this case zonked on pain medicationa troll from Texas who thinks it makes sense to base the modern world on the standards of the Roman empire, and Mitt Romney were the possibilities; in fact, most of the possibilities arose as temporarily viable because they had the virtue of not being Mitt Romney.  After Romney survives a war of attrition, he then selects an Eddie Munster look alike who actually refused to explain the math behind his tax reform and budgetary plans. Romney is revealed as a lumbering clown -- of course, he did that quite well last time, and the reality showed through to the deniers  with the 47% crack -- beginning at the Iowa State Fair when he argues that "Corporations are people too, my friend."

I'm not the Virginian, and you aren't Travis. Don't smile when you say that, you grinning zombie. Don't say it. Don't call me friend when you're not my friend.

Republican Convention 2012

Then we have a comedy of errors going on all 2012. Transvaginal probes. Eighty two members of the Democratic Party are card carrying members of the Communist Party. The Female body has defense mechanisms that kick in when there's legitimate rape. The sky is falling and massive inflation is right around the corner. Obama is a Kenyan Socialist Manchurian Candidate. A child conceived in rape is a blessing from God. (By that logic, Rosemary's Baby would be a blessing from God.) Cut taxes on the rich; cut spending on the poor, on education, on infrastructure. Government can't create jobs! (Particularly liked this when it was some Republican house member or Senator with 20 years seniority saying it.) We love our warfighters -- but if we take care of the Veterans, we're going to bust the budget and raise the deficit. "Hell no you won't!" Success in Libya, Iraq and a end-date to the Afgnasy (Yeah, I'm channeling the Russians here) ordeal are signs of weakness; not bombing Iran and widening that conflict at the bidding of the craziest of the Zionists in Israel; advocating war in Syria; and on and on and on...

What were they thinking?I watched the Karl Rove meltdown on Fox a couple of times and actually found it painful...but you know, facts have a way of biting you in the ass if you ignore them. I kinda, sorta actually felt bad for the guy -- he looked like a fat kid denied someone else's hotdog. The guy who coined the phrase "reality-based" as a pejorative was getting bitchslapped by that reality. As lots of commentators have noted, the facts seem to have a liberal bias these days.

 

Who would ever have thought blacks would get out and support the first black president? Who would ever have thought women would shy away from the party of transvaginal probes? Who would ever have thought gays would work against a party that treated them as immoral and subhuman? Who would have ever thought young people would desert a party that ignored science and hectored on social issues? Who would ever have thought Latinos would scorn a party that expected them to finish up their chores and self-deport?

I think it's possible, and patriotic, to vote against your own interests for the common good. But, the Republicans by hitching their wagons to Ayn Rand, a God not familiar to most readers of the New Testament, denigration of women, denigation of workers, greed, guns, racism and intrusion while trying to wrap it up as "Freedom!" really couldn't claim anything for the common good. Romney's dancing horse really sums them up in a way so apt; he actually believes that saying things like the trees are the right height was a way to connect. Bragging that he had always paid at least 13% was tone-deaf. Demanding greater disclosure from Ryan than he was willing to disclose to the American people on his taxes is kind of amazing. Mormons are not generally considered exemplars of chutzpah, but damn... Expect more convulsions. We are a deeply divided country in a lot of ways, but if the Democrats stay charged up and the President takes it to the Republicans actually using the bully pulpit as opposed to occasionally polishing it with a deep coat of linseed oil, then we'll see. But right now, I see no way the Republican party as it is now survives as a relevant force. 

Souls of the Republican Party 2012

"Why do they call this heartless place Our Lady of Charity..."

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.

John Milton, “On His Blindness”

It’s been an odd summer at Defeatist Central. In the last few years, we’d have gone crazy with lots of stuff about how horrible the politicians, economy and so on have become. However, not unlike a lot of other bloggers, we’ve become strangely quiet. Is it because, as in the case of Mr. Fun, we are frustrated because once you go Pek you can’t go back and no Pony has arrived? Perhaps because of the arrival of Defeatist Babies while we mourn the departure of beloved Defeatist Pets? Is it perhaps because of more mundane concerns? Or, maybe greater concerns? Who knows what ennui and disinterest lurk in the hearts of men? Well, besides Yeats, of course….but I quote him often enough.

For me, it’s been an odd time. Mrs. AXE came home one day and announced that she wanted to retire from Federal Service because she was old and because she was working for complete assholes. Well, that was fine with me; I did some math and said, OK we’ll be fine. She then went through some totally unnecessary hassles over insurance coverage for some tests, submitted her paperwork, got the tests in early March and retired on the 31^st. That afternoon, we got the diagnosis – colon cancer with fairly large polyps that probably had breeched the walls of the colon. On April 20, they did the surgery. The surgeon said it went very well; on the following Tuesday, I got a call at 10PM saying they were taking her to emergency surgery because of complications; when I got there, she greeted me by crying “Goodbye…” Now, by nature I am not a nurturing type; my response was fairly unemotional and probably helped in this case – “Really? I don’t think so unless you know something I don’t.” The surgery went well – there had been an obstruction and the surgeon took out three feet of small intestine that was gangrenous. To allow everything to heal, he performed a temporary Ileostomy, that is, a procedure to route the small intestine to a sack outside the body. When she was healed, they would reattach the plumbing. In the meantime, she’d start with an oncologist and see if Chemo was the next step.

Except it didn’t work that way. The original hospital could not find a way to install an ostomy bag that would work; while she stayed there for three weeks, she spent a large part of that covered from the top of her abdomen to her groin covered in her own feces and stomach acid. The hospital staff was fatalistic and resigned; I was rapidly getting angrier – nuture, no. Defend, protect and raise hell, yeah…I can do that. Their solution was to send her home despite the leakage problem and figure that the home health care provider would be able to figure it out. I raised hell, the surgeon came by to see what the problem was and he reacted about as badly as I did. The next day, she was transferred to a new place, a “long term acute care” hospital. Exit surgeon, stage left, pursued by a bear.

Now, the surgeon was confused as to why the staff at the hospital was having so many problems. There are a variety of Ostomy suppliers producing supplies that work for some or most results of the surgery. However, each surgery is different, and each person is different. In the wife’s case, well, her Stoma (the intestine jutting through the skin) was a convex stoma, meaning it did not extend above the the skin. Silly me – I thought that for something this fraught with potential issues, Medical Science would have perfected a way to cap and channel the material flowing instead of basically trying to extend a sewer cutoff. Well, it’s not even close. It’s probably possible to fabricate a fairly good ostomy bag with some spackling compound and a good freezer bag.

Why do that? Why not get the right stuff – not surprisingly, the hospitals are under pressure to sign exclusive agreements for a lot of medical supplies and apparatus as well as drugs as a cost control measure. By dealing directly with the supplier, they can get the best price which makes the insurance company happy; however, it may not be what the patient needs. Tough shit…in this case, literally.

 What the hell is a long term acute care hospital? Regular acute care hospitals have an average stay of about 3 days for patients. If the patient stays there too long, regardless of medical necessity for care, the hospital will face complaints from the Insurance Companies. Are we starting to notice a theme here?

Now, the long term acute care hospital was about 75 miles away from the house. I got down there every other day, and for the most part they took excellent care of her. However, they are a for-profit hospital, and skimped on some things. It seemed that there was a constant battle between the wound care and physical therapy folks versus the ward staff. It was not uncommon for me to arrive and discover that she had been left sitting in a bed pan for a half hour or so, or that no one had come to give her the bed pan…I got quite good at helping install the bags, and actually helped resolve some of the issues with the types of bags they had. However, this hospital had the type of relationship with the insurers – in my wife’s case, Medicare and Tricare for life – that they could get what they needed, regardless of manufacturer.

Ultimately, they felt she no longer needed the level of care afforded by the acute care side of the health care system. I was told that they wanted to transfer her to a “skilled nursing facility” and had me check a few out in a “Renters Guide” sort of magazine. Too were closer but one did not have an RN on staff 24 hours a day and was primarily an old folks home. Because my wife needed IV fluids and feeding at this point, they couldn’ take her. However, there was a large facility near the original hospital. So, she was transferred there.

Now, the wound care team had given me a kit to take home of the sorts of bags, powders, adhesives and sprays that they had found worked with my wife. Remember, the use of ostomies is common, but they are all kind of custom. The staff at the new place ignored me and when what they were doing didn’t work, freaked out. One nurse was exceptional in her efforts and I’d do just about anything I could for her; the rest were absolute idiots. However, this was a doomed place – I refer to it as a “storage and disposal facility” or “ a human rendering factory.” I was there every day…I was rare. It was not a healthy environment for someone who was not dying.

Ultimately, all the good work that the second facility had done was undone by these people. The problem of course is that what they would refer to as a rash was really burns….because the food was coming from the small intestine to the stoma – the hunk of intestine pulled through the skin to drain into a bag—she was re-injuring the skin damaged by the same fluids at the first hospital. Now, they had an excuse, albeit a terrible one. These people, not so much. What they were doing had been proved not to work. But, they kept doing it anyway until finally, after a lot of her pain and her embarrassment, they accepted that they were unable to deal with this simple procedure. They decided to send her to see the original surgeon and see what he thought about it being time to reverse the procedure. Great…however, they ultimately decided that they just needed to send her to that hospital’s emergency room because they were totally incompetent to handle the situation. And so they tried, the day prior to when she was supposed to be taken to see the surgeon. You see, hospital emergency rooms are overwhelmed by poor people who have no insurance and for whom a visit to their family doctor. That hospital was overwhelmed in the emergency room. So, they sent her to another private, non-profit hospital. They told me about it a couple of hours after she’d departed, which I thought was just special.

Anyway, I joined her about 4PM (1600 in real military time.) The chief surgeon came by, talked with us briefly, said that he wasn’t going to operate on her in the condition she was in  -- burned, dehydrated, weak but would admit her so that she could recover enough for the surgery to correct the original resection either by reconnecting the plumbing or revising the outlet, so to speak. She was taken to the surgical ward, and the wound care and ward team immediately took care of her. Since she was given an IV shot of morphine because of the intense pain, I left by 6 when she went to sleep. When I returned the next day about noon, she was awake, and the bags that they were using did not leak. At all – she never had a leak there. She recovered enough that the operation was performed on Friday. She took about a week in the hospital post op, and then was released to home care.

Since she’s returned to her home, her stuff, her cats she’s made great improvements. I’m amazed at how well she’s doing. I had a Facebook Entry the next evening that she had finally been released from incarceration…err, hospitalization, and was already being a pain in the ass. She now is able to get around quite well with the walker, and I forced her to make her own tuna sandwich for dinner. She is eating reasonably now and even made her own tuna sandwich the other day. All’s well that end’s well, right, AXE? No, fuck you.

 You see, I’m not totally happy about this. When she was diagnosed, the cancer was quite large and probably had penetrated the wall of the colon. Colon cancer discovered during colonoscopy and taken out in biopsy, basically minor problem. Colon cancer discovered during colonoscopy and removed followed after recovery by chemo, not a minor problem but not terribly threatening. However, colon cancer that has penetrated the outer wall of the colon and spread or where chemo is delayed or refused by the patient, major problem. The original timeline was colon resection, return home in a week or less, follow-up in two weeks, referral to Oncologist, begin course of treatment. Now, we have had an extra 14 weeks plugged into the equation. But, she is now in a helluva lot less pain, she has some quality of life and dignity and has made her own decisions. Good for her.

Next, for those who’ve been following my writing for a few years, you may recall that at one time I was struggling existentially between a significant other and my spouse. I ultimately chose the easiest route because they were both crazy. Well, the gal I was so interested in and loved a few years ago and still do love, had a horrible bout of colon cancer in 2003. She was actually told that “we’re going to operate but you need to get your affairs in order…” Did I mention that she was a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy and a Navy Nurse? Her sister was also a nurse, only a return boater to Ireland; her parents were both immigrants in the 40s; her sister and her husband had decided that New York City was no place to raise kids and had returned to Eire, I believe outside of Cork but I could be wrong. My friend was a triathlete and a serious marathoner; her sister won awards as an athlete in her county as late as 2004. In early 2006, she died from colon cancer. My friend was able to be there when her sister passed; she had some fairly funny stories about the way the staff of the hospital handled the dying process. But, she also felt a great deal of guilt – you see, when the significant other got the word about her cancer, the only family member she informed was her sister, Kathleen, who caught a redeye from Shannon to the US and on to San Diego to be there for her kid sister when she went into the surgery. She knows that Kathleen couldn’t catch colon cancer from her; but, there is still an incredible feeling of guilt. I am stunned by the irony…

Another thing I’m keeping in mind is the problem of the economics of healthcare. Now, I spent 23 years in the Army, and am grateful every day for that experience. I am incredibly grateful for Tricare and in the case of my wife, Tricare for Life. I know that the total bill for this great time up until now will be well into six figures; in fact, it already is. My total financial liability at this point has been $58 that I probably could have gotten out of paying. Now, we earned this; we paid for the Medicare in her payroll Medicare taxes and the part B in cash prior to starting to take her Social Security benefit and now in deduction from her benefit. But, talk about value; and yet, we know that the current healthcare situation is abysmal in this country and we know that we’re faced with the possibility of it becoming worse. The GAO has released estimates that because of the Supreme Court’s decision that the states do not have to extend Medicare as required originally by the Affordable Health Care Act, at least 3 Million People who would have been covered under the Act will not be covered. Which means that if they become as sick as my wife, they will go bankrupt and they will die. And Republcian voters will cheer as they cheered Ron Paul…

Well, we all are going to die, but there should be some degree of human dignity in the situation. But, we don’t seem, as a nation, to get it. The people most at risk are working class Americans without adequate health care insurance. And, there is absolutely no reason for this. I find the fact that France, Canada, the UK and my beloved Ireland have far better health care systems by any objective standard than we do to be a national disgrace. I am ashamed when I try to explain it to people from other countries that are supposedly not as great as we are. No Patriotic American should be able to stand this shame. So, those who oppose continued reform are what…un-American?

Remember Death Panels? There are death panels under the current system – they’re the insurance companies who determine what they will cover and what they will not based solely on market decisions. They are the insurance companies that raise rates so that people are no longer able to buy insurance or must cut back and buy only for the breadwinner as opposed for their whole family. These may be decisions made by the Marketplace (rigged, corrupt and based on debased values, where it’s reasonable for Ann Romney’s horse to be worth more than the annual tuition for 20 college students at a mediocre college.) However, from a human perspective, these results condemn those decisions. No, these are the decisions forced by fate on Frank McCourt’s mother Angela, whether to care for her family or take food from their mouths so that she has enough to survive. Hey, it’s a market decision. Compromise is a satanic thing here, because you’re dealing not with a possible win/win but with definite lose/lose. This was not acceptable in Ireland in the 30s and 40s and shames that Catholic nation as much as the Magdalenes Sisters, the history of betrayal to the British empire, and the current economic crisis even today. IT CANNOT BE ACCEPTABLE TO ANY AMERICAN NOW. NO FUCKING WAY! USA!USA!USA!

And, yet it is. If Mitch McConnell gets an unfortunate pimple on his ass, he can go to Bethesda and the entire United States Navy is mobilized to handle his departure from the norm. Hey, a pimple on the ass of the worst American Senator since Joe McCarthy is a really bad thing. But, most people in this country, insured or not, unable to pursue that kind of treatment. If Mitt Romney wakes up with the sniffles and an odd growth on his dick, he can afford to endow his own wing of a hospital to handle sniffling dick growths. Why should a man who builds elevators in his house for his cars concern himself with the health care of some poor kid in Harlem? It’s God’s will…

It’s not that these men are inherently evil. (Well, I think they are, but let’s assume they’re not.) They lack imagination and empathy for those who they see as not quite up to their standards of wealth, power and connection. Somehow, they’re not quite up to God’s standard. The market does the will of God so if you’re not able to hedge your bets and profit from the misfortune of others, you deserve to be poor, wretched and sick.

You know, it’s one thing for Milton to accept his blindness as the will of God and see that as it is God’s will, it’s a good thing. It’s a totally different thing to see someone else’s horror, pain and suffering as the will of God. That’s not stoic acceptance of the Almighty’s will – Stoicism is about your relationship with the world, not that of others! And, if the idea is that by not paying taxes at a reasonable rate in an industrial democracy you can accrue unconscionable wealth, you are doing what God wants, you are deranged, or you worship neither Jesus, nor Yahweh, nor Buddha, nor Allah nor Vishnu but eternally damned CTHULHU or Satan.  Willard Romney and and Turtle McConnell and the Paulline Faillacy and John Boehner are tools of Evil and the Republican Party is the Party of the Rich, the Party of the Evil, the Party of the Ignorant and ultimately, the PARTY OF SATAN.

 Ok, that’s a little rich, even for me. But then, I profess that the arbitrary decisions of the universe about life, death and the baseball game speak to the underlying problem of God – there is no God, or God is an evil sonofabitch with a nasty sense of humor, or God is really a teenage girl with lots of behavioral and emotional problems that, since we’re not her parents, we should try to stay away from lest she do something awful to us. I feel guilty when I see a beggar and I don’t stop; in my idea of America, there are no beggars, no homeless, no hungry – this experience with my wife underlies for me the importance of the America as champion of a world dreamed of by Franklin Roosevelt and expressed so eloquently in his Four Freedoms.

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called 'new order' of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS, January 6 1941

 

 

 

 

 

Got a 5.0 Ford and a copy of Concluding Unscientific Postscript

  

 I just came to the conclusion that except for oddities and occasional fill-ins, I will probably never "work" for anyone except wife, cats and whim again, and I shockingly realized that I actually don't give a fuck. In fact, feel pretty good. It's been surreal, real, fun, occasionally real fun but mainly just tedium and putting up with a fine broth of idiots, assholes, and asslickers. Going to the cafe to join Rhett Miller and Soren Kierkegaard, Chris Hitchens, Brian Jones, Mr. Jennings and Socrates...

As Mr. Miller and the boys so eloquently put it ....

Gettin out of the house.
Im gonna go for a ride,
Cause I got me a five-o Ford
and the good Lord knows I tried
to make friends with you
and evrything went wrong.
Yeah, Im goin Im goin Im goin Im goin Im gone.

Goin down to the tracks.
Im gonna hide out for a while.
Gonna have me some ranch-style beans
From a tin can hobo-style,
Forget your face,
If that can be done.
Yeah, Im goin Im goin Im goin Im goin Im gone.

And youll find you a boyfriend
And he wont like my cat.
And youll try to
Pretend that you dont want me back.
Right now Im leavin So youd better say, So long. Yeah, Im goin Im goin Im goin 
Im goin Im gone.

Gonna find me a boat
And a brand new name.
Im gonna find some wall-eyed,
Weak-kneed European dame.
Shell be my wife
And youll only be a song.
Yeah, Im goin Im goin Im goin Im goin Im gone.

And youll find you a boyfriend
And he wont like my cat.
And youll try to
Pretend that you dont want me back.
Right now Im leavin So youd better say, So long. Yeah, Im goin Im goin Im goin 
Im goin Im gone.

Yeah, Im goin Im goin Im goin Im goin Im gone.

Yeah, Im goin Im goin Im goin Im goin Im goin Im goin Im goin Im goin Im goin 
Im goin Im goin Im goin Im gone.

Jesus.
Well, what do ya do about a string breakin 
Oh, nothin  

So, to steal a line from Graham Nash to Steven Stills back in the No Nukes Movie and you're looking for an executive like me, well, "Steven, if you need me, call. And Steven, don't call."

 

Merry Christmas to the official Defeatist Cat

Fleshy, the Defeatist's Official Cat, displays an odd aspect of catnip on Cats...they are suddenly in need of Marshall Amps, Fender Telecasters, and bandannas.. 

On a related issue, the Great Old Ones drowsing beneath the sea have sent us all a reminder that the true meaning of Christmas is that CTHULHU WILL EAT YOUR SOUL!

 
Of course, I'm waiting for all this nonsense to be over. The world still sucks despite the best wishes of the mega-corporations. I am looking forward to catching The Girl in the Dragon Tatoo -- I spent a good part of Christmas watching the Swedish version, and it was excellent. Incredible, given that it held my interest and was in Swedish...which is like German, kinda and kinda not. I'm not so sure that they had to go with Trent Raznor for composing the score -- there are a lot of Swedish emo-rock-garage-punk Celtic bands. And, if you go beyond Sweden, there's always our friends at Lordi!

 

Actually, a lot of really great music is coming out of Scandanavia. From Denmark, there's The Ravennettes, who have a lot of music that would fit the movie, especially something like The Last Dance which is an incredibly ironic piece of material...catchy, pretty, perky until you listen to the lyrics. "Every time you overdose, I rush to intensive care..."Lisabeth would approve.  

Norway has the Cocktail Slippers among others, and they're pretty amazing as a group, whether covering some Girl Group piece from the 60s or doing one of their originals. They are in Steven Van Zandt's Wicked Cool stable, and they're excellent. Again, there's a lot of irony in their stuff -- "Who'll be the last lover standing, come St Valentine's Day?" Particularly for the scene with her walking down the promenade at the end in the Swedish version; sure there's an equivalent moment in the Mara-Craig version. 

So, Happy New Year from AGI, ELS, Mr. Fun, Capt C at Defeatist Central and from our fellow travellers, Montag, Culture Ghost and all the rest at Guys From Area 51. Have yourself a very Tiffany New Year... and, if you aren't a machine and want to drop a comment even a la Rush Limberger "", well, we live for that crap. Actually, we don't...but it makes for a more fun conversation!

Remem Rememmember....

 The Aryan Pride band Prussian Blue appears to be no more. The world seems marginally richer. Most rational thing said by them appears in the Wiki article --

A 2011 profile in The Daily describes the twins' rejection of some of their previous politics:

"I’m not a white nationalist anymore," Lamb told The Daily in an exclusive interview, the twins’ first in five years. "My sister and I are pretty liberal now." ... "I’m glad we were in the band," Lynx said, "but I think we should have been pushed toward something a little more mainstream and easier for us to handle than being front-men for a belief system that we didn’t even completely understand at that time. We were little kids."

There are a lot of examples of what happens when little kids get confused in the minds of adults with some sort of mystical figures...Hank Williams Jr. was marketed by Ms. Audrey in kind of a necrophiliac kind of way, resulting in some fairly awful things when he was a kid and the scars continue unto later generations. Although, the first album "Hank Williams JR. Sings Hank Williams" is actually a pretty good piece of work. Downhilll from there. The voice didn't so much mature as coarsen, and not a lot more to be said.  

These kids had no chance, whether it was the absurd names hung on them by their mom or the touring led by the grandfather with the swazstiki belt buckle and the adoring crowds of mouth-breathing brain dead twits screaming white power. 

On the other hand, having girls in their early teens playing the role of Nazi wet dreams isn't really that surprising...

Something the Brits do better than we do...

I used to read the Times of London primarily for the book reviews and Jeremy Clarkson's columns until Murdoch decided to overcharge for the privilege. I do still pull up The Guardian for a variety of reasons. One is that Ana Marie Cox, the equallylovely, younger,equally red-haired version of Dulcinea Dowd who would have been a lot of fun listening to chat with Molly Ivins about Michelle Bachman, has returned to professional blogging and is now doing it for The Guardian. Very cool. The other is that they frequently have columns like this one -- the author's defense of his belief, nay conviction, that the Prime Minister of Great Britian is a slithering reptile.  I do not know why we can't routinely get it this right... Here are some of the great lines from the piece that should be printed out and posted on every thinking person's desk when looking for inspiration on how to effectively eviscerate the trolls toiling the bells of American economic justice and freedom. 

 

... writes vividly and from the heart and, if his byline photo is anything to go by, appears to be a perfectly reasonable man (specifically, Ross Kemp). He deserves the benefit of the doubt. But I fear in his rush to reprimand the "Modern Left", he has overlooked one key fact: David Cameron is a lizard. Yes, David Cameron is a lizard. A lizard that devours live foals in its lair. And as far as Archer is concerned, it's perfectly fine for this limbless, non-human, Cameron-reptile-beast-thing to squirm across the stone floor of its den merrily excreting the bones of its victims, yet I'm "depraved" simply for writing about it. This is the tragedy of the Modern Right. They're idiots. Well, let me spell it out: You cannot dehumanise a lizard. Not without humanising it first, by giving it a little top hat, say, or a monocle. Maybe put some lipstick on it. And a wig. Teach it to walk sexy. That's the way. (AXE comment -- Like a pitbull, or a momma Grizzly!)

Seriously, we need to spend time practicing to be this good. There is an art, a craft, a honed skill to political commentary and invective, and these awful people deserve the best of that art. 

Umm, about that whole Zionist-Baal thing...They don’t want you to see. Congress doesn’t know, governors don’t know, Red Cross, ACLU, National Geographic. Nobody knows, man.

Hardison: Oh, no. All this construction is goin’ on underground. Under, beneath the eyes. The eyes of the world, man. They don’t want you to see. Congress doesn’t know, governors don’t know, Red Cross, ACLU, National Geographic. Nobody knows, man. Nobody, man. They’re puttin’ terrorists in your backyard. Terrorists under your backyard. “Hey, little Billy, go outside. Dig in the sandbox. Ooh, klang. What’d ya find, little Billy? What’d ya find? It’s a terrorist. It’s a bunker full of terrorists, man.” Bunker, man.

Monica: What other sources do you have besides tin foil hat over here?

Hardison: Hey, hey, hey, man. Bein’ a tin foil hat, that’s better than bein’ a lap dog for the four corporations that control the global media, man.

Leverage--Three Days of the Hunter Job

  I get emails. I get comments. At times that the Tin Hat Brigade of both left and right wing nuts and assorted loonies are out to amuse me. There's really no other way for an adult to respond to some of this stuff. There is no answer sufficient, no proof adequate. The best response, the most telling one I've seen that illustrates this paranoid function in America -- and anywhere else -- was a comment to the effect that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were forgeries by the Czarist Secret Police doesn't matter, because if the elders had written down their protocols, this would be what they'd say... So getting this email in one of my professional accounts was interesting, amusing and kinda, sorta sad. It sums up in some ways the very nature of our debate today -- between ideology, superstition, and ignorance fighting for the main tent in the three ring circus of the downfall of western Culture and the United States as we know it. (And, don't get me started on the right...heh, heh.)

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Subject: WOE TO THE WORLD! Rothschild N.W.O Illuminati EXPOSED!!! > Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2011 22:44:44 -0500 > > N.W.O. EXPOSED! > > WOE TO THE ROTHSCHILDS! WOE TO THE FREEMASONS/ ILLUMINATI! WOE TO LUCIFER! > > PLEASE RESEARCH THE ILLUMINATI/FREEMASON BOHEMIAN GROVE CONNECTION! > > THE THIRD JEWISH TMEPLE TO BE BUILT SOON! > > http://www.squidoo.com/templejerusalem > > THE ANTI-CHRIST IS NEAR! REPENT AND KNOW ALL WILL BOW BEFORE THE LAMB OF GOD JESUS CHRIST. > > WATCH, LEARN, PRAY & PASS ON PLEASE! > > Rothschilds/Illuminati/Bohemian Grove Exposed!: > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2E_HP97Rzc > > http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bloodlines/index.htm > > http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bloodlines/rothschild.htm > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icKIWW1EcuY > > Bible: > Revelatinos Chapter 11 > > The Two Witnesses > 1. I was given a reed like a measuring rod and was told, “Go and measure the temple of God and the altar, with its worshipers. > > 2. But exclude the outer court; do not measure it, because it has been given to the Gentiles. They will trample on the holy city for 42 months. > > 3. And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” > > 4. They are “the two olive trees” and the two lampstands, and “they stand before the Lord of the earth.”[a] 5 If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die > > 6. They have power to shut up the heavens so that it will not rain during the time they are prophesying; and they have power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they want. > > 7. Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them > > 8. Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city—which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where also their Lord was crucified. > > 9. For three and a half days some from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. > > 10. The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth. > > 11. But after the three and a half days the breath[b] of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them. > > 12. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on. > > 13. At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. > > 14. The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon.... > > Galatians 1:8 written in 50 A.D. > "But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!" > > 33rd Degree Freemason Oath: > Albert Pike- > "That which we must say to the crowd is:* 'We worship a god, but it is the god one adores without superstition.' > * To you, Sovereign Grand Instructors General [a 33rd Degree Mason], we say this ... you may repeat it to the > Brethren of the 32nd, 31st, and 30th Degrees ... The Masonic religion should be, by all of the initiates of the high > degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian doctrine ... Yes, Lucifer is God, and unfortunately Adonay is also > God ... the doctrine of Satanism is a heresy; and the true and pure philosophic religion is the belief in Lucifer, the > equal of Adonay; but Lucifer, God of Light, God of Good, is struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of > Darkness and Evil." [Lady Queenborough, Occult Theocracy, p. 220-221, quoting a letter from Albert Pike to the > 23 Supreme Councils of the World on July 14, 1889]... > > THE LAMB OF GOD JESUS CHRIST WINS THE BATTLE OF ARMAGEDDON! > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2E_HP97Rzc

Reply: > Date: Mon 19 Sep 2011 0925-0926

Ok, well err...good luck with that. Whatever I can do to help you out with this one...

Mike

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Now, I remain unconvinced that Israel had anything to do with 9/11. I'm willing to be convinced; I'd like to see the actual surveillance tapes from the Pentagon, for example. The failure of the government to release everything they can is just stupid.  Into that vacuum oddities arise. However, that aside, there is an important difference between not being convinced that the world is about to end in some Jewish-Freemason-Illuminati-Bohemian Grove rhapsody and being able to look at evidence that should make you wonder. Thomas Friedman is not one of my favorite thinkers. In general, he falls into the category of establishment-moderate twits who has to keep his credentials polished. Maureen Dowd mentioned once on The Daily Show that someone had said that the issue for the Times Op-Ed was going to be the contest between Friedman and Safire for the soul of Maureen Dowd. Well, I think her soul has stayed pretty much her own, Safire is gone but  occasionally Friedman gets something very right. It's simple -- Israel is not primarily our friend -- in fact, there is some question in my mind as to whether or not Israel is its own friend.  In his Sunday column, Friedman writes:

The crumbling of key pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation....O.K., Mr. Netanyahu has a strategy: Do nothing vis-à-vis the Palestinians or Turkey that will require him to go against his base, compromise his ideology or antagonize his key coalition partner, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, an extreme right-winger. Then, call on the U.S. to stop Iran’s nuclear program and help Israel out of every pickle, but make sure that President Obama can’t ask for anything in return — like halting Israeli settlements — by mobilizing Republicans in Congress to box in Obama and by encouraging Jewish leaders to suggest that Obama is hostile to Israel and is losing the Jewish vote. And meanwhile, get the Israel lobby to hammer anyone in the administration or Congress who says aloud that maybe Bibi has made some mistakes, not just Barack. There, who says Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t have a strategy?...Israel can fight with everyone or it can choose not to surrender but to blunt these trends with a peace overture that fair-minded people would recognize as serious, and thereby reduce its isolation...Unfortunately, Israel today does not have a leader or a cabinet for such subtle diplomacy. One can only hope that the Israeli people will recognize this before this government plunges Israel into deeper global isolation and drags America along with it.

Which leads me to another thought...Bibi Netanyahu bears a striking resemblance to the John Boehner and Mitch McConnell in his ability to get the United States down rabbit holes and dark allies we really shouldn't be going down. While it's great to see Obama acting a bit like Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, going out to call down the psycho bullies intent on ruining the polity and civil society we kinda, sorta have in this country most of the time, one realizes that there is no John Wayne character off in the alley, waiting for the guns to go off to cover his rifle shot taking out the evil and enshrining the good. Far from it...Obama is in this one alone. Not unlike the Stewart character, Obama has truth, justice, law, common sense, economics and the laws of mathematics behind him; the Lee Marvin stand-ins -Johnny-Mitch-Eric-BoehnerMcConnellCantor III have a majority in the house, the cloture rule in the Senate, and a gleeful allegiance to chaos and disorder to maintain their self-interest.

Lonesome Rhodes: This whole country's just like my flock of sheep! Marcia Jeffries: Sheep? Lonesome Rhodes: Rednecks, crackers, hillbillies, hausfraus, shut-ins, pea-pickers - everybody that's got to jump when somebody else blows the whistle. They don't know it yet, but they're all gonna be 'Fighters for Fuller'. They're mine! I own 'em! They think like I do. Only they're even more stupid than I am, so I gotta think for 'em. Marcia, you just wait and see. I'm gonna be the power behind the president - and you'll be the power behind me!

A Face in the Crowd

To a large extent, this sort of statesmanship goes a long way toward explaining the Tea Party -- America's Likud -- and the capture of the Republican Congressional Delegation by it. Now, most of the people in the caucus are not certifiable wing nuts. Hell, most of them are mid-level functionaries in the Military-Industrial-Financial Complex. The theory was that with Boehner as Speaker, the Rs would make a lot of noise but not do anything to hurt the country or at least it's economic interests. Well, hah ha, hah ha, hah ha. Fooled us. Then, there's the slate of candidates vying for the nomination. Dear God -- in order to stay in the race and yet appear sane -- remain electable -- the adults in the room, Huntsman and Romney, have had to stake out positions so far to the right of the flat earth that they've embraced that they're hanging on by their fingertips. Huntsman has at least taken the principled and courageous position of endorsing science...now, as a child of the 60s, I remember when the Left was anti-technocracy, science and math. One of the criteria to be a long-haired hippy commie freak was to not be good at math or, if you were, to be mildly ashamed of it. The Science and Math and Computer types were kind of oblivious to politics, but if they did deign to look at it, they were interested in the Republicans as the party most likely to endorse research into Science, Math and Computers. Well, isn't today a turn around...

I have to wonder how Newt Gingrich, freaking Phd, can walk into the faculty club of any respectable college campus without blushing or hiding behind a raincoat based on his performance in the Iowa debate alone. Romney is an android whore, and so his anti-science positions are kind of in keeping with the rest of his character. His greatest accomplishment in Massachusetts -- health care reform -- is something he runs from, while he babbles about job creation when the historical record is pretty clear -- as a capitalist, he created jobs in the Third World at the expense of American workers; in Massachusetts, he didn't have a respectable competitive record on job creation. So, the logical thing is to run away from your strengths. Rick-a-Dick Perry went to the pre-eminent Technology School in Texas, and admits that four semesters of Organic Chemistry made a pilot out of him. Well, it made pilots, teachers, lawyers and a variety of other things out of other people -- there's no shame in bumping into the wall between Med or Vet School that is Organic and Inorganic Chemistry. But, he appears to have gotten a D in meat...compared to Bush's Gentleman's Cs, this is kind of scary. More to the point, he's packed the State Board of Education with right-wing, anti-science, anti-research and anti-history lunatics who would embarrass the PTA in Incest Springs Arkansas. Texas depends on technology, engineering and geology to a tremendous extent -- how do you develop new and safer approaches to drilling for oil by ignoring science in Geology?

As for Bachmann-Palin overdrive, wow. WOW. While I'm going to pass on Mikki the Monkey right now, they're both worth considering. Batshit crazy, of course, if the bat is a fox. Occasionally, they both get off some good lines -- I'd like to think that Palin's line about polls being for strippers as a witty use of satire and homonym to take a pun and bitch slap it out of the park. (How's that for mixing up the old metaphor salad?) However, I'm pretty sure she doesn't get the subtlety there, and didn't intend it. When Keith Olbermann jokes about "Lonesome Rhodes Beck" referencing the dark study of celebrity "A Face in the Crowd," he really is talking more about Palin. We forget at our peril that she really wanted to be an entertainer, a sportscaster. Had the WNBA been around in her Sarah Barracuda days, she's have been trying to get on the court to be her generation's version of Sue Bird, without the talent, but with all the crazed desire possible. I hope she gets into this -- the media will eat her up, and she'll totally screw up whatever the R's look like, act like and try to think like. Like Journey or Paul Revere and the Raiders, she'll keep doing her revival tours on the rubber chicken circuit so long as she can. A number of years ago, I was in my least favorite city -- Las Vegas -- and in the hotel hosting the conference I was being bored at, Englebert Humperdink was appearing. I thought he was dead...but, this wasn't the Hard Rock or Bellagio, and I guess the slot machine crowd there was demographically correct. In a few years, Palin will be doing shows in Branson and Knotts Berry Farm. She might get a gig at Dollywood, except that Dolly is a pretty smart woman, and recognizes fraud and stupidity far away. Sarah can't see it when it's in the mirror.  

Now, the hatchet job that my fellow alum Joe McGinnis did on Palin requires comment. The revelations in the book appear to be pretty trite -- Palin was the Alaska version of a scene-whore and the Wassilla version of a Yuppie. She has a lot of kids, a long-suffering spouse, and a trail of silly, trite and nutty behavior that isn't worth anyone's attention. In a better time for the Republican party, she'd be a fringe candidate at worst; I suspect the adulation she found on the campaign trail with McCain made her crazy for attention, for the perks, for the love and adoration that she seems to seek. Let's remember, she wanted to be a sportscaster, and failed at it. She's found a way of getting the attention, and the money and will do whatever it takes to do that. Ride into the Republican convention on a White Snow Machine so she can save the day, again? Sure, why not... Now, McGinnis has an interesting career, chronicling cheats, liars, criminals and so on beginning with Nixon and Roger Ailes in 1999's The Selling of the President. 1968. He could have done an interesting take on the Palin phenomenon, building on President by comparing how the media and political operatives had morphed into something as powerful while incompetent as to propel Palin onto the national stage. Instead, he made the story about himself and the venal silliness of the Palin family. I think he missed the point. Frankly, the only one in that saga who seems to come off well is Todd -- he seems to defend his family and be pretty much a regular guy thrust into something he didn't want. McGinnis wrote a book 30 some years ago about spending a year wandering around in Alaska called Going to Extremes. I think he should have remembered that book and the people there...and possibly, re-read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail...he'd have done a better and more interesting job. Now, he's the Kitty Kelly of Holy Cross alumni, and comes off not as chronicler but scold. The Palin tale deserves a Mencken with a bit of Budd Schulberg ( after all, Schulberg wrote A Face in the Crowd) and McGinnis, for better or worse, produced a piece worthy of Penthouse, only without the vanity shots.  

Odd, inappropriate and plea bargain...

Congressman Allen West is a tea party activist and a nutcase. I think it's probably possible to be involved in the Tea Party without being crazy, but the leadership is either incredibly venal -- Dick Armery comes to mind --  lobotomized or plain old batshit crazy. So, when Representative West was quoted as saying that he was going to resign from the Congressional Black Caucus because a leader made remarks comparing the Tea Party to lynchmobs, he surprised the hell out of Crusader AXE. Allen West has less in common with the Congressional Black Caucus than I do with the Ulster Volunteer Force or the Russian GBLT Federation of the Communist Party. And, he's far less tolerant of them than I would be of those guys. The similarity between the two situations is pretty clear -- he's Black so he's in the Black Caucus; I'm Irish and my family is originally from Ulster, pre-Cromwell; I'm white, and the imaginary GBLT Federation would be white, and I'm white. That must be the logic...

Frankly, the guy violated the Law of Land Warfare and got about the same deal Ollie North did; there are risks in observing the Geneva Convention which is what makes it hard. However, he had his men beat an Iraqi policeman and then he fired his pistol next to the guy's head. West was an artilleryman -- pull string, gun go boom. He's obviously not a dumb man. He can make all the weaselly comments he wants to, but Field Grade Officers don't get Article 15s unless they do something awful; this is an admission of some guilt. West got to keep his rank, full retirement and retire with the honor earned. No argument there. What I can see of the guy's career, he was a competent soldier commanding a battalion of cannon cockers who were probably being used as SWAT teams and backups. I believe he sincerely cared about his men more than he cared about himself. He reacted in a rough situation in a way that was seriously wrong, and didn't help. While I find the comments from his defenders that everything went to hell in the district after he was relieved of command, that was in 2003 -- everything fucking thing in Iraq went to hell in 2003. Everything.

Now, West got a General Officer Article 15. This is non-judicial punishment -- not a criminal conviction-- but it is punishment in lieu of a court martial. It is in fact a plea bargain. Frankly, he could have been hammered -- hard time in Leavenworth -- had he taken the court martial. More likely, he would have been forcibly retired as a Major instead of a Lieutenant Colonel, which is a significant difference in pay. There's also the fact that he'd have had a federal conviction on his record. Felons can't be Congressmen. 

Well, I haven't heard anything sensible come out of this guy; he represents what happens when people vote their emotions -- "I'm mad as hell, keep your big government hands off my Medicare and Social Security! " instead of some level of reason. Allan West is typical of a type of Republican; the odd thing is that he's Black, but that isn't too terribly odd really. The guys in the Ulster Volunteer Force are Irish, after all. 

Al Sharpton's new show has some interesting things happening on it. Sharpton definitely shows that it is possible to change and grow; he also shows the difference between authenticity and hype really well. I haven't really made up my mind about the guy yet, but he said of another situation that "It's like ME going to a Tea Party event and drinking coffee. It might be delicious, but it would just be inappropriate."  

That sums up so much. Allen West is a scary representative, but he doesn't represent the Black Community...and it's probably in the best interests of both to end this inappropriate relationship. I can only hope that some of his other antics will lead his constituents to come to their senses and end their inappropriate relationship with the guy in November 2012; after that, he can go make model tanks and hang out at the VFW telling war stories. Or, sell insurance. Or, work for Ollie North. Hell, let him manage Christine O'Donnell's campaign for Sainthood. Just get him and his ilk out of Congress...

Pathetic...selling soul, $5 or best offer!

Crusader AXE has been feeling lousy and is starting to feel better. However, I'm still enough out of it to not be able to really sustain a piece of writing. Fortunately, there are things that really amaze and don't need a lot of commentary, or if they do, there's someone who does a great job. In this case, Quadaffi and Goldman, Sachs as dissected by the inimitable Matt Taibbi and Rolling Stone. 

... there was a widespread feeling of relief within the walls of the bank after news broke that Goldman a few years ago offered to sell Moammar Qaddafi a $3.7 billion equity stake in their company. The relief, it seems, stemmed from the fact that the deal was never struck – and therefore Goldman doesn’t have to answer charges now of having funded repression in the Middle East. From the Carney piece:

“The last thing we need right now would be headlines reading ‘Vampire Squid Profits Funding Libyan Dictator,’” one senior Goldman investment banker told NetNet.

I appreciated the shout-out there, but I also had to laugh: only a Goldman, Sachs executive would fail to see that offering to sell yourself to a ruthless anti-Semitic dictator/terror sponsor is just as bad as actually completing the sale. If anything, it’s worse. There is no modern-day Goethe or Faust with the genius to even invent an anti-hero pathetic enough to not only try to sell his soul to the Devil, but fail! But apparently, this shameful episode is what counts as a PR win for the esteemed i-banking King these days...

Now, the story is involved...Goldman had managed to lose 98% of a Libyan investment of several billion dollars in a fairly short time -- amazingly short time, as Matt points out, unfavorably comparing Goldman's skill for it's clients in this case with a "blind three legged donkey sent into Caesar's with $1.5B in chips." Then, for some reason, the Goldman people were surprised that the people who brought you Lockerbie were incensed and threatened more than just some more lawsuits for misrepresentation, malfeasance and misfeasance. So, the obvious thing to do is to offer Q and the gang a large equity stake. Odder still, showing that some thieves have some honor someplace, the Libyans turned them down. Hilarity ensues...

Here's the thing. We'll pass over the supposed religious relationship between a lot of senior Goldman employees and Israel...these guys were dealing with Quadaffi. They fucked him, and then were surprised at possible repercussions. This is a piece with everything -- knowing how to screw money out of stange mathematics is not an effective way to run a world. There are people like the Libyans who are perfectly capable of bringing things down to reality really quickly. So, let's let Matt sum it up:

In con-man parlance, this is called the reload. You beat someone in a Ponzi scheme for his life’s savings, and when he shows up at your door with an axe, you get him to mortgage his house to buy a stake in the Brooklyn Bridge. After blowing $1.5 billion of Libya’s money almost instantaneously, Goldman’s solution to the problem was to immediately get Qaddafi reaching back into his pocket for a cash sum over twice the size of the original losses. It’s really hard not to admire the sheer balls of the whole deal.

If we'd hang a few investment bankers, life would be good again. 

Speaking of good, I like Anthony Weiner. He's articulate, smart and generally on the right side of things. He also just made a complete ass out of himself and Taibbi makes the point very clearly. Frankly, I find the thought of taking pictures of your erect member in or out of your shorts is kind of infantile. I recall a soldier questioned about how he ended up in the emergency room with a lightbulb shoved up his ass responding to the company commander with, "Sir, my sex life is none of your business..." Hard to make it clearer than that...except if you want to be Mayor of New York and a national spokesman for the Democratic party, you don't get to have pictures of your dick around. Anywhere. Not even an etch-a -sketch. The correct answer to "Is that your penis in the picture that was tweeted?" is "No, goddamnit. And if I can find out who did this, I'll do whatever it takes to ruin him, her, it or them!" Certitude? Again, let someone who writes better than I have the last word...

In other words, when you’re a certain kind of famous, there are a few things you’ve just got to give up in life – like uploading pictures of your dick, for instance, or tweet-herding hot twentysomething women by the hundreds. Is it really that hard to find other hobbies? Why do I feel like this kind of thing isn’t a problem for someone like Bernie Sanders? Politicians never cease to amaze.

Yep.

Shudder

I admit that I don't quite get some aspects of our contemporary culture...but what the hell is that all about? And, am I enabling something evil? Or just confusing? I'm so confused...

And now for something completely different...but equally bizarre. These are from Power Pop, the great Steve Simels site and what the hell were they thinking?

And this madness? Granted, the Sid Vicious cover of Sinatra is the epitome of the worst cover ever but still...

And then, remember when we thought Sting was a serious musician instead of a papparazi-baited wanker wannabe?

Actually makes this one make sense...sort of...I mean, did we ever take Elton John seriously? But, Springsteen? Really...