A liberal arts education prepares you to get angry at the oddest things...

I’m working on a screenplay now called “Grand Theft Pundit,” about gangs of outlaw columnists dealing drugs, running guns and saying rude things on “Morning Joe.”The role of me was going to be played by the late Suzanne Pleshette or Adrienne Barbeau, assuming there is a difference. -- David Brooks

But, angry in a coherent way. I haven't tossed a lot of Dulcinea Dowd's stuff up lately because I've been utterly pissed off by the world in general. It's more fun to make the Defeatists a music blog. The Bros don't care, on the rare occasions they regain consciousness from the stench of bicycle shorts and baby diapers. El S is fixing the webs, Agi is teaching his daughter the Lydian mode on his acoustic guitar, and Mr Fun is going to Phillies Games, even when he's not. Holier is long since gone off to a self-imposed metaphysical ashram, and Captain Capitulation is channeling Leibnitz. Me, I'm still on my own road, headed toward another point of view...

However, the oil gusher in the gulf is exciting some interesting things. The top kill method is interesting...although I'm a fan of pumping old tennis balls and tampons into the damn hole. Where's the goddamn Glormar Explorer when you need it? What this country needs is more secretive billionaires who dislike bathing and cutting their nails to serve it better. Anyway, my personal beacon of hope at the Times pointed this out -- we're being fucked over repeatedly by things we've never heard of and with acronyms that make no goddamn sense at all. And, when they do make sense, they make no sense -- I'm wondering how many Department of the Interior regulators and officials lost their jobs and , oh, I don't know, WENT TO JAIL over the orgies and snorting meth off the microwave thing. As Dulcinea points out in her lead ...

It’s unnerving, disorienting. A particularly noxious blend of helplessness, fear and fury that washes over you when you realize the country has again been dragged into a costly and scary maelstrom revolving around acronyms you’ve never heard of.

Our economy went in the ditch while traders got rich peddling C.D.O.’s and C.D.S.’s. Even many bankers — much less average Americans who lost their shirts — were gobsmacked by the acronyms, and scrambled to figure out how collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps worked.

And now a gazillion gallons of oil have poisoned the Gulf of Mexico, thanks in part to unethical employees at a once-obscure agency known as M.M.S. — the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service.

And it goes from there. Enjoy...Gail Collins and David Brooks have an ongoing dialogue, and frankly, I've avoided it because Brooks perturbs me. He's too smart and too well grounded in, what do they call it, oh yeah, reality to really mean the things he says and writes. However, today's piece makes me think I've been skipping something. Beginning by talking about Lost -- which I never watched, never will watch, and have no interest in at all, Ms Collins talks about how all the characters were dead and it was like St Elsewhere and a snow globe. Brooks said he's still trying to figure out how Adrienne "Swamp Thing" Barbeau and Susan Pleschette were different, which led inevitably to a discussion of the BP nonsense. Brooks and Collins don't get our current spate of righteous indignation demands from the punditocracy. He points out that unless the president has a degree in underwater engineering he hasn't told us about, the president needs to keep doing what he's doing. However, Brooks has taken on the Rand Paul approach, which I find interesting...accidents happen, risk is inherent in human activities, and when a risk filled enterprise goes tits up, we should react somewhat more appropriately than running around screaming at fate and coming up with wild draconian measures...Collins and Brooks disagree about the role of government oversight going forward, but they do so with good sense and humor. Collins steps into Dowd's dream with this insight --"Obama must have known, when he took office, that there was some agency somewhere — probably tucked away in the governmental attic — that was going to hand him a disaster. If you’d asked him to guess, I bet he’d never have fingered the Minerals Management Service..." and Crusader AXE has to agree. This is so Bush administration...obviously, the 2000-2008 really screwed over the government. Collins raises the issue of what to do going forward, and Brooks points out very well how we're basically screwed by the nature of risk, reality and the economy. "The fact that an industry with inherent riskiness sometimes produces catastrophes hasn’t really changed my view of the industry. Less offshore drilling just means more oil tankers, a more environmentally risky mode of getting our energy." Well, since about once a quarter I throw up Yeats' centre will not hold thing, I guess I can't argue with this...

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[Barbara O' Brien]

Dear Defeatists,

I just have a quick question for you but couldn't find an email so had to resort to this. I am a progressive blogger. Please email me back at [email protected] when you get a chance. Thanks.

Barbara