Wise sayings

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I used to think life was too short not to say whatever you want, but now I'm starting to think that life is actually too long to say whatever you want.

A Christmas anecdote

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I was walking down a long hallway in the research complex where I work and spied a pleasant co-worker approaching me from the opposite side of a set of double doors. He is a pleasant fellow, as I mentioned, but sometimes just a bit too breezy in communication style to conform to my expectations for professional interpersonal communications.

I said to myself, "I'll bet this joker is going to say 'Happy Happy!" as a greeting when he walks by me, so I must restrain the demon within me that wishes to laugh in his face or even, on a cranky day, punch him in the neck. Yet also I must reply with an appropriate degree of Yuletide good will in order that I not mar or dent his high spirits."

So this gentleman straight-arms the double doors, bursting through immediately with the following tidings: "Have a Happy and a Merry!!!"

"Same to you!" I replied, and I really meant it at the maximum sincerity level of which I am capable in such exchanges.

As we walked our separate directions, I heard him saying, "I fully intend to... if only the weather will cooperate... murble snurble muf noff etc...."

Holiday Greetings from StuporMundi. Have a Merry and a Happy!!! It has been so decreed. Long live StuporMundi.

My last word on Rick Warren

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Media coverage of issues like the ongoing hissy fit over Rick Warren can make me momentarily forget that the homosexual "community" is not really very homogeneous at all. This lulu, by a HuffingtonPost blogger named Chris Durang, is in my eyes really the nadir of self-marginalizing liberal political thought, and invites both knee-jerk derision and stereotyping even from a kind gentleman such as me. Although he acknowledges, with qualifications, that Pastor Rick "is good on the environment and on AIDS in Africa", Durang's overriding issue is he feels "hurt and upset" by Obama's decision to include Warren in the inauguration. The implication of Durang's argument is that politics are mainly about people's feelings, and that the feelings of gay people are more important the feelings of evangelical-minded people.

Today, as I skimmed over the decreasingly useful HuffPost I did notice some gay and liberal pushback against the guilt-by-association stuff that has been written about Obama. The best one, by Bob Ostertag, ceremoniously dismantles idea that gay marriage is a major political issue for most gay people. The issue, he says, is (as always) equal rights for everyone. Ostertag helpfully notes that weird evangelical beliefs about gay marriage are rooted in even weirder beliefs, such as that the God of The Universe literally sent his only Son to die for earthly sinners, however that might work. The substrate of Ostertag's text is some solid horse sense about political pragmatism from which I think liberals in general could benefit if they paid attention. Furthermore, in a nice act of journalistic integrity, Ostertag also provides some fuller context about Rick Warren's thoughts on gays, as extracted from a widely read beliefnet.com interview that I don't feel like linking to. The upshot is that Warren isn't quite the know-nothing cartoon character he has been painted as by the angry gays and liberals over the past few weeks.

The Ostertag piece is a bit long, but I strongly recommend it. He directly nails several points I was trying to make in my previous post, but he has the benefit of writing about gay and liberal activism as an insider (i.e., he actually knows what he is talking about from experience).

Josh Marshall makes a funny

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His latest deep thought truly rises to the level of a wise saying:

"It's going to take a lot of money to make the rich people rich again."

Liberal priorities

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I said to LuMac the other day that I believe liberal ideas are too important to entrust to liberals. He was amused. Here's what I meant:

Everybody knows that liberalism and democracy are inseparable. Even neocon scum talk in terms of "liberal democracy" when criticizing nations whose authoritarian governments prevent U.S. corporations from stealing their national resources. Liberal ideas are that important: even fascist-leaning swine are forced to pay lip service to them as a desirable way of life. My observations and direct experience with self-identifying liberals have led me to conclude that liberalism became a very different thing in the late 1960s than it had been through the New Deal and earlier times.

Baby boom conformists searching for a unique identity put on liberalism the same way they slipped into their railroad-striped bell bottoms and tee shirts with the Zig-Zag man on them. The minuscule reproduction of a '60s rock show poster (upper left) shows an example of how readily liberal ideas --- in this case the doubly political overtones of the headlining group's name: Big Brother And The Holding Company --- were conflated with accouterments of youth counterculture lifestyle. In order to prove that one was a real hippie in the 1960s, and not just one of those white suburban phonies, the young person had to learn the liturgy of mainstream counterculture liberalism and talk about it earnestly enough to be considered Genuine. The more earnest you were, the more genuine you were. The idea was to never say or do anything to jeopardize your counterculture credentials in the eyes of people who were even hipper than you. Likewise, you could never pass up an opportunity to demonstrate that you were hipper-than-thou, and the easiest way to do that was to "make a statement." Turn everything into a political issue.

I'd guess that maybe 30 percent of the people I am characterizing here chose to calcify in their juvenile roles as rabble-rousing freaks, and the other 70 percent became Reagan Republicans after freaking out on dope, or catching an unpronouncable social disease, or growing tired of living like bums. I dropped out of college in 1973, as Watergate was boiling over in pus, then re-enrolled in 1977. Campus liberalism had changed significantly during that span. It was expressed strictly in terms of lifestyle choices, and I remember very little political awareness being expressed --- a bit of interest in U.S. atrocities in Latin America and some anti-corporation rhetoric published in the newspaper I edited as a senior. For most of my latter-day campus peers, the transition from a "liberal" lifestyle into a Reagan Revolutionary presented no real dilemma. As the disco era smeared into the Reagan era, any valuable core of liberal conterculture ideals defaulted into the hands of self-proclaimed "true hippies" who were retrenching in defiance of their fading youth.

To this day the survivors of the liberalism-as-lifestyle tradition don't understand that activities like making earnest statements and contriving political theater have no impact on policy formation. Worse, these obsolete schmoes do not understand how their anachronicstic and self-centered behavior helps to margnalize important ideas of which they purport, by implication of their acting out, to be the sole stewards. Unfortunately for the preservation and promotion of liberalism, many smart and articulate people of the baby boom generation act as if its more important to maintain their self-image than to applying presure in pragmatic ways.

In short, nobody who knows a goddam thing about how power works gives a fuck that Obama selected Pastor Rick Warren to offer the invocation at the inauguration. It's only "optics," as the celebrity pundits now like to say. The decision was a political calculation, just like one might expect from the smartest political strategic thinker we've seen since Kevin Phillips. Does anyone really remember who gave the invocation at Bush's last inaugural? Or his first one? Or either of Clinton's? Or Nixon's? Did the words spoken at those inaugurations by the Holy Men have any impact on policy formation?

I understand that gay people have their reasons for disliking or despising Rick Warren. I do not understand why high-visibility liberals would waste their time with fist-pounding denunciations of Obams's "poor judgment" in this matter if their intent is to "make a difference." Their petulance will not make a difference. But by co-opting Rick Warren for his inauguration, Obama is probably shielding himself from a significant amount of criticism from the middle should he decide, for example, to lift the ban on gays serving in the uniformed military forces.

In this case, the best suggestion I've read for a liberal response to this non-event comes from Atrios: if you're present at the inauguration and deplore the presence of Rick Warren, then turn your back on the invocation. It could be a silent bit of political theater that might actually be heard by the media. Meanwhile, I wish the marquee names in liberal blogging and commentary would try to grow up soon and get their priorities straight. The host of a religious invocation at a public event is not a good reason to "go to the mat," as the wrestlers say. They need to save their zeal for promoting core liberal policy priorities, like progressive taxation, full employment, sustainable economics, and law & order in the worlds of business and finance.

Update before I'm done writing: I predict a small number of inauguration attendees will be arrested for throwing shoes in Warren's direction.

Shoe-hurling hilarity [updated]

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Even though some late-night TV jokers have made a few good funnies based on the Iraq shoe-throwing incident, I don't consider the attack to be all that entertaining. What hilarity: someone tried to assault the President of the United States with shoes! I'm sure there is all sorts of liberal "schadenfreude" justification for the cackling.

Would it have been funny if it had been President Obama at that podium in Iraq on Sunday? And if Obama had been hit? And if the shoes were rocks? Or hand grenades? And if the hurler was wearing a white hood? A regular laff riot! Hey, remember the "shoe bomber"? What was up with that guy anyway?!?

How the fuck does something like this happen in a controlled space in a war zone without the perpetrator getting a Secret Service bullet in the ear before he's done with his first follow-through?

Imagine how we all would have roared with laughter in 1963 if Kennedy had only gotten a dumdum bullet through the crown of his fedora instead of the crown of his skull. But that's not the way history played out. What did happen, though, starting in 1964, was a statistically improbable increase in naming newborn baby boys "Lee Harvey".

Update: shoe throwing is not just for laughing at. It's also a golden opportunity for narcissistic liberal sanctimony. Things like this tempt me to launch an "Oh brother..." feature on this blog.

Bye, Bettie

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A lot of stories like these have been published in the past day about the passing of Bettie Page, who died Thursday evening, December 11, in Los Angeles. In the various reports I've read or heard on the radio, Bettie is packaged as some sort of bellwether of the '60s sexual revolution or an "infamous" bondage model. I am not a Bettie expert, but I do know a little about her and her contemporaries in the figure modeling profession. The obits are generally heavy on caricature and short on context.

First, Bettie did not "set the stage for the sexual revolution"; that had been under way since World War II even if it was mostly excluded from Hollywood movies and the other popular media. Second, she was really not a superstar in her day. She was a popular figure model who posed in lingerie and various stages of nudity, but only one of many, and I strongly doubt that she was ever the most popular pinup model even during her heyday --- the early and middle 1950s. At that time, the colossal sex symbols were burlesque and strip-tease superstars like Tempest Storm, Blaze Starr, and Lili St. Cyr (prononced "Sincere"), some of whom were pulling down four-figure wages per week in Las Vegas while bedding first-tier entertainers and mobsters, not to mention the occasional state governor or president. Then there was also Marilyn Monroe, who really did traipse fairly unabashed sexuality into middle class consciousness via the movie screen. And third, Bettie was certainly not the most infamous cutie to pose in fetish gear, bondage poses, or catfight vignettes --- there were plenty who specialized in that market, as advertised "back of the book" in pulpy paper in men's "cheesecake" and "adventure" magazines. But that fact is known mainly to the original purchasers of such photos and to latter-day collectors, not to corporate journalists looking for a way to sensationalize a light, campy takeout on the death of a faded sex symbol.

Photographers and publishers made carloads of money selling copies of Bettie's likeness. She was left to deal with exploitation and broken marriages, and a past of sexual abuse by her father, by herself. I've read that even though she turned to Christianity at the end of the Eisenhower era and remained devout to the end, she never disowned or even expressed shame about her modeling career. That struck me as touching, and an indication of strong character.

News media have their reasons for sensationalizing Bettie now, possibly because it allows even NPR to talk about her "endless legs, tiny waist, and beautiful bustline" --- not to mention bondage and leather --- in respectable, well modulated tones of voice. I, as an admirer of vintage figure and pinup art, have my own reasons, and here they are:

In terms of anatomy alone, during her prime time, Bettie was a force of nature. Physically, every molecule of Bettie was in exactly the right place when she posed. Strictly speaking, the molecules were the product of her genetic heritage. But I feel that what arranged those molecules so exquisitely in front of a lens was her spirit. The magic had to have been her personality. A few of Bettie's contemporaries may have rivaled her "physical plant." Lili St. Cyr comes to mind, but her molecules radiate aloofness and even arrogance. Others, such as Rose La Rose and Betty Howard, exuded terrific personalities but may have lacked certain indispensable fine points, for example, below the knees and above the ankles. Winnie Garrett, my favorite model, was a tall, "flaming redhead" who by all accounts overflowed with personality, intelligence, and genuine niceness. No red-blooded American he-man could ask for more, then or now. But even so, I must admit that Winnie was a bit exotic-looking in the direction of "school marm"; that's fine by me, but it nevertheless falls short of Bettie's unfailing appeal to almost anyone with a Y chromosome.

As in the Irving Klaw snapshot above, from my photography collection, Bettie stands alone. She was not a trailblazer or a self-promoter: she was exploited for her charm and forgotten by some of those who profited from the light that her molecules reflected and her personality radiated. I can't remember ever seeing a picture of Bettie in which she looks tired, bored, or bitter. It's as if the camera brought her to life, and she returned the favor. Bettie was stunning without even a hint of self-importance. She could clown for the camera without seeming stupid or trivial. She was supremely generous --- not to her photographer, but to her audience. Look at any picture of Bettie: you can almost hear her Tennessee accent, thick as pine tar, declaring "Sir, I am so glad to be able to share this picture with you."

Land of Lincoln sanity checks

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Governor Blagojevich returned to "business as usual" today, which for him is the administrative equivalent of spraying a tommy gun inside the capital rotunda hollering "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" Meanwhile, most state officials are making serious noises about meeting to develop a framework to draft a resolution calling for the study of possibly impeaching our modern day Baby Face Nelson. Our remaining U.S. Senator, Dick Durbin, pulled a blindingly stupid PR stunt on Tuesday when he immediately called for a special election to fill Obama's vacant Senate seat. Dumb idea: the next Congress will have been in session for months by the time a special election is set up and concluded. Nobody even knows how one would be administered in Illinois under current circumstances. And a special election would open the seat to being won by any Republican skilled enough to play the backlash card of downstate resentment of corrupt city slickers. Anybody who thinks that couldn't happen is a fool: the Land of Lincoln is not as "blue" as celebrity journalists seem to think. If I were Obama, I'd be tempted to have Durbin skinned with poultry shears for throwing a special election on the table. Bonehead.

And Armageddon must be near: I agree with a Republican. Former governor Jim Edgar said on public radio Wednesday morning that he thinks a special election is a bad idea because it would get partisanship all stirred up at a time when we need two U.S. Senators in Washington. He also suggested that Blagojevich's successor appoint a panel to help select the new senate nominee. That could work, but I don't think it's necessary: the appointment power lies with whomever is governor or acting governor.

I figured that the legislature could have Blagojevich impeached by Christmas if there was a will to do it, but serious observers seem to think that impeachment requires hard evidence of criminality and a reasonable-doubt standard for guilt. I doubt it. They don't have to impeach Blagojevich for bribery: lawyers can figure it out. For example, if Blagojevich were insane enough to appoint someone to the seat, I believe he would be violating at least the spirit of Illinois state ethics laws in the conflict-of-interest arena. [Allow me to interject that anyone accepting a Senate appointment by Blagojevich now would be an imbecile... unless Blago pulled the supreme jiu jutsu move of appointing an Republican to the seat. Think about it. You heard it here first.]

The Attorney General, Lisa Madigan, can appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court to remove a governor who is incapable of performing his duties. Madigan has indicated that she is smart enough to wait for awhile, though, necessarily letting state government twist in the wind long enough so even a mischevous Republican justice might think twice about voting against a removal petition. (The Supreme Court decision must be unanimous.) Normally, I would have thought Madigan would have been a slam-dunk appointment to the Senate seat. But under these circumstances, and given her likely role as Blagojevich's putative executioner, the Lieutenant Governor might find it awkward to be seen as "rewarding" her for the kill.

I know that people smarter than me don't believe this is a serious danger, but he longer chaos persists in Illinois government, the better it is for Republicans here. At the state level, Illinois Republicans are pathetic: divided, devoid of viable leaders, and they stand for nothing except fueling resentment against Chicago. But nothing unites Republicans like chaos.

And it's also better for the national Republican Party: without a Democrat in Obama's seat by January, the new President has one less vote to beat down the twin menace of Mitch McConnell and "Diaper" Dave Vitter.

Editor's note: the illustration of James Cagney from White Heat is used above solely for nonprofit education and research purposes, and this fair use is believed not to diminish the commercial value of the image to the copyright holder.

Where I've been

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There's just too much to unpack in Illinois and national politics these days for me to try documenting everything I write here with links to source material. Part of the problem is that I've taken on an exciting new role in life that dominates my free time: raising a set of illegitimate triplets I unexpectedly sired last winter... er, I mean, helping to administer my aged mother's transition into assisted living. Both of these factors have crimped my substantive blogging output.

For the time being, just for the sake of writing something on a regular basis, I must devolve to basic punditry and speculation modes. Unfortunately, my posts will mainly be supported only by my background knowledge, the considerable amount of news reports that I blow through every day, my need to think like Machiavelli, and my joy in fabricating hypotheses and strategies.

I rarely expect anyone to take anything I say just on the basis of my own authority anyway, but now that the lack of time forces me to relinquish some of my documentary rigor, caveat emptor totally, OK? I don't like it, but I don't like shutting up even less.

Blago blogging

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I apologize if the title of this post isn't original to you. But it's new to me as of 21:08 CST.

It would be naive to think that a state governor has never tried to play high-stakes tit-for-tat with a Senate seat appointment. Wouldn't it? But what are we to think, really, of a state governor --- under federal investigation for at least 3 years with "imminent indictment" rumors swirling around the state for several months?

Stupid? I know it's "cute" to say so, and Blago may barely scrape into three digits, IQ-wise. But his reported behavior really can't satisfactorily be explained away that easily. Chutzpah may get a little closer to serving as a feasible explanation, if that word encompasses epic-scale obliviousness to the consequences of planning a criminal conspiracy without using code words and euphemisms. But what could account for such an Olympian disconnect from reality?

If Blago is really guilty of trying to shake down the President elect and even possibly Warren Buffett, then it's clear to me that he's criminally insane. The guy belongs in Arkham Asylum.

In TPM's fantasy movie about Blago, David Kurtz would cast Steve Carrell on the basis of appearance and the ability to portray cluelessness. But I'd recommend Michael Badalucco, who portrayed Baby Face Nelson in O Brother Where Art Thou. Badalucco would be perfect: more babyfaced than the gangster, like Blago; nuts the size of coffee cans, acting-wise; and a peerless performance as a bipolar criminal thrill-seeker. The photo above is the historical George "Baby Face" Nelson. I curse the World Wide Web for not having a readily available picture of Badalucco strutting his stuff with speeding sedans, tommy guns, and dairy cows.

Another reason why "Hoover" means "suck"

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Josh Marshall has a few posts up today puzzling over the possible resurgence of the Herbert Hoover wing of the Grand Old Party. Given how unlikely it is that a "neo-Hooverite" pro-depression economic ideology will sweep the nation (like the Mudshark) anytime soon, Josh wonders whether the new Hooverite vanguard is motivated by

“strictly economic reasons (creditors can do well in a deflationary economy), moral reasons (need a good hard recession to re-teach the poor moral values) or just because they're economic illiterates....”

One TPM reader offered a fourth hypothesis that I think best explains why these creatures are trying to rally the party around the legacy of Herbert Hoover instead of swarming back under their rocks for a few decades. He says:

“Given the new demographic realities of the country, Obama's presidency must be a failure if Republicans are to ever emerge from the political wilderness. The more they obstruct, the more Obama and Congressional Democrats will be forced to water down economic policy. And a watered-down policy just won't cut it at this moment in history. This is sabotage, pure and simple.”

Oh goody --- I truly hope so! I think a Republican strategy like that would be outstanding for the country, especially without a Democrat supermajority in the Senate. Now, for progressive legislation to be enacted rapidly, some Republicans are going to have to vote with Democrats. And I’m certain they will do exactly that if they want their political careers to remain intact for long.

I think some people are forgetting that the GOP no longer has unified political leadership let alone any power to reward and punish. This may not have sunk in on Republicans yet. I can’t think of any reason why the likes of Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins would support a long Republican filibuster of, say, a national healthcare bill or an infrastructure program just because Mitch McConnell decrees it... especially since Democrats can wheel, deal, and threaten to gain the support of moderates who want a piece of the action. It's feasible that we could see the so-called "Gang of 14" working backwards, drawing its Republican members over to vote with Democrats.

For that matter, I can’t think of any good reason why a moderate Senate Republican wouldn’t consider shedding his or her toxic brand and switching parties. Obama’s magnanimity toward Lieberman, considered from this perspective, might be seen as a shrewd move to subliminally invite a few more conservative Senators into the Democrat tent. The opportunity to be treated with respect might have its attractions for a handful of the more reality-based Republicans.

Meanwhile, on CNN and Fox News, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Shopper can enjoy the spectacle of Republican stalwarts creating gridlock in the Congress for purposes of burnishing Herbert Hoover’s legacy (i.e., The Great Depression). In the process, they may even learn that there is already a widely accepted modern name for neo-Hooverite doctrine: Reaganomics.

Holy crap: wait a minute!

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I just discovered that today is the first anniversary of my astounding blog!

I truly believe this is the finest blog available on the web today that does not shove a PayPal "tip jar" or Amazon "wish list" down your virtual craw on the home page. I am able to provide this information and entertainment service to you, the public, free of charge owing to my hobby of robbing gas stations on the weekend.

Fantasy derivatives I'd like to buy

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I wish someone would come up with a way to convert stupidity into an investment product. I'm not talking about bundled subprime mortgages or credit default swaps: the short sellers figured out a way to do that back in September. That was a bubble. I want a product that promises 20 percent growth annually out until about the time our distant descendants grow a third eye. I want someone to find a way to monetize Stupidity with a capital S.

Stocks plunged today on news that Ben Bernanke said the U.S. economy remains under "considerable stress." Because last Friday everybody thought the economy had turned the corner since the Dow climbed by 10 percent in 4 days. God damn Ben Bernanke for shattering the faith of the children. That was pretty Stupid of him. But not as Stupid as Wall Street Masters of the Universe who are shocked to hear that we're "officially" in a recession. Do you see the growth potential?

Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to invest in Stupid Pill Futures any time soon thanks to the socialist Obamislamofascists who are now poised to swarm the shining city on the hill like sheets of Keynesian cockroaches.

Tomorrow's news today: "Wall Street rebounds on bargain hunting." Here, have a Stupid Pill. The first one is free.