Ruled by superminority

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Maybe you've heard about this jagoff of a U.S. Senator from Alabama who has abused Senate protocol rules to put a blanket hold on all of President Obama's nominees until he extorts some public funds for projects in his state. This isn't traditional legislative logrolling for the purpose of maximizing the bacon one brings back for the hometown crowd, which happens within routine lawmaking practice. It's the exercise of a secret active veto over pretty much any Senate activity by a single bad actor.

I haven't read the stories about this closely enough to know how the obstructionist's secret identity was revealed, but my understanding is that, at the very least, the Senate Majority Leader by definition must know who has placed the hold... and that it's considered not very gentlemanly for the Majority Leader to "out" that person.

So not only do Democrats feel they can't control the legislative agenda without a Senate supermajority (i.e., 60 votes as needed to overcome the threat of a filibuster). They don't even feel they can act on a routine presidential nomination if a single member of the club decides against it... because holding that member publically accountable would seem impolite.

All of the above, while not unique or profound observation, I present as background for a couple of Paul Krugman blog posts wherein he describes the abuse of the nobility's liberum veto in 17th century Poland. This familiar-sounding political dysfunction greatly contributed to the collapse, breakup, and annexation of that country, by its neighbors, at the dawn of The Enlightenment elsewhere in Europe.

So the bad news is that America seems to be swirling helplessly around the drain that empties into the septic tank of feudalism. (Think of nobility such as the Duke of CitiCorp, the Prince of General Electric, and the Archbishop of Viacom.) The jury is still out on any good news this may portend.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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This is for Gurlitzer, if you're still out there. Don't know about you, but this was the first rendition of Stormy Monday I ever heard. Many hipsters would say this version is absurd, what with the Hammond organ sounding like a couples skate at the roller rink, and Lee Michaels with his earnest white-boy falsetto. But it hits the same spot as Wagner does on my aural palate.

Tuesday Night Bedtime

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And I don't wanna hear another peep outta ya!!!

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Here's another Louis Jordan "soundie." It looks like it's from a C movie of the 1940s in which a paper-thin script gives The Boys a chance to perform six or seven of their hits on film. Jordan and his band were featured in "Beware!", which was named after the hit I posted yesterday. I don't remember this clip from that movie. The marquee at the beginning fictionalizes Louie's name, though, as was done in "Beware!" There's no band at all, as a matter of fact, and the chorus line is as tame as can be, unfortunately. I offer it here because the only "Fish Fry" recording available on YouTube at this time is a horrible latter-day effort, and to my ears it might not even be Jordan.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Here's a classic piece of advice from Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five. He must have recorded it umpty-nine times, as was the practice back in the days when the the master recordings would degrade after a finite number of pressings. It's an oddly laconic version, as compared with his original manic lecture to the hapless youth. But truth is truth, whether served up hot or cool, so listen up cubs!

The biomimicry of the Reagan Revolution

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Here's a fascinating New Scientist article about the life cycle of a very cunning and ruggedly individual worm, Maculinea arion. This caterpillar is the beast of the insect apocalypse, seducing innocent ants to accept it into the breast of their colony, mimicking their queen and feeding them its "sweet fluids." The goal of its vermigenic largesse is to devour all the eggs, all the larvae, and all the adults, obliterating the colony so it can transmigrate into a beautiful blue butterfly for all the world to admire.

Introducing the failPad

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In the previous comments thread, our prolific commenter "Anonymous" glibly predicted that the overhyped new Apple mobile media device would be "stupid." I could faintly imagine innovative possibilities for a highly portable multimedia touchscreen computer, but could not figure out how it could be successfully implemented. Forward-facing camera for videoconferencing and texting? Maybe cool, but cellular nets certainly don't have the bandwidth to support too much of that. Larger touch keyboard with tactile feedback (haptic) technology? Of interest to me, but I really can't see any advantage to a screen that you can't reach at least 3/5 of the way across with your thumbs, because laying the "pad" flat on a table would give the user a lousy viewing angle, and propping the screen up would give the user lousy typing ergonomics.

I felt that all the mockups were wrongheaded --- basically large iPhones with no apparent redeeming social value. Certainly the guy who sent engineers back to the lab a dozen times until they designed a MacBook trackpad with exactly the right texture would have obsessed over the ergonomics of the device, the hand feel, the effortless graspability, I thought.

Nope. Jobs's failPad is, in my opinion, astonishingly banal. The device appears to incorporate zero technical innovation and clumsy ergonomics. It offers no new essential, or even interesting, capabilities whatsoever (unless you think it's important to have a ridiculously high-def 10 in. display that you can hold up to your face with both hands while watching YouTube porns).

Apple didn't introduce a technology innovation today --- it unveiled a new business model for media content owners. I'd imagine that those giant media corporations --- which actually are people just like you and me, granted --- already have a mighty case of blue balls owing to several years of foreplay. These behemoths have gently been urging Apple (like a thousand tiny fingers) to market a stylish new widget that will seduce foolish young consumers into turning their media collections into a never-ending revenue stream for Time-Warner, Disney, General Electric, and all those other friendly folks who rent you content for your life so you don't have to provide your own.

When I read the description of the iPad today I'm sure I felt the same kind of bile rising as Ralphie did when he discovered that the Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Ring message was just a lousy commercial. Early Apple geek reaction to the failPad in blog comments threads has been pretty negative (about 2:1, in fact), which is uniformly unheard of after any new Apple rollout.

I may be wrong, but I'll bet anyone a beer that I'm not. I think the reason this new offering is so lame is that it wasn't really designed by Jobs and Jonathan Ives: it was developed for control-horny media conglomerates.

Most important thing

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Steve Jobs says the iPad will be "will be the most important thing I've ever done." I guess that's not counting the liver transplant.

Pop culture amnesia

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Stephen Worth, an animation producer of note, has been guest-blogging on BoingBoing for a few weeks, and has been unearthing all kinds of vintage animation, film, and sensible ideas about the forgotten richness of American pop culture. This particular post struck a chord with me for two reasons. First, it's a pretty concise summary of the current state of corporate popular culture and its victims who, for example, like "all kinds of music" as long as it's something they can hear played in stress rotation on a Sirius XM channel targeted to their particular consumer demographic. Second, it reminds me how my own tastes as a youth were molded by giant entertainment corporations which gleefully convinced me that, prima facie, the past sucked, so I would be well primed buy their product.

The video embedded in the BoingBoing post is the grand finale from the 1943 musical "Stormy Weather." I'm struck by how different it looks to me now versus how I imagine I would have reacted to it as a late-night TV movie 35 years ago. It would have been unthinkable for twentysomething Baby Boomers to find anything to admire in it. Tap dancing? Shit --- that's what we were forced to sit through every Sunday night while Selig and DoubleE stared at The Ed Sullivan Show with us as collateral damage. The counterculture had no use for tap dancing because purveyors of Revolution like Capitol Records, Warner Brothers, Columbia, and all their groovy subsidiaries convinced us that we were too hip for it. And the funny thing about it: I do believe it was a more innocent time. For awhile, at least, entertainment corporations were content to throw money at freaks and impresarios, stand back, and let them create both innovative music and bales of cash.

So what changed? Why is the product of today's entertainment conglomerates so much more odious than it was 40 or 45 years ago? My guess: the marketing focus group as a social engineering tool --- a tool that, today, is probably less successful at funding the cocaine habits of entertainment tycoons than at trapping the American mind in an endlessly recursive matrix of multimedia cross references, taglines, brand names, and virtual reality.

Tap dancing? It's all about dudes and babes playing jump-jazz percussion using castanets bolted to the soles of their shoes, while bounding across tabletops, grand pianos, and what-have-you. The Nicholas Brothers must have had adductors with the proportionate strength of piranha jaws. So if you have 10 minutes to spare, click through to the YouTube video clip embedded in the BoingBoing post. There are more dancing zoot suiters, foxy babes, and African-American GIs than you can shake a stick at, plus Cab Calloway keeping the tempo and Lena Horne dolling up the joint.

Wise sayings

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It is awesome when the stock market surges on the prospect that healthcare reform will fail, but it's an abomination when the stock market retreats because there's talk of restoring bank regulations that, if the Republican Congress and Clinton hadn't dismantled them, would have prevented the current U.S. economic depression.

A parody of a parody

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The old adage about American politics, updated here using post-feminist lanaguage, was that the difference between the children and the adults is that the children want to be something and the adults want to do something. Today, though, the children don’t even want to be something --- they just want to be seen as being something. With few exceptions, Democrats are children. Or “wimps,” as Republicans have successfully branded them for 30 years. (So are Republicans, though, but that’s beyond my scope here.)

Just look at Obama and other Democrats like Jim Webb now tripping all over themselves to put a halt to a critical legislative process in order to wait for some neophyte Tea Party Republican to be seated in the Senate... so that he can lock down the filibuster for the minority party. This guy is literally a nobody, but they want to grant him a veto over legislation that was nailed down long before anybody outside of Massachusetts heard of “Scott Brown.” The only way this makes one f@*#king bit of sense is if Obama is just simply more interested in being seen by the public as always being the man who takes the high road, even at the expense of his own agenda and even his gross personal ambitions. And what is Webb up to? Maybe he is more interested in being anointed by the media as The New Maverick of the Senate than he is in expanding health coverage to unfortunate average Americans and cutting the federal deficit through good government. To these men... I mean boys... it’s not even about being something: it’s about appearing to be something.

About 10 years ago the phrase “perception equals reality” came into vogue. You noticed, right? But the trouble is, perception equals reality only for solipsists, psychotics, and gullible consumers. And what we have now is a political and policymaking establishment that seems truly to believe that government is about managing the perceptions of the rubes.

And then there are those Real Democrats --- “real” because they perceive themselves to be --- who think now’s the time to scapegoat progressives (i.e., liberals). Why? Because some liberals (1) have fought tenaciously for the agenda on which they ran for office and (2) now they talk about playing the same kind of hardball with their votes in the House like Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe, Mary Landrieu et al. have been doing all along in the Senate. Real Democrats are angered by a progressive bloc in Congress that might hold their votes hostage until they extract some meaningful concessions from their Real Democrat colleagues (legislative and executive). This is supposed to be dirty pool, you see, or “irresponsible.” Spare me. Liberals have compromised with moderates every f@*#ing step of the way, and not only on healthcare reform. Frankly, liberals have gone 10 extra miles to appease some very bad men and women who make a career of burnishing their images as “responsible” public servants on talk shows.

There may be a large bloc of Real Democrats who will weep to see their dream of healthcare legislation die this winter. From the commentary I’m reading these days, many Real Democrats now view healthcare reform much more as a Democratic political totem than as a public policy imperative. And that’s the main reason why they’ve stood by while Max Baucus and his warty playmates denuded the Senate legislation of its most important potential policy virtues (e.g., universal coverage and cost reduction for the government). Real Democrats cried crocodile tears while Baucus, Snowe, and their playmates stalled and vandalized, but now they are furious about filthy liberals like Howard Dean and HuffPost and FireDogLake who want to extract a coupla pounds of flesh on behalf of their own constituencies. But hey, why should anyone care about the fury of wimps?

Real Democrats have failed the public and themselves, since the onslaught of The Reagan Revolution, by dealing with the devil as standard operating procedure. It’s the easiest way to grab and hold a seat in The Club, after all. Yes, that’s right: cowardice and self-hatred are now entrenched personality traits of the modern Real Democrat. The way he and she copes with it, of course, is by psychological projection to an external scapegoat --- the filthy, irresponsible liberals. It’s the same way that Republicans cope with their own failures, after all. Unfortunately for Real Democrats, though, their little club can’t get along any better without the progressive bloc than it can without the Joe Lieberman and Olympia Snowe bloc. So they’d better come up with a Plan C, or else just become Real Republicans. Because most of them already are, and not closeted very well. (Rockefeller Republicans, maybe, if not Nixon Republicans.) Yes, the Elite Real Democrats should just join the Republican Party and accelerate its destruction from within using their own time-tested wimpiness. Not only are Real Democrats wimps, as right-wingers correctly point out: they are parodies of wimps.

Incoming

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Seems like I've spent the past month, psychologically and socially, in a place much like Porky Pig depicts in my previous post. Except I share none of Porky's good humor on the matter.

One implication of my hiatus is that I'm rejiggering this journal of mine to some extent --- something I may have already hinted that I was thinking about.

Another agenda item, less important except in terms of personal vanity, is that I'm about sick of the StuporMundi ID. I borrowed it from one of my previous incarnations during this current life, sometime in the '78 - '79 timeframe. At that time the moniker was borrowed from a medieval emperor, who also used it as a nickname. It means Wonder of the World. Although I'm not surrendering that status, I'm about ready to surrender the handle. And I'll do it as soon as I figure out what to replace it with. Suggestions are welcome, but that don't mean I'm gonna listen to them.

Watch this space for more exciting details soon!!!

The Obama Age of Aquarius

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Fair use claimed: reproduced for purposes of social commentary.

See how it works?

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It works like this: Jay Rockefeller denounces Howard Dean as "irresponsible" for suggesting that lousy HCR legislation be scrapped, but he doesn't denounce Joseph Lieberman (King of the United States) as irresponsible for aggressively acting to scrap the HCR legislation unless Rockefeller's public option was removed from the language.

Sure, Jay is upset, he confesses. But that doesn't mean "...I take my football, and run home and sulk, and complain, or hold out for $100 million for something in West Virginia," he assures us. No, he mans up to it all and... blames Howard Dean.

Wherein I have a sissyfight with JMM

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It should be evident to anyone who reads this that Josh Marshall is my media hero, mainly due to the accomplishments of his TPM investigative reporting unit and his fine capacity both for issuing political ridicule and championing human decency. But today, with this post and a few earlier ones, the lad has disgustipated me. Just like that, both the public option and Medicare buy-in are dead at the hands of the King and Queen of the United States, Joseph and Olympia. But Josh thinks that furious progressives (not to mention the majority of Americans) should bend over and take it for the good of the Democratic Party. I wrote a note to tell Josh, politely, that he's full of shit. Here it is, for what it's worth:

“Ravening masses,” Josh? Really? Pheeewwww!

So many “responsible” liberals, like some who pontificate in your comments threads and sometimes you yourself, always seem ready to provide cover to “serious” politicians like the putative King and Queen of the United States, Lieberman and Snowe, when they bargain in bad faith in order to destroy progressive public policy initiatives that are favored by a majority of Americans. These people enable the erosion of majority rule by lecturing us about how "something is really better than nothing," and that if we threaten to pull our support then we’re “taking our marbles and going home.” We’re engaging in political theater instead of political activism. We need to grow up. Or whatever.

Progressives are authorized by you to speak our piece --- gosh, thanks!!! --- but not to use our own political muscle to sabotage King Joseph’s health care vision for us peasants (which is to say, no meaningful reform whatsoever plus increased costs for many, many working people). Withdrawing support from this ugly policy initiative would be irresponsible of progressives, you say; a “cop out.” Pheeewwww! You rarely reek of sanctimony, but today you sure do.

Joe Lieberman, with constant backroom assistance from Rahm Emanuel in the White House and the entire GOP as a pom pom squad, blocks and scuttles majority rule in this country, and “responsible” liberals cluck a pretty good game about it. But in the final analysis, betrayed progressives are expected to STFU, accede to King Joseph’s proclamations, and “improve it” later. Tell me: what makes you believe that it will be feasible to “improve it” later if King Joseph and Queen Olympia do not wish it to be improved? Seriously: what makes you think that is a possibility?

This situation represents an epic failure of Democratic leadership, especially by Obama, who is supposed to be, um, a leader after all. Since you are a “political junkie,” I will direct your attention to Machiavelli’s “The Prince.” Machiavelli’s contribution to political science was not his prescriptions for achieving ends by any means, but by describing what successful leaders from history *did* to achieve their ends. And, as you’re fond of saying, it wasn’t through bean bag. I’m not suggesting that President Obama lead his adversaries to their demise behind a velvet curtain, Caesar Borgia style. But geez: RTFM! For starters, you don’t invite a Fifth Columnist from the other side into your tent, at least not if you expect to keep your own counsel. Next, you do use your charm, your guile, and your muscle to compel people (particularly opportunists) to get with your program. Neither Obama nor Harry Reid seem to have any idea whatsoever about how to get anything done, except on behalf of King Joseph and Queen Olympia. Step back and ask yourself, what is really going on here? If Obama really believes he’s playing 11-dimensional chess, as Atrios likes to joke, then he’s stalemated in half of the dimensions and checkmated in the rest.

If this useless HCR legislation represents a “responsible” liberal’s idea of the best the Democratic Party can do to help our constitutional democracy start clawing its way out of the hole after 30 years of Reagan Revolution, then you can have it. It makes zero real-world difference if policy wonks see some advantages to passing the current legislation: there’s nothing in it for me or anyone I know. It makes zero difference to me that scuttling this version of HCR would be an embarrassment and a 2010 electoral disaster: they deserve it.

To be more specific, the “responsible” Democratic Party does not deserve the support of progressives as it has “progressively” been undermining our interests since the day Ronald Reagan smirked his way into the Oval Office and tore out the solar panels. I totally advocate that progressives should “pick up our marbles and go home.” They’re *our* marbles! And you can’t succeed without them any more than you can succeed without Lieberman’s marbles. Politics ain't bean bag. So go ahead, “responsible” liberals: call us “cop outs.” Cluck about us from now until the inauguration of President Lieberman and Vice President Snowe. Maybe that will be change you can believe in. But not me.

So then, Josh wrote back:

"[StuporMundi], You might want to adjust your sensor for facetious post titles."

And then, my tit for a tat (and I'm done, because basically he's a mensch):

Maybe my sensor does need adjusting, Josh. But judging by the body of your post, the title doesn't seem facetious at all. Your point appears to be that the ravening masses need to get with the Lieberman/Snowe/Landrieu program because it provides "monumental gains" relative to something or other. And that progressives who want to use Lieberman's tactics to scuttle the legislation are irresponsible "cop-outs." So maybe the title of your post is facetious in your eyes only, but actually an accurate indicator of your intended meaning. (Incidentally, there was something more to my note than the throwaway comment about the title of your post. Maybe there was some substance, maybe not.)

Judging from what you wrote, it seems that in your view this HCR legislation must clear the Senate *not* because it's good for U.S. citizens, but because it would be an electoral disaster for the Democrats to come away empty handed. If that's the case, so be it. If the Republicans are going to continue dictating regressive national policy through people like Lieberman and Snowe (and helpmeets like Rahm Emanuel), then let's allow the GOP to directly control the levers of government so they can be fully held to account when all the chickens come to roost. Today Krugman said, not ironically, that this nation is well on its way to failed-state status. I agree, and am not sanguine about that.

That's all. A bunch of recycled words about my hissy fit in the blogosphere today. This Lieberman/Snowe agenda is pretty much what I've been expecting the Senate to come up with. We've been treated to 6 months of political theater: Garfield Goose on the Little Theater Screen. My political contributions for the foreseeable future will be routed to progressive Democrats challenging apparatchiks like Harry Reid and Claire McCaskill and Max Baucus in primaries.

Update before I'm done: JMM and I had one more exchange but it's not worth reporting because I need to log off and download some more purple booze into my gullet.

The King of the United States; or What We Can Learn About Current Events from The Little Theater Screen and William Shakespeare

When I was growing up in Chicago, the must-see after-school show for kids of a certain age range was Garfield Goose and Friends. See, Gar was the self-appointed King of the United States. His Prime Minister and "mouthpiece" was one Frazier Thomas (not pictured in the photo at the left, which, incidentally is being reproduced in compliance with the Fair Use Doctrine for purposes of education and social commentary). Nobody except Frazier could understand Gar's furious declamations, which consisted of the clattering together of a two-piece fiberglass bill, signifying nothing. Frazier also used his good offices as the official interpreter for all the other mute puppets on the show. By "interpreter" I mean that Frazier basically put words in their mouths because any sound that issued was incomprehensible to the viewer. Frazier Thomas served as the affable, long-suffering Enabler In Chief for a delusional Monarch.

Joe Lieberman, our current King of the United States, is similar to Garfield Goose in that he is operated by an unknown puppeteer with a hand way up his ass, and the sounds he makes are insanely grating on the ear. The corporate media, our current Royal Enablers, are similar to Frazier Thomas in that they presume to tell us exactly what Joe Lieberman's sociopathic performance art piece means by putting words in his mouth for us to hear. Unlike Joe Lieberman, Garfield Goose never did anyone harm when off camera. And unlike our corporate media, Frazier Thomas would often challenge The King's intelligence, motives, and ethics, and the substance of these challenges would be borne out in the end as Gar got his comeuppance about this thing or that. And he'd also show us Clutch Cargo cartoons on The Little Theater Screen.

I am utterly dumbfounded, even as I and so many others have fully expected it, that our constitutional democracy has come to this: the triumph of minority rule as ceded by the representatives of the true majority to the party of know-nothings, bigots, Wall Street, tea-baggers, and no doubt more than a handful of holocaust deniers.

It's pointless to blame Joe Lieberman, a known serpent who is behaving exactly like a serpent. I blame Barack "Othello" Obama and his lieutenant, Rahm "Iago" Emanuel. Evidently Iago's machinations have the Moor of Hawaii utterly unable to lead the nation or his own congressional majority, and so suspicious of his own Mandate For Change that he's getting ready to smother the life out of it like Desdemona in her chambers.

Afterword: This current disgusting healthcare reform episode, plus the concurrent military escalation in "The Stans," compels me to dust off the Petraeus-Lieberman Dream Ticket Theory for 2010. Not my dream, you understand; just my theory. Most Democrats deserve to have their asses handed to them for this travesty, but not mine and yours as well.

What I learned from the Bible this week

I have been working my way through the Book of Genesis, words by God Almighty with pictures by Robert Crumb. It is interesting to read reputable translations, unexpurgated and basically unedited except where Crumb jumped between different translations to restore a "Behold!" or select a more scholarly and precise choice of words than King James's crew provided. I say interesting because Judeo-Christian ideas and references so permeate Western Civilization that many of us don't recognize the full extent. Irrespective of any literal or allegorical truth found in the text, reading this book is to me a very similar experience to reading a good history.

I found the story of Noah and the Ark to be intriguing. This adventure was much more of an ordeal for Noah and his stalwart family than I ever received in Sunday School. The narrative is vivid and it plays out over a time scale that makes the flood and its rescission almost seem plausible. The three gentlemen pictured at upper left are Noah's three sons, Shem, Japheth, and Ham. I immediately noticed that Ham appears to have an anger problem, as if about to exclaim "Get busy, Porkypine, we got a job to do!" as a prelude to a smack in the kisser. And Shem seems to be cooking up a wisecrack, apparently vulnerable to the same lapses of judgment that plagued his distant descendant, Samuel Horwitz.

I claim "discovery" of this charming coincidence in the same way I claim "discovery" of Saturn about 25 years ago in my backyard telescope after returning from the fridge with my third beer, after the earth had revolved a few degrees through the ecliptic. I performed a quick google search to discover that, sadly, comics publisher Dan Nadel had made the same connection back in October, shortly after publication. (Schmuck probably got a free review copy, but I had to save my hard-earned shekels to purchase mine.)

As far as I can tell, this is the only "gag" Crumb embedded into his Old Testament illustrations. Somehow, this works for me and I think it might not offend me even if I had a long-nurtured reverence for the text. When you look at Crumb's drawings of the ark, sealed with hot pitch, it's easy to see these three lunkheads tripping over each other and bonking each other on the noggin with 8-cubit two-by-fours.

Editor's note: fair use is claimed for the image of Shem, Japheth, and Ham, which is reproduced here for purposes of literary critique and education. The art panel is copyright 2009 by R. Crumb; the text is in the public domain as previously furnished by The Lord and His earthly designees.

Analysis of my paralysis

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My "paralysis" is metaphorical, thankfully, but genuine in that very sense. I've simply lost the capacity to comment frequently on an unprecedented upwelling of mass psychosis and psychopathy that is represented to news consumers as "populist vigor." Rising rapidly to the top of my reading list is the Book of Revelations (or whatever its official name is), in which it is shown that the end times will be characterized by a polar reversal in how the damned human race assesses good and evil. I'm starting to think that the Jehovah's Witnesses may be more credible interpreters of reality than The New York Times.

That's not all. I've been deeply affected by the sight of Barack Obama futilely scampering around to co-opt snakes and sworn enemies under his imaginary big tent of collegiality. Maybe Obama really is playing some awesome game of 10-dimensional chess in which he's five moves ahead of all opponents on all planes. But I have no way of guessing, and he's used up all the benefits of my many reasonable doubts. Basically, it appears to me that he's using the Oval Office for approximately the same purposes I feared Hillary Clinton would: to symbolically appease credulous liberals with rhetoric and tokens while nurturing same cabal that began delegating our national sovereignty to a world government administered by banks and industrial corporations 30 years ago. (Sometimes I think the Black Helicopter crowd, in some sense, may have a more accurate worldview than Tom Friedman --- they are just hallucinating about who is pulling the strings while Friedman revels in the glory of the institutions that really are pulling the strings.)

For the past several weeks I've been trying to figure out what to do with this blog. It seems impossible a the moment to write a meaningful opinion essay on public affairs. The data stream is fully choked with disinformation and what Situationists called The Spectacle. I'm leaning toward a radical de-emphasis of direct commentary on The Spectacle since it's about like trying to document all the faces that appear in the clouds when no one else is looking.

Let's see what emerges. Something asymmetric, I hope.

Dumb sayings

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One medium latte, including tip: $4
Closing costs on house refinance: $1650
New 15 foot steel garage door and opener: $2400
New radiator, head gaskets, timing belt, water pump, and thermostat: Pricey....

All pundits suck except for me

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I did my best to avoid listening to vacuous celebrity pundits talk about yesterday's insignificant elections. Everybody's nervous about the economy, they tell us. Well no fucking shit. It's a critical fact about current affairs, but it had nothing to do with any of the nationally reported election results.

The results of the NJ governor's race was accurately predicted by pollsters for weeks: a toss-up between two unpopular politicians. The Democrat lost because the machine didn't bring out the urban vote for him. Urban Obama voters stayed home because Corzine and the NJ Democratic machine have issues --- nothing to do with Obama. There was to be no surprise no matter which way the wind blew.

The results of the Virginia governor's race was accurately predicted by pollsters practically since Day 1. There really hasn't been any significant liberalization trend in Virginia over the past decade, just the trading of some Republican seats for some conservative Democrat seats. Virginia has a southern mentality, and 18 months of racist slander against Obama during and after the 2008 campaign has evidently resonated with many "independent" voters (you know: crackers). A Pat Robertson protege will always win in Virginia if he behaves himself during the campaign. No surprises; no meaningful national momentum shift related to "economic jitters" or Obama indicated by the results.

The only significant result was the NY-23 special election, which wasn't critical or "key" in any conventional strategic way. The significance of it was that the Tea Bag Party, as led by Sarah Palin and Fred Thompson, was successful in marginalizing New England Republicans by backing a right-wing radical. Nothing to do with "economic woes" or Obama, but lots to do with the heart-warming plague that could subdivide the Republicans into two permanent minority parties or else create a small but decisive exodus of New England Republicans to the Democratic side of the divide.

For the old folks out there, the NY-23 special election campaign was roughly analogous to what it would have looked like in about 1970 if George McGovern and Ted Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson III had made a strategic decision to ally themselves with emerging radical left-wing political celebrities like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale... after the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention and presidential election. The Democrats in fact were tarred with guilt by association with left-wing radicals in the 1972 campaign, but the connection was spurious. Machine Democrats left George McGovern to the wolves in 1972, but for reasons very different than Radical Chic. Republicans exploited the generational divide in the Democratic Party to persuade the Silent Majority that the "Yippies" were running the show. It worked, and it paved the way for Ronald Reagan to begin his ascent from the slime to claw the Constitution from its hermetic glass display case and drag it in shreds back down into the slime... along with the rest of us.

An interesting question is when New England Republicans will work through their denial and wise up to the idea that there is no place for them in their party. If I were in Obama's political boiler room, I'd be volunteering for the Democratic Northern Strategy project in order to put down a historical bookend for the odious Republican Southern Strategy that defeated conservative Southern Democrats with Republicans or peeled them off to the Republican side. A Northern Strategy would not have to produce dramatic numerical shifts. I think that the best wedge issue for a Northern Strategy would be reproductive rights, i.e., reproductive rights for women.

Editor's note: sorry, no time to edit this mess for readability tonight, but I think the gist is self-evident. I'm now off to read some Fletcher Hanks comic reprints before bedtime. Stardust The Super-Wizard --- yes!

The zombie of Billy Mays

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Back from the dead... For A Limited Time Only!!!

[Photo credit: Beer-D.]

Special note to Anonymous

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Thanks for commenting on my post of 14 May 2009 and providing the JR link. But I must question your grasp of either mathematics or physics. Or the quality of your stereo vision. Jane may have been one-dimensional (I don't know for sure) but she was also very much three-dimensional. By my Simple Country Editor (TM) ciphering method, that makes her fully four-dimensional, putting her in a class with such notables as Heinlein's Valentine Michael Smith and Eugene the Jeep, Popeye's "fourth-dimensional dorg."


Editor's note: fair use is claimed for the accompanying image of Popeye the Sailor and Eugene the Jeep for purposes of education and cultural commentary.

So sorry, honorable readers, for my absence

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Man, I have been bent out of shape for several weeks now and it made me afraid to log on and post here. While I hate to use media-manufactured cliches, the term "perfect storm" does seem to apply in my sad case. Were I now writing to you from the zombie afterlife, another media-propagated cliche --- death by a thousand cuts --- might even be more to the point.

Some causes for my woeful state of affairs include two foolish attempts to have a good-faith conversation with two different certifiable libertarians (borderline psychosis grade); extreme sunlight deprivation due to climate and astronomical conditions; a management change at work with all the associated uncertainties; and a rising tide of "fucking shitwater" (as we like to refer to it around the StuporMundi Thanksgiving banquet table) that passes for public discourse; and a steady stream of reminders about the shortcomings of social life in my little town.

But that was then and this is now. I'll be dipping my little tootsies back into the warm, salty world of Blogspot in no time, and will resume my position in your life as a Polar Star of reasoned discourse and boyish charm before you can say "Jack Robinson."

Trashy little friend of the business world

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As seen on Atrios, Scott Simon's "friend from the business world, Joe Nocera," clearly demonstrates the odious nature of celebrity journalists with some intervention by a blogger named Matt Browner Hamlin. Nocera believes it is right and proper that there should be two different kinds of contracts for each of the nation's two principal social castes (i.e., Masters Of The Universe and All The Rest Of Us Slobs) --- one type that is sacrosanct versus another type that is merely a short-term serving suggestion to trick the rubes.

What a trashy little whore a man must be to write such things for open consideration by the general public. When celebrity journalists and pundits are not held accountable by their publishers for spreading lies or demonstrably ridiculous opinions, they need no credibility in order to earn a giant payday. It makes a guy wonder why the New York Times keeps people like that on salary.

I'll bet Joe Nocera is the type of person who thinks he's too important to wash his hands before returning to work. Absent gloves or hand sanitizer, never shake hands with a trashy little whore of a man. And if he touches you anyway, consider chopping off his hands. Thus Sprach StuporMundi.

Families: our most important resource

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Overheard last Saturday on the second level of Bergner's, Market Place Mall, Champaign, IL. Dramatis personae: a Mother, Upholstered with Fast Food; a Daughter, Inflamed with Desire.

Mother: No!
Daughter: Why? I don't have any!
Mother: Put them down before you break them!
Daughter: Whyyy?!? I don't have any!!!

See, this is what I was talking about [updated]

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We can disagree about the amount of harm this kind of headline does to Obama. But I argue that these kind of paper-cut news bites will cumulatively, subliminally, diminish his credibility and integrity in the public eye. It's not that HuffPost's snotty little headline is totally out of line, because it isn't. But it was entirely predictable and avoidable, just as I said. And he'll be taking it from the right and the left, both, for the duration. Especially as the economy continues taking, which every reputable macroeconomist says it will.

And my greater point stands, too: taking the prize blew a perpetual serving of chum to cowardly but bloodthirsty celebrity pundits who love to sniff at "apparent contradictions" in their betters. Every cycle of bandwidth this kind of petty critique takes up is one less cycle available for covering a real news topic. Unnecessary and regrettable, but not for the reasons the celebrity pundits give.

Update: TPM points to a real zinger by the always beyond-odious Pat Buchanan, who uses a sophomoric trick of rhetoric to launch an exciting new meme: thanks to the Nobel committee, he says, Obama is once again the recipient of affirmative action. That's all on this topic from me for the time being.

It's a curse!

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If Obama were listening to me, he would go on TV this morning and decline the Nobel Peace Prize. If he accepts it, his wingnut enemies will say it confirms that he's soft on national security. Many of the rest of us will certainly think it's ridiculous that the Peace Prize would be awarded to someone who is currently directing covert military attacks on Pakistan (not to mention those other two places). Obama must know that, too.

Furthermore, the Nobel announcement included a rejoinder that the prize carries with it great responsibility. Every time Obama opts for peace or diplomacy in the future, wingnuts will say he's more concerned about his prize and his legacy than with America. They'll say it confirms how "narcissistic" he is.

Nope, he needs to reject the prize and say that he would be deeply honored to be considered for it after he as accomplished his goals. Since he's a pretty smart dude, and Axelrod is too, I say there's a significant possibility that the President will take StuporMundi's advice this time.

Knock knock Harry Reid

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Stories like this warm the cockles of my black heart, and that's not easy to do any more.

"If Harry Reid does not have the leadership skills to get 60 votes for cloture and give a Democratic president an up-or-down vote on health care, progressives will help defeat him in 2010, even if that means Republicans take that seat," said the head of one progressive organization...."

Believe me --- I'm in for $50 if muscular progressive groups like ActBlue and FireDogLake decide to put the electoral hit on Reid if he doesn't deliver (1) a Senate health reform bill with a real, robust public option and (2) 60 Democrat votes for cloture on any filibuster that Republicans might attempt on said bill.

Weeding out "Blue Dog" Democrats (i.e., crypto-Republicans) could feasibly be done with extreme prejudice by activist groups. Republicans have been doing the same thing for decades. The first Senate targets should be the offenders who have the most to lose, such as senior leaders and major committee chairs --- the glam jobs --- people who have attained the highest prestige, power, and visibility in life that they are capable of. There will never be a President Harry Reid, or a Chief Justice Max Baucus. They will never be bigger celebrities than they are right now, and they need to know that some human nobody in Chicago Heights with $50 to spare can help to take it all away from them forever in the next election. (Can there be anything more humiliating in this society than a loss of celebrity?)

Now, specifically, Harry Reid needs to know that there are a lot of people out here in the howling darkness* who aren't interested in his weasling promises about "something like" a public option. He needs to read the fucking opinion polls and take a long hard think about "where he wants to be in 5 years," as the old job interview question goes. Harry Reid is applying for a job in the Senate next year, just like sixty-something other people who are up for re-election or challenging an incumbent. America has no particular need for the talents of Harry Reid as Senate Supermajority Leader if he's not on board with the supermajority of Americans who want affordable universal health insurance. I bet our Land o' Lincoln homeboy Dick Durbin would be happy to ascend to Harry Reid's lofty station in life with a non-super majority ranging between 51 - 59 Senate Democrats. Unless he doesn't have the stomach for it. In which case, another impromptu mob of furious middle-American nobodies may raise the bet by $50 times a lot and help to put him out of the game, too.

If this Democrat supermajority prefers to shelter the predatory insurance industry from the will of three-quarters of the voters (and vice versa), then let them go do it in the private sector. There is room to purge nine of them, starting in 2010. Almost like Agatha Christie wrote the script: nine little Indians... and then there were none.
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*Editor's note: "howling darkness" was invented by Jean Shepherd.

"Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution" [updated]

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As seen on Atrios: I assume that "Newsmax" is some kind of influential far-right nuthouse organ. But in these times, the drool of self-marginalized lunatics bubbles in chunks from underneath the toilet seat cover and into our public commons too fucking often for my taste. To paraphrase one of the commenters in the linked piece on Media Matters: Judas Fucking Priest --- these people lost one single election, not even a year ago, and they're already halfway down the path toward advocating violent revolution. Wingnuts just need to get a grip on things, because they still control the Senate with the help of Democrat Copperheads, and the media are choked with projectile vomit from the neckholes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest. Meanwhile, genteel corporate media celebrity pundits are afraid to acknowledge the existence of this puke fountain, let alone suggest that it's an odious and disturbing nuisance.

Anyway, someone needs to let this John Perry guy know that coups actually are not permitted by the U.S. Constitution, whether by "patriotic general and flag officers" or racist asshole bloggers. But, then, maybe the Congress will decide to repeal all federal laws that prohibit insurrections (Article 8), and John Perry can then enjoy his "bloodless coup." John Perry claims that "[d]escribing what may be afoot is not to advocate it." Well, yes it is actually, John Perry. And if you have foreknowledge that a treasonous conspiracy by patriotic military men "may be afoot," I hope that some Secret Service agent won't have to beat it out of you too hard... especially not the 7 foot bald one with a gold grille and prison tats.

Update: I'm sure we all can look forward to indignant editorials festooning the op/ed pages across the land, plus salvos of sharply worded criticism by national TV news treasures like George S. and Chris Matthews, in response to the astonishing revelation that Newsmax is sponsored by the Republican National Committee. It Can't Happen Here Dunt Duhduh Dunnnnn! Yawn....

Pandemic

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Forget the swine flu --- that’s a lightweight compared with the one I'm worried about, which is dragging American civilization with it down the muddy gopher hole of irrelevance and ruin. Of course I’m referring to the creeping tacit conspiracy which binds all of us to pretend that it is genuine for us to act like Hollywood actors who are paid to act like a producer’s idea of how everyday people would act if we were always ready with the appropriate cutting observation, or the perfect ironic retort, or the desire to ceaselessly serve up straight lines to the ones who are always ready with the appropriate cutting observation or the perfect ironic retort, while we simultaneously pretend that we have never seen Hollywood actors say these very words on TV night after night for the past 40 years.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I, for one, know what could go wrong

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Mark Frauenfelder on BoingBoing asks the eternal question:

What could be wrong with taking an insane killer to the country fair?

To me, this is a self-answering question: he would return to his secure, undisclosed location and continue planning the follow-up to his secure, undisclosed activities on 11 September 2001.

It's A Trap!

Well, it's a band formerly called Jackanapes. This is a shot of 3/7 of the members entertaining a robust crowd at The Iron Post, Urbana, late on 12 September. Just between us girls, I like to refer to this band as Skunk And The JuggLice. They play peppy tunes that might be categorized as gypsy-ska-punk. Pictured is an electric embodiment of the group. The acoustic version entertained guests at my place last New Year's Eve, and I think they were less cramped in my fireplace pit than on this dinky bandstand at the Post.

I shot the photo with my "see-in-the-dark" Nikon D700 set to ISO 6400, no flash. Interestingly, to me, I had to increase the shutter speed by the equivalent of about 2 stops (less light) compared with the exposure recommended by the meter. Was really nice to review each shot and find the correct exposure manually with little trouble or guesswork. The most amazing thing about this camera is how little noise (pixels of random color and brightness) there is in the image as shot in such low light at such high sensitivity. Right now you pay a big premium for this kind of tech; within 5 years (assuming the world doesn't end when the Aztec calendar does) we might see this kind of sensor quality in modestly priced snapshooters.

Side note: the band playing before IAT! was a five-man pickup jazz combo that also featured Big Rock Head (silver tenor sax) and Mike Eye (bari), plus local pal Aaron (not pictured, playing 40s and Dickie Dale-style guitar) and two others. They hadn't played together until earlier in the day (even if then --- don't know).

Now do it to "Blue Dogs"

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This is a pretty amazing example of what small campaign contributions can do when a politician pisses off a lot of voters who care about something. Joe The Crakkker, of "you lie" fame, unintentionally enriched his 2010 Democratic challenger by well over a quarter-million dollars in less than 24 hours merely by exhibiting bad wingnut behavior during a joint session of Congress.

I don't know if $350,000 of instant funny money can help Rob Miller in South Carolina, the most socially primeval state in the union. But Blue Dog Copperheads like Steny Hoyer, Claire McCaskill, and the like should take notice. The quarter-million raised for Miller in 1 day by DailyKos readers might be more effectively applied to, say, funding a progressive primary opponent for McCaskill or Evan Bayh. After all, a Senate challenge by Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania is forcing Arlen Specter to talk out of the left side of his mouth, at least until after the election. And people like them in the Senate do much more damage to the public interest, week in and week out, than a nonentity like Joe Wilson ever will.

Evens of the past decade have made a small donor of me, and I do it with some regularity. Furthermore, I'm completely willing to follow the lead of a group I respect in order to target Copperhead Democrats in primaries. Imagine: instant campaign contribution "hit squads," just by taking aim at a select Democrat apostate and clicking the money button.

Editors note: StuporMundi does not approve of the term "cracker" being applied indiscriminately to just anyone from the southern precincts. It is hateful and unseemly.

On pandering, roping dopes, and the hidden message

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My apologies for not providing an pre-Obamacare-speech analysis before tonight. My punishment is loss of any predictive cred I could have gained by being punctual, but I've been a little run down for a few days. Anyway, the text of Obama's speech is here for your reading pleasure in case you're interested.

First, the pandering: people much more clever than StuporMundi, including the Chief himself, determined that the speech had to include a dram of denouncing "partisan spectacle" and a small overdose of "the time for bickering is over." It makes the President look diplomatic, which is a high priority in this hateful environment, but it also panders to right-wingers by implying that liberals were behind some of the fear, uncertainty, and distrust (and bare hatred) we've been reading and hearing about for months. No: the incivility and lies are the exclusive creation of people who call themselves conservatives, paid for and incited into violent expression by organizations with strong ties to the Republican politburo. OK, whatever. At least he got it out of the way early.

Second, the dope-roping: I think he did a pretty good job of taking down the big Republican lies about healthcare reform, namely the "death panels," the "free lunch" for brown-colored illegal immigrants, and the "government takeover" canards. He and every Democrat will have to repeat these points relentlessly every day from here to eternity in speeches and news network appearances, of course, but his concise handling of them made the official Republican rebuttal afterward sound especially puny. It won't matter, though, without public pushback each and every day. Because this current breed of Republicans will never, ever stop lying about anything, period. (Big dope-roping bonus: here's the website of the troglodyte from South Carolina who called Obama a liar during a joint session of Congress on national television. Tomorrow he'll be the new Sarah Palin.)

Third, the hidden message: I think it was real, but admittedly it may have been perceived by StuporMundi in his zeal to find friendly faces in the wallpaper. Starting four paragraphs from the end, BHO seemed to fire a warning shot in the direction of Ronald Reagan's casket. Honestly, I hope that I'm correct, and that he's loaded for bears, and that he has a bad-ass (and highly caucasoid) posse help him take it to the streets. In my view, Obama may have explicitly opened up on the entire malignant premise of the Reagan Revolution by proposing that "the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little," and by supporting this novel point with references to the collapse of our predatory economy. Hundreds of thousands of middle-class, middle-road Americans are going bankrupt or insane from worry about their loss of financial stability.

Obama better not have stirred that pot without being prepared personally to lead the emancipation of us unwashed masses, and especially those loathsome political creatures called "centrists" and "Blue Dogs," from the delusion that the market can provide everything a democracy needs. He can't accomplish this using traditional leftist-sounding rhetoric, though. I'd expect him to edge toward a sort of civility-tinged populism, undeniable in its intent, but performing a sort of lethal surgical strike on the Reaganomics Mother Ship while tastefully avoiding the blanket demonization of Establishment players whose indulgence he needs in order to survive. I think Obama may see his historical task as the repair and even advancement of a national consensus where everyone understands that government, corporate, and individual interests must be well enough balanced for all to coexist and prosper. That would be a huge job after 30 years of American political dementia, the Reagan gift that keeps on giving.

One legacy of our insect Republican overlords

It's this: the hollowing out of the federal government and the military services by outsourcing core public services to mercenaries. Embassy protection had always been the responsibility of the U.S. Marine Corps. The guys who work for outfits like ArmorGroup North America (AGNA) are paid reams more of the green stuff than leathernecks and soldiers. And the outfits they work for don't provide these essential services out of patriotism: they're duty-bound to make as much profit as possible for the flagship corporation --- in this case "Wackenhut," which sounds like a name that would be given to one of the inhumanoid demons scrawled and splattered into existence by Ralph Steadman (see upper left).

This variety of heist has to be obvious to everyone in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. It's justified by the baldfaced lie that the business sector does everything more efficiently than the government. In fact, the only thing the business sector does more efficiently than government is pillage the U.S. Treasury on behalf of corporation executives. I'll award an aluminum-plated Gordian Knot for the first MBA who can convince me that a corporation can provide highly trained and disciplined security personnel, loyal only to the defense of the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, for a lower price than the salary and benefits of a U.S. Marine.

It should go without saying that the situation at the embassy in Kabul is a completely logical and predictable outcome of using mercenaries to perform inherently governmental work, and it is intolerable that the Congress and the White House should allow this situation to persist for even another day.

Editor's note: the portrait of "Sir Wackenhut" (my nomenclature) is by Ralph Steadman, copyright owned by him or his masters. Fair use is claimed as the image is used here solely for purposes of social commentary and education, for no profit to anyone.

Wise sayings

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Every bottle of wine I don't have to share is a blessing.

Suggestion for California libertarians

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Attention California tax resisters: if you don't like Government, then next time a wildfire starts to melt your vinyl siding, call Nancy Reagan.

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoyed your imbecile-of-a-governor's awesome garage sale this past weekend. Don't worry: the 14% wage cut he forced on state employees probably didn't apply to the firefighters (especially not the ones who died Sunday while you were still congratulating yourself about your brand new $10 government surplus office chair).

Just dream of it: state-maintained Highway Patrol cruisers and BMW cycles for thousands under book value --- everything must go. Haha --- LOLROFLMAOGTGBRBZOMGZ! Extra, extra --- read all about it! Illiterate eurotrash governor sells off anything a sociopath might want to pick from the twitching corpse of his own state government, pennies on the dollar for the savvy shopper, courtesy of the state's impoverished public schools, colleges, and diseased poor people. Hey, wait, I've got it: let's call it The Great American California's Fire Sale!!! Government sux, destruction rulez!!!

Healthcare fact checking? For real?

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Facts?!? What the hell are facts doing on NPR and in a non-Krugman Times Blog? I'm a-skeert!

But there you are: ATC host Robert Siegel and NYT healthcare blogger Anne Underwood pretty thoroughly shoot down barefaced distortions pertaining to the costs of litigation, malpractice insurance, and defensive medicine told on Sunday Times op/ed page by former Senator Bill Bradley. It was a refreshing and unexpected piece of journalism to my shell-like ears, which are no longer accustomed to such spectacles as, uh, professional journalism being broadcast on NPR.

I'll have to dock Siegel and Underwood a few points for not directly calling Bradley a lying sack or reporting who is paying his wages and stipends these days. But gee whiz --- I'm actually slightly impressed!

The origin of Big Otis (28 August 1949) [updated]

Part I: postpartum nirvana. If this li'l guy looks like your uncle, send him an email and tell him you're sorry you forgot his birthday. (Me too; couldn't post before midnight.)

489 --- Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, defeats Odoacer at the Battle of Isonzo, forcing his way into Italy (Odoacer... haha!).

1609 --- Henry Hudson discovers Delaware Bay (immediately changes his name to "Henry Delaware")

1961 --- Motown releases its first No. 1 hit, "Please Mr. Post(partum)man," by the Marvelettes.

1968 --- Agents provocateurs incite violence at the Democratic National Convention, Chicago (or at least the late Sherman Skolnick thought so).

Luminaries born on 28 August include Tito Capobianco, Argentinian stage impresario and director (1931); Sybille de Selys Longchamps (1941), Belgian aristocrat; Svetislav Pešić (1949), Serbian basketball player and coach; Myke Hawke (1965), American Survivalist. (Editor's note: Haha: I have Freud, Orson Wells, Willie Mays, George Clooney, and Bob Seger... loser!)

Update: well, I got the date wrong in the headline but Big Rock Head told me that the post showed up with a 29 August date stamp. Please make a note of it.

Creeping meatballism (and related Night Person geeking-out)

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While plowing through a surprisingly tedious book about one of my pop culture heroes, radio humorist Jean Shepherd, I came upon a previously unknown (to me) reference to an article dictated by Shepherd for publication in the March-April 1957 "ish" of MAD Magazine. In the article, entitled "The Night People vs Creeping Meatballism," Shepherd warns his impressionable readers of a scourge then sweeping the nation --- a menace that threatened to transform America into a race of dimwitted robots who completely identified with The Pepsi Generation. (The text page also has links to graphic facsimiles of the original MAD pages.)

Shepherd's radio audience, The Night People, were fundamentally different than The Day People, but with a role reversal that had the zombies and vampires coming alive with the first drop of Maxwell House Coffee and prowling the earth until Bonanza was over and the kids were tucked in. The Night People were considered outsiders, both by The Day People and by themselves --- alienated, round pegs hammered carelessly halfway into square holes, not "getting it" like The Day People seemed to.

The text may seem tame by today's standards, but I don't believe anyone outside of Harvey Kurtzman and MAD were doing this kind of humor for relatively mainstream readers (albeit The Night People). The content was intended for impressionable adolescents and precocious kids, written by a premier New York City hipster, and Shepherd mean every word of it in grim earnest. To me, Meatballism provides a classic display of Shepherd's prescience regarding the decline and fall of Western Civilization, as it begins with mass conformity and loss of individual identity as driven by mind-colonizing ad agency vermin.

MAD's editorial intro to Shepherd's Meatballism recitation is clearly a fully savored fuck-you to the hapless WOR manager who fired Shepherd a few months earlier for not being commercial enough, and was then immediately forced to hire him back due to a fierce Night People backlash. The MAD editors, writers, and artists were obviously Night People, as were so many of their pimply fans. (And, for that matter, as was Stan Lee at Marvel Comics in New York City, who subsequently introduced an emergent nation of comic book geeks to the cry "Excelsior!", which was a Shepherd trademark.)

Fun Fact No. 1: if you're too young to know who Betty Furness was or why MAD and Shepherd were poking fun at her in Meatballism, then you might miss the irony that Ms. Furness later became a respected consumer rights advocate in the Johnson Administration even though critics felt LBJ had picked a bimbo for the post.

Fun Fact No. 2: Shepherd did not like his first name because, not being short for "Eugene" and being spelled the way the Frenchmen spell it, some Americans in Hammond, Ind., during the Depression perceived it as a "girl" or "sissy" monicker. Shepherd's pal Shel Silverstein immortalized young Jean's plight in the lyrics he penned for Johnny Cash's 1969 hit, "A Boy Named Sue."

So take that, you meatballs!

Healthcare reform town hall fashion statement

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In the comments thread of a previous post, Big Otis indicated that he would exercise his Second Amendment Rights at an corn belt healthcare reform town hall meeting next week by brandishing a chainsaw. His reasoning, which appears sound to me, is that it's perfectly legal to carry power tools in public, even ones belching two-stroke engine exhaust. So, therefore, it must be doubly blessed to for Big Otis to defend himself with a nice American-made implement of dual-use technology such as the one hanging there all quiet in his tool shed.

Frequent commenter "Anonymous" calls the idea brilliant. I agree. I'll bet Big Otis could parlay this sincere expression of his Second Amendment Rights into appearances on CNN and FOX, not to mention Colbert and Democracy Now! It could start an exciting new trend in liberal activism, and BO could become the progressive incarnation of Joe The Plumber. Maybe the liberal grassroots also need to be watered with the blood of tyrants... but, oh, I think I already said too much. Never mind. Pass the blowtorch, please.

Above: Artist's rendition of Big Otis departing from his sleepy rural demesne to exercise his freedom of expression. Editor's note: this picture may be protected by copyright law; it is reproduced here under fair use rules solely for purposes of education and social commentary.

Take 5

An iPhone snapshot from early a.m. on 15 August 2009, composed by Big Rock Head during a sightseeing excursion in Chicago to visit some ne'er-do-well friends. Postprocessed in Bridge and Photoshop to boost the red objects a little and reduce color noise. Since I don't know anything about rendering for different color regimes and output devices, the reds don't look as vivid on my screen via the web as they do in my photo directory. But I'll worry about that tomorrow.

The photo is a found little gem of urban beauty. Thus spoke StuporMundi.

Cuddling enemies, losing friends [updated]

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Big Otis referred me to this Jane Smiley column on HuffingtonPost, which says pretty much what I've been feeling about Obama over the past 2 months. My own thoughts have been bifurcated, with clarity recently provided by Niccolo Machiavelli during my rereading of The Prince (Everyman's Library edition, which rocks!).

First, Obama has inexplicably been pandering to his worst enemies during this so-called healthcare reform debate. Instead, he should read what Machiavelli wrote about the folly of sparing adversaries who have reason to hate you: you don't reach out to them for approval and empowerment --- you go on the TV and point out to craven media talkers and their audience that Republicans and "Blue Dogs" are willful liars who don't want regular people to have it as good as everyone in the TV studio has it. I have been planning future posts on this topic so I won't belabor it here.

Second, Obama is either disregarding the positions his mainstream supporters elected him to fight for, or else he feels he can be extremely coy, with no negative consequences, toward hundreds of thousands of small donors such as myself who made his ascendancy to the White House possible. Machiavelli stated repeatedly, with clarity, that the Prince must never lose the support of the people; Niccolo's much-misunderstood advocacy of treachery in the building of political power largely did not countenance deceit and abuse of the people. Again, I've been planning some writings on this topic for a later date.

I'll simply conclude here that Jane Smiley, as usual, is on target in the way she writes about her Obama trepidations. Barack Obama --- who has a hardcore vocal minority expressing open hatred for his ideals, his background, and his racial heritage on Main Street, around the office pop machine, and on corporate news networks --- cannot afford to end up in a position where he literally has no friends. I haven't written him off just yet, but I'll (generously) give him until the day after his first State of the Union address. This coyness shit will not work with his regular, everyday supporters forever... especially after a major political defeat by the very scum we elected him to neuter and tame.

Update: I just noticed that Paul Krugman blogged about these same two points this morning, but from the very specific perspective of the "public option" and its rhetorical place in the so-called healthcare reform debate. If Obama's electoral based trusted him, it would not necessarily see the public option as a litmus test for Obama's good intentions. But owing to the President's apparent lack of interest in forcefully promoting universal healthcare coverage or denouncing right-wing lies about it, Obama hasn't consolidated the trust of many of the people most active in getting him elected --- progressive volunteers and contributors.

They'll shoot your eye out, kid!

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What do you suppose would have happened if, say, union members arrived packing heat outside venues where President Bush II spoke to carefully screened friendly political audiences in the earlier years of this decade?

The corporate media basically treat this kind of thing as if it weren't even news, let alone very disturbing news that should alarm anyone who prefers civic society to live under a military junta. But just you wait until a Secret Service agent or cop drops one of these assholes in his tracks. That will be all the evidence required by serious pundits to wonder aloud whether Obama really is The New Hitler, on the verge of launching Kristallnacht 2009 in the direction of all average, freedom-loving citizens.

Toward a unified field theory of current civic insanity

If you’re up for pondering a unified field theory of the insanity that passes for public discourse these days, as served up by cable news networks that likely give Joe Goebbels lumpy wet dreams in hell, then the following two finds may be worth a read along with the Steve Benen post I highlighted last night.

First there is Benen’s follow-on to his earlier email conversation with veteran Republican pol Bruce Bartlett, in which Bartlett theorizes about why Republican dead-enders hold such sway over the national media today. Benen provides a reality check to Bartlett’s overly robust assertions about our traditionally “liberal” media, but agrees with much of what he has to say (as I do, too). Bartlett:

Liberals have long been content with the mainstream media because it did largely reflect their values. It doesn't any more but liberals still treat the mainstream media as if it does. Thus as the mainstream media has declined, liberals have lost their primary sources of news and commentary and have not replaced them with those that are explicitly liberal in the same way that the right has created a fully-formed alternative media.

The missing piece of the problem that Bartlett and Benen don’t mention, though, is the consolidation of news media under transnational corporate ownership, and the funding of it under transnational corportate sponsorship. The unsurprising result of those developments has been the demolition of the traditional firewall between the newsroom and the business operations shop. Fat chance that MSNBC could become the liberal version of Fox when it’s principal function is to serve as a profit center for Microsoft and General Electric. Still, Bartlett would appear to be that rarest of birds these days: a reality-based conservative. And I salute him for that. (Not that I really consider “free market economics” to be reality-based, but at least I probably wouldn’t bar him from my swingin’ New Year’s Eve party based solely on his previous unfortunate associations with the G.H.W. Bush cabal.)

Second is a column I’ve seen several references to over the past few days: a Rick Perlstein Washington Post essay on why our current political ecology is no more deranged than it has been since the 1940s but, at the same time, very much more disturbing. Pay attention to Perlstein's 1963 anecdote about a protestor whacking the inoffensive milquetoast Adlai Stevenson with a picket sign to his bafflement. Also note Perlstein’s reasonable inference that if the Stevenson incident were to have happened last week, with America’s current U.N. ambassador as a stand-in for Stevenson, the furious wingnut protestor lady would have been interviewed on CNN and Fox, and her droolings would have become part of our national dialog. But Perlstein left out one other significant speculation, which I’ll now provide: if the lunatic protestor had been a sloppy, tie-dyed liberal whale named Wavy Gravy Jr., and the U.N. ambassador had been John Bolton, and the incident had happened 4 years ago, then our hypothetical Mr. Gravy would probably be awaiting trial in some U.S. penitentiary located in the deep, deep south.

Bartlett half-astutely notes in Benen's column that liberals “need to abandon the mainstream media and create their own alternative media,” but he seems to think that this alternative should manifest as a liberal version of Fox. I disagree, because such a thing could never work correctly in the context of being a corporate profit center. The alternative media are emerging on the web. The leading example is TPM, which combines a lucid, largely fact-based commentary function with a very impressive investigative reporting unit. Television should be left to feed on the shrivelling brains and souls of helpless right-wing consumers.

Canadiennes sans frontieres

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Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram security blog tells of the dismantling, by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, of a large sign on the Canadian side of a U.S./Canada border crossing at Massena, New York. The mighty, yellow sign was declared to pose a significant risk of endangering customs agency employees by drawing the unwelcome attention of international terrorists.

No, the sign did not say "Bin Laden Sucks" or "Fuck the Ayatollah." It said "United States." Because if Canadians become aware that they're entering the United States via Massena, NY, then you-know-who has already won.

Apropos of previous post

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Steve Benen, a TPM alum who writes for Washington Monthly (which I really should read more often), reports on an email chat he had with Bruce Bartlett, a veteran of the Reagan and Bush I regimes. It's about the nauseated wonderment with which we regard twin monstrous absurdities: the Republican delusion that they have anything to contribute to society other than ruin, and the corporate media's treatment of these people with continuing deference and moral authority. Benen's observations are worth reading from top to bottom.

In addition to hatred and blame to Republicans and the corporate media, I add a supertanker brimming with typhoid spit for establishment Democrats, all the way up to Obama, for not force-feeding some reality trash talk back down the throats of the people who have been dismantling our democracy for 30 years. Yes: congealed typhoid spit with large, lazy pinwheels of gum abcess blood and thick with mats of wriggling Anopheles mosquito larvae.

I say that the Benen piece is "apropos" of the previous post because I'll bet any of you the best bottle of purple booze in my basement that in the coming days there will be no credible discussion of the absurdity of letting an 8-year-old boy play with an Uzi... and that anyone with enough guts to suggest such a thing on TV will be denounced as a far-left enemy of America's second-amendment right to empower our children blow their brains out. Read the piece.

"You'll shoot your eye out, kid."

Stories like this bring out the worst in me, but I don't even care. Rest in peace, kid.

Hat tip to "Dworvin" for the link.

Wise sayings

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This issue of "Wise sayings" was outsourced to Niccolo Machiavelli, from The Prince (1513, p 89, Everyman's Library editon):

And here it should be noted that hatred is acquired as much by good works as by bad ones....

The Selig Century ends

The gentleman above with the widow's peak and wide-awake eyes is my father as he appeared c. 1956 - 1957. In carefree moments he sometimes liked to clown for the amusement of onlookers, in this case a parakeet named "Poncho" and a funny-looking dame named "Mom," in teardrop eyeglasses, who took the snapshot for reasons now forgotten. Dad was born on 16 September 1919 in Chicago and died on 6 July 2009 in Joplin, Missouri.

As I told a friend a moment ago in an email, my father's death was not a surprise. He eked out an extra decade or so beyond what most who knew him thought he would. I had a very good visit with him in the spring, and he knew my sons and I were at his bedside during the Fourth of July weekend. He and I liked and respected each other, and we had no unfinished business between us. His suffering after breaking his hip was relatively short, and he was kept physically comfortable until the end. His services were a combination of fundamentalist Baptist (for his Joplin family) and a military ceremony provided by a four-man VFW detail (which I, personally, appreciated a bit more than I would have had I not been associated with the U.S. Army over the past two decades).

I believe that Dad was always somewhat alienated from mainstream society but tried his best to fit in. He made his share of mistakes, but no more than I've made. No matter what his fortunes were financially and career-wise, he always could find a away to enjoy himself. As I think back on it, I don't ever remember hearing him complain about his lot in life or the unfair hand that life dealt him, even though I think either complaint would have been understandable at times. In trying to overcome my own negativity over the years, I've looked to his example as a man who knew how to find satisfaction in life's simple pleasures. That's a fine legacy, as far as I'm concerned.