January, 2009 archive
They Have Learned Nothing 0
Still lying after all these years.
John Cole sums it up and suggests a remedy (emphasis added):
(snip)
From now on, anything the Republicans say I am just going to have to assume is a lie, until proven otherwise. I don’t know how else to handle this, as they simply can not be trusted to tell the truth or do the right thing, regardless what the stakes are.
Follow the link for the evidence.
Bank Shot 0
Another one bites the dust.
In other news, Andy Stern, President of SEIU, prepares to attend the Davos World Economic Forum for the first time. He’s done his homework:
Making Lemonade (Updated) 0
Robert Reich:
It’s called Lemon Socialism. Taxpayers support the lemons. Capitalism is reserved for the winners.
And the folks who planted the lemon trees are still going home with their pay for performance bonuses and their fancy cans.
Oh.
I forget.
Performance has nothing to do with it.
They get the bonuses because, well, they wear three-piece suits, write good memos emails, and look good in meetings.
They take us for fools.
And we prove them right.
Addendum, the Next Morning:
Polly Toynbee in the Guardian:
(snip)
But it’s business as usual for the masters of this failed universe. Who is to stop them? Shareholder democracy was always an empty myth. The government relies on the men who profited in the balloon years to get us out of this, making them ministers in the Lords to oversee their own. No doubt they will regulate the worst, but don’t expect a scintilla of culture change. There is a sense right now that the financial and political worlds still don’t get it. They are like cartoon characters who have run off a precipice, suspended in mid-air before realising how hard they are going to crash.
Great Moments in Journalism 0
Not.
“Responsible journalists” are so busy patting themselves on the back that they keep forgetting to get the damned story.
The press wonders why newspapers and traditional media are failing financially.
In other words, they wonder why fewer persons are willing to pay for their product.
Has the press considered that their consistently missing the story may have something to do with it?
Persons don’t like to pay for a defective product.
Question 4
Why would the Department of Homeland Security want to look at my picture of a magnolia tree?
From the stats (emphasis added):
URL: /weblog/?m=200604
Date: 2009-Jan-23 15:53:32
Referer: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://pineviewfarm.net/graphics/magnolia.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.pineviewfarm.net/weblog/%3Fm%3D200604&usg=__dPjKV009qCbCCtyjW80S–urFL0=&h=497&w=435&sz=222&hl=en&start=20&tbnid=rZe-p23wXqEhYM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=1
IP: 204.248.24.163
Host: sbcp4.dhs.gov
Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DHSI60SP1001; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1)
One would think they could find better things to do with our time. Not, of course, that I ever surfed the web while at work.
(Frankly, I think it should never had been created. Congress blew that one. And, if it had to be created, it should have been called the “Department of Domestic Security.” “Homeland” sounds too much like “Vaterland.“)
“Whois” information below the fold.
Sinkholes 5
Bonddad on the TARP. After a detailed analysis, he concludes that:
However, I would caution that the anger be stored away from the current discussion and instead brought out when we discuss reform which will be forthcoming. Right now the goal is to keep the economy moving — or, perhaps more precisely, to keep it from falling off a cliff. It’s a bit like lecturing a drunk driver while he’s in the emergency room; yes, he needs to be dealt with, but it’s more important at that time to keep him alive. That’s what we have to do right now — keep the economy alive.
You Feed It, It’s Yours 2
A bill pending in the Colorado state legislature wants to bell license the cats and make their owners liable for keeping them licensed and leashed:
8 (4) “OWNER” MEANS ANY PERSON WHO KEEPS, HAS PERMANENT
9 CUSTODY OF, OWNS, MAINTAINS, HARBORS, PROVIDES CARE OR
10 SUSTENANCE FOR, OR HAS CONTROL OR CHARGE OF OR RESPONSIBILITY
11 FOR A CAT OR WHO PERMITS A CAT TO HABITUALLY BE OR REMAIN ON OR
12 BE LODGED OR FED WITHIN SUCH PERSON’S PROPERTY OR PREMISES.
13 REFUSAL TO PERMIT AN ANIMAL CONTROL OFFICER TO IMPOUND A CAT
14 SHALL BE DEEMED TO BE EVIDENCE OF OWNERSHIP UNLESS OWNERSHIP OF
15 THE CAT BY ANOTHER PERSON IS ESTABLISHED.
I assume that this is a jobs bill to create large number of positions for new cat catchers animal control officers.
All seriousness aside, I recognize that stray cats, dogs, iguanas, marmots, and the occasional downsized gecko are problems, but arbitrarily assigning them to owners seems to be a screwy solution.
If they want to make it illegal to feed strays, then make feeding strays illegal and stop mincing words.
Must be the water.
H/T Karen for the link.
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes 0
Whitehouse dot com, which was a porn site for as long as anyone can remember (as many embarrassed websurfers found out while helping their kids with homework about the presidency of the United States, the site for which is Whitehouse dot gov) is now a news site.
The “About” page says the site is non-partisan (but, then, most everyone claims to be, don’t they? Especially when they are not), but does not specify the source of their support.
In other news, Whitehouse dot org seems to have been experienced a burst of two or three new items after a long period of dormancy.
Whitehouse dot com story via NSP.
Missing Persons Alert 0
StevenD sounds an all points bulletin, then answers his own question:
And his answer surprises us how?
A Vote against Small-Minded Silliness 0
Of course, anyone who comes here knows that English is the lingua franca, as it were.
Passing a law declaring English the “official language” of a city, town, or state is nothing more that legislating xenophobia. Such laws have no practical value except to say to those who come looking for a better life, “Get off my lawn.”
The citizens of Nashville figured that out.
A Liberal Nation 0
Yesterday, I received an email in response to this post.
The email was from someone in the Netherlands.
(As usual, I was mildly surprised to find that someone other than the two or three friends and relatives that I know about actually reads this thing.)
The writer told me of watching the inauguration of the President of the United States on the telly vision, because
the inauguration of Mr. Obama was and is something very very moving.
One of my friends tried to claim that the writer was trying to blame his country’s problems on the United States.
That could not have been farther from the writer’s intentions.
His country doesn’t have problems to blame on the United States (other than the venality of Wall Street and the corruption of Republican Economic Theory, which has poisoned the financial system of the world and which richly deserves opprobrium).
As I have mentioned from time to time, the United States of America is the only nation founded on an idea: the idea of freedom under the rule of law.
That idea is a real thing, not just for those of us who, like me, can trace their ancestry in this land to before the French and Indian War, not just for all those who since then have come here, believing in that idea and looking for a better life, but also for persons who have never left their home countries to come here, but who still treasure the idea of freedom under the rule of law.
This has never been a perfect country.
It is a nation that has done really bad things.
Just for a moment, think of the Trail of Tears.
Indeed, I have ancestors who were slaveholders.
One of my relatives signed John Brown’s death warrant (not that John Brown was a prince among men).
But, all the while, one of the core beliefs of America has been the idea of perfectibility.
This does not mean a belief that the United States or, indeed, mankind, can ever become perfect (only the wingnuts and the nutcases believe that we have achieved perfection, whatever the hell that is), but rather the belief that a free people working together can continually find a better way.
And, with many failures and false steps and mistakes, throughout the two and a half centuries of its history as a nation, the United States of America has, with all it faults, encouraged others that the world could become better, because the United States believed that it could become better.
To paraphrase the Grateful Dead, it’s been a long, strange trip, but somehow, with each meandering, the United States has managed to get a little closer to getting it right.
With much bumbling and fumbling and with many sidetrips and false starts, over the years, the United States has faced its failures, faced its injustices, faced its darkest impulses, and tried to fix them. Yes, often with great struggle, but getting it right a little more often than getting it wrong.
As I have pointed out from time to time, I grew up under Jim Crow.
Those who you did not, whether it was because of where you grew up or because of when you grew up, cannot imagine what it was like.
And, as I look back on it, the scary thing was that, as I was growing up, it seemed normal. Because it was what we were used to.
It seemed normal to have separate schools, separate bathrooms, separate water fountains, based on the amount of carotene in the skin.
Indeed, I remember taking the bus with my mother to visit my grandmother in the red clay country of South Carolina sometime in the late 1950s. Somewhere in North Carolina, I think in Raleigh, the bus made a rest stop. I remember walking into the wrong–into the “colored”–waiting room.
Never in my life, and I am old and have made many mistakes, have I felt so out of place. I can only imagine from that experience what it was like to be black in a white world.
And I know my imaginings cannot approach the reality that black persons have dealt with for 300 years on these shores.
I would not wish the feeling I had at that moment on anyone.
For the last eight years, I have had that a similar feeling in my own country, in the country my ancestors fought to found.
Under a mad leadership, the United States of America has been insane for eight years.
Horrible, evil things, deeds which betrayed the blood and the ideals and the beliefs and the sacrifices of the Founders, have been done in our name by persons who are yet and will remain unrepentant.
And, as we look at those persons, we see that evil is banal, for they are ultimately banal, small, weak persons who, having no character, no principles, no understanding of the meaning of the ideals upon which this country was founded, seized on force as the only value.
They are gone from governance.
Not merely gone. Repudiated.
In their own way, the American people, sometimes sooner, too often later, have managed to figure out the right thing to do.
As I told my correspondent from the Netherlands, it is good to have my country back.
God be with President Barack Hussein Obama as he leads us back to sanity.
“A Return to Rational Governance” 0
A submission from a reader over at TPM.
The Plain Light of Day 0
Bushes wither in the plain light of day.