December, 2009 archive
Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming 0
The nominations are open for the 2009 Golden Dukies. Categories include
Meritorious Achievement in The Crazy.
Best Public Policy-based Fib.
Outstanding Achievement in Corruption-based Chutzpah
Best Scandal — Sex and Generalized Carnality
Best Scandal — Local Venue
Best Scandal — General Interest
Follow the link above to make your nominations.
If at least one of these awards isn’t Sanfordized, I’ll eat my blue serge suit with my green fedora for desert.
Iraq Didn’t Pass This Test. Not Even Close. 0
And I’m not sure Afghanistan does, at least not any more; it was quite one thing to look for a bad guy, quite another to occupy a country.
Shaun Mullen summarizes just war doctrine.
“Give ‘Em Hell, Harry” 0
Truman was correct, you know: The Republican Party, now and ever the Party of Privilege.
Rules are for the rest of us:
We have seen the results of Republican Economic Theory. Yet they cling to it.
One does have to admire in a perverse way their committed refusal to learn from or admit to their mistakes.
It’s Not Just Teenagers 2
Reuters:
At least one major study has found that, with mobile devices now central to their lives, young people often ignore laws against using cell phones or texting in the car.
Not that teenagers don’t do stupid and dangerous things (I did, but I was smart enough not to get caught). So do grown-ups. We have a social tradition of thinking that each successive generation is going to hell, doing stuffus horribilus that we would have never done (except that we did).
None of the several cell-phone-using drivers who have nearly killed me have looked to be under 35.
QOTD 0
George Mason, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
When the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty.
Have Cake, Eat It Too, Phonus Dept. 0
Bloomberg reports that Goldman Sachs will pay the 30 members of its executive committee with “restricted stock options” that won’t show on the books until they vest:
“That’s just what they needed to make this year look better,” said Willens, a former managing director at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. “The first charge won’t be until 2010, so this will definitely reduce their compensation expense. These 30 people make a disproportionate amount of the compensation.”
It keeps the phonuses off the books for a while, while still letting persons get paid obscene amounts for moving piles of money back and forth, while creating nothing.
Aside:
Here’s the other side of phonuses:
I know someone whose retirement was in stock options. This person added real value to the economy by producing real stuff for a company that actually makes things that people want and use every day and, in doing so, she rose to an executive position and retired very nicely cushioned, thank you.
The company from which she retired fell for Wall Street’s financial games, the bubble burst, and her retirement went away. The stock options were for prices higher than the stock itself, so she could not cash them when they matured.
The three-card Monte dealers banksters win as long as they control the deal. The marks lose. And, as far as they are concerned, we are all marks.
Republican Pure, as in Marilyn Chambers 0
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word – Grand Old Purity | ||||
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As Mithras Says 0
One down, 214 to go.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Still under half a mil. The stimulus may be having an effect. Bloomberg:
I heard on the radio that continuing claims dropped also, but the story left out how many of those folks had simply run out of unemployment compensation. That is a statistic that seems routinely not to make the news, and I’m too tired, after a 250 mile drive today, to go digging.
QOTD 0
George Bernard Shaw, via the Quotemaster:
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
All or Nothing . . . 0
. . . is not how to things get done.
Martin Kettle at the Guardian comments on the tendency of liberals to be rigid and doctrinaire:
Betrayal? Not in my book. A mistake? Perhaps. The dilemma in Afghanistan is profound. Obama’s chosen course may prove disastrous, masterly or, more likely, somewhere in between. But that does not make it a betrayal. I yield to few in my admiration for Professor Wills. In my eyes, Garry Wills is up there with Hugo Young as one of the commentarial paragons of my era. But betrayal? If the Nobel committee was naively premature in elevating Obama to the pantheon, Wills is surely naively premature in banishing him from it.
Betrayal has long provided a liberal comfort zone from which to survey the difficult issues in modern politics.
Read the whole thing.
The world is neither simple, nor easy. Neither is politics.
Indeed, one of the (many) flaws of Republicanism is that it attempts to render the world to simple (usually either with bombs and bullets or with tax cuts–too many Clint Eastwood movies) and ends up with simpletons.
Grow up, stop moaning on the innerwebs because things ain’t easy and simple, take out your pens, and write your damn Congresspersons, write them real letters, and sign them by hand.
And don’t give up, for giving up is giving in.
Politicians stop being scared only if they think there are votes in not being scared.
It’s My Comment and I’ll Rescue It If I Want To 0
Anyone who thought that Obama was going to attempt to govern as a doctrinaire anything was not paying attention during the campaign.
Seems to me that a lot of frustrated (like myself) lefties have projected their own policy preferences onto Obama (unlike myself).
I heard Hamsher on the radio recently (I think on the Diane Rehm Show, but I can’t find the link). She seemed bitter that Obama has not accomplished everything he promised on the campaign single-handedly in ten months.
(With apologies to Leslie Gore, who’s still cute as a button.)
It’s my comment to the Booman’s post. Please read that first.
Wonder Whether They Felt the Same Way about Clinton 0
News from the Sanfordized state:
I don’t think he should be impeached and removed from office either, not that I have a say in it.
As long as he is in office, he is one more reminder of Republican Family Values in action.
We Need Single Payer 1
And, while we are at it, clean up TV.
Senator Dorgan takes on prescription drug ads (which never should have been allowed):
Commentary starts at about 3:40. It gets good about two minutes later.
Via TPMDC.
Congress of Cowards 2
Passing the bucks:
No mention is made in the story that most economists think that, right now, the national debt is not the issue; the recession is. Radio Times considered this issue last week. From the website:
All estimates point to a growing economy, but the recovery is not quite fast enough for average Americans to feel the improvement. We talk about economic policies – what’s worked and not worked and what it will take to get Americans working and spending again. Our guests are economists JAMES GALBRAITH and LARRY MISHEL.
Go to the website and search the archives for December 1, 2009, Hour One, or listen here (mp3).
Afterthought: This is the RepubliBlueDog way:
- Be scared. Think small.
The Internet Is a Public Place, Online Antics Dept. 0
It is clear that our public officials cannot distinguish between danger and dumb:
“If any additional information comes to light, I will of course reevaluate the matter,’’ he said.
The author of the online group “If 1,000 People Join This Group, I’ll Slap Mrs. Meyer,’’ was suspended for 10 days, while four others who posted to that site and similar ones were sent home for five days, officials said.
Jeez oh man, if my buddies and I had gotten caught teepeeing Mrs. H(redacted)’s yard these days (misty water-colored memories), we’d probably have been charged with aggravated assault, malicious trespass, and terroristic threatening and sent up the river (well, it was a small place–up the creek) for 20 to 25 with no time off for good behavior.
