I can't tell you how happy this makes me...
really... I can't...
My only question is this: Is this research ongoing, or is it already operational and deployed and we're just now starting to hear about it?
mojo sends
Friday, October 06, 2006
Remember Ira Hayes
Can I say just how sick I am of WWII lionization?
Clint Eastwood is releasing a new film: Flag Of Our Fathers, all about the battle of Iwo Jima and American military triumpalism...
I can appreciate the battle as a significant event, and even be legitimately moved at the various aspects of what the U.S. Marines who fought and died there went through.
But any attempt to tell this story will be disengenous and fraudulent if it does not pay serious attention to the fact that one of our greatest military victories, also encompasses one of our greates national shames...
You wanna honor the dead of Iwo Jima and take something important from that event...Go read The Ballad of Ira Hayes. Every inch a true story by the way...a young man who fought bravely for country that, at the end of the day, crapped all over him for cheap political purpose...
I have said it before that this is the greatest country on earth and I am glad to call it my homeland...that is why this bothers me so...that we can superficially puff up ourselves up with jingoism and our military superiority in the face of that shame without lifting so much as a finger to redress it, says something ugly and horrible about this country, and it dishonors the men who fought and died in that battle
That needs to end, now!
mojo sends
Clint Eastwood is releasing a new film: Flag Of Our Fathers, all about the battle of Iwo Jima and American military triumpalism...
I can appreciate the battle as a significant event, and even be legitimately moved at the various aspects of what the U.S. Marines who fought and died there went through.
But any attempt to tell this story will be disengenous and fraudulent if it does not pay serious attention to the fact that one of our greatest military victories, also encompasses one of our greates national shames...
You wanna honor the dead of Iwo Jima and take something important from that event...Go read The Ballad of Ira Hayes. Every inch a true story by the way...a young man who fought bravely for country that, at the end of the day, crapped all over him for cheap political purpose...
I have said it before that this is the greatest country on earth and I am glad to call it my homeland...that is why this bothers me so...that we can superficially puff up ourselves up with jingoism and our military superiority in the face of that shame without lifting so much as a finger to redress it, says something ugly and horrible about this country, and it dishonors the men who fought and died in that battle
That needs to end, now!
mojo sends
The Money Knows All
The Mighty Billmon agrees with our man Mojo about the real reason Congressman Foley was allowed to continue his campaign of sexual harassment directed at adolescent boys in the Page office.
I should have known. Follow the money. It's always the money.
I should have known. Follow the money. It's always the money.
And now, something completely different
Ezra Klein points us to an excellent analysis of the works of HP Lovecraft in the New York Review of Books.
The reviewer correctly identifies Lovecraft as an early progenitor of Geek Nation:
And a Happy Cthulhu fhtagn to you and yours...
The reviewer correctly identifies Lovecraft as an early progenitor of Geek Nation:
In other words, he was a nerd. He was a nerd on a grand scale, though— a heroic nerd, a pallid, translucent, Mallarméan nerd, a nerd who suffered for his art. His art consisted exclusively of conveying horror, and in this his range was encyclopedic. As a setting for his horror he built a whole world—a whole universe, with a time-span measured in eons—which others could happily continue furnishing indefinitely. His horrors themselves are, with a few unhappy exceptions, described loosely and suggestively enough that in effect they present a blank screen on which the reader can pro-ject whatever visual imagery is most personally unsettling. This explains the seeming paradox of an exceedingly bookish writer enjoying a legacy that is to a very large degree extraliterary. As a supplier of instruments for the cultivation of horror he was custom-tailored for the suggestible fourteen-year-old boy, and the number of fourteen-year-old boys—some of them chronologically rather older, a few of them even female—is continually on the increase.
And a Happy Cthulhu fhtagn to you and yours...
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Breaking News!
Updated Below
Denny Hastert puts together a last minue persser in his home district at about 1100 pst, CNN reports... the House Ethics Committee holds its own presser about 30 minutes later
Resignation? Maybe (but probably not, this will be about calling the tune)... but we'll see, stay tuned...
Update 1.0: HotLine Blog has some info on the pending presser, to wit:
mojo sends
Denny Hastert puts together a last minue persser in his home district at about 1100 pst, CNN reports... the House Ethics Committee holds its own presser about 30 minutes later
Resignation? Maybe (but probably not, this will be about calling the tune)... but we'll see, stay tuned...
Update 1.0: HotLine Blog has some info on the pending presser, to wit:
"In a press conference scheduled for noon CT in Illinois, House Speaker Dennis Hastert plans to accept some measure of responsibility for failing to discover Rep. Mark Foley's misconduct with pages, a House official said this morning. " He is taking responsibility because the buck stops with him," the official said.And while we're on the subject, Tony Snow is getting the snot beat out of him in the gaggle right now. He has a paper cup in fron of him that he is hitting... I'm willing to be it's vodka. Poor guy really looks like he's contemplating suicide.
Hastert won't resign "because that would be giving into the Democrat party’s best wish," the official said.
He is expected to make several announcements, including one about revisions to the page program.
mojo sends
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
...To Keep His Seat Safe, They Keep Saying
Bullshit.
The reason the GOP House Leadership didn't expose their chickenhawk Congressman from Florida wasn't because they didn't want to lose his seat to the Democrats. It was to keep the insipid little tool voting in line with leadership expectations.
Think about the night they held the voting open on the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Exactly what part of Congressman Foley's anatomy do you think they twisted in order to get him to sell Florida seniors down the fscking river on that one? Foley was a TRMPAC recipient, too— and that right there ought to be enough to explain everything you need to know.
Come on, people! How difficult is it to figure this out?
The man was being blackmailed. That's why they didn't haul him up on ethics charges. He was more valuable as a reliable partisan vote. Jeebus, why do progressives not get this? I mean, I know why the Democrats aren't speaking up, but I don't get why Left Blogovia isn't catching the clue. It's like they're congenitally naïve or something.
The reason the GOP House Leadership didn't expose their chickenhawk Congressman from Florida wasn't because they didn't want to lose his seat to the Democrats. It was to keep the insipid little tool voting in line with leadership expectations.
Think about the night they held the voting open on the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Exactly what part of Congressman Foley's anatomy do you think they twisted in order to get him to sell Florida seniors down the fscking river on that one? Foley was a TRMPAC recipient, too— and that right there ought to be enough to explain everything you need to know.
Come on, people! How difficult is it to figure this out?
The man was being blackmailed. That's why they didn't haul him up on ethics charges. He was more valuable as a reliable partisan vote. Jeebus, why do progressives not get this? I mean, I know why the Democrats aren't speaking up, but I don't get why Left Blogovia isn't catching the clue. It's like they're congenitally naïve or something.
Just Another Day
[Via Pharyngula] comes this horrible iconography:
Apparently, "those who feel that neither they nor their actions matter to God lose their motivation to care for the lives of others or for their own life." And that, dear friends, is why you should believe in Creationism.
If you don't, some evil atheist will shoot you with a gun. Or maybe, you'll shoot yourself. Or molest children and shoot up a school. Who knows? Without the controlling Authority of Joseph Darby's nightmare God of the Rapture telling you how to live your life and what to think, you might turn into a slavering, depraved, subhuman creature— like me.
You wouldn't want to be like me, would you? God would hate you. And make sure you spend all eternity in Hell, enduring unimaginable suffering forever and ever. And it will be a good and righteous thing, too.
Why, if it wasn't for the God of the Rapture, you'd be going on a three-state killing spree right now, wouldn't you?
You'd be raping every little boy you could get your hands on.
You'd be luxuriating in an orgy of violence, waste and destruction— and who would blame you? The rest of society? Don't make me laugh!
We're all just base animals, after all— Domesticated North African Plains Apes, homo sapiens. No different from enterobacter, really. You can see the resemblance if you just squint your eyes hard enough.
So. Embrace Darbyite Christianity today! Or we will tell the atheists where you live.
Apparently, "those who feel that neither they nor their actions matter to God lose their motivation to care for the lives of others or for their own life." And that, dear friends, is why you should believe in Creationism.
If you don't, some evil atheist will shoot you with a gun. Or maybe, you'll shoot yourself. Or molest children and shoot up a school. Who knows? Without the controlling Authority of Joseph Darby's nightmare God of the Rapture telling you how to live your life and what to think, you might turn into a slavering, depraved, subhuman creature— like me.
You wouldn't want to be like me, would you? God would hate you. And make sure you spend all eternity in Hell, enduring unimaginable suffering forever and ever. And it will be a good and righteous thing, too.
Why, if it wasn't for the God of the Rapture, you'd be going on a three-state killing spree right now, wouldn't you?
You'd be raping every little boy you could get your hands on.
You'd be luxuriating in an orgy of violence, waste and destruction— and who would blame you? The rest of society? Don't make me laugh!
We're all just base animals, after all— Domesticated North African Plains Apes, homo sapiens. No different from enterobacter, really. You can see the resemblance if you just squint your eyes hard enough.
So. Embrace Darbyite Christianity today! Or we will tell the atheists where you live.
It Was Only a Matter of Time...
The GOP leadership needs to be given a pass on La Cage Aux Foley, or the terrorists win...
They're slippin'; frankly I'm surprised it took them this long to run this play...
mojo sends
They're slippin'; frankly I'm surprised it took them this long to run this play...
mojo sends
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Real Work at Hand...
Okay, the La Cage Aux Foley has been an amusing diversion, like any good car wreck, but time to look at the road again and resume driving.
Lies, lies and more lies.
It appears that George Tenet has chosen his time to strike very well. So now we have something of a confirmation that the National Security team not only had advanced warning of the 9/11 attack, but then started firing people who complained about their inattention to it, like Richard Clarke.
Have we had enough yet?
mojo sends
Lies, lies and more lies.
At issue is a key meeting on July 10, 2001, between then-national security adviser Condolleezza Rice, then-director of central intelligence George Tenet, and Tenet deputy Cofer Black. (Rice is now secretary of state; Tenet is retired; and Black is an executive with private security contractor Blackwater.) The meeting, in which Tenet warned Rice of the al Qaeda threat, does not appear in the commission's final report, although it had already been publicly reported two years earlier -- and the panel had been briefed on its details by Tenet himself...So the 9/11 commission was even more of a white wash than initially thought.
On the premise that Woodward's book was the first time the meeting had been mentioned to him, 9/11 panelist Ben-Veniste told the New York Times that the meeting “was never mentioned to us.”
“This is certainly something we would have wanted to know about," he told the paper.
When reporters confirmed Tenet's January 2004 briefing with the 9/11 commission yesterday, the Democratic panelist changed his tune. "Ben-Veniste confirmed. . . that Tenet outlined for the 9/11 commission the July 10 briefing to Rice in secret testimony in January 2004," McClatchy newspapers reported. But he wouldn't comment further, referring all questions about the content of the report to Philip Zelikow. Zelikow has yet to comment.
It appears that George Tenet has chosen his time to strike very well. So now we have something of a confirmation that the National Security team not only had advanced warning of the 9/11 attack, but then started firing people who complained about their inattention to it, like Richard Clarke.
Have we had enough yet?
mojo sends
Monday, October 02, 2006
Waterboarding Demo
Get your fresh torture porn documentary film here. Bonus: watching Alan Dershowitz explain why he thinks torture ought to be warranted.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
I Find Your Lack of Piety Disturbing
This government's unremitting war against religious minorities continued unabated last week with the passage of the Veterans' Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006. The Senate has it now, and will probably hold on to it until right after the election.
This will prevent attorneys from recovering fees in Establishment Cause actions, in an open attempt to discourage such actions.
Note to my fellow legal professionals: You should be actively looking for these cases right now, clog the fscking courts with them and do it on a pro bono. This isn't just about religious minorities, this is legislating your right to make a living, this is just the first such law in a long line of these to come.
Note to my fellow Christians: We need to be up in arms about this. This law is a big step towards an establishment of religion. And if you think this a good thing... you go to hell! Do not, I repeat do not, come crying to me about religious persecution when they come for you (and they will, rest assured!). I will be too busy standing next to my friend s9 where you fscking people should have been all along!
mojo sends
This will prevent attorneys from recovering fees in Establishment Cause actions, in an open attempt to discourage such actions.
Note to my fellow legal professionals: You should be actively looking for these cases right now, clog the fscking courts with them and do it on a pro bono. This isn't just about religious minorities, this is legislating your right to make a living, this is just the first such law in a long line of these to come.
Note to my fellow Christians: We need to be up in arms about this. This law is a big step towards an establishment of religion. And if you think this a good thing... you go to hell! Do not, I repeat do not, come crying to me about religious persecution when they come for you (and they will, rest assured!). I will be too busy standing next to my friend s9 where you fscking people should have been all along!
mojo sends
SCUMBAGS!
Updated below
Absolute fscking scumbags!
They should just change the name to Grand Ole Pedophiles...
Trying to equate adult consensual sexual conduct to a predatory child abuser... there is no floor for these people.
And the fact that the House GOP leadership knew this was going on, should make them all culpable as accessories to felony conspiracy to commit child sexual abuse...and because it was done across state lines with the internet, it's a federal crime... like that's gonna happen...
This really tears it, there is no place in this country for these people, and I think Brit Hume needs to be on the first airplane out...
Update 1.0: Once again, via The Mighty Billmon we have the definitive take:
mojo sends
Absolute fscking scumbags!
They should just change the name to Grand Ole Pedophiles...
Trying to equate adult consensual sexual conduct to a predatory child abuser... there is no floor for these people.
And the fact that the House GOP leadership knew this was going on, should make them all culpable as accessories to felony conspiracy to commit child sexual abuse...and because it was done across state lines with the internet, it's a federal crime... like that's gonna happen...
This really tears it, there is no place in this country for these people, and I think Brit Hume needs to be on the first airplane out...
Update 1.0: Once again, via The Mighty Billmon we have the definitive take:
"It's becoming increasingly hard to regard these "people" as anything more than cockroaches who for some strange reason have decided to put on suits and ties and go walking around on their hind legs.Word!
We don't need an election. We need the Orkin man. Maybe DeLay could recommend somebody.
mojo sends
Friday, September 29, 2006
Fraternity Hazing Rituals
Our good friend Tongodeon explains how the practice of "waterboarding" is done in excruciating detail. I'd just like to say that if we had a functioning news media in the so-called "West" somebody on the production team for 60 Minutes at CBS, or any one of its competing "investigative news" operations, would have done a special television report about this. Before the vote in Congress yesterday.
Explain to me again how professional journalists are supposed to be independent guardians of the public interest. I love that faerie tale.
Explain to me again how professional journalists are supposed to be independent guardians of the public interest. I love that faerie tale.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Stupidest Thing Ever Said, v2.0
You may have thought the idea of vacuum-schooners plying their way across the Van Allen plains to the hopeful mining fields of Mare Tranquilis, where modern day 49ers scratch a dusty living off the lunar surface searching for precious adamantium nuggets, could not be toppled in the race for Stupidest Thing Ever Said...
But wait, this is just... it's a good thing I've already had a stroke... here's a hint, it is Laura Ingarham
We should conduct the most sensitive functions of foreign policy, matters of international law and military intelligence based on the popularity of a particular tv show. In fact we could replace the entire mechanism of democracy with set top arbitron ratings machines, and direct national policy based on what's on the tube...
Nice job... why is this sollopsistic harpy even allowed to even own a tv, much less be on it...
mojo sends
But wait, this is just... it's a good thing I've already had a stroke... here's a hint, it is Laura Ingarham
"You know the average American out there loves the show 24, they love Jack Bauer, they love 24, and to my mind that's as close to a national referendum that it's okay to use 'tough tactics' against high level al qa'ida operatives ... I don't know this stuff, but I trust our military interrogators and CIA more than Ron Suskind or Human Rights Watch..."Just watch the video... it's stunning; watch and join me here in clutching my head like a stunned monkey.
We should conduct the most sensitive functions of foreign policy, matters of international law and military intelligence based on the popularity of a particular tv show. In fact we could replace the entire mechanism of democracy with set top arbitron ratings machines, and direct national policy based on what's on the tube...
Nice job... why is this sollopsistic harpy even allowed to even own a tv, much less be on it...
mojo sends
Monday, September 25, 2006
So... I've had a kinda scary weekend...
(cross posted at Live Journal)
Stroke.
I have had a stroke.
I am looking at the preceding words and still trying to come to grips with what this all means... for me, my family and friends.
This is going to take a while to type, seeing as my left hand and arm have lost a major portion of their function. But my doctor said trying to type would be good for my left hand. Already I can feel my brain trying to re-route the signals to the arm and hand.
My neurologist said that with therapy, my prognosis for a full or very close to full recovery is very good.
I am very grateful to be here typing this at all right now...
I'll keep this short, as I am getting tired. Saturday morning I got out of bed feeling odd... my left arm was tingling, my speech sounded like the village drunk from some early Irish novel and I was a little dizzy and lightheaded. I took a shower thinking that it was just cobwebs from sleeping. Mrs. Mojo took her shower and I was still feeling weird.
I also knew that these were classic stroke symptoms. I sat my wife down and explained what I was feeling and suggested that I go to the emmergency room. Needless to say she did not argue.
Long Beach Memorial got me in fairly quickly and got me a CT scan which came up negative. They were going to admit me for observation and testing but my insurance insisted on transferring me to Los Alamitos Medical Center. So I get an ambulance ride across town.
The next two days I get a series of MRIs that confirm what the first CT scan could not find. A mild to moderate stroke in a lower left part of the brain, caused by untreated severe hypertension and an arterial blockage in an artery going to the back of the brain. The treatment for this is primarily medicine... blood thinners, statins for cholesterol, beta blockers and so on...
Most of the day Sunday I could barely move my left arm. Then on Sunday night, I was dozing and Laurie suddenly asked if I was okay; my left arm was twitching as I slept. It felt funny; a tough sensation to describe, like it was getting a signal to move, but couldn't, then it twitched. I suddenly got a little feeling and use back. I could grab my water bottle and my voice was clearer.
It was not a miraculous cure... but it was a marginal improvement, and that moment, it was enough.
So where am I now? Well, Saturday was about keeping it together and putting on a brave face. Sunday was about icy cold fear and crying jags.
Today is about angry and fighting like hell.
There are some major lifestyle changes I am coming to terms with. I have about a jillion medical appointments in the next couple of weeks. I still uncontrolably cry, mostly when I think of small army of people who are ready to step up for me. And no words will ever be adequate to express my love and gratitude for me wife, without whom, I would not be here now.
Mostly, I am glad to be home.
mojo sends
P.S.: I blame George Bush
Stroke.
I have had a stroke.
I am looking at the preceding words and still trying to come to grips with what this all means... for me, my family and friends.
This is going to take a while to type, seeing as my left hand and arm have lost a major portion of their function. But my doctor said trying to type would be good for my left hand. Already I can feel my brain trying to re-route the signals to the arm and hand.
My neurologist said that with therapy, my prognosis for a full or very close to full recovery is very good.
I am very grateful to be here typing this at all right now...
I'll keep this short, as I am getting tired. Saturday morning I got out of bed feeling odd... my left arm was tingling, my speech sounded like the village drunk from some early Irish novel and I was a little dizzy and lightheaded. I took a shower thinking that it was just cobwebs from sleeping. Mrs. Mojo took her shower and I was still feeling weird.
I also knew that these were classic stroke symptoms. I sat my wife down and explained what I was feeling and suggested that I go to the emmergency room. Needless to say she did not argue.
Long Beach Memorial got me in fairly quickly and got me a CT scan which came up negative. They were going to admit me for observation and testing but my insurance insisted on transferring me to Los Alamitos Medical Center. So I get an ambulance ride across town.
The next two days I get a series of MRIs that confirm what the first CT scan could not find. A mild to moderate stroke in a lower left part of the brain, caused by untreated severe hypertension and an arterial blockage in an artery going to the back of the brain. The treatment for this is primarily medicine... blood thinners, statins for cholesterol, beta blockers and so on...
Most of the day Sunday I could barely move my left arm. Then on Sunday night, I was dozing and Laurie suddenly asked if I was okay; my left arm was twitching as I slept. It felt funny; a tough sensation to describe, like it was getting a signal to move, but couldn't, then it twitched. I suddenly got a little feeling and use back. I could grab my water bottle and my voice was clearer.
It was not a miraculous cure... but it was a marginal improvement, and that moment, it was enough.
So where am I now? Well, Saturday was about keeping it together and putting on a brave face. Sunday was about icy cold fear and crying jags.
Today is about angry and fighting like hell.
There are some major lifestyle changes I am coming to terms with. I have about a jillion medical appointments in the next couple of weeks. I still uncontrolably cry, mostly when I think of small army of people who are ready to step up for me. And no words will ever be adequate to express my love and gratitude for me wife, without whom, I would not be here now.
Mostly, I am glad to be home.
mojo sends
P.S.: I blame George Bush
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Get Well, Mojo
Our founder and editor, Van Mojo, will be away from the blog for an indeterminate time while he recuperates. The radio show may also be suspended. Hebisner and I shall attempt to carry on without his guidance until he returns. In the meantime, be assured...
Mojo sends.
Mojo sends.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Don't Worry, It's Only a Shower...
I guess this makes me close to not being an American anymore, apparently...The agreement says the executive branch is responsible for upholding the nations’ commitment to the Geneva Conventions, leaving it to the president to establish through executive rule any violations for the handling of terrorism suspects that fall short of a “grave breach.”... Democrats have put their trust in Senators Graham, McCain and Warner to push back against the White House, and Thursday they signaled that they intended to continue cooperating. “Five years after Sept. 11, it is time to make the tough and smart decisions to give the American people the real security they deserve,” said the Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada.Great... we are officially codifying the President's ability to order acts recognizable by any sentient being on the planet as criminal acts of violence.
Wonderful compromise. We'll let the Maximum Leader, decide what is and is not torture, in exchange for indemnifying his gang for their felonious conduct, except in circumstances that would take a Hudud tribal court to convict.
And let me just say how very, very proud I am to be affiliated with the Democratic Party at this critical junction in our nation's history. At the moment when a strong moral compass, and a primal sense of right and wrong would have been both useful and politically effective, the party's elected leadership has given us something to be genuinely proud of, yet another pass for Preznit Chucklehead!
I guess this doesn't make me a good Democrat anymore, huh...
mojo sends
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Watching Chuklehead right now at the UN...
Wow... a brother's ripped to the gills... I am wondering if he's going to make through his speechifizing...
OMFG... he's actually doing the Book of Revelation, he's doing a drunken version of John's relation of Christ's admonition to the 7 Churches of Asia, but instead he's talking to the countries of the Middle East... this is really creepy...
mojo sends
OMFG... he's actually doing the Book of Revelation, he's doing a drunken version of John's relation of Christ's admonition to the 7 Churches of Asia, but instead he's talking to the countries of the Middle East... this is really creepy...
mojo sends
Unacceptable to Think...
Maximum Leader, last week:
mojo sends
"It’s unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective..."The United States Military this week:
RAMADI, Iraq - US forces are taking to collective punishment of civilians in several cities across al-Anbar province west of Baghdad, residents and officials say.You're absolutely right Mr. Preznit. We're much better at it... Nice work, Chucklehead...
"Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar province, is still living with the daily terror of its people getting killed by snipers and its infrastructure being destroyed," said Ahmad, a local doctor who withheld his last name for security purposes. "This city has been facing the worst of the American terror and destruction for more than two years now, and the world is silent."
Destroying infrastructure and cutting water and electricity "for days and even weeks is routine reaction to the resistance", he said. "Guys of the resistance do not need water and electricity, it's the families that are being harmed, and their lives which are at stake."
mojo sends
Monday, September 18, 2006
Your Daily Moment Of Irreality
Via the mighty Eschaton, we learn from Greg Sargeant that the problem with the SoCalledLiberalMedia™ is their petulant insistence that imprisoning war correspondents who cover the clusterfnck in Iraq ought to involve formally charging them with some kind of crime first.
The edu-grenade, please handle with caution.
Kevin Drum pulls the pin on a edu-debate grenade here. Kevin links to a Prospect article that poses the question of whether the bitter education debates over homework, cut scores, and public vs. private funding are are inconsequential next to the issue of Socio-Economic Inequaility. I guarantee you as someone who hangs out in the rough education hoods of the blogsphere that a nasty brawl is going to break out on the education blogs over this question when it is posed on an influential liberal blog.
Kevin notes:
My take is that I too am sympathetic to the viewpoint that the social capital that derives from socio-economic class plays a large role in shaping educational outcomes. But the way Kevin and the Prospect writer poses this question raises several concerns for me.
First, both Kevin and the Prospect article ignore the growing consensus in the educational debate wars that one of the most critical elements in improving student performance is the quality of the teacher. In a world where you can dig up a study to justify virtually every possible viewpoint, that kind of consensus is rare. The better trained, qualified, and motivated among other qualities the teachers are, the better the students do. Studies seem to vary on the improvement in terms of student scores, but they appear to be signficant. By signficant I mean sometimes in the double digits in terms of test scores if I have interpretated those studes accurately. This is a constant theme in education debate circles and they don't seem to be aware of it, or don't consider it important. The reason I point this out is that teacher quality seems to a factor independent of a students economic background ,and it would seem to bear out the argument of many in the education reform movement that there are reforms that should be carried out that are not dependent on economic inequality.
Second, whenever we use jargon like socio-economic inequality, can someone offer a definition when they use it, even in a blog post? Is that strictly parental income and educational background? Inequality is a slippery term these days. Do we count median income in the district as a factor? It's important to know this because of the role property taxes play in funding schools in the United States. We toss these terms around and I suspect they mean different things to different people. I assume that Sociologists have a professional definition of the term, but is that definition used by other academic disciplines like economics?
I'm not convinced that it follows that if socio-economic inequality is important that it renders all other debates as trivial as they seem to be implying. I suspect that even to the most liberal education experts and wonks, the importance of inequaltiy is still unclear, despite numerous and ongoing attempts to quanitify it in a meaningful way. The pushback from people who are advocating for reforms in our public educational systems to Kevin's question is that too often, the economic inequality issue is used as an excuse for a host of political, bureaucratic, and systemic failures on the part of all the players in the education game. Before you ask taxpayers to assume a larger taxation burden, is it too much to ask that we come up with the most efficient, productive, and pedagogically sound system we can under the current financial scheme? Virtualy nobody is arguing we are doing all we can with what we have in terms of resources. We can and should do better despite any social, economic or funding issues. Without a determined and credible effort in this regard, cynical enemies of public education will have a strong hand in subverting and defeating attempts to expand our capital investments in addressing socio-economic inequality in terms of education.
I think we should be extremely careful when we make these broad correlations between class and possible life outcomes. I know this is just a blog post and an online magazine article and it should not be parsed like an academic publication. But, I don't think it's too much to ask that we exhibit caution in tying the cause of improving socio-economic inequality to educational outcomes. Improving socio-economic outcomes should be and is a legitimate goal for liberalism and progressives on it's own merits. If memory serves, the advocates of the Great Society made numrous grand proclamations about the social ills that would disappear if their programs were enacted. Cynical ideologues like Ronald Reagan used this as a way of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. An example I would use is AFDC, which was justfiable as a way of reducing the suffering of poverty, but was not designed or effective at eliminating root causes. My point is that any specific effort by the government to address economic inequality should not be burdened with as complex a problem as public educations challenges. It' way too easy to get hubristic and self-righteous on this issue, particulary when we tie the cause of improving our kids education to it. I'm not saying they aren't related or it's neccesarily a bad notion. I'm advocating caution in what we claim our efforts, whatever they may be, can accomplish.
Ultimately, I strongly suspect that if we want to make a quantam leap forward in educational outcomes for future generations, we are going to have to address the issue of economic class and inequality. But I would argue that issues of curriculum, teacher quality, testing methodolgies and data interpretation, fiscal and political governance, and public versus private funding are important and should not be dismissed as trivial distractions. Homework debates might seem silly depending on the context, but it's damn important to the daily lives of teachers, students and parents, all of whom are less concerned with baroque terms like socio-economic inequality, and more with how well their kids are reading and adding, and if they will graduate high school and college. If you want to advance this cause, you need to convince those sorts of stakeholders in its value.
Kevin notes:
I'll confess that I have a lot of sympathy for this view. The education world seems to be perpetually riven by fantastically shrill battles between traditionalists and progressives, and in the end it's hard to see that either side ever manages to win decisively in any area. These battles have swung back and forth for decades (the traditionalists seem to have won the latest round in the math wars, for example), but there's precious little evidence that kids today learn any more or less than kids in the 40s and 50s. Or the 60s or 70s. Does any of this stuff really make a difference?
My take is that I too am sympathetic to the viewpoint that the social capital that derives from socio-economic class plays a large role in shaping educational outcomes. But the way Kevin and the Prospect writer poses this question raises several concerns for me.
First, both Kevin and the Prospect article ignore the growing consensus in the educational debate wars that one of the most critical elements in improving student performance is the quality of the teacher. In a world where you can dig up a study to justify virtually every possible viewpoint, that kind of consensus is rare. The better trained, qualified, and motivated among other qualities the teachers are, the better the students do. Studies seem to vary on the improvement in terms of student scores, but they appear to be signficant. By signficant I mean sometimes in the double digits in terms of test scores if I have interpretated those studes accurately. This is a constant theme in education debate circles and they don't seem to be aware of it, or don't consider it important. The reason I point this out is that teacher quality seems to a factor independent of a students economic background ,and it would seem to bear out the argument of many in the education reform movement that there are reforms that should be carried out that are not dependent on economic inequality.
Second, whenever we use jargon like socio-economic inequality, can someone offer a definition when they use it, even in a blog post? Is that strictly parental income and educational background? Inequality is a slippery term these days. Do we count median income in the district as a factor? It's important to know this because of the role property taxes play in funding schools in the United States. We toss these terms around and I suspect they mean different things to different people. I assume that Sociologists have a professional definition of the term, but is that definition used by other academic disciplines like economics?
I'm not convinced that it follows that if socio-economic inequality is important that it renders all other debates as trivial as they seem to be implying. I suspect that even to the most liberal education experts and wonks, the importance of inequaltiy is still unclear, despite numerous and ongoing attempts to quanitify it in a meaningful way. The pushback from people who are advocating for reforms in our public educational systems to Kevin's question is that too often, the economic inequality issue is used as an excuse for a host of political, bureaucratic, and systemic failures on the part of all the players in the education game. Before you ask taxpayers to assume a larger taxation burden, is it too much to ask that we come up with the most efficient, productive, and pedagogically sound system we can under the current financial scheme? Virtualy nobody is arguing we are doing all we can with what we have in terms of resources. We can and should do better despite any social, economic or funding issues. Without a determined and credible effort in this regard, cynical enemies of public education will have a strong hand in subverting and defeating attempts to expand our capital investments in addressing socio-economic inequality in terms of education.
I think we should be extremely careful when we make these broad correlations between class and possible life outcomes. I know this is just a blog post and an online magazine article and it should not be parsed like an academic publication. But, I don't think it's too much to ask that we exhibit caution in tying the cause of improving socio-economic inequality to educational outcomes. Improving socio-economic outcomes should be and is a legitimate goal for liberalism and progressives on it's own merits. If memory serves, the advocates of the Great Society made numrous grand proclamations about the social ills that would disappear if their programs were enacted. Cynical ideologues like Ronald Reagan used this as a way of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. An example I would use is AFDC, which was justfiable as a way of reducing the suffering of poverty, but was not designed or effective at eliminating root causes. My point is that any specific effort by the government to address economic inequality should not be burdened with as complex a problem as public educations challenges. It' way too easy to get hubristic and self-righteous on this issue, particulary when we tie the cause of improving our kids education to it. I'm not saying they aren't related or it's neccesarily a bad notion. I'm advocating caution in what we claim our efforts, whatever they may be, can accomplish.
Ultimately, I strongly suspect that if we want to make a quantam leap forward in educational outcomes for future generations, we are going to have to address the issue of economic class and inequality. But I would argue that issues of curriculum, teacher quality, testing methodolgies and data interpretation, fiscal and political governance, and public versus private funding are important and should not be dismissed as trivial distractions. Homework debates might seem silly depending on the context, but it's damn important to the daily lives of teachers, students and parents, all of whom are less concerned with baroque terms like socio-economic inequality, and more with how well their kids are reading and adding, and if they will graduate high school and college. If you want to advance this cause, you need to convince those sorts of stakeholders in its value.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
It's On!
We're going. Looks like it will be in the last couple of weeks before the election.
From everything I have been able to read, it looks like it will start with a blockade and air campaign against select Iranian sites. Iran will have no choice but to retaliate against U.S. interests in Iraq and Afghanistan...
And now we've got a ball game...
I really pray to God, I am wrong and just over-reacting to some turgid reporting...
mojo sends
From everything I have been able to read, it looks like it will start with a blockade and air campaign against select Iranian sites. Iran will have no choice but to retaliate against U.S. interests in Iraq and Afghanistan...
And now we've got a ball game...
I really pray to God, I am wrong and just over-reacting to some turgid reporting...
mojo sends
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Just Hollywood?
Max Blumenthal provides a us a breakdown of the backstory on the nice little piece of 9/11 agitprop, Path to 9/11.
I think that this story is only the tip of the iceberg. Consider:
Now take this idea and move it itno the major news divisions at the networks, and it explains alot about the state of the Newtork Corporate Media today. It's not just "reporters" like John Stossel or Bernard Goldberg. It's producers and writers and a host of other believers who all committed to bringing the kind of bias to the news that they accuse liberals of doing. Don't even start me on Little Russ over at Beat the Press.
Just something to keep in mind as we start talking about the 08 race and what kind of media coverage the candidates will receive. It's not hard to predict. McCain will be the greatest thing ever and the Dem candidate will be a elite nerd who has no "charisma" and is too "political". It will not matter a whit who the Dems nominate. The GOP know the political media needs to be bullied into submission. The Dems still, truly, cling to the fantasy they will get a fair shake without ripping it from the still living corpse of the reporters that cover them. And don't count on the freak vote preventing McCain from getting the nomination. The Democratic candidate will be starting leagues behind the GOP nominee on the mind of the press. They better get used to it and act accordingly. Which, to put it simply, is don't trust them. Get your message out despite them, anyway you can.
I think that this story is only the tip of the iceberg. Consider:
Iger now bears ultimate responsibility for authorizing the product of a well-honed propaganda operation--a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far-right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, a secretive evangelical religious right group long associated with Horowitz, founded by The Path to 9/11's director, David Cunningham, that aims to "transform Hollywood" in line with its messianic vision, has taken the lead.
Now take this idea and move it itno the major news divisions at the networks, and it explains alot about the state of the Newtork Corporate Media today. It's not just "reporters" like John Stossel or Bernard Goldberg. It's producers and writers and a host of other believers who all committed to bringing the kind of bias to the news that they accuse liberals of doing. Don't even start me on Little Russ over at Beat the Press.
Just something to keep in mind as we start talking about the 08 race and what kind of media coverage the candidates will receive. It's not hard to predict. McCain will be the greatest thing ever and the Dem candidate will be a elite nerd who has no "charisma" and is too "political". It will not matter a whit who the Dems nominate. The GOP know the political media needs to be bullied into submission. The Dems still, truly, cling to the fantasy they will get a fair shake without ripping it from the still living corpse of the reporters that cover them. And don't count on the freak vote preventing McCain from getting the nomination. The Democratic candidate will be starting leagues behind the GOP nominee on the mind of the press. They better get used to it and act accordingly. Which, to put it simply, is don't trust them. Get your message out despite them, anyway you can.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
You Da Man, Keith... You Da Man!
If you haven't watched this yet, then go, and we will wait for you here...
But here is my favorite part:
You da man, Keith...
mojo sends
But here is my favorite part:
So too have they succeeded, and are still succeeding — as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.There are a lot of people out there right now comparing him to Edward R. Murrow for this. Well, that's a tall order, but he was clearly channeling for someone that night... If he keeps up this kind of writing, it will be an apt comparison.
This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney’s continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.
And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm.
Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced.
An "alien" is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help.
The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen, manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves."
And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight.
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men.
"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn."
You da man, Keith...
mojo sends
That Big Hole In The Ground
There's been a fair bit of rending of garments about the fact that the site of the World Trade Center in Manhatten, the so-called "ground zero" of the 9/11 attacks— which always rubs very badly on me when I think about how it distracts the mind away from the big chunk of the Pentagon that had to be remodeled— that big hole in the ground remains a big hole in the ground.
Oh, yes— they rebuilt the Pentagon lickety-split. There's a nice memorial in that field in Pennsylvania— though, one wonders whether everyone understands what it supposedly memorializes. But the hole in the ground in Manhatten remains a hole in the ground. As Billmon points out, even the memorial is a jerry-rigged temporary affair built mainly to provide Commodore Codpiece and his rockin' sidekicks a cool backdrop for putting aside all that "partisan rancor" we keep hearing about.
And yet, I'm not all that surprised. Five years after the World Trade Center was destroyed, and they haven't rebuilt anything yet. Look, I live in San Francisco. I remember the last time we had a major disaster here, and a President Bush came out and walked around on the concrete rubble of a mass grave of Americans. It was 1989, in the days after the Loma Prieta earthquake. Granted, I was living in Southern California at the time, but my heart was still staked out in Civic Center Plaza. I watched the television reports while the rest of my SoCal family, friends and acquaintences went on about their lives. It was terrible, but it was happening in somebody else's town. It was when I fought back tears and rage while seeing President George H. W. "Atheists Are Neither Citizens Nor Patriots" Bush posing for a photo op on the remains of the Cypress Freeway while the bodies of several hundred Bay Area commuters had yet to be dug out from under his shiny leather wingtips— that was when I knew San Francisco was my town.
That was 1989. We are still rebuilding the Bay Bridge. How the fsck long did you really think it was going to take to get the World Trade Center site rebuilt?
Honestly. Really, be honest.
Oh, I get it. It's in Manhatten, not some goddamn podunk commie shithole on the Left Coast where nobody cares if the bridges fall down. It's a fscking TRAVESTY that we didn't have another pair of skyscrapers built right in the same spot, this time even bigger than the freaking Taipei 101, inside five years. San Francisco, New Orleans, none of those places matter. Manhatten, though— goddamn it, drop everything, something has to be done right this second.
Meanwhile, we are slowly, steadily making progress rebuilding the most heavily trafficked commuter bridge in the world. Maybe, we'll finish before the next century quake strikes, or some cracker terrorist from South Carolina plants a bomb on it to make us all pay for allowing queer people to get married.
Oh, yes— they rebuilt the Pentagon lickety-split. There's a nice memorial in that field in Pennsylvania— though, one wonders whether everyone understands what it supposedly memorializes. But the hole in the ground in Manhatten remains a hole in the ground. As Billmon points out, even the memorial is a jerry-rigged temporary affair built mainly to provide Commodore Codpiece and his rockin' sidekicks a cool backdrop for putting aside all that "partisan rancor" we keep hearing about.
And yet, I'm not all that surprised. Five years after the World Trade Center was destroyed, and they haven't rebuilt anything yet. Look, I live in San Francisco. I remember the last time we had a major disaster here, and a President Bush came out and walked around on the concrete rubble of a mass grave of Americans. It was 1989, in the days after the Loma Prieta earthquake. Granted, I was living in Southern California at the time, but my heart was still staked out in Civic Center Plaza. I watched the television reports while the rest of my SoCal family, friends and acquaintences went on about their lives. It was terrible, but it was happening in somebody else's town. It was when I fought back tears and rage while seeing President George H. W. "Atheists Are Neither Citizens Nor Patriots" Bush posing for a photo op on the remains of the Cypress Freeway while the bodies of several hundred Bay Area commuters had yet to be dug out from under his shiny leather wingtips— that was when I knew San Francisco was my town.
That was 1989. We are still rebuilding the Bay Bridge. How the fsck long did you really think it was going to take to get the World Trade Center site rebuilt?
Honestly. Really, be honest.
Oh, I get it. It's in Manhatten, not some goddamn podunk commie shithole on the Left Coast where nobody cares if the bridges fall down. It's a fscking TRAVESTY that we didn't have another pair of skyscrapers built right in the same spot, this time even bigger than the freaking Taipei 101, inside five years. San Francisco, New Orleans, none of those places matter. Manhatten, though— goddamn it, drop everything, something has to be done right this second.
Meanwhile, we are slowly, steadily making progress rebuilding the most heavily trafficked commuter bridge in the world. Maybe, we'll finish before the next century quake strikes, or some cracker terrorist from South Carolina plants a bomb on it to make us all pay for allowing queer people to get married.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Friday, September 01, 2006
Weird...
Look, I know I have probably already exhausted everyone's interest in this subject, but that hunky-he-man o' legal luv Glenn Greenwald has another interesting look at the fallout from the FauxNews "Kidnapping." [c.f. this post]
To wit, apparently, some of the warriors of the wasteland are howling for blood, because the season finale did not end with the beheading of either of our protagonists, but had them cowering like "chestless" (no shit, I'm not making this up) sissies. As such, Glenn goes on to bring us the spittle flecked bloviating of one David Warren over at Real Clear Politics
Look, here is the best part:
Now in light of my previously unsubstantiated bit of conspiracy theorizing that this was primarily a ham-handed attempt by FauxNews to inject a little Vitamin V into their WarNews® to arouse their flaccid ratings, I really have no current model to fit this latest development into it.
Just curious, that's all...
mojo sends
To wit, apparently, some of the warriors of the wasteland are howling for blood, because the season finale did not end with the beheading of either of our protagonists, but had them cowering like "chestless" (no shit, I'm not making this up) sissies. As such, Glenn goes on to bring us the spittle flecked bloviating of one David Warren over at Real Clear Politics
Look, here is the best part:
"And the two Fox journalists, whom I will not stoop to name, begged for their lives even though, in retrospect, their lives probably weren't in danger. . . . Men without chests, men without character, men who don't think twice."Is it me, or is this a needlesly turgid and yet curious bit of spleen?
Now in light of my previously unsubstantiated bit of conspiracy theorizing that this was primarily a ham-handed attempt by FauxNews to inject a little Vitamin V into their WarNews® to arouse their flaccid ratings, I really have no current model to fit this latest development into it.
Just curious, that's all...
mojo sends
Thursday, August 31, 2006
I think we have a front-runner for the "Stupidest Thing Ever Said" award...
Talking about the future of manned space exploration, a young under-bean-counter uttered the following statement to the press:
And who says the people in this adminsitration are not committed to excellence in their dealings with the media and the public?
mojo sends
"Space is no longer going to be a destination that we visit briefly," NASA associate administrator Scott Horowitz said at a news conference at NASA headquarters Thursday. "We're going to learn to live off the land like the pioneers did."Several of his audience apparently died of massive and immediate brain aneurysms and one poor news photographer's lower intestine crawled out his ass and plugged itself into a 220v. outlet to relieve the pain ...
And who says the people in this adminsitration are not committed to excellence in their dealings with the media and the public?
mojo sends
Support the Troops! Gouge those suckers!
This is just unacceptable:
I haven't been on a military base in many years, but are there really no financial services provided to service members on base? Would not a credit union that provides financial services be appropriate here?
36% is still outrageous where credits unions and other financial entities can provide these services at more competitive rates. The industries response is a charming combination of spin and condescension:
Ummm..The Pentagon manages a 400 billion dollar budget and a payroll of over a million people. I think they could figure out the loan shark business if they put their minds to it. Better yet, form service member credit union that has branches at every base that service people can use to provide these services. Put the offices right next to the sharks, errr, the payday lenders and let the glorious free market determine who is in over their head. I think it's time for some Creative Destruction.
The whole *alleged* deregulation of the financial industry was to allow consumers to reap the benefit of competition among financial entities. It's allegedly one of the reasons why Banks and S&L's were allowed to get into each others business, although that particular idea didn't live up to the hype.
Where is the American Legion? Veterans of Foreign Wars? College Republicans? You people are all into our shit when we protest the war. You get all assed up when someone burns a flag, (although wearing it as butt floss seems just peachy), yet service people are being ripped off and you people are silent as near as I can tell.
I have a particular hatred for payday lenders. I think it's exactly the business that gives markets a bad name and is a poster child for imposing strict regulations on companies that provide financial services. It's legal loan sharking, now backed up by a draconian bankruptcy law that gives these people more power to ruin lives than having their hired muscle break someones fingers. IF a constituency that gets as much attention as the military can get exploited in this way, what about the rest of us who aren't spoken of in such reverent terms? And yes, I know the reverence for the military is mostly talk. As Ezra Klein points out, this is what John Edwards and others mean when they state that being poor is expensive. Drive through an urban low income neighborhood and count the chain grocery stores. You won't find very many, if at all. What you will get is liquor stores and small stores that charge much higher prices. That is typical of many consumer services we take for granted. With the exception of WalMart that sometimes can be found in these places, but causes plenty of other kinds of economic havoc.
What really pisses me off is this is fixable. It doesn't take a huge program or a vast new bureaucracy to make services more accessible or other things to improve the quality of life for people who occupy lower rungs of the income ladder. It just takes some will and effort, and not placing the needs of shareholders and CEO's above everyone elses all the time without exception. Cut the little guy a break every now and again.
There I go again, talking that hippie Socialist talk...
The report says “payday loan” stores (so named because their loans are often due on a borrower's next payday) have sprung up by the thousands around military bases and elsewhere in the past decade.
Lenders typically charge $15 to $25 per $100 loan for two weeks, and most loans are extended for several weeks. The report says the average loan is $350 and has an annual interest rate of 390% to 780%. The average borrower, it says, pays back $834 for a $339 loan.
The report cites estimates that 13% to 19% oservicemenrs — at least 175,000 people — took out high-interest, short-term loans last year. It said nine out of 10 loans go to borrowers who get five or more over a year.
I haven't been on a military base in many years, but are there really no financial services provided to service members on base? Would not a credit union that provides financial services be appropriate here?
Congress ordered the Pentagon to conduct the lending study. This year, the Senate passed an amendment to its annual defense spending bill that calls for a 36% cap on interest for loans to service menbers. It would not affect loans to civilians. The House version of the defense bill doesn't include the amendment. A joint committee will begin working out differences between the two versions next month.
36% is still outrageous where credits unions and other financial entities can provide these services at more competitive rates. The industries response is a charming combination of spin and condescension:
Such lending, the report says, hurts readiness and morale and “adds to the cost of fielding an all-volunteer fighting force.”
That's a misguided critique of a valuable service, says Darrin Andersen, president of the Community Financial Services Association of America, the payday lenders' trade group. The Pentagon, he says, “is in over its heads when it comes to … complex personal finance and lending issues.”
Ummm..The Pentagon manages a 400 billion dollar budget and a payroll of over a million people. I think they could figure out the loan shark business if they put their minds to it. Better yet, form service member credit union that has branches at every base that service people can use to provide these services. Put the offices right next to the sharks, errr, the payday lenders and let the glorious free market determine who is in over their head. I think it's time for some Creative Destruction.
Master Sgt. Leah Caldwell, who manages training and deployment for a squadron of the Missouri Air National Guard, says she has had several airmen get so deep into debt with the loans that they lost their security clearances, jeopardizing their deployment. One airman, she says, took out a $500 loan and after refinancing it several times saw it grow to a $2,600 debt.
The whole *alleged* deregulation of the financial industry was to allow consumers to reap the benefit of competition among financial entities. It's allegedly one of the reasons why Banks and S&L's were allowed to get into each others business, although that particular idea didn't live up to the hype.
Where is the American Legion? Veterans of Foreign Wars? College Republicans? You people are all into our shit when we protest the war. You get all assed up when someone burns a flag, (although wearing it as butt floss seems just peachy), yet service people are being ripped off and you people are silent as near as I can tell.
I have a particular hatred for payday lenders. I think it's exactly the business that gives markets a bad name and is a poster child for imposing strict regulations on companies that provide financial services. It's legal loan sharking, now backed up by a draconian bankruptcy law that gives these people more power to ruin lives than having their hired muscle break someones fingers. IF a constituency that gets as much attention as the military can get exploited in this way, what about the rest of us who aren't spoken of in such reverent terms? And yes, I know the reverence for the military is mostly talk. As Ezra Klein points out, this is what John Edwards and others mean when they state that being poor is expensive. Drive through an urban low income neighborhood and count the chain grocery stores. You won't find very many, if at all. What you will get is liquor stores and small stores that charge much higher prices. That is typical of many consumer services we take for granted. With the exception of WalMart that sometimes can be found in these places, but causes plenty of other kinds of economic havoc.
What really pisses me off is this is fixable. It doesn't take a huge program or a vast new bureaucracy to make services more accessible or other things to improve the quality of life for people who occupy lower rungs of the income ladder. It just takes some will and effort, and not placing the needs of shareholders and CEO's above everyone elses all the time without exception. Cut the little guy a break every now and again.
There I go again, talking that hippie Socialist talk...
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Roy Edriso is the man
Roy Edriso at AlicuBlog provides us with our 2006 campaign slogan. Read the whole post and the bumper sticker at the end.
More suggestions in the same vein? I'll take a stab:
It's a pussy, not a choice!
Monday, August 28, 2006
It's Time To Test The West
Via The mighty Glenn Greenwald, we learn fromThe San Francisco Chronicle that the United States of America has begun forcibly ex-patriating its citizens.
They're just not being allowed back into the country.
(08-26) 04:00 PDT Sacramento -- The federal government has barred two relatives of a Lodi man convicted of supporting terrorists from returning to the country after a lengthy stay in Pakistan, placing the U.S. citizens in an extraordinary legal limbo.The crime here that seems to be keeping these two Americans from returning to the only country they're legally allowed to reside is either A) being related to somebody convicted of supporting terrorism, or B) refusing to be interrogated by the FBI without counsel present, except it's hard to tell— because the Americans in question haven't been charged with anything.
[...]
They're just not being allowed back into the country.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Somebody Set Up Us The Bomb...
...How are you gentlemen? All Your Base Are Belong To Us...
Is there anyone else out there who thinks that it is more than just a passing possibility that the "kidnapping" of two FoxNews guys in Gaza is complete bullshit?
There is much about this story that does not compute. An entirely unknown new group, that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbollah, Fatah, Al Aqsa, et al. claim absolutely no knowledge of? Kidnapping of American journalists? (not unheard of, but pretty damn rare in the Territories), Political demands of America, not Israel or the P/A?
Here is the passage from the "Holy Jihad Brigades" that really put the skepticism hook in me:
Come on... I'm supposed to believe this shit?
Look, I know that I'm being all impolite and impolitic by not holding my breath and offering continual silent rosaries 24 hours a day for the safe return of these two, while heaping prayers of hatred and violence upon the wicked, swarthy heathen brown Asian man, and if these guys are truly in danger, then I apologize for my insensitivities.
On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of ham-handed, melodramatic stunt I would expect from the sideways reality engineers and Republican Party hacks of FoxNews.
Sorry, this thing simply does not pass the sniff test. And I would be Jack's complete-lack-of-credulity-and-surprise to learn that this was all a FoxNews publicity trick to "alert us all to the dangers of international terrorism..." or something...
Is there anyone else out there expressing similar thoughts right now?
mojo sends
Is there anyone else out there who thinks that it is more than just a passing possibility that the "kidnapping" of two FoxNews guys in Gaza is complete bullshit?
There is much about this story that does not compute. An entirely unknown new group, that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbollah, Fatah, Al Aqsa, et al. claim absolutely no knowledge of? Kidnapping of American journalists? (not unheard of, but pretty damn rare in the Territories), Political demands of America, not Israel or the P/A?
Here is the passage from the "Holy Jihad Brigades" that really put the skepticism hook in me:
And to add to the bitterness, they placed infidel regimes they called "Democratic" regimes that want to bring us justice and freedom. So some ran [to embrace such regimes] while they knew by heart "(Illegible)"."Fie upon you?" "Curse You George Bush... You and your Democracy Legion Super Friends have won again, but you will be no match for our evil weather manipulation machine..."
God is the only legislator. He is the final Judge in all matters. Like parrots, they all started to shout "Democracy, freedom, elections, referendum". They did not know — or maybe they did but neglected to do what they were supposed to under the pretext that this was not happening on their own soils — that they were only praising states of mental illnesses through which the West went through in its intellectual and ideological struggle to achieve the heavenly justice, and they [Westerners] did away with the causes of their backwardness to prosper, so you can obey them and they can play God. "Fie upon you, and upon the things that ye worship".
Come on... I'm supposed to believe this shit?
Look, I know that I'm being all impolite and impolitic by not holding my breath and offering continual silent rosaries 24 hours a day for the safe return of these two, while heaping prayers of hatred and violence upon the wicked, swarthy heathen brown Asian man, and if these guys are truly in danger, then I apologize for my insensitivities.
On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of ham-handed, melodramatic stunt I would expect from the sideways reality engineers and Republican Party hacks of FoxNews.
Sorry, this thing simply does not pass the sniff test. And I would be Jack's complete-lack-of-credulity-and-surprise to learn that this was all a FoxNews publicity trick to "alert us all to the dangers of international terrorism..." or something...
Is there anyone else out there expressing similar thoughts right now?
mojo sends
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
DOH!
Explosive revelation out of Canton Ohio. Apparently, sexual ignorance can lead to unplanned pregnancies:
Nice JOB RED STATE! Apparently, the curriculum at Timken was abstinence only prior to the revelation about the pregnancy rate. Props to the school board for addressing it rather than devolving into the usual rhetoric of blaming the usual strawman, that is to say providing accurate biological information on sex. I wonder how many of these kids took the abstinence pledge?
Just for the record, I don't object to abstinence being a part of a sexual education curriculum. My objection to the sexual education abstinence-only curriculum promulgated by the White House is that it almost always distorts the facts about the effectiveness of condoms to prevent STD's and pregnancy, and frequently makes the false assertion that early sexual activity leads to mental illness and chemical dependency. Their oft repeated claim that HIV can be transmitted through tears is patently false and a disgraceful and blatant attempt to stigmatize gay people.
I think that ALL sides of this issue tend to overstate the impact of sexual education and wildly misinterpret the impact of culture. But in the case of Timken, it seems like a reasonable deduction that educating students on available birth control might lower the teenage pregnancy. It's a cost effective, low risk way to address it that lays within the scope of the schools mission. Pushing them into programs that are slightly disguised recruitment efforts for evangelical Christian churches who *officially * regard premarital sex as sinful is clearly not within their scope.
CANTON, Ohio -- An Ohio school board is expanding sex education following the revelation that 13 percent of one high school's female students were pregnant last year.
There were 490 female students at Timken High School in 2005, and 65 were pregnant, WEWS-TV in Cleveland reported.
The new Canton school board program promotes abstinence but also will teach students who decide to have sex how to do so responsibly, bringing the city school district's health curriculum in line with national standards
Nice JOB RED STATE! Apparently, the curriculum at Timken was abstinence only prior to the revelation about the pregnancy rate. Props to the school board for addressing it rather than devolving into the usual rhetoric of blaming the usual strawman, that is to say providing accurate biological information on sex. I wonder how many of these kids took the abstinence pledge?
Just for the record, I don't object to abstinence being a part of a sexual education curriculum. My objection to the sexual education abstinence-only curriculum promulgated by the White House is that it almost always distorts the facts about the effectiveness of condoms to prevent STD's and pregnancy, and frequently makes the false assertion that early sexual activity leads to mental illness and chemical dependency. Their oft repeated claim that HIV can be transmitted through tears is patently false and a disgraceful and blatant attempt to stigmatize gay people.
I think that ALL sides of this issue tend to overstate the impact of sexual education and wildly misinterpret the impact of culture. But in the case of Timken, it seems like a reasonable deduction that educating students on available birth control might lower the teenage pregnancy. It's a cost effective, low risk way to address it that lays within the scope of the schools mission. Pushing them into programs that are slightly disguised recruitment efforts for evangelical Christian churches who *officially * regard premarital sex as sinful is clearly not within their scope.
Monday, August 21, 2006
WTF?
The Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays For War are asking WTF? I confess, I don't have a coherent answer for them. I wish I did, but the facile and obvious answer, i.e. the international bourgeois conspiracy, just doesn't hold enough water.
On the other hand, there is always Dr. Strychnine's Immortal Advice To Would-Be Conspiracy Theorists: never propose conspiracy as an explanation where mere stupidity will suffice.
On the other hand, there is always Dr. Strychnine's Immortal Advice To Would-Be Conspiracy Theorists: never propose conspiracy as an explanation where mere stupidity will suffice.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
The Impending Mortgage Reset Wave
I've occasionally written about this problem, most recently here and here. Now, via Calculated Risk, comes this scary article from The Baltimore Sun [my emphasis added].
[...]I bring this to your attention with the key phrases emphasized that way, because it's not clear to me that everybody understands compound interest calculations well enough to understand how they will be so well and truly fncked when their mortgage resets.
To head off potential problems, the largest mortgage originator in the United States, Countrywide Home Loans, quietly has begun sending out letters to thousands of borrowers who have been making only the minimum payments on the company's popular "PayOption" adjustable-rate mortgages.
The letters explain that "this is an early message to alert you that, based on your current payment trends and potential future interest rate changes, the monthly payment you will be required to pay may increase significantly."
A model letter provided to me by Countrywide includes this hypothetical example of what could be ahead for a California homeowner currently making only minimum payments monthly on a $402,000 loan.
The current full interest rate on the loan is 7.6 percent, but the borrower has been paying just $1,348.47, far less than what's needed to fully amortize the mortgage over its 30-year term.
If the loan reset at today's rates, the letter explains, the full payment required would be $2,887.50 - more than double what the homeowner has gotten used to paying. Future reset rates could be even steeper, making the potential payment crunch much worse.[...]
Now that you've internalized that side of the problem, look at this graph again:
All those wonky PayOption and interest-only ding-a-ling mortgages taken out over the last two years to "bridge the affordability gap" are going to start resetting in a huge wave, the leading edge of which is just starting to swell up now, and it will really be rolling quite seriously over America in about six months. Americans don't have the savings to indicate that they've been using these exotic instruments responsibly. There is a financial hurricane coming.
I have a 30-year fixed rate mortgage on a detached house in San Francisco at 5.67% and no 2nd mortgage. On paper, the balance of my loan is a little less than half the comparable price in my immediate neighborhood. I think I'm in a pretty good position to ride out this wave, but I'm still nervous. There are a lot of people who are going to have their lunch money stolen in this market correction. I expect the financial suffering to be horrendous, and in that kind of upheaval, even the people who managed their risks responsibly tend to get the shaft. If you don't believe that, I'd like to send you on a tour of gulf-coast Louisiana and Mississippi.
Friday, August 18, 2006
We Are Not Worthy!
Our Monkey's Kung Fu is Not Strong!
Even though it is a link to a Daily Show segment, this bit of descriptor was wonderful, and I would like to think, literally true:
mojo sends
Even though it is a link to a Daily Show segment, this bit of descriptor was wonderful, and I would like to think, literally true:
"You know, I'm a big fan of The Daily Show and Colbert Report. But I can say that this is the first time that Bill Hicks -- who did not die, but transcended mortality -- out on the border between the Real universe and the Chaosium from whence the Cthulhic Horrors spring, way out there on the border where he fights the Creatures of Madness with Elvis's old six-shooters powered by his own prodigious sex magicks ...
This is the first time Hicks looked back over his shoulder at us and smiled."
mojo sends
Do Not Mock the Powerful Oracle-Like Nature of the Mojowire
Well, it looks like we may have the beginnings of a real ballgame! [c.f. Kurds flee homes as Iran shells Iraq's northern frontier]
Ah yes, strange and ominous rumblings and rumors of war cross the web today. There are various reports that Turkish generals are considering unilateral, large scale cross border incursions into Northern Iraq. Iran is placing thousands of troops on the border. The PKK is getting close to telling the Americans to get bent if they won't help them establish a Greater Kurdistan in Northern Iraq.
Okay Chucklehead... bet's to you, call or fold, chump!
mojo sends
"Turkey and Iran have dispatched tanks, artillery and thousands of troops to their frontiers with Iraq during the past few weeks in what appears to be a coordinated effort to disrupt the activities of Kurdish rebel bases.Well, what can I say that I didn't say here about two or three weeks ago. It's like a slo-mo car wreck. You have to watch, you have to look.
Scores of Kurds have fled their homes in the northern frontier region after four days of shelling by the Iranian army. Local officials said Turkey had also fired a number of shells into Iraqi territory."
Ah yes, strange and ominous rumblings and rumors of war cross the web today. There are various reports that Turkish generals are considering unilateral, large scale cross border incursions into Northern Iraq. Iran is placing thousands of troops on the border. The PKK is getting close to telling the Americans to get bent if they won't help them establish a Greater Kurdistan in Northern Iraq.
Okay Chucklehead... bet's to you, call or fold, chump!
mojo sends
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Joseph Darby Emerges
Via Digby's Hullaballoo, we learn that Joseph Darby has written a feature article for GQ's online presence this week. Those who know me offline will recall me asking whatever happened to Specialist Darby. I haven't read this article yet, but I'm relieved just to see it in print.
Update: I've now read it. Let your jaw drop with mine as you read this paragraph:
Update: I've now read it. Let your jaw drop with mine as you read this paragraph:
Well, it didn’t work out that way. About a month after Graner and the rest of them left Abu Ghraib, we were up in Camp Anaconda, and I was sitting with ten other guys from my platoon in the dining facility. It’s a big facility, packed with like 400 other soldiers, and I’m sitting there eating when Donald Rumsfeld comes on during the damned congressional hearings. It was like something out of a movie. I’m sitting there, and right next to me there’s a TV, and Rumsfeld is on it when he drops my damned name. Almost nobody in my unit knew what I’d done until he dropped my damned name. On national TV. I was sitting midbite when he said it, and I was like, Oh, my God. And the guys at the table just stopped eating and looked at me. I was like, Fuuuuuck. And I got up and got the hell out of there.I hope that motherfucker Rumsfeld has a debilitating stroke and spends the rest of his unnatural life paralyzed and unable to speak.
No Kings
Headline: Judge Pulls Plug on NSA Wiretapping
Well, it's a dark day when we actually needed a federal judge to tell us that "there are no hereditary kings" of the United States...
Thank God that at least there was still someone on the federal bench willing to stand up and say so, even if their opinion (and for a district bench opinion, this is a pretty long at 44 pages) is likely to be whacked out by the Fifth Circuit, and upheld by the newly reconfigured Supremes...
Of course the bloodless ghouls of Freeperville (sorry, I don't have the emotional energy to link there) have completely spun out... I think they are over their cognitive dissonance and have finally embraced their fascist leanings, openly saying that the Preznit should just ignore the court, under the rubric of "Oh yeah? Well, who's gonna make us stop? You?" That and of course, that the court is actually in support of terrorism, so anything they say should not count...
mojo sends
Well, it's a dark day when we actually needed a federal judge to tell us that "there are no hereditary kings" of the United States...
Thank God that at least there was still someone on the federal bench willing to stand up and say so, even if their opinion (and for a district bench opinion, this is a pretty long at 44 pages) is likely to be whacked out by the Fifth Circuit, and upheld by the newly reconfigured Supremes...
Of course the bloodless ghouls of Freeperville (sorry, I don't have the emotional energy to link there) have completely spun out... I think they are over their cognitive dissonance and have finally embraced their fascist leanings, openly saying that the Preznit should just ignore the court, under the rubric of "Oh yeah? Well, who's gonna make us stop? You?" That and of course, that the court is actually in support of terrorism, so anything they say should not count...
mojo sends
A reasonable call for skepticism
So, how much credibility are we supposed to give the governments of Britain and the United States regarding the recent alleged plot to blow up a bunch of U.S.-bound airplanes?
Harry Shearer writes something I have been thinking for the past few days, and manages to find a go-to guy for a little reasonable questioning of the official party line in one Craig Murray former British ambassador to the Central Asian garden spot of Uzbekistan.
To wit, Mr. Murray says:
"In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few - just over two per cent of arrests - who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.This does not mean that I believe the whole thing is some sort of a put up job. But I am deeply suspicious of the timing and the alleged advancement of the plot, in particular, the idea that James Bond and a team of MI-5 specials rolled into Imam Goldfinger's secret underwater mosque/lair and foiled the plot at zero-hour... Look, it is hard to go wrong betting on mendacity and exaggeration when it comes to the actual level of terrorist threat as purported by either of these governments.
Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.
And in looking at Mr. Murray's comments, I am also wondering how much of this is also going be responsible for a resurgence of the political viability of groups like the openly and violently racist British Nationalist Party and act as a pretext for more conservative elements at all levels of government in Britain to bring back the bad old days of the late '60s and '70s where Irish immigrants working in urban areas were under constant suspicion, routinely arrested without charges, imprisoned without cause, beaten, abused, and generally made to feel unwelcome...
And I wonder, how much of this is going to serve as an object lesson to conduct the same kind of political purging, and suppression here in the United States?
mojo sends
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Stamp Out Heterosexuality Now!
Via TBogg (and The Mighty Atrios), comes this anxiety-inducing nightmare at BlackFive.Net:
Update: Oh yeah, don't read the comments. I mean it.
[...]I think I've never, in my entire life, heard a more strident polemic against heterosexuality, and remember— I live in San Francisco.
That we pursue war without thought of the children. That we do not turn aside from the death of the innocent, but push on to the conclusion, through all fearful fire. If we do that, the children will lose their value as hostages, and as targets: if we love them, we must harden our hearts against their loss. Ours and theirs.
[...]
Update: Oh yeah, don't read the comments. I mean it.
Monday, August 14, 2006
What do DHS agents do on a Sunny afternoon?
Andrew Sullivan today posted some photo's purportedly from ANSWER anti-war rallies in in Montreal and San Francisco:
I'd like to thank the agents for Homeland Security for stopping by the ANSWER rally.
I'd like to thank the agents for Homeland Security for stopping by the ANSWER rally.
The Freedom and the Liberty and the Creamy Democracy Filling...
A couple of days ago, s9 wrote in the comments section of this post about : "I hope I don't have to point out to anyone that our President and his NeoConClownCarCrew™ are using the words "freedom" and "terror" now as completely meaningless antonyms of one another. It's quite orwellian, actually."
Well, Preznit Chucklehead buried the needle on meaningless political methane emission this afternoon when he went on a drunken extended rant about our "Forward Strategy of Freedom."
Now, you see, I thought it was just bunkering down in Bagdad and Kabul trying to get blowed up, but no ... apparently it is just our "Forward Strategy for Freedom."
Here, I'll just let Maximum Leader explain it to you:
Next question, after what sounded like a tirade fueled by cheap tequila and meth, I would like to clarify that the only thing standing between the people of the Middle East and their freedom is the governments in Syria and Iran... mostly Iran. So my question is basically when do you anticipate to begin the bombing?
We are so screwed...
mojo sends
Well, Preznit Chucklehead buried the needle on meaningless political methane emission this afternoon when he went on a drunken extended rant about our "Forward Strategy of Freedom."
Now, you see, I thought it was just bunkering down in Bagdad and Kabul trying to get blowed up, but no ... apparently it is just our "Forward Strategy for Freedom."
Here, I'll just let Maximum Leader explain it to you:
Yet, the lack of freedom in the region meant anger and resentment grew, radicalism thrived, and terrorists found willing recruits. We saw the consequences on September 11, 2001, when terrorists brought death and destruction to our country, killing nearly 3,000 of our citizens.Sure Chucklehead... I gots a couple questions for ya... First, exactly how drunk do you have to be to stand there with a reasonably straight face and deliver hideously wonton rhetorical crap like this? Really, what is it? A dozen Jack Daniels shooters? A case of Coronas? A couple of mason jars full of 160 proof Tennessee Moonshine? 500cc IV push of MDMA or Mescaline
So we launched a forward strategy of freedom in the broader Middle East. And that strategy has helped bring hope to millions and fostered the birth of young democracies from Baghdad to Beirut.
Forces of terror see the changes that are taking place in their midst. They understand that the advance of liberty, the freedom to worship, the freedom to dissent, the protection of human rights would be a defeat for their hateful ideology.
[...]
So the terrorists are striking back with all the destructive power that they can muster.
[...]
Some say that America caused the current instability in the Middle East by pursuing a forward strategy of freedom, yet history shows otherwise.
We didn't talk much about freedom or the freedom agenda in the Middle East before September 11th, 2001
[...]
History's clear: The freedom agenda did not create the terrorists or their ideology, but the freedom agenda will help defeat them both.
[...]
The problem in the Middle East today is not that people lack the desire for freedom. The problem is that young democracies that they have established are still vulnerable to terrorists and their sponsors.
[...]
The message of this administration is clear: America will stay on the offense against Al Qaida. Iran must stop its support for terror.
[...]
Yet millions of people in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere are equally determined to live in peace and freedom...They reject the hateful vision of the terrorists
[...]
We seek to advance the cause of freedom in the Middle East
[...]
The way forward's going to be difficult. It will require more sacrifice. But we can be confident of the outcome because we know and understand the unstoppable power of freedom.
In a Middle East that grows in freedom and democracy, people will have a chance to raise their families and live in peace and build a better future. In a Middle East that grows in freedom and democracy, the terrorists will lose their recruits and lose their sponsors and lose safe havens from which to launch new attacks. In a Middle East that grows in freedom and democracy there will be no room for tyranny and terror, and that will make America and other free nations more secure.
Now I'll be glad to answer a couple of questions...
Next question, after what sounded like a tirade fueled by cheap tequila and meth, I would like to clarify that the only thing standing between the people of the Middle East and their freedom is the governments in Syria and Iran... mostly Iran. So my question is basically when do you anticipate to begin the bombing?
We are so screwed...
mojo sends
Sunday, August 13, 2006
"A Failed Military Concept For Ninety Years"
Read the latest dispatch from the mighty Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker. You will be horrified. I lost track of the number of terrifying things Mr. Hersh reports in this article.
I'll just quote the last one (with my emphasis added to the really scary bits).
I'll just quote the last one (with my emphasis added to the really scary bits).
[...]Apparently, those darned Iranian flying saucers must be stopped. Stopped, I say. You don't believe me? Pish tosh. Why do you hate America?
The Times also reported that Rice viewed herself as “trying to be not only a peacemaker abroad but also a mediator among contending parties” within the Administration. The article pointed to a divide between career diplomats in the State Department and “conservatives in the government,” including Cheney and Abrams, “who were pushing for strong American support for Israel.”
The Western diplomat told me his embassy believes that Abrams has emerged as a key policymaker on Iran, and on the current Hezbollah-Israeli crisis, and that Rice’s role has been relatively diminished. Rice did not want to make her most recent diplomatic trip to the Middle East, the diplomat said. “She only wanted to go if she thought there was a real chance to get a ceasefire.”
Bush’s strongest supporter in Europe continues to be British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but many in Blair’s own Foreign Office, as a former diplomat said, believe that he has “gone out on a particular limb on this”—especially by accepting Bush’s refusal to seek an immediate and total ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. “Blair stands alone on this,” the former diplomat said. “He knows he’s a lame duck who’s on the way out, but he buys it”—the Bush policy. “He drinks the White House Kool-Aid as much as anybody in Washington.” The crisis will really start at the end of August, the diplomat added, “when the Iranians”—under a United Nations deadline to stop uranium enrichment—“will say no.”
[...]
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Futureproof!
I'm beginning to think that's the kind of idiocy we're beginning to see emerge here now. Idiocy so airtight that it's completely impervious to the future...
A reprint from The Wall Street Journal today tells all you need to know about what's happening in the American mortgage lending market.
BOHICA!
A reprint from The Wall Street Journal today tells all you need to know about what's happening in the American mortgage lending market.
[...]Hmm, "built for failure," eh? That's just CRAZY-TALK, MISTER! And, if you think your situation is untenable now, then just you wait until the price of 9-month benchmark crude goes to €120/bbl.
Credit-counseling agencies say that in the past few months they've seen a growing number of homeowners pinched by rising mortgage payments. Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City says it's been "flooded" with calls from borrowers who took out ARMs two years ago and whose rates are now resetting for the first time. And Consumer Credit Counseling Services of Atlanta, which works with borrowers nationwide, says it has tripled its housing counseling staff in the past six months to keep up with increased demand.
Until recently, most mortgage-payment problems were an unfortunate byproduct of major life changes, such as job loss, medical problems, divorce or a death in the family. But for the new wave of troubled borrowers, the problems stem largely, or in part, from the structure of their mortgage, housing counselors say.
In the past, the home mortgage "was a steadying influence; it neither rose nor fell over time," says Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor who has studied consumer bankruptcies. "All that has changed in the last half-dozen years," she adds. "The mortgage payment is now more variable than any other expense for millions of people. We're working in completely uncharted territory."
Rising mortgage rates are causing problems for first-time home buyers such as Edward Snyder, a product manager who bought his house in St. Paul, Minn., two and a half years ago. Mr. Snyder financed the $210,000 purchase with a $168,000 interest-only ARM that carried a fixed-rate of 6.15 percent for the first two years and a $42,000 second mortgage with a 9.4 percent rate that is fixed for the first three years.
Mr. Snyder says he was stretched even before a rate adjustment on his ARM boosted his monthly payments by $200 in May. Since then, he has fallen behind on his water bills, car payments and student loan. "Now, it's a choice of what gets paid late," Mr. Snyder explains. Last month, he received a letter from his lender with the words "rate increase" on the envelope. Mr. Snyder says he hasn't opened it "because it gets too discouraging." This week, he's meeting with a mortgage broker to discuss his options.
"If I had been aware both loans were interest-only, I would have probably turned the loan down," says Mr. Snyder, who says that the terms of the mortgage were never properly explained to him. "I believe this loan is built for failure. There's no means to build up equity."
[...]
BOHICA!
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
A Victory For The Netroots!
Via RedState.Org, we find yet more reason to be excited about the emerging power of blogofascism!
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Today is election day in Michigan and we are hoping Tim Walberg wins. Walberg is a pro-life tax cutting Republican who will work to reduce government and encourage the free market. We've been reviewing the top ten reasons why Joe Schwarz Must Go.And the number one reason? "1. It will send a message to Republican leaders in Congress."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Cheque, Please!
You want depressing? I've got your depressing. Read this comment (reprinted without permission) by Graydon Saunders over in the comments at Making Light.
Update: And here you will find Max Boot explaining why you should lie down on the floor, keep calm, and always remember that America prevails.
It's very, very clear that Rummy wants a different army; the re-organization of the mech brigades makes that very obvious, if nothing else -- such as purging the ranks of the general officers, or (mostly successfully) attempting to inculcate millennialist Christianity at the Air Force academy (presumably so they'll have pilots who will obey nuclear first strike against a non-nuclear power orders) -- has managed to do that.This gives voice quite nicely to one of my own ongoing unstated concerns. I haven't had the inspiration or the ability to put these views into words, but now that Graydon has done so, I can just point to them here and say, "Just read that if you want to know what I think."
To my mind, the question is whether or not Rummy's willing to expend the army he has deployed in Iraq to get the pretext he needs to run roughshod over the objections -- the generally very sensible objections -- of the professional military on the way to getting the army he wants.
Put in those terms, well, of course he is; such a plan would differ only in rate of expenditure of troops from what is being done now, so it's clear that SecDef Rumsfeld possesses no fundamental objections to achieving his ends by such means.
The current professional Army, in such a scenario, would mostly be dead; the forty percent or so gone when the army on the ground in Iraq was destroyed, and then the other forty percent of maneuver units gone in the counter-attack out of Kuwait or otherwise into Iran before the mercenary army could come in behind them. Much of the remainder would go when used as cadre for elements of the mercenary army, which will probably not be officially called that.
Note that the current mercenary forces are by no means themselves adequate in numbers to provide meaningful maneuver elements for a field army; they are, however, heavily drawn from former US army special forces personnel, and are heavy with people whose separation ranks were from the junior end of senior NCOs. They'd be entirely capable of training a mercenary army, should the recruits be provided to them. (Though they themselves are likely to be independently retained on grounds of greater reliability and whiteness.)
At that point, not less than two years in the future, you're dealing with scattered veterans of the professional army, not in formed units and not provided with heavy weapons, being the only remaining elements of the professional army available to oppose the use of a mercenary army to quash dissent.
Those veterans of the professional army would, in that scenario, lack a snowball's chance under any circumstances short of a committed general uprising.
I would judge a general uprising impossible in the United States; too much of the population is generally pro-authoritarian for that to occur.
It is also worth noting that the areas most likely to rise in defense of their traditional liberties are those areas being systematically stripped of military materiel and infrastructure by the current National Command Authority.
Update: And here you will find Max Boot explaining why you should lie down on the floor, keep calm, and always remember that America prevails.
Put your Quatloos where your wrinkly braincase is..
Provider #3 wagers 35,000 quatloos that Lamont edges Lieberman by 6%.
You know, I don't really have much of a stake whether or not Joementum keeps his job or not. But the more Lamont gathered momentum, the more the beltway dweebs like Broder, Matthews, Cokehead..err..Cokie got their panties in a bunch. The wailing and gnashing of teeth is deafening. I almost sorry the primary is upon us, I wanted to read more column where beltway sychophants firmly lodged between Karl Rove's buttcheeks rend their garments in faux outrage at how the Democratic Party will destroy itself in purging Lieberman.
Just for the record, my problem with Joementum isn't really about the War, at least not entirely. My problem with Joeboy is his career is one long slow wet blowjob for the worst excesses of the financial services industry. No Joe, we were not decieved by your oh so clever no vote on the bankruptcy bill. No one deepthroated his colleagues deeper and more often than you on this subject through the cloakroom gloryhole. If there is one legislative product of the last decade that is more cloven hoofed, brimstonesmelling, orphanstarving evil, it would have to be sponsored by Satan himself. Even he wouldn't put his name on that wretched piece of crap.
I won't even get into Joe's key role in running Arthur Leavitt off the hill back in the 90's when he wanted to push some reforms amidst the Roman orgy of the Dot.com boom. When the bell starts tolling for all the people in hock up to their eyeballs in mortgage debt with ARM's and the rest of those "innovative" loan products they pushed on people with bad credit and limited capital, where is Joe going to be? Getting feted by the lads at Heritage and AEI for being their kind of Demcocrat. Even if Joe opposed the War, he would still be a venal little biatch.
Good Riddance.
Update 1.0: And the results are almost official. It's Lamont, 52-48.
You know, I don't really have much of a stake whether or not Joementum keeps his job or not. But the more Lamont gathered momentum, the more the beltway dweebs like Broder, Matthews, Cokehead..err..Cokie got their panties in a bunch. The wailing and gnashing of teeth is deafening. I almost sorry the primary is upon us, I wanted to read more column where beltway sychophants firmly lodged between Karl Rove's buttcheeks rend their garments in faux outrage at how the Democratic Party will destroy itself in purging Lieberman.
Just for the record, my problem with Joementum isn't really about the War, at least not entirely. My problem with Joeboy is his career is one long slow wet blowjob for the worst excesses of the financial services industry. No Joe, we were not decieved by your oh so clever no vote on the bankruptcy bill. No one deepthroated his colleagues deeper and more often than you on this subject through the cloakroom gloryhole. If there is one legislative product of the last decade that is more cloven hoofed, brimstonesmelling, orphanstarving evil, it would have to be sponsored by Satan himself. Even he wouldn't put his name on that wretched piece of crap.
I won't even get into Joe's key role in running Arthur Leavitt off the hill back in the 90's when he wanted to push some reforms amidst the Roman orgy of the Dot.com boom. When the bell starts tolling for all the people in hock up to their eyeballs in mortgage debt with ARM's and the rest of those "innovative" loan products they pushed on people with bad credit and limited capital, where is Joe going to be? Getting feted by the lads at Heritage and AEI for being their kind of Demcocrat. Even if Joe opposed the War, he would still be a venal little biatch.
Good Riddance.
Update 1.0: And the results are almost official. It's Lamont, 52-48.
Friday, August 04, 2006
And now for something completely different!
A little something to wash the taste of the previous discussion out of our mouth:
Kevin Drum pointed us to:
Ask a Science Blogger:
What movie do you think does something admirable (though not necessarily accurate) regarding science? Bonus points for answering whether the chosen movie is any good generally....
A lot of people like Kevin chose Real Genius, which is an excellent choice.
My current choice would be Warm Spring, which I just saw on HBO. Essentially, the movie is about FDR right after he contracts Polio and his experience coming to grips with his disability. The something admirable is that the film brings home the impact of diseases like Polio, and the enormous contribution made by Science in coming up with the Polio Vacine. The advances made by Medical Science in the twentieth century, particulalry the victories against Polio and Smallpox cannot be overstated.
Kevin Drum pointed us to:
Ask a Science Blogger:
What movie do you think does something admirable (though not necessarily accurate) regarding science? Bonus points for answering whether the chosen movie is any good generally....
A lot of people like Kevin chose Real Genius, which is an excellent choice.
My current choice would be Warm Spring, which I just saw on HBO. Essentially, the movie is about FDR right after he contracts Polio and his experience coming to grips with his disability. The something admirable is that the film brings home the impact of diseases like Polio, and the enormous contribution made by Science in coming up with the Polio Vacine. The advances made by Medical Science in the twentieth century, particulalry the victories against Polio and Smallpox cannot be overstated.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Politically Incorrectly Wrong!
Bill Maher at the Huffington Post offers an analogy:
This is just flat out wrong. Israel is a democracy and a nation of laws. Deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime. It doesn't matter if the other guy started it, this is childish logic. Tell me Bill, in your hypothetical, did the United State invade Canada like Israel invaded Lebanon? Did an American General massacre refugees like Ariel Sharon did? Did the US occupy Canada for decades? Hezbollah didn't just appear out of the ether. This conflict, like the rest of the mess in the Middle East, has deep roots and many fathers. Try to pretend like you understand that.
Holding Israel to a higher standard than Hezbollah is self evident. Criticizing them for the immoral and illegal targeting of civilians isn't anti-semitism, its called valuing the lives of innocent Lebanese as much as we value innocent Israelis. For those of us who don't subscribe to the fantasy world of NeoConservatism, it's also called good strategy not engage in a futile conflict that moves you no closer to the political settlement. You know, a political settlement, the only thing that has a hope of ending the bloodshed.
The world is not a drunk religious zealot who belongs to a sect that reveres a form of medieval Catholicism that perpetuated anti-semtism. What is far more prevalent in this country is a religious bigotry deeply embedded in the Dominionist strain of Evangelical Christianity that despises Islam, Secular Humanism, the Enlightenment, Atheists and a cornucopia of other "isms", including ones completely fictional that exist in their own heads. By the way Bill, is it or is it not anti-semitism to support Israel only because you hope it brings about your own Doomsday mythology where your faith's adherents get dropped into eternal damnation. Welcome to James Dobsons and George Bushs Middle East policy. Now does it occur to you why maybe they are drawing out this conflict? Or that the Vice President and pack of deranged whackjobs want to use Israel and spill the blood of her children to play out their foreign policy fantasies?
Mel Gibson is the world, huh? Well, then the world is one ugly drunk.
As I watch so much of the world ask Israel for restraint in a way no other country would (Can you imagine what Bush would do if a terrorist organization took over Canada and was lobbing missiles into Montana, Maine and Illinois?) - and, by the way, does anyone ever ask Hezbollah for restraint. you know, like, please stop firing your rockets aimed PURPOSEFULLY at civilians? - it strikes me that the world IS Mel Gibson. Most of the time, the anti-semitism is under control, but that demon lives inside and when the moon is full, or there's been enough alcohol consumed,or Israel is forced to kill people in its own defense, then it comes out.
This is just flat out wrong. Israel is a democracy and a nation of laws. Deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime. It doesn't matter if the other guy started it, this is childish logic. Tell me Bill, in your hypothetical, did the United State invade Canada like Israel invaded Lebanon? Did an American General massacre refugees like Ariel Sharon did? Did the US occupy Canada for decades? Hezbollah didn't just appear out of the ether. This conflict, like the rest of the mess in the Middle East, has deep roots and many fathers. Try to pretend like you understand that.
Holding Israel to a higher standard than Hezbollah is self evident. Criticizing them for the immoral and illegal targeting of civilians isn't anti-semitism, its called valuing the lives of innocent Lebanese as much as we value innocent Israelis. For those of us who don't subscribe to the fantasy world of NeoConservatism, it's also called good strategy not engage in a futile conflict that moves you no closer to the political settlement. You know, a political settlement, the only thing that has a hope of ending the bloodshed.
The world is not a drunk religious zealot who belongs to a sect that reveres a form of medieval Catholicism that perpetuated anti-semtism. What is far more prevalent in this country is a religious bigotry deeply embedded in the Dominionist strain of Evangelical Christianity that despises Islam, Secular Humanism, the Enlightenment, Atheists and a cornucopia of other "isms", including ones completely fictional that exist in their own heads. By the way Bill, is it or is it not anti-semitism to support Israel only because you hope it brings about your own Doomsday mythology where your faith's adherents get dropped into eternal damnation. Welcome to James Dobsons and George Bushs Middle East policy. Now does it occur to you why maybe they are drawing out this conflict? Or that the Vice President and pack of deranged whackjobs want to use Israel and spill the blood of her children to play out their foreign policy fantasies?
Mel Gibson is the world, huh? Well, then the world is one ugly drunk.
Stress Fractures...
Once again, we bring the word via The Mighty Billmon, who asks the direct questions we were hinting at a week or two ago regarding the stability of the regimes in Damascus, Riyadh, Cairo and Amman.
And if the leaders of those governments get to a point where they have to choose between openly supporting Hizbollah or face an increasingly restive population, not to mention security services, which side do you think they will come down on?
mojo sends
I don't know -- maybe things would have to get infinitely worse before Arab soldiers would turn their guns on their officers, or Mukhabarat attack dogs would sink their teeth in the throats of their masters. Maybe the pain and humiliation of watching Lebanon destroyed by American bombs dropped from Israeli planes isn't enough. But the puppets themselves are showing signs of a growing unease. They know how much depends on the loyalty of the hired help -- or at least its continued willingness to obey orders.I think this is the central issue that our foreign policy wogs should be obssessing about right now, because the fact that there are still nominally working governments in these capitals is one of the last lynch pins preventing a real World War III from starting.
And if the leaders of those governments get to a point where they have to choose between openly supporting Hizbollah or face an increasingly restive population, not to mention security services, which side do you think they will come down on?
mojo sends
I'm Still Supposed to Believe the Greens are Legit...
And not just an anti-dem put up job?
They're either incredibly dumb, or utterly corrupt and coopted...
mojo sends
They're either incredibly dumb, or utterly corrupt and coopted...
mojo sends
Morons!
Overheard on KNX 1070 by morning anchor and assclown Dave Williams, regarding unprecendented warm water temperatures at the beach.
"some might be tempted to think this is about global warming... but no, sorry. Local officials say this is just storm generated warm currents or wind driven warm water from the south."
And KNX is one of L.A.'s two regular "straight news" stations.
kill. me. now.
mojo sends
"some might be tempted to think this is about global warming... but no, sorry. Local officials say this is just storm generated warm currents or wind driven warm water from the south."
And KNX is one of L.A.'s two regular "straight news" stations.
kill. me. now.
mojo sends
The Dominoes Begin to Tumble?
News Item: Mortgage Defaults Soar 67 Percent.
Here's the nut:
"Housing bears will tell you the world is coming to an end," said Scott Simon, mortgage portfolio manager for Newport Beach-based investment giant Pimco. "But by every historical standard, this is still insanely low," he said of the latest DataQuick numbers.
On a scale of zero to 10, Simon suggested, the current level of defaults is about 1.
At the peak of any housing boom, foreclosures and default notices are nearly nonexistent. That's because home values are rising so fast that they cover up any financial missteps by homeowners, who can draw down their equity to get out of trouble.You hear that, hippies? Enough of your liberal doom and gloom. All is well! Continue consuming!
Of course, Mr. Simon's Fantasy about ever-increasing home prices in his beautiful gated community of Villa-del-Costa-de-Coto-de-Potro de la Brillo de la Princesa is of course predicated on this being some sort of statistical anomaly, a burp after a particularly filling and expensive meal... and not really the first signs that the Superior Vena Cava now resembles the I-110 going through downtown Los Angeles at 5 p.m...
No, just order another drink... you'll be fine...
mojo sends
Here's the nut:
A notice of default is the prelude to foreclosure, but very few homes end up there. People tend to sell a house before suffering the ignominy of letting the bank seize it.[Emphasis Added]
Even so, the number of foreclosures in the state is rising too. The second-quarter total was 1,901, according to DataQuick, a 215% jump over the 604 in the same period last year.
"Housing bears will tell you the world is coming to an end," said Scott Simon, mortgage portfolio manager for Newport Beach-based investment giant Pimco. "But by every historical standard, this is still insanely low," he said of the latest DataQuick numbers.
On a scale of zero to 10, Simon suggested, the current level of defaults is about 1.
At the peak of any housing boom, foreclosures and default notices are nearly nonexistent. That's because home values are rising so fast that they cover up any financial missteps by homeowners, who can draw down their equity to get out of trouble.You hear that, hippies? Enough of your liberal doom and gloom. All is well! Continue consuming!
Of course, Mr. Simon's Fantasy about ever-increasing home prices in his beautiful gated community of Villa-del-Costa-de-Coto-de-Potro de la Brillo de la Princesa is of course predicated on this being some sort of statistical anomaly, a burp after a particularly filling and expensive meal... and not really the first signs that the Superior Vena Cava now resembles the I-110 going through downtown Los Angeles at 5 p.m...
No, just order another drink... you'll be fine...
mojo sends
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Florida GOP Jettisons Mrs. Ed
News item from various TDM sources this morning: GOP Puts Mrs. Ed Out to PastureApparently, a leading cadre of the "party elite" have told Mrs. Ed...errr...Rep. Katherine Harris of Florida -- the rhinoplasty disaster that walks -- that her incipient bid for the U.S. Senate has become a political trainwreck, trailing Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson by nearly 40 points in most polls.
You know, I think Aaron Sorkin in his movie The American President may have said it best: "You know, the time it takes a person in this town to go from national power player, to late night talk show joke punchline can be measured with an egg timer..."
I think, arguably the most pathetic thing has been her inability to take the hint, though. She has had mass defections of her senior staff, turning them over twice now, she still might be indicted for her associations with Jack Abramoff, at this point Gov. Jeb Bush is openly recruiting primary opponents to run against her, and she has utterly failed to raise the money necessary through normal channels and has been having to loan her campaign money. And now, the party has finally just sent her a letter telling her enough is enough, and to stop embarrasing herself and her party in public:
"Katherine, though it causes us much anguish, we have determined that your campaign faces irreparable damage. We feel that we have no other choice but to revoke our support.Shorter: "Stoopid cow, yer doomed, stop embarassing us!" And yet, she still doesn't seem to get the hint. In the previously linked Fishwrap on the Potomac article, Mrs. Ed says that the Florida State Party's High Komissar Carole Jean Jordan had never expressed any concerns about her campaign to her, in spite of issuing another statement today to the effect that Mrs. Ed is done.
"The polls tell us that no matter how you run this race, you will not be successful in beating Bill Nelson, who would otherwise be a vulnerable incumbent if forced to face a stronger candidate," it said.
So the hits just keep on coming, right after replacing her senior staff for the second time, after they all went over the wall, telling tales of a campaign that more resembled the screenplay for "Mommie Dearest" and the one seeming exception to the rule that no matter how much money you pump into a campaign that sometimes these things are simply not to be... My guess, is that since the letter was actually sent to her on May 7 (mojo's birthday by the way ... thanks Ms. Jordan!), they wanted to give her one last chance to step aside with whatever shreds of dignity, self-respect and personal fortune she could hang on to.
But she obviously did not heed them, so the letter went public, and now everyone knows that Mrs. Ed is cold-product and yesterday's news in politics. I doubt she'll even be allowed to run for dog catcher in Florida ever again.
Couldn't happen to a nicer talking horse...
mojo sends
Go the Mattresses
James Zogby at the Huffington Post offers a drubbing of the White House over it's policy on Israel and Hezbullah. He said something though that grabbed my attention and that I wanted to talk a bit more about:
I haven't checked carefully to see if any Democrats are doing that, although I suspect some are in one way or another. But If I was the parties chief political advisor, you know what I would say: Say as little as possible. Get to work in your local races talking about Social Security, You want to talk about War, talk about iraq and bringing the troops home and attacking the White House's failures.
I would advise this for the following reasons:
1. Nothing you say will impact the Policy of this White House. They don't care what Senators from their own party say, let alone the opposition. If you tell them what you want, they will try to do the opposite. Their contempt for Democracy is so blatant, it's a wonder anyone other than James Dobson even bothers to offer policy alternatives. Karl Rove is focused on winning elections, and he knows he can't do that by taking advice from Democrats, even they handed him a perfect solution. He and his president will destroy the Middle East before allowing the Dems or any Republican not 100% supportive of the President any credit.
2. Nothing you say will be reported accurately. If two Democrats say anything that isn't exactly, and I mean EXACTLY alike, process stories will appear in the New York Time and The Washington Post talking about how Democrats are divided over Israel. Any Democrat who calls for a ceasefire will be tarred as a cowardly Hezbolah lover who hates Israel. Not by the RNC, they don't have to. It will be done by Matthews and O'Reilly and Hannity and the talk show bots. Any Democrat this doesn't happen to is living on borrowed time. See Election 2002 for details.
3. You will still be pilloried for not standing for something. Every Democrat stand, even on core Dem values like Social Security is reported by "objective journalists" as a strategy. This is in large part the fault of Democrats, who need to shut the FUCK UP about strategy to reporters. If one more Democratic office holder or hopeful starts in on the meta-conversation about "what Dems need to do", Rahm Emannuel should put a severed horse head in their bed.
Sean Connery in the Untouchables asks the only question that Dems should be asking. "What are you prepared to do?". They cannot influence policy in the minority unless they go to extreme legislative ploys that carry substantial risk of blowback and retaliation. All other venues are closed to them. So it's time to get your hot human blood temporarily removed from your body and replaced with that ice cold concoction that Karl Rove uses for Blood. Attack the GOP and the White House any way you can. They call you gay, you call them Nazi's. They Swift Boat one of yours, you Daisy AD one of theirs. That is the Chicago way.
Do you know what a blood oath is Mr. Dean?
Where are the Democrats who seek to lead in 2008? Why have they not called for a ceasefire and negotiations leading to a resolution of this conflict before another Qana occurs?
I haven't checked carefully to see if any Democrats are doing that, although I suspect some are in one way or another. But If I was the parties chief political advisor, you know what I would say: Say as little as possible. Get to work in your local races talking about Social Security, You want to talk about War, talk about iraq and bringing the troops home and attacking the White House's failures.
I would advise this for the following reasons:
1. Nothing you say will impact the Policy of this White House. They don't care what Senators from their own party say, let alone the opposition. If you tell them what you want, they will try to do the opposite. Their contempt for Democracy is so blatant, it's a wonder anyone other than James Dobson even bothers to offer policy alternatives. Karl Rove is focused on winning elections, and he knows he can't do that by taking advice from Democrats, even they handed him a perfect solution. He and his president will destroy the Middle East before allowing the Dems or any Republican not 100% supportive of the President any credit.
2. Nothing you say will be reported accurately. If two Democrats say anything that isn't exactly, and I mean EXACTLY alike, process stories will appear in the New York Time and The Washington Post talking about how Democrats are divided over Israel. Any Democrat who calls for a ceasefire will be tarred as a cowardly Hezbolah lover who hates Israel. Not by the RNC, they don't have to. It will be done by Matthews and O'Reilly and Hannity and the talk show bots. Any Democrat this doesn't happen to is living on borrowed time. See Election 2002 for details.
3. You will still be pilloried for not standing for something. Every Democrat stand, even on core Dem values like Social Security is reported by "objective journalists" as a strategy. This is in large part the fault of Democrats, who need to shut the FUCK UP about strategy to reporters. If one more Democratic office holder or hopeful starts in on the meta-conversation about "what Dems need to do", Rahm Emannuel should put a severed horse head in their bed.
Sean Connery in the Untouchables asks the only question that Dems should be asking. "What are you prepared to do?". They cannot influence policy in the minority unless they go to extreme legislative ploys that carry substantial risk of blowback and retaliation. All other venues are closed to them. So it's time to get your hot human blood temporarily removed from your body and replaced with that ice cold concoction that Karl Rove uses for Blood. Attack the GOP and the White House any way you can. They call you gay, you call them Nazi's. They Swift Boat one of yours, you Daisy AD one of theirs. That is the Chicago way.
Do you know what a blood oath is Mr. Dean?
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