While You Were Busy With Your Life

 For what it's worth dept. (And it may not be worth much, but, hey, this is a blog, not a book.)

Ever heard of Yekaterinburg? Me neither. It's somewhere in Russia and the last thing I read about Russia is that they really ended up with a fucked up economy with average life span of 62.3 or something younger than me and their reproduction rate is about half what it would take to replace the population and there's a lot of alcoholism.

Something has been going on with something called the dollar as the world's reserve currency that barely causes a blip in the media sphere. I have no idea how bad it is. Taplin seems to think it's pretty important, meanwhile Krugman is answering questions from readers that don't appear to recognize this topic.

Then there's the big scary:

The architects of this new global exchange realize that if they break the dollar they also break America’s military domination. Our military spending cannot be sustained without this cycle of heavy borrowing. The official U.S. defense budget for fiscal year 2008 is $623 billion, before we add on things like nuclear research. The next closest national military budget is China’s, at $65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.

...The cost of daily living, from buying food to getting medical care, will become difficult for all but a few as the dollar plunges. States and cities will see their pension funds drained and finally shut down. The government will be forced to sell off infrastructure, including roads and transport, to private corporations. We will be increasingly charged by privatized utilities—think Enron—for what was once regulated and subsidized. Commercial and private real estate will be worth less than half its current value. The negative equity that already plagues 25 percent of American homes will expand to include nearly all property owners. It will be difficult to borrow and impossible to sell real estate unless we accept massive losses. There will be block after block of empty stores and boarded-up houses. Foreclosures will be epidemic. There will be long lines at soup kitchens and many, many homeless. Our corporate-controlled media, already banal and trivial, will work overtime to anesthetize us with useless gossip, spectacles, sex, gratuitous violence, fear and tawdry junk politics. America will be composed of a large dispossessed underclass and a tiny empowered oligarchy that will run a ruthless and brutal system of neo-feudalism from secure compounds. Those who resist will be silenced, many by force. We will pay a terrible price, and we will pay this price soon, for the gross malfeasance of our power elite. 

I don't know who this author is, how much of an alarmist he is, but one of Taplin's commenters linked to it and I usually respect people having that conversation.

Caption Contest

If I could legally import this NYT picture, I would. But I can't. Anyway, what would your caption be?
Off the top of my head, how about "Take that, pig!"

I Want To Go To There

Andrew Sullivan linked to Fortune's marijuana cover story today.

New Mexico hopes to have the nation's first state-licensed medical marijuana farm and distributorship up and running by the time this article is published. New Mexico's law was enacted two years ago, but state officials hadn't dared implement it until Attorney General Holder blew the all clear in February.

It's All About You, Isn't It?

They asked a bunch of psychologists "What's the one nagging thing you still don't understand about yourself, " and, surprisingly, many of them answered.
Tidbit:

Our other disagreement was about forgiveness. I believe there are unforgivable actions – child abuse, rape, holocausts, torture are examples. The Dalai Lama says he forgives but does not forget. In my view, since he believes such people will be reincarnated in an undesirable form, he doesn’t need to forgive them.

Apocryphal?

We think not.

Castro provided another bizarre memory from that year's assembly by keeping live chickens in his hotel room.

Oh, that crazy U.N.

Comment O' Teh Day

Also, "Spider Milker" sounds like just about the worst job ever. Like, a representative from the Spider Milker Union is going to be the main attraction at the career fair of my nightmares.
From Ilana at MetaFilter. She was commenting about this.

Hey, Big Spender

It wasn't your grandaddy's Depression after all.
All that talk about how Americans learned to be frugal during the Depression, with Grandma saving string and whatnot? And how the great-grandkids are just a bunch of spoiled brats with too much stuff and too much debt?
Hooey. That's right. Hooey.
Consumption Junction started in the 1950s, and based on what we actually spend on stuff vs. necessities (health care anyone?) we've been getting the short end of the stick ever since, in case you haven't noticed.
Yeah, yeah, plasma TV, iPod City. I hear ya.
But don't take my word for it.
Read this. It's short. And based on, sigh, actual data.

Are You A Liberal?

Open adoption available from Jerry Falwell's (I thought he was dead, but no-o-o-!) Liberty Council.
Read more here without driving up their batshit crazy traffic.

Run, Sarah, Run!

News To Use

Your dog is vomiting the box of chocolates he ate while you were at the movies. It's midnight. What to do.

Keep Away From Your Children

Myparetswereawesome

Like The Spanish Inquisition

says Nobel winner.

Greider, 48, said she was telephoned just before 5 a.m. her time with the news that she had won.

"It's really very thrilling, it's something you can't expect," she told The Associated Press by telephone.

People might make predictions of who might win, but one never expects it, she said, adding that "It's like the Monty Python sketch, 'Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!'"

Wait a sec. Greider is 48 and the work that won was done during the 70s and 80s. Do the math. First female near-child to win Nobel?
And now for something completely different.

Linkins O' Teh Day

Congress is like "like a den of amphetaminized scorpion demons."
Sounds right to me. I love Jason Linkins, the only way to watch the Sunday talking heads is not to watch.

Quote O' Teh Day

"Why people who have not committed a punishable offense listen to country and western music is beyond me."
John Cleese, Monty Python interview



Oh, just one more then.


And a reunion and documentary.

I Didn't Know That

Monty Python has its own YouTube site.

Stacations

A friend recommended CheepSleeps and it looks like a good place to get some inside tips for local travel.

The Pope Scope

Andrew Sullivan at The Dish has ongoing conversations about religion. I enjoy reading what he and his readers have to say even though I don't expect any answers, just maybe some clarification of my own thinking. Today there's a link to some Jesuit scientists that seems to help. It's a really good read just for the novelty, not to mention the Jebbi (they let Catholics call them that) intellect.
Good pull quote, too.

Consolmagno has little patience for intelligent design. “Science cannot prove God, or disprove Him. He has to be assumed. If people have no other reason to believe in God than that they can’t imagine how the human eye could have evolved by itself, then their faith is very weak.” Rather than seeking affirmation of his own faith in the heavens, he explains that religion is what gives him the courage and desire to be a scientist. “Seeing the universe as God’s creation means that getting to play in the universe - which is really what a scientist does — is a way of playing with the Creator,” he says. “It’s a religious act. And it’s a very joyous act.”

Sesame Street In Palestine

From the NYT, kinda long.

Since the inception of “Sesame Street” in the United States 40 years ago, the nonprofit New York City-based organization that produces the show, which is now called Sesame Workshop, has created 25 international co-productions. Each country’s show has its own identity: a distinctive streetscape, live-action segments featuring local kids and a unique crew of Muppets. Bangladesh’s “Sisimpur” uses some traditional Bangladeshi puppets, and South Africa’s “Takalani Sesame” features Kami, an orphaned H.I.V.-positive Muppet.

Friviality Friday

Obama rumored to be taking new, more normal family.
The Onion comes through, as usual.

Poll: Happy, Healthy Obamas Out Of Touch With Miserable Americans

Fuck America

The right-wing screaming heads are triumphant that Obama, all by his foreign, Muslim self, lost the Olympics for Chicago.
In that vein, a commenter on Kos says

I hear wingnuts are agitating against America hosting the next Super Bowl.

The Worst of the Worst

Dick Cheney's description of all Gitmo detainees.
Here's one of Andrew Sullivan's commenters, a DOJ litigator, noting the most important paragraph from the judge in the al-Rabiah case:
Interrogator to prisoner:

“There is nothing against you. But there is no innocent person here. So, you should confess to something so you can be charged and sentenced and serve your sentence and then go back to your family and country, because you will not leave this place innocent.”

Whole thing is worth a read, it's not that long.

Comment O' Teh Day

From Josh Marshall:

We're now living in the post-Chicago Olympics rejection era.

Later, he said this:

Just Shoot Me Now Update: That Dr. Nancy goof on MSNBC just called this a "profound loss" for Chicago and a "stunning blow" for the USA. Look, I'm sure there are a lot of really disappointed people in Chicago who worked really hard. But c'mon, the rest of us can muddle through, right?

Me:
Post-modern News Rule #1
Anything new in the last hour or two is stunning, followed by profound.
Look it up, it's in every dictionary.

Meet Cousin Ardi

Pretty good write-up on the new fossil evidence.

Just Because I Can

Obama and niece Savita, Pete Souza, White House photog.

Maria Cantwell Is Brilliant Today

Throw her a little love, eh?
From TPM's liveblog of the Finance Committee debate on the public option.
2:03 p.m. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) notes smartly that any public option tied to Medicare will be tied to a newer, better Medicare that will correct for rural disparities, and reward providers that provide cost-effective care, and move away from fee for service. That undermines Kent Conrad's objection to a pretty significant extent. More on this soon.
2:09 p.m.Cantwell also says she'll be offering an amendment that will allow private insurers to team with the government to negotiate lower rates. Your move, Kent!

Joanie!

Baez, whose voice has followed me for more than 40 years, will be featured on PBS' American Masters Oct. 14.

Stop Eating Fish?

It's written in tabloid, semi-hysterical style. And rightly so.

Today, governments provide nearly $30 billion in subsidies each year--about one-third of the value of the global catch--that keep fisheries going, even when they have overexploited their resource base. As a result, there are between two and four times as many boats as the annual catch requires, and yet, the funds to “build capacity” keep coming...

But eating a tuna roll at a sushi restaurant should be considered no more environmentally benign than driving a Hummer or harpooning a manatee.

There's hope, though, in the last paragraph. If governments start behaving responsibly. Yeah.

Read This Long, Long Story

Every word. You won't regret it.

In The Year 2000

Speaking Of Babies

A little give-and-take between Dem. Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Rep. Sen. John Kyle, who inadvertently reveals the depth of his Republicanness during Finance Committee debate over an effort to scratch maternity coverage from insurance requirements.

Friviality Friday

Rover, Fluffy and MRSA

Now, don't panic or anything. On the other hand, are you really going to wash every time you pet your dog or cat? Puleeze.
From the NYT:

In a study this summer in The American Journal of Infection Control, Elizabeth A. Scott and her colleagues at the Center for Hygiene and Health in Home and Community at Simmons College in Boston swabbed household surfaces like kitchen and bathtub drains, faucet handles, toilets, high chairs, trash cans and kitchen sponges at 35 randomly selected addresses to see what germs they would find. They found MRSA in nearly half of the homes they sampled.
When they tried to figure out what might make it more likely to have the bacteria at home, they ruled out many supposed risk factors, including working out at a gym, having children who attended day care, having a recent infection or recent antibiotic use, and even working in a health care facility.
The one variable that overwhelmingly predicted the presence of the germ was the presence of a cat. Cat owners were eight times more likely than others to have MRSA at home.
“There are a number of papers coming out now showing that pets pick up MRSA from us,” Dr. Scott said, “and that they shed it back into the environment again.”

Here's the don't panic part.

“In the grand scheme of things with MRSA, pets are a pretty minor thing,” he said. “But when you consider how many MRSA infections are occurring in North America at the moment, if they’re a minor component of a major disease, that’s still something we need to be aware of.”

A Few Words About Glenn Beck

From Salon via The Daily Howler.
I'm not gonna read it because I've already heard it.
And I'm not really as disturbed about him as Somerby.
Somewhere today I read that Beck has an audience of 2.2 million people a day. They're the crazy ones, and their numbers aren't all that alarming.
And besides, didn't Father Coughlin have a relatively large audience in his day?
On the other hand, ya gotta wonder how many extra issues Time sold of the Beck cover, and how many subscriptions that might translate into. Oy.
Okay, I'll worry. But I won't read it.

Kabuki, Ch. 499 and counting...

Okay, here's what they're saying over at TPM.
The White House is reaching out to progressives to allow a health reform bill with a triggered public option to pass in the Senate. A non-triggered bill will pass the House.
Then when it goes to conference, the bill that emerges will not have a trigger and will not allow for a filibuster, according to the rules.
So, what about Kent Conrad, I ask. They'll have 60 votes in the Senate if Conrad goes along, but he's making all sorts of noise right now. He's the co-op guy from North Dakota.
Of course, nobody says reconciliation is off the table either.
One commenter notes that the White House is just preparing for a variety of contingencies, which makes sense.

Erm, About That ACORN Bill Ch. II

Apparently some others have noticed its big flaw, too, including Greenwald, who does get attention.
How long before the New York Times does a story?
...crickets

I Love Epigraphs

piquant little quotes at the beginning of someone's writing. I used to use them a lot.
Phil Graham has a whole bunch to choose from.
Here's one:

"People don't change their minds. They die, and are replaced by people with different opinions."

- Arturo Albergati

And The Sooner The Better

The optimal ways to make money from the written word probably require different words written by different people….

From somebody named Phil Graham. He is talking about newspapers and publishing and movies and music, but not journalism. I'd like to know what he thinks about that. In the pure sense, that is.
Basically, he says we've never paid for content because we don't pay for information we don't need.

Forks At Twilight

The two-stoplight town on the Olympic Peninsula is prospering from its placement as the "Twilight" book series and movies' locale. Even the NYT has noticed.

A small Seattle-based outfitter, En Route to Adventure, offers a five-day Forks Adventures tour that covers key “Twilight” locations (206-619-5006; www.forksadventures.com). The cost is $1,200 a person. This year’s touring season has ended; the 2010 tour schedule is to be posted next month.

From the sounds of it, it's not as much fun as Twin Peaks, though. No cherry pie.

Sullivan On Afghanistan

Concise and to the point.

But no one has to sustain a war that is now twice as long as the Second World War if the results of the summer campaign, the exposure of deep corruption in Kabul and the use of Pakistan as a refuge make it a largely impossible endeavor.

Erm, About That ACORN bill

Some Kossacks have been mulling it over and today it seems some Florida Democrat got the same idea.
Seems there's some broad language that could snatch up some pretty big players.
Blackwater was the first one I thought of and, sure enough, so did others.

So as per the bill's text, I'm going to put into the Congressional record a list of organizations who have committed fraud against the government or employs anyone who has.
Now, I'm just one person, and I can't possibly find and list all of the organizations that fit this bill.  So I need your help.  Please nominate organizations and show me that they need to be in the record.  To help, send me the name of the organization and proof in the form of a link to evidence that this organization should be in the Congressional record.  I will also need your email address so I can follow-up with you if necessary.  The proof you send needs to be easily verifiable, as in credible media reports, legal documents, government data, or otherwise.
An example might work as follows.  Let's say that you were nominating 'Blackwater,' the controversial mercenary outfit which showed fraud in its contracts for Iraq in 2005.  You could include a link like this one.

Where Are The Terrorists?

Same place you are. Right now. Hi.

When a group has a haven, it will use it for such purposes as basic training of recruits. But the operations most important to future terrorist attacks do not need such a home, and few recruits are required for even very deadly terrorism. Consider: The preparations most important to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks took place not in training camps in Afghanistan but, rather, in apartments in Germany, hotel rooms in Spain and flight schools in the United States.

In the past couple of decades, international terrorist groups have thrived by exploiting globalization and information technology, which has lessened their dependence on physical havens.

By utilizing networks such as the Internet, terrorists' organizations have become more network-like, not beholden to any one headquarters. A significant jihadist terrorist threat to the United States persists, but that does not mean it will consist of attacks instigated and commanded from a South Asian haven, or that it will require a haven at all. Al-Qaeda's role in that threat is now less one of commander than of ideological lodestar, and for that role a haven is almost meaningless.

I Miss Republicans, Too

although I'm now not sure that they ever existed.

They were the grown-ups. They were the realists. Sure they were a bummer, maaaaan, but on the way to La Revolution you need somebody to remember where you parked the car.

Anyway, Judge Richard Posner has apparently stirred up a hornet's nest in his eulogy to conservatism, and the above link was from one of his commenters.

This East Fuckistan Thingie

I can't help but recall how many times someone new to the presidency with a long list of laudable domestic plans is diverted instead by the problems of maintaining this empire we've established. Enough to make you cry.
So, just in case you thought health care reform and carbon offset credits and financial and other regulatory reform were about it for Obama, there's this:
(You knew there was a leak this week, right?)

What are the alternatives? An intense, low-level war of attrition between NATO forces and the Taliban forever? Or a concerted effort by the US, Russia, Iran and China to essentially force India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmiri dispute, combined with massive amounts of direct aid to Pakistan, combined with a massive influx of intelligence assets into the region, combined with the bribing of willing and bribable Taliban commanders? Basically, instead of focusing on Afghan civillians, this strategy would make it as expensive as possible for a Taliban leader to decide not to ally with the United States.  In other words -- counterterrorism as counterinsurgency, and not the other way around.

As Washington synthesizes the new report and tries to gauge its effect on the administration, speculation naturally redounds to the source of the leaker. Various theories have been put forth; let's put aside Occam's razor and assume that McChrystal and his staff didn't just give the document to Woodward. Theory one:  Woodward traveled with Gen. Jim Jones recently, so Jones gave him the report. Probably not: the trip was in July, before the review was finished. Admiral Mike Mullen's staff, anxious about White House dithering, leaked the report with Mullen's blessing. Probably not: Mullen shares Jones's concerns about mission drift and is counseling caution. The  more probable communities of suspects: senior Pentagon civilian holdovers, lifers, who've cooperated with Woodward before and who have a stake in McChrystal's counterinsurgency doctrine; war planners at Centcom, or the large cadre of defense consultants with clearance.

This leak not, in other words, a shot in an ongoing conflict between the military and civilians. It's between those who are invested in the success of McChrystal's endeavor and those who harbor growing concerns about over-investing in a strategy that might not work.

My money's on Biden because why else was he picked.

Health Care In Canada

We aren't going to get anything like the Canadian system any time soon, but a Canadian reader over at The Dish shares his experience and worries about moving to the U.S. for his job.
Bottom line"

There was a long, hard political fight for universal health care in Canada. Man, was it worth it.

Quote O' Teh Day

 "My family is and always will be a decrepit bowl of dog urine compared to Nityananda of Ganeshpuri. That is how great Nityananda is." The Indian yogi died in 1961. "Wor ship Nityananda, not the Phillips family. Nityananda can protect you," said Tamerlane.

Tamerland Phillips commenting on his sister McKenzie's plan to reveal family secrets on Oprah today to advance her book sales.
I know, I know,  you never heard of either one of the children of former  Mamas and Papas  singer  John Phillips. Good quote though.

Green Birth Control

Linked from The Dish

Last week, the Optimum Population Trust published a paper it had commissioned from the London School of Economics estimating the effect on carbon emissions of providing birth control to women who want to use it, but currently lack access. It found that spending on birth control is six times as effective, as a means of reducing carbon emissions, as spending on renewable energy....Hopefully, since America is politically incapable of addressing this issue, someone else will be able to pick it up. The Europeans, perhaps. Or maybe the Chinese.

But worth reading the whole short piece from The Economist.

Time On Beck

Apples and oranges, but it feeds my bias.

In 1987 comedian David Brenner bombed in syndication with about 2.5 million viewers at midnight — which is roughly what Fox, the leading network for political talk shows, averages in prime time.

This from The Dish, but the chart is better. But again, Research 2000 is Daily Kos' pollster. Kos says they're neutral and report good as well as bad news for progressives. Still.
As for the Republican Party being a permanently regional voice, many have said it's true. Why then the credibility they're given by the media?
Cuz The Village is stupidly stuck in the time-warp that is Washington, D.C., and they're lazy, and they need blood on a daily basis. If all we had were stories critiquing the administration from a rational, factual perspective, people might actually turn off the tube or switch to HBO or something.

Warning: Process Story

The budget reconciliation route for health care reform in the Senate is not so simple. And then, of course, there's always unintended consequences.
But TPM's commenters so far are full-bore in favor of something lawmakers aren't likely to do, which seems to satisfy their underlying need to blame their own party for inevitable defeat. I get tired of them, too.
Perfect, meet good.

Note To Reporters: Truth Is Relative

 Signed: Mr. Goebbels I'm A Dinner Jacket Bill Irving Kristol

"There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work," - Irving Kristol.

Thanks again to The Dish. Hey, beats Bot flies.

When Do You Drink The Beer?

Don't Go To Belize Dept.
I had to look up Belize on a map when I did a story about a man who went diving there, made the mistake of renting his oxygen locally, and nearly died from the contaminated product.
Anyhoo, they also have Bot flies that can embed themselves in your — yipes — scalp.
NSF the squeamish.


Thank you, Andrew Sullivan's interns.

Why We Twitbook

and other social networking revelations.

Piskorski has also found deep gender differences in the use of sites. The biggest usage categories are men looking at women they don’t know, followed by men looking at women they do know. Women look at other women they know. Overall, women receive two-thirds of all page views.

It's The Words, Stupid

I like to read comments on my favored blogs. They're usually written by people much better informed and more intelligent than I am, often people with real jobs in important occupations. TPM has a phalanx of lawyers and congressional aides, for instance, who crowd-read the Friday afternoon document dumps that were a regular part of the 2007 Justice Department stories.
Anyway, they always teach me something I didn't know before, open new doors, shine a light.
This one is a favorite today. Remember Newt? I remember watching him on the Charlie Rose show during the build-up to war and seeing his eyes shift up close and listening to how he never seemed to actually answer any question. Saw Kissinger do the same thing.
So, here's Newt's 1996 memo. See if you notice anything familiar.

My Fellow Americans

Jay Leno had to retire Jaywalking after last Saturday.
What else can I say? They hate us cuz we, like, know stuff?

Maria Comes Through. Thank You, Maria.

 They can't get the Baucus bill through his committee without a public option because it needs all but one Democrat and now Rockefeller and Cantwell have said they won't vote for it without the PO. Fuck Olympa Snowe!
This could get interesting.

Two Democrats have now said "no public option, no vote." Where are the other Finance Dems? Schumer? Wyden? Kerry?

Thank Maria here.

Friviality Friday

And God bless The Onion, too.

Report: Growing Ranks Of Nouveau Poor Facing Discrimination From Old Poor

Joe Wilson. What Really Happened. And...Wait For It...Carville!

Thank God for SNL. And Jon Stewart. And Stephen Colbert. We're not really crazy no matter how bad August seemed.

Time Magazine

put somebody named Glenn Beck on the cover this week, and apparently the accompanying story lives up to my expectations.
Remember, balanced news means never having to say you're sorry.
I don't get why Karen Tumulty and Jay Carney don't just quit. Oh, wait...it's the money, stupid. And The Village. And the money.

Demonstrate

I haven't been to in a demonstration since the 70s-80s. I think this is important to counter the tea party crap and all the rest of it. We ARE the silent majority this time.
Sign up here.
Seattle rally gathers at noon at City Hall on Tuesday, Sept. 22.

Only In America. Only In America. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

From TPM today:

The politically charged Texas Board of Education has kicked off hearings today on whether school textbooks should have a more conservative slant. Things began auspiciously when one member of the public got up to announce that she is a 56-year-old virgin.

Warning: May Disturb Your Equilibrium

Sullivan linked to this today. How can I not?

Today, now, more than 100 million women are missing. They have vanished. In normal circumstances, women live longer than men—but China has 107 males for every 100 females in its overall population, India has 108, and Pakistan has 111. Where have these women gone? They have been killed or allowed to die. Medical treatment is often reserved for boys, while violence against women is routine. More girls are killed in this "gendercide" each decade than in all the genocides of the 20th century. This year, another 2 million girls will "disappear."

Speed Dating In 'The Jing"

Much to my relief, Su Fei is still around. But apparently Sexy Beijing does not allow embeds, so you'll have to click here.

Health Care Rock Video

My friend Marietta passed this along.

The Next Woman Senator

I know, I know, who cares about Massachusetts politics. Me.

Stumbled Upon

Somebody over at another Web site said the review of J.G. Ballard's short stories was probably the most linked in the universe. I doubt it. But I think I've found another author to read. Books, must get.

His is the voice reminding you not to take the postmodern hangover too personally: it was always going to happen this way.

Marriage Matters

I just received some news that could permanently change my life. For the better.
Sorry, I can't say what it is.
But even if it doesn't change my life, the possibility and its factual source challenge me to rethink my thinking about some core beliefs. And we all know how resistant we are to that challenge.
With that in mind, I think this note from one of Andrew Sullivan's readers is appropriate.
No, my life-changing news has nothing to do with marriage. At least I don't think so.
But the reader does talk about how marriage changed his life and his mind in ways he never dreamed possible.
Nice to know I'm not alone in this challenge.

The Next New Book I Read

Will be Alexandra Horowitz’s Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

Dogs, it seems, are Aristotelians, but with their own doggy teleology. Their goals are not only radically different from ours; they are often invisible to us. To get a better view, Horowitz proposes that we humans get down intellectually on all fours and start sniffing.

While my uncracked, two-year-old copy of The Return of The Imperial Presidency  languishes on a side table.
I am particularly anticipating a chapter on Frisbees.
Oh, wait...

A dog’s vision affects its sense of time, too. Dogs have a higher “flicker fusion” rate than we do, which is the rate at which retinal cells can process incoming light, or “the number of snapshots of the world that the eye takes in every second.” This is one of the reasons dogs respond so well to subtle human facial reactions: “They pay attention to the slivers of time between our blinks.”) It also helps explain those ­eerily accurate balletic leaps after tennis balls and Frisbees, but Horowitz lets us see the implications beyond our human-centric fascination with our pets. This is more than a game of fetch; it is a profound, existential realization: “One could say that dogs see the world faster than we do, but what they really do is see just a bit more world in every second.”

So, this whole space/time thingie then is dependent on perception, and human perception is...oh, hell, where is Wittgenstein when I need him?

"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits."

Blogging is my church. Shorty is my priest. Frisbee time.

 

The World Is Not Good

Leave it to Barbara Ehrenreich to spoil a beautiful Sunday morning be reminding us how racist this anti-Obama crap really is, and how the perceptions among some whites — emphasis, some — that somehow black people are benefitting from their bad fortune.
Oh well, I needed that, especially the "God wants you to be happy" stuff that surrounds me on a daily basis. Fight Rage against the machine.

The World Is Good

Forget the teabaggers today.
Here's Aki Ra:

As a child soldier in Cambodia's notorious Khmer Rouge army Aki Ra laid many landmines. He now clears these deadly bombs with a stick and a pocketknife, more than 10,000 to date. It is very dangerous. No one pays him to do it. Aki is the real deal.

Via Metafilter.

Another Reason Not To Shop At Wal-Mart

BoingBoing has a lot of good stuff this morning. A Bach mobius strip, some real-time broadcasts as the towers were hit on 9/11. But I chose to give you this:
The American Prospect reviewed a couple of books about Wal-Mart, and included this charming anecdote about Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton

Around the time that the young Sam Walton opened his first stores, John Kennedy redeemed a presidential campaign promise by persuading Congress to extend the minimum wage to retail workers, who had until then not been covered by the law. Congress granted an exclusion, however, to small businesses with annual sales beneath $1 million -- a figure that in 1965 it lowered to $250,000. Walton was furious. The mechanization of agriculture had finally reached the backwaters of the Ozark Plateau, where he was opening one store after another. The men and women who had formerly worked on small farms suddenly found themselves redundant, and he could scoop them up for a song, as little as 50 cents an hour. Now the goddamn federal government was telling him he had to pay his workers the $1.15 hourly minimum. Walton's response was to divide up his stores into individual companies whose revenues did not exceed the $250,000 threshold. Eventually, though, a federal court ruled that this was simply a scheme to avoid paying the minimum wage, and he was ordered to pay his workers the accumulated sums he owed them, plus a double-time penalty thrown in for good measure.
Wal-Mart cut the checks, but Walton also summoned the employees at a major cluster of his stores to a meeting. "I'll fire anyone who cashes the check," he told them.

I Love Tilda Swinton

I really do, and I am convinced that her public wardrobe is one of God's inside jokes.

And I am grateful that her appearances at the Venice Film Festival drew gofugyourself comment, because otherwise I would have forgotten that my friend Pam's favorite web site still thrives.

Erm, About Those Despicable Big Bonuses

I Never Thought of That Dept.:

“Traders must be bribed not to plunder the firm. If you don’t pay them millions, they’ll sell the banks’ assets cheaply to rival firms, for which they then go and work.”

Another witty Brit — politics and economics — from  The Times' best blogs.

Best Blogs

Andrew Sullivan linked to Norman Geras this morning, and I loved the post, about how you cannot possibly read enough books no matter how long you live. Made me feel better about not actually having read any books in months, although there are four new ones I picked up at the library this week.
Anyhoo, Geras had this link from the Times of London and I was happy to see two at the top of the list that I already check out now and then. Well, Sullivan daily, Clemons now and then. So I don't feel so out of it after all.
And I loved this quote:

This, combined with the relief involved in getting something instantly off my chest, is what keeps me blogging. I want to quit, I really do. I dream of going cold turkey, I even once posted my resignation. But someone somewhere always says something stupid or funny, Lord Jeff emits another post or I am stunned by some unexpected fragment of beauty and truth — and, once more, I am lost in the limitless land of fancy now known, to me, anyway, as the blogscape.

bryanappleyard.com

I suspect the Brits have this blogging thing down better than we do. I have skipped blogging on occasion, but can't conceive of going cold turkey, although I'm definitely dropping my obsession with Word Challenge on Facebook, which is not blogging but more like dry drinking.

Quote O' Teh Day

Bill Maher to Obama:

Stand up for the 70 percent of Americans who aren't crazy.

Rob Miller

may become as famous as Joe Wilson.
He's received $1 million in donations to oppose the man who called Obama a liar during his speech.
Wilson claims he's received $750,000.

Friviolity Friday Is Back. On Thursday!

With Yoga Dogs.

Cannoli!

I ate my first cannoli while visiting friends in Chicago. They lived down the street from an Italian bakery.
Crazy Legs Conti won this year's cannoli eating contest during NYC's celebration of the feast of San Gennaro. He ate 20 in 6 minutes, but I think this picture is from an earlier year, because the image I saw on the Dish had him in Mickey Mouse ears.

Post Speech

Obama is asking for your help.

Love Rescue Me

I probably should have paid more attention to U2.



More from Playing for Change.

The Loyal Opposition

The Dish found this:

"[Tea baggers and conservative bloggers] want Obama to be ruthless and authoritarian because they want to think of themselves as a heroic resistance. They evoke Hitler not because they fear another Hitler, their very obsession with Nazi imagery betrays their attraction; no, they're longing for a Leader, a Hitler of their own. Even a Hitler in high heels, if you can picture such a lady, and I think we all can," - James Wolcott, Vanity Fair.

Basic Health Care Reform

Wapo explains.

Bob! On The Public Option

Reich has a public option video out. Make it viral.

Here's the link. Send it around. Thank you.

Health Care Reform: Cut To The Chase

This guy has it down in an easy-to-digest article:

But if Snowe signs on, according to nearly every person I consulted, it’s quite possible the legislation she supports would become the Senate’s bill with very little change--and that, in conference, the Senate bill would prevail. She’d hold the leverage, as long as the administration and Democratic leadership prefer to pass pass legislation with 60 votes. And that certainly seems to be the inclination of Obama and his advisors. (It's harder to tell about Congress, particularly the House, but they're unlikely to challenge the White House openly on this.)
Unless, of course, it never gets that far. Snowe may not sign on; even if she does, one source close to the process notes, she "may not bring a sufficient number of conservative Democrats" to reach 60. If that happens--if consensus proves elusive, for whatever reason--then Obama and his allies would focus on trying to pass a bill through reconciliation. And they would move quickly.

History of Health Care Reform in America

 From Robert Reich, that cute, really short guy. Well, okay, not as cute as Rahm. But even shorter.
This, just to remind you, that politics is politics.
Tidbit:

An honest economic forecast would most likely have sunk Medicare.

Trigger With A Twist

That's what I'm betting we're going to get in the health care reform package. A public option that is activated at a certain point if premium prices and what all don't come down. I'm guessing they're going to make that trigger look "tough" by dictating just how much costs must come down, how quickly, etc., so it will be a "compromise" on the trigger that those favoring a trigger like Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine (and her cohort Susan Collins) can't wiggle out of support for it.
But what do I know?
And they'll relook at it very soon, like as soon as this thing passes the Senate.
But what do I know?

UPDATE: What did I tell ya? First Nelson, now four House progressives. Trigger with a twist. Yep.

"It depends on how strong that trigger is," Farr added. "The only way I could see it getting progressive votes is by making sure the public option is strong and goes into operation."

Fired Up. Ready To Go.

Know hope.

Happy Labor Day

From Barry Ritholtz:

Speaking with Marketwatch’s Rex Nutting, I learned yet another incredible datapoint: Over the past decade, the U.S. private-sector has lost 203,000 jobs.
That’s right: Zero job growth for 10 years.
In the 1940s, we created 10 million jobs. In the 1990s, we added 19 million new jobs. Even during the much-maligned 1970s, we added almost 16 million jobs.
The 2000s might be zero. Some economy, huh?
The government has created 2.1 million jobs over that period — primarily teachers. And, that’s the weakest government job growth in nearly two decades.
Happy Labor Day!

The Public Option Is Crap, Too

Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article is finally available online, and some Kossacks at least, are pissed about the mess.
I haven't read everything on this, so I have no opinion yet. Just an FYI.

But just to hedge its bets even further and ensure that no real reforms pass, Congress has made sure to cover itself, sabotaging the bill long before it even got to Baucus' committee. To do this, they used a five-step system of subtle feints and legislative tricks to gut the measure until there was nothing left.

UPDATE:
Okay, I've read Taibbi's piece.  It's scary.  I'm back to the pass it, then fix it  solution. Nothing else will work at this point.  Or maybe  the White House really does have something up its sleeve.  Know hope.

All that's left of health care reform is a collection of piece-of-shit, weakling proposals that are preposterously expensive and contain almost nothing meaningful — and that set of proposals, meanwhile, is being negotiated down even further by the endlessly negating Group of Six. It is a fight to the finish now between Really Bad and Even Worse. And it's virtually guaranteed to sour the public on reform efforts for years to come.

Obama May Write His Own Health Care Bill

The White House denied it last week, and the AP considered it so unimportant that it's the second to last sentence in this story.
But I'm inclined to believe that the President's own bill might hold more sway over recalcitrant Dems than anything Congress has come up with so far. For some, they just might decide they'd rather have the product of their own give-and-take out there to run on next year than something they had no part in to try and defend.
Also, I'm beginning to hope that Obama's non-position on the public option is a stance being held as long as possible to win some more concessions from the insurance industry. Maybe, for instance, they'd agree to an early trigger and promise, so help me God, they will bring costs down before then or face costly consequences.
I've seen no speculation along these lines, maybe because everyone is so focussed on what's going on publicly. But you know there's all kinds of kabuki here.
Obama can say, look, I'll put the prestige of my office behind this thing that you should be able to live with even though it's painful, or you face public option through reconciliation.
No one knows publicly at least how between 12 and 15 senators would vote to get it to 50, but they know there are 45 now. Arms can be twisted. Some of those 12 to 15 may be holding out at the President's request, but privately telling the insurers what's going to happen if they don't bend.
Oh, well, might make a good novel if the good guys win in the end.

Poetry 101

Take a short class from one of the masters.

Grammar, "Church Monuments" makes me think, is the soul of poetry.

More classes — I promise you'll enjoy them — here.

Dear Mr. President

I told him to forget the trigger option, that Olympia Snowe should not be dictating health reform for the entire country and that a trigger means the insurance companies win and he needs to fight even if it takes a reconciliation process.
You can tell him anything you want.

All Because Of The Intertubes

 teenage boys no longer have to quake as they purchase their porn, and other losses.

Here's What's Going On In Health Care Reform

The news and speculation break almost hourly about what direction the White House will take and what signals it's sending out.
Finally, somebody gets it right:

A careful deconstruction of recent statements reveals an irresolvable tension within the text itself. The administration necessarily supports and opposes the public option. Though the opposition is only implicit in the statements of support, the terms signifying his opposition are central to a multifaceted understanding of the ambiguous sense of the term "support." This aporia must ultimately dissolve in the universal recognition that the public option both is and is not itself. With or without a trigger, it will be infinitely deferred, always ascendant but never fulfilled as a thing in-and-for-itself. It is a paradox spiraling ever downward into the enigmatic abyss that is Barack Obama, the man whose purely reflective symbolic significance condemns him to serve simultaneously as our Christ and Judas.

This is why I read blogs and not newspapers.

Petition O' Teh Day

Yeah, the save health care reform message is going viral on Twitter and Facebook.
But here's something else you can do.

Vicki and Teddy, The End

Well, I'm still kinda sort interested in the annulment thing, so this from The Daily Dish clears it up. In case you're also kinda sorta interested.

Public Option: Damned If You Do...

TPM has an excellent synopsis of the Democrats' dilemma as they prepare to push the health care bill through the Senate with the reconciliation process.

The Vicki And Teddy Marriage

The Daily Dish readers answer my questions. Apparently Vicki also got an annulment.

Joke O' Teh Day

On Facebook I am a bona fide fan of Overheard in the Newsroom.
This morning it was, New Media editor:
"Teaching journalism...that's like teaching coal mining."

Teddy's Wife

The NYT does a soft profile of Vicki Kennedy, in case you were wondering.
But here's the thing for this recovering Catholic.
They both shared a deep religious belief, supposedly.
And were able to marry inside the Church because?
Well, he had his marriage to Joan annulled and I haven't seen any discussion about the grounds for that.
She divorced her husband before she met Teddy and, presumably, also managed an annulment.
Guess I'll see what Wiki dug up.

UPDATE: So Wiki says they married in a civil ceremony, which implies she didn't get an annulment of her first marriage. So in the Church's eyes, Teddy was living in sin with a divorced woman, and unless he made a deathbed renunciation of this sin, was technically not entitled to Church burial.
I know, I know, who cares? I don't care personally, it's just this cafeteria Catholicism that interests me because the Church I knew was all about sex. When my mother converted, my parents had a Catholic marriage ceremony, of which I remember nothing except that I was there.
I've had several younger Catholic colleagues who lived with spouses-to-be before marriage, unapologetically.
No wonder the Vatican was indifferent to Teddy's passing. Benedict's a strict constructionist on things like this, not to mention the abortion support by American Catholics like Kerry and Kennedy.

So Long, And Thanks For All The Goldfish

Crooked Timber explores the age-old dilemma: What about our pets when the Rapture happens?
Apparently there are whole web sites devoted to this question.
My favorite answer:

But aren’t most cats usually quite self-sufficient? I imagine there will be much less traffic and other man-made hazards in the areas previously populated by evangelicals, so, one could argue that the cats and dogs left behind will find themselves in their own little paradise. The goldfish will perish, though.

Libertarian Litmus Test

There's a little Libertarian in all of us, I think, but in the crazies? Not so much.
Anyway, Dark Syde's 10 tests of Libertarianism are just humorous enough to recommend, albeit a bit "strident," whatever that is.
My favorite:

If you argue that cash for clunkers or any form of government healthcare is unconstitutional, but forced prayer or teaching old testament creationism in public schools is fine, you're not even consistent, much less a Libertarian, and you may be Michele Bachmann.