YESTERDAY Indiana Governor, 2012 Republican Presidential nominee, and ill-tempered card cheat Mitch Daniels was forced to announce that he'll terminate the state's ten-year experiment in seeing whether anybody would give a shit if the destitute and the disabled were handed over to the familiar tender, still-dryer-warm-blankie ministrations of the average ad hoc business consortium given a $1.3 billion government contract. Terminate early, that is. Like seven years early. Though in fairness, the other three years were merely disastrous.
Our story so far: in 2005, flush with the success of his high-speed ramming maneuver on the Indiana Toll Road (not to mention his Solomonic solution to Indiana's centuries-old Time Zone Conundrum, both of which required the legislative mastery of a stateload of hayseeds with nothing like his Enormous Brainial Facilities), Daniels and his henchmen went scouting around for anything else they could fence. $ Millions were pocketed by privatizing prison food--Indiana is saving money on prison food, a concept which, I guarantee you, had you ever been invited to dine at one of our state prison facilities would have rendered you speechless with wonder--which also had a little-remarked-upon beneficial effect on the state's massive timber industry, which needed to find something to do with the exponential increase in state trees it had been given, also by Daniels. Still more savings came from contracting out the operation of one of our under-utilized slammers. The contractor then thoughtfully filled the place with experienced out-of-state rioters who torched a third of the joint. Whether this was designed to make Hoosiers appreciate just how good we have it, intended as a metaphor for privatization, or just God's Idea of a Joke we will never know. Life, it turns out, is complicated, as was recently explained to me on the internets.
At some point it occurred to one of Mitch's bright boys that, like convicted felons and people presently in Ohio who needed to get to Illinois (or vice-versa) by auto while spending the absolute minimum amount of time in Indiana, people on welfare, food stamps, disability, or unemployment did not exactly vote Republican in large numbers. So after a suitable twenty-minutes of study, the consolidated Family and Social Services Administration went to a cosa nostra of concerns under the IBM umbrella (Motto: We're IBM. What th' Hell Could Go Wrong?), along with $1.3 billion.
And here's a thing I really enjoy, in the "Republicans gut government, then point to government's inefficiency" sense: it's been widely bruited about--then and now--that the real impetus for this was that FSSA was "dysfunctional". Sheesh, of course it was dysfunctional. It served the poor and needy. Even politicians who'd allow, in public, that this is something society might want to consider doing a little won't plant the flag somewhere and defend it. Saying FSSA was dysfunctional is like saying the clerk at the convenience store wasn't very helpful with your wine selection. Funny, Indiana's Strategic Overseas Junketing Program was workin' jes fine. Don't hear many complaints about months-long backlogs or disconnected phone calls at the Tax Abatements for Business Expansion reception desk. The only thing that delays the decision to build a new basketball palace or football barn is the amount of time required to distinguish between Foregone Conclusion and Slam Dunk. It's paying to keep the floors mopped that causes the trouble.
Now, unless you've skipped ahead, it may come as a shock to you that a) the goal of a consortium given $1.3 billion to perform a task turns out not to be how well it can perform that task, but how much under $1.3 billion it can spend while doing so; and b) the thing immediately went into Hell's Toilet.
It was all of two months old when the Bush administration demanded tighter oversight. The first publicly-acknowledged rollback came eight-months later; the first Class-Action lawsuit seven months after that. Four months later came word that a portion of the program would not be implemented due the the fact that it would fuck up the very process it was supposed to streamline. Which takes us to just over a year ago, not that the final months of a campaign marked by your using the millions in your war chest to inflate your economic record is a good time to be putting the kibosh an ongoing billion-dollar festival of pooch buggery.
By all accounts, through the entire process Indiana never missed nor altered a contract payment, nor demanded any adjustments for a program which ran for one-third of the contract life without coming anywhere near its standards. And Indiana's Big Entrepreneurial Brain does Nothing Whatsoever until the Feds are threatening to take their dollars away unless the system is fixed. Remember that when his campaign RV pulls into your state.
IBM, for its part, insists it was not in violation of the contract and has been wrongly terminated; it blames the unexpected rush of unemployed Hoosiers for its troubles, meaning that the 2008 recession is responsible for a product that was crappy in 2007. Is that a V-2 I hear? Daniels, meanwhile, says the program "just didn't work", something which probably sounds pretty pathetic unless you consider it's the only known instance of the man exhibiting anything approaching functional hindsight.
Friday, October 16
Wednesday, October 14
Man, I Wish "The Bell Jar" Would Change His Life, If You Catch My Drift.
TODAY the cold thing has taken up a sort of multi-floor residence in the lymph glands behind both my ears, meaning that I have no outwards signs of being sick other than an occasional dry cough, and a resultant Sympathy Factor of zero. The pain, fortunately, is excruciating, which means it's probably infection, not the less noticeable incipience of cancer or Republicanism.
Yes! Forget "Conservatism" as mental illness; Republicanism is viral in nature, and if you give me a couple minutes I'm sure I can dig up some biopsychologist, neurocogitator, or molecular paleontologist who agrees with me if you edit him right. It seems like a promising hypothesis, at least, especially considering this item, which I assure you was gonna be a much better post before Tomás de Fucking Torquemada took hold of my sinuses. And my mental processes feel like I'm still straightening them up after a party. But that didn't stop 'em at Valley Forge.
Via Blue Indiana we learn that enormous-craniumed and small in every other respect Indiana Governor Mitch "Come for the Combover, Stay for the Charm" Daniels passed out copies of a Charles "Bell Curve" Murray education tome at a meeting of the Indiana Education Roundtable last month, explaining that the book quote changed the way he thinks about education. (Full story at the Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette.)
And y'know, forget the connotations of casual racism; after all, the man is running for the Republican presidential nomination. The book was Real Education, and it's Murray's most recent hardback contribution to the world of ideas. 2008. Which means either that Mitch "The Brain" Daniels first came into contact with his libertoonian academic doppelgänger fourteen years after The Bell Curve and a quarter century after Losing Ground, or that he expects other people to believe he did. Which is more damning, exactly? Kee-rist, even I thought he had to be smarter than that, even if I secretly suspected he wasn't. You're sixty fucking years old, Stretch. The only books which are supposed to change your Life, or your Outlook, at that age are religious tomes, and then it's really only seemly if you're a hopeless alcoholic or imprisoned for three lifetimes. It's a mark of intellectual inferiority approaching We'd Like To Bring You In For Some More Tests Starting Tomorrow territory, and the willingness to admit it to other people, even if you're doing it for cynical political purposes, is goddam near hallucinatory. That Shooting Pack Animals From A Helicopter thing worked for La Palin, too. What're we, twenty-four months from you tearing one of the tame deer at Brown County Park limb from limb with your bare hands while the cameras roll?
And, fuck, it's Indiana. Every college degree comes with two bus tickets out of state. And you think we have too many undesirables applying to college? We're at risk of lowering the quality of our native pool boy, landscaper, and night watchman stock? And it took you till your early Golden Years to to tumble onto this?
My earliest recollections include a television in the house. Black and white, sure, and a screen the size of your mid-range iPod's, but still: my youth has more in common with twittering, rainbow parties, Jonas Brothers mousepads, and all the rest of the detritus of mass-market lobotomizing than it does transcendentalism, sonnets, and Malmsey Madeira, and I'd still like to know how th' fuck we got here. Mitch Daniels is considered not just a leader, but a friggin' paragon of temperate reflection in a major political party. This cannot be accompanied by anything remotely definable as reasoned consideration; one likes to imagine, at least, that even the denizens of some of the 19th century's most extensive swamplands would have sussed him out within ten minutes of his opening spiel and given him the option of leaving the county the way he came in, or riding a rail. If my next-door neighbor handed me a portion of Murray's oeuvre, with or without a tale of personal epiphany, I'd think less of him, as much for the admitting of it as the actual belief, and he went to a state school. If someone turned up peddling them door-to-door I'd grab the shotgun. And neither of them would have already spent half a taxpayer-funded career explaining to me how much smarter they are than everyone else.
And "society needs elites"? Mitch Daniels. I rest my case.
Tuesday, October 13
Olio: Giant Blobs of Free-Floating Mucous Edition
• Lyndsey Layton, WaPo: "Under Obama, Regulatory Agencies Step Up Enforcement".
"In a move designed as much for symbolism as effect, the new chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission dispatched all 100 agency inspectors across the country last month to enforce a law that requires special drains on swimming pools to prevent children from entrapment. The agency shut down more than 200 pools."
Designed as much for symbolism as effect! Much like Jimmy Carter's Cardigans of Malaise. Maybe they should have shut them down symbolically. Or drained them symbolically, with a soda straw and a teaspoon.
Not that you'd learn this from reading a news account designed to make actual enforcement of actual laws designed to protect actual people sound like one of the Great Philosophical Quandaries of Western Thought, but the law in question, The Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act, was signed into law by then-Acting President Bush in December, 2007, and went into effect last December. There was, apparently, a shortage of the new drain covers for a time, which the CPSC acknowledged.
So at the end of the outdoor swimming season following the first year of the law's effect, which followed enactment by a full year, the Fed shuts down 200 public pools where the operators were something less than urgently concerned about the potential for disemboweling children, and it's "symbolic". So's every holiday's crackdown on highway speeders.
And okay, it's also "symbolic" in that 100 agents are all the CPSC can muster, and they're not all going to be out inspecting pools every day. Nor should they. And it's "symbolic" in that it was designed--perhaps--to make a point about Federal enforcement of a recent law and encourage compliance among the psychoneurologically profit-oriented (see Prof. Brooks, below). Feel free, next time, to employ any of the various resources available to the English speaker to explain what you meant, Ms Layton. Meanwhile, both the Sweep and the PR campaign are long-acknowledged ordnance in the law enforcement arsenal. "As much for symbolism as effect"--we used to call that "editorializing", by the way--is intended to append the headline "Obama Administration Enforces Federal Regulations" with "Without Regard For Jobs", instead of "Unlike Bush Administration".
• Anthony McCartney, AP: "Anka Gets Credit for Co-Writing Jackson Single".
"The preparation of "This Is It" is eerily similar to how the surviving Beatles took outtakes from John Lennon following his murder and added their voices and instruments to craft the "Real Love" and "Free As a Bird" songs released as part of the "Anthology" project in 1996."
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aside from the fact that the two post-mortem Beatles tunes turned up sixteen years after his murder, when the three survivors decided to cooperate with a career retrospective, while the Jackson number was stitched together while the funeral baked meats still served as cold hors d'oeuvres.
• Andrew Sullivan, last seen throwing a day-long fit because some guy on CNBC (Motto: "We're More than just Jim Cramer! And We're on your Dial Somewhere, Honest!") reported that some anonymous guy at the White House said Gay Bloggers Wear Pajamas, or Only Leftists Oppose Don't Ask Don't Tell, or something (described today as a "smear". God, th' fuck do you react when you have a real problem?), gives Imaginary Professor of Applied Psychocalifragilistics, Lt. Col. (Hon.) David Brooks two big thumbs up:
"The combination of a reporter's ear and an intellectual's mind is a rare thing, which is why I'm grateful for David Brooks, and particularly excited about his burgeoning interest in and study of neuroscience. It seems quite likely to me that this relatively new field will be the most fecund in the future for understanding just who we mortals be."
First: I know that when you two were in college, having episodes of Stendhal Syndrome at Milton Friedman lectures and going to campus dances in Dame Thatcher drag, no one in his right mind would consider taking courses that didn't lead directly to lucrative employment, but fer chrissakes, didn't "try to refrain from pecking at the feed corn of a discipline you know absolutely nothing about, or, failing that, do not select a nugget you find particularly attractive and announce you've found a diamond" get through to either of you somehow? Bobo:
"Since I’m not an academic, I’m free to speculate that this work will someday give us new categories, which will replace misleading categories like ‘emotion’ and ‘reason.’ I suspect that the work will take us beyond the obsession with I.Q. and other conscious capacities and give us a firmer understanding of motivation, equilibrium, sensitivity and other unconscious capacities."
Not an academic? You couldn't report accurately on the menu at Red Lobster. Not an academic. You don't give a fuck about this stuff, except that, as a sort of wistful nostalgia for Omni magazine (the kind of thing that convinces someone like Andrew Sullivan that you're an intellectual), it allows you to ally Imaginary Scientificalistics of the Future to your personal conviction that amoral capitalist rapine is a biological imperative. Reason, Emotion, and IQ! Dave, you've got the same Enemies List as Coca-Cola™. Not that that should surprise anyone.
And who throws a fucking day-long fit because somebody insults bloggers?
Monday, October 12
Hello, Death? Riley. Listen, I Just Read Douthat's Column, And If Last Week's Offer's Still Open I'd Like To Reconsider.
Ross Douthat, "Heckuva Job, Barack". October 12
LEST we forget to state the obvious, let us begin by stating the obvious: this is Ross Douthat, current moistener of the John Tierney Chair of "Conservative" Sinecuristics at the Times; a man whose career mission--making religiofascism, Christian Division, sound dishwasher safe to people who were inclined to give it a pass anyway--was augmented, briefly, when he saw Wither "Conservatism", Inc. as a strong buy; a man whose present position of prominence leads us to conclude that Kathleen Parker was busy; Ross Fucking Douthat is lecturing Barack Obama about accepting something he didn't deserve.
(Memo to David Shipley: The boy needs a mentor even worse than he needs a personal stylist. Could you maybe give him some suggestions? Maybe assign a topic once in a while? This thing is So Last Friday that Dowd's already written about it, which means the zeitgeist has moved on and the only people still hollerin' are the Right, the crypto-Right, and Adult Idolaters of Geriatric Men in Dresses who're still pissed off that John Paul #2 never got one. If Mr. Bad Teenage Beard on the Cusp of Middle Age can't distinguish between last week's Bozo Kazoo Ensemble and actual ongoing issues, at least move him off Mondays, where he not only competes with Krugman, but regularly opens the week with preternaturally colorless takes on what the blogosphere would have talked to death a week ago, assuming the blogosphere consisted of himself, Rod Dreher, MoDo, and that professional Christian who was on Everybody Loves Raymond back in the Forties.)
Now, a lot of things come to mind here, and not all of them involve homicide. First, and most obvious, the question of your alibi for the period when George W. Bush was being hailed as the New Churchill and a Carrier-landin' Fighter Jock. Are we really supposed to believe that, had the Nobel committee given Bush II the 2001 Peace Prize for his foolproof plan to end global terra and free the enslaved women of Islam your cohort would have objected? Second, where are these overzealous Obamaphiles, anyway? I'd like to know why they couldn't be bothered to show up and drone out all the Town Hall bleaters this past summer. Obama had adoring throngs during the campaign. So did Reagan. So did Bush II. Fer chrissakes, so did Nixon. A lot of his was based on how badly your party had fucked things up. For someone who was busy at the time cashing royalty checks for your plan to reform the party you sure seem to be having a lot of difficulty getting over it. Some of it is what campaigns do, and, again, if those'd been Dick Cheney or Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani crowds it would have been a validation of their policies, not evidence of a Messiah complex. And don't look at me; I complained loud and long about it, and urged 'em to fire whomever was responsible for those chanting bleachersful of Thorazined monastics. For that matter, I urged a boycott of the Blackeyed Peas, but that was really because Fergie sucks donkeys.
In other words, if you've got a problem with the interminable war over product placement that is the modern Presidential election--and, fuck it, every other election from Dog Catcher on up any more--then take it up with the people responsible. And while you're there, admit that your only real problem with it is that your side loses from time to time. Kee-rist, Ross, whose candidate was pilloried last time because he'd supported cosmetic reforms to the campaign finance laws?
And look, th' fuck is the problem with you guys learning practical lessons? One minute you're intent on sham-reforming the "Conservative" movement, like some Baby Brooks (Oh, if only the Party would toss out all those racists and rednecks and anyone else I'm uncomfortable snogging in public it'd be on the road to permanent majority!); as soon as you sense the tiniest political advantage you're back in the tenth row of the mob, next to the guy with the "Grow A Brian, Post-Marxists!" sandwich board. I mean, where exactly do you think this is going to get you? Do you really imagine that your party is in control of its loudest, most hate-filled elements? That they're going to sit politely while you nominate Romney, or Mitch Daniels, and schedule Sarah Palin's Convention speech for 6 AM Tuesday?
Yeah, because by turning it down he'd have earned your eternal admiration. Just like involving the Republican caucus in the Stimulus and Health Care reform negotiations, and hosting that pro-life symposium at the White House did.
Shit. Both were finished a long time ago. It's just inconvenient for some people to admit it.
Incidentally, we're 165 words into this week's prattling--you have a full week to come up with these, Ross--and you've already exhausted your Idea, which is a term I use just to show Christian charity isn't confined to Christians.
And I come this far, Ross (and no farther), just for a couple personal reflections. Back in December of 2000, I remember waiting for Supreme Court designee George W. Bush to acknowledge that he'd lost the popular vote, and in many people's minds stolen the hinkiest US Presidential election since the invention of the telephone. Just to acknowledge that many of his fellow citizens, including a majority of those who had bothered going to the polls, did not want him as President. It's a standard feature of victory speeches from landslide winners, but the best we got from Bush that night was a smirky Tough Shit. Which I will admit, while not was I was hoping for was at least an accurate preview of his Presidency.
And less than a year later I remember arguing that Bush should announce he would refuse to seek a second term, in order to run a truly non-partisan campaign against Trans-Global Chaos, or whatever it was. Of course I knew it would never happen; of course it wasn't long before we knew (and by "knew" I mean "had our apodictic certainty confirmed by independent observation") that the administration, its pals like Giuliani, and the rest of its party intended to wring every last ounce of partisan advantage out of The Day That Changed Everything.
I had no illusions; I'd have settled for a speech, however mangled, that acknowledged the complexity of the situation, and the overwhelming odds that what he was proposing was a generations-long occupation or four halfway around the world, but I didn't expect that, either. And the point is that this is what we got from your man during the two greatest Presidential crises of the quarter-century, and during a pair of incompetently-managed, PR-directed military actions which he, and you, tried to peddle as a Battle for Civilization Herself. So th' fuck gives you the right to demand anything, let alone adherence to your phony ethical demands, in such a small beer as this?
LEST we forget to state the obvious, let us begin by stating the obvious: this is Ross Douthat, current moistener of the John Tierney Chair of "Conservative" Sinecuristics at the Times; a man whose career mission--making religiofascism, Christian Division, sound dishwasher safe to people who were inclined to give it a pass anyway--was augmented, briefly, when he saw Wither "Conservatism", Inc. as a strong buy; a man whose present position of prominence leads us to conclude that Kathleen Parker was busy; Ross Fucking Douthat is lecturing Barack Obama about accepting something he didn't deserve.
(Memo to David Shipley: The boy needs a mentor even worse than he needs a personal stylist. Could you maybe give him some suggestions? Maybe assign a topic once in a while? This thing is So Last Friday that Dowd's already written about it, which means the zeitgeist has moved on and the only people still hollerin' are the Right, the crypto-Right, and Adult Idolaters of Geriatric Men in Dresses who're still pissed off that John Paul #2 never got one. If Mr. Bad Teenage Beard on the Cusp of Middle Age can't distinguish between last week's Bozo Kazoo Ensemble and actual ongoing issues, at least move him off Mondays, where he not only competes with Krugman, but regularly opens the week with preternaturally colorless takes on what the blogosphere would have talked to death a week ago, assuming the blogosphere consisted of himself, Rod Dreher, MoDo, and that professional Christian who was on Everybody Loves Raymond back in the Forties.)
This was Barack Obama’s chance.
Here was an opportunity to cut himself free, in a stroke, from the baggage that’s weighed his presidency down — the implausible expectations, the utopian dreams, the messianic hoo-ha.
Here was a place to draw a clean line between himself and all the overzealous Obamaphiles, at home and abroad, who poured their post-Christian, post-Marxist yearnings into the vessel of his 2008 campaign.
Here was a chance to establish himself, definitively, as an American president — too self-confident to accept an unearned accolade, and too instinctively democratic to go along with European humbug.
Now, a lot of things come to mind here, and not all of them involve homicide. First, and most obvious, the question of your alibi for the period when George W. Bush was being hailed as the New Churchill and a Carrier-landin' Fighter Jock. Are we really supposed to believe that, had the Nobel committee given Bush II the 2001 Peace Prize for his foolproof plan to end global terra and free the enslaved women of Islam your cohort would have objected? Second, where are these overzealous Obamaphiles, anyway? I'd like to know why they couldn't be bothered to show up and drone out all the Town Hall bleaters this past summer. Obama had adoring throngs during the campaign. So did Reagan. So did Bush II. Fer chrissakes, so did Nixon. A lot of his was based on how badly your party had fucked things up. For someone who was busy at the time cashing royalty checks for your plan to reform the party you sure seem to be having a lot of difficulty getting over it. Some of it is what campaigns do, and, again, if those'd been Dick Cheney or Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani crowds it would have been a validation of their policies, not evidence of a Messiah complex. And don't look at me; I complained loud and long about it, and urged 'em to fire whomever was responsible for those chanting bleachersful of Thorazined monastics. For that matter, I urged a boycott of the Blackeyed Peas, but that was really because Fergie sucks donkeys.
In other words, if you've got a problem with the interminable war over product placement that is the modern Presidential election--and, fuck it, every other election from Dog Catcher on up any more--then take it up with the people responsible. And while you're there, admit that your only real problem with it is that your side loses from time to time. Kee-rist, Ross, whose candidate was pilloried last time because he'd supported cosmetic reforms to the campaign finance laws?
And look, th' fuck is the problem with you guys learning practical lessons? One minute you're intent on sham-reforming the "Conservative" movement, like some Baby Brooks (Oh, if only the Party would toss out all those racists and rednecks and anyone else I'm uncomfortable snogging in public it'd be on the road to permanent majority!); as soon as you sense the tiniest political advantage you're back in the tenth row of the mob, next to the guy with the "Grow A Brian, Post-Marxists!" sandwich board. I mean, where exactly do you think this is going to get you? Do you really imagine that your party is in control of its loudest, most hate-filled elements? That they're going to sit politely while you nominate Romney, or Mitch Daniels, and schedule Sarah Palin's Convention speech for 6 AM Tuesday?
He didn’t take it. Instead, he took the Nobel Peace Prize.
Big mistake.
Yeah, because by turning it down he'd have earned your eternal admiration. Just like involving the Republican caucus in the Stimulus and Health Care reform negotiations, and hosting that pro-life symposium at the White House did.
People have argued that you can’t turn down a Nobel. Please. Of course you can. Obama is a gifted rhetorician with world-class speechwriters. All he would have needed was a simple, graceful statement emphasizing the impossibility of accepting such an honor during his first year in office, with America’s armed forces still deep in two unfinished wars.
Shit. Both were finished a long time ago. It's just inconvenient for some people to admit it.
Incidentally, we're 165 words into this week's prattling--you have a full week to come up with these, Ross--and you've already exhausted your Idea, which is a term I use just to show Christian charity isn't confined to Christians.
And I come this far, Ross (and no farther), just for a couple personal reflections. Back in December of 2000, I remember waiting for Supreme Court designee George W. Bush to acknowledge that he'd lost the popular vote, and in many people's minds stolen the hinkiest US Presidential election since the invention of the telephone. Just to acknowledge that many of his fellow citizens, including a majority of those who had bothered going to the polls, did not want him as President. It's a standard feature of victory speeches from landslide winners, but the best we got from Bush that night was a smirky Tough Shit. Which I will admit, while not was I was hoping for was at least an accurate preview of his Presidency.
And less than a year later I remember arguing that Bush should announce he would refuse to seek a second term, in order to run a truly non-partisan campaign against Trans-Global Chaos, or whatever it was. Of course I knew it would never happen; of course it wasn't long before we knew (and by "knew" I mean "had our apodictic certainty confirmed by independent observation") that the administration, its pals like Giuliani, and the rest of its party intended to wring every last ounce of partisan advantage out of The Day That Changed Everything.
I had no illusions; I'd have settled for a speech, however mangled, that acknowledged the complexity of the situation, and the overwhelming odds that what he was proposing was a generations-long occupation or four halfway around the world, but I didn't expect that, either. And the point is that this is what we got from your man during the two greatest Presidential crises of the quarter-century, and during a pair of incompetently-managed, PR-directed military actions which he, and you, tried to peddle as a Battle for Civilization Herself. So th' fuck gives you the right to demand anything, let alone adherence to your phony ethical demands, in such a small beer as this?
Thursday, October 8
Olio
• I was gonna write about the above, which I just caught over the weekend, when the search for a vidclip informed me that it's over a year old. I really need to watch more teevee.
Anyway, I'm not sure why anyone would concern themselves with teenage argot from a previous century, or teenagers, period, for that matter, but it's their money. Still, if that's your target group, I think it's safe to say that Gentle Admonition is a poor choice of format. I'd'a gone with the "What if Zinc suddenly disappeared?" classroom films approach, and made all the hot teenage couture ensembles not produced by The Gays vanish, and show the two twenty-something teens leaving the shop in identical muumuus, or something.
Also, one of those people is reportedly Hilary Duff. Have eliminated the brunette.
• Bestest thing on the internets, ever, in case you haven't seen it:
1) Wonkette uncovers Soviet-Realist rendition of Jesus H. Moses hand-delivering the US Constitution direct from Mt. Sinai, except that his copy seems to include only Article I, meaning either that our crappy Legislature is what's Divinely inspired, or the thing comes in installments, like the Time-Life Greatest Hits of the 70s collection. 2) Artist's website includes handy mouse-over explanation of all the Symbolism involved, an even greater treat than the aesthetic one. 3) Internet denizen "Shortpacked!" "corrects" mouse-over information, as the kids say. 4) Everyone's happy, including guy with horrible undiagnosed respiratory thing.
• Which forms a more perfect segue than I could manage to the military/historical Thought of Lt. Col. (Hon.) David Brooks, who yesterday engaged in a "Conversation" with Gail Collins, notable for being the only time they seem to have actually conversed during one. The give-and-take amounted to a mutual tongue-bathing of each other's book deals, of course. Like you expected any different.
Anyway, we get this from our Honorary Looey Bird:
When we first invaded [Afghanistan], it seemed like this gigantic victory for high-tech warfare. We had a few special forces types sneaking around the country pointing lasers at targets and then F-18s would blow them up. That seemed to vindicate the Donald Rumsfeld high-tech war doctrine, which in turn shaped the way we fought in Afghanistan and Iraq for years to come.
I don’t recall anybody, Democrat or Republican, questioning that strategy five years ago. I don’t recall anybody saying we needed a classic COIN strategy of lots of boots on the ground.
Which just might be because you were so busy crowing about our Amazing Technological Victory, pseudo-pondering how much gloating you could do without being unseemly, and rubbing the noses of imaginary hippies in the dirt. The Army spent twenty years absorbing the counterinsurgency lessons of Vietnam, but they're extremely unattractive to politicians in general and your party in particular, and they went out the window the instant you figured you had Righteousness on your side. Just bomb the shit out of people: it kills all our enemies and leaves us unscathed. Just like in did in Nam. Everyone in uniform knows this is the absolute key to guaranteed success, all right.
What You Heard At The Time, David Brooks, was identical to What You Were Shouting: partisan politics and myopic triumphalism, 100 tons of hubris in a 10 ton shell, which permitted no difference of opinion, let alone heard any. In 2001, just as in 2009, Afghanistan was a god-forsaken collection of badlands. It bordered Pakistan back then too, which bordered India, just like now, two swell members of the Nuclear Club which don't seem to care much for each other. And there was precisely Zero chance that The Grand Coalition was going to bag bin-Laden, get back in time for the start of the Parade season, and all's well that ends well. We undertook a generation-long occupation of one of the poorest countries on earth, half a world away, with no plan to increase troop levels, no public accounting, and for godssakes No New Taxes. Quick technological victory, everybody keeps cheering for two years, reelection, no questions asked. To say that what the Bush administration was up to in Afghanistan--while you shook your pom-poms, Brooks--revolved around the rosiest of rosy scenarios falls short only in that you can actually see through rose tints.
Wednesday, October 7
On The Anodyne Qualities Of The Wicked, Squawking Box In The Living Room
LET us suppose that you suddenly find yourself a middle-aged Midwesterner at the tail end of this previous weekend, slowly being forced to admit to himself that this time, just like fifteen times before, he has not managed to fight off whatever godawful respiratory disfunction his Poor Wife brought home from public school, aka Hell's Culture Medium, with the twin amulets of zinc lozenges and vitamin C, which have, at best, somewhat lessened its effects--to that point--while making the inside of his mouth taste, and feel, as if he'd been keeping a chaw of tin foil there for thirty-six hours. That--again! Groundhog Day!--the tiny incidence of sore throat two mornings ago, the one which has steadily gotten worse, is, in fact, connected to the lethargy so profound it's even noticeable in a man not particularly given to long-term exertion in the first place, and presages a similar slow breech of the mucous-control system, like the end of Force 10 from Navarone.
You will find yourself tempted to turn on the television, because listening to the enormous clogged drain inside your skull has become tedious, but this will only make things worse. For one thing, back when the Mutual Happy Ending Broadcast Committee that determines who gets what NFL game looked at Week Four, the Green Bay/ Minnesota match-up had to look like ratings dynamite or a roadside bomb. Would perennial sportscaster Marry or Fuck? Object Brett Fah-vuh-ruh be on the Vikings roster? Or re-re-re-retired? If he was playing, could he still actually grip a football? So they split the difference and gave it to ESPN for Monday night, meaning they missed out on having the real professional fluffers do tricks on NBC Sunday night, but they got an extra day to convince football fans to watch despite the Ultimate Junior High Grudge Match PR campaign. The catch here being that it seems, on Fahrrrve's part, to have actually been some sort of grudge match against the organization which had heartlessly decided a couple years ago that it would like to stop paying him $150,000 a minute to play a kid's game, which it had been doing for the previous fifteen seasons, and go with an outstanding prospect by the name of Aaron Rodgers, thirty years Faaahve-ruh's junior, despite the fact that F*vre's father is still tragically dead.
And despite the fact that this fucks the loyal fans of Lambeau Field, who were just months ago the loyalest, heart-warmingest aficionados in all of Sport, but who, it turns out, cannot collectively move razor blades, big-screen teevees, or sodium-laden cans of soup. Oh well, at least I didn't get sick on Sunday night, when I would have been forced to listen to Professional Decent Guy and Biblical Homo Abhorrer Tony "One and Done" Dungy.
Speaking of people who are willing to turn their life's love into a professional wrestling story arc for quarters, NASA, the not-quite-crypto-military agency which hasn't found anyone to torture yet, is all set to blow up the Moon as part of the Cowboys, Pirates, and Hunky ER Doctors in Space Program. Y'know, to see if there's enough theoretical water on the place to support a massive colonization program before anyone starts asking why we need a massive colonization program, or pointing out the track record of white people invading things. I learned this shortly after throbbing sinuses, burning throat, and fawning sportscasters had driven me to explore the uncharted reaches of Stuff I Recorded A Year Ago And Never Watched, specifically some PBS deal about Life On Mars? featuring scientists from NASA's Space Junk Division asking the eternal question: Does the possibility that Life evolved on other planets mean a lifelong employment opportunity, or what?
And don't get me wrong: I'm all for basic research for its own sake, and unlike lunar real estate scams, the Mars missions at least have some small justification, assuming all these people and all those millions were just sitting around going to waste otherwise. But, please, knock off the Search for Extraterrestrial Life routine, huh? Didn't that rock with the "wormholes" thing embarrass you enough? We know the conditions under which Life began on Earth. We know how unknowably vast are Time and Space. We're trying to "find" "Life" nearby not because it means anything, but because we can, and on everyone else's dime.
Look, think archeology. There's tons of banknotes out there for "Biblical" archeology, which employs plenty of archeologists willing to look for Noah's Ark, but which counts for precisely nothing, which everyone smart enough to be involved realizes. Meanwhile, finding the money to do real archeology is like asking for divine intervention. It's one thing to hope to find liquid water on Mars, or microbes on Enceladus; it's another to be seen openly rooting for that result, on camera, in a roomful of cheering nerds all working for Uncle Sugar, when you're all smart enough to find jobs elsewhere.
Which reminds me: as long as you're at it, could you do something about a diversity program, fer chrissakes? And a cure for the common cold would be nice, too.
You will find yourself tempted to turn on the television, because listening to the enormous clogged drain inside your skull has become tedious, but this will only make things worse. For one thing, back when the Mutual Happy Ending Broadcast Committee that determines who gets what NFL game looked at Week Four, the Green Bay/ Minnesota match-up had to look like ratings dynamite or a roadside bomb. Would perennial sportscaster Marry or Fuck? Object Brett Fah-vuh-ruh be on the Vikings roster? Or re-re-re-retired? If he was playing, could he still actually grip a football? So they split the difference and gave it to ESPN for Monday night, meaning they missed out on having the real professional fluffers do tricks on NBC Sunday night, but they got an extra day to convince football fans to watch despite the Ultimate Junior High Grudge Match PR campaign. The catch here being that it seems, on Fahrrrve's part, to have actually been some sort of grudge match against the organization which had heartlessly decided a couple years ago that it would like to stop paying him $150,000 a minute to play a kid's game, which it had been doing for the previous fifteen seasons, and go with an outstanding prospect by the name of Aaron Rodgers, thirty years Faaahve-ruh's junior, despite the fact that F*vre's father is still tragically dead.
And despite the fact that this fucks the loyal fans of Lambeau Field, who were just months ago the loyalest, heart-warmingest aficionados in all of Sport, but who, it turns out, cannot collectively move razor blades, big-screen teevees, or sodium-laden cans of soup. Oh well, at least I didn't get sick on Sunday night, when I would have been forced to listen to Professional Decent Guy and Biblical Homo Abhorrer Tony "One and Done" Dungy.
Speaking of people who are willing to turn their life's love into a professional wrestling story arc for quarters, NASA, the not-quite-crypto-military agency which hasn't found anyone to torture yet, is all set to blow up the Moon as part of the Cowboys, Pirates, and Hunky ER Doctors in Space Program. Y'know, to see if there's enough theoretical water on the place to support a massive colonization program before anyone starts asking why we need a massive colonization program, or pointing out the track record of white people invading things. I learned this shortly after throbbing sinuses, burning throat, and fawning sportscasters had driven me to explore the uncharted reaches of Stuff I Recorded A Year Ago And Never Watched, specifically some PBS deal about Life On Mars? featuring scientists from NASA's Space Junk Division asking the eternal question: Does the possibility that Life evolved on other planets mean a lifelong employment opportunity, or what?
And don't get me wrong: I'm all for basic research for its own sake, and unlike lunar real estate scams, the Mars missions at least have some small justification, assuming all these people and all those millions were just sitting around going to waste otherwise. But, please, knock off the Search for Extraterrestrial Life routine, huh? Didn't that rock with the "wormholes" thing embarrass you enough? We know the conditions under which Life began on Earth. We know how unknowably vast are Time and Space. We're trying to "find" "Life" nearby not because it means anything, but because we can, and on everyone else's dime.
Look, think archeology. There's tons of banknotes out there for "Biblical" archeology, which employs plenty of archeologists willing to look for Noah's Ark, but which counts for precisely nothing, which everyone smart enough to be involved realizes. Meanwhile, finding the money to do real archeology is like asking for divine intervention. It's one thing to hope to find liquid water on Mars, or microbes on Enceladus; it's another to be seen openly rooting for that result, on camera, in a roomful of cheering nerds all working for Uncle Sugar, when you're all smart enough to find jobs elsewhere.
Which reminds me: as long as you're at it, could you do something about a diversity program, fer chrissakes? And a cure for the common cold would be nice, too.
Monday, October 5
Wither "Conservatism", Vol. MDCCXXXI
STOP, You're Killin' Me, Vol. CDXVII:
Quote courtesy the cremains of the Indianapolis Sunday Racist Beacon's political stovepiper's grab-bag "Behind Closed Doors", which heretofore has saved the one-liners for last, but which now leads every week with a Daniels item, apparently as a contractual obligation. The Mighty Atom responded in kind by appearing in ads promoting the state's newspapers, meaning he justifiably reckons his risk of personal exposure by the Hoosier-centric press at zilch. I tried to hide it (the quote, I mean) from my Poor Wife, who spent the weekend getting progressively no better from this year's case of whatever the Walking Petri Dishes of Psycho Death Germs known as "her students" gave her, since hysterical laughter leads to five-minute coughing spasms, and it's impossible to hear the teevee over 'em. But she got to it before I did, and I missed the last ten minutes of The Sports Reporters.
My Poor Wife's illness discombobulated everything, of course, to the extent that we didn't hear Jon Stewart's routine about "at least the mainstream media won't pick up the blatantly-partisan, transparently absurd complaint that the President 'has better things to do' than make a twenty-minute speech in favor of the 2016 Olympics being held in Chicago, as told by the same people who thought six months worth of brush clearing in a four year term was a model of sound political husbandry," (followed, of course by mass-market news doing precisely that) until Sunday. And this was two days after the issue had been explained to everyone's satisfaction by Channel 8 Statehouse reporter Jim Shella, the Dean of non-charismatic Indiana Teevee Political Reporters by virtue of his twenty years helping inform the public how insiders imagine it should think about things. This is a lot like qualifying for your own cooking show by virtue of spending 5-10 on the serving line at the Michigan City pen. Shella--who got the first toss of the night (from an anchor desk which had, just 24 hours previously, been festooned with the Timeline for the Thrilling Chicago Olympics Announcement) to cover the "political fallout"--explained, rhetorically, about the story he had been given five-minutes' airtime to masticate, "Is this fair? Maybe not. But if Chicago had gotten the bid the President's supporters would have been giving him all the credit." Q.E.D.
Y'know, it's not like I expect, let alone hope for any better; it's just that I would like to see the theoretical construct of something other than an immediate and enthusiastic dive for the bottom turn up on occasion, just to prove that math is still a force to be reckoned with.
Which brings us, first, to David Brooks' Friday column, a rare opportunity to attempt a Shorter ("If Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh really ran the Republican Party, Mike Huckabee wouldn't have been the 2008 nominee"), and its double-reverse Slate doppelgänger, this "Book Club" discussion of Sam Tanenhaus' The Death of Conservatism, between Tanenhaus and Ross Douthat co-Republican apologist and Third Runner Up for the role of the quirky lab technician in NCIS: Los Angeles, Reihan Salam. The exchange is notable for the patient concision of Tanenhaus' dismantling of the "My Conservatism is the product of Burke, Bill Buckley, and Irving Kristol, and has nothing whatsoever to do with racist yahooliganism" routine that sprung like Athena's nerdy, pretentious cousin from the shitpile of George W. Bush's presidency:
And can we just mention, here, that the fifth anniversary of Schiavo, aka, the point at which principled Burkeans looked up from their Waughs and Wodehouses and tried to determine where that rank smell was coming from, is but three months distant? When does the desire, or "desire", to address the problem some day, time and elections permitting, stop being news?
"What is the world coming to when Chicago can't fix an election anymore?"--diminutive Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, commenting on the Olympic committee vote while in Chicago
Quote courtesy the cremains of the Indianapolis Sunday Racist Beacon's political stovepiper's grab-bag "Behind Closed Doors", which heretofore has saved the one-liners for last, but which now leads every week with a Daniels item, apparently as a contractual obligation. The Mighty Atom responded in kind by appearing in ads promoting the state's newspapers, meaning he justifiably reckons his risk of personal exposure by the Hoosier-centric press at zilch. I tried to hide it (the quote, I mean) from my Poor Wife, who spent the weekend getting progressively no better from this year's case of whatever the Walking Petri Dishes of Psycho Death Germs known as "her students" gave her, since hysterical laughter leads to five-minute coughing spasms, and it's impossible to hear the teevee over 'em. But she got to it before I did, and I missed the last ten minutes of The Sports Reporters.
My Poor Wife's illness discombobulated everything, of course, to the extent that we didn't hear Jon Stewart's routine about "at least the mainstream media won't pick up the blatantly-partisan, transparently absurd complaint that the President 'has better things to do' than make a twenty-minute speech in favor of the 2016 Olympics being held in Chicago, as told by the same people who thought six months worth of brush clearing in a four year term was a model of sound political husbandry," (followed, of course by mass-market news doing precisely that) until Sunday. And this was two days after the issue had been explained to everyone's satisfaction by Channel 8 Statehouse reporter Jim Shella, the Dean of non-charismatic Indiana Teevee Political Reporters by virtue of his twenty years helping inform the public how insiders imagine it should think about things. This is a lot like qualifying for your own cooking show by virtue of spending 5-10 on the serving line at the Michigan City pen. Shella--who got the first toss of the night (from an anchor desk which had, just 24 hours previously, been festooned with the Timeline for the Thrilling Chicago Olympics Announcement) to cover the "political fallout"--explained, rhetorically, about the story he had been given five-minutes' airtime to masticate, "Is this fair? Maybe not. But if Chicago had gotten the bid the President's supporters would have been giving him all the credit." Q.E.D.
Y'know, it's not like I expect, let alone hope for any better; it's just that I would like to see the theoretical construct of something other than an immediate and enthusiastic dive for the bottom turn up on occasion, just to prove that math is still a force to be reckoned with.
Which brings us, first, to David Brooks' Friday column, a rare opportunity to attempt a Shorter ("If Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh really ran the Republican Party, Mike Huckabee wouldn't have been the 2008 nominee"), and its double-reverse Slate doppelgänger, this "Book Club" discussion of Sam Tanenhaus' The Death of Conservatism, between Tanenhaus and Ross Douthat co-Republican apologist and Third Runner Up for the role of the quirky lab technician in NCIS: Los Angeles, Reihan Salam. The exchange is notable for the patient concision of Tanenhaus' dismantling of the "My Conservatism is the product of Burke, Bill Buckley, and Irving Kristol, and has nothing whatsoever to do with racist yahooliganism" routine that sprung like Athena's nerdy, pretentious cousin from the shitpile of George W. Bush's presidency:
Dear Reihan,
Actually, what you call a polemic means to be an interpretive history that makes the opposite case from the one described in your account. Revanchist conservatism did not originate as a form of populist protest. Rather, it was the brainchild of the very elites you say have no influence on our politics. It was conservative intellectuals who argued that the "managerial elite" (James Burnham), the "liberal establishment" (William Buckley), or the "new class" (Irving Kristol) had seized control of American politics and later our society. This argument, in its inverted Marxism, gave theoretical shape to the unarticulated anxieties and suspicions—anti-government, anti-institutional, antinomian—of the "small but intense and vocal minority," many of them "white evangelical Christians," who today populate the eroding island of movement conservatism. Even today the right insists it is driven by ideas, even if the leading thinkers are now Limbaugh and Beck, and the shock troops are tea-partiers and anti-tax demonstrators.
In other words, the movement has thrived not as a top-down operation, nor as a bottom-up one, but as a convergence of shared prejudices and cultural enmities. Thus, the right's first great modern tribune was Joe McCarthy, whose theatrical "investigations" of "enemies within" were either endorsed or indulged by each of the intellectuals mentioned above.
And can we just mention, here, that the fifth anniversary of Schiavo, aka, the point at which principled Burkeans looked up from their Waughs and Wodehouses and tried to determine where that rank smell was coming from, is but three months distant? When does the desire, or "desire", to address the problem some day, time and elections permitting, stop being news?
Friday, October 2
Did The IOC Mention Anything About "Deplorable Medical Care" And "Loose Gun-Wielding Psychopaths On Every Street Corner" By Any Chance?
Chicago Loses Bid for 2016 Olympic Games
Well, at least now the President can turn his full attention to health care reform. Which means the odds are good Spain will get some.
Well, What's In The News Today? Oh, Did You See This, Paul? The Economy's So Bad, Extortionists Now Take Checks!
DAVE--Homey, Bruder…Weatherman! Women who work on your show? A woman who worked on your show is the tyranny of the Heart. Women is the tyranny of their Big Shot Boss.
This is what you wanted to be a star for? It isn't about who you fuck, or fuck over, Dave. It is partly about the ethics of sleeping with employees, and the rest is about fucking everyone else, whether they consented or not.
And no, I'm not being hypocritical about Polanski. I happen to believe that judicial misconduct, and prosecutorial malfeasance, trump damn near everything, an opinion that is left untouched by the fact that this guy proves to be a serial liar, since he already was a known prosecutor. But it is strengthened by the I'm Not Even Going To Bother Hiding My Contempt for the Intelligence of the Public routine passing as a "confession". "Hey, I'm ruining my reputation in service of the truth," says Mr. Retired Prosecutor whose actions co-opted a case it now pleases them to renew. As though he didn't ruin both his and the LA justice system's reps when he admitted colluding with a judge. Hell, as though admitting you lied for money, and media attention, in a country full of people who do the former every day and dream of the chance to do the latter, doesn't make you the fucking idol of millions. It's like saying you blew your shot at Country music stardom by professing Jesus as your Lord and Savior.
Next time try passing it off as youthful indiscretion.
Hailstones the size of Canned Hams! Dave. It meant more to some of us than that some silly guy was being silly on local news. It meant somebody who saw through the bullshit that everyone else seemed so eager to gulp down by the heaping handful had at least made it to the place where he could twist a nose or two. It meant the hope that someday someone other than some British pop star might bite General Electric where it hurt. It meant being happy that you got rich, and forgetting it when the show slid into mediocrity and superciliousness and tabloid moments with Drew Fucking Barrymore.
'Cause y'know, Dave, Eugene Levy can make any number of crappy movies he wants, and he'll still be the guy from SCTV. But the unspoken part of the deal is, he can't show us how he spends the money. Dipping your willie in the steno pool is much, much worse.
In the next life, David Letterman, Bill Hicks is hosting the Tonight Show. And you are his seat cushion.
And thanks, by the way, for helping Sarah Palin reload.
This is what you wanted to be a star for? It isn't about who you fuck, or fuck over, Dave. It is partly about the ethics of sleeping with employees, and the rest is about fucking everyone else, whether they consented or not.
And no, I'm not being hypocritical about Polanski. I happen to believe that judicial misconduct, and prosecutorial malfeasance, trump damn near everything, an opinion that is left untouched by the fact that this guy proves to be a serial liar, since he already was a known prosecutor. But it is strengthened by the I'm Not Even Going To Bother Hiding My Contempt for the Intelligence of the Public routine passing as a "confession". "Hey, I'm ruining my reputation in service of the truth," says Mr. Retired Prosecutor whose actions co-opted a case it now pleases them to renew. As though he didn't ruin both his and the LA justice system's reps when he admitted colluding with a judge. Hell, as though admitting you lied for money, and media attention, in a country full of people who do the former every day and dream of the chance to do the latter, doesn't make you the fucking idol of millions. It's like saying you blew your shot at Country music stardom by professing Jesus as your Lord and Savior.
Next time try passing it off as youthful indiscretion.
Hailstones the size of Canned Hams! Dave. It meant more to some of us than that some silly guy was being silly on local news. It meant somebody who saw through the bullshit that everyone else seemed so eager to gulp down by the heaping handful had at least made it to the place where he could twist a nose or two. It meant the hope that someday someone other than some British pop star might bite General Electric where it hurt. It meant being happy that you got rich, and forgetting it when the show slid into mediocrity and superciliousness and tabloid moments with Drew Fucking Barrymore.
'Cause y'know, Dave, Eugene Levy can make any number of crappy movies he wants, and he'll still be the guy from SCTV. But the unspoken part of the deal is, he can't show us how he spends the money. Dipping your willie in the steno pool is much, much worse.
In the next life, David Letterman, Bill Hicks is hosting the Tonight Show. And you are his seat cushion.
And thanks, by the way, for helping Sarah Palin reload.
Thursday, October 1
There Goes The Neighborhood Ballgame.
MY Poor Wife is home with Deadly Pan-Asiatic Barnyard Pneumonia, or a cold, despite the fact that she's be warned, several times by now, not to come down with any respiratory diseases while it's too warm to leave chicken stock outside overnight. And we happened to be out of Imagine Brand Organic Free-Range Low Sodium Chicken Broth, which is the only other way I'll make chicken soup (and Thanks and Honorable Mention to Kitchen Basics, which makes a perfectly serviceable no salt added stock that just doesn't cut it, for me, as a soup base, flavor-wise); Imagine Brand is a five-mile round trip distant, through crappy evening traffic, so after she sprung this on me I went to the grocery and looked for a canned soup to tide her over. Right. Progresso "Heart Healthy! No MSG! Reduced Sodium!" Right. Twenty percent of your Rational Daily Intake in half a can of soup. You're Good to Go, Murrica! Just try not to eat anything the rest of the day unless you harvest it yourself.
Four-hundred seventy milligrams of sodium in an eight ounce serving, which is actually less than half a can, since the fine folks at General Mills provide you with an extra 2.5 oz/ can, meaning you dine free once every 3.2 cans. If you live that long. Of that maybe 50mg is naturally occurring. Let's call it 100. So you increase that by 370% and plaster Healthy! And Reduced! all over the can, by comparison to the ghastly amounts in your "regular" soup.
And I'm not even a health nut--though I am a cook, a group you offend even more egregiously--just a guy whose Poor Wife was told to watch her sodium intake. It's more or less immaterial to me, personally, what you chose to dump in those vats of yours, but how you're allowed to peddle it isn't, and how it is that the Market won't ever respond to rationality without a fight ought to inform all our politics. Progresso soup isn't on My Grocer's Shelves because they've discovered the perfect amount of salt to complement Modified Food Starch and Alpo, any more than the "Progresso" name reflects a line of black-clad Italian women lovingly stirring simmering pots of just picked/ fresh grated/ recently slaughtered goodness stretching back to the Old Country, unless by "Old Country" you mean Teaneck, NJ or its environs. It's there because the General Millers pay retailers for the space that Campbell's doesn't. Can we not just fucking 'fees up? It's not like there aren't entire floors of Bright Boys at General Mills who could produce soups with reasonable amounts of salt and the same profit margins. They don' wanna. They'd rather hire other Bright Boys to advertise you out of your socks, because that's what they do.
Speaking of open secrets, the above explains the mood I was in this AM when I e-opened the Indianapolis Racist Beacon and e-turned to the four-page exposé, "Some Fear Charter Schools May Become Sports Powers".
A little background is in order here, though first we'll happily take the Under on "number of people now fearing Charter School Sports Hegemonies who also expressed the slightest concern about Charter Schools siphoning tax dollars from the academic programs of the neediest public school districts", assuming the Under to be "any positive number".
High School athletics in Indiana are basically governed by the Indiana High School Athletic Association, or IHOP, which, several years back, managed to ruin the only high school athletic competition in the nation worthy of national attention without it featuring some future Lebron James All-McDonald's Hottie playing his final year of semi-pro ball: the Indiana High School Basketball Tournament (think Hoosiers, but with 537 alcoholics). The IHOP decided that what Indiana really needed to drive its citizens back home to watch hockey every March was class basketball, so everyone could win. Everyone here defined as "mostly private religious schools which cull players from a considerably wider radius than their similarly-sized public counterparts". Used to be that on occasion some momentary attack of truthfulness would lead someone to admit such schools "recruit" athletes, which would result in immediate denunciations of such anti-Catholicism, anti-Christian, Obviously Jihadist-inspired infamy of a plain fact. But now, with the internets and insta-comment feature of the Racist Beacon, this pretty much consumes any and every discussion of high school sports in the state. Who says we ain't forward-looking in Indiana? Besides our Governor.
The IHOP has twice looked into bumping private schools up one Division to compensate, and twice turned it down. But that was before the Poor and Unsightly got into the act:
Yes, the children of the blasted urban lunarscape that once was Steeltown, USA, might be getting over in a way that was never intended! For nonwealthy nonwhites, anyway.
So now here's IHOP Commissioner Blake Ress (member of the Board since 1990, member of the Executive Committee since '93, Commish since 2000, so he's been on hand for the adoption of Class basketball and both challenges to the unlimited boundaries of private schools):
Within their school districts, that is, not to the edges of the known universe, like private schools. (It is suggested that one of the stars of an independent religious school and perennial athletic power's volleyball team requires three different interstate highways to reach school each morning, possibly crossing from Central into Eastern Time while she's at it. We're not really sure what time it is 'round here.)
Boundaries and access and imbalance are precisely the issues you've decided on twice already, which is certainly hypocritical enough, but without paying tuition? Doesn't that mean it's intended to be the province of wealthy parents only? 'Cause if I didn't know any better…
Four-hundred seventy milligrams of sodium in an eight ounce serving, which is actually less than half a can, since the fine folks at General Mills provide you with an extra 2.5 oz/ can, meaning you dine free once every 3.2 cans. If you live that long. Of that maybe 50mg is naturally occurring. Let's call it 100. So you increase that by 370% and plaster Healthy! And Reduced! all over the can, by comparison to the ghastly amounts in your "regular" soup.
And I'm not even a health nut--though I am a cook, a group you offend even more egregiously--just a guy whose Poor Wife was told to watch her sodium intake. It's more or less immaterial to me, personally, what you chose to dump in those vats of yours, but how you're allowed to peddle it isn't, and how it is that the Market won't ever respond to rationality without a fight ought to inform all our politics. Progresso soup isn't on My Grocer's Shelves because they've discovered the perfect amount of salt to complement Modified Food Starch and Alpo, any more than the "Progresso" name reflects a line of black-clad Italian women lovingly stirring simmering pots of just picked/ fresh grated/ recently slaughtered goodness stretching back to the Old Country, unless by "Old Country" you mean Teaneck, NJ or its environs. It's there because the General Millers pay retailers for the space that Campbell's doesn't. Can we not just fucking 'fees up? It's not like there aren't entire floors of Bright Boys at General Mills who could produce soups with reasonable amounts of salt and the same profit margins. They don' wanna. They'd rather hire other Bright Boys to advertise you out of your socks, because that's what they do.
Speaking of open secrets, the above explains the mood I was in this AM when I e-opened the Indianapolis Racist Beacon and e-turned to the four-page exposé, "Some Fear Charter Schools May Become Sports Powers".
A little background is in order here, though first we'll happily take the Under on "number of people now fearing Charter School Sports Hegemonies who also expressed the slightest concern about Charter Schools siphoning tax dollars from the academic programs of the neediest public school districts", assuming the Under to be "any positive number".
High School athletics in Indiana are basically governed by the Indiana High School Athletic Association, or IHOP, which, several years back, managed to ruin the only high school athletic competition in the nation worthy of national attention without it featuring some future Lebron James All-McDonald's Hottie playing his final year of semi-pro ball: the Indiana High School Basketball Tournament (think Hoosiers, but with 537 alcoholics). The IHOP decided that what Indiana really needed to drive its citizens back home to watch hockey every March was class basketball, so everyone could win. Everyone here defined as "mostly private religious schools which cull players from a considerably wider radius than their similarly-sized public counterparts". Used to be that on occasion some momentary attack of truthfulness would lead someone to admit such schools "recruit" athletes, which would result in immediate denunciations of such anti-Catholicism, anti-Christian, Obviously Jihadist-inspired infamy of a plain fact. But now, with the internets and insta-comment feature of the Racist Beacon, this pretty much consumes any and every discussion of high school sports in the state. Who says we ain't forward-looking in Indiana? Besides our Governor.
The IHOP has twice looked into bumping private schools up one Division to compensate, and twice turned it down. But that was before the Poor and Unsightly got into the act:
...what if a charter school specialized in sports? What if that school became an irresistible magnet for the city's elite athletes -- a prep school for sports that guaranteed college hopefuls a chance to play with the best, to be coached by the best and to dominate opponents?
It's the very scenario that some fear could severely damage the competitive fairness of one of Indiana's most treasured traditions -- high school basketball -- and it's one that some believe already is playing out in Gary. The basketball program at Thea Bowman Leadership Academy, a K-12 school that opened in 2003, has elicited enough ill will in recent years that at least one coach is refusing to schedule games against the team.
Yes, the children of the blasted urban lunarscape that once was Steeltown, USA, might be getting over in a way that was never intended! For nonwealthy nonwhites, anyway.
So now here's IHOP Commissioner Blake Ress (member of the Board since 1990, member of the Executive Committee since '93, Commish since 2000, so he's been on hand for the adoption of Class basketball and both challenges to the unlimited boundaries of private schools):
"The potential is there for a charter school to create imbalance because you draw from anywhere and (students) can go there without paying tuition. There's a wide pool of talent to choose from, and (charter schools) have access to it."
Within their school districts, that is, not to the edges of the known universe, like private schools. (It is suggested that one of the stars of an independent religious school and perennial athletic power's volleyball team requires three different interstate highways to reach school each morning, possibly crossing from Central into Eastern Time while she's at it. We're not really sure what time it is 'round here.)
Boundaries and access and imbalance are precisely the issues you've decided on twice already, which is certainly hypocritical enough, but without paying tuition? Doesn't that mean it's intended to be the province of wealthy parents only? 'Cause if I didn't know any better…
Wednesday, September 30
I Take It Back. George Eff Will's Bowtie Is The Smartest Thing At WaPo.
Richard Cohen, "Time for Obama to Act Like a President And, Preferably, Not The One He Campaigned To Be". September 29
Barbara Kellerman, "Uprooting Bad Leaders: Turn Your Total Indifference to Basic Facts and Unfamiliarity with Godwin's Law into a Lucrative Career on the Professional Lecture Circuit". September 29
John Pomfret, " Oil and Ideology Keep China From Joining Effort to Press Iran: Also, My Name Means 'French Fries'". September 30
Dana "Satire" Millbank, "The Latest From Michael Moore: 'Rocky and Me', The 'Me' in Question Being An Overweight Fellow". September 30
FIRST, For God's Sake: Don't read those! They're just there to serve as examples. They're meant to scare small children and the literate.
Yesterday I was buzzing around the History/Science neighborhood of my teevee menu while pedaling the exercise bike my knees have suddenly become adapted to more than five minute's riding of, and simultaneously basting a roasting chicken ("Poor Man's Alligator") every ten. And I was stopped by the second half of a thing on the Bygone Era of the Train-Traveling Circus. I'm not quite sure which exact channel it was on, but I know it wasn't the History Channel proper, since they didn't interview any Biblical archaeologists, and no one mentioned whether Nostradamus eerily foresaw Barnum hooking up with Bailey.
Now, I always hated the circus, even as a tyke (not quite as much as parades, but similarly), though I did marry the daughter of itinerant carnival laborers, and I have to admit that even I was taken in a bit by the forced nostalgia for the Romance of the Rails, the thundering Iron Horse nickering showers of hot cinders on the wooden dwellings either side of the tracks, the days of rolling packs of small-time grifters, grown men wearing makeup, and acres of the manure of captive beasts, many clad in tutus or funny hats, bringing the allure of an 18th century European art form, a sort of traveling opera but without the libretto, and played on bagpipes, to the credulous and the inbred. So, y'know, there's a sense in which I understand what they're going through at WaPo these final days. Excepting, of course, that the circus had integrity. At least by comparison. But then, what doesn't?
Is there a greater casualty of the Internets than The Washington Post? Exposed as a thieves' cabal of Media Whores, careerist fellators, and, worse, future Politico founders, then as war-mongering media whores, lying war-mongering media whores, perpetually-adolescent clowns, and, finally, as the prima-facie refutation of Intelligent Design.
Imagine what it would be like to turn up at the Cube Farm one morning and find you were now yoked to Bill Kristol, a man so remarkably free of one single decent idea, let alone the ability to convey one if he did stumble over it, that he had just been fired from a sinecure? Supposing at this point you had some microscopic jot of self-respect left? I believe you see my point. All these people are still eating, so far as we can tell. But no one can say why.
So I don't give a fuck what any of those people has to say, though I do think it's interesting that Cuban Missile Crisis pops up more than once as a cautionary tale, and not--after the forty-seven fucking years they've had to consider this--the propensity of hot-headed fuckwits to manufacture the opportunity for disaster using only the Smoke from their fevered imaginations and the Cracked Mirror America admires her self-image in every morning.* With the help of the Washington Post.
As for Millbank's "Fat Michael Moore is gonna start a Democratic Civil War", well, for one, So Fucking What? They've had three years. What's the slogan for 2010, by the way? "The Democratic Party: Because Republicans Would Have Defunded ACORN Without Some Ass-Clown in Jolson Makeup!" ? Moore and I are the same age, born four months apart. We've been lied to by the Democratic Party our entire adult lives. We're supposed to prefer being rabbit-punched while held in a theatrical embrace to the telegraphed jackboot to the groin from Republicans? Because to act otherwise offends Dana Millbank's complacency? What's the friendship of "moderate" Democrats ever done for the Left, huh, Dana? A filibuster-proof Senate?
Second, I was tempted to say, "Forget it, Michael. It's Chinatown." But it's not. It's D.C., where they eat an Owens Valley every morning, just to coat the gut for that first Bloody Mary.
Shit. Still more than 400 words.
_________
* Apparently this needs to be pointed out every October: what does Cuba do in 1962, with ten-thousand nuclear warheads? It launches them before a Soviet strike, thus tipping one off, and is annihilated instantaneously, while tipping one off, or the Soviets launch first and we annihilate Cuba in response without them firing a shot. Fast forward fifty years, only make it Cuba trying to acquire fifty-year-old technology on the open market while knowing full well we (or our non-nuclear chums in the region, wink wink) could wipe it off the map without exiting Google Earth first. And the people who believe in the plerophoric global domination of Judeo-Christianity, Inc., are the ones who fly off the handle quickest; a woman who lectures at the Kennedy School doesn't seem to understand where Mahmoudolph Ahmadinehitler fits on the Iranian flow chart (and whatever Kagan it is they have there, whom it is superfluous to link to, thinks the Supreme Leader has to stand for reelection); some other guy throws a tantrum because China is laughing at us instead of pitching in to help avoid whatever Armageddon it suits us to predict this week. Because they crave Oil! And Michael Moore could stand to lose a few pounds. For fuck's sake, didn't we just learn what going crazy at the least little sound in the night gets us?
Barbara Kellerman, "Uprooting Bad Leaders: Turn Your Total Indifference to Basic Facts and Unfamiliarity with Godwin's Law into a Lucrative Career on the Professional Lecture Circuit". September 29
John Pomfret, " Oil and Ideology Keep China From Joining Effort to Press Iran: Also, My Name Means 'French Fries'". September 30
Dana "Satire" Millbank, "The Latest From Michael Moore: 'Rocky and Me', The 'Me' in Question Being An Overweight Fellow". September 30
FIRST, For God's Sake: Don't read those! They're just there to serve as examples. They're meant to scare small children and the literate.
Yesterday I was buzzing around the History/Science neighborhood of my teevee menu while pedaling the exercise bike my knees have suddenly become adapted to more than five minute's riding of, and simultaneously basting a roasting chicken ("Poor Man's Alligator") every ten. And I was stopped by the second half of a thing on the Bygone Era of the Train-Traveling Circus. I'm not quite sure which exact channel it was on, but I know it wasn't the History Channel proper, since they didn't interview any Biblical archaeologists, and no one mentioned whether Nostradamus eerily foresaw Barnum hooking up with Bailey.
Now, I always hated the circus, even as a tyke (not quite as much as parades, but similarly), though I did marry the daughter of itinerant carnival laborers, and I have to admit that even I was taken in a bit by the forced nostalgia for the Romance of the Rails, the thundering Iron Horse nickering showers of hot cinders on the wooden dwellings either side of the tracks, the days of rolling packs of small-time grifters, grown men wearing makeup, and acres of the manure of captive beasts, many clad in tutus or funny hats, bringing the allure of an 18th century European art form, a sort of traveling opera but without the libretto, and played on bagpipes, to the credulous and the inbred. So, y'know, there's a sense in which I understand what they're going through at WaPo these final days. Excepting, of course, that the circus had integrity. At least by comparison. But then, what doesn't?
Is there a greater casualty of the Internets than The Washington Post? Exposed as a thieves' cabal of Media Whores, careerist fellators, and, worse, future Politico founders, then as war-mongering media whores, lying war-mongering media whores, perpetually-adolescent clowns, and, finally, as the prima-facie refutation of Intelligent Design.
Imagine what it would be like to turn up at the Cube Farm one morning and find you were now yoked to Bill Kristol, a man so remarkably free of one single decent idea, let alone the ability to convey one if he did stumble over it, that he had just been fired from a sinecure? Supposing at this point you had some microscopic jot of self-respect left? I believe you see my point. All these people are still eating, so far as we can tell. But no one can say why.
So I don't give a fuck what any of those people has to say, though I do think it's interesting that Cuban Missile Crisis pops up more than once as a cautionary tale, and not--after the forty-seven fucking years they've had to consider this--the propensity of hot-headed fuckwits to manufacture the opportunity for disaster using only the Smoke from their fevered imaginations and the Cracked Mirror America admires her self-image in every morning.* With the help of the Washington Post.
As for Millbank's "Fat Michael Moore is gonna start a Democratic Civil War", well, for one, So Fucking What? They've had three years. What's the slogan for 2010, by the way? "The Democratic Party: Because Republicans Would Have Defunded ACORN Without Some Ass-Clown in Jolson Makeup!" ? Moore and I are the same age, born four months apart. We've been lied to by the Democratic Party our entire adult lives. We're supposed to prefer being rabbit-punched while held in a theatrical embrace to the telegraphed jackboot to the groin from Republicans? Because to act otherwise offends Dana Millbank's complacency? What's the friendship of "moderate" Democrats ever done for the Left, huh, Dana? A filibuster-proof Senate?
Second, I was tempted to say, "Forget it, Michael. It's Chinatown." But it's not. It's D.C., where they eat an Owens Valley every morning, just to coat the gut for that first Bloody Mary.
Shit. Still more than 400 words.
_________
* Apparently this needs to be pointed out every October: what does Cuba do in 1962, with ten-thousand nuclear warheads? It launches them before a Soviet strike, thus tipping one off, and is annihilated instantaneously, while tipping one off, or the Soviets launch first and we annihilate Cuba in response without them firing a shot. Fast forward fifty years, only make it Cuba trying to acquire fifty-year-old technology on the open market while knowing full well we (or our non-nuclear chums in the region, wink wink) could wipe it off the map without exiting Google Earth first. And the people who believe in the plerophoric global domination of Judeo-Christianity, Inc., are the ones who fly off the handle quickest; a woman who lectures at the Kennedy School doesn't seem to understand where Mahmoudolph Ahmadinehitler fits on the Iranian flow chart (and whatever Kagan it is they have there, whom it is superfluous to link to, thinks the Supreme Leader has to stand for reelection); some other guy throws a tantrum because China is laughing at us instead of pitching in to help avoid whatever Armageddon it suits us to predict this week. Because they crave Oil! And Michael Moore could stand to lose a few pounds. For fuck's sake, didn't we just learn what going crazy at the least little sound in the night gets us?
Tuesday, September 29
The Amazing Cascading Olio
Okay, but is that Dick Sergeant, or Dick York? (Ismael Roldan/ WSJ Online)
Los Angeles. Isn't That Where Michael Jackson Lived Out His Twilight Years A Free Man? Whatever you think about Roman Polanski, there's this: the legal record stinks, the sudden request for extradition stinks on ice, and if we can't come to the conclusion that prosecutorial misfeasance is a more fundamental problem than any crime then a System where basement pot growers get 5-10 and war criminals get book deals is actually better than we deserve.
Pressed for an explanation of why it ignored so many earlier opportunities that had extradition been a Trademark they would have lost it, the LA DA's office coughs up "a list of actions and queries by which it had monitored his travels in at least 10 countries"--an astonishing annual rate of ("at least") 0.294 countries per, though we are merely raising the curtain--"including what appeared to be a near miss, when officials relayed a request for information from Israel about a visit in 2007. 'Polanski had left Israel and was not arrested,' by the time the information arrived, said the advisory. " Right. The Modern State of Israel, eager extraditors of childhood survivors of the Warsaw ghetto. Damn! Just missed him. On the Will Ferrell/ Adam Sandler That's the Fucking Best You Could Come Up With For The Trailer? Scale, this one rates "funnier than anything that's ever been in a Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler trailer, though not funny ha-ha".
Speaking of Israel, who knew the Times had two military experts on the Op-Ed pages? Certainly no one who read them back when Iraq and Afghanistan were Bush's war. And isn't there some sort of codicil to Godwin about mentioning Joe Lieberman in the context of US foreign policy? No? Okay, isn't there still such a thing as common sense? Joe Lieberman never met a proxy Israeli war he didn't like, and he's sure never met a real one he didn't embrace wholeheartedly, and how much better off is everyone who's taken his advice? Motherfucker couldn't even win his own primary, and he's the Conscience of American Foreign Policy, Blowing Up People Division?
These guys realize they can't really ever bring up Iraq--there will, of course, be a collective attack of the publicized fantods when it's "discovered" there are still US troops in Iraq after "Obama's" timetable has been exceeded, led, of course, by people who shouted "Cut and Run!" so much they were rendered hoarse for the entire second half of 2005--so the inexorable pinning of Bush's other Colossal Poodle Fuck on the President--who, mind you, accepted it in 2007, when he and the crew decided he'd better not look too anti-war--precedes apace. And suddenly--oh, do sit down for this!--what a General has to say about the situation is Holy Writ. Bear in mind that this is coming from the people who helped tie weights to Eric Shinseki's legs before Bush reassigned him to Atlantic Command, Sargasso Sea.
An Iraq-style Surge won't succeed "unless Obama has the stomach for it" says Aspiring Honorary Looey Bird Colonel Douthat--who's still young enough to enlist, by the way--which sorta somewhat raises the question of what was in George W. Bush's gut all those years, but no matter. When this leftover We Weren't Allowed To Win excuse-mongering starts turning up in people who not only weren't born when the Vietnam war ended, but weren't even born when the excuses they now adopt started flying, it's Officially Too Long. Apparently the key to becoming a Librul-Media Approved "Conservative" Mouthpiece is wearing your father's old ties in anticipation of them coming back into style now and then.
Speaking of the Times, it's time (evidently) for the latest installment of The Search for the Unified Theory of Boboism, in which David Brooks tries yet again to mate the G.I. Joe of his Fiscal Imperialism to the Inner Barbie of all those times hippies laughed at him in grade school. Oh, if only, if only! those tacky Culture Wars would vanish, like all forward-thinking people wish they would so they wouldn't be forced to constantly ignore the Troglodytes they eagerly bedded down with from 1980-2005 as the surest way to keep our Plutocracy safe. Because, y'know, Brooks has had nothing to do with the Culture War. Just a front-line correspondent. That guy slobbering all over Irving Kristol's burial suit a week ago? Wasn't Dave. (I love, by the way, the idea that because neocons, as a group, are rather remarkably amoral, even for bureaucrats and people who do their Thinking while Tanked, they are some how not simultaneously tiresome moralizers of the David Brooks type.)
Speaking of people who keep their morals in their wallet, right next to the posed snapshot of the model family that came with it, and which they whip out and claim as their own whenever anyone mentions "wife", "huge, bulging envelope of talcum powder, ostensibly sent through the mails", and "empty quart of Chivas Regal" in the same sentence: the latest "Mitch 2012" fantasy (h/t Porrofatto) covers the same Incredible Shrinking List of Accomplishments; it's interesting that he's now touting Wait Times at the BMV instead of Number of Toll Roads Sold, but whichever, it's Still Mitch:
Perhaps most appreciated was the governor's overhaul of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. It's gone from one of the worst in the country—a place, he says, "where people would take a copy of 'Crime and Punishment'"—to one of the best, with an "average visit time of seven minutes and 36 seconds."
Because, first, Crime and Punishment isn't all that long; maybe it's just the first thing that pops into a Republican Brain. Second, I've been patronizing Indiana's license branches since 1970, and the time the wait really became unbearable was--you're still sitting down, right?--during the first two years of the Daniels administration, when a failed retail exec tried to turn them all into Pro Shops, and when they rushed the new computerized system online without adequate testing or backups. Computerization is part of the speed up (from a personal standpoint it's been fairly remarkable, but then I'm in Indianapolis, so the Daniels administration couldn't just close my branch--one of its early cost-cutting strokes of entrepreneurial ratiocination--and I can generally go at off-hours). So too the fact that what used to be a major source of long wait times--getting stuck behind car dealers who were licensing a dozen vehicles at a time--has now been eliminated by having dealers print their own, and by the related point that, under Daniels leadership of the Federal, then the state economy, fewer Hoosiers than ever can actually afford cars, excepting maybe the ones who still build them thanks to the bailouts Mitch opposed. (Another little part of that remarkable average visit time is that they don't start running the clock until you've gotten to see the branch receptionist, which is a bit like counting your stay at the Doctor's office from the time he finally walks in the exam room. Not to quibble. My visits are faster now, sure 'nuff. But if you want to make this a hallmark of your management style [Hog the glory. Attribute it to your Big Brain. Ignore the fuckups. Ignore anything complex. Raise lots of money to get the word around.] then I think it's at least fair to note that my Core 2 Duo Mac runs rings around the Motorola-driven IIsi from 1992.)
The Toll Road sale has fallen off the self-promotional campaign literature shelf--after it briefly reappeared when the Macquarie Infrastructure Group's potential bankruptcy brought Team Daniels out to shout "We're Getting It Back, Plus We Get To Keep the Money!" long enough to drown out any real questions about what that might mean in, y'know, the real world--because the smaller interest revenue than expected (blamed on "the bad economy", as though you couldn't foresee any rough patches over the next 75 years) now won't cover the escalating costs and suddenly small, non-inclusive details, like, oh, building materials, for the big I-69 project we couldn't survive the next three-quarters of a century without. Not to mention--since he won't--the Family and Social Services Administration swindle, $1 billion to thoroughly fuck up the state's Medicaid, Food Stamp, Aid to Dependent Children, Vocational Rehabilitation and Mental Health Services--which the Big Cranium'd Daniels Administration is still paying for at 100 cents on the dollar, even though the thing is so screwed no one can say when it might meet its standards, and even though it's so bad that Republicans in America's Third-Worst State Legislature, Now In Permanent Session!™ are getting antsy.
Anyway, nobody looking in from outside could really imagine that Mitch Daniels sporked his way to a $1 billion surplus. It's the balance before all the bills start coming due, including the ones he sloughed off on county and municipal governments. It's strong first quarter numbers at the expense of voters not yet old enough to vote. It's a crock.
Anyhow, I realize the GOP doesn't have much going for it these days, and if you add Without Visibly Packing Heat it's practically nil, but if you'd like a blueprint for the Non Culture Warrior, Mr. Brooks, take our Bonzai Governor. Please. Steers clear of them hot-button issues all right. Unless you're one of those people who think congenital lying is a moral issue.
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