Thursday Olio: Must Be The Contrails Edition

•Krishna H. Vishnu, Ed Rogers, "The Insider: Why do they hate Bush?"

All the vitriol directed at him bewilders me. Why all the personal animus? It wasn’t because of what he said. Bush never called anyone a name.

Not anyone who wasn't a major league asshole.

His most controversial decisions surrounding the invasion of Iraq were almost universally supported by Democrats at the time.

The majority who didn't believe a President would lie the country into a war, maybe.

Bush brought character to his decision-making. He must have believed what he was doing was right because so many of the decisions he made avoided taking the easy way out and were, at best, politically risky.

Class?  Anyone?

I don’t understand the level of contempt his critics have for him. The only thing I can see is that the left hates much of what he still stands for and how he has lived his life.

You hit the nail of the head there, Ed. Just not the one you were aiming for.

Bush went to church and he was not shy about his Christian faith.  He is a southerner, a Christian, a family man, a conservative and a white Texan, and he beat the Democrats at the ballot box — twice.

Oh, you mean in Texas. Had me goin' there for a minute.

• No finer family than the Lawrence Coonrods.

Lawrence police were called to an apartment at 5766 Devers Drive on Saturday, where they were flagged down by Curtis Coonrod, 58. 

He told police he had been robbed at gunpoint by a man who kidnapped his girlfriend, Cheyenne Poole, 21, and stole his car. 

Coonrod said he and Poole were in the apartment, which he leases for her, when a man burst through the door with a gun, demanding money and saying, "I don't know you. I don't care about you. I will kill you," according to the police report. 

Coonrod told police the man taped him to a chair while forcing Poole to go to an ATM and withdraw $500 using his bank card. 

The man then left with the alarm code to Coonrod's house, taking Poole with him, Coonrod told police. 

Investigators traced Poole's cellphone to Indianapolis' south side, where they spotted her driving Coonrod's stolen car, according to the police report. Poole then led police on a high-speed chase, running stop lights before blowing a tire on stop sticks and eventually stopping, police said. 

Poole and her passenger, Ralph Lopez, 24, were taken into custody. 

Police said Poole then admitted to orchestrating the robbery and kidnapping plot with Lopez, her new boyfriend. 

Poole told police she had met Coonrod on a dating website, "something like SugarDaddy.com," police said, and that he had been supporting her financially for about five months.

Time passes. Two days, anyway.

The woman accused of robbing former Marion County politician Curtis Coonrod plotted against him after feeling overwhelmed by his repeated sexual advances, she told The Indianapolis Star on Wednesday. 

“He wanted kissing and feeling, and that was something that did not interest me at all,” Cheyenne Poole, 21, said in an exclusive interview from the Marion County Jail. “But I never wanted to tell him that, just because I didn’t want him to be angry.” 

Poole confessed to organizing an armed robbery Friday against Coonrod, a former Marion County auditor and City-County Council member. Coonrod has insisted the two were just friends, but Poole said Coonrod wanted something more not long after meeting her on the “SeekingArrangement.com” dating website. Its motto is the “Elite Sugar Daddy Dating Site for those Seeking".

A gentleman never tells:

Coonrod, who is single, told The Star he could not recall having a profile on the dating site but did not deny meeting Poole there. 

“I’ve heard of that site, and I’ve seen it,” said Coonrod, 58, Lawrence. “So I just don’t remember if that’s where I met her. But she says it was, so I’m not disputing that.”… 

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about what we may or may not have done,” Coonrod said. “But I certainly never got the impression that we did anything that made her feel uncomfortable.”

True love waits:

But Coonrod remains convinced Poole is innocent, even saying he feels confident the charges will be dropped. He is furious, he said, that he hasn’t been able to speak to Poole since the robbery. That is because of an order of protection the court placed on Poole, which bans suspects from talking to victims. 

“They are bullies, the Lawrence police detectives,” Coonrod said. “I don’t detect that they are interested in justice. They are interested in proving themselves right, and they decided before there was any evidence that she was guilty.”

Curtis Coonrod is the former Marion country Auditor and two-term City/County councilman. I'll check on his party affiliation and get back to you.

•Damn. I've got me one a' them HD washing machines rotates like a turbojet, and it don't spin like that. Your Weekly Standard:

After being read Miranda rights, the Boston bombing suspect in custody, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has stopped talking to authorities, officials tell the Associated Press. 

"The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings acknowledged to the FBI his role in the attacks but did so before he was advised of his constitutional right to keep quiet and seek a lawyer, U.S. officials said Wednesday," reports the Associated Press.

Good thing he was goin' down anyway, huh? Though in fairness I think we have to admit that the Times We Live In do call for waving your balls around in public, rather than being 10% smarter than your average perp.

But, then, you didn't think I chose Bill Kristol's Monthly Hot Flash as a news source for nothin', did you?

But while it might not "matter in court," it will likely matter in the intelligence gathering process, which will likely be hampered.

And, somewhere, al-Qaeda's Latest #2 Man breathes a little easier.

It's Worse Than I Thought, Just Like I Always Thought

Joan Walsh, "Rand Paul’s missing spine: I thought he was a joke, but after he filibustered over drones, wondered if I'd been wrong. Nope." April 24

YE Gods and pygmy goats:

I was on vacation when Rand Paul staged his filibuster to get more answers about drones from the Obama administration, or else I probably would have embarrassed myself by praising him.

Were you on vacation, or taking leave of your senses? If the latter, did the airlines lose your luggage?

I’m concerned about drones and targeted assassinations and I think it’s a perfect place for a left-right alliance.

Stop it.

So I was glad to see Paul’s filibuster.

Which had nothing to do with targeted killings, and everything to do with making the Obama administration initial a piece of paper about targeting killing of Americans on American soil. Which some wiseasses on the Right thought was a big PR deal. And which has about as much to do with the US drone program as Sadam Hussein had to do with 9/11.

Bonus points one: the filibuster was actually about Benghazi!! Benghazi!!!! BENGHAZI!!!!1! and the urban legend behind Paul 2.0's concern about drones--there's an urban legend behind everything the man believes, Joan; look it up--was the idea that the Interior Department or Homeland Security or the US Department of Sharia Law is flying drones over federal waterways to snoop on Western ranchers and oil and mineral interests, aka, Sen. Rand Paul (Kook-Kentucky)'s natural constituency.

Bonus points two: assuming there's any earthly reason for any sentient voter to desire a left-right alliance on anything, "targeted killing of Americans on American soil" ain't it, and a signed policy statement is utterly worthless even if it was. There's plenty enough wiggle room under standard federal law enforcement powers to fly a fleet of drones through, on either side of the truck you are driving. Either the current President of the United States has no plan for the wholesale killing of Americans on American soil via Death Drone (just as the previous President of the United States did not mastermind the 9/11 attacks), or else the world is so fucking irredeemably insane there's nothing a piece of paper, forty days and nights of filibustering, and Protective Sponge Helmets for every citizen ("They're Just Like The One Rand Paul Wears!™") can do to protect us.

Bonus points three: somebody smarter than Rand Paul--yes, it is a large sample--came up with the "make Holder sign this" routine. Paul's "opposition" to drones, such as it was, was just one anti-fluoridationalist fantasy hitched to another-Benghazi!! Benghazi!!!! BENGHAZI!!!!1!--and I'm not quite sure how anybody managed to miss that, or think well of him for an instant. Even while on vacation.

Even though I disagree with Paul on virtually every other issue and generally consider him to be kind of a joke, I’d have been happy to be proven wrong. Maybe he had a conscience. Maybe he would become a much needed civil liberties leader on the right.

Just for the record, how can you consider someone a joke without actually realizing just what sort of joke he is?

Alas, I haven’t been proven wrong.

Except for that narrowly-avoided "Rand Paul, Much Needed Civil Libertarian on the Right!" column.

Mr. Filibuster, the tribune of civil liberties, now says that drones should have been used against the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston – not only that, he told Fox’s Neal Cavuto, they should even be used against someone robbing a liquor store. 

Strangely enough, Cavuto himself seemed a little spooked by the technology that was deployed in the hunt for 19-year-old Dzohkhar Tsarnaev, including the thermal imaging that was able to find him in a boat and even to get some sense of the extent of his wounds.

Okay, so now would be a good time not to imagine you saw signs of incipient humanity in Neil Cavuto just because he was standing next to Rand Paul.

“I have never argued against any technology being used against having an imminent threat, [or] an act of crime going on,” Paul replied. “If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” 

Wow. So Paul has gone from “your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court” to “If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him.”

Hey, I don't know if he's telling the truth, or if he even recognizes "truth" as a category, but so far as I know Paul avoided speaking of imminent threats. That was part of the charade. Professional wordsmithers are supposed to catch that sort of thing.

Back during his filibuster, I briefly thought Paul might prove a formidable 2016 GOP presidential candidate, if he channeled American discontent with the Obama administration’s drone policy and other national security excesses. I shouldn’t have worried.

Nor admitted it in public, Joan.

Worst Video Game Ever. Figures.

Peter Baker, "Rewinding History, Bush Museum Lets You Decide". April 20

UNIVERSITY PARK, Tex. — More than four years after leaving office, former President George W. Bush has a question for America: So what would you have done? 

In a new brick-and-limestone museum, visitors to an interactive theater will be presented with the stark choices that confronted the nation’s 43rd president: invade Iraq or leave Saddam Hussein in power? Deploy federal troops after Hurricane Katrina or rely on local forces? Bail out Wall Street or let the banks fail?

• Cruise through Yale as a drunken frat boy, or sober up long enough to take notice of the world's intellectual traditions?

• Attend all your required Texas Air National Guard duties, or call in sick?

• McDonald's coffee spoon or rolled-up hundred?

• Hit up daddy's pals for business investments, or hit up daddy's pals for business investments?

• Use your insider knowledge to get out from under Harken Oil just before the stock collapses and buy the Texas Rangers, or the Baltimore Colts?

• Build a new stadium with taxpayer money, or move the team to some other city that's built a new stadium with taxpayer money?

• Realize a 1242% profit when the team is sold, or hold out for a good deal?

• Run for governor of Texas, or move to an island and found your own colony of Jebus-mazed explosion fanciers?

• Fakey Texas drawl, or Cagney impression?

• Run for President, or do something for your country for once?

Wow, that was fun! Which way to the Laura Bush Interactive Driving Experience?

Extremist Blows Up Fourteen, Including Nine First Responders; Cites Religious Worldview; Death Toll May Rise

WHERE'S the fucking manhunt? Where are the No Miranda arrests?

WEST, Texas, April 19, 2013 — Donald Adair, lifelong resident of the community of West, Texas and owner of Adair Grain Inc., today issued the following statement:
This has been a terrible week for everyone in West, Texas and I want to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt sympathy for those affected and my appreciation for those who responded.
As a lifelong resident, my heart is broken with grief for the tragic losses to so many families in our community. I know that everyone has been deeply affected by this incident. Loved ones have been injured or killed. Homes have been damaged or destroyed. Our hearts go out to everyone who has suffered.
The selfless sacrifice of first responders who died trying to protect all of us is something I will never get over. I was devastated to learn that we lost one of our employees in the explosion. He bravely responded to the fire at the facility as a volunteer firefighter. I will never forget his bravery and his sacrifice, or that of his colleagues who rushed to the trouble.
This tragedy will continue to hurt deeply for generations to come.
My family and I can't express enough our deep appreciation for the loving service and selfless sacrifice from within and around our community responding to the urgent needs of those affected. I am proud to be associated with West Church of Christ, which has opened its doors to the State of Texas to provide grief counseling services. My family and I will continue to assist in relief efforts through our church family.
The genuine kindness we have witnessed will be the hallmark for all of our children's children.
Going forward, the owners and employees of Adair Grain and West Fertilizer Co. are working closely with investigating agencies. We are presenting all employees for interviews and will assist in the fact finding to whatever degree possible. We pledge to do everything we can to understand what happened to ensure nothing like this ever happens again in any community.
While the investigation continues, and out of respect for the investigative process, we will limit our comments during the weeks and months ahead.

Thanks, really, for respecting the investigative process. Too bad you had no respect for the regulative process:

(Reuters) - The fertilizer plant that exploded on Wednesday, obliterating part of a small Texas town and killing at least 14 people, had last year been storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Yet a person familiar with DHS operations said the company that owns the plant, West Fertilizer, did not tell the agency about the potentially explosive fertilizer as it is required to do, leaving one of the principal regulators of ammonium nitrate - which can also be used in bomb making - unaware of any danger there.
Fertilizer plants and depots must report to the DHS when they hold 400 lb (180 kg) or more of the substance. Filings this year with the Texas Department of State Health Services, which weren't shared with DHS, show the plant had 270 tons of it on hand last year.

By the way, who had "about ten fucking seconds" in the How Long Will It Take Bill Flores and "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz to do a Jim Rockford 180º on Federal disaster relief once it was their fat asses on fire?

The Federal government should take care of the immediate needs of private citizens affected by this act.* The state of Texas should pay for personal and business losses caused by its laissez-faire attitude towards zoning, and sue Donald Adair, lifelong resident of West, for the costs.

___________

* Personally, I'd require the place to secede as a condition of our cutting the check, but maybe that's just me. Is there anything in the 10th amendment which says we can't at least require them to change the motto from "Lone Star State" to "There's So Much Shit in Texas You're Bound to Step in Some"?

Weekend Olio: Buzzkill Edition

• Our Constitutional rights are currently being updated by having Jennifer Rubin moderate an imaginary debate between Lindsay Graham and Rand Paul.

• I neglected to copy the actual quotation, nor note who it was whose recent capsule description of Graham was something like "Least surprising rentboy scandal ever."

• Ditto writing down the actual source, or the actual quote, from whatever news babbler called the 12-hour search for the missing Boston bomber "the greatest manhunt in US history".

• And somewhere along the line someone mentioned something about "accomplices". Or something that sounded like "accomplice". Maybe someone asked for compliance. Or a compress. Anyway, that was on the fucking crawl for eight hours, and then, when the nets went wall-to-wall again after the evening news, they'd disappeared.

Really, really, really, John King can get a hundred stories wrong an hour and it doesn't begin to compare to the self-fulfilling fantasies about Terrism that color every last word out of every last commentator's mouth. It was interesting--by which I mean "predictable and depressing"--that the nets, especially, seemed to keep their powder dry for the first 48 hours, when it might've turned out to be Some Crazy White Dude. And the minute "ethnic Chechens" became part of the story they all stomped on the accelerator. Al-Qaeda affiliates!

• Dear Lord. Fred Hiatt's Petting Zoo gives space to Stephen F. Knott, the Victor Davis Hansen Chair of Applied Fertilizer at the U.S. Naval War College, for some ironclad reasoning from the deck of a lead submarine. It's one thing to claim that George W. Bush deserves a better place in History--or Hell--than the one most people want to assign him. It's another to do so by spending your 840 words insisting that it's all a matter of academic bias. Without, you know, actually demonstrating any. Aside from the fact that some people are negative about George W. Bush.

Bonus points, though, for working in "FDR called Republicans fascists".

Somehow it's not surprising that one avoids defending the idea that Dubya deserves a better place history by, oh, actually talking about his record.

I'm With Pierce, Vol. MMMCMLVII

ITEM One:

But, for the moment, and from a distance, I will tell you what this looks as much to me as it does to anything else.

It looks like Columbine.

That portion of the morning I didn't spend vacuuming water in my basement was spent open-mouthed, watching Charley "Journamalism" Rose attempt, repeatedly, to get the message across to a skeptical nation that the two Boston bombing suspects were foreigners. Which, of course, leads to the inescapable conclusion that the bombing was part of a global anti-American terror campaign.

Further proof, where none was actually needed, was the incredible military precision of the attacks, the execution of MIT security officer Sean Collier, and the running gun battle with police, all indicative of some no doubt foreign training.

Except for, y'know, the fact that they were caught on every security camera in the Back Bay, were still in Boston three days later, made a break for it once their pictures were plastered all over creation, and tried to rob a 7-11 and/or an ATM for some getaway cash. I believe we can rule out any Mossad connections at this point.

For relief I switched over to NBC, and counted how many times Richard Engle could say "possible al-Qaeda affiliate" in sixty seconds.

ITEM Two:

I'd like to point out that, given the performance of cable teevee news this week, I'd like an offer of proof about that guy's really being their uncle.

A-fucking-men. Everytime these guys go wall-to-wall I hope to find some evidence of a slight improvement. Some tiny flicker of evidence that they've tried to learn from what is charitably described as past mistakes. Some small sense that, when everyone's covering the same story, a "scoop" is much less important than accuracy. Maybe a hint that national reporters have learned the difference between being arrested and being taken into custody.

And, y'know, not only am I disappointed every single time. It fucking just gets worse. Television news is the mutant rainforest amphibian of our national dialogue.

Dear CBS This Morning:

USING John McCain and Rudy Giuliani as "experts" on the Boston bombing suspects is like bringing in Howard Hughes as an expert on germ-borne disease. 

Thursday Olio: Dark-Skinned Like Me Edition

• Explain to me how ABC let Jake Tapper get away.

I switched on CNN mid-afternoon yesterday, having just been alerted that the world record for running backwards was in danger of being broken. I got there in time to see 1) John "Scoop" King claim that everybody had been doing it, not just he; 2) another reporter insist that the "really important thing" was that the police make a solid case; and 3) King, again, noting that now, he emphasized now, the FBI was saying officially that no one had been arrested.

To which I may have shouted 1) "Not sure if everyone was claiming to have an exclusive, but you sure were"; 2) "Now you tell us"; and 3) "What was the official story all along, John?" The FBI certainly hadn't announced an arrest while you were scooping all the other idiots.

Speaking of which, this was followed by the Jake Tapper Goodtime Hour. Jake was joined by comedian Tom Ridge. This is a question:

We know, of course, Secretary Ridge, that the London marathon, they are now taking extra precautions because of what happened here, just a block or so away, uh, here in Boston, and in the very near future we're going to see huge crowds at the Indy 500, at the Kentucky Derby; how do we, as a society, and how does the Federal government keep people safe at these massive events?

I guess everybody's been asking that question. It's just that most of us used six or seven words, tops.

Here was the sign-off:

All right, former Pennsylvania governor, veteran, and Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, thanks so much for joining us.

I know, I suffer from buffo italic incontinence, but that's really the way he said "veteran". Th' hell was responsible for that? Do Ridge's people insist it be included in his litany of honoraria and sinecures? Is that just part of Tapper's oral sex technique? Were they too short to fit "member of the Home Depot Board of Directors" in there? A few glazing techniques for all those blown-out windows couldn't hurt, could it?

• When last we viewed the historic grain silo in Carmel, Indiana, Indianapolis' neighbor to the Great White North, it was a pile of rubble lying next to the Monon Trail, whence it had been knocked, in such a hurry (over fears that the local Save Our Silo movement might actually interfere with development) that no one bothered to notice the large quantity of pesticides that had once been stored inside, and now was stored, rather more randomly, in the vicinity. This put the ki-bosh on the development deal the mayor and his pals had made with some of his other pals, so they had to find some different pals to make a deal with, after cleaning the site up. Possibly.

The new deal is with Pedcor Development, which reportedly has done a lot of development work in Carmel over the last decade, but which, it turns out, might have a hint of the tar brush:

Pedcor, the city’s partner in much of its redevelopment over the past decade, is known to be a developer of Section 42 projects, which use tax credits to provide for rent-controlled, affordable housing.

Saying "affordable" in Carmel is a lot like saying "radioactive" elsewhere. So the City council, which, in fairness, does have a black friend, wants more information before signing off on Industrial Recovery Tax Credits, a state program that sluices the redevelopment of old industrial areas via local kingpins.

Such as, wonder of wonders, the  one piece of real estate along the Monon Trail that Carmel hasn't developed already.

[Councilwoman Lucy] Snyder [said] at a council meeting Monday night, “My concerns, for this or any other project in this area — just north of City Center and the Palladium, and south of the Arts and Design District — is that whatever is proposed is of high quality both in design and materials.

I guess it's lucky you built the water tower next door, and the adjacent Public Works sheds, a while back. Before the price of gold skyrocketed.

Snyder said she thinks a Section 42 proposal might be questionable, given the location. She said she is not opposed to such a project in Carmel but said it might be better suited for another area, such as the Old Meridian corridor.

Right. Or Dumptown. Or the Historic Lead Paint Quarter. Or Somewhere Th' Hell Out of Hamilton County. 

Tax support is best used, Snyder said, for major projects that will bring more jobs to the city. 

“You tell me,” she said. “How is a project like that considered a job-producing project?”

These are the same people who signed a blank check to build an Arts Palace, which so far has produced a half-million-a-year job for Michael Feinstein, some gainful, if temporary, employment for the former mistress of the former CEO, plus some ticket takers and concessionaires, who live god knows where. They're the same people who signed off on millions of dollars of roundabout construction, because stoplights are for little people. And "construction jobs" were part of the sales pitch. They're $250 million in debt, that they admit to, and the official position on that is "Who cares? We're rich!" I'm not making that up.

Didn't there used to be some sort of Federal regulation about housing discrimination?

• Speaking of things blowing up, West Fertilizer Co. did, taking West, Texas, with it, despite the fact that its EPA report said the greatest risk at the plant was a worker improperly refrigerating an egg salad sandwich.

This morning CBS had on Bill Flores, Texas Congressman, which is a nice way of saying "Insane". And Norah O'Donnell, which is a nice way of saying "Hairdo", sorta asked him about it, kinda. You know, leaving out that if it were up to Bill Flores there'd be no EPA, an' stuff:

Well, y'know, those estimates are based on systems operating as they should, and you never know, uh, what mechanical problem may have occurred or if there was a human mistake, a human error that caused, uh, some, uh, uh, mix of chemicals to get together to start this fire. Once the fire starts then uh, uh, any EP, any estimate made to the EPA is not gonna necessarily be valid.

Yes, estimates of potential risk assumes everything functioning perfectly. Tell us something we don't know.

Flores was generous enough to thank John Boehner for sending in FEMA, despite Texas' aversion to Federal assistance.

• Speaking of broadcasting pictures of your naked ass, it appears now that much hinges on who owns the ox, and who the pike:

Three Fairfax County high school students made cellphone videos of drunken sex acts with fellow teens and shared them among themselves, authorities said. When they go on trial Thursday, they face a charge usually reserved for adult predators: child pornography. 

The case is one of a number in Virginia where teens caught “sexting” have been charged with a felony that can carry a sentence of 20 years in prison and could require registry as a sex offender. 

In Virginia, Maryland and many other states, the law has not caught up with the combustible mix of teens, technology and sex that has made sexting an issue. Prosecutors must rely on a patchwork of laws created before the rise of smart­phones to handle such cases.

I'm sorry; caught up with?

Some parents and rights groups are calling for a new law that would distinguish sexting from child pornography, create lesser punishments and focus on educating teenagers, not punishing them. But they also acknowledge that young victims can be devastated when embarrassing photos or videos are spread among their peers.

Well, that's big of 'em. Especially since it's "parents and rights groups" which pushed for strict child pornography laws in the first place, because of the victims.

This is why we have a juvenile justice system. It's also why our laws are designed to protect the innocent. No judge should sentence a teen sexter to 20 years for something innocent and kid-foolish. But no 15 or 16 year-old doesn't understand that taking surreptitious nude photos, or broadcasting them all over, is wrong, and criminally so. Cell phones don't make it any different. A cell phone is not a defense. Its what the courts ought to make those parents eat. In public.

Praeteritio

LOOK, first: would I be upset if the Boston bombings turn out to be the work of one of Roger Ailes' disgruntled minions, or some Sidewalk Second Amendment Expert, or the good Christians of Westboro? I'll be piling on, same as everybody. The major difference between my side and their side is that we didn't have anyone screaming Mooslems Mooslems Mooslems between the two blasts.

Well, that's one difference, anyway. Another is that the Right has to resurrect Bill Ayers to accuse the Left of domestic terrorism, while we need only harken back to the Murrah building. (Take a moment today to remember the nearly 900 victims of that one, including the 168 who never got out. I won't ask you to remember Bob Dole announcing immediately that the bombing had to be the work of "Arabs".  I won't mention which party resisted giving additional investigative powers to the FBI.)

We could (but won't) point out that interest in the Anthrax Attacks plummeted the minute it became obvious to everyone but Judith Miller that the source was domestic. Allah is Great! We could go further, if that was what we were up to, and point out that that's pretty much the direction of American law enforcement since the days when the Pinkertons were conducting it. Or point out that the US has been bombing women and children, on a regular basis and without a declaration of war, for seven decades now.

For that matter, someone in my little Midwestern burg might remember that two people died last year when the house next door exploded, in a plot to turn insurance payments into fucking Ferraris and fucking tokens for fucking slot machines.

I'm not gonna mention that any or all of that went through my head once the initial shock subsided.

I will tell you, though, that I examined all that in myself, and decided that none of it motivated me.

That is, that none of it motivates me to hope that Boston will be the lesson I'd hope it to be. Because I don't hope. It's senseless, stupid, ugly violence. It is, as Pierce says, a political act, and it has political ramifications we can't ignore. And like Zhou Enlai and the French Revolution, I guess someday we'll see. I'm glad for Patton Oswalt if he can find solace in human altruism. Humans are the only animals that will knowingly rush into a bombing site to help total strangers. They're also the only animal that needs to.

So lemme tell ya, for real: anyone who shed a tear for an eight-year-old boy who died waiting to see his Daddy finish a race should be reminded that eight-year-olds die all the time while we fucking dick around about gun violence. They should remember Fallujah, and the Christmas Bombings, and the torture that's been done in their names, right out in the open. Sorta. Not because they have any political axe to grind, but because senseless violence is senseless violence. And excusing any of it is a political act.

Me, I'll be satisfied if there's a closet in Hell somewhere where Chuck Todd gets to say "The President did not use the word 'Terrorism'" over and over, for Eternity, while he watches his paycheck shrink.

Glad I Can Help You Kids Out With This New Googling Technology

Edward McClelland, "The Other Kind of Moneyball: The grotesque rise of baseball salaries reveals everything that’s wrong with the American financial system. April 15

Over the past 40 years—the period of rising economic inequality that former Slate columnist Timothy Noah called “The Great Divergence”—Americans’ incomes have not grown at all, in real dollars. But baseball players’ incomes have increased twentyfold in real dollars: the average major-league salary in 2012 was $3,213,479. The income gap between ballplayers and their fans closely resembles the rising gap between CEOs and their employees, which grew during the same period from roughly 25-to-1 to 380-to-1.

UH, first: there is a large, relatively well-remunerated employee type in this country known as "sales personnel" whose salaries are largely contingent on how much money they bring in for their bosses. There's your comparison to what has happened to player salaries over the past thirty, forty, or sixty years. Media revenues exploded. The Reserve Clause was overturned. Cable television gained, with an assist from the Rehnquist Court, the same sort of anti-trust protection that Major League Baseball has had for over a century, so that a cable system has, say, a billion fucking dollars to throw at the Dodgers. In 1946 the average player's salary ($5000, 1946 dollars) was 0.2% of the value of his franchise. In 2011 it is 0.5%. That's not astonishing exponential growth. It's the power of collective bargaining, aided by a changing legal status (and blocked by collusion for most of the 80s) to gain a more equitable distribution of revenues which depend entirely on the players. Nobody goes to the ballpark to see an owner. Except maybe Slate writers. Well, and Reason.

I’m singling out professional athletes for my class envy because they’re the highest-profile beneficiaries of changes that have enriched those at the top of the economic order while impoverishing those at the bottom.

If you say so. Sounds more to me like you're singling them out because they earn "salaries", same as average joes, if they're lucky. Owners, on the other hand (increasingly conglomerates or major transglobal piracy concerns), have "earnings". Just like Justin Bieber, Heidi Klum, and the Estate of Elvis Presley, none of whom can hit the curve. Or have to field these sorts of complaints. It's a standard bleacher bum gripe, and it's been going on at least since Babe Ruth had a better year than Herbert Hoover. If you think Hank Aaron's $200,000 per is laughably minuscule these days, you should'a been around when people were talking about it in real time.

It's the song of everybody who volunteers $90 for a seat and $12 for 12 ounces of lukewarm Bud Light. C'mon, let's work a little Slate double reverse magic, huh?

The labor policies of the mid-20th century depressed the price of skilled labor while inflating the price of unskilled labor.

That's what I'm talkin' about.

Labor unions are cartels that increase their members’ salaries by bargaining collectively, thus winning a more lucrative contract than workers could negotiate on their own. Baseball players are entertainers with specialized skills. They didn’t start earning their true market value until they were allowed to negotiate individually with owners—the antithesis of collective bargaining.

Which right it took a union to defend when the owners responded by colluding.

This is the same way the various entertainment unions work, except movies don't have an antitrust exemption and they're not limited to 25 players per team. Their rules protect the guy making $6 million a picture--this is hardly the "antithesis" of trades unionism--as well as the extra who'd be spending half his life as an unpaid intern otherwise. Who's supposed to pocket all the "savings" from making player salaries more reasonable? The teams? The teevee networks? Who?

Paying to see a baseball game feels like paying to see a tax lawyer argue in federal court or a commodities trader work the floor of the Mercantile Exchange. They’re getting rich out there, but how am I profiting from the experience? I know we’re never going back to the days when Willie Mays lived in Harlem and sold cars in the offseason, but the market forces that have overvalued ballplayers’ skills while devaluing mine have made it impossible for me to just enjoy the damn game.

Then stick to the minors. Or college ball. There's a spot where antithesis-spouting guardians of athletic perspective have held sway. Great if you're a football factory, or a spewer of memorabilia; not so much if you're one of hundreds of Kevin Wares who don't have a national beacon shone on how your university treats you once you're no longer putting meat in the seats and gelt in the collection basket.

Look, trades unionism has a lot to answer for in the decline of average Americans' earnings over the past forty years. Go on, write that story. But first maybe we could put a little perspective on just what rich fucks like your average MLB owner have done in the meantime. 'Cause, yes, that, and not some cosmic Reversal of Thesis, is what baseball players are sharing in.

Come Morning, Either The World Or Your Job Should Be Gone

I STARTED to say "Or your reputation should be gone" but I caught myself. 

And you've got the other problem that April 15th is Kim il-Sung's birthday. And they're going to want to do something spectacular for the birthday. 

Greta Van Susteren  

What is it with these fucks and anniversaries, anyway? 

The $100,000 Question

TOM Scocca reads that NAS Bowdoin vanity study so I don't have to:

A search of the report indicates that the National Association of Scholars included the words "sex" or "sexual" 244 times. "Western civilization" appears twice.

Also, no course in Spenser!  At great personal risk of an exploding aneurysm I am avoiding any Faerie Queene jokes, and will just ask if anyone would like to cover my bet that that Klingenstein guy couldn't pick Spenser out of a line-up that included Hulk Hogan, James Madison, and Dame May Whitty.