January 27, 2012
In lieu of the regularly scheduled Newt Gingrich post, go to the NYT's Opinionator blog, where writer Timothy Egan writes the best, most honest, truest (and most snazzy) takedown of Newt Gingrich I've read since the last time Newt Gingrich was relevant. It's titled "Deconstructing a Demagogue," and that is a very accurate description of the piece.Have some:
Gingrich, as he showed in a gasping effort in Thursday night’s debate in Florida, is a demagogue distilled, like a French sauce, to the purest essence of the word’s meaning. He has no shame. He thinks the rules do not apply to him. And he turns questions about his odious personal behavior into mock outrage over the audacity of the questioner.After inventing, and then perfecting, the modern politics of personal destruction, Gingrich has decided now to bank on the dark fears of the worst element of the Republican base to seize the nomination — using skills refined over four decades.
And of course it is Gingrich's odious lack of character that would enable him to read the whole thing and be entirely unmoved by it — perhaps attack the American-ness of Egan, or change the subject with a well-placed racist dogwhistle But Newt (and those that love him) is certainly Exhibit A in the inquiry over why the rest of the world thinks that Americans are feckless idiots.
Posted at 02:48 PM
Every eighteen months or so I stub my toe on a new band that I don't see getting a lot of air from the usual media outlets and they're so good that they set my hair on fire. Now is one of those times, and the Darcys, from Calgary, BC, is that band.They are trippy and textured and make a slow quiet noise. I will compare them to Destroyer's Kaputt even though Kaputt (pretty much the best album of last year) has a deeper/wider range of influences. Atmospheric yet tuneful, let's say. (My iTunes sez that it's "rock/shoegaze," so I'll include that even though that's a pretty wide net you're casting there, sir.)
The album that you absolutely have to here is Aja.nbsp; And yes, THAT Aja. It's a cover of the entire Steely Dan classic. And you might be skeptical of a shoegaze cover of Steely Dan tunes — in fact, you should be. But it works, and if there is a finer rendition of "Deacon Blues" out there, then I'm a ham sandwich.
It's streaming until Monday on AOL's The Spinner, although the band let me know via tweet that's it's for sale/free download at their site, as well.
Posted at 09:32 AM
January 26, 2012
Another thing that happened yesterday is that Newt Gingrich made news without being pompous, deluded or plain mendacious (for once) when he told some Floridians in the Spaceport area that were he to be president for two terms, we'd have a base on the moon by the end of the second one.Pandering aside, the proposal is a little out of character for Gingrich, for specific economic reasons (which I suppose Gingrich could sidestep if he were to entirely privatize NASA).
Which gets to the true flaw of his plan: even if, in an effort reminiscent of our effort to put a man on the moon in ten years during the Sixties, could somehow manage to design/test/implement some sort of safe permanent moon-bound base, we don't have a way to get there and back. (I've done a little research on this.) And forget the space shuttle: even if we could magically unretire the remaining space shuttles, they're not designed to go above low-earth orbit (putting them about 380,000 km short of the moon, or, "most of the way"). Even the big guys we use to put satellites in orbit A) are not recyclable and B) are still hundreds of thousands of km shy of lunar orbit. It'd be like having a mission to get from Baltimore to San Francisco while only having a conveyance designed to get you as far as the end of your driveway.
So yes: a lunar base would be awesome (and useless, until we figure out how to get precious metals off the moon back to here), but eight kinds of implausible.
Which is not the kind of thing to dissuade Newt Gingrich, of course, on his crusade to bestow dignity on the human race for the first time.
Posted at 05:11 PM
Where to start with the heaping heap of yesterday's news? How about with Gov. Jan Brewer.She's the governor of Arizona, and a controversial figure down there—heavy on the GOP firebrandism, very immigrant unfriendly. The president is visiting the state, and yesterday the governor met him on the tarmac and engaged in a finger-pointing dispute with him. There's no love lost between them, she's a bit of an insane person, etc., etc.—there's not a whole lot of there there when it comes to the story. It's a bit of a yawn.
But I feel like I have to bring it up because of my pre-presidential-run fascination with Michele Bachmann: Jan Brewer is playing for national conservative attention and eventual national campaigns for office (or at least lucrative speaking fees on a national basis). For you and me, to badger the president after immediately after he deplanes and in front of TV cameras is a lapse in manners, but to others, it's the equivalent of Bachmann being all over President Bush like ugly on a gorilla five years ago.— It's a strategic introduction to the base of the Republican Party, who view such un-niceties as a positive quality.
Don't bother remembering her name; you'll be seeing plenty of it over the next twelve months, and even more thereafter.
Posted at 09:38 AM
January 25, 2012
On one of my social media feeds (could've been any, really), some dude put up a post about how an economics professor has a class that "insisted that Obama’s socialist economic practices worked," so the prof says that the entire class will get the same grade based on the average grade of everyone, and as the semester progresses the average grade keeps falling (because the lazy get lazier and the achievers want a free ride, see) and then eventually everyone fails.Now, this account is labeled as a "parable," so we'll have to shut up about, "Pictures or it didn't happen!" But the author, in case the reader was unsure as to the purpose of a parable in the first place, ends with five lessons the reader is supposed to learn:
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2012 elections.
I'm not linking/IDing this because I'm assuming the dude means well, and this argument is not exactly a novel one, and one that you find without looking very hard.
And I could hammer away at his takeaways (such as, I would call a more favorable tax rate for capital gains as the very definition of "receiving without working for," or, are we counting potable water and sewage disposal as things the government gives? etc.), that the refutations are also out there and easy to find. Actually, the president had a nice little passage relevant to this last night:
We don’t begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get a tax break I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference — like a senior on a fixed income, or a student trying to get through school, or a family trying to make ends meet. That’s not right.
But what I do find even more annoying than the thinly veiled greed and disregard for others displayed by those worried about the trammeling of the fundamental rights of the rich to rig the game is speciousness. Believe what you want about about how society should operate, but you don't get to make up your own personal fairy tale and then cite it as proof of your righteousness. No one is entitled to their own axioms. Because, you know what, at my college economics class, a bunch of us were yelling at our fatcat professor about Marxism Now!, so he said he'd give us all the same average grade, and we ended up with a A-, because we were a bunch of fucking college students and therefore pretty smart/privileged to fucking begin with.
Parable!
If you got some data that supports the notion that the social safety net is somehow toxic, or that the trickle-down economy has any trickle to it at all, then please: share. Otherwise, there are plenty of website comments pages (New York Post is one I'd recommend) that need more commenters.
Posted at 09:52 AM
January 24, 2012
Hey, here's something creepy. Last week, I noticed that jailed polygamist Warren Jeffs, who has declared himself spiritual head of a renegade Mormon sect fashioned as "The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," took out an ad in newspapers imparting some important information: Namely, while imprisoned in Texas, he's been talking to Jesus. And Jesus has got some things he'd like us to know!For example, the Eastern Seaboard? It will be tsunamied. Phoenix? Volcanoed. And Cincinnati? Removed from the map. Plus tons more apocalypitca!
Ordinarily I'd hunt down whatever whack-job website they're running, but this time I don't have to, as some kind soul decided to plot all the Jeffs/Jesus disasters on a Google map, which is a true service to we who are about to perish in flames/water/whichever.
Go check for yourself! And maybe send Jeffs a note down in Palestine, Texas where he is incarcerated, and he'll put a good word in with Jesus for you.
(Via Ellis.)
Posted at 12:53 PM
January 23, 2012
You know how you've been sitting around all day wishing that you could read 3,000 words about the history of Chinese food in America? Well, almost good news: I wrote something like that for The Awl. It's a couple hundred words short of three grand, but hopefully long enough that someone will leave me a TL;DR (because TL;DR is the HEIGHT OF WIT!)And since you're all so nice all the time, here's a free tibdit that I could not fit in: you know the packets of soy sauce that come with your moo goo gai pan or your orange beef? They are made entirely without soy beans, in the industrial food production equivalent of test tubes. So if you have a soy intolerance, maybe you can eat that stuff, and save the bucks you've been spending on soy-free versions from the health food store. Also, ick.
But I do not wish to extend the ick to Chinese cuisine in general, by which I am obsessed. The fake-soy sauce is made in a factory in New Jersey, so there's your ick right there.
And happy Year of the Dragon.
Posted at 04:55 PM
January 21, 2012
Today is the South Carolina primary, which is pretty much SC's only tourism industry once you get away from the coast. And it's all over the headlines, how Newt's surging and Mitt's flagging, and how SC is a truly red state looking to anoint the eventual nominee.And of course it's a red state; you've heard the applause/boo lines from SC debates (food stamp president = YAY/Golden Rule diplomacy = BOO), and President Obama has no chance to carry the state this November.
But I heard a news story on the radio that gave Obama's approval rating in the state, and I thought I misheard, so I double-checked. NBC/Marist has the president with approval of 40% of likely voters, and the most recent Winthrop Poll gives Obama an approval rating of 44.8% among SC registered voters, which is higher than that of the sitting Republican Go. Nikki Haley. Neither one is over fifty percent, which some say is the bar set for reelecting a president, but for a black socialist/Muslim/freedom-hating president to poll that close to fifty in an election year is what i would call pretty awesome.
I find it highly implausible that Obama could ever carry that state, but if those are "Obama's terrible numbers" that pundits keep talking about, then I'm still looking for the terrible.
Posted at 08:54 AM
January 20, 2012
I promise to leave politics behind for a post or two, but in light of the reaction to last night's debate (yeah see, the candidates debate, publicly, to give voters one or two chances to see them compared to other candidates), two quick thoughts:First is, Newt Gingrich is a textbook sociopath. There's not an aw-shucks in him, nor an ounce of cynicism. He truly believes that what's good for Newt is what's good for the country, because he's here to save us. I may be a bit late on this, but dudeman is certifiable, in the sense of they're-coming-to-take-me-away-ha-ha.
And second, Newt is in a pretty good position with regard to the nomination. I don't think he's going to win, but I no longer think it impossible.
Thank God It's Friday.
Posted at 09:48 AM
January 19, 2012
Hey, for once the five minutes I set myself aside coincides with actual breaking news, as Rick Perry drops out of the race, suggesting that the fifteen people that still want Rick Perry for president instead Newt Gingrich.Rick Perry was fun to make fun of, but at least he can go back to Texas still never having lost an election, as he didn't make it past the preliminaries on this one. Maybe a talk show on Fox, or at least public access in the Dallas/Fort Worth area?
And Newt: as far as he goes, you know that no good thing has ever happened to (such as an endorsement) that he did not fully deserve and fully anticipate, because THAT'S HOW DESTINY WORKS.
Speaking of Newt, there's a bit of last weekend's debate that I caught in an audio clip, and I found it very Newt:
Invoking the memory of former US president Andrew Jackson, whose face was sliced by a British officer's sword during the American War of Independence, Gingrich said Jackson knew what to do with America's enemies: "kill them."
Which is of course why the colonies successfully invaded and conquered the British Isles in 1783. Ladies and gentlemen, the wit and wisdom of four-year Assistant Professor of History for West Georgia College, Newt Gingrich.
Posted at 10:06 AM
January 18, 2012
I do not have the technical facility to actually pull the plug on this site for the span of a day. I suppose that I could look it up, but that's not how I'm spending my time these days. Also I'm not so much inclined to refrain from posting, as any time I can get a post out of me for Titivil is a lucky time for me.But the two Internet blacklist bills before the House and Senate — the Stop Internet Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, respectively — are wrong-headed land-grabs by the behemoths of the entertainment industry (the MPAA and the RIAA, mostly). Why are they wrong? I defer to the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
As drafted, the legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet's underlying infrastructure. The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to block users' attempts to reach certain websites' URLs. In response, third parties will woo average users to alternative servers that offer access to the entire Internet (not just the newly censored U.S. version), which will create new computer security vulnerabilities as the Internet grows increasingly balkanized.
Basically, the movie studios and the major record labels want independent police authority. They want to have law enforcement at their beck and call, and they want IP infringement to be treated in the same way that physical crimes against persons are. (Which is funny, because physical person is exactly what the corporations that comprise the studios and labels are not.)
The good news? I think the entertainment industry has overplayed their hand. (FD: the entertainment industry is where I make the bulk of my money.) As unpacked by the Hollywood Reporter's Eriq Gardner, Big Entertainment basically bought this legislation without public comment, keeps citing crap justification like, "Overseas piracy is costing American jobs!" (uh, yeah, no), and basically has been heavy-breathing like Darth Vader.
So maybe this outcome will not be as dire as the outcomes to which we are accustomed.
And yes, consider this site dark for the day, even though it isn't, and even though I think I have another post before the end of the day.
Posted at 10:16 AM
January 17, 2012
While I managed to yet again miss a Republican presidential debate (sorting the sock drawer!) I heard whisper thatBut what's even more awesome is this comment in a NYT story on the GOP's appeal to blacks in SC from a consultant named Chip Felkel, which comment pretty sums up the GOP's difficulties with issues of race:
“It would be nice if I thought black voters would give the Republicans more due as the party of Lincoln,” said Chip Felkel, a Republican consultant in Greenville, who is unaffiliated with any campaign.
Mr. Felkel runs a snazzy little marketing/consulting firm down there in South Carolina. I wonder how much this firm charges to tell you that it's the fault of black voters that they don't so much like the GOP?
Posted at 09:54 AM
January 16, 2012
Here are some useless but interesting things about this Panera that I attend early mornings when I find myself in Bethlehem, PA (in order to gain access to the Internet):First, it's actually located in this little elbow of natural splendors. Even though it's fifty yards from an Interstate-sized highway, it's built overtop of a stream that goes by the name of Monocacy Creek, where the creek kind of meanders to the south on its way to the Lehigh River. For some reason, this stretch of the creek is the home to a large family of ducks that paddle around, and a flock of geese that laze there when they're not pooping on the golf course adjacent. This is much more fun to look at than the inside of a subway car.
Also, and I swear this is the first time this has happened (and I was here yesterday), but this particular Panera has instituted piped-in elevator music. Most of it sounds like the kind of thing you hear on The Weather Channel when they're running the forecast loop and not some silly reality TV show, though I did hear something that sounded like a popular singer/songwriter of the day, which is what made me notice this mild annoyance in the first place. Though there was that stretch of three months when I was nineteen when I decided that maybe there was something TOO this adult contemporary thing, so maybe I'm flashing back pretty hard.
I usually sit pretty close to the coffee station, and watching the traffic pile up around that is like watching the Major Deegan at rush hour. Americans are bad at queueing, at all times.
The tagline for their Steel Cut Oatmeal on the display advertising is, "A Better for You Breakfast." (Capitalization theirs.) Does that need a hyphen? Like, as opposed to breakfast for someone else? Is it a play on the phrase Good for you? Do they have something against the word for? It's a bad tagline, and someone should be thrown into Monocacy Creek over it.
Dude I totally worked the chain retail/service jobs for a good couple post-college years, and watching the employees of this here Panera (or, Pantera as it is called in some quarters) it is impossible not to feel some quiet solidarity, to corner each one of them as they refill the coffee urns and tell them, "It gets better." Not that those jobs were without the good times. There was fun to be had. But they were weirdly like high school without the learning, and it made you feel like you were an item on a production line and there was no way out. I do though have to except this solidarity from the two employees on every shift who are over sixty. That is some Great Recession shit that did not exist twenty years ago, and I'm not entirely sure that it does get better from that.
It's PANERA, not PANERA'S. The apostrophe in brand- and trade-names is an artifact.
Posted at 08:28 AM
January 15, 2012
Last night I stopped by the Barnes & Noble in Easton, PA, a last-minute gift acquisition foray for the final Christmas (obsv.) event of the season.We walked in and something looked different. It's about as big as your average non-NYC B&N, and it has the prerequisite Nook stations dominating the front of the store, just like the one I was at pre-Christmas in Williamsburg, VA. But, it seemed like it had more room. I've been to this particular store for eight or so years, and the aisles, between the rows of books, between the display tables and stand-ups, were wider.
It didn't fully hit me until I went back to the DVD/CD section, to browse and pick out something new and good for the bf of my step-sister-in-law, (both) of whom I'm quite fond. Where there was once a modest but decent selection — three of for rows of bins, divided into pop/country/classical/etc. now there was one side of a standing rack devoted to new releases, and one side of a standing rack devoted to everything else. There was zero chance that I'd be able to pick anything out of that.
And then I looked around the rest of the store: the case was the same everywhere (other than periodicals, weirdly, and the toy section, which is a new, non-book section put in a couple years ago). Just from experience working in bookstores for four or five post-college years, I'd say that the stock on the floor of that particular B&N has been reduced by fifteen to twenty-five percent.
There could be a bunch of reasons for that, but the only one that makes sense to me is that that store will not be there in a year. The square footage of that place is fixed and not reducible, and the return structure of the book business is not exactly punishing when it comes to unsold stock — almost an incentive from distributors to overstock. And considering the depth of the backlist that should be sitting on a shelf in case someone wants to buy it, the reason why you slash available product is so that when you pull the plug you have less product to fire-sale.
This is a realization that I hope is totally wrong-headed, but it seems to follow that book-buying (the physical books, the ones you can keep and lend to friends, or even resell) is on the verge of becoming a boutique experience.
Posted at 09:19 AM
January 14, 2012
I keep finding myself in the strange position of agreeing with Henry Blodget, he of the Business Insider website which is an unqualified success, what with its content aggregating, author misrepresentation and slideshow crimes against humanity. The reason why is that, despite his Wall Street background, he is one of the few that line up behind Paul Krugman in Krugman's insistence that the Friedmaniacal austerity being proscribed to the economies of the Western world is a wrong thing.Take this aside in this rhetorical question posed to Krugman concerning debt loads:
The U.S.'s public infrastructure is in an embarrassing state of repair. It's also about a half-century behind the state-of-the-art. Spending a few trillion dollars over the next several years to bring our infrastructure up to date would help the country for decades. It would also put millions of Americans back to work and pump trillions of dollars back into the economy. It would help ALL Americans, not just those in specific industries or socio-economic groups. And unlike debt incurred to prop up consumer consumption, the new debt incurred for this infrastructure buildout could, in large part, be secured by the infrastructure itself.
Granted, the piece is a (gentle) objection to the concept that debts don't matter, given how current situations do not resemble those of the past, but even in that it's more a hand raised during a lecture than it is a screed.
And as to the point of a massive investment in infrastructure, that one's a giant duh, and it's a crime that such a thing is so virulently opposed by the GOP in general. : Do they do so on the grounds of opposing anything that would help a pre-2012 election, or because any public employment is a bad thing? Not sure if there's a Republican honest enough to say so out loud. But as to the first, the thought that there's no political price to pay for that down the road is Newt Gingrich-levels of juvenile, and as to the second, even David Koch's limos gotta drive on something, and if you want an example of the efficiency of markets as applied to infrastructure, drive the length of the Indiana Turnpike and tell me how much poorer you are.
It is a time of strange bedfellows, and as much as I can't imagine agreeing with Blodget on much, he's pretty spot on when it comes to reacting to the Great Recession.
Posted at 12:12 PM