Peasant Revolt

Wherever you stand on Kunstler's dire predictions, ya gotta admit he paints a pretty picture:

Wait until summer gets underway and The New York Post gossip page resumes its coverage of hijinks in the Hamptons. The executives of Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan / Chase, and other dealers in fraudulent securities, plus the art world and show biz glitteratti who party together out there, might all find themselves the object of considerable grievance and resentment as the beaching season ramps up, and the limos roll around the charity lobster roasts, and the guests stray down the lawns, chardonays in hand, to plot divorce from their over-leveraged husbands.... God knows what seekers-of-vengence will be creepy-crawling the privet plantings along Gin Lane in the crepuscular gloom, searching for trophy wives to garrote.

Perhaps a bankrupt landscaping contractor from Lake Ronkonkoma, recently stiffed by a hedge fund manager over the installation of a half acre of pachysandra, will be arrested on the Wantagh Highway with blood on his sleeves and a high-C piano wire in his pocket.

Well, one can only hope, but the surveillance state and enhanced police powers, coupled with an utterly complaisant media that will swallow anything a mall-cop with a taser tells them, does not bode well for the rebellion. Besides, reg'lar folks may be too preoccupied with trying to hang on for dear life to worry about crashing the swells.

Here lies my third dissent from what I heard at the conference: since America is bankrupting itself so comprehensively at every level, the wished-for "funding" for the green rescue program will not be there in any case. Capital itself, as represented by Wall Street, is flying to pieces this year as its stock-in-trade of paper certificates loses legitimacy in the face of the overwhelming fact that the society behind that paper will be decreasingly capable of producing surplus wealth -- which is what capital is. The unwind of "positions" now underway among the big bankz is the process of previously anticipated capital accumulation vanishing down a black hole. It will be gone forever.

The first part of the paragraph should perhaps be untethered from the second. Any "green" economy that springs up in the wake of peak oil will most assuredly do it on the public teat. There may be the usual appearances of private-sector capitalization, but only gubmint largesse greases the sufficient wheels. Oil companies are content to cash their record profit checks, let refining and extraction infrastructure either dwindle away or lose EROEI, and bide their time until federal money in some form appears to motivate them to action.

So we'll pay for it, one way or the other, as we do right now. Even before the enhanced risk premiums that have led to wartime profiteering, there were always externalities subsumed by the public, in order to keep gas "cheap" as compared to the Euros with their public transportation and such.

The decoupling of global financial capital markets, while associated in some respects, seems to be an altogether different matter. That is simply a natural result of using imaginary money to bet on imaginary products; it's second- and third-order bookmaking. Nothing is actually produced but collections of guesses and percentage points. And it is only going to last so long as European and Chinese central banks continue to fund it out of rational self-interest.

But now they're pulling to cover their own side bets. The fat stock bumps here and there are erupting out of valleys; it's a buyer's market for federally bailed-out bags of crap like Bear Stearns. Hell, who wouldn't want to buy federally-secured stock at two bucks that was trading in the $70's just weeks ago? But obviously that won't hold, that's short-term speculators cashing in on a quick mark.

If the Chinese get sick of propping us up and lending us money to buy shit from them, or the major countries decide to ditch dollars for euros as reserve currency or oil trading, we are screwed royally. Or perhaps not; what such a situation would do is essentially force us into a position the British Empire found itself in nearly a century ago -- making a choice between guns and butter, having to live smarter and more modestly, realizing that everything comes from somewhere, that the only things generated out of thin air and happy thoughts are prayers and financial derivatives.

It might mean no more ginormous sorry-about-your-penis-mobiles, jacked-up guzzler toys carrying nothing to nowhere, which would be a real tragedy. And it might mean that an entire class of people who made a great deal of paper wealth by grifting each other and betting on it, would suddenly have to justify themselves. But we'll cope somehow, I'm sure.

Back Door Man

The bozos are up to their usual tricks:

As if to offer denial in the face of disaster -- and commit the U.S. to losing many more soldiers and Marines -- the Bush administration has begun negotiations with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for years, even decades, after President George W. Bush leaves office.

The negotiation, set to conclude this summer, will establish the basis for a long-term U.S. occupation of Iraq. According to the Bush administration, the Iraqi government requested a bilateral agreement to replace the expiring U.N. mandate for the occupation, which offended Iraqi sovereignty. Asked if there was any irony in preparing a plan to keep thousands of foreign soldiers in Iraq in the name of Iraqi sovereignty, a National Security Council official, who requested anonymity, replied, "Sure, but we plan to negotiate that aspect" of the agreement.

....

The Bush administration has less than a year in office, yet it is now negotiating a deal that will commit the U.S. to an open-ended continuation of its most momentous, and controversial, foreign-policy decision. At the very least, the accord will prove a thorny issue for any successor Democratic administration that wins election on a promise to end the war.

Which was probably the point -- if McCain wins, the country has lost its mind anyway, and endorsed Cheneyism after supposedly repudiating it for several years; if Clinton or Obama wins, they will be hemmed in from day one by an eleventh-hour agreement. Of course, that can be augmented or even circumvented with more mercenary units, and rotating regular troops home.

But the most glaring aspect of all this is that after five years, they're still making this up as they go along. There's scarcely a semblance of a plan, certainly not a proactive one, and not even a reactive or much of an adaptive one. It's just stick people in as needed, take credit and deflect or ignore blame. When Clausewitz declared that war was politics by other means, I guess the Bushies took him as literally as they possibly could.

Life's a Pitch and Then You Cry

Life outside the bubble.

Walmartyrs

The current non-political outrage of the week involves this poor family whose story sounds like a country song:

Debbie Shank breaks down in tears every time she's told that her 18-year-old son, Jeremy, was killed in Iraq.

The 52-year-old mother of three attended her son's funeral, but she continues to ask how he's doing. When her family reminds her that he's dead, she weeps as if hearing the news for the first time.

....

The family's situation is so dire that last year Jim Shank divorced Debbie, so she could receive more money from Medicaid.

Jim Shank, 54, is recovering from prostate cancer, works two jobs and struggles to pay the bills. He's afraid he won't be able to send their youngest son to college and pay for his and Debbie's care.

And, as you've probably already heard, Wal-Mart is seeking reimbursement for medical expenses incurred on the employee health plan.

Two years after the accident, Shank and her husband, Jim, were awarded about $1 million in a lawsuit against the trucking company involved in the crash. After legal fees were paid, $417,000 was placed in a trust to pay for Debbie Shank's long-term care.

Wal-Mart had paid out about $470,000 for Shank's medical expenses and later sued for the same amount. However, the court ruled it can only recoup what is left in the family's trust.

The Shanks didn't notice in the fine print of Wal-Mart's health plan policy that the company has the right to recoup medical expenses if an employee collects damages in a lawsuit.

....

The family's attorney, Maurice Graham, said he informed Wal-Mart about the settlement and believed the Shanks would be allowed to keep the money.

"We assumed after three years, they [Wal-Mart] had made a decision to let Debbie Shank use this money for what it was intended to," Graham said.

Okay, here's the thing. As awful as this story is, and as heartless as Wal-Mart is coming off (and believe me, we'll get to that), this is simply a case of a trusting family being taken to the cleaners by an incompetent -- if not outright unscrupulous -- lawyer.

Let's see if we have this straight: this assclown took 58.3% of the settlement, and for his services, he assumed that Wal-Mart was just going to good-faith their recoupment of this health-plan clause? And this clause, which is pretty standard stuff, went completely unnoticed? What exactly does it take to get a license to practice law in Mizurrah, a pulse and a stack of self-printed cards?

Seriously, what exactly did this guy do for these people for a 58.3% cut? It looks like he failed to read her health plan clauses and assumed that Wal-Mart was some sort of benevolent creature. A third-grader could have done that for free.

"The recovery that Debbie Shank made was recovery for future lost earnings, for her pain and suffering," Graham said.

"She'll never be able to work again. Never have a relationship with her husband or children again. The damage she recovered was for much more than just medical expenses."

And all he could get for all that was a million, more than half of which went in his pocket? Again, what is up with this Lionel Hutz crap, and why hasn't Jim Shank gone out and found another attorney to grind it out of his ass? I honestly can't see what this guy did to earn his keep. And I've never heard of a contingency lawyer taking over 40%, and even then only in lawsuits with higher payoffs.

Anyway, it seems pretty clear that Wal-Mart is well within their legal rights, and their duties to their stockholders. But come on, people, what's legal is not always what's ethical:

In 2007, the retail giant reported net sales in the third quarter of $90 billion.

Legal or not, CNN asked Wal-Mart why the company pursued the money.

Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley, who called Debbie Shank's case "unbelievably sad," replied in a statement: "Wal-Mart's plan is bound by very specific rules. ... We wish it could be more flexible in Mrs. Shank's case since her circumstances are clearly extraordinary, but this is done out of fairness to all associates who contribute to, and benefit from, the plan."

That's a crock of shit. Plans can be and are contingent upon external factors at times. Simley is really just saying that if they do a favor for the Shanks, they'll have to throw everyone a bone. I don't think that's true; these are obviously extraordinary circumstances, and considering that CEO Lee Scott makes enough to recoup that $470K in a very short week, perhaps Wal-Mart might reconsider its intractable stance.

Or not. I've never gotten the impression that the throngs of Martards have it in them to put their principles where their mouths are, and shop elsewhere. Something shiny will come along within the week, by which time Debbie Shank will have been reminded of her situation another half-dozen times, but be forgotten herself in the shuffle.

[Update: If you want to donate a few bucks to the Shanks, Wal-Mart Watch has set up a fund here. And again, while a write-in campaign might make people feel a bit better temporarily, and might even get Wal-Mart to give the Shanks a much-needed break, if people are truly morally disgusted, stop shopping there. It's better for you anyway; as the Rude Pundit points out, they are fundamentally unpleasant and oppressive in a lot of ways.

The only times I've ever been there is when we had a cat with a propensity for urinary tract infections, and for the last couple years of the cat's life, Wal-Mart was literally the only place in northern CA to carry the Purina UTI food. Since the cat died in 2006, there's been no need, and frankly, trudging through narrow, over-stocked aisles with people who can't afford the cheap shit they're buying is not my idea of a good time. I'd rather pay a little more and buy less stuff locally. I have too much stuff anyway. I think most of us do.

Also, I have been picking on the Shanks' lawyer, Maurice Graham, and Rude Pundit links to an interesting interview with Graham, which fleshes out a great deal of the story. The trucker was probably driving too fast, and Debbie Shank pulled out in front of him (going to yard sales, I read elsewhere), thus the liability was shared, and the trucking company was some podunk outfit that had the bare minimum required insurance, thus the measly payout. Accident reconstruction experts were required to properly assign liability, and no doubt that is recouped in the lawyer's fees, part of that 58.3% cut.

I still question Graham's assumption that Wal-Mart would just let the case go, but he's right in that it's strange how they waited around three years to initiate action. So I'll retract my unkind assertions about Graham earning his keep. It looks like he did what he could with a pretty bad hand to begin with. And it sucks that at the end of a series of incredibly horrible occurrences, the Shanks are basically at the mercy of Wal-Mart deigning to lift their corporate thumb. It might be interesting to see how this sort of situation is dealt with in a universal health care system, and how the costs would be subsumed in such a system (for example, the Shanks had to buy a wheelchair-accessible house). Just a sad story all the way around.]

A Friend In Greed

Shorter Richard Cougar Melloncamp Scaife:

I still think she's a lesbian vampire who had an affair with Vince Foster before she killed him with her rapier talons, but we might be able to play ball with Hillary Clinton, just as soon as we ratfuck Barack Obama.

Money

Awful nice of Comrade Bob Mugabe to do his part to make the good ol' American dollar look pretty damned good by comparison:

With inflation estimated at 200,000 percent -- easily the highest in the world -- Zimbabwe's currency is barely worth the paper it's printed on. (The largest Zimbabwean note, 10 million dollars, can't buy more than a couple of sodas.) Foreign currency runs this economy now, mainly the U.S. dollar and the South African rand, nearly all of it traded on the black market.

The government of longtime President Robert Mugabe, who faces a critical reelection test on March 29, has pegged the exchange rate at $1 to 30,000 Zimbabwean dollars. But the currency is losing value at such head-spinning speed that on the streets of Harare, one U.S. greenback will soon fetch about 2,000 times that.

I don't even want to try converting all that to euros, or loonies for that matter. Guess that "land reform" thing is doing about as well as expected. Where they've tried actual "parecon" schemes in South America, they sound like they've actually worked, and people finally have a tangible share in what they do. Mugabe just let every bozo with a machete take whatever wasn't nailed down, turning what was at least a decent economy under the predations of Ian Smith into just another sub-Saharan subsistence regime.

I Can Haz Dummycrats?

For what it's worth, it seems highly doubtful that these numbers will hold -- or are even fundamentally true.

Clinton supporters appear to be somewhat more reactive than Obama supporters. Twenty-eight percent of the former indicate that if Clinton is not the nominee -- and Obama is -- they would support McCain. That compares to 19% of Obama supporters who would support McCain if Obama is not the nominee -- and Clinton is.

But allowing for the likelihood that there is at least some truth to this, it behooves every faithful Dem with their god-bothering Thanksralph! plaint these past seven-plus years to keep each other in check now. Because scarcely a month after announcing his tilt at the windmill, Nader is all but forgotten. He will not remotely be a factor in any state. But even a vote for Nader would at least be a direct expression of principle. I have no idea what the hell a Clinton or Obama supporter going for McCain is thinking about anything. It is literally the dumbest fucking thing they could do, politically, intellectually.

The perfidious dipshits who plan on stamping their wittle feet if they don't get their preferred nom are invited to kindly go fuck themselves for a good long time. Anybody who claims to hate this war, to be tired of the malicious incompetence and indifference of the current junta, to desire improvement in practically every quality-of-life factor, cannot be an actual Democrat and then decide to vote for John McCain. Period. No exceptions. You have abdicated your responsibility to pay attention, and thus your right to be part of a rational debate.

McCain has made it clear that he is Bush without the MBA, Cheney with a couple of borscht-belt zingers. And to his credit, he has been quite upfront about all that. So there's no excuse for any of this "McCain Democrat" horseshit. It couldn't be any clearer. I cringe at the idea of another eight or even four years of the Clintons and their tedious games of triangulation and gutless parodies of idealism. And as well-intentioned as Obama appears to be, he needs to acquire some brawling skills if he's going to survive the big boys' game.

And really, neither Democrat is going to "fix" or "change" all that much, because Americans haven't quite hit rock-bottom enough to get their heads out of their asses. They still think someone can come along and return things to what they were. Eight years of magical thinking and brain-dead stupidity can have that collective effect.

But neither Clinton nor Obama, whatever their respective weaknesses, is nearly as likely to continue digging this hole and servicing the clump of superstitious goons that holds this country in political and intellectual stasis, whereas McCain has made it abundantly clear that he'd be perfectly happy to do exactly that. You want Fred Thompson on the Supreme Court and Chuck Norris for Secretary of Defense, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Secretary of State, then McCain's probably your guy. Cartoon people for a cartoon agenda.

Otherwise, these self-indulgent idiots need to grow the fuck up and pay attention to what each candidate actually stands for, not what you wish they stood for. The problem with democracy, American democracy in particular, is that too many individuals are under the impression their vote is some sort of idealized affirmation of how they see themselves, rather than a response to how things are, and how issues can be addressed.

Fuck Fred Phelps, Part 47,893

It's bad enough when some small-town asshole snaps and clubs his wife and young children to death like it ain't no thing:

Funeral services have been scheduled for this weekend for the six members of the Sueppel family, killed in a murder-suicide by the father, who had been facing embezzlement charges.

....

Steven Sueppel apparently beat his family to death with a baseball bat late Sunday or early Monday before driving the family minivan into a concrete pillar along Interstate 80 and killing himself.

But then the pond scum known as the Westboro BastardBaptist Church crawl out from under their rock to capitalize on this ugly situation.

The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., known for picketing funerals in protest of homosexuality, said in a news release that "God sent the shooter" to the Sueppel home as punishment for Iowa's sins, and that it would picket their funeral in a "respectful, lawful" manner.

Iowa City Police Sgt. Troy Kelsay said he thinks the group is attracted to the event because of Iowa City's "liberal stance" toward homosexuals and the media attention surrounding the Sueppel deaths, and that police would work to limit any intrusion upon the funeral. The best response is to ignore the group, Kelsay said.

Actually, I think the best response would be to wait until the next "service" in this cult of soulless freaks, bar the doors, and torch their outhouse of a "church". Failing that, hopefully every godless fag out there is counting the days 'til Ole Fred's overdue and hopefully excruciating death, when they commence with endless rounds of buttfucking and such on the old bastard's grave, until the grass is completely torn up and the dirt glazed and turned to mud with homo-chowder.

Hell, these inbred retards can't even get their fundamentalist hate right. There was no "shooter", assholes; the guy beat his children to death with a baseball bat, which means that the Phelps' evil, spiteful deity is as gratuitously cruel as they are.

Die already, you vile morons.

Five Years On

I don't know why the mediots persist in pestering Bush and his claque every time a "milestone" is "reached", implicitly saying that the 4000th troop killed is more or less notable than the 2197th, or that any of them are more or less valuable than a civilian child perforated by random fire. This is the business of death, and that business is wholly indiscriminate.

But to the matter at hand, Bush per usual displays an astounding capacity for the sort of magical thinking that has typically set American exceptionalists apart from most sentient bipeds:

President Bush today marked the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war with the message: "The world is better, and the US is safer."

....

He also claimed that the surge into Iraq, launched last year, had been a success in reducing attacks against US troops, restoring order, and opening the door to "a major strategic victory in the broader war" on extremism.

This is true only to the extent that the residents of the occupied country allow it to be so, and everyone, including Bush, knows this. The rest is simply wishful thinking, a vain attempt at saving face long after that face is gone.

There is no way a person can rationally defend Bush's preamble, and tellingly, Bush himself declines to do so, preferring instead to wallow in the more obvious refrains of "Saddam was an asshole!" that has spiced his stubbed-toe oratory almost since day one.

Blackout

I've been thinking about the big Obama speech since he made it. I thought about it in the context in which most white people perceive what they believe to be the "black experience", and I've thought about it in the context in which I observed what I presumed to be that same experience, spending childhood summers in places such as Compton and Bellflower and Phoenix, sometimes being literally the only white kid for ten or fifteen blocks.

Obama's speech cannot and should not be regarded in any other context but this: the media's interpretation of his speech is complete and utter bullshit, engineered to contrive contention and controversy out of the fairly mundane (yet incendiary if you ask the media rubes) rhetoric of Rev. Wright, especially when contrasted to the widely distributed "you brought this on yourselves" chunder from Falwell and Robertson immediately after 9/11. Funny how nobody bum-rushed the stage to repudiate those jowly motherfuckers. Indeed, the current Republican nominee repudiated his own words to give the commencement address at Falwell's clown college.

Now, Obama's primary mistake may simply lie in the fact that he chose to address Americans as if they were adults on this subject, which many of them most assuredly are not. People laughed at the irascible Archie Bunker back in the day, but what many fail to acknowledge is that a good chunk of 'murka really is Archie Bunker -- unrepentant in their ignorance and bigotry, although more than willing to go through the usual motions to demonstrate that they like the "good ones". This is concurrent with their insistent opinions on wimmins and queers; they know at least one of each that they can put up with, but are still for some reason apprehensive about giving all of them fundamental rights. Funny, that.

You're not really going to win with such people, because they aren't looking to be convinced. Still, Obama needed to stop the artificially induced bleeding, and after mulling over the text for a week, I still think he did very well. But what a certain part of the audience expected, to confirm their prejudices and apprehensions, was for him to give the entire speech in "izzle" talk, and perhaps sport a gold toof and a medallion or two. Maybe Obama can assuage their nonsensical fears by wearing a giant clock around his neck next time, so's everyone knows exactly what time it is.

It's times like these when I remember that motherfuckers get exactly the kind of gubmint they deserve, because they lack the testicular fortitude to stand up on their hind legs and expect -- no, demand -- something better.

Crash Test Dummies

Every year there's at least one of these goofy-ass looks at how the Wonderlic test affects NFL draft prospects.

Look, if you told me I had to take the SAT cold tomorrow morning, I wouldn't come close to getting the 1270 I got in high school. If, however, you gave me a few weeks to study and take some practice tests and such, I might surpass that score.

Ryan Clady knew this Wonderlic test was coming. He had plenty of time to take practice tests and get himself ready. That 13 indicates that he did not put in the necessary study time. If he didn't study for this, what else won't he study for?

You know, I not only didn't study for my SAT, I refused to study for it. Can't really explain why, something along the line that studying is for pussies. And I was pretty hungover when I actually took the test. I got a 1300, fourth-highest in my school, sixty points from the top score in the school. So much for studying; the three guys who scored above me studied for fucking months, and they were all pretty damned smart to begin with.

And there are plenty of sites where you can take the Wonderlic, which is also used as a corporate evaluation tool. I decided to see what all the hoo-ha was about some time ago, and got a 42 (out of a possible 50). Not terribly difficult. Suck on that, Dan Marino!

And yet. Forgetting that the Wonderlic, being a logic test (essentially a poor man's IQ test, which themselves are no great shakes), cannot by definition be truly "studied" for the way conventional tests can, the fact is that these tests do not sufficiently measure a person's ability to throw or carry an oblong pleather ball downfield, nor block nor tackle.

The best way to test a person's ability to do those things is to -- bear with me here -- put them on the field and have them do those things. It's not that complicated. I know a lot about football, and I can sport the test scores, and I'm not a small guy. But there was never a time where I would have been anything but useless on a football field. I just don't have the knack for it.

Tests in general are overrated; people are either test-takers or they're not. Spelling bees are a prime example of this syndrome. Bad spelling is an annoyance, to be sure, but spelling in and of itself is not a terribly marketable skill. This is not a sour-grapes thing; I was a two-time California state finalist, and three-time regional champion. It's just that it is a correlative rather than causative skill. There are plenty of very intelligent people who can't spell for shit.

Same with the Wonderlic. Offensive linemen (centers in particular), believe it or not, are generally the most intelligent people on a football team. But football intelligence is not the same as the associative and spatial intelligence sought out in conventional IQ tests.

And still, twenty years out of school, I say the same thing -- studying is for sucks. Either you know the material or you don't; either you read what you were supposed to read or you didn't. The idea that cramming is some sort of substitute for actual understanding of the material is itself a cheat.

Belle of the Balls

For the amount of money the Jaguars shelled out for Jerry Porter, one would expect him to be as happy as he appears to be. And yet, as any attentive Raiders fan knows, this guy was a tremendously under-utilized player, and a consummate Raider. Shit, he expressed his displeasure with management by parking in Al Davis' reserved spot. That alone should have netted him a substantial raise.

“This is me. I smile a lot. I’m happy to be here, too,” Porter said. “It’s good to be back to expecting to win instead of hoping to win. When you have to play this team, you better bring your hard hat because it’s going to be a slugfest. I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t want to be on a team like that.”

For some reason, since the Raiders have been on their laughable half-decade (and counting) slump, I have watched some of the "cat" teams as seconds, especially Jacksonville and Carolina. And I was rooting for the Jags this post-season; one of the brief highlights while my family was holed up in a hotel room during the massive storm at the beginning of this year was watching the Jaguars squeak by the Steelers in the playoffs.

So while I've picked on Randy Moss for his perfidy as a player and teammate, the opposite stands for Jerry Porter. He's a guy who has several great seasons ahead of him, and has managed to land with a team that can make the most of that. The Jaguars have a very good team, and an excellent QB in David Garrard, and Porter may actually help them win the division finally.

Week In Review

It's hard to complain sometimes. Drinking profusely, doing yardwork in truly fantastic weather, and exploring the new and severely tightened job market have all conspired to make this a glorious week.

Coupled with all that, having to dick around with my hooptie of a computer has strangely allowed me to get several drafts in the can, yet not get 'round to actually posting them. Shit happens, hence the extra quiet on the ugly front. And some (probably all) have already expired their shelf-life; this is, after all, a quick man's game. So I'm currently in the process of flipping coins to trash a few, post others, and intersperse sage football observations in the mix. This is, sadly, the way I roll.

Nerds of a Feather

30 Rock is a pretty solid show with a lot of genuinely funny moments, and I dig Tina Fey, and not just in the "no no, leave the glasses on" milfhunter sense. But here, as amusing as all the butt-hurt commenters are, she is a bit out of line, not in the general comparative sense but because their styles as writers and performers seem so similar. They both utilize self-effacing, nebbishy humor, and seem to have each become nerd sex symbols in the process. For someone who appears to be fairly organized and intelligent, Fey's comment shows a surprising lack of self-awareness.

And basically, if you took Weekend Update and made it, well, funnier, you'd have many of The Daily Show's strongest elements. A good chunk of WU's schtick consists of the same lukewarm choir-preaching to a self-selecting audience, just as Fey murmurs about TDS. Indeed, WU and TV Funhouse have frequently been the only watchable things about the show, especially in its current heavily-padded incarnation. (This is actually somewhat surprising, since there are very good performers in the cast, but there's generally not much for them to work with.)

If anything, TDS and Colbert have generally strived for an "all killer, no filler" approach, with decent results most of the time. That alone places it well past SNL since at least the Phil Hartman days. Again, though, this is not nearly the big deal the kids are making out of it. Before you know it, Fey will be on to plug Baby Mama, Stewart will give her a gentle nudge, she'll kiss his ass, and all will be right with the world. I mean, if Jon can put up with Billy Kristol's shameless horseshit, Tina Fey's off-the-cuff comment should be nothing.

Things We Like

I fuckin' looooves me some Time Bandits like Rosie O'Donnell loves a fifth Devil Dog. Awesome movie.

Dancin' Fools

I've said this many times before, but as contemptuous as I am of the whole "reality" teevee thing, some aspects in particular are simply confounding, such as the dancing thing. Okay, first, if you have the word "stars" in your title, this should at the very least mean people who, if they were not on your show, would be doing something else. I did see Steve Guttenberg on a Law & Order a couple weeks ago; other than that, not so much. Hell, I've been on game shows and I can't dance either. Do I qualify?

But really it's the idea that watching people who used to be moderately famous try to dance -- and get critiqued by people no one's ever heard of -- would be entertaining for more than five minutes. (No doubt this is in the usual context of reality tropes that I have gleaned second- and third-hand: pregnant pauses, protracted explanations, contrived diversions, anything to stretch ten minutes of actual material into forty, plus commercials.) It sounds like something that the kids find on the YouTube and talk about for a couple weeks, like the fat kid working on his Jedi moves in the garage.

But once the novelty's over, you're watching the guy from Police Academy dance, which must be only slightly more exciting than watching him take a dump. And we're several years into this, um, phenomenon, which says as much about the viewing audience as it does about the laziness of the network programmers. To each their own and all, and I'm certainly not insisting on the elitist rigors of Mawsterpiece Theatre. But I work ten hours a day at a job I tolerate just like everyone else. And when I turn to the nutworks at 9PM and my choices are people dancing, people losing weight, and people doing whatever the fuck it is they do on Big Brother, I start to wonder more and more why it is I pay sixty bucks a month for satellite service when I could just boost my Netflix to the top level and pocket the difference. If it weren't for football and Daily Show/Colbert Report, I'd probably do just that.

Used to be that the minimum requirements for entertainment were that people were doing something that you probably couldn't do yourself -- act, write, tell stories, do stunts, direct, etc. This is like holding something sparkly in front of a mirror and staring at it for several years.

Sex Tape Thing

A Kristin Davis sex tape? Really? This would have nothing to do with her movie (a movie no one aside of urban cougars, fag hags, and gay men will see, but will nonetheless determine the viability of future HBO franchise movies, no doubt) coming out shortly, would it?

Ah well, a hummer's a hummer, n'est-ce pas?

Does A Bear Shit in the Economy?

The bailout has begun:

Q: Why would the Fed [guarantee $30 billion worth of Bear Stearns' nearly worthless assets]?

A: Experts say the risks of inaction were far greater. With investors backing away from anything linked to the U.S. mortgage market, the Fed aims to prevent the value of those investments from plunging even further, which could cause widespread fallout among big banks. "The problem is that unless the major financial (companies) are kept solvent, the economy will suffer (so much) that everybody's livelihood will be affected," said Peter Walliston, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Q. Does this mean my tax dollars are being used to bail out Wall Street?

A. Not exactly. The Fed has vast resources on its own, thanks to its ability to sell Treasury securities that investors consider extremely safe. Still, some fear the mortgage crisis that engulfed Bear Stearns will soon spread to other companies and ultimately test the Fed's resources, especially after the central bank last week said it would lend up to $200 billion in exchange for mortgage investments.

Q. Might taxpayers ultimately be on the hook?

A. Potentially. The Federal Reserve's actions could augur much broader government action to stabilize the mortgage market. Calls are growing in Congress for government-funded efforts to help borrowers refinance out of troubled loans.

You know, there's a much shorter answer to all these questions: Because they can. What the fuck are you gonna do about it, bunky -- turn off Dancing with People Who Used to be Sorta Well-Known and register your disapproval somehow? Not bloody likely.

I don't know if it's a more standardized reference in financial circles, but I like the "shadow financial system" descriptive Roubini employs:

All these institutions look similar to banks because they are highly leveraged and borrow short and in liquid ways and invest or lend long and in illiquid ways. This shadow financial system is, like banks, subject not only to credit and market risk but also to rollover or liquidity risk, i.e. the risk deriving from having a large stock of short term liabilities (relative to liquid assets) that may not roll over if creditors decide to withdraw their credits to these institutions.

Unlike banks this shadow financial system does not have access to the lender of last resort support of the central bank as these are not depository institutions regulated by the central banks. What we are now observing – with the case of Bear Stearns and the recent disaster among SIVs, conduits, run on a number of hedge funds and money market funds is a generalized liquidity run on this shadow financial system.

Although "casino running on borrowed money" is also pretty accurate.

Finally, First Draft has an excellent takedown of the billionaire welfare queens.

Let me ask those questions, those questions we ask of every beneficiary of the smallest drop of government assistance. Let me ask why this is the ONLY scenario in which our parsimonious bullshit about personal responsibility, about choices and consequences, about "survival of the fittest" and other forms of sicko math, need not fucking apply.

Let me ask just how the unholy fuck it is that we can quibble every single day for hours over lunches that would feed a small village for a week about the ten dollars a year we give to some social program and how it's going to waste because somebody fed us an anecdote about somebody somewhere faking their need. Let me ask just how the bloody fucking blue hell we can get all worked up over how the homeless people downtown don't deserve our pennies because one of them said something rude to us on the way out of a store, and how they're just gonna spend our 65 cents on booze and then pee on the stoop. Let me ask how on earth we can take all the time it takes to think up all the ways we think up to sit in judgement on every individual case we hear about, about how that person just didn't work harder, didn't suffer enough, didn't earn "our" money, didn't deserve "our" charity, didn't bleed in front of us enough, and all the while, all the fucking while, we give it away by the millions and never ask where it goes. All the while.

And the minute the majority of rubes out there finally disabuse themselves of this notion that each of them will somehow get a cut of all this phantom finance and percentage-point diddling, maybe then we can cut these grifters loose once and for all. Not that waiting until we were $2 trillion deep into two endless wars wasn't bad enough. Maybe it does take going under to encourage fools to finally learn to swim, and let the weasels drown.

Last Throe Update

Looks like the welcoming committee came out for Big Time's surprise visit:

A female suicide bomber apparently targeting Shiite worshippers killed at least 33 people and wounded at least 50 in Karbala on Monday, according to an Interior Ministry official.

....

Also Monday, two American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, officials said.

The incident occurred about 12:20 p.m. as the soldiers were "conducting a route-clearance combat operation north of Baghdad," according to a news release.

The names of the soldiers were not immediately released.

Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in the Iraqi capital Monday on an unannounced visit.

Cheney told reporters that the five years in Iraq since the war's start has been "well worth the effort."

I'm sure Cheney's financial advisor would be happy to confirm that.

The Straight Talk Express also paid a surprise visit, because nothing says "success" like having to skulk in unannounced.

McCain traveled there with Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, and Joseph Lieberman, I-Connecticut, both of whom serve on the Armed Services Committee with McCain, the committee's ranking member.

You have to give these people credit -- at least you know exactly where they stand. There is no room for any confusion on this, and the harmonic convergence of Cheney and the Straight Talk posse says it all. Any bullshit about disaffected apostate Democrats not clearly understanding that POST openly promises more of the same should be slapped down instantly. Your wittle feelings about Clinton or Obama, distasteful as either or both may seem at times, do not matter. Either you want to prolong the current regime's efforts, or you don't. It's that simple.

Conspiracy Guy Notes and Errata

Regardless of topic, Rigorous Intuition is never dull, and the same is true of its chat fora, this one discussing an interesting, appropriately ominous article in the Financial Times:

John Lipsky, the IMF's first deputy managing director, said: "We must keep all options on the table, including the potential use of public funds to safeguard the financial system."

The statement by the senior IMF official marks the second radical policy intervention from the IMF this year. It had previously called on governments to consider using fiscal policy to offset the impact of the credit crisis on growth.

Mr Lipsky said: "I fully recognise an appropriate role for public sector intervention after market solutions have been exhausted."

He urged policymakers to "think the unthinkable" and prepare now for what they would do if the worst case scenarios materialised and "low probability but high impact events" threatened to jeopardise global financial stability.

He warned of the risk that a "global financial decelerator" could take hold, in which rising defaults and margin calls from lenders triggered forced asset sales, driving down the value of collateral and forcing further forced sales.

The speculation as to what such a catalyzing event could be is reasonable enough, I suppose. It would not take much to kick over a war with Iran; an Iranian-backed Sadrist strapped with a dirty bomb penetrating the Green Zone would be pretext enough. And Poor Ol' Straight Talk has already begun establishing rhetorical turf in the brief border incursions between Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia recently. Venezuela being the third-largest oil exporter to the U.S., if Chàvez suddenly gets any bright ideas about turning off the tap, or even just screwing up production with his nationalization programs, his Bolivarian dream may be brought unceremoniously to heel.

But whatever. We can all nurse our pet theories till the cows come home. What I find interesting is the notion that, in the face of such a catalyzing event, Le Dauphin and his éminence grise would have an excuse to suspend elections and retain power, which presumes that they are looking for such an excuse. Folks, I think this is making rhetorical toothpicks out of logs, as it were; you can be quite certain that, should a Democrat happen to accede to the figurehead position come November, he or she will assiduously continue most of the operational prerogatives currently in play. Obama (and perhaps Clinton) is surely less predisposed to mindlessly attack another country, but with the required pretext, he would have little choice.

There is no need whatsoever to suspend or postpone elections. Indeed, maintaining their due course is critical to continuing the notion that they matter in any substantial way, other than elites sending signals amongst themselves. Plus, without the election industry, consultants would have to return to their former occupations, and there's only so many hobos to blow.

Why on earth would Bush want a third term anyway? He's done his bit; he'll spend a couple years scooping up money on the rubber-chicken circuit with Benito Giuliani and then amble off to Crawford -- or perhaps Paraguay.