Still don't know what Sarah reads. Well, good news is that I'll have more time to work on this blog, bad news is that not quite so busy these days, though I still have my regular job.

I almost feel like wearing black these days to mourn the passing of America. What sad days these are, when the GOP feels a divine purpose to abandon any form of comity in our civic discourse and conduct.

Still swamped with work. Money's nice, especially this time to year. Marveling at the reception accorded to sequester Sarah. She says the birth certificate is fair game. Here's a fair question: what does Sarah read. She talks about this constantly, but she never answers the question. Anybody know what Sarah reads?

It has been awhile. Don't know why, but I've been swamped with work. That's an unusual problem to have things being what they are in these first few months trying to clean up after the shrub. Work does get old; but the money doesn't.

It is sheer joy watching the recent tea baggers. Old people on medicare decrying the evils of government backed health care? But woe to that foolish politician who would dream of touching their medicare!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/us/politics/12intel.html?_r=2&hp

Maybe we'll see a truth commission yet. Ya know, think about it. Obama's like it will be a distraction, let's not go into this truth commission. Meantime behind the scenes they let the truth leak out drip drip drip. So while the badly damaged economy continues to sputter along this immense despicable story continues to keep the heat off.

One full time, one part time job, but in this economy you can't turn down good paying work. Will we be able to keep posting here? Will anyone notice. Shit, I don't know.

http://chicagoist.com/2009/06/10/why_does_mark_kirk_hate_america.php

Why does Mark Kirk hate America. Why isn't that darn liberal press reporting this?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/gen_sanchez_my_soldiers_were_abandoned_on_the_battlefield.php?ref=fpblg

I understand that we don't want to live in the past. But we really need a truth commission. 

It's not simply about the torture and the inhumanity, but what was done to the common soldier.

Cheney and Rumsfeld sold them down the river to hide their culpability. 

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/levin-cia-torture-documents-cheney-wants-dont-prove-squat/

Once again that nasty liberal press declines to run a story that might contradict it's plot. 

Well, ok, basically Cheney's a liar. That's old news.

http://www.citypages.com/2009-05-27/news/a-michele-bachmann-comic-misadventure/

A Michelle Bachman comic book! At last.

Joe the plumber is leaving the GOP! The rats are scurrying off the foundering vessel.

The line from the GOP has been that the Dems were socialists. But now we're hearing that they're facists, corporatists. 

Think of something nasty to say about the Democrats, and then say it, especially if it doesn't make sense.

I had thought that the GOP might have the opportunity to come back because they have left such a shitbag for the new admin. But they appear to be self-destructing. 

They lack the ability to deal with reality. In their little minds this is a center-right nation, and their permanent majority status is pre-destined. You could almost feel sorry for them.

Barry's talking about reforming the tax code, which, if I may paraphrase, he feels is too complicated for most people, but comprehensible to the insiders who use it to game the system. That's the best thing I've ever heard a politician say. He's gonna end up dead.

I think the main thing to worry about is if we can just maintain some sanity as a country. Glenn Beck and the tea baggers are very worrisome. The GOP is acting like a nutty fringe group. This needs to stop, or bad things are going to happen.

Watching the news the last few days, is it just me, or is the right in this country becoming increasingly desperate?

Their boy failed. After two stolen elections, that miserable frat-boy is totally exposed, and the Dems look like a million bucks. 

So what are they left with. Nonsense, but they aren't too proud to go there. Witness Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Hannity, the whole sordid crew. The people are disenfranchised! We're all going to be slaves! We need a revolution! Sorry fools, beneath contempt.

Newspaper are dying the slowest death in the history of history. They've been dying since the invention of radio. Newspapers were huge, the only source of current info. Then the radio, and they were dying; then the tv, and they were dying; now the internet, and they're mortally wounded for sure. It's change, bigtime, and what the final outcome will be is anyone's guess. But you can probably be confident that there will still be a place for journalists and editors, just where is hard to say. 

All I can say is that anything that puts the dipshit cartoonist Higgins out of work is fine with me.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/26/budget/index.html

The GOP didn't produce a budget! But here we see the plutocratic press ballyhooing the budget that isn't. 

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/house-gop-unveils-its-budget-shiny-packet-of-goals.php

The GOP unveils it's non-budget! Breath-taking. They must be thinking what I am: with the stock market ticking upward and houses starting to sell, a recovery seems to be underway. And the stimulus package proper really hasn't started to flow into the larger economy yet.

What with the disastrous electoral results of the last two electoral cycles, if Obama succeeds in turning this economy around in any kind of reasonable timeframe, the GOP is toast.

Will we see RICO prosecutions? When looking at the transgressions of these various moral midgets, is Eric Holder going to step up and take these vapid fools down?

Jon Stewart superman!

Job creation: GOP vs adults

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/2/23/153449/938/834/700890

Saint Ike was really pretty poor, wasn't he? I'd heard that things were shit during his time in office, and my god ain't it so. GOP just fucking stinks.

WRT the current economy, we do have one big break. The original crash of the great depression occurred in 1929, and Hoover was in charge until the bottom in 1933. So the economy dropped like a lead sinker for those four years. 

In this case, we have a good liberal on the job relatively early on, though it would have been better to have some adults in charge last year. So look for things to begin to display signs of life later in the year, and then probably sputter through most of next year as well. Hopefully the economy will be moving later in the year of 2010. 

Also we have to remember that in a sense the economy is already getting a certain degree of stimulus from the price of gas. It's almost like a self-regulating mechanism at this point with the world still depending on fossil fuels. As the economy surges, the price of energy surges with it and drags things down somewhat; when the economy lags, the price of energy declines and serves to bring things back.

Sgt Gunnies psycho cousin

You've heard of Uncle Sams misguided children? Well, I don't know if I'd care to go along with a blanket condemnation of the corps, in spite of the fact that I once sailed beneath the waves on a nuclear sub. 

However I did meet Gunnies psycho cousin last Friday.

I and my sister had a rather long day. We cashed in our grandfather's coin collection. It was sad for me, thinking  of the hours he'd put into it, to be tearing it apart and casting it to the wind. But my sister is the executor of my dad's estate and so we did it. At the end there was a modest pile of money, which had been in the collection, but was only worth face value, so we went off to the bank to deposit that last small dab of cash. 

As we waited in line, the individual in question settled into line behind us. I noticed he had a McCain/Palin button on his clean, yellow wind breaker and suppressed a smirk. But I believe he noticed my reaction, and commenced to do his best to make trouble. 

Somehow I managed to keep a straight face, and kept my face pointed forward as he pretended to receive a phone call and launched into a childish diatribe, calling Obama a Marxist, damning the democrats. We soon enough got to a teller window and were taking care of business while several tellers down cuz was still trying to make trouble. My sister and I were making some good jokes about this safely out of ear shot, and generally having a good time, when after he had closed his business he came up to us offering some sort of bizarro apology for an unrelated conversation he seemed to have had with someone else. Again I assiduously avoided eye contact, and he spotted some one else that had been in line, and set off to try and make trouble with them. Me and my sister made a couple of other jokes about needing an escort to the parking lot before we hastened off to enjoy the weekend. Wonder how cuz did? 

Time for more moral instruction from the book of life. Well, it is more like speculation.

But a star like Obama is the person that others strive to become. And when it's not them, they might not react sensibly.

Thus we see Blago and Burris, two heavies of the Illinois political scene, falling down in the most ridiculous way imaginable, their dreams of glory being fulfilled by another. Hopefully the secret service has enough on the ball to take note of this, and prepare accordingly, lest someone close enough to do physical harm find means to manifest their resentment.

Right now there are some very positive looking things happening.

Obama's stimulus package is an impressive achievement, but politically it's stunning. The right wing has been out there spewing it's usual garbage, but polls are showing that folks just aren't listening. They've lost credibility it seems.

This is stunning. The right wing noise chamber is over with. We're not going the way of Nazi Germany. Obama's the president, not the messiah, and Limbaugh is a marginal boob.

Let's all give a big secular hossanah!

End of the world, nearly

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/2/9/234340/6189/142/695504

In FDR's day we came close to a communist revolution,  a fact that is too little discussed.

Democrats: saving Republicans from themselves.

GDP went up every year that FDR was in office, except 1937, an incredible record. 1937 is the basis for the GOP to say that the new deal was a failure. Right wing infoporn go poof.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2008/Karl_Roves_IT_guru_Mike_Connell_1220.html

Strange story here. Mighty convenient death.

sad state of affairs for GOP

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/republican-national-committee/rnc-quietly-scraps-plans-for-big-renewal-think-tank/

One fond hope of mine is that the GOP would change. Doesn't look like that's gonna happen. It appears that their strategy is Limbaugh's, the de facto leader.

I'm dyin'! I think I cracked a rib roaring with laughter.

Joe the plumber, whose not a plumber, and whose name is Sam, is now advising the GOP.

But wait! There's more! Joe says that his child will be taking up his time for now, and as such we'll be deprived of his leadership.

Help me! I've fallen and I can't reach my Wii!

McConnell wants to stimulate the economy by offering cheap mortgages. Isn't that how we got here? 

More jobs were created under Carter than under the twelve years of Bush-Shrub.

More jobs were created under Clinton than under twenty years of Reagan-Bush-Shrub.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_01/016597.php

The Bush admin was completely clueless. It's that simple.

heckuva job brownie

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/20/AR2009012003261.html?hpid=topnews

Looks like the shrub managed to kick the can down the road here, or at least he tried. What a disastrous eight years this has been. And yet something like 30 percent of the country still approves of the work he did. Personally, I have a hard time accepting his right to co-habit this planet.

Folk I talk to are concerned that Barry will end up another Carter. It think this is entirely possible. However, the demographics of the country have altered; the GOP southern strategy won't carry the day for them. They'll need something radically new.

But I think there's just too bright a big red line to be drawn between the GOP's lunatic fiscal policies and the current problems. Nobody is going to blame this on Obama. And if- however haltingly- the nation has begun to come out of the deep doldrums it's diving ever more deeply into now, he'll cruise to re-election.

But the work has only begun. Democrats are hardly perfect; but the GOP is scum, pure and simple. The GOP needs to torn out by the roots and the furrows salted.

Ding Dong the witch is dead!

http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/thewizardofoz/dingdongthewitchisdead.htm

As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her.
And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead

Illini B-Ball

It isn't often that we can talk about major college athletics being morally instructive, but then again something like last weekends annihilation of Indiana's mens basketball team doesn't happen too often either. Thanks to some recruiting short cuts by their last head coach, Indiana this year finds itself DOA. When you add in the comments by the prize recruit of this ex-head coach concerning drug use on last years team, well, you get the idea. 

Illinois of course was the original destination of this prize recruit who was pried away by whatever means to the cream and crimson. And Illinois had a poor season, partially because of losing this prize recruit. 

Now of course not only is this years Illinois team doing a lot better, but they also seem to have a steady stream of talent coming to the school over the next few years. So the present is good and the future yet more promising.

My only problem with this is that now it's become a lot more difficult and expensive to get tickets to upcoming games.

meaning in lit

I imagine when Cervantes first wrote Quixote he probably was sitting around doddling with pen and paper, and suddenly this odd fellow who seemed to say something appeared on the paper. I can't imagine that there was any real intent beforehand; Cervantes didn't sit down and conceive a project of some sort, where Quixote was a soul of the golden age lost in the modern world. No I imagine he just walked out, almost an organic being in his own right, more born than conceived.

It must be the same with any real art. Kafka's cockroach came to him as an amusing sort of fiction, a perfect way to express the pediastrian nature of the heroes soul and life. Only after the fact does Kafka think in terms of inverting the mans soul and body, if he ever does at all. Kafka doesn't sit there and conceive of a project where the soul of a man is inverted, and his physical body becomes that of a cockroach. No, the man as cockroach just appears suddenly as if of its own volition, more in the nature of a birth.

Bill O'Reilly's love child

Joe the Plumber, who's not actually a plumber, is now trying to be a war correspondent. But while doing his war correspondence thing, he's saying there should be no war correspondents? Now, myself, if I desire to take a principled stand against something I start by... not doing it myself. Some things are hard that way. Smoking is a great example, perhaps the best you could imagine. How many smokers think smoking is great. Pretty much none. Pretty much any smoker will tell you it sucks, but it's hard to quit. (those who enjoy the occassional fine cigar excepted). So is war correspondence hard to quit? Perhaps Joe not the Plumber having begun is now hooked on war. 

Blago, Hamlet, King Lear

Why the hell didn't the Illinois Supreme Court insert itself into the current woes of Blago? Why did they decline to consider his fitness to hold the office of governor when it is so painfully obvious that this man is unfit. Verily, the corruption can be inferred to extend even to the the august chambers of the state's highest court.

As I contemplated these happenings, somehow I thought of our old friend Hamlet. This reputed procrastinator in my book is actually just mortally confused. He looks out at his native land and wonders who do I kill first?

And then it hit me. King Lear is the predecessor of Hamlet. Out of the decadence of Lear proceeds the dillema of Hamlet. Clever on Shakespeares part. After all, if he were to speak of corrupt, decadent rulers too directly, it might prove fatal. Oh damn now I have to start re-reading Shakespeare. Where does the rest of it fall in? Julius Ceasar, Othello. McBeth's place in this seems pretty clear, the story as it were of Hamlets stepfather and mother. Or is this duo the heir to the throne after Hamlet? 

Interpreting Shakespeare as a dark commentary on official corruption is probably not going to lead to a comprehensive understanding of the bard, but it may yield some interesting insights.

on being Jewish... or not

Upon further investigation, there is no conclusive evidence one way or another. As earlier recounted, a great aunt of mine, related through marriage to my maternal grandmothers brother, went to Europe and returned with the news that we were Jewish. This news was greeted with jeers, dismissed as an attempt on her part to upset people.

Today there seems to be much less resistence to the idea of being Jewish, the same stigma does not seem to adhere to the notion. One cousin of mine has lived in the city of New York for a long time, which of course has the largest concentration of semites in the US. He informs me that when he examines pictures of my grandmother in her twenties he feels that her being Jewish is beyond doubting.

However, technically, we would not be considered Jewish, because Jewishness is passed through the mother, and my maternal great-grandfather- the purported Jew who wished to leave persecution behind- married a woman named Standish.

Perhaps we should simply let that lay then. Quite obviously if my great-grandfather was Jewish he wished to come here and leave that behind, to avoid persecution. And while it seems interesting to me at this point to examine this question, the fact is that being Jewish is not always popular or - sorry to say it- safe. After all, Kike was one of the K's in KKK.