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.