The Rude One Does It Again

Man, I love this guy with all my heart.

In response to this: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/opinion/25desantis.html?_r=3&ref=opinion&pagewanted=all

He writes this: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

The denouement is especially lovely:

"Fuck you, finally, at last, you pedantic, deluded, groveling worm. You think you're making some point that you and your ilk are people, too, when what you're revealing is that the world you occupy has no relation to the real one. Tell you what: give it all up, all the money, get the others in your division to do it, too, and go work for the people served by those organizations into whose pot you're gonna toss your change. Look into their eyes until you can say you're one of them. That's called redemption. Your letter? It's just pathetic for what it says about AIG, for what it says about us, but, mostly, for what it says about you."

Oooooh, snap.

Unhappy Anniversary

I was going to post about today's very, very sad anniversary, but Matt Y says exactly how I feel and much better than I could:

"It must be said that six years ago the United States of America launched an unnecessary and immoral invasion of Iraq, largely under false pretenses. I tip my cap to those who had the foresight and judgment to understand the morally and strategically disastrous nature of the unfolding events, and I reserve a special bitterness toward those politicians and public officials who were trusted progressive political leaders and who helped sell the country on this misfortune. But it’s worth looking a bit past the domestic political arguments and reserving our deepest thoughts for those individuals, primarily Iraqi, but also including Americans and citizens of our coalition partners, who lost their lives as a result of this tragedy."

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/03/6_years_later.php

Just Double Click the Mouse

One more piece of evidence that reichwingnuts are probably that way because they can't get laid:

"You could spin this out further and point out that it also makes adaptive sense for women to have a certain amount of difficulty having orgasms, because then they’re more likely to seek out a long-term monogamous partner who knows their body well, which in turn dovetails nicely with the general female interest in having only one partner, the better to keep that partner around when the children come along." - Ross Douthat

And some really special stuff right here in Pennsylbama from the marriage fetishists:

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20090318_Are_they_married__It_depends______.html

Gawd, I hate these people. And their stupid institutions.

Before I Was So Trollishly Interrupted

I thought I'd make a list of things that are very, very good in my life.

• John. Just...John.
• After 15 years of hosting and 0 wins, Penn State Beaver has finally won the Beaver County Corporate Spelling Bee. YAY! And, I will modestly point out, I was the team captain and top speller among our team. Congrats to Renata and June, too.
• Our men's basketball team ended their season by winning the PSUAC and finishing second in the nation in the USUAC. Our women's team also won the PSUAC and finished fourth nationally.
• I have fallen in love with Henry. Now, don't get excited. Henry is one of John's three dogs. And I really am fond of the other two, Otis and Cane. But Henry is my special boy.
• I have my new living room furniture. It really changes the entire atmosphere and I can't even articulate how happy I am that the old stuff is gone. The old couch and chair were definite artifacts of the early 90s obsession with southwestern motifs and the color combination of burgundy and hunter green. The new stuff is a kind of classic chocolate brown leather with super modern clean lines. I got some cool color block rugs and that was all I needed to totally update the look. Love it.
• I have made a down payment on my new car. Well, not a new new car. Just a new car for me. Brother-in-law Sam got it at an auction for less than $1500. It needs a new front bumper, new hood, new water pump, and new air conditioning condenser due to it having survived a headon crash. But otherwise, it's perfect. It's a 2005 Intrepid with 60,000 miles. He is charging me $3500 for it. My last two cars I bought from dealers, one brand new and the other used. Buying new is never going to happen again because I think it's such a ripoff. And the used one from a dealer is not nearly as nice as the one Sam got me and it cost about $4000 more. I can pay cash as Sam buys parts and he is going to work it out so that when we exchange the title, he's going to call it a "gift." No sales taxes that way!!!!!
• March Madness has taken over the 'Burgh. We have three local teams in the Big Dance: West Virginia, Robert Morris, and, of course, the number one seed in the East, Pitt. Both Duquesne and Penn State will be playing the NIT. I love this time of year. Just love it.
• Have I mentioned how happy John makes me?

This Is My Place

Well, I come back from the weekend and find a flame war breaking out in my blog.

I have a few things to say about that and this is the last time I intend to discuss this matter and RTVW/OT ever again.

First, no one should be reading this blog if you don't like me. You are quite likely to see things here you won't want to see directed at you. If you've been a reader of this blog, you know that I stated from the start that I would say what I think about things here. And I consider this a place where I can not only say those things honestly, but I'll be saying them in the moment. This means no self censorship. Things will be typed as I react. And I don't always react in a way that is going to make everyone comfortable and happy with me. So, if you don't want to read anything bad about yourself, especially if you say stupid and ignorant things about issues you obviously know nothing about, you should stay away from this blog.

Second, I am quite bemused and puzzled by all these accusations of "bitterness." I am one of the least bitter and most easy going people I know. I am happy and successful in my career. I have loads of friends, almost all of them in real life, not online. I have a wonderful man in my life. I live in a nice home in a pretty, small town in a lovely state in the greatest country in the world. I have no real life enemies, not even my exes. I have several online communities in which I am active and who appreciate me. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be bitter about. Being banned from RTVW/OT, I guess? I don't think so. As several of my friends there can attest, I pretty much knew it was coming months ago. I was surprised when it happened because I still cannot fathom what I did nor had anyone ever warned me I was close to it. But it was inevitable because of the incoherent rules and complete lack of any fairness in how those rules are applied. I'm surprised how long I lasted there. As for that other place, banning for what I say in a completely unrelated and totally personal blog entry is even more stupid and draconian. I will miss RTVW/OT as much as I miss that other. Which is to say, not at all.

Third, if you're coming here to screech and rend your clothing and jump up and down with rage at me, stay the fuck out. I don't care. I really, really don't care. Don't clutter my blog with your psychodrama and schoolyard fights. Feel free to trash me all over the worldwide web. Just don't it here. I won't edit out your most recent comments, mainly because they're hilarious. But I will do it the next time. I don't have the energy for this kind of garbage and I'd prefer not to spend my precious free time blogging editing out the stupid.

Lastly, because this is what I came here to do before I saw that the junior high contingent showed up...

GO PITT!!!!!

Stupid People

• Maybe if he'd been wearing a diaper, this wouldn't have happened: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2009/03/11/vitter_blows_top_at_airport.html
• Perhaps someone should read the Constitution before committing complete piles of shit to paper: http://openleft.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=A70088D4FDF43F279D67BDC3A044D490?diaryId=12135
• Buying this for your child should be grounds for child abuse charges: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/03/studies_in_crap_7.php
• Uninformed idiocy, out and out lies, and wingnutty goodness, all in one package:

"The Employee Free Choice Coercion Act hasn't even been signed into law yet, and we already have non-union workers being followed from their jobsites to restaurants, to bars on Super Bowl Sunday and to their homes to try to get cards signed. I can't wait until it really goes into effect, can't wait until I show up at work everyday and have to lock my door and pull my shades because of the union contractor that insisted on buying out the lease early of the company next to us just so they could have that particular space. Can't wait until I have to remove fliers from my vehicle every single day, etc., etc., etc. Can't wait until that big $13 bucks a week stimulus gets eaten up when employers whose business costs increase because of the union pass those costs down to me.
The most ironic part of the whole thing, however, is that Obama is the one who wanted every voice heard, every vote counted. Yet he is about to take away the very right of someone to freely make the decision to join a union by private ballot. I wonder how he and his voters would have felt on election day if Repulicans had been able to imploy such tactics in order to secure votes."

What an asshole. Read the fucking legislation, dimwit. You don't know a damn thing about it, as is obvious. A redneck with a vendetta against unions. What a shocker.

I Knew It! It's All Miss Smith's Fault!

Yes, I (a person who works in the world of finance and statistics and amatorization) am a devoted mathophobe (http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1100000/1095592/cb-p38-papert.pdf?key1=1095592&key2=9321076321&coll=GUIDE&dl=&CFID=26118967&CFTOKEN=67391957). And I place all the blame for that on Miss Smith. Before I encountered Miss Smith, I had been a veritible math whiz. Always put in the fast track in the classrooms of elementary school and in pre-algebra by 7th grade. Which put me in Miss Smith's Algebra I class in 1973, my eighth grade year. Where things swiftly went off the rails of my parents' dream of me becoming the only Gray with a half a chance of ever aspiring to a career as an engineer. And a highly desirable female one, at that. I am, unfortunately, not someone who easily picks up on theoretical mathmatics nor am I one who easily understands a concept for which there is no answer to "why" other than "because." As a result, I was always asking questions not about the process but the whys and wherefors of the process. Which were never answered. Which led to me not being able to work out how to apply the processes. Which, in a class in which our classroom seating was based on our current grading period's cumulative grade, led to me always being in the last row in one of the last seats.

With that background, it was with a great sense of schadenfreude mixed with smug satisfaction that I had seen much of this hedge fund, short selling, fund of funds, real estate, credit market crisis coming that I read this article today that pretty much places the blame for much of our current economic crisis on physicists and mathmeticians and their flawed prediction models:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/science/10quant.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Have You Ever Noticed?

That with the Reichwing, Neocons, and Rushublicans that it's always, always, always a matter of do as I say, not as I do?

And that perhaps goes twice as much for those who nickname themselves after cant-spewing tyrants.

Glad to see someone had the balls to call him on it, though. Just one person, though, unsurprisingly. And the least likely, I must say.

Stuff

• I don't know why I never got into it before this, but I've started watching The Wire. Stupidly, I just started watching it yesterday and Season 1 ends OnDemand tomorrow. But what I've seen has been fantastic. Shocking and real, just something I've never seen on tv before, even on cable. And I now have a huge crush on McNulty. So he will inevitably turn out to be fatally flawed in some way that will crush me. But I will love every minute leading up to that sad day.


• John is seeing the difficult economy first-hand. He hasn't had a consulting job for about a month. He still has fees coming in from previous jobs, so he's not hurting too much yet. And he has several prospects lined up for the end of this month and next, one of which is pretty well firmed up. But he says he's never seen it so slow for a fixer like him. And the man is 62, so it's not like he's never been through a bad economy before.


• Speaking of John, in what was possibly the most embarrassing moment of my entire life (and that's saying something), we were having sex Friday night and it was pretty hot and heavy at a particularly critical moment. As I squirmed and moaned and groaned, I heard a voice saying "Dad?" from the open doorway to the hall. It was his 23-year-old daughter, for some reason marching around upstairs having left her apartment in the basement at midnight to ask some stupid question about her dogs. I mean, seriously, WTF? Yes, we had the bedroom door open, but we always do as a courtesy to Henry and Otis. We respect his daughter's privacy in the basement apartment, but she apparently thinks not at all about extending the same courtesy to her dad, whom she had to know would have company, considering she showed up while we were eating and drinking at a local restaurant earlier in order to bum free drinks and cash from her dad. It weirded me out, I have to say. And gave me a lot more sympathy for my poor parents with their six kids who were constantly barging into their bedroom.


• I was incredibly frustrated with TAR last night. Maybe I'm an intellectual snob or something, but how do that many adults get through life without having a clue of any kind as to who Chekhov was? I mean, maybe you haven't read any of his stuff, but surely a culturally literate person with a modicum of a college education is familiar with the name.


• If you must have only one cookbook in your life, you simply cannot go wrong with Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything. He's not a chef, so it's not technique heavy like my other favorite Think Like a Chef by Tom Colicchio. But it really deconstructs basic cooking and recipes and provides many ideas for building on those basics. It's like an introduction to the more sophisticated riffing off of classical techniques that you learn through Colicchio's tome. I love these kinds of cookbooks because they reinforce my natural inclinations while cooking. I'll make something exactly according to strict instructions one time. Once I experience the creation and taste of it, I will then never make it the same way twice. I will tweak it and play with it and try new and unexpected tastes. This is also why I will never be much of a baker. Too exact for me.


• I don't even understand why any of this is such a problem: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19771.html. No bill needs 60 votes and Harry Reid is completely full of shit here. If he wants the bill to go to a vote, then all he needs to do is put it up for the vote. This whole myth about "needing" 60 votes is garbage. This is all about Harry Reid's fear of a filibuster. Which is the silliest thing I've ever heard. What's so frightening about a filibuster? Especially one by the Senate GOP? I mean, seriously folks. First, the Senate GOPers were ready to nuke the filibuster when they were in the majority and were all over the media squawking about how illegitimate the filibuster was as a tactic when Dems were threatening it. So the hypocrisy of their current position of using it as a threat is deeply hypocritical and the public will know that hypocrisy for what it is. Second, let them filibuster. I remember the last time they shut down government. Didn't work out so well for them as I recall. And that was against a less popular president during a much less critical period of our country's recent history. Call their bluff, Harry, you wimp. Just call their bluff.


• And can I just say that I think the above photo is of one of the most real and beautiful women I've ever seen in my life. I'm incredibly proud that she now represents my president and my country. And, personally, I'd fuckin' kill for those arms. BoBo Brooks is an asshole (h/t to MoDo for that one).

Subhuman

I just saw this reader email posted over at Sully's place:

At the Calif. Supreme Court hearings today, I saw the lowest of the lows: A pro-Prop 8 protester proudly wielding a hand-written poster which read,
"Dan White: Hero For Killing A Queer."
Not much commentary or reaction I can provide you. I was rendered mute.

Brilliant

I have nothing to add to this:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=220252&title=cnbc-gives-financial-advice

Wonderful News

And I hope it sweeps the nation like a wild fire.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/nyregion/05rockefeller.html?hp

The War on Drugs? Another massive GOP FAIL.

A friend of mine and I were discussing legalization and how the government could cash in on it. He was against selling and taxing it like we do booze and tobacco, though I believe that is the best way extract maximum government revenue from the end of prohibition. His proposal would be to allow people to grow their own for personal use and require them to buy a permit, while keeping sales illegal. He was advocating a $1000 fee for the permit.

I'm against that. I would certainly pay for one of those permits should such a thing ever pass. However, I still think sales would happen simply because some people have no green thumbs or have no interest in taking the time, money, and effort to grow it. And it doesn't seem fair to throw them in jail because of that.

Pot is the third largest cash crop in the U.S. and the largest cash crop in several states. How much revenue do you think that would bring in if it was regulated and taxed?

I Can't Stop Because It's All So Good

The commenter Fulcanelli on Balloon Juice re: the OLC memo dump:

"This needs to be thrown in the face of every asshole wingnut TownHall/Freeper/NRO/Limbaugh/Malkin douche nozzle on the fucking planet every 5 minutes for the next 50 years. I’m beyond postal. I am gonna put a fucking hurt on at least one of these fuckers and record the screams to use as a ringtone on my cell phone."

Zactly. Just...zactly.

Asshats

This might be the stupidest legislation I've ever seen (though, with the way things are going, I'm sure that's a bar that is set too low):

http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article.aspx?aID=112823.54928.124964

Now perhaps there's something I'm not seeing in this article that proves that the scholarships that colleges and universities in Arkasas provide for students go disproportionately to wealthy students. Or that they never go to students with financial need. But I don't see anyone making any such argument other than a blanket claim that providing a lot of scholarship money to students somehow steals from the poor to give to the rich. Are they claiming that scholarship funds come from the tuition poor students pay? I don't get this at all. Sounds more to me like they are trying to make it harder for anyone to get a college education.

From the perspective of the university where I work and whose scholarships I award, this would cripple the ability of many of our students to pay and, thus, limit educational options for middle class and poor students. The vast majority of our scholarship and institutional funds go to students with demonstrated financial need. Yes, we have some strictly recruitment awards, but that is the smallest pot of money in our gift aid pot. Our largest scholarship program run by the Office of Student Aid, the Trustee Scholarships, is strictly for students who are Pell eligible. Our endowed scholarships (which are run by various awarding units such as Student Aid, academic colleges, the alumni society) have criteria that are written by the donors. However, I can say that of the sixty-four endowed scholarships that are specific to my campus and for which I am responsible for awarding, only ten have no financial need criteria. Plus we have seventy-three campus specific Trustee Scholarships. I cannot see how, in this sort of scholarship system, the Arkansas plan would be robbing the poor to give money to the rich. It would just place one more handicap on the poor and middle income families' ability to get their kids a college education.

But then, I shouldn't expect any other sort of logic from anyone who is a member of the GOP, I suppose.

Why I Heart MattY

On Israel's seeming insistence on telling the U.S. how to conduct policy on Iran, as outlined here:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1068177.html

"In light of the billions of dollars in aid they give us annually, and that absent our alliance with Israel we’d risk isolation in the international community, it would obviously behoove U.S. policy makers to take these “red lines” very seriously. After all, they’re the ones with the leverage in the bilateral relationship."

That's a level of snark I could only hope to attain.

Meanwhile, I really don't even know what to say about these. All I know is that even though I am completely thrilled they decided, for whatever reason, to do it, I am unsure why they decided to step down from power as the Constitution says. It is obvious that they had no respect whatsoever for the Constitution, so I'm puzzled but happy they decided to not take us to the facist regime they so obviously fantasized about as their end game.

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/documents/olc-memos.htm

The Last Discussion

I have to respond to people who are, apparently, discussing this blog elsewhere.

When I say I had no warnings, I am not saying I have never been told to tone things down. And I have, with one exception, never repeated whatever behavior was the impetus. The sole exception is that I was warned twice for going around the filter to say fuck. After the second time, I have not done it again.

As to the specific incident referenced, I got the warning. I said I wouldn't do it again. I didn't. I'd really like someone to point to something specific I said that warranted banning in the only thread I can imagine prompted this action, the one making fun of the current gyrations of the GOP. I was not profane, I didn't bash anyone personally, I just posted what was all over the news and the Toobz.

As I said, I'm not interested in going back there as a poster. But I will keep up with my friends there. And in the course of that, I'm going to know what is being said. And I would prefer some honesty in how I am portrayed. Perhaps I am not seeing something that others are, but I am at least up front enough to tell it exactly how I experienced it. It is stated with great finality that the moderators had worked with those who were banned. Other than those recent warnings for things I did not repeat, I state uncategorically that that is not true in my case. And I guess that's how they roll and that's fine. It's their place.

And this one is mine. And here I state my mind in all it's messiness, cynicism, idealism, romance, realism, and personal truth. And I'd rather talk about other things. But don't lie about me. Because I will make note and, yes, I keep a list. The cynic, you see, usually wins.

All You Need To Know About the GOP

From their de facto Dear Leader:

"One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas ..."

"To us, bipartisanship is them being forced to agree with us after we have politically cleaned their clocks and beaten them."

And they cheered and wept and starbursts went winging around the room like fireworks.

And a fat, draft dodging, thrice-divorced, Viagra popping, Oxycontin addicted, sexual tourist to the Dominican Republic shall lead them.

Edited to add: In another chapter of obvious answers to easy questions, here's a link to a study assessing what parts of the country buy the most online porn, three guesses as to which states consume said porn the most: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Business/story?id=6977202&page=1. Some tidbits:

• Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.
• Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.
• States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."

They are so repressed I think they must have a hard time taking a shit in the morning. Somebody fuck these people so they can join the world of the sane again, please.