It's a new year in a little bit, and some new things have to be done. It isn't really a lot of fun moderating comments, and doing this is no longer playtime, it instead makes me worry. Maybe a new name or place is in order. Anyway, the email will work if you want to keep up with me, and if I do something like this elsewhere - or there is meatspace drinking to be done - I will be happy to take advantage of your attention or supplies of available cash.
Thank you, people who brought me fun and advice and information and sometimes alcohol. You have no idea how helpful you were, or what silly fun it was making some of this nonsense.
Comments off, now and forever. All the best to you and Happy New Year.
A healthy and happy new year to all from all of us here at DWT
"Either cheer up or take off the hat."
by Ken
As I hinted in my post earlier today, "Ready for New Year's Eve? We've got the New Yorker cartoon crew to help get you psyched," I squirreled away one more of the New Yorker New Year's cartoons gathered by cartoon editor Bob Mankoff in his blogpost "New Year, Old Laughs" -- the one above -- for later use, and I think you'll agree that it's just dripping with the New Year's Eve spirit.
And in that spirit, let's turn the proceedings over to Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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The Brooksie Awards
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| Kokoro ("Heart"), 17th-century Japanese calligraphy via Onmark Productions. |
In my work as projectile-eclectic philosopher and continental observer at good old Yale University, where I have served in recent years or at least months in an endowed chair as W.F. Buckley Memorial Professor of Humility Studies, I frequently have an opportunity to tell students eager to learn the writer's craft from a diligent if diffident craftsman that eighty percent of the work is done before a fellow puts thumb to thinkpad, in preparatory work, in the accumulation of the literary gold dust of fact and wisdom, and in hammering it into preliminary shape in the interior of one's mind.
Thus when it comes time for me to write a column, after a hearty breakfast and an hour's sitting meditation, I like to begin by gaming it out in [jump]
the vastnesses of my living room in palpable form right there on the floor, lining up the draft of each paragraph in a broad architectural design outlined by throws and pillows, up the nave and across to the transepts of an imaginary cathedral, before I wind it up in the precincts of the sanctuary; or in fair weather out on the veranda in literal chalk, as a spiritual hopscotch. If something in the harmony of its proportions displeases me, I don't sit there pushing and pinching bits of it around but tear the whole thing down and start over again, because it needs to be realized, when the concept is finally ripe, in a single disciplined but passionate gesture. This puts me in something of the same league as John McPhee, though his approach is on a huge scale that suits his geological subjects, while I generally stick to the deft and delicate tracery of the traditional eight-legged essay.
Though in fact I was thinking of writing a book this autumn. I don't know whether I mentioned it to you or not. In the end I began to feel it was more of a young man's game, this writing of books, decade after decade, a little ostentatious and even somewhat unseemly in an already established sage. And then with so many ideas I found it hard to settle on just one.
Calligraphy style, Bordeaux City, by Mr. Stack/Keusta.
Anyway as we come to the end of the year—a bleak time in some respects when the mind wanders all too easily into a dark region of fatigue and defeat, and yet a time of stocktaking, remembrance, and reassessing the values that make us what we are—it's appropriate that we give some thought to our country, and the things I've managed to say about it through this difficult and trying period. I'd like to just point out some of the less commented-on highlights of 2013.
January found us coping as well as we could with the inevitable inauguration of Barack Obama for a second term as president. I was making the case for maintaining our rich American tradition of inequality, a job that may have struck some as quixotic or even irrelevant; but I was vindicated months later when Obama finally came out to acknowledge that wiping out inequality, effectively turning us all into shaven-headed unisex robots, would be the theme of his term.
In March, as the so-called sequester began to bite into the budgets of nonprofits, I was thinking about the New Suburbanism of my favorite social scientist, Joel Kotkin, and the need for people to reaffirm their social-spiritual connections by moving to the suburbs, as detailed in my earliest book, Bobos in Narnia (a review of the work focusing on its helpfulness for readers in Christian ministry is found at Christian Mind). Particularly noteworthy is the use I made of the Modern Orthodox Jews of Midwood, Brooklyn, as an example of the benefits of religious observance, without noting that I am Jewish myself and don't practice any of that shit, an example of hutzpa even I have rarely equaled.
By late spring the unrolling of presidential scandal had developed to flood proportions, prompting me to think of how I could turn the late great American conservative Clinton Rossiter into a froth-at-the-mouth teabagger by decontextualizing a famous quotation from him. Although it wasn't in my view so much the amount of government that was the problem in the case of the Obama scandals as government's attitude of not knowing its place—I mean, what part of "civil servant" do you not understand?
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| Seal-script Saru (Monkey) by Christopher Mayo. |
Meanwhile Egypt began to crumble and it was getting to be time for my quarterly visit to Friedmanland, in July, when I came out to clarify that the problem was the Egyptians' lack of mental equipment, demonstrating once for all that there is really just about no kind of racism you can't get away with once you've got tenure at the Times; and as autumn and book leave approached I began to wonder if there was any height left for me to scale.
But I shouldn't have worried, because there was still at least one more spectacular Brooksery left for me to perform—a sweet and summery home run, when I devoted a column to comparing myself to the drug-tainted Yankee Alex Rodriguez, showing clearly why I'm a much better person than he is. Come to think of it, it's been a pretty great year after all. So here's, as we uncork another bottle of the sparkly (there are now Proseccos that are just as expensive as any French Champagne, bobos, so go for it), to a 2014 just as great, though not, I hope, as great for you as it will be for me, inequality being as important to our national character as it is.
2013 in Review -- A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy,* Part 2: Remember when Reagan cut funds for insane asylums?
Storms, guns, bombs, free stuff, and the secret gay life of Obama: Some top Republican lies of 2013
[*TO MEET THE JANITOR OF LUNACY, SEE PART 1]
Plum loco, stone stoopid, or pathologically dishonest? You be the judge.
by Noah
I'm calling this "Some top Republican lies" because everyone else does "Top 10s" or "Top 20s," but I see no reason to come up with some arbitrary round number. Besides, with the Crackpot Party there's always another lie, and chances are very good that the corporate media will be all too willing to repeat them all without examining their veracity. That said, here are a few. I hold these lies to be self-evident.
1. The Boston Marathon bombing was a false flag (government) job
Wingnut Alex Jones (see above), Natural News, New Hampshire Republican State Sen.Stella Trembley, and others had the "scoop" on this one almost immediately after the tragic bombing on April 15th. It's straight out of Marvel Comics or some wacko Twilight Zone. Just like 9/11 truthers, there are a lot of wingnuts out there that are so determined to hate the government for something, anything, especially if that Obama dude is in charge, that their sick minds will concoct and believe anything. For some, the idea of the government taking their guns away or evilly giving you the opportunity to purchase healthcare for your family just isn't enough.
2. A Saudi national or nationals were responsible for the bombing
Shall I speculate as to why it is that, in the twisted minds of Republicans, terrorists must be nonwhite or Muslim? Immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing, the same people were proclaiming that Muslim terrorists from the Middle East were the bombers. That one turned out to be white folks. Oooops! And white folks that were a lot closer to Republicans than Republicans would like to publicly admit, right down to Newt Gingrich, as House speaker, having radical Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth as a liaison to the militia groups of the Northwest. In this case, the bombers were Muslim, but it became obvious that, to Republicans, the glass was only half full.
3. The Saudi government warned the U.S. about the Boston Marathon bombing
Nope. Turns out the Russians did communicate some info about the actual bombers, but a few days after the bombing Glenn Beck said he knew the truth about a Saudi national who had been questioned and let go. It wasn't even the same guys that Rupert Murdoch's New York Post had falsely claimed right on his front page were the perps.
Beck claimed the White House knew who did it and was covering up, and he claimed he would lay out all the evidence the following Monday if the government didn't come clean. There was even some sort of Benghazi connection. So what happened? Well, in the meantime the real bombers were identified and one was killed and one was caught. They weren't Saudis. They even (oh, the disappointment!) weren't of a darkish hue. The whole thing had gotten started on Hannity's show. Bill O'Reilly had Beck on to lay it all out. Thanks, Fox. Where would this country be without you?
4. The White House is full of Muslim Brotherhood
It seems that as soon as Egypt's government fell, and Americans became aware of the Muslim Brotherhood's position of influence and power in that nation, it just somehow sounded perfect to those in the Crackpot Party that there must be some nefarious connection to the Kenyan-born, secret-Muslim, socialist black man in the White House. (Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the Obama administration, even "letting Muslim Brotherhood run anti-terror ops," is just one of the Impeachable Offenses "documented" by crackpot "authors" Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott. If you shopped on the right wingnut website, you could get not just a less-than-half-price copy of the book, autographed, but also a "a FREE Impeach Obama bumper sticker.")
Yes, I can see it all clearly now, the unseen hand of . . . yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Guilt by association when there's no association -- I get it. Next!
5. Bush kept us safe
Giuliani on Hannity again! He did? I coulda sworn that Bush, not Clinton, was at least pretending to be prez on 9/11. It's amazing how anyone can still put Rudy Julieandrews in front of a camera and let him prattle on. It's 2013, for Christ's sake! The man was a failure as a mayor who made himself Mr. 9/11. The guy was so lame, it took him umpteen numbers of trials to nail John Gotti. He spent $50 million running for his party's nomination for president and got one delegate and that delegate was from Florida. But there he was again, in Sean Insanity's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest studio uttering those famous four words, in the wake of the Boston bombing.
One of the sick Republican memes, post-tragedy, was to somehow make the Boston bombing Obama's fault. Hey, Repugs! People were maimed. People died. Families were destroyed! And you, you just see it as an opportunity.
6. Superstorm Sandy was caused by Obama seeding of clouds
Okay, I know this was from late in the previous year, but it still has life in at least some Republican minds. The rest seem to be more fixated on blaming Gov. Blowhard Christie for turning the 2012 election in Obama's favor when he took a romantic walk on the beach with the president. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFvmguc56YA
The first minute and a half is just a Fox News report on the progressing storm. But listen for the eerie voice of insanity that comes in at 1:29 and then shows us "why this Frankenstorm may be changing its trajectory." Can you guess whodunnit? (Hint: "Obama is falling behind in the polls. Is this the October surprise we have been expecting.") The poster, PEREXUSREX, followed up with this reply to doubting commenters: "Watch the news - Obama has been able to look presidential and Mitt Romney has had to slow his campaign. This hurricane has definitely helped Obama who was definitely behind - he is not behind anymore since the hurricane."
7. Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi
Repugs don't even seem to realize that their very own lies about what happened in Libya may have cost Romney the White House when he repeated a portion of their Libya lie in a the second presidential debate and got caught. In Republikook world, President Obama supposedly either let the storming of the embassy happen or encouraged it, maybe with his supersecret Muslim underground decoder ring, or something.
One thing Republicans won't tell you is that it was they who voted in Congress to withdraw security funding for our embassies. Nice goin', a-holes. Since then we've had madman Rep. Darrell Issa, doing his best Joe McCarthy imitation, running hearing after hearing after hearing, wasting mountains of our taxpayer dollars on some insane attempt to build an impeachment-worthy case against the president. Again, people died, so let's exploit it! Ain't that the Republican way?
8. Romney lost because of "free stuff"
Watch the Lawrence O'Donnell Last Word segment here.
Sooo much chest-beating and recrimination in the wake of Romney losing. So many accusations: Christie, the storm, and, most of all, "free stuff." Obama won by giving out "free stuff" to you know whom.
Just keep telling yourselves that, Repugs. But if Romney had won, people like Sheldon Adelson stood to get a whole lotta free stuff; free stuff in the form of a return of an estimated $700 million in tax breaks in return for his $100 million in campaign contributions. $600 million? Now that's what I call free stuff! Sorry, Mittens, you lost because enough Americans of all backgrounds saw you for what you are.
9. Guns don't kill people
Neither do 30-shot magazines, right? Well, 11 kids escaped death in Newtown, Connecticut, while the shooter in their school had to switch to a new magazine. Suppose he only had 10-shot mags. How much death and human misery would have been avoided?
Yet there are the Republicans, the party that pushes human misery, demanding the right to their 30-shot mags. And if you want to look at the face of insanity --
10. Background checks bad; straw purchases good
Terrorists don't have to try to smuggle their guns into the country. So what's the easiest way for a terrorist to get a gun here in these United States? Well, if you enter a gun emporium and you look like ya just might not be quite white enough and ya might have some sort of one o' them un-'merican accents, they might not sell you a gun. What to do? There's already no background-check thing. That's good for would be evil-doers, but still, there's that accent and skin-tone thing.
Ah, easy! Pay someone to go buy you whatever you need! Street gangs do it all the time. It's called a straw purchase, and Republicans like that just fine. Of course, in the case of the gang gunplay in Chicago, that's all Obama's fault, not the permissiveness of the Republican gun kooks.
11. The Government is buying all the ammo in order to kill us all
No one likes this lie more than the companies that make bullets. It inspires more purchases and hording of ammo. Republicans spend a lot of energy telling each other that Obama is going to take away their guns. They campaigned on it. They shrieked that he'd be coming for our guns as soon as January came along. So it follows that when he couldn't get Congress to pass saner gun laws, he would, naturally, buy up all the bullets!
12. Obama is still a secret Muslim
Yes. Well, that explains everything. Scientists may still be looking for their Unified Field Theory that explains all the physical workings of the universe, but until then, this works fine for those in the Crackpot Party. Behold, all is explained! I saw it on Fox!
13. Obama is deliberately tanking the stock market in order to destroy capitalism
Hey, let's not let the reality that the market has gone over the 16,000 mark get in the way of this "theory." Wingnut chatterboxes and more reputable authorities like Forbes say a crash is coming. Some say everyone should sell their stocks and cash out. Repug media like Newsmax issue weekly warnings about an imminent crash as if they want it to happen, just so they can blame Obama.
Hey, it might happen. The fall of 2008 wasn't pretty, and not much has been done, and the Wall Street criminals run free, but hmmm, now if everyone were to listen to these Chicken Littles and pull their stocks at once, wouldn't that crash the market and destroy the economy to the likes of which has not been seen since 1929? So just who is trying to deliberately destroy capitalism?
14. Obama is gay and has even been "married" to a man
So says World Net Daily's Jerome Corsi, the Swiftboat guy, so it must be true. Can Issa investigations and Hannity breathlessly speculating about gay orgies in the White House be far behind?
This gay Obama thing refuses to die in Repug circles. It's even used as the reason that there are so many of those wicked LGBTs working in the White House. Maybe the saddest thing is that such a thing would matter to Republicans. Ah, but no wonder Obama is pushing that "gay marriage" thing. Say no more!
[*TO MEET THE JANITOR OF LUNACY, SEE PART 1]
Plum loco, stone stoopid, or pathologically dishonest? You be the judge.
by Noah
I'm calling this "Some top Republican lies" because everyone else does "Top 10s" or "Top 20s," but I see no reason to come up with some arbitrary round number. Besides, with the Crackpot Party there's always another lie, and chances are very good that the corporate media will be all too willing to repeat them all without examining their veracity. That said, here are a few. I hold these lies to be self-evident.
1. The Boston Marathon bombing was a false flag (government) job
Wingnut Alex Jones (see above), Natural News, New Hampshire Republican State Sen.Stella Trembley, and others had the "scoop" on this one almost immediately after the tragic bombing on April 15th. It's straight out of Marvel Comics or some wacko Twilight Zone. Just like 9/11 truthers, there are a lot of wingnuts out there that are so determined to hate the government for something, anything, especially if that Obama dude is in charge, that their sick minds will concoct and believe anything. For some, the idea of the government taking their guns away or evilly giving you the opportunity to purchase healthcare for your family just isn't enough.
2. A Saudi national or nationals were responsible for the bombing
Shall I speculate as to why it is that, in the twisted minds of Republicans, terrorists must be nonwhite or Muslim? Immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing, the same people were proclaiming that Muslim terrorists from the Middle East were the bombers. That one turned out to be white folks. Oooops! And white folks that were a lot closer to Republicans than Republicans would like to publicly admit, right down to Newt Gingrich, as House speaker, having radical Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth as a liaison to the militia groups of the Northwest. In this case, the bombers were Muslim, but it became obvious that, to Republicans, the glass was only half full.
3. The Saudi government warned the U.S. about the Boston Marathon bombing
Nope. Turns out the Russians did communicate some info about the actual bombers, but a few days after the bombing Glenn Beck said he knew the truth about a Saudi national who had been questioned and let go. It wasn't even the same guys that Rupert Murdoch's New York Post had falsely claimed right on his front page were the perps.
Beck claimed the White House knew who did it and was covering up, and he claimed he would lay out all the evidence the following Monday if the government didn't come clean. There was even some sort of Benghazi connection. So what happened? Well, in the meantime the real bombers were identified and one was killed and one was caught. They weren't Saudis. They even (oh, the disappointment!) weren't of a darkish hue. The whole thing had gotten started on Hannity's show. Bill O'Reilly had Beck on to lay it all out. Thanks, Fox. Where would this country be without you?
4. The White House is full of Muslim Brotherhood
Yes, I can see it all clearly now, the unseen hand of . . . yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Guilt by association when there's no association -- I get it. Next!
5. Bush kept us safe
Giuliani on Hannity again! He did? I coulda sworn that Bush, not Clinton, was at least pretending to be prez on 9/11. It's amazing how anyone can still put Rudy Julieandrews in front of a camera and let him prattle on. It's 2013, for Christ's sake! The man was a failure as a mayor who made himself Mr. 9/11. The guy was so lame, it took him umpteen numbers of trials to nail John Gotti. He spent $50 million running for his party's nomination for president and got one delegate and that delegate was from Florida. But there he was again, in Sean Insanity's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest studio uttering those famous four words, in the wake of the Boston bombing.
One of the sick Republican memes, post-tragedy, was to somehow make the Boston bombing Obama's fault. Hey, Repugs! People were maimed. People died. Families were destroyed! And you, you just see it as an opportunity.
6. Superstorm Sandy was caused by Obama seeding of clouds
Okay, I know this was from late in the previous year, but it still has life in at least some Republican minds. The rest seem to be more fixated on blaming Gov. Blowhard Christie for turning the 2012 election in Obama's favor when he took a romantic walk on the beach with the president. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFvmguc56YA
The first minute and a half is just a Fox News report on the progressing storm. But listen for the eerie voice of insanity that comes in at 1:29 and then shows us "why this Frankenstorm may be changing its trajectory." Can you guess whodunnit? (Hint: "Obama is falling behind in the polls. Is this the October surprise we have been expecting.") The poster, PEREXUSREX, followed up with this reply to doubting commenters: "Watch the news - Obama has been able to look presidential and Mitt Romney has had to slow his campaign. This hurricane has definitely helped Obama who was definitely behind - he is not behind anymore since the hurricane."
7. Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi
[Click to enlarge]
Repugs don't even seem to realize that their very own lies about what happened in Libya may have cost Romney the White House when he repeated a portion of their Libya lie in a the second presidential debate and got caught. In Republikook world, President Obama supposedly either let the storming of the embassy happen or encouraged it, maybe with his supersecret Muslim underground decoder ring, or something.
One thing Republicans won't tell you is that it was they who voted in Congress to withdraw security funding for our embassies. Nice goin', a-holes. Since then we've had madman Rep. Darrell Issa, doing his best Joe McCarthy imitation, running hearing after hearing after hearing, wasting mountains of our taxpayer dollars on some insane attempt to build an impeachment-worthy case against the president. Again, people died, so let's exploit it! Ain't that the Republican way?
8. Romney lost because of "free stuff"
Watch the Lawrence O'Donnell Last Word segment here.
Sooo much chest-beating and recrimination in the wake of Romney losing. So many accusations: Christie, the storm, and, most of all, "free stuff." Obama won by giving out "free stuff" to you know whom.
Just keep telling yourselves that, Repugs. But if Romney had won, people like Sheldon Adelson stood to get a whole lotta free stuff; free stuff in the form of a return of an estimated $700 million in tax breaks in return for his $100 million in campaign contributions. $600 million? Now that's what I call free stuff! Sorry, Mittens, you lost because enough Americans of all backgrounds saw you for what you are.
9. Guns don't kill people
Neither do 30-shot magazines, right? Well, 11 kids escaped death in Newtown, Connecticut, while the shooter in their school had to switch to a new magazine. Suppose he only had 10-shot mags. How much death and human misery would have been avoided?
Yet there are the Republicans, the party that pushes human misery, demanding the right to their 30-shot mags. And if you want to look at the face of insanity --
10. Background checks bad; straw purchases good
Terrorists don't have to try to smuggle their guns into the country. So what's the easiest way for a terrorist to get a gun here in these United States? Well, if you enter a gun emporium and you look like ya just might not be quite white enough and ya might have some sort of one o' them un-'merican accents, they might not sell you a gun. What to do? There's already no background-check thing. That's good for would be evil-doers, but still, there's that accent and skin-tone thing.
Ah, easy! Pay someone to go buy you whatever you need! Street gangs do it all the time. It's called a straw purchase, and Republicans like that just fine. Of course, in the case of the gang gunplay in Chicago, that's all Obama's fault, not the permissiveness of the Republican gun kooks.
11. The Government is buying all the ammo in order to kill us all
No one likes this lie more than the companies that make bullets. It inspires more purchases and hording of ammo. Republicans spend a lot of energy telling each other that Obama is going to take away their guns. They campaigned on it. They shrieked that he'd be coming for our guns as soon as January came along. So it follows that when he couldn't get Congress to pass saner gun laws, he would, naturally, buy up all the bullets!
Or maybe Iraq, Afghanistan, and the creation of a huge Department of Homeland Security have something to do with the so-called ammo shortage. Look, bozos, if Newtown shooter Adam Lanza can get all those bullets, and all the shooters we hear about every damn day can get all the bullets they need, maybe you ought to rethink this. Please, oh Janitor of Lunacy, make it stop!
"We just denied everything that this president and the vice president are trying to do. So what are they going to want to, if they want to violate our Second Amendment rights? Do it with ammo."-- Sen. Jim Inhofe (Republikook-OK)
12. Obama is still a secret Muslim
Yes. Well, that explains everything. Scientists may still be looking for their Unified Field Theory that explains all the physical workings of the universe, but until then, this works fine for those in the Crackpot Party. Behold, all is explained! I saw it on Fox!
13. Obama is deliberately tanking the stock market in order to destroy capitalism
Hey, let's not let the reality that the market has gone over the 16,000 mark get in the way of this "theory." Wingnut chatterboxes and more reputable authorities like Forbes say a crash is coming. Some say everyone should sell their stocks and cash out. Repug media like Newsmax issue weekly warnings about an imminent crash as if they want it to happen, just so they can blame Obama.
Hey, it might happen. The fall of 2008 wasn't pretty, and not much has been done, and the Wall Street criminals run free, but hmmm, now if everyone were to listen to these Chicken Littles and pull their stocks at once, wouldn't that crash the market and destroy the economy to the likes of which has not been seen since 1929? So just who is trying to deliberately destroy capitalism?
14. Obama is gay and has even been "married" to a man
So says World Net Daily's Jerome Corsi, the Swiftboat guy, so it must be true. Can Issa investigations and Hannity breathlessly speculating about gay orgies in the White House be far behind?
This gay Obama thing refuses to die in Repug circles. It's even used as the reason that there are so many of those wicked LGBTs working in the White House. Maybe the saddest thing is that such a thing would matter to Republicans. Ah, but no wonder Obama is pushing that "gay marriage" thing. Say no more!
NOAH'S 2013 IN REVIEW --
A PRAYER TO THE JANITOR OF LUNACY*
Part 1: Take a bow, Repugs! (*including Nico's "Janitor of Lunacy") [Monday]
Part 2: Remember when Reagan cut funds for insane asylums? (Storms, guns, bombs, free stuff, and the secret gay life of Obma: Some top Republican lies of 2013) [Tuesday]
Part 3: No Cruz control (Rafael "Ted" Cruz in his own words) [Wednesday]
Part 4: A great anniversary approaches! (Nixon's resignation) (plus more "Quote of the Year nominees") [Thursday]
Part 5: Everyone's a critic, including me -- Some people really try my patience (Bill-O, Howie Kurtz, E. W. Jackson, et al.) [Friday]
Part 6 (and last): In the words of Dan Quayle, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind" (Exploiting tragedy for a buck; Miss America's not American?; "Quote of the Year" winner) [Saturday]
And don't forget Noah's recent --
"Need a last-minute Christmas gift suggestion?" [12/22]
"50 Years Ago Today: The Beatles" [12/26]
"A Tale of Two Popes -- the one in the Vatican and the one in North Carolina" [12/27]
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Ready for New Year's Eve? We've got the "New Yorker" cartoon crew to help get you psyched
"Just one more holiday to hit us upside our heads," says New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff in his latest e-newsletter/blogpost, "New Year, Old Laughs" -- more of this post in a moment. (Click on this cartoon and most of our others in this post to enlarge.)
by Ken
It's hard to ramp up to the appropriate level of festivity with this smack-dab midweek New Year's, especially if you're expected to be at your work station until today's closing whistle sounds. (Let's just say that I was at my desk until that whistle.) So I thought we could all use some professional inspiritization. So we're calling on some of the most dependable merry-makers, the corps of New Yorker cartoonists, as refereed by cartoon editor Bob Mankoff.
When we rejoin Bob in a moment, we're going to find him sneaking his way, not entirely surprisingly, toward a slide show, and here I have to enter a disclaimer. This is, I think, the best slide show I have ever seen Bob post. There are nine cartoons in it, and I think they're all gems. I made an executive decision that we're going to pluck out three, with possibly a fourth for another use I have in mind -- but believe me, the choice was excruciating.
Now let's rejoin Bob, having announced that we have "just one more holiday to hit us upside our heads."
§
And then the whole damn merry-go-round starts to go round again.
"The seasons fly by so fast, don't they?"
This last holiday is a tricky one to navigate, with its injunction for fun fueled by inebriation:
And its aftermath leaves us resolved to do better and be better, with the predictable results.
The takeaway is not to bite off more than you can eschew.
Still, as we slide into 2014, it would be a sin to abstain from all fun, so perhaps it’s not a bad idea to resolve to view this slide show of some of the magazine’s favorite New Year’s cartoons. We won’t judge.
"Now we'll need a sitter for New Year's Eve."
"Nope, no New Year's resolutions for me this year --
I'm still working on a backlog dating from '87."
I'm still working on a backlog dating from '87."
"Ernest, it's bedtime. The party's over."
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Fuckin Magnets--How Do They Work?
The Chronicle's resident right-wing climate denialist dimwit scores what she thinks is a great big gotcha:A funny thing happened during Australian climate-change professor Chris Turney's venture to retrace a 1912 research expedition in Antarctica and gauge how climate change has affected the continent: Two weeks into a five-week excursion, Turney's good ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy got trapped in ice. It turns out, global warming notwithstanding, that there's so much ice down under that two ice-breaking vessels sent to rescue the research team cannot reach the Australasian Antarctic Expedition.Hilarious, amirite?
What follows is a sort of greatest hits of climate-denialism. Unseasonable cold!
Years ago, global warming believers renamed the phenomenon "climate change" - probably because of pesky details like unusually cold weather undercutting the warming argument.They can't even predict the weather!
Too bad the folks who are supposed to predict climate decades into the future are guided by scientists who could not manage to avoid ice floes during a five-week trip.Quote from ideologically-aligned pseudo-expert!
"I'm sure some researchers can find a possible explanation where humans are causing both Arctic ice melting and Antarctic ice growth, but I'm skeptical of scientists who blame every change in nature on human activities. Nature routinely causes its own changes, without any help from us," quoth Spencer, himself a climate change contrarian.1If I don't understand it, it can't be explained!
"Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here ice is building up," the Australasian Antarctic Expedition acknowledges. It's a conundrum. If warming is melting ice in the North, why isn't it melting ice in the South?And so on, in similar fashion.
Shockingly, it turns out that this happy little denialist talking point about Antarctic sea ice is only part of the story:
Antarctica is a continent with 98% of the land covered by ice, and is surrounded by ocean that has much of its surface covered by seasonal sea ice. Reporting on Antarctic ice often fails to recognise the fundamental difference between sea ice and land ice. Antarctic land ice is the ice which has accumulated over thousands of years on the Antarctica landmass through snowfall. This land ice therefore is actually stored ocean water that once evaporated and then fell as precipitation on the land. Antarctic sea ice is entirely different as it is ice which forms in salt water during the winter and almost entirely melts again in the summer.And while there's no definitive answer as to why Antarctic sea ice is increasing, it isn't incompatible with climate-change models:
Importantly, when land ice melts and flows into the oceans global sea levels rise on average; when sea ice melts sea levels do not change measurably but other parts of the climate system are affected, like increased absorbtion of solar energy by the darker oceans.
It’s clear to Zhang and other experts who look at sea ice that the seeming paradox of Antarctic ice increasing while Arctic ice is decreasing is really no paradox at all. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is land surrounded by ocean. In the Arctic, moreover, you’ve got sea ice decreasing in the summer; at the opposite pole, you’ve got sea ice increasing in the winter. It’s not just an apples-and-oranges comparison: it’s more like comparing apple pie with orange juice.But hey, poor little Debra can't be bothered with a bunch of trivial detail. What matters is the soundbites this gives her and Fox and the rest of the denialists. Because catastrophic change that would kill millions and devastate entire nations is nothing compared to winning the spin cycle.
It does serve as a reminder, however, that while the planet is warming overall, largely due to human emissions of greenhouse gases, the complexity of the climate system guarantees that the changes to come won’t unfold in a completely straightforward way.
1Spencer, by the way, also happens to be an evolution "contrarian"; make of that what you will.
Meet The D.C. Insiders Backing Colleen Hanabusa's Bid To Oust Progressive Senator Brian Schatz
 |
| The worst U.S. drone advocates, Buck McKeon and Colleen Hanabusa |
She doesn't mention the D.C. insiders bankrolling her campaign to oust Schatz from the U.S. Senate in the Aug. 9 Democratic primary. That's because the military-industry complex isn't popular with voters.
For the first time since its founding in 1991, the Congressional Progressive Caucus lacks a Hawai`i member in the House of Representatives. Hanabusa has decided to not follow the example of Hawai`i Representatives Patsy Mink, Neil Abercrombie and Mazie Hirono and instead has joined the corrupt, Wall Street-financed New Democrat Coalition, which was founded in 1997 as a conservative counterweight to the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
The New Dems' self-described mission is "ensuring that the voices of our tech and business communities are heard in Washington." Hanabusa chairs the group's National Security Task Force. With her focus on helping defense contractors, she's a natural for the role. She travels the country promoting their interests, as is noted on her Congressional website ("Runyan hosts Armed Services discussion with area defense contractors"). In her numerous campaigns for Congress (2003, 2006, 2010, 2012), defense contractors have been key donors. That's true also for her current Senate bid. Through the last reporting period, defense PACs had given her campaign $31,000, more than any other business sector.
Top PAC donors to Hanabusa include:
Lockheed Martin (which was recently awarded $1 billion in Pentagon contracts)
BAE Systems (which also has been racking up big Department of Defense contracts within the last month)
Northrop Grumman (which is a leading drone manufacturer)
Throughout her three-year tenure in Congress, Hanabusa has formed remarkably close relationships with senior Republicans who are important to ensuring public funds keep flowing to the private makers of war machinery.
For instance, she's part of Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon's drone caucus, and has worked even more closely with Randy Forbes - who is proud to be a lavish defense spender. She doesn't miss an opportunity to praise Forbes, despite his right-wing ideology and pathological homophobia. McKeon, Forbes, Hanabusa and others on the House Armed Services Committee have helped maintain soaring profits for defense contractors.
Though military spending is important to Hawai`i's economy, Democratic primary voters in Hawai`i are strongly progressive, and many are aghast to learn about Hanabusa's hawkish friends and positions. Meanwhile, Hanabusa is openly dismissive of progressives. It's a strange strategy, considering recent primary failures of other ConservaDems in major Hawai`i races. See, for example, Mufi Hannemann for Governor in 2010 and Congress in '12 and Ed Case for Senate in 2006 and '12. Case also used the "D.C. insider" line of attack against Hirono, with dismal results.
Schatz, meanwhile, has been endorsed by Council for a Livable World and has consistently maintained a top ranking by Progressive Punch. He's working to ensure Hawai`i gets its fair share of defense spending (and then some), but without sacrificing principles.
Hanabusa hasn't been able to identify a single issue on which she's more progressive than Schatz. So her campaign is focused on things other than issues:
• Calling for endless debates - a refrain often heard from losing campaigns.Ultimately, it's probably useful that Hanabusa has brought up the question of "D.C. insiders" (though, like calling for debates, it's a common refrain of losers). Relationships and alliances do mean a lot in politics. Who do Hawai`i voters want in the Senate for years to come: Hanabusa and her Northrop Grumman/Forbes/McKeon friends or Schatz and his green-blue alliance including Warren and Merkley?
• Implying Schatz is uppity and sort of an outsider, while she was born in Hawai`i, eats at local food places and practices local customs.
• Touting endorsements from the last of the old boys, such as conservative-leaning elderly ex-governors Ben Cayetano and George Ariyoshi (who haven't won elections since the '90s and '70s, respectively).
It's better than talking about her record, which (beyond the contractor-money game) includes these nuggets:
• "Steamrolling" anti-labor "reforms" through the state legislature.
• Allowing vetoes of civil unions and emergency contraception legislation by a Republican governor while she was State Senate President, despite holding an overwhelming Democratic majority.
• Refusing to endorse Hirono in her 2012 Senate primary against Blue Dog Case (though now some of her supporters are saying Senator Hirono is somehow obligated to endorse Hanabusa-- which Hirono has said isn't going to happen).
• Telling voters at home that the supports Social Security after speaking at a press conference following the 2012 elections when New Dems announced everything was on the table and they were "ready to deal."
• Leading the effort to oust the Attorney General who headed the historic investigation of the previously untouchable leaders of the nation's biggest charitable trust.
Blue America, of course, has proudly endorsed Schatz, based on a comparison of his progressive record and her conservative record (and long, sordid history of corruption). You can help him keep this seat progressive here at the Blue America ActBlue page with a contribution before the quarterly deadline tonight... or after.
Tears Of Blood
I didn't know when I would be able to write about this. It feels too raw in my system right now-- raw and not fully digested. When the standard Foder/Frommer/Lonely Planet guide books tell you what to do if you only have two days in Quito, they all mention Oswaldo Guayasamín's Capilla del Hombre (Chapel of Man). Maybe it was just the circumstances of the day but it was one of the most spiritually moving museums I've ever visited, beyond even Jesus' reputed birthplace in Bethlehem. A tribute to all the people of Latin America, Guayasamín's incredible art-- reminiscent of Picasso-meets-Bacon-- captures the profoundly tragic struggle of the indigenous people and the Africans kidnapped and enslaved there.
Now that I'm thinking about it though, I realize I really do need to wait at least a few days to be able to fully convey my experience at La Capilla del Hombre and at Guayasamín's home. What's compelling me to even mention it now is that I stood in front of this painting, Tears of Blood: Homage to Salvador Allende, Victor Jara, and Pablo Neruda, dedicated to the memory of 3 heroes of the people, the first two of whom were slain at the behest of my own country by a handpicked fascist dictator, Augusto Pinochet, shedding my own tears. Immediately afterwards I got an e-mail from my old friend Russ Baker about how the U.S. media, particularly the lapdogs at the NY Times, treated the revelations about a CIA campaign of assassination directed at Latin American social democratic political leaders. I urge you to read the whole article by Dave Lindorff at WhoWhatWhy.
The purportedly “natural”, “accidental”, or “suicide-related” deaths of such important left-leaning figures as Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, Brazil’s President Joao Goulart and Chile’s President Salvador Allende all occurred during the rule of various rightist dictators.There was a bunch of Texans on the tour with me, athough they seemed to be on a completely different tour and certainly could never have fathomed in a million years why that painting left me unable to hold back my tears.
The re-examination of evidence in these cases is based therefore on strong skepticism about the “official” narratives of their deaths. This skepticism, in turn, is based on a well-documented history of thousands of cases of political murder in the region.
Investigators from Brazil’s Truth Commission, looking into the 1976 car crash of former leftist Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek and his limo driver, have discovered a bullet fragment lodged in the driver’s skull. This finding, the Commission ruled, along with other evidence, suggests that Kubitschek was murdered-- most likely at the behest of the leaders of the CIA-backed military coup that also ousted his successor Joao Goulart.
...The Agency, while perhaps not directing the killings—and which in any case has a history of carefully avoiding a direct evidentiary trail of involvement in covert operations—did enable the building of a crucial database on leftist activists and ousted leaders, and facilitated radio communications among the various countries’ intelligence services.
...That distinction may not mollify Latin Americans who are looking for the truth about the real roots of democracy’s historic collapse in their countries in the 1970s and 1980s.
Additional untimely deaths in Latin America are likely to be reclassified as political murders in the coming months.
While autopsies are not always definitive, forensic studies are becoming more sophisticated. They’re also becoming more popular in a region where the political pendulum has decisively swung in recent years from right to left, with more left-leaning governments being elected in the region-- including in Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and most recently Chile, where Socialist Michelle Bachelet won a landslide victory in regaining the presidency there.
Those leaders, for obvious reasons, will wants answers to the grim fate of similar leaders who came before them. Currently, for example, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team is working to identify victims of that country’s “dirty war” against leftists.
One case to watch carefully is that of Brazilian President Goulart, whose body was exhumed last month. Goulart, who died in exile in Argentina nine months after a junta overthrew his elected government, was officially reported to have suffered a heart attack. But as his death came at the height of Operation Condor, with dictators aiding each other in eliminating their exiled opponents, there has always been speculation that Goulart had actually been murdered.
A former Uruguayan intelligence officer, himself in trouble on other charges, publicly testified a few years back that Goulart was poisoned by Uruguayan operatives at the request of the Brazilian junta. Tissue samples are being sent to Europe for testing.
With a new year bearing down, braving a bold look into the future
By some measures, 2014 is already looking like tough times.
by Ken
Probably you were aware, but we're just this close to starting a whole new year. I know it happened last year just about this same time, but that's no help. (Look how that turned out!) Naturally it would be nice to have some sort of advance information as to what the new year has in store, so when I stumbled across an invitation -- as I was riffling through my e-mail -- to check out my astrological forecast, I thought I'd click through.
What I found was at once more specific and more vague than what I was imagining. In fact, I'm not quite sure what I found.
In 2014, your playfulness could bring trouble, as it'll be hard to find people that get your sense of humor. Sure, there will be instant attractions and more than enough opportunity for fun banter, but anything for the long term will be scarce. However, it'll be you that gets bored fast, as the ball will be in your court more times than not, in whatever games you do find yourself playing. Of course, there is nothing wrong with enjoying the wining and dining involved, as all is fair in love and war. After all, you don't have to answer to anyone but yourself -- and if anyone does try to get you to do otherwise, trust they will never understand you the way you want. 2014 will be all about your personal freedom. If there is another beside you for the journey, they'll be following your lead, not the other way around.First off, I'm not clear why my playfulness, such as it is, will bring any more trouble in 2014 than in years past, or why it will be any harder to find people that get my sense of humor. What would be surprising -- and definitely worth mentioning -- is if it were going to be somehow easier.
Then, I'm not clear about this business about the ball being be in my court more times than not, in whatever games I do find myself playing. I actually can't think of that many games in which the ball even might be in my court, or why this should lead to my getting bored fast. I suppose it's true that I do sometimes get bored fast, but at other times I have the patience of, well, a really patient person. Look at how hard I'm working to make sense of this! (Say, is the ball in my court now?)
As to not answering to anyone but myself, well, I think we all try to pretend that this is the case, but when there are necessities of life to be accounted for like shelter and food and clothing, there are any number of people standing in line ahead of me expecting to be answered to, with excellent grounds for their expectations.
It could be that I'm not getting this part quite right since my head is still shaky from the part about it being A-OK to enjoy the wining and dining involved seeing as how all is fair in love and war. Um, which wining and dining is this? I did have some lovely roast-pork sandwiches yesterday and another today from a pork shoulder I roasted the day before (I dipped the inner sides of the rolls in the juices, and oh my goodness!), but I'm not sure that really qualifies as wining and dining, especially without the wining. I thought about maybe having some beer yesterday with the sandwiches, but I knew that in my head I would have seen my sleep doctor getting really frowny about it -- or, for that matter, about the hypothetical wine. Oh, I do indulge occasionally, but then, as you know, all is fair in love and war. (I think you have to slip that one in really quickly to get away with it, and just as quickly hurry on to some other subject.)
If I had to guess, I would say that the chances of 2014 being all about my personal freedom, or even substantially about my personal freedom, are pretty unlikely -- at least without the kind of windfall that these forecasts sometimes project, of which I notice no mention here. And as to the chances of anybody at all following my lead, well, that would frankly shock me.
But don't let me stop you from checking out your horoscope at the above link. I just hope it's easier to make sense of than mine.
#
2013 in Review -- A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy, Part 1: Take a bow, Repugs!
No sooner do we finish rerunning Noah's 2012 "Year in Review" series than he's ready, having apparently chained himself to his computer, to tackle 2013! Herewith the initial installment. -- Ed.
Carnival's "Cruise to the 13th century": As the cruise ship Carnival Triumph drifts helplessly, its engines kaput, in the vicinity of Mexico's Yucatán peninsula on February 11, this boat dispatched by the Coast Guard cutter Vigorous keeps an eye out.
by Noah
By the time I was 18, I had come to the realization that God, if he, she, or it existed, was really just the Royal Galactic Emperor of Practical Jokes, a being who had set things in motion from which there is only a slim chance of recovery. The obstacles to that recovery? Our fellow humankind. I had also decided that if God created man in his image, then we were truly screwed, big-time. Perhaps God saw his creation in action for a while, shrugged, gave up, and left the building.
Last year I wrote up the year as a series of what I called "Idiocracy Moments," making liberal use of Mike Judge's fine Idiocracy movie as context for what I see in everyday life. [See this year's "redux" of all five parts, beginning here. -- Ed.] Well, surprise, surprise, what I saw in 2013 wasn't any better. Mankind bathes itself in stupidity, illogic, and suicidal tendencies. Is this the end of the road? Are we doomed to just run headfirst, splat!, into a spiked wall?
Ladies and gents, I present the evidence! Since this forum is DownWithTyranny, I feel compelled to start with some observations about Republicans. Hey, it's part of what we do!
First off: some Republican contradictions that deal with survival while revealing the chaos of the Republican mind
1. Republicans want a bigger army, but at the same time they want the right to own more and more guns and even bigger state militias ("Idaho Lawmaker Wants To Draft All Adults Into Militias") to defend themselves from that army. This doesn't just include handguns or fully automatic rifles, it includes things that can stop a tank and bring down aircraft -- oh, and deer too.
2. Republicans want to put all terrorist suspects on a "no fly" watch list ,but to be able to sell them all the guns they want without anything that smacks of a background check, thus giving us the right to die with our feet on the ground. Now, that's freedom, with a capital F. And, of course, there's the issue of just who is a terrorist suspect? I mean, where does one draw the line? Skin tone? Facial hair? Nationality? Religion? Name that ends in a vowel? Books read? Groceries purchased? Contraception? Drive a foreign car? No Christmas tree? Life gets complicated when you're a Republican.
3. Republicans don't want taxes, hate FEMA, and want immediate help when the tornado hits but won't approve the needed emergency budgets -- unless, of course, the storm hits their state. This cuts right to the inherent selfishness of being a Republican in the first place. What should we expect from a party that boasts "libertarian" principles? Others must "pull themselves up with their own bootstraps," not us. No, not us. We're special, exceptional!
Now, one of my favorite stories of 2013: Carnival's cruise to the 13th century!
Do you miss those days when humankind just tossed its human waste out the window and into the street? Do you miss those days when there was always a good chance at coming down with cholera or bubonic plague right in your own neighborhood? If so, then for a mere $600 or so, Carnival will punch your ticket to their own floating theme park of Hell on Waves.
Diesel engines almost never blow, but this one did. After being trapped, drifting for days and days that must have seemed like months and months in a nightmare of medieval on-deck rivers of shit, and no water to drink or water to shower with, etc., all the while surrounded by a polluted ocean, the Carnival Cruise Lines ship ironically named Carnival Triumph found a way to get its cruise suckers back to land in, of all places, Mobile, Alabama! Now that's lunacy! That's one hell of a vacation!
Showing maximum caring and sensitivity, Carnival then decided to make up for the duress by offering its victims the staggering sum of $500, and -- wait for it -- tickets for a future cruise! Yeah, I'd sure want to get right back on the boat to Hell. (Even before this marvelous party on the high seas, I never understood why someone would actually pay money to board one of these floating vomitoriums. Okay, sometimes it's just dysentery.) The "gift" came only if you agreed never to sue Carnival. Carnival then put its victims on a bus that broke down. Then they got their victims, er, customers, a plane that had electrical problems and delayed the victims' flight to Houston.
Houston? Mobile? I guess the victims should feel fortunate that Carnival didn't put them on a plane to a fabulous vacation in Chernobyl! I imagine that if Carnival were owned by some Japanese company, the directors would have done the honorable thing and disemboweled themselves with hari kari blades. The punishment would have carried some measure of poetic justice with it.
At least one of Carnival's victims wasn't buying into the quick $500 payoff. Lisa Williams, 42, of Houston, had to be hospitalized twice for dehydration complications due to being in the tropical heat with no water to drink for days. She wants 150 times that $500. Personally, I'd be going for $750,000,000 not $75,000.
I can't wait for that guy who did the Titanic movie, James Cameron, to take on this one. I'll especially enjoy the scene where Leonardo DiCaprio takes all of the passengers to the bow of the ship so they can breathe some air that isn't reeking. Just remember, if you do go on a Carnival cruise, pack some hip waders. They'll come in handy, but be careful, you might drown if your ship tips over in the Mediterranean and water or sewage fills your boots. Yeah, that was a different ship and a company (the Costa Concordia, back in January 2012), but does it really matter?
Meanwhile, back in Repugland --
Kudos to the great state (not) of Mississippi. Yeah, I know, easy target, but what did they do this time? Well, it seems they did something very commendable this year. In February, they finally banned slavery! That's right, slavery has been legal in Mississippi all this time! I guess they were just keeping it on the books in hopes of it making a big comeback. This is the state that wanted to put Nathan Bedford Forrest, a founder of the KKK, on its license plates just a few years ago.
I'm forced to assume that Mississippi has never considered itself part of these United States. No surprise there. Why would I say that? How about because the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banned slavery 148 years ago. To be fair, though, and I'm always fair; Mississippi actually got around to banning slavery long, long ago, back in 1995. No, not 1895. 1995! See? They were only 130 years behind. It just took them a bit of time to make it all nice and official-like. Meanwhile, the 20th century came and went.
The first Janitor of Lunacy "Quote of the Year" nominee
I wish to close Part 1 of "A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy" by nominating none other than Paul "Crazy Eyes" Ryan. Did he have those eyes on the day he was born? Was his mother named Rosemary? No baby should be tossed into a trash can, but of all the babies not to be tossed into a trash can --
People vote for this man. People who walk among us disguised as normal people. Many in the media just adore this classless pathological lying assclown ( "Veteran's Facebook post to Paul Ryan goes viral"). This man was nominated to be vice president of the United States of America! A heartbeat away!
Lunacy? You betcha!
Still not convinced?
Here's a quote from recording artist and newly minted Christonut Michelle Shocked, spewing out her religion's message of hate. Who needs Muslim extremists when we have our own religious nutters right here, often saying much the same things?
Carnival's "Cruise to the 13th century": As the cruise ship Carnival Triumph drifts helplessly, its engines kaput, in the vicinity of Mexico's Yucatán peninsula on February 11, this boat dispatched by the Coast Guard cutter Vigorous keeps an eye out.
by Noah
Janitor of lunacy
Paralyze my infancy
Petrify the empty cradle
Bring hope to them and me
Janitor of tyranny
Testify my vanity
Mortalize my memory
Deceive the devil's deed
Tolerate my jealousy
Recognize the desperate need
Janitor of lunacy
Identify my destiny
Revive the living dream
Forgive their begging scream
Seal the giving of their seed
Disease the breathing grief-- Christa Päffgen (aka Nico, 1938-1988)
By the time I was 18, I had come to the realization that God, if he, she, or it existed, was really just the Royal Galactic Emperor of Practical Jokes, a being who had set things in motion from which there is only a slim chance of recovery. The obstacles to that recovery? Our fellow humankind. I had also decided that if God created man in his image, then we were truly screwed, big-time. Perhaps God saw his creation in action for a while, shrugged, gave up, and left the building.
Last year I wrote up the year as a series of what I called "Idiocracy Moments," making liberal use of Mike Judge's fine Idiocracy movie as context for what I see in everyday life. [See this year's "redux" of all five parts, beginning here. -- Ed.] Well, surprise, surprise, what I saw in 2013 wasn't any better. Mankind bathes itself in stupidity, illogic, and suicidal tendencies. Is this the end of the road? Are we doomed to just run headfirst, splat!, into a spiked wall?
Ladies and gents, I present the evidence! Since this forum is DownWithTyranny, I feel compelled to start with some observations about Republicans. Hey, it's part of what we do!
First off: some Republican contradictions that deal with survival while revealing the chaos of the Republican mind
Republicans don't like budgeting money for emergency relief, but they sure do squeal when there is, say, a tornado in their own personal back yard.
1. Republicans want a bigger army, but at the same time they want the right to own more and more guns and even bigger state militias ("Idaho Lawmaker Wants To Draft All Adults Into Militias") to defend themselves from that army. This doesn't just include handguns or fully automatic rifles, it includes things that can stop a tank and bring down aircraft -- oh, and deer too.
2. Republicans want to put all terrorist suspects on a "no fly" watch list ,but to be able to sell them all the guns they want without anything that smacks of a background check, thus giving us the right to die with our feet on the ground. Now, that's freedom, with a capital F. And, of course, there's the issue of just who is a terrorist suspect? I mean, where does one draw the line? Skin tone? Facial hair? Nationality? Religion? Name that ends in a vowel? Books read? Groceries purchased? Contraception? Drive a foreign car? No Christmas tree? Life gets complicated when you're a Republican.
3. Republicans don't want taxes, hate FEMA, and want immediate help when the tornado hits but won't approve the needed emergency budgets -- unless, of course, the storm hits their state. This cuts right to the inherent selfishness of being a Republican in the first place. What should we expect from a party that boasts "libertarian" principles? Others must "pull themselves up with their own bootstraps," not us. No, not us. We're special, exceptional!
Now, one of my favorite stories of 2013: Carnival's cruise to the 13th century!
This lucky lady, Lisa Williams of Houston, brought suit against Carnival Cruise Lines for "damages in excess of $75,000" for the, er, not-quite-a-carnival she had aboard the Carnival Triumph in February. “She had gone to have a relaxing couple of days," said her attorney, Spencer Aronfeld, "and it turned into torture."
Do you miss those days when humankind just tossed its human waste out the window and into the street? Do you miss those days when there was always a good chance at coming down with cholera or bubonic plague right in your own neighborhood? If so, then for a mere $600 or so, Carnival will punch your ticket to their own floating theme park of Hell on Waves.
Diesel engines almost never blow, but this one did. After being trapped, drifting for days and days that must have seemed like months and months in a nightmare of medieval on-deck rivers of shit, and no water to drink or water to shower with, etc., all the while surrounded by a polluted ocean, the Carnival Cruise Lines ship ironically named Carnival Triumph found a way to get its cruise suckers back to land in, of all places, Mobile, Alabama! Now that's lunacy! That's one hell of a vacation!
Showing maximum caring and sensitivity, Carnival then decided to make up for the duress by offering its victims the staggering sum of $500, and -- wait for it -- tickets for a future cruise! Yeah, I'd sure want to get right back on the boat to Hell. (Even before this marvelous party on the high seas, I never understood why someone would actually pay money to board one of these floating vomitoriums. Okay, sometimes it's just dysentery.) The "gift" came only if you agreed never to sue Carnival. Carnival then put its victims on a bus that broke down. Then they got their victims, er, customers, a plane that had electrical problems and delayed the victims' flight to Houston.
Houston? Mobile? I guess the victims should feel fortunate that Carnival didn't put them on a plane to a fabulous vacation in Chernobyl! I imagine that if Carnival were owned by some Japanese company, the directors would have done the honorable thing and disemboweled themselves with hari kari blades. The punishment would have carried some measure of poetic justice with it.
At least one of Carnival's victims wasn't buying into the quick $500 payoff. Lisa Williams, 42, of Houston, had to be hospitalized twice for dehydration complications due to being in the tropical heat with no water to drink for days. She wants 150 times that $500. Personally, I'd be going for $750,000,000 not $75,000.
I can't wait for that guy who did the Titanic movie, James Cameron, to take on this one. I'll especially enjoy the scene where Leonardo DiCaprio takes all of the passengers to the bow of the ship so they can breathe some air that isn't reeking. Just remember, if you do go on a Carnival cruise, pack some hip waders. They'll come in handy, but be careful, you might drown if your ship tips over in the Mediterranean and water or sewage fills your boots. Yeah, that was a different ship and a company (the Costa Concordia, back in January 2012), but does it really matter?
Meanwhile, back in Repugland --
Kudos to the great state (not) of Mississippi. Yeah, I know, easy target, but what did they do this time? Well, it seems they did something very commendable this year. In February, they finally banned slavery! That's right, slavery has been legal in Mississippi all this time! I guess they were just keeping it on the books in hopes of it making a big comeback. This is the state that wanted to put Nathan Bedford Forrest, a founder of the KKK, on its license plates just a few years ago.
I'm forced to assume that Mississippi has never considered itself part of these United States. No surprise there. Why would I say that? How about because the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banned slavery 148 years ago. To be fair, though, and I'm always fair; Mississippi actually got around to banning slavery long, long ago, back in 1995. No, not 1895. 1995! See? They were only 130 years behind. It just took them a bit of time to make it all nice and official-like. Meanwhile, the 20th century came and went.
The first Janitor of Lunacy "Quote of the Year" nominee
I wish to close Part 1 of "A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy" by nominating none other than Paul "Crazy Eyes" Ryan. Did he have those eyes on the day he was born? Was his mother named Rosemary? No baby should be tossed into a trash can, but of all the babies not to be tossed into a trash can --
"We are not going to give up on destroying the health care system for the American people."Did Crazy Eyes misspeak? Is this really what he meant to say? Or is it not what he meant to say but just a little Freudian slip? A glimpse into the inner mind of a Repug?
People vote for this man. People who walk among us disguised as normal people. Many in the media just adore this classless pathological lying assclown ( "Veteran's Facebook post to Paul Ryan goes viral"). This man was nominated to be vice president of the United States of America! A heartbeat away!
Lunacy? You betcha!
Still not convinced?
Here's a quote from recording artist and newly minted Christonut Michelle Shocked, spewing out her religion's message of hate. Who needs Muslim extremists when we have our own religious nutters right here, often saying much the same things?
"When they stop Prop 8 and force priests to marry gays, it will be the downfall of civilization, and Jesus will come back."Well, all righty then! I thank you for the heads-up, Michelle! May I introduce you to the Duck Dynasty clan, or perhaps just Mitt Romney? Certainly the Janitor of Lunacy has quite a sense of humor.
NOAH'S 2013 IN REVIEW --
A PRAYER TO THE JANITOR OF LUNACY*
Part 1: Take a bow, Repugs! (*including Nico's "Janitor of Lunacy") [Monday]
Part 2: Remember when Reagan cut funds for insane asylums? (Storms, guns, bombs, free stuff, and the secret gay life of Obma: Some top Republican lies of 2013) [Tuesday]
Part 3: No Cruz control (Rafael "Ted" Cruz in his own words) [Wednesday]
Part 4: A great anniversary approaches! (plus more "Quote of the Year nominees") [Thursday]
Part 5: Everyone's a critic, including me -- Some people really try my patience (Bill-O, Howie Kurtz, E. W. Jackson, et al.) [Friday]
Part 6 (and last): In the words of Dan Quayle, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind" (Exploiting tragedy for a buck; Miss America's not American?; "Quote of the Year" winner) [Saturday]
And don't forget Noah's recent --
"Need a last-minute Christmas gift suggestion?" [12/22]
"50 Years Ago Today: The Beatles" [12/26]
"A Tale of Two Popes -- the one in the Vatican and the one in North Carolina" [12/27]
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Singapore food pron
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| Lau Pa Sat satay. Via. |
It took a form like that of an indexing dream, where you toss and turn over an imaginary term that you might have spelled wrong, worrying that you'll lose it before you get to work: something I was determined to blog about but wouldn't have sufficient information [jump]
to Google, the story of a Malay aristocrat of the colonial period who agitated to have pumpkin pie (or a local variant perhaps of Dutch-Melaka origin?) declared a national treasure in Singapore, or product of the intangible cultural heritage, or something like that, with a name as far as I can remember sounding something like "purslane", perhaps a cross between C.S. Lewis's lion-Jesus Aslan and the Parameśvara from Sumatra who founded the half-mythical 14th-century settlement on Singapore Island—obvious by the time I was really awake that I was being trolled by my own unconscious in a big way, because the whole thing doesn't even make comical sense, although it may turn out to have some ideological meaning.
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| Bunga kantan. Image from Malaysian Wikipedia. |
At lunchtime it was a Cantonese restaurant with the paternal aunt-matriarch, now close to 80, newly slim, and diabetic, and mountains of dim sum plus century-egg porridge. The porridge had ostentatiously large pieces of pork that tended to spill out of your spoon instead of the traditional fragments of minced meat, but the whole experience was gastronomically pretty gratifying, Cantonese cuisine being really a cuisine, with upper-class roots, in the first place, so that most things were just a bit better than they'd be in the working-class coffee shop, spicy braised chicken feet of remarkable tenderness, melt-in-your-mouth yam dumplings, delicately flavored radish cake without the gumminess that sometimes compromises it. Silly Shanghai soup dumplings our 12-year-old nephew earnestly explained under the (hilariously false) impression that they were a native Singapore fashion item that we wouldn't have been able to see anywhere before.
In the evening, the aunt-matriarch's offspring took us to one of the island's private clubs, the golf-free kind where eating is more of a focus, and a feast of upscaled street foods, basically so that the number two daughter could fulfill her own whim of having rojak, an elaboration of the ancient Javanese tossing of green fruits with thick sweet soya sauce that has over the years gotten dominated by pineapple, cucumber, cuttlefish, and pieces of fried dough or youtiao ("oil stick"), and a turkey club with potato chips, both at the same meal.
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| Rojak ingredients form Lao Hong Ser, Dunmore Road. Photo by Dr. Leslie Tay. |
Here nothing was quite right. The lamb on the satay sticks was issued in huge shashlik-sized chunks instead of tiny threads of meat, and had been broiled under a salamander instead of tended over an agonizingly slow charcoal grill, so it was not very tender. My bowl of Hokkien shrimp noodles was full of squid, really beautifully cooked, but not part of its presentation in the ordinary world. Everything seemed to be missing a particular street fragrance: the rojak itself lacking the bunga kantan or torch ginger flower that is supposed to mark the home-elegant version, while the sambal blacan (dipping chili of bird chilis, kalamansi lime, and the stinky sun-fermented tiny shrimp paste called blacan) had no blacan. The satay sauce was without lengkuas or galangal, the intoxicating ginger-like rhizome that makes what is basically hot peanut butter worth putting under your nose; and the sago pudding sweet that we call gula melaka after the Melaka-made brown palm sugar syrup that flavors it hardly had any gula melaka, though it did have sliced bananas and a hugely superfluous scoop of vanilla ice cream. But another sweet had far more smell than it needed: ice kachang, a shaved-ice concoction with red beans that I've never much liked, came with the most famous local fragrance of all in the shape of a scoop of durian ice cream, a senseless gilding of an already seriously over-freighted lily. The whole feast was all very edible, too, in every respect; just overdone, overgenerous, and not quite nostalgic.
The dream, I guess, was an id-effort at satire of the way the club kitchen aims at nostalgia for its yuppy customers, bombarding them with foodie floating signifiers without understanding the complexity from which the nostalgia can arise, the importance of the heat, an unsteady four-legged stool, and the smell of road dust.
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| Fried Hokkien mee by Thye Chua at the Food Republic Beer Garden; photo by The Yumyums. |
If predators are scamming billions and billions via for-profit hospice "care," isn't this why we have the death penalty?
Profits up in California: The average profit per patient has grown steadily. The combination of more patients and far greater profit per patient has pushed overall inflation-adjusted profit up more than tenfold. (click to enlarge; from washingtonpost.com)
by Ken
In a moment I'm going to back up a bit to try to enable you to understand why I was so shocked, and found my gut so clenched, upon reading an online teaser Thursday night for an investigative report in the Washington Post's "Cost of Healing" series which appeared on Friday's front page, "Medicare rules create a booming business in hospice care for people who aren't dying."
The gist of the article was that a mutibillion-dolar industry has sprung up in "for profit" hospice care, taking advantage of the daily amount Medicare pays for hospice care -- $150, according to the article, whether or not any care has been provided on any particular day -- by bulking up the rolls with large numbers of clients who, to put it bluntly, aren't really sick enough to be in hospice care, and therefore: (1) cost much less to care for than the dying people hospice care is designed for, and (2) for the same reason live much longer, thereby continuing to bulk up the predator-hospice companies' already outsize profits.
We'll come back to the article, but first, as I said, I have to back up.
In the years when -- from long distance -- I watched over my mother's final decline and passing, one lesson I kept relearning was that every situation and stage I encountered was a first time for me, all the people I was dealing with dealt with this all the time. Nearly all those people knew I had no idea what I was doing, and many of them not only counted on it but took advantage of it. Some were a little more helpful.
Miraculously, a very few people along the way showed genuine humanity, making it their business to try to help me understand what was happening and what could or needed to be done. In my state of perpetual apprehension and befuddlement, I doubt that I thanked those blessed souls enough.
The highest concentration of them worked for the hospice that was recommended to me when my mother's doctor, who had known her for many years, told me there was nothing more that could be done for her medically and he was recommending hospice care. He was aided considerably by the copy of my mother's "living will" I showed him, in which she made it absolutely clear that she wanted no heroic measures to prolong her life when there was no quality of life left to be preserved. When my mother was still relatively healthy, she had made a point of showing this to me and making sure I understood her wishes.
My first assumption was that "hospice" meant she would be "going to" a hospice when she was released from the hospital. I suspect I wasn't the first person to make the mistaken assumption that it was a place rather than a form of care for the terminally ill. I still had to figure out how to arrange her living situation.
But since my mother now needed around-the-clock care, and I thought a nursing home was our only option, there was someone at the hospice who guided me through every step of the Medicaid application, something I can't imagine how I would have managed on my own. It certainly wouldn't have occurred to me that I needed to talk to the funeral home (with which my mother had taken the precaution and taken on the expense of prepaying her funeral arrangements so that I wouldn't have to do that) and have them make her plan nonrefundable so that it wouldn't be counted as an "asset"! (And I should add that throughout the remainder of the process the funeral-home people, both in Florida, where my mother lived, and in New York, where she was to be buried, were also angels, handling everything with kindness and efficiency.)
There was another person at the hospice who made no secret of the fact that she hated the nursing-home option, and made me aware that there were now small assisted-living facilities where residents received invididual attention, and which might well be covered by the long-term care policy my mother had providentially scrimped to pay for, which up to that point had made it possible for her to have a home-care aide for a healthy chunk of the day. She wouldn't have been able to recommend a facility, but one of the people she suggested I talk to to better understand the small-ALF option did have a suggestion, of a facility not that far from where my mother lived run by a young woman who gave her residents the best possible care. Ana indeed turned out to be a saint, and took care of my mother till the end as if she were her own mother.
When I told the woman at the hospice of the arrangement I had made, I could hear her relief and happiness at the change from my nursing-home plan. She knew the facility, and considered it an excellent choice. As it turned out, she also made regular home visits to my mother, and in her new residence was able to provide me with information to supplement what I got from Ana. I know there were also regular visits by hospice nurses, and medical care when needed from those nurses and a doctor. The hospice also regularly supplied a range of supplies. When my mother died, there were kind expressions of sympathy from her hospice "unit."
This, then, is the background to the feelings I experienced when I saw the Washington Post report, whose online version began:
Hospice firms draining billions from MedicareIt took me awhile to wrap my brain around this.
By Peter Whoriskey and Dan Keating
Hospice patients are expected to die: The treatment focuses on providing comfort to the terminally ill, not finding a cure. To enroll a patient, two doctors certify a life expectancy of six months or less.
But over the past decade, the number of "hospice survivors" in the United States has risen dramatically, in part because hospice companies earn more by recruiting patients who aren't actually dying, a Washington Post investigation has found. Healthier patients are more profitable because they require fewer visits and stay enrolled longer.
The proportion of patients who were discharged alive from hospice care rose about 50 percent between 2002 and 2012, according to a Post analysis of more than 1 million hospice patients' records over 11 years in California, a state that makes public detailed descriptions and that, by virtue of its size, offers a portrait of the industry.
The average length of a stay in hospice care also jumped substantially over that time, in California and nationally, according to the analysis. Profit per patient quintupled, to $1,975, California records show.
This vast growth took place as the hospice "movement," once led by religious and community organizations, was evolving into a $17 billion industry dominated by for-profit companies. Much of that is paid for by the U.S. government -- roughly $15 billion of industry revenue came from Medicare last year. . . .
First I had to grasp that no, they weren't talking about he kind of hospice that had watched over my mother -- though already it occurred to me that most readers of the article wouldn't know enough about the subject to make the distinction; the message would likely be: Hospice care is a scam.
Then I had to overcome my automatic resistance to the idea that there's an entrepreneurial class so vile as to make a business out of phony hospice predation. Alas, once I understood the nature of the scam, it wasn't difficult to overcome this resistance, knowing as I do that if there's money to be made, there's no shortage of entrepreneurs for whom no degree of vileness would be an obstacle, and if there's a lot of money to be made, then it's likely to be more like a gold rush.
Today the Post published several letters to the editor about the Friday article ("The business of hospice"). But the response that struck the most responsive chord for me appeared only online, at the above link, in a comment by a reader who identified herself (wait, am I just assuming it's a woman?) as "ProgressiveCatholic":
As a former longterm social worker at a non-profit hospice in this area, my heart hurt to see the article in the Post not differentiate between the amazing care that local and national nonprofit hospices provide, but simply identify all hospice care as a way to abuse Medicare. The hospice I worked at for more than 8 years agonized over decisions about whether to take a patient and family off of our program, or to leave them on, receiving badly needed care, when they had elected the Medicare Hospice Benefit and lived longer than 6 months to a year.Yes, please differentiate, and then take the masterminds of the for-profit hospice ripoff and give them fair trials -- I'm thinking 15 minutes apiece should do it -- in preparation for their executions.
Though I can easily imagine that for profit hospices have abused this benefit, the fact remains that many hospices who are in this field are here, and have been for decades, to provide care, not make a profit. PLEASE DIFFERENTIATE between hospices in this community, and in many, who have been providing care, many times at a financial loss, for those on the Medicare Hospice benefit, and those for-profit hospices who have moved in to the field in the last 20-30 years, and may be (?) abusing the Medicare benefit.
A long term joke among our workers was that Hospice care 'caused people to live,' in that when a patient and family have their stress relieved, when caregivers get respite and when patients get adequate pain management, they do indeed, get better for a time. This then leads to the difficult choice of taking that care away, because they no longer meet the Medicare Benefit criteria vs. leaving the care in place, but potentially misusing the benefit.
This is a drastically different issue than "making money" off of hospice care. Hospices face the dilemma of being sued for trying to take someone off of hospice care (it happened to our hospice) versus being sanctioned by Medicare if they leave someone on hospice care. Though I agree for profit hospices have created a number of problems, the way this article reads misleadingly indicates that all hospices out there are "making money off of" dying patients.
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