How Hot Is It?

The crazy little dog:

has been seek indoor shade and some place less hot then where ever it is she is. Normally she would be either begging for a walk or trying to get me to toss a toy around. She thought I was going to get the leash and she ran crawled behind the stool legs thinking she had become invisible. The cat, meanwhile, has absconded altogether.

Haven't They Got BetterThings To Do?

From StatCounter comes this bit of oddity. Granted who ever it was didn't stick around long. Visitor Analysis & System Spec Show Full URLs
Referring URL:				www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CFcQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fighomb.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F11%2Fbloat-and-rot-start-at-top.html&ei=W47WTsSJI4jr0gHy4qTpAQ&usg=AFQjCNFrLMEoUqqJm04lv0TwPozJ1F-oKQ
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IP Address:				198.137.240.197 — [Label IP Address]									Operating System:				WinXP
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Zeitgeist

Year and years ago, I had several dozens of box sets of John Carter of Mars, Tarzan, and
Conan and the rest of that clapish trapish stuffish. Recently, I discovered that great masses of it is available for free on the Kindle.  So I decided to read some of the Mars series.  Man o man are they bad; badly written idiotically plotted, and just generally weird in their racial, gender, and cultural politics. Now today I find that



It will be, of course, worse than Dune; but still, I swear, somebody needs to hire me as a cultural weather vane.

Andrew Sullivan Good For Something

I found these cartoons, which mash up The New Yorker and Charlie Sheen, via Sullivan and they are funny as all get out.

What is really odd is that Sheen sounds like Glenn Beck, or maybe that's not odd at all.

Comedic Geniuses, They Are

So, Sarah Palin misuses blood libel, the Washington Times', as distinct from the Post,

editorial defends Sarah Palin's use of the phrase "blood libel" in the wake of the Tucson shootings, by calling media criticism of Palin "the latest round of an ongoing pogrom against conservative thinkers."

It just doesn't get any funnier. What's next: the Liberal Romans have crucified Sarah Palin on a cross of blood libels with crown of pogramic thorns.

A Republic, If You Can Keep It

In the past little while, Republicans, particularly in the House, have been busy covering themselves in silliness and related whatnotery.  There are the two congressmen who failed to take the oath, there is Representative Steve King (R-Unconstitutional) seeking to subvert the Constitution by passing a law invalidating its provisions for law of the soil citizenship thus neatly sidestepping the amendment process on the solid constitutional grounds of easier is better, there is Paul "it's spelt 100 billion dollar spending cut but its pronounced nearly none" Ryan and his pal John "I haven't a clue what to cut" Boehner irresponsible gobbledy gook on important matters of governance, there is the sophomoric let's not discuss the problem let's rather name a bill something silly style of governance, there's the let read the Constitution but ignore its evolution as a document style of historical understanding,  and that's just the first few days.

How long, one wonders, until the realization of being sold a bill of goods hits the radical Right? In Nevada, it seems, not particularly long.

Many People Wonder Why Many Other People Make Fun of Norwegians

So I was trying to find TMBG Older for its yearly birthday playing and I found these two videos for some Norwegian tv show which seems to deal with b and b+ list celebs long past their prime.  Watch the first one just so as to hear Radar O'Reilly lipsyncing Bob Dylan.



I am not sure there is any reason to watch this one except to feel better about yourself because, well, you didn't take part.

Jonah Goldberg Hates America

America is as much a state of mind as it is a state.  For the longest time, America, as a state of mind, meant things like rule of law, fair play, politeness, and related whatnotery.  Recently, Jonah Goldberg decided that to be authentically American meant not just rejecting all those fundamentally American state of mind dealios but developing a new mindset that more closely reflects the false allegations about Lucrezia Borgia.  To wit:

So again, I ask: Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?
It’s a serious question.

He concludes that Assange's death is, unfortunately, unlikely because

it’s the law. Ultimately, I don’t expect the U.S. government to kill Assange, but I do expect them to try to stop him. Alas, as of now, the plan seems to be to do nothing at all.

 What, I wonder, does he expect America to do? And, I ask, why does Jonah Goldberg hate America?

Too Few Choices

For the longest time, Conservatives and Neoliberals have argued for more testing and greater choice, through charter schools and vouchers.  Recent studies suggest that none of this works. When confronted with these facts of the matter, the intellectually honest thing to do would be stop rooting from them.  Ross Douthat, however, thinks the thing to is repeat old and discredited canards, "incompetent teachers" cause low performance among students, and double down on choice, vouchers, and other even yet more idiotic solutions, "fund students" and allow the magic of the market place to sort it all out. About one sensible point made in this column is that testing doesn't provide the evidence necessary to find the answer to the question "is our children learning," which comes because testing delegitimatizes Douthat's preferred solution: choice. 

When it comes to education reform, Conservatives really do suffer from a dearth of choice.

Bikes and Dogs

From

A Little Deregulation Never Hurt Anyone

Recently a pipeline blew up in California and it has come to light that from

a consumer advocacy group [that] has discovered that the company that operated the faulty pipeline, Pacific Gas & Energy (PG&E), had classified it as “high risk” and failed to utilize the funds it had collected from a rate hike to repair it. The Utility Reform Network (TURN) has obtained documents detailing the energy giant’s request to the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) for a rate hike in 2007. PG&E asked the PUC for permission for a $5 million rate hike to “replace a section of the same pipeline that blew up in San Bruno.” The PUC approved PG&E’s request, allowing it to hike its rates so that it could repair the line in 2009.

Yet the energy giant failed to go through with its scheduled repairs. And in 2009, it once again requested a rate hike from the PUC, again for $5 million. In its request, PG&E warned that if “the replacement of this pipe does not occur, risks associated with this segment will not be reduced. Coupled with the consequences of failure of this section of pipeline, the likelihood of a failure makes the risk of a failure at this location unacceptably high.” Despite these admitted risks, the company could only promise to make its repairs by 2013.

There is considerably more skulduggery available at the link.  One might wonder why the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) didn't intervene and force the PG&E to fix the damn pipeline. It couldn't be because for the past 30 years or so all the cool kids having screaming like a bunch of flying monkeys that regulation of industry is unnecessary, stupid, and wasteful.  Could it?  It couldn't be because if you shout that kind of stuff loud enough and long enough regulators become ever laxer. Could it?

UPDATE:
More Neoliberal, Reaganite, and (possibly) glibertarian complaints about regulation

Coburn's office said Wednesday the senator will object to bringing up the bill if his concerns aren't addressed. His objections are a major blow to supporters' chances of passing the legislation this year.


The legislation would give the agency more power to recall tainted products, require more inspections of food processing facilities and require producers to follow stricter standards for keeping food safe. Currently, the FDA does not have the authority to order a recall and must negotiate recalls with the affected producers. The agency rarely inspects many food facilities and farms, visiting some every decade or so and others not at all.

As Tom Scocca, from whom I found out about this, puts it

This is just hostage-taking. Coburn's concern about the deficit is one-sided—he's not asking for taxes to go up to cover the cost of the bill, which is a scary-sounding $1.4 billion, or a considerably less scary $4.67 per American citizen. Taxes are bad. He is expressing the political opinion that removing disease-ridden feces from the food supply is a responsibility that the government should not take on. This is what Tom Coburn stands for: he believes that, on top of everything else, you can actually go eat shit.