Money and How it Got That Way

I urge all interested in the history of money, debt, and nonsense of economics as a scientific discipline to read this, this, and this. While we're at it, I strongly urge reading this ignorant and hostile response and the comments in which hostility and ignorance vie against and lose to reason and evidence.

Kids Today

Reasons to think that the future may not be a bleak as it may seem:



and



or



gotta love the Dutch

Beer Summit

There are, of course, all manner of reasons, actions, and facts to find Obama less than perfect. On the other hand, there is this:

The man is comfortable in his skin and, given it's color and America's problems with that color, he is kind of amazing.

Nostalgia

In the comments, John  Rove, friend of the blog, makes the point that mediocrity and success go hand in hand. This seems to be true politically, given the rarity of Lincolns and the swarms of George Bushes, who can disagree.  I was reminded that Bryan MaGee made the same point in his memoir. For a variety of reasons, I read this several times. In it he mentions, more than once, his various BBC series in which he discussed philosophy with philosophers on the BBC for all, as it were, to see. Guess what? You can watch some of them.

I may be wrong, as I often am, but it strikes me as unlikely that any Western tv station is going allow some old Marxist egghead like Marcuse burble on in this day and age.

Round One:

With Friends Like This

According to the NRO, former Sen. Malcolm Wallop and friend of liberty is dead.  According to the webpage of the "think tank" he founded and chaired, his love of liberty led him to

[r]ather than simply promising to retaliate if we were attacked with nuclear missiles, Malcolm Wallop argued we should defend ourselves and render missiles powerless to threaten future generations. Malcolm Wallop is the father of missile defense and was the first elected official to propose a space based missile defense system, a program that later became part of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. There are people all across the globe that are safer and freer because of Malcolm Wallop. Malcolm Wallop changed the world for the better.

 According to this, Bush alone spent 10 billion a year on a failed attempts to build missile defense; this suggests that by 2013 over 100 billion in total expenditures for a failed system.

Waste, fraud and abuse, thunder the Conservatives; Government can't do anything right, they insist. And yet a paranoid maniac sets the state on a course to waste billions and billions on a fraud dies a friend of liberty.

God bless America indeed.

Oh For Dumb

A couple of days ago, Matthew Yglesias lamented the winner take all refusal to compromise politics of the contemporary Republican party. He also insisted that

[t]his is the fundamental reality of American politics today, but far too few people put it at the center of their accounts of what’s happening.

Some time ago he praised Mitch McConnell as being "very good at his job" precisely because of his obstructionism and etc.

It's almost like he types the first thing that  comes into his head without thinking.

9/11

Where I was and what I remember are of less importance than zero. Ditto everyone else memorializing the day. On the other hand, what Vonnegut had to say way back in the day, seems relevant.

A Fact That Depresses Me

Not one of my students knew Yertle the Turtle.

Odd Songs

The lead singer plays the sax and they all smile manically.

A related mashup





Having nothing to do with anything

Was It Ever Thus?

The other day, I mentioned Taft and the treaties of arbitration. Today marks the 100th anniversary of a TR op-ed dealio denouncing Taft. In it, he argues that the Spanish American war was one of many incidents in which the US put "righteousness" ahead of "peace." Plus, he argues that the US would never push around smaller countries, like Cuba or Columbia, just to get what it wants. Furthermore, what if those danged foreigners told us we couldn't discriminate via immigration policies and laws? Outrageous idea he fumes.

Clearly, TR was a loon, whose ability to ignore reality was quite stunning and whose bizarre notions of masculinity meant more and better killing of things in the service of peace, prosperity, and environmental protection. Still, it's worth asking if today's morons any worse?

Or is it the case the cumulative errors, fibs, self-deception, lies, and the terrible policies that result have created a situation in which more of the same means we're doomed?

Presidential

Tonigh, Obama will give a speech. Lots of Republicans won't be there. Below is a list. DeMint (professional crackpot) gives the best or, in any event, most revealing, explanation. He told the Obama just exactly what to and Obama didn't do therefore, DeMint won't be there. Why, it's almost as if Obama thinks he is a co-equal who won a national election the temerity he shows by failing to take a Southern white gentleman's advice.

These folks aren't showing up:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.): The Hill says he wanted the president to present the plan in writing before giving the speech and that he wants to draw attention to people who make jobs instead of talking about them. He’ll meet with Boeing officials and employees.

● Rep. Joe Walsh (R., Ill.): The Tea Party–allied representative will host a forum on small businesses. He said he doesn’t want to be a “prop,” reports the Chicago Tribune.

● Sen. David Vitter (R., La): He’s having a Saints–Packers watch party at home with friends, and he’s emphasized that his decision is based on his football fanaticism rather than his political views. But he told Fox that he expects the speech to be “more political than substantive.”

● Rep. Paul Broun (R., Ga.): He plans to watch from his office so he can tweet about it –– representatives aren’t supposed to use their Blackberries in the chamber. He did the same thing during the State of the Union address.

● Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas): Spokesman Gary Howard said yesterday that he doesn’t plan to attend the speech. Paul has made a habit of skipping primetime presidential speeches, including State of the Union addresses, dismissing them as “a bunch of fluff.”

● Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.): He probably won’t be there, but not for political reasons –– Yahoo reports that his mother is ill.

Here In Wisconsin: Paul Ryan is a Horrid Little Man

Via we learn that unhappy that regular folks crashed his 15 dollar a head town hall meeting, Paul Ryan had  them arrested:



Meanwhile in Missouri, the GOP wants to

pay for a business tax cut by eliminating a tax credit that benefits more than 100,000 senior citizens and disabled people.

What in the world is happening to us?

UPDATE:
Via everyone in the know universe.  Over 41 death row prisoners in Texas have been exonerated, which is the most in the nation. Last night professional vampyre and general threat to western civilization Rick Perry had this to say about that, while the crowd, like howler monkeys, roared their approval:



See also:



There you go.

Forgotten Mistakes

On July 28, 1945, a B-25 crashed into the side of the Empire State Building. Until reading this, I'd never heard of the event. How many other tragedies like this have we forgotten? And, as 9/11 memorialization draws ever nearer, how does our decisions about what to remember and what to forget determine how we move forward?

Good God

For some longish time, say thirty years, our representatives have agreed to deregulate industry and capital and, on the basis of the world outside my window and in my professional life, the results have been the opposite of the promises. Rick Perry, the Republican front runner, promises that should he become President:

The EPA officials we have an opportunity to put in place, they’re going to be pro-business, and there’s not going to be any apologies to anybody about it,” he said. “Those agencies won’t know what hit ‘em.”

Great, having destroyed any countless number of jobs and basically succeeding in recreating the 19th century, the neoliberals promise to destroy the environment so that not only will there be no decently paying jobs there will be no liveable world on which the poor can, like fish thrown on the river's bank, gasp for breath while they await their for their miserable lives to end.

Let's all raise a glass to St. Ronnie the Great Communicator and the triumph of the market.

Pick 'Em

If you're interested grating tomatoes actually does make a great sauce. Now then, who, as it were, are you? This


Or that:



How 'bout this?


This:



Or this:

Not Really a Contradiction

In today's NYT book review:

Gabrielle Chanel — better known as Coco — was a wretched human being. Anti-Semitic, homophobic, social climbing, opportunistic, ridiculously snobbish and given to sins of phrase-making like “If blonde, use blue perfume,” she was addicted to morphine and actively collaborated with the Germans during the Nazi occupation of Paris. And yet, her clean, modern, kinetic designs, which brought a high-society look to low-regarded fabrics, revolutionized women’s fashion, and to this day have kept her name synonymous with the most glorious notions of French taste and élan.

This is the kind of silliness that drives me nuts. To give a headline: Evil Wretches Still Capable of Artistry. The idea seems to be that if an individual can create something of lasting aesthetic value the fact that he or she was a horrific person ought surprise us despite the fact that the history of the world is filled with precisely those kinds of people.

In a similar fashion, and no doubt equally as surprising, louts with mongoose's aesthetic appreciation of fashion struggled against the evils with which Chanel collaborated. They might, of course, have appreciated something else and yet left nothing of "lasting" value behind but a well bred pig or neatly written ledger, or whathaveyou. Why, it's almost like the objects aesthetic appreciation and ethical actions have nothing whatsoever  to do with one another. 

And So To Bed

It has long been apparent that 1) Sarah Palin is incapable as a politician and 2) no one likes here. Yet the this fact has not kept news outlets both various and sundry from treating here as a potential something or another. Today, I think it is,  TPM, after covering the various ins and outs of her speech to a group no one cares about as if it were news, makes this point. So, I ask TPM et alia why report on Palin? Except, of course, it's easier than engaging in actual reporting about issues that make something like a difference. Horse race for all.

What's Wrong With These Videos?

Johny Cash at San Quentin:



And this:



No, I don't mean a country singer standing by the least among us but rather to paraphrase Blazing Saddles: Where's all the Black Folks At?

Not Tom Waits

Don't like Tom Waits? Dwight and Buck:

Aha

As Lincoln said our forefathers brought forth a country for the rich, by the rich, and of the rich:

Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum is just going to come right out and say it: registering the poor to vote is un-American and "like handing out burglary tools to criminals."

"It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote," Vadum, the author of a book published by World Net Daily that attacks the now-defunct community organizing group ACORN, writes in a column for the American Thinker.

 Enjoy your weekend, while you still have one.

The Muppets Weren't Always Sweeties

I believe this is known as the hard sell:

Pick 'Em

LostNames:



Original



Theft?:

WWI

If you've got a better explanation, I'd like to hear it.


See, or rather hear, also:

Listen and Weep

It's true, you know:

Oh For Dumb

When the state offers a contract it's not here's a million dollars how many miles of road can you pave; rather it is we need three hundred miles of road paved, how much will it cost.  Houston Texas recently passed a rule that when contracting for those kinds of services locals within 5 percent of bids below 100k  and 3  percent over 100k of a lower nonlocal contractor get the contract. They  provide the same service or miles of highway paved, it just costs slightly more on the basis of money spent to home benefits the local economy.

Always ready to expose his ignorance, Matthew Ygelsias misses the point, errs in his understanding of contracting, and seemingly has no idea what bidding for a job means:

The Houston Chronicle describes detractors of this initiative as “free market devotees” but it’s actually advocates of big government who should be upset about this. If big government advocates write a bill to launch a widget-distribution program to equip Houston’s citizens with widgets and they appropriate $1 million to the widget initiative, the “Buy Local” program will ensure that Houstonians end up with 3 percent fewer widgets. The alleged benefit here is that under the “Buy Local” scenario the $1 million is somehow trapped in the Houston Metropolitan Area. But if that’s the goal, why not simply appropriate $970,000 to buy the smaller quantity of widgets and directly disburse the $30,000 you saved by purchasing fewer widgets to the citizens of Houston? Either way, you’re reducing widget purchases in order to keep more money in the local economy. But my way the extra money is actually kept in the City of Houston rather than smearing itself all around the eight county Greater Houston area.

The state doesn't say we have a million dollars to spend who wants it, they say we need X services or whatever how much? How dumb can one man be?