Pete Lit

Ashtabula

At MobyLives, Paul Oliver has written a nice piece on Ashtabula, Ohio and its local Occupy movement.

While Wall St. is certainly the fortress of everything the movement is fighting against, a city like Ashtabula is everything that the movement is or should be fighting for. The 99% is a wide-ranging demographic, but at its bottom is the forgotten mill and port towns. Places like Ashtabula, Ohio or York, Pennsylvania.

Though I've never been there, Ashtabula will always have a place in my heart, as it was the setting of my first published story, "Ectoplasm". (The inspiration for the story was the same Dylan lyric that Oliver mentions.) Clearly, the same economic conditions that drove my story continue today, and have even worsened. I'm not sure that my protagonist would have still had his teaching job in 2011.

Happy Thanksgiving

Today I'm grateful for Julie and Maddie and the rest of my family, and Mud and Spike, and close friends, and still being gainfully employed with a solid roof over my head and working furnace and full refrigerator, and my reading and writing and everything else that keeps me engaged and sane. In other words, for everything it would be so easy to just take for granted.

“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Visionary, world-changer

Regis McKenna...said Mr. Jobs' genius lay in his ability to simplify complex, highly engineered products, "to strip away the excess layers of business, design and innovation until only the simple, elegant reality remained."

Jobs was 56. I'm 46. What will I accomplish in the next ten years?

About that U.S. Postal Service crisis...

As it turns out, one of the biggest factors that's driving the USPS into insolvency is not its obsolesence and inefficiency, but instead a 2006 federal law that requires retiree health benefits to be prefunded for the next 75 years over a very short ten-year timespan. That's right - the USPS is required to pay for the healthcare of employees it hasn't even hired yet, including those who haven't even been born yet. By Ralph Nader's calculation, without this ridiculously boneheaded law, the USPS would actually have a $1.5 billion surplus today.

I'm sure the law's original sponsors tried to justify this by claiming it was intended to keep the USPS viable, but in doing so they have ensured the service's imminent bankruptcy. The cynic in me can't help wondering whether the Republican-controlled Congress and Bush White House of 2006 pushed this through at the behest of FedEx and United Parcel Service.

So get to work, Congress: either ease the restrictions of this law right now, or abolish it entirely. If you have any common sense at all, that is, of which I'm far from certain.

Intolerance, Back of the Yards

During the past two weeks The Reader ran an excellent piece by Steve Bogira called "The Price of Intolerance" (part one, part two) about a senseless and yet not unexpected tragedy that occurred in Chicago's Back of the Yards neighborhood in 1971, and has echoed through the decades ever since. And here's one difference between journalism and fiction - fiction would have put a much rosier gloss on Sam Navarro's feelings at the conclusion.

(Photo of Sam Navarro by Jeffrey Martini, for The Reader)

Whither Gadhafi?

Salon is running a collection of short stories imagining either the escape or final days of Moammar Gadhafi. J. Robert Lennon's take is called "Blood in the Corners".

Ah, shit. Didn't work. And he messed up the bottom corners. Tries to remember what he did, to do it in reverse. Right, right, up. Left? No, right...It's like his life - you think you're planning things out, you think you've created order. But chaos creeps in, doesn't it. There's no keeping it at bay.

Cosmos, Rubik's Cube and a windowless transport. Not quite Saddam's rathole, though not much better.

"Corporations are people, my friend."

When politicans spew ludicrous comments like this, do they truly believe them? Or are they just pandering to their overlords?

Campaigning in Iowa on Thursday, Mitt Romney told a heckler, “Corporations are people, my friend”—words immediately seized upon by Democrats in what they termed as a possible defining statement by the presidential candidate.

Romney, speaking to a crowd of hundreds at the Iowa State Fair, was being pressed about raising taxes to help cover entitlement spending. When one mentioned raising corporate tax rates, Romney responded by saying corporations were no different than people. The line earned him a sustained round of applause from the crowd.

No mention there of whether or not it was a crowd of CEOs. Just for the record, Mitt: people are people, but corporations are nothing more than artificial legal constructs. What a frigging tool this guy is.

Imbalanced approach

The really mind-boggling thing about the budget mess is that the debate could be this acrimonious without any of the final proposals including even a tiny increase in taxes. Can you imagine if the Dems had really pushed for more taxes to reduce the deficit or - heaven forbid that we have an equitable tax code - a reapportionment of tax revenues that requires the upper class and corporations to finally pay their fair share? Washington might have physically imploded from GOP fury, leaving nothing but a smoking crater.

(If this sounds like an offhanded comment more appropriate to a Facebook status update, that's exactly what it is. But Facebook won't take a status update that's as long as this, so I posted it here instead.)

Life's been good to him so far...his kids, not so much.

Gee, thanks for all the sermons on fiscal responsibility, Congressman.

Tea Party Rep. Joe Walsh sued for $100,000 in child support
Freshman U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, a tax-bashing Tea Party champion who sharply lectures President Barack Obama and other Democrats on fiscal responsibility, owes more than $100,000 in child support to his ex-wife and three children, according to documents his ex-wife filed in their divorce case in December.

"I won’t place one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids and grandkids unless we structurally reform the way this town spends money!" Walsh says directly into the camera in his viral video lecturing Obama on the need to get the nation’s finances in order.

And apparently he won't place one more dollar into his kids' pockets, either.

Farewell, Elliott Handler

An icon of my childhood has passed away, albeit an icon whose name I didn't know until today: Elliott Handler, co-founder of Mattel, and - even more important to me - inventor of Hot Wheels. I don't know what my childhood would have been like without Hot Wheels. I hope he thoroughly enjoyed speeding down the bright orange track of life.

This obituary makes me very _____ (adjective)

Leonard Stern, co-creator of Mad Libs and source of many hours of amusing diversion during my childhood, has passed away, at age 88. As if being a writer for Get Smart and The Honeymooners wasn't already great enough. Farewell, good sir.

"Handicapping the Handicapped"

Just came across this gem: Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger's irreverent primer on the dubious crop of GOP presidential candidates. Here's their take on Herman Cain:

What's his problem?
He insists that as a black Republican, he's "Obama's worst nightmare." He's one of those annoying "run America like a business" douches who insists you can apply lessons learned from running a crappy pizza chain to being commander in chief of the armed forces. He's widely regarded as the best speaker in the field, though it's unclear if Republicans just say that because they're shocked a black guy can form complete sentences on conservative subjects.

Just in case you somehow needed a reason not to vote for any of these yahoos, read this. And laugh.

Breaching the levee, then and now

Given the big international news events of the past week (Osama bin Laden, the royal wedding), the story of the demolition of a Mississippi River levee in Missouri to ease severe flooding has gotten remarkably high exposure. At the University of Illinois Press blog, historian Jarod Roll (Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South) writes an excellent piece on the last time that the Bird's Point-New Madrid Spillway was intentionally breached, in 1937. Back then, the action spurred not only the creation of federal public housing for the displaced, but also government-provided health care.

Although impossible to predict, the effects of the 2011 flood will probably not be as dramatic as those that followed the inundation of 1937. It would be difficult to imagine renewed protests for federal housing projects, especially in a section of Missouri that once routinely voted Democratic, but is now a Republican stronghold. It is perhaps even more difficult to imagine protestors using the flood to not only call for but actually receive a government health service.

Times have definitely changed, and not necessarily for the better.

Abbottabad, the poem

For the same reason that I once avidly watched such cringeworthy TV fare as The A-Team, The Tim Conway Show and Quincy, I can't help but appreciate the sheer awfulness of the poem "Abbottabad". Stephen Moss at The Guardian has background on the "poet" (an overly generous term, to be sure), General Sir James Abbott. Abbott makes "Bullwinkle's Corner" sound lyrical and profound in comparison.

Innocent until proven guilty

Compare and contrast this passage from Nelson Algren's Nonconformity...

For so deeply now do we presume the accused to be guilty by the act of having been accused, that it seems to us no more than an act of atonement to turn the knife on himself. The accused who stubbornly declines this form of confession is now advised that either the answers he would have given would have incriminated him or else he would not have declined. Refusal to reply thus becomes an automatic confession of guilt. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. Leaving us with the implication that the men who devised the Fifth Amendment had in mind not the protection of the innocent, but of the guilty. How sick can you get?

...with this recent item from Boing Boing:

CNN has discovered that the TSA considers "complaining about TSA procedures" to be a profiling marker for potential terrorists. They explain that one terrorist (the "twentieth hijacker") complained a lot about TSA screening, and so that means "getting angry about TSA screening procedures" goes in the "signs of terrorist intent" bucket.

So much for being innocent until proven guilty - just complaining about inappropriate treatment from the TSA will get you tagged as a potential terrorist. Although Algren was writing in direct reference to the McCarthy anti-Communist witchhunts of the 1950s, he clearly would not have been surprised at the absurdity of the War on Terror, over fifty years later. Algren also quotes the following from Judge Learned Hand:

Risk for risk, for myself I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread a spirit of general suspicion and distrust.

I'm guessing Hand wouldn't have been a big fan of our current paranoia either.

Wisconsin

"In 30 minutes, 18 state senators undid 50 years of civil rights in Wisconsin. Their disrespect for the people of Wisconsin and their rights is an outrage that will never be forgotten."
- Wisconsin State Senator Mark Miller

Let this be a wakeup call to Wisconsin and the rest of the country: despite its claims, the Republican Party is not populist and cares little about the needs of everyday people. Instead they serve very narrow interests, primarily corporations and the very wealthy. Whether you're union or not, if the actions of Republicans in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the Midwest infuriate you, then don't let that anger go to waste. Channel that emotion into pushing for recall elections wherever possible, or else mobilizing people into voting the GOP out of office during the next elections. Make it happen.

McEwan's Bully Pulpit

In accepting the Jerusalem Prize, Ian McEwan endured plenty of criticism from pro-Palestine advocates who claimed that in doing so he was legitimizing Israel's suppression of Palestinians. As it turns out, McEwan used the ceremony as a means of giving both sides the tongue-lashing they so deserve, and thus exercised the freedom for which the prize stands. Had he boycotted, he would have missed out on the bully pulpit that allowed him to tell the adversaries what they needed to hear. Well done.

No to Illinois SB 136

The Illinois State Senate is currently considering legislation (SB 136) which would require registration of private school and homeschooled students. My wife Julie homeschools our ten-year-old daughter, Maddie, who has progressed rapidly (she's already studying at the high school level) and has enjoyed a far better education than she ever could have gotten from our local public schools. Maddie is an amazingly enthusiastic student with a real hunger to learn, and most of that is due to the close attention and guidance that Julie is able to provide. It's also worth noting that we support our public schools financially via our hefty property taxes, yet do not burden the system by having Maddie enrolled in it and thus diverting resources from other students.

SB 136's sponsor claims that the bill is merely about registering students. But I can't help suspecting that this is actually the first step towards full-scale regulation of homeschoolers, including the eventual imposition of a state-mandated curriculum and standardized testing. As parents, Julie and I have chosen to educate Maddie on our own, and the results (as well as those of other homeschoolers, who consistently outperform public school students) speak for themselves. We should remain free of registration or any other regulation that the state wants to impose.

If you agree with me, please contact your Illinois state senator and express your opposition. Even if your own kids are in public schools, this should matter to you. Because it doesn't matter where - in public schools, private schools or at home - our children are educated. What matters is that they're getting the best education they can get. Burdening homeschoolers with registration or any other regulation does nothing to improve the quality of education our kids receive. And taking away parents' right of choice on how their kids are educated is simply wrong.

Stop SB 136 now!

If it walks like a dictator, talks like a dictator...

You see, Vice President Biden, this is how a dictator responds to public protests. Yes, Mubarak is a dictator. How disappointing that you refused to acknowledge this until the situation in Egypt revealed you were standing on the wrong side, and that you hide behind semantics just as egregiously as your White House predecessors.

Snowmageddon, Part I

With all the snow the East Coast has gotten this year, I almost feel guilty making a big deal about a single blizzard in the Midwest. Still, there are some interesting sights out there this morning.

Quote

"The Middle East would be a much more powerful and dynamic place if there were less authoritarian regimes, and historically the U.S. has supported all of them. We’re always on the side of 'stability' rather than justice. So let’s get on the right side this time.”
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN)

Past lives on, sort of...

I'm loving this. After forwarding this 1910 photo of the old League Park in Cleveland to my buddy Fred, he sent back links that lead me to the vintage postcard above, which features the park's ticket office. The park is long gone, but the ticket office remains - the photo shown above is from Google Street View. I'm so used to old relics being completely obliterated that to find such a small but lovely piece of one still in existence is a wonderfully pleasant surprise. The entire League Park land parcel is currently vacant with most of it (at least as of 2009) owned by the city - which inspires, to an idealist like me, thoughts of the ballpark being rebuilt from scratch. But then reality sets in and I realized that a city park is infinitely more practical and affordable. But I can still dream.

Then again: you may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Okay, not an exact replica, but pretty close.

Exporting democracy (and, more importantly, capitalism) abroad

Wave that flag and hold back the tears, because this whole American nation-building effort is finally paying off. For well-connected insiders and dubious real estate projects in Dubai.

Losses at Afghan Bank Could Be $900 Million
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and JAMES RISEN, New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — Fraud and mismanagement at Afghanistan’s largest bank have resulted in potential losses of as much as $900 million — three times previous estimates — heightening concerns that the bank could collapse and trigger a broad financial panic in Afghanistan, according to American, European and Afghan officials.

The extent of these losses make it clear that keeping the bank afloat — something the government has said it is determined to do — would require large infusions of cash from an already strained budget.

Only a few years into reconstruction, and the Afghans have already replicated our financial system. Now the next step is a massive bailout, retention of the executives who created the mess and, once the dust settles, a return to corruption as usual. Just like Wall Street does it.

"The red shirts spoke of racing."

At first I was drawn to this article because I thought it was about an aging horseracing track - which allures me, on many levels - then was disappointed to realize it was a car track, but finally stayed for the writing, which often borders on literary:

Easy to spot in their red “Save Our Fairgrounds” shirts, they were spread out over the sixth floor, the basement, the lobby and the Council chambers — at least a thousand and possibly hundreds more, possibly more than had come to some past racing events.

The other side was represented, too; a mix of neighborhood residents, environmentalists, small-business owners and real estate agents, they wore yellow shirts reading “Neighbors for Progress.” They spoke of the noise, the deafening drone that stifles conversation on front porches and back yards, even in the living room with the TV on and the windows closed.

They also spoke of sustainable growth, property values, infill, green space, economic development, vibrant corridors — the articles of faith of modern urban planning.

The red shirts spoke of racing.

Excellent work, Campbell Robertson.

Quote

"Sweden`s reputation abroad is intact. We have funny drinking habits, we copulate diligently and then commit suicide after paying a dreadful amount of tax."
- Swedish actor Erland Josephson, in a 1987 government report on foreigners impressions of Sweden.

Being three-fourths Swedish myself, this is one of my favorite quotes ever. I especially like the phrase "copulate diligently" - as if sex is some patriotic duty that Swedes engage in, even if they don't want to, just to maintain Sweden's reputation.

Mike Royko, "How To Ease That Hangover"

Mike Royko, "How To Ease That Hangover" (2.7mb download)

Happy New Year! In case you overdid it last night and now have (in my dad's immortal words) "skull cramps", I'm passing along this helpful advice from Mike Royko. The man definitely knew a thing or two about drinking.

Frost

As my old college friend Rick used to say, it's a tid nipply out this morning.

George Ade, "The Money Present"

George Ade, "The Money Present"

This is my reading of George Ade's very funny Christmas piece, "The Money Present", which was published in his 1903 collection In Babel: Stories of Chicago. This is my first attempt at recording with my new iPhone, so I'm hoping it's playable in either iTunes or Quicktime. (I couldn't figure out how to do an mp3 conversion on short notice.) Enjoy the story, and the holidays!

Merry Christmas

 

The family watched the Grinch once again last night, and loved it. I'm thinking it's the greatest Christmas story ever. Though that Dickens guy certainly offered some stiff competition:

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was dead as a door-nail.

I'm hoping to add another special feature here today or tomorrow, as my dubious audio capabilities allow. Have a magical holiday, and be careful not to get run over by any reindeer.

'Tis the Season

That's right, nothing says "It's the holidays" quite like a quartet of Victorian-garbed carolers in a modern office building lobby, singing to indifferent white-collar workers hurrying past. Well, at least I noticed.

Quote

"Thanksgiving goes probably far deeper than you folks suppose. I am not sure but it is the source of the highest poetry...We Americans devote an official day to it every year; yet I sometimes fear the real article is almost dead or dying in our self-sufficient, independent Republic. Gratitude, anyhow, has never been made half enough of by the moralists; it is indispensable to a complete character, man's or woman's — the disposition to be appreciative, thankful. That is the main matter, the element, inclination — what geologists call the 'trend.' Of my own life and writings I estimate the giving thanks part, with what it infers, as essentially the best item. I should say the quality of gratitude rounds the whole emotional nature; I should say love and faith would quite lack vitality without it."
- Walt Whitman

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

VOTE!

Do your civic duty and vote today, or else refrain from complaining about our political system for the next two years. Vote for the party and/or candidates of your choice, but vote. And if you're not sure which way to vote, use this general rule of thumb: as long as the Democratic candidate isn't under federal indictment, vote Democratic. Unless you're a corporate executive or Wall Street tycoon, the Democrat is the one looking out for your interests, not the Republican. And while the Republican Party was already dangerously out of touch in the 2008 elections, they've become even more extreme as they pander to their tiny but vocal Tea Party minority.

A few rebuttals to tired Republican talking points from this election cycle:

+ Obama's healthcare reform is NOT a government takeover of the healthcare system. Instead it works within the existing system of corporate insurers, instilling competition that has largely dissipated while the industry has consolidated into a handful of giant players, prohibiting insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and other technicalities, and offering more affordable policy coverage.

+ The progressive political cause espoused by Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi is NOT about government infringing on personal freedoms. Instead it's about bringing corporations more under control - and since consumers have increasingly been unable to do so as several decades of deregulation has reduced industry competition, it's up to the government to do so.

+ The much-reviled Wall Street bailout not only saved the financial system and our economy as a whole, the government is actually turning a profit on its investment in Wall Street banks - and news reports out this week indicate the government will likely profit from its AIG bailout as well. The only portion of the bailout that will likely lose money is the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler, but I don't really remember there being widespread calls to just let the U.S. auto industry die.

+ Obama's stimulus plan saved several million jobs while also investing much-needed billions in our physical infrastructure and educational system.

+ The U.S. economy has now expanded for five consecutive quarters. While this expansion has not yet made a dent in unemployment, it's only a matter of time before continued economic growth encourages employers to start hiring again.

Keep all of that in mind when you're trying to decide whether our Democratic political leadership should be retained. I think it should.

Farewell to an icon

 
The deceased, 1979-2010

Sony to stop making Walkman cassette player

As with all things technological, I was very late to the Walkman game, not getting my first cassette model until around 1990 or so. (Then again, throwback that I am, I still own it.) I suppose a lot of people expressing similar farewells online will go the obvious route and invoke the New York band the Walkmen, but I'll be more obscure with this bit from Yo La Tengo's "Paul Is Dead":

Walking on 10th Street
The guy in front of me
Walkman headphones on, Stones cranked
The thing that caught my ear, singing loud and clear
Every couple of steps I heard, "Woo-woo"

I believe the Stones song in question is "Sympathy for the Devil." Regardless, anyone from that era who remembers those foamy, sound-leaking Walkman headphones will undoubtedly remember this phenomenon well.

Tom Bosley

The beloved TV actor Tom Bosley has passed away, at 83. Bosley was a boyhood friend of my dad, in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood during the 1930s and 1940s. Though they weren't particularly close (more like friend-of-friend), they still "ran around the neighborhood together" (my dad's words), and one night years ago when the family was watching "Happy Days" my dad suddenly recognized the name as someone he grew up with. A quick check of his old Lake View High School yearbook revealed a grainy photo of a smiling, amiable kid - picture Howard Cunningham, but skinny and thirty years younger. After that my dad always followed Bosley's career, from "Happy Days" to "Murder She Wrote" and "Father Dowling Mysteries", always finding amusement in his portrayal of the Catholic priest Father Dowling - Bosley was Jewish. Farewell, good man. If somehow there's a heaven, Abe is waiting for you.

Pub for sale, affordable price, inconvenient location

 

Ah, to be independently wealthy. The Old Forge, Britain's most remote pub ("reachable only by an 18-mile hike through tumbling Scottish wilderness, or a buffeting seven-mile boat trip from Mallaig") is up for sale.

"I've decided to stop pouring pints and start drinking them," says Jackie Robertson who, with her husband Ian, owns the place. It's on sale for offers over £790,000 but cash alone won't guarantee a sale. "We won't be selling to anyone who won't keep its spirit alive," says Jackie. "All the interested parties have been customers. They understand the culture of the place: good food, good music, good people."

And I'm guessing that not only does everybody know your name, but also most of your personal history, in embarrassingly fine detail.

(Via Coudal.)

"It gets better."

This is wonderful. Dan Savage, responding (third letter down) to a reader's comment about Billy Lucas, a gay teenager from Indiana who committed suicide after enduring relentless bullying from classmates.

"My heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas," a reader wrote after I posted about Billy Lucas to my blog. "I wish I could have told you that things get better."

I had the same reaction: I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.

But gay adults aren't allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don't bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.

Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don't have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better.

So here's what you can do, GBVWS: Make a video. Tell them it gets better.

I've launched a channel on YouTube—youtube.com/itgetsbetterproject—to host these videos. My normally camera-shy husband and I have already posted one. We both went to Christian schools and we were both bullied—he had it a lot worse than I did—and we are living proof that it gets better. We don't dwell too much on the past. Instead, we talk mostly about all the meaningful things in our lives now—our families, our friends (gay and straight), the places we've gone and things we've experienced—that we would've missed out on if we'd killed ourselves then.

"You gotta give 'em hope," Harvey Milk said.

Savage is soliciting video messages from other GLBT adults that offer similiar encouragement to youths. Truly an essential and worthwhile project.

Posted Without Comment

(Photo by John V. Moore.)

Pack up the house, honey...

...we're moving to Hungary.

A survey of about 12,500 people in 24 countries found that Europeans are the most casual when it comes to work clothes with only 27 percent wearing a business suit or smart clothes to work.

Hungary came bottom of the table with only 12 percent of workers saying they wore a suit or smart dress to work.

Among Hungarian workers, 46 percent said it was appropriate to wear shorts to work while 56 percent approved of thong sandals or flip-flops at work.

I wonder if the First National Bank of Budapest is hiring.

Today, for one day only, Joliet is the preteen hotspot of the entire world

Jonas Brothers likely to snarl traffic

As of 7 o'clock this morning - six hours before the gates open - there were already a hundred youngsters congregating in front of Silver Cross Field, traffic was being diverted and police patrols were prominent. There are very few days that I'm glad to work an hour away from home, and this is one of those days.

Metaphysical graffiti

I noticed these messages this morning, spray-painted on the sides of freight cars which idled on the siding adjacent to my commuter line.

FOR MY BROTHER, I MISS YOU! THE ONLY KING OF TOLEDO!

And, even better...

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

I wonder how many moms have even noticed that second one.

"...a bang for his pains..."

I really enjoyed watching the Spain-Netherlands final of the World Cup, more for the spectacle (the camera shots of hundreds of thousands of fans watching the game on TV in public squares in Madrid and Amsterdam were awe-inspiring, especially since such a thing would never happen here in the U.S.) than for the rough, foul-plagued play itself.

And I also enjoyed the British commentators, with their appealingly unique turns of phrase. I remember one instance in which a player made an extra effort to control the ball, only to get tripped up by his opponent - if he hadn't made that effort, he never would have suffered the painful tripping. Here in the U.S., we would have said something like "for all his trouble, he got tripped up", but the British announcer instead said "he got a bang for his pains." Love that.

Throw the bums out

While listening to an NPR story this morning about the agency formally known as the Minerals Management Service - the regulatory agency which, to put it very kindly, simply looked the other way and let BP and other oil companies do whatever they wanted - this aspect (from a related AP article) in particular struck me:

While some critics have urged mass firings, Bromwich said he does not intend to clean house at the drilling agency, which has offices ranging from Washington to Louisiana, Texas, Colorado and Alaska. "The risk of saying 'off with their heads' across the board is you risk losing a tremendous amount of knowledge and expertise," he said.

Why not mass firings? I'm in banking, specifically in credit, where I serve as a sort of watchdog over our clients. If I was caught having a too-cozy relationship with the clients I was supposed to be overseeing - nothing as severe as the drug-and-sex parties the MMS was having with the oil companies, but more basic things like ignoring loan agreement violations or doctoring financial records - I would be fired on the spot. No questions asked.

My job is to oversee our loan clients, make sure they're performing satisfactorily and remain good credit risks, and if I fail to do so I deserve to be fired. The MMS' job, as regulator, is really no different - the MMS is supposed to keep an eye on the oil companies, make sure they're acting legally and responsibly. And the BP fiasco makes it clear that with the widespread incompetence and corruption of the MMS, the agency was absolutely, positively not doing its job. And for that, there should be mass firings. Clean house, from top to bottom, and start over. All that "knowledge and expertise" means nothing if the knowledgable and expert regulators are in bed with the companies they're supposed to be regulating.

Love this photo...

Two of my absolute heroes.

(Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

“You know, I’d like my life back.”

We know how you feel, Mr. Hayward, because we'd like our Gulf back. But I suspect you'll be getting your wish long before we get ours.

Drinking game

Here's a simple idea for a drinking game: while watching The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, do a shot at every mention of the words "amazing", "journey" or "here for the right reasons." But if you do so, make sure you don't have anything important to do the next morning, because the recovery time might be lengthy.

Change we can believe in

Hmmm...first healthcare reform, now financial market reform. Obama's getting the job done, just like he promised. All the naysayers should remember that change is a gradual process - there was absolutely no chance of America becoming a more progressive, fair and equal country instantly upon Obama taking office in January 2009. Our government is designed to be a ponderous, deliberate and cautious policy-making body, so while change may not be coming as quickly as some would have hoped, it is defintely happening.

Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich is having a fit, calling Obama a socialist and the most radical president in U.S. history. When Gingrich is that livid, it surely means that good things are happening.

Dan Savage, Neologist

In this week's Savage Love, Dan Savage reconsiders and dismisses a common anatomy-derived derogatory term and, like any good solutions person, suggests a more appropriate alternative. This being a (nominally) family-friendly blog, however, I'm redacting the actual terms involved. Follow the link to see them for yourself.

You are a huge -----, CTOAC—wait, scratch that. ------- are powerful; they can take pummeling and spit out a brand-new human being. What you are, CTOAC, is weak, vulnerable, easily manipulated, and far too sensitive for your own good.

What you are is a ---- ----.

Perfect.

Decider Deigns to Divulge

I'm sure the Nobel and Pulitzer committees are now bubbling with excitement over the news of this forthcoming tome of rational thought, probing intellect and relentless curiousity.



Geez, what's with that photo? Was he constipated at that moment? With that squint of his I assume he was going for some sort of John Wayne look, but mostly this projects the image of a guy at the dog park who just stepped in something soft.

Gawker has a few nice alternate takes on the cover, from the comic:



To the bitter:



Somehow I sense that this small handful of Gawker covers contains more insight than anything Bush is writing. Or, more accurately, "writing."

Reward without burden

I wish I could say this surprised me, but it really doesn't. A study compares the operating behavior of 940 banks who obtained TARP bailout funds with 7,400 banks who didn't:

• Lending fell. The amount of loans outstanding to businesses and individuals fell 9.1% for the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2009, at banks that participated in TARP compared with a 6.2% drop at banks that didn't.

• Employee pay rose. Average pay at banks getting aid rose 9.4% in the program's first year. By contrast, non-TARP banks increased salaries 1.8%.

• Cost-cutting limited. Banks in TARP cut costs less than those outside the program. Government-aided banks increased branches by 2.7% while non-TARP banks cut branches by 1.2%.

This is exactly what to expect when you give banks a handout with no conditions attached - no mandate to funnel the money to borrowers, no restrictions on compensation, etc. Instead of acting like responsible and grateful corporate citizens, they cut credit even further, boost compensation and make expensive investments in new branches. Thanks so much, Mr. Paulson.

“...the steeds of life swirl their smoke to the skies..."

Over at Quid Plura?, Jeff Sypeck ponders the surprising dearth of volcanic references in medieval Icelandic literature (surprising, in that Iceland is essentially a big hunk of volcanic rock), as well as the provenance of everyone's favorite unpronounceable geographic feature of the moment, Eyjafjallajökull: eyja (island), fjalla (mountains), jökull (glacier). Though that name sounds prosaically dull in English translation, I quite like the original.