Give a big wet Brilliant welcome kiss to The Earth Bound Misfit, The Minstrel Boy (the OTHER one), and State of the Day.

Labels: bloggers

Today's honoree: Tata, for Got To Make The Best Of. Because she has a more mature psyche than mine.

Labels: bloggers

I'm glad it's not just me.

If you click over to Hoffmania, you'll see right below the title:

OMIGOD. SOMEONE JUST CLICKED IN. Quick - clean this place up.

I know the feeling. I'm a packrat. I'm not one of those pathological packrats that still has pay stubs from 1977 (not even Mr. Brilliant has those anymore) or copies of the magazine section of the Sunday New York Times from the last six months piled up in a corner because I really, really AM going to read them, or all of my toys from childhood. I'm not a compulsive collector of Hummels, cherubs, skulls, pictures of sad-eyed dogs, Beanie Babies, model airplanes or Harry Potter action figures, or cheap plastic ashtrays in the shape of a foot that say "I get a kick out of [someplace]" (though the latter is not for lack of trying -- long story). The closest I have to a collection is a small group of 1920's cloche hats that I actually used to wear until I cut my hair short and they now make me look like Stewie Griffin's head rotated 90 degrees. Every six months I go through my filing cabinet, put everything that's over a year old into a box in the basement, take what's already down there that's over three years old (seven years for income tax records) and shred it. When I go through the mail I throw about 90% of the catalogs and other crap away.

So why is my house always such a mess?

Part of it is that if I have a choice between doing something fun or straightening up, fun usually wins. Part of it is that I'm often unable to get past "But I might NEED this!" Part of it is all those clothes I can't bear to part with that haven't fit me for over 15 years but I really, really MIGHT fit into them again someday. But most of it is that I tend to live by two simple laws of the universe:

1) "If you like something, buy dozens of them because they WILL stop making it". This is why I still have about six boxes of Ambervision sunglasses in my linen closet (they really ARE good for cutting glare), and why I recently found fourteen pair of black leggings -- in unopened packages -- in my closet. I have a drawer full of them -- some are paint-stained or faded, but I have to SAVE them BECAUSE ZOMG THEY MIGHT STOP MAKING THEM!!! This is how I recently donated a half-dozen linen blazers to the Caring About the Strays thrift shop. Because Chadwicks may one day just stop carrying classic linen blazers (hey, I never said it was rational) and one year I just bought a bunch of them, in a size I no longer wear, even though I didn't wear them then either. Because you know, I may decide I want to start wearing suits again.

2) "Never fail to buy anything that is on sale." This rule actually has its origins in the seminal 1960's book How To Be a Jewish Mother, a book so important to my early development that it is a documented fact that I have, in fact, bought two shirts for Mr. Brilliant and when he wore one of them for the first time, asked, "You didn't like the other one?" This rule is what gives rise to racks of canned goods in the basement, as if it is still 1963 and I am all ready, locked and loaded in the event of Mutually Assured Destruction, and to at times as many as a half-dozen multipacks of toilet paper and paper towels. This last tendency is a family inheritance. When my mother first moved to North Carolina, her house then had a shed in the back yard for which I wanted to have a sign made up that read "The Charmin Building." Pot, meet kettle. This happens because when the A&P puts the 12-big-roll pack on sale for $5.99 and I have a dollar-off coupon, I have to buy it. And if they're going to do this every four weeks, as they are wont to do, you can end up accumulating a lot of toilet paper. BUT ZOMG THEY MIGHT NEVER PUT IT ON SALE AGAIN!! More recently I've managed to fight this one, but I have to tell you that having only 24 rolls in the house for two people still feels like "We're running low."

In case you're wondering, no, I do not have a Costco card. That would be like giving George W. Bush a case of Budweiser for safekeeping. The main reason I don't bother with Costco is that the one closest to me is so crowded at times when I can go that the lines are often all the way to the back of the store, but some of it is sheer self-preservation. Can you imagine someone like me with a Costco card? The mind reels.

Ever since we got the hi-def television set in January, I've rediscovered my addiction to home shows. It seems odd to be doing this at a time when the real estate market is crashing, but then I was always one to discover trends far too late. But one day I discovered the home show to end all home shows: Clean House on the Style channel. I stumbled upon this little goodie on a rainy Saturday afternoon and have been hooked ever since.

The premise of Clean House is nothing new. A team of "makeover specialists" visits a home that makes even people like me look tidy by comparison, talks people into getting rid of stuff to which they're emotionally attached, throws a big yard sale, matches up to $1000 of proceeds and throws in some "gifts", cleans up the house and redecorates at least part of it. It's basically Queer Eye with a different set of cartoon characters and a smaller budget.

The Carson Kressley flamboyant role is handled by one Niecy Nash, a curvelicious black diva with a hibiscus behind her ear whose persona is a walking stereotype of every woman in every Tyler Perry movie ever made. She's sort of like what Oprah would be if Oprah were funny and were a Marine drill sergeant in the bargain. Nash is a familiar face from Reno 911 and is set to headline a sitcom on Fox that sounds like an American Fawlty Towers -- all of which makes me hope she's not planning to give up the Clean House gig. The Thom Filicia decorator role is filled by "designer to the stars" Mark Brunetz, who is less bitchy than you'd expect and somehow manages to work wonders with little money. Then there's a really annoying woman named Trish Suhr who handles the yard sales with a kind of Tennessee-by-way-of-Santa Monica folksiness, and a "go to guy", Matt Iseman, who handles the power tools and is supposedly a stand-up comic, though it's hard for anyone to be all that funny on this show when Nash is around sucking up all the oxygen in the room, and when you see people whose domestic lives are pretty much a train wreck caused by a combination of American overconsumerism and a touch of mental illness.

But the show is highly addictive, and while at home one day this past week I found myself tuning the TV into what turned out to be a Clean House marathon. And in the process I cleaned out my closet, filled up two bags of clothes, one of which is stuff too battered to go anywhere but into the Amvets bins over by the supermarket, and another of stuff to be put out at my own yard sale later on this spring. And that's where Clean House goes beyond just standard feel-superior-to-these-people reality shows. By watching these people crying over getting rid of stuff that you can't imagine anyone keeping, it forces you to look at yourself, and what you're keeping around.

Packrattery seems to come from three basic places: One of them is the Fear of Not Having Enough. This is where the need to have a half-dozen 12-jumbo-roll packages of Charmin comes from, and where parties for ten people where you cook enough for forty come from. The idea of You Can Always Buy More never seems to occur to those of us who have this mindset. Because we're pessimistic by nature, we're certain that there will never again be another sale on Charmin, or that it will snow 47 feet and we won't get out of the house for six weeks, or we'll lose our job and at least if we have all this toilet paper around we can wipe our asses even if we can't do anything else.

Another mindset of packrattery is seen in shopoholism, and its three corollaries:

1) The Fear That They Will Stop Making This Item

2) This Might Come In Handy Someday, and the most dangerous one of all...

3) For Five Bucks It Can Hang In the Closet, which is just another name for Never Fail To Buy Anything That Is On Sale.

The other night Clean House ran a two-hour appalling train wreck in which the crew cleaned up a house in Piscataway, New Jersey that makes me look like Martha Stewart. We're talking being unable to walk through the house clutter. This isn't just packrattery, this is pathology. As the crew set up the yard sale, the three women -- a widowed mother and two adult live-in daughters -- who lived in this mess kept carting stuff they couldn't bear to part with back into the house.

In the course of this show, the mother appeared to have about 27 housecoats -- and seemed to need every one of them. I thought about the 14 unopened pair of black leggings in my closet and about the idea I had the other night, that since the Mainstreet Blues petite-length twill pants seem to fit me really well, I should maybe order a few pair in each color, IN CASE THEY STOP MAKING THEM. And so far (knock on wood) I haven't ordered any more.

The third part of packrattery is Filling the Hole. Now get your mind out of the gutter, because while Filling the Hole is related to shopoholism, it's different in that shopaholism is about the buying -- the PROCESS of acquiring Stuff™, whereas Filling the Hole is about the HAVING of said Stuff, usually, but not always, in the form of collecting. It's about the pleasure of looking at the beanie babies, or the vintage hats, or the teddybears. Even if you can't see them, you know they're there. You're never poor, because you Have Stuff.

All of this is, of course, based in childhood emotional deprivation, and my one beef with Clean House is that even the Formidable Niecy lecturing you about keeping up your nice newly-cleaned and decorated house isn't necessarily going to be enough to make you suddenly forget the emotional traumas of your childhood. And I notice that the show doesn't go back a year later to see how well their subjects have held up their end of the bargain.

But now, after having watched about a dozen episodes of this show this week, it's as if I have these four people in my head as I go through stuff trying to cull out things to sell at our garage sale later on this spring. And if you'll excuse me, I have a basement to go through. I think that since we have four cat carriers and only two cats, two of the carriers can go. And then there are those dozens of 3-prong outlets I bought when we moved in.....

Labels: homeownership, television

This is why quality free public education is important.

This is why good teachers are worth every penny of their salaries and every penny of their pensions, no matter how bad a state's financial condition.

This is why we must not give up on any students, no matter how tough they may appear to be or how rough the neighborhood they come from.

Want to know why Obama and not Hillary?

This is why:



(h/t: Joe Sudbay)

Labels: Barack Obama

John McCain has broken the campaign finance laws by accepting public financing, which comes with a spending limit, and then going over the limit. This is not just unfair advantage, its illegal.
The taxpayer funding was good enough for McCain when he needed it, but recently, when he felt that he could raise more money than the limit, he sent a letter pulling out of the deal. Well, the letter would have to be processed and accepted by the Federal Election Commission and that has not happened yet. So, every bit of money that he goes over the limit, breaks the law.

Considering that this is the most publicized election in a long time, maybe forever, and considering that the entire world is looking at us, including our own country and our children, how can McCain expect to openly break the law without some sort of repercussions. A huge problem that we have in American diplomacy and in American attitude in general, is this feeling that the law doesn't apply equally. We used to have the legal system that other countries would pattern themselves after. We used to be able to be proud of our leadership role in the world. Now we have endless politicians involved in scandals and jails filled to capacity. Worse than that, we are reviled the world over for our lies and deceit. The world is watching this election, and our children will be studying this in school for years to come. What is the answer?

We've been through 7+ years of an administration that shows no respect for the law and makes no bones about their contempt for any institution that might question their pure authority. America is built on laws, and this is one fairness law that has not been thrown out...yet...
We cannot afford another 4 or 8 years of unlawful leadership. We cannot afford to erode our society any further at the hands of another old man who thinks that he knows whats right, and that set of rules seems to apply differently to him than to the rest of us.

Lets let John McCain know that we are not going to consider him to be an extension of the outlaw Bush regime, that he is not above the law, and that he may be able to buy the press with his barbecue and fake swagger, but the American people have had enough.

Daily Kos and FiredogLake have pulled together a group of bloggers and concerned citizens to launch a complaint to the Federal Election Commission, against McCain, and they are collecting signatures here.
If you haven't yet signed the petition, please do and please forward it on to everyone yourl address book...they have had an enormous response in a short amount of time, but they need more. Every voice is important and now is the time to use yours. We cant let one bit of disregard for the American people's laws past us again. It us up to us to take a stand, because its been proven again and again that the system, taken apart as it is, will not work without concerned people powering it.

John McCain is going to have to answer for this flagrant disregard of the law...let's get to it!

Labels: John McCain

It's unusual for a Republican to so baldly declare himself to be a friend of the financial community and stern parent to individuals. Even Ronald Reagan used his eye twinkle and friendly, grandfatherly smile to convince working Americans that his shifting of wealth to the richest Americans was somehow in their best interest.

But John McCain has no use for such niceties. You can tell how bad the Democratic infighting has gotten when Senator Keating Five knows he can so baldly declare himself on the side of big financial companies and their highest-paid managers and not worry one bit about potential consequences. Yesterday he wagged his fingers at those Americans who answered the siren song of homeownership and told them they had to grow up and face the consequences of their actions (h/t: Steven Reynolds):

"I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers," McCain said. "Government assistance to the banking system should be based solely on preventing systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy."

[...]

Asked whether the Fed went too far in helping Bear Stearns, McCain said: "It's a close call, but I don't think so." He said he doesn't support federal bailouts unless it has catastrophic effects on the entire financial marketplace and there were indications that a Bear Stearns failure would have rippled across the entire economy.

Of course he doesn't say what those "indicators" were or where they came from. Somehow I suspect those "indicators" took the form of lobbyists.

As the New York Times notes, McCain's stern father bit, like that of George W. Bush, only extends to Americans who work for wages and aren't the "have-mores":

In practice, the Democrats have not really had to confront the full fury and magnitude of the crisis. Measured in dollars, their biggest proposals are small compared with the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Federal Reserve has decided to lend to struggling institutions, and compared with the magnitude of losses in home values and defaulted mortgages.

Mr. McCain and the Bush administration, meanwhile, have staunchly supported one of the biggest government interventions in the last century: the Federal Reserve’s decision to lend as much as $400 billion at rock-bottom rates to banks and Wall Street firms.

The Fed’s rescue operation involves a sum many times more than Democrats proposed spending on homeowners, and it comes on top of a host of other injections of government money into the economy. First came the bipartisan economic stimulus package, which this year alone will provide about $152 billion in tax rebates and temporary tax cuts to help spur consumption.

Then came a series of moves to greatly expand the roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government-sponsored mortgage finance companies.

And this week, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board decided to lend an extra $100 billion to member banks for mortgage financing.

Did people who took option ARMs and interest-only mortgages behave stupidly? Absolutely. Are people who charge multiple credit cards up to the limit irresponsible? Absolutely. They've succumbed to the lure of the apparatus I mentioned yesterday that made luxury homes and luxury cars and luxury products within the reach of ordinary Americans, and they didn't stop to think about payback time. Of course, why should they, when their president has been borrowing money from China at a furious clip to pour into the pockets of Halliburton and KBR and Blackwater and other corporations that are profiting off the war in Iraq? But even the quaint notion of there being consequences for one's actions doesn't apply to the titans of Wall Street that John McCain thinks are more worthy of assistance than a family about to lose its home:

Bear Stearns Cos. Chairman James Cayne on Thursday dumped his entire stake in the embattled investment bank for $61 million as it appears closer to a takeover by JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Cayne sold 5.66 million shares for exactly $10.84 a share on March 25, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. His stake was once valued at about $1 billion when the stock was trading at $171.50 per share.

His stake at one point plunged to about $27 million when JPMorgan announced nearly two weeks ago it would acquire the No. 5 U.S. investment bank for $2 per share. JPMorgan later upped that offer to $10 per share, and agreed to acquire 39.5 percent of the company without a shareholder vote to block any rival offers.

Now admit it. You're going to cry all night tonight because James Cayne is only going to walk away with $61 million instead of the billion dollars his stock holdings were worth while his company was gaming the mortgage system. What could YOU do with $61 million? For that matter, what could you do with HALF that? Or a quarter of that? I'll tell you what I'd be doing with it -- I wouldn't be sitting here watching every fucking penny I've put into my employer's retirement plan since the beginning of the disappear as the markets tank, and I wouldn't be worrying every day about what happens if the research grant money runs out and if I end up unemployed in my fifties.

George W. Bush vetoed $35 billion for children's health care, but the Fed has $29 billion to help J.P. Morgan Chase take over Bear Stearns and help James Cayne walk away with $61 million. And John McCain thinks that's perfectly OK.

Shall we talk about sending a message? The message is now that if a Wall Street firm just screws up badly enough so that its failure will cause a ripple effect in the markets, it's going to be entitled to a Federal bailout to prevent even more damage. In other words, just as we've found with Bush Administration corruption, once you reach the Tipping Point of Evil, you're home free.

Labels: economic death watch, John McCain

Every now and then a product comes along that's so perfect, so fabulously conceived, so wonderfully zany that it seems like destiny. Usually such products are only purveyed at Trader Joe's (like reduced guilt french onion pita chips) or Vermont Country Store (Tired Old Ass Soak), or concocted in whatever bong-den Ben and Jerry use to come up with their flavors like Phish Food, or the regretfully nonexistent Yes, Pecan, or the best one ever -- a Slovenian brand of bottled iced tea called -- no I am not kidding, I used to have a bottle of this stuff brought to me by a Slovenian friend -- Tea-tanic, and yes, it did have a picture of the sinking White Star liner on the label. But this one happens to already be carried at my own local A&P, and even though I have largely sworn off soda, this could tempt me to succumb every now and then:



Want YOUR lolkitteh to be a Soda Star? Jones Soda is having a contest to find the perfect lolcat. More information and contest rules here.

(h/t: Slashfood)

Labels: lolcats, pop culture

Some Wednesday nights when I’m not writing I’ll tune in to the Sci Fi Channel’s Ghost Hunters and, if I’m really intimidated by a blank white monitor, I’ll follow straight through and watch Destination: Truth, which is hosted by self-proclaimed “cryptozoologist” Josh Gates (A "cryptozoologist", says Websters, is "n- A gullible adventurer who ineptly pursues and documents the existence of long-known zoological species.").

Last night was such a night. Typically, Gates and Co. had another near-miss and caught an exciting blur that may or may not have been a dragon off the coast of Hanoi (Vietnam's own oceanographic experts said it was more like a shark).

But the second segment is what got my attention because Gates took his gang on the road to Zanzibar to investigate claims of the Popobawa, which is a big, evil ogre with a gigantic penis that sodomizes people. Hm.

Anyway, after canvassing the neighborhood in Stone Town, the island’s capital, Gates made it a point to interview those who'd claimed to have been attacked and molested by this giant, bat-like creature. After setting up cameras on the roofs, Josh’s people got exactly one sighting of a winged creature in the distance that wasn’t even large enough to get even Gates and his “I want to believe!” people excited.

So, remembering that the last two waves of sightings occurred during Zanzibar's elections, Gates finally grew some brain cells and began recanvassing the neighborhood and speaking to people at random instead of those with whom he was carefully put in contact. Suddenly, he began discovering a growing number of people who openly laughed at him when he mentioned the word "Popobawa." (I guess they'd be Zanzibar's equivalent of informed liberals).

Come to find out, the sightings reached a fever pitch among Zanzibaris before elections, in which incumbents and wouldbe office holders preyed on the peoples’ native superstitions, promising to combat the Popobawa cornholing menace if they would only elect me! The President of Zanzibar, who, I’m told, holds a little less power than your typical local chapter’s Moose Lodge Master at Arms, even commissioned the services of a “traditional doctor” (read charlatan, er, shaman) to drive away the big butt-banging bat.

Pity the Sci Fi Channel. If Mr. Gates had only done a little Internet research, he would’ve discovered that at least as far back as 2001, people had begun making the connection between Popobawa sightings and Zanzibar’s notorious rigged elections and the SFC could’ve saved thousands in air fare alone. But that’s not the point I’m making, here. And I think all you cynical liberals know where I’m headed.

Politicians and other fear mongers are the same the world over. And, with the help of our unconditionally loyal media, American financial institutions were especially vulnerable to being yo-yo’d. Just before the 2004 elections, financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, the Prudential Building, and the GOP’s beloved NYSE were put on high alert.

Then... Presto, insto change-o! Right after the 2004 election, the terror threat level goes down! Of course, no connection whatsoever was ever established between the Bush administration getting bad news, the election cycle and terror threat level (remember on Gay Pride Day, the alert would be raised to lavender?). Those Joshes. They always get their facts wrong.

So, now that we’re wise to them, look out for the GOP to try other scare tactics to goose their poll numbers this year. Look for Homeland Insecurity Secretary Michael Jerkoff to go on national TV to tell us to lock our windows, wear butt plugs and to keep a different kind of bat beneath our beds. And, oh yeah, don't forget, only McCain has pledged to tackle the butt bat menace.

Cuz ya never know…

“But that’s OK, Mr. President. We’ll suspend sending them home, even though you told us a week ago that success in Iraq was ‘undeniable’.”

Funny, I recall Bush saying time and again that he would listen to his ground commanders and to follow their initiatives as to how to proceed in Iraq. Yet last week Bush, who’s never been outside the Green Zone during his back door man visits, is now telling the Pentagon how successful they’ve been since the start of the surge 13 months ago that resulted in 901 American deaths last year, the bloodiest one out of the five.

But the Pentagon being well aware of the toll this is taking on the boots on the ground and their families yet still going along with Bush’s suspension of troop drawdowns is just downright despicable, especially after his feel good news at the last SOTU Address of bringing home 20,000 troops by this summer.

And shame on Congress, sez Dear Leader, for “hectoring” Nouri al-Maliki’s puppet government that both Bush and his enemy Moqtada al-Sadr jointly propped up to power (apparently al-Sadr reneged on his second 6 month-long cease fire that he‘d just renewed a month ago.). How dare they claim that the crackdown since Tuesday that’s resulted in the deaths of at least 130 people (Thank goodness somebody does body counts) in southern Iraq really isn’t working?

That would be the southern Iraq that’s valiantly collapsing ever since the Great British pulled out of there last December. That would be the very same exact southern Iraq that Bush nonetheless says can stand on its own thanks to its security forces.

Which neatly explains why our troops aren’t coming home soon, right?

It's interesting to watch Joe Scarborough try to talk up the economic news every morning. Every time the Dow takes a breather and goes up a few points, it's happy days are here again. The giant turd of subprime mortgages may be past the halfway mark in working its way through the colon of the financial markets, but anyone who thinks that's the end of it is delusional, because the next wave, that of bad equity loans, is just getting started:

Little by little, millions of Americans surrendered equity in their homes in recent years. Lulled by good times, they borrowed — sometimes heavily — against the roofs over their heads.

Now the bill is coming due. As the housing market spirals downward, home equity loans, which turn home sweet home into cash sweet cash, are becoming the next flash point in the mortgage crisis.

Americans owe a staggering $1.1 trillion on home equity loans — and banks are increasingly worried they may not get some of that money back.

To get it, many lenders are taking the extraordinary step of preventing some people from selling their homes or refinancing their mortgages unless they pay off all or part of their home equity loans first. In the past, when home prices were not falling, lenders did not resort to these measures.

Such tactics are impeding efforts by policy makers to help struggling homeowners get easier terms on their mortgages and stem the rising tide of foreclosures. But at a time when each day seems to bring more bad news for the financial industry, lenders defend the hard-nosed maneuvers as a way to keep their own losses from deepening.

It is a remarkable turnabout for the many Americans who have come to regard a home as an A.T.M. with three bedrooms and 1.5 baths. When times were good, they borrowed against their homes to pay for all sorts of things, from new cars to college educations to a home theater.

Lenders also encouraged many aspiring homeowners to take out not one but two mortgages simultaneously — ordinary ones plus “piggyback” loans — to avoid putting any cash down.

The result is a nation that only half-owns its homes. While homeownership climbed to record heights in recent years, home equity — the value of the properties minus the mortgages against them — has fallen below 50 percent for the first time, according to the Federal Reserve.

Lenders holding first mortgages get first dibs on borrowers’ cash or on the homes should people fall behind on their payments. Banks that made home equity loans are second in line. This arrangement sometimes pits one lender against another.

When borrowers default on their mortgages, lenders foreclose and sell the homes to recoup their money. But when homes sell for less than the value of their mortgages and home equity loans — a situation known as a short sale — lenders with first liens must be compensated fully before holders of second or third liens get a dime.

In other words, when homeowners have to choose between paying the first mortgage and the second, the first one has priority. And with the number of mortgageholders (I'm not about to call people who bought a $500,000 POS with a no money down mortgage for $500,000 and other $50,000 to remodel the kitchen "homeowners") already sitting on first mortgage balances in excess of what their homes are now worth, the equity lenders are going to get hosed. And thats where things get really interesting.

It's no secret anymore that the consumer binge of the last eight years wasn't done via increased income for most Americans, it was all done with the hot checks of easy credit. Why pay taxable interest on a loan for that fifty grand SUV when you can borrow on your house? Why just replace the countertops and the floor when you can take out a loan for seventy-five grand and gut the whole damn thing? Why just take an ordinary mortgage when you can get a couple of piggyback loans, knock the thing down, and build a big ugly box out of particle board and vinyl that extends to within 8' of the property line and blocks the sun from your neighbor's house but has a bigass chandelier overhanging the "bridal staircase"?

When I was a kid, my parents used to talk about the dream of going from a $25,000 house to a $30,000 house, the latter of which maybe had an extra bath and a pool in the backyard. They knew that such things were probably just a dream, out of financial range for people like them. People like my family drove Dodge Darts and Ford Falcons, while only rich people drove Cadillacs and Mercedes and BMWs.

Then the 1980's came along, and people watched Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous on television and got this idea in their heads that they could have everything that rich people had, even if they had to go into hock up to their eyeballs to get it. You could drive a luxury car by leasing it. You could have that extra bathroom by taking out an equity loan. You could have the trappings of the rich -- the bigass entry foyer with the chandelier, and the luxury cars and the multiple garages and the vacations in St. Barths -- and the fact that the rich could buy this stuff out of ready cash while ordinary Americans had to go into hock to do it never occurred to people.

And so the debt culture was born. Creative forms of debt allowed ordinary Americans to kid themselves that they were gaining entry into "the club" -- and now they too could look down on the poor and the "welfare queens", because those above them on the economic ladder were opening the doors and saying, "Come on in! The free lobster buffet is straight ahead on the right." Except that there was no free lobster buffet, and the debt culture was designed not to enrich the lives of the middle class, but to anesthetize it to what was really going on -- a massive transfer of real wealth to the richest Americans, hidden by the debt being made available to the middle class.

And now the bills are coming due and Americans are only now realizing that the free lobster buffet is off limits to them. But instead of blaming the people who made the debt available and helped them get in over their heads, they're still pointing their fingers down the economic ladder and preparing to elect another Republican president who will continue to screw them over seven ways to Sunday until there's no more blood that can be wrung from the dry stone that used to be middle class life in America.

Labels: economic death watch

Lenny Dykstra. The very name is onomatopoeic, describing as it does a short, tough, plug-ugly guy with a chew of tobacco in his mouth and a Napoleon complex as big as the swing of his bat.

Perhaps more than anyone else, Dykstra embodied the swaggering, cocksure chutzpah of the 1986 Mets. Strawberry and Gooden may have had the talent, but for those guys in 1985 and 1986, before the seductive allure of money and drugs had ruined them, playing baseball was no different from getting up in the morning. It's just what they did. It's what they were made to do. Dykstra was different. He wasn't built for the game, but through sheer dint of hard work (until he apparently succumbed to the siren song of steroids), he was one of the most exciting players in the game. To this day, every time I hear the song Centerfield, I think of Lenny Dykstra.

It's understandable that I would have been a Dykstra fan. I know all too well what it's like to a short person trying to make it in a tall world and having to talk louder and try harder. But for all that he made the game entertaining, the steroids and the fights he got into later in his career were an ominous sign that once his career was over, Dykstra might succumb to the downward spiral that affects so many professional athletes once their careers are over.

But those of us who thought Dykstra was just a dumb jock of limited innate ability and even less intelligence who put all his energies into playing over his head were dead wrong.

He may sound like a burnout when he talks, but today Nails is a successful businessman, respected investment prognosticator with an investment newsletter people pay a thousand bucks a year to read, subject of a recent profile on Real Sports on HBO, soon to be publisher of an investment magazine for professional athletes that he hopes will represent the perfect confluence of capitalism and doing a service for his brothers in professional sports who may not have his financial savvy, and the subject of this charming profile in, of all places, The New Yorker magazine:

Mets fans of a certain age will recall a popular poster from 1986, bearing the word “Nails” in bold letters across the top, and featuring a shirtless Dykstra, wearing eye black and holding a bat against his shoulder. The nickname referred to his tenacity and also to his peculiar Southern California lexicon. (“MTV is nails,” he explained in his autobiography, also called “Nails,” which was published in 1987, when he was twenty-four. “Winning is nails.”) He was wiry then; he used to complain that Lenny might as well have been his middle name, given how often it was preceded by the word “little”: Little Lenny Dykstra. He is lumpy now. Referring to his suit, which was pin-striped, he said, “It gets a little tighter, you know?” His hands tremble, his back hurts, and his speech, like that of an insomniac or a stroke victim, lags slightly behind his mind. He winks without obvious intent. In his playing days, he had a term for people like this: fossils. Nothing about his physical presence any longer suggests nails, and sometimes, as if in joking recognition of this softening, he answers the phone by saying, “Thumbtacks.”

[snip]

For many ballplayers, the growing-up point does not arrive until after retirement, when all the freebies vanish and equipment managers and hotel maids can no longer be relied upon for regular laundry service. Dykstra last played in the majors in 1996, at age thirty-three. Improbably, he has since become a successful day trader, and he let me know that he owns both a Maybach (“the best car”) and a Gulfstream (“the best jet”). The occasion for our lunch, however, was a new venture: Dykstra is launching a magazine, intended specifically for pro athletes, called The Players Club. An unfortunate number of his former teammates have ended up broke, or divorced, or worse. The week before we met, the ex-Yankee Jim Leyritz, himself twice divorced and underemployed, had hit a woman while driving home from a bar. He never grew up.

[snip]

Dykstra did not attend college, and, like many accomplished autodidacts, he is ever alert for signs of condescension, but he relishes his newfound opportunity to meet executives in a boardroom rather than on the charity golf circuit, and studies their habits carefully, to the point of noting their preferred e-mail font sizes. He is open about the fact that many businessmen—“​graybeards”—​have a hard time taking him seriously. “It’s like I got hit with an idiot stick—took ten lashes on the way in,” he said of a recent meeting. The steady pursuit and accumulation of class markers and status symbols is a handy defense against such anxieties, and during a rare break between calls he led me to a different computer, in the front seat, to show off a photograph that he was using as his wallpaper. “This is my bird, here—that’s a GII,” he said. “I wasn’t going to buy a plane till I bought a Gulfstream, ’cause Gulfstream’s the best in the world—and there’s not a close second, by the way. That’s something that was important to me. Like, all my hard work? Gulfstream makes me feel like it was worth something.”

So maybe he's still trying to prove his dick is as big as that of the big boys. But if that's what he's doing, at least he's doing it in a way that has not only made him wealthy, but might help some of today's athletes from meeting the same fate that befell some of his compatriots. And if the idea of little Nails, the kid with the chaw of tobacco in his cheek who always seemed more like your pain in the ass kid brother who wanted to play street baseball with the big kids than like any kind of profesisonal, turning into this macher in business isn't endearing enough, perhaps this is:

“Wives are key, dude. They are key. It’s a tough life. Your husband is gone and it’s always about him, and then—can you imagine?—he’s done, and all that happens, and you got no money?” (The fact that he and Terri have been married for twenty-three years, through stardom and retirement, seems to surprise even Dykstra. “Terri’s a special person, and I’m a very, very lucky guy,” he said. “It took me a long time to realize that. You know what I mean?”)

Look at the shattered lives of some of his 1986 Mets teammates -- Darryl Strawberry with a shaky hold on sobriety after battling drugs, booze, prison time for tax evasion, and colon cancer; Dwight Gooden, newly out of prison after repeated battles with substance abuse; Wally Backman, who was fired from a job he hadn't even started yet as manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks after the team found out about an old arrest for DUI and the fact that he was just about bankrupt. Given that Dykstra always had that short guy thing about having to out-macho the big boys, you'd think he would have fallen twice as far, twice as hard, just to show that he could. Dykstra is charmingly aware of his own intellectual limitations, admitting that he doesnt "read so good", but he managed to learn about high finance via books on tape and found out that this is something at which he excels, whether through some kind of innate ability or the same kind of sheer guts he used to show on the field.

The Mets' 2008 season starts next week, and for every question that the presence of Johan Santana may answer, there are innumerable new ones. Can José Reyes' ego be kept in check so that he thinks of the team as much as his own stats? Can Mike Pelfrey finally get his act together to be a credible fifth starter? Who the hell is going to play the outfield? And is this organization going to wake up and realize that either this team has to get younger or do something about its strength and conditioning program? But in an age of eight-figure-a-year incomes, this year's Mets could do worse than to look back at the gritty little guy with the big chaw of tobacco in his cheek, and realize that when push comes to shove, ever-vigilant moxie trumps lazy talent every time.

Labels: finance, Lenny Dykstra, New York Mets

Check out the blogswarm, here.

It’s just about cherry blossom time….

Last night, after miles of DC monuments, I found myself in a small television studio at Atlantic video on Massachusetts Avenue NW, invited to view the taping of a show/event that reaches to the very heart of what’s wrong in this country. Presented by First Freedom First, an organization dedicated to the separation of church and state, this pre-taped event will be simulcast tonight at theaters across America. Log on here to find one near you and pick up some free tickets.

The show is hosted by actor Peter Coyote, along with Welton Gaddy, Air America Radio Host and President of the Interfaith Alliance, and Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United. Their combined specialties run the gamut from theology to law, spirituality to broadcasting, and back again. The event presents facts, fallacies, and heart crushing stories that exemplify the huge amount of work that this country will have to do in the wake of eight years of fundamentalist rule. Featured guests are Comedian and AAR host, Marc Maron, Musical group the Bacon Brothers, actors Dan Luria, Wendie Mallick, and Catherine Dent, one man show, Roy Zimmerman, singer/songwriter Catie Curtis, and living legend, dear to my own heart, Jack Klugman.

The tide of a particular brand of Christianity that has swept our nation is a troubling one, in that there is this my-way-or-the-highway mentality about it; a framing of this story as one in which the good are raptured up to heaven and the bad are damned. Even our foundational institutions that are supposed to be, by law immune to this blurred line have succumbed slowly and insidiously thought the years. Schools and the military have moved in a direction that is not only against what this country stands for, but damaging to our strength as a guiding force and to our diplomatic standing in the world. This movement has become a forced migration towards a purely Christian country with the rest being systematically viewed as a dark side, damned to hell, and it has gained strength mainly due to an administration that boldly defies the law, and logic in how to maintain an inclusive society.

Welton Gaddy describes the concept of spirituality or religion as one made up of the journey of understanding, and acknowledging the many ways that the spirit, or some part of it, might make itself known; a search for what each of our personal truths may be made up of, that should not be lessened by any one person’s journey. He embraces a God who encourages that journey, believing that faith is a growing organism, and the inclusion of all forms of spirituality and religion is imperative to the survival of our species. We cannot begin to aspire to attain any goal of understanding on any path, religious or otherwise, without the acceptance of the many differences that make up the human spirit. It is only through this kind of love and acceptance and educational foundation that we fulfill what might be human possibility.

First freedom first is a charitable organization concerned with empowering people to ask questions of their religious leadership, communities, and government, because each of us shapes our own culture and one person really can evoke change. The journey of spirituality is an interactive one, and unfortunately what has happened through our educational system has served to stilt the ongoing dialogue that faith and education should be.

Our places of worship and our society are so steeped in the information age that we have abdicated our responsibility to get up off the couch and ask the questions that shape this conversation. When an issue of importance arises the best answer is usually to ask a question; what does that mean to you? But a culture of proselytizing has taken hold, and the urgency of the concept of “saving” the masses seems to have trumped the law as well as common sense…and in so doing, has served to silence whole portions of our society. The threat of being considered un-American or anti-religion or just not politically correct has been a huge and powerful weapon that has been used against us more and more in the past years. We need to find our courage once again to be the brave Americans who have fought at just about every critical juncture in history for what is right; not what is convenient.

First freedom first encourages everyone to sign on to their webpage, learn about the issues, watch the videos of some of your favorite stars talking about their own concerns, sign the petition, and take a copy of the set of questions to ask your family, your community members, and most importantly, the politicians who shape the agenda regarding so many issues that are run solely from the point of view of religious dogma. These are also critical questions to ask yourself from time to time, when you get swept up in the nonsense that masquerades as real life.

The stories told during this show will break your heart, give you hope, and make you laugh. Questions will be asked, singers will sing, a minister will preach a differing view of the scriptures, and the minister of the funny, Marc Maron will remind us all of the common bond of humanity, that goes past religious or partisan lines and cuts directly to the empathetic thinking spirit of a fellow traveler on the road to wherever this leads. The big shame is that we can’t have a regular dose of this voice on the radio, as we did for what were brilliant years of not just politics, but a life in some sort of motion. This is what we need to hear; interactive moving dialogue that moves us forward rather than pushing us down where I hear that the right wing hate-jocks are repeating the same old thing, as if it becomes truer as you wish it to be.

Facing an end is not anything that we can project ourselves into, or fathom the depth of. I sometimes think that Mother Nature makes the vision dull and softens the edges on the concept of nothingness to make it a little easier for us to parse that divide. For those who embrace a heaven with loved ones and pets; a place of beauty and comfort, and for those who feel that the circle of life leads to rebirth or maybe just nothingness, we must always remember to respect each individual ‘s needs and wants and beliefs in order to be the free country that the framers envisioned. We have the right to the pursuit of happiness, but forcing our beliefs on someone else is not anyone’s right, much less the right of the state. It is, in fact, denying them their rights.

Voyagers across oceans gave their lives to escape a society that lacked the freedom of religion and the ability to strive for happiness. America was founded by people who wanted that freedom so badly that they bravely risked their lives and died in order to be free of that oppression. Somehow over many years, sometimes cyclically, but seemingly moving towards the right, we have forgotten what we are , how we came to be here, and somehow it has become okay to close the doors and turn this into an exclusive club feeding on itself in its intolerance.

After the show, an audience member came up to Marc and I overheard him asking “So, Marc, how would you classify yourself?” To which Maron replied, “Well, I guess I’m just a stand up.” The man then said “Well, I'm a humanist.” And as I walked away I heard Marc sorting it out, like, “oh, you meant…”... I didn't stay for the end of the sentence, because I know the answer and that answer is as individual as each of us…and it is as apt to believe in rock and roll as the humanistic way we treat each other as it is to be a Jew or Christian or to worship at the knee of Don Rickles…and, what about God’s Comedian….? There is no saving or teaching or helping without basic understanding, and it’s sad that so many of us speak totally different languages but really intending somewhat the same outcome.

I hope that First Freedom First will be making the show available on DVD or even better, general television. ( update: this video will be released on the internets shortly.) There should be some way that many more people can see this wonderful show. It was long, probably too long and in need of an intermission, but it was engaging and important and the kind of programming that would go a long way towards helping Americans try to sort out the morass of dogma that has become the stock in trade of every walk of life in America today.

Visit First Freedom First here

c/p RIP Coco

Labels: Marc Maron, religion, Religious Intolerance

All of the Big Guns are firing the battle cry for increasing the numbers of H-1B visas being issued, as dictated by Bill Gates in his Committee of One testimony in front of Congress. The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, and others dutifully lined up to spout out the same, tired old high tech industry party line. (Yawn!) More foreign guest workers are needed in order to remain competitive, and American jobs will disappear if the visa cap is not raised.

Network World came up with this innovative solution for working within the current 65,000 H-1B visa cap:

One option that eliminates the need to work with immigration lawyers is rooting out potential candidates for the open position already on staff. For many hiring and IT managers, training in house technical employees on skills that are considered critical going forward is a better option that [sic] looking outside the company for talent.

"Managers can look for internal talent that may need a little more training or need to work in a different style," says Albert Porco, CIO at Kings County Medical Center in New York. "There are times when the most talented person is two or three levels down in the organization. Also at times, you don't need superstars, you need staff that can get the job done."

Talk about thinking outside the box! That ranks right up with the unusual idea of having a company set up a booth at a career fair to recruit recent college graduates!

How's this for particularly hateful commentary:

Kamal Jain, Director of Operations and Customer Service at Auraria Networks in Boxborough, Mass., agrees saying if IT hiring managers exhaust options outside of the company, then they need to look at the pool of talent already producing at the company.

"Consider career-changers who have the right attitude, intelligence, demeanor, etc. to fit your needs and then take some chances on training and development," Jain says. "It’s not a good way to get senior people, but it can bring in a great pool of talent which can free up enough experienced people to allow them to grow into the senior roles you may need filled."

I can write an entire post about this statement alone, but notice how the concept of hiring IT staff that have already reached "senior" status is completely missing.

Finally, (buckle your seat belts - you won't be ready for this one.)

Digitas' Russell says that her team and the company’s management is using a new mantra when it comes to hiring external or internal candidates that involves considering a broader range of qualified candidates.

"Management and recruiting is pushing people to consider what could be trained. If a candidate has 80% of the skills needed, we can hire them and we can teach the other 20% of skills," she says.

A company willing to look at a candidate who is not a 100% match for the position? I thought I'd never see that happening again.

The Washington Post waited a while, but they finally came up with "Visas Needed" in their Editorials section. According to Vdare, Norm Matloff at UC-Davis has put out the call to bombard the Post with letters protesting this story. He reminds us that Mrs. Bill Gates sits on the paper's board. Matloff advises us to "Let your draft sit for at least an hour, then revise it with a clearer head, before submitting."

(Phooey! I want to write it while my blood pressure is still elevated.)

Finally, here's a pretty good Op-Ed piece I found in Newsblaze that gives the other side of the H-1B story. In "The Current H-1B Visa Program Must Be Abolished or Reformed", John Wallace points out that:

The H-1B visa program was originally created to assist American employers who were having trouble finding American high-tech workers for their businesses. It allowed a fixed number of foreign workers come to the United States to "temporarily" fill those positions while the American companies and the federal government invested time and money in upgrading the training of American workers to meet the new skill levels required.

Here's how the H-1B program really works:

The H-1B work visa program was supposed to be used to bolster the U.S. economy by helping American-owned companies. Under the program, American companies can use the speciality visa to hire foreign software programmers or computer scientists with rare skills in order to encourage innovation and improving competitiveness. Instead, foreign companies such as Infosys and Wipro are using our own government program to undermine the American economy by wiping out American jobs. These foreign-owned companies are bringing low-cost workers into the U.S., training them in the offices of American business clients, and then rotating them back home after a year or two so they can provide low cost, out-sourced tech services that causes American IT workers to lose their jobs. How is this helping American workers and American businesses?

Notice how Wallace's story can only be printed in a media outlet that hardly anyone has ever heard of (as TooTruthy points out in the end of her blog post).

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

Labels: Bill Gates, H-1Bs, outsourcing

After returning from a carefully choreographed (well, except for his statements that Shi'ite Iran is training Sunni Al Qaeda) trip to Iraq, John McCain insisted that we're "succeeding" in Iraq:

"We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says. I've seen the facts on the ground," the Arizona senator insisted a day after a roadside bomb in Baghdad killed four U.S. soldiers and rockets pounded the U.S.-protected Green Zone there, and a wave of attacks left at least 61 Iraqis dead nationwide. The events transpired as bin Laden called on the people of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to "help in support of their mujahedeen brothers in Iraq, which is the greatest opportunity and the biggest task."

I guess he's right, if by "succeeding" you mean "all hell is breaking loose":

Could Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's attempts to re-establish control over Basra backfire? There is a growing possibility that it could become a wider intra-Shi'ite war, drawing in the forces loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose ceasefire has been key to the success of the U.S. "surge"? If so, the consequences for American military strategy in Iraq in an all-important political year will be grave.

Maliki's government targeted Basra because it could. Unlike many other southern cities where fighting has escalated in recent weeks, Maliki has built an independent power base among the security forces there. But Tuesday's sweep of Basra could turn sour in other southern cities where the central government's power is weak. Indeed, many Shi'ites are seeing this not just as an example of the Shi'ite Maliki taking on other Shi'ites (including Sadrists) but of America backing the Prime Minister up in a de facto Shi'a civil war. Iraqi government forces have attacked Shi'ite militias and gangs in at least seven major southern Iraq cities in the past two weeks. And America has been there to support Maliki's troops every time.

In response, Sadr loyalists have already taken to the streets in Baghdad, where U.S. troops will have to deal with the backlash. U.S. officials have so far shied away from blaming Sadr for the recent rise of violence (including an Easter attack on the Green Zone), mostly because Sadr's ceasefire has been key to the success of the surge. (General David Petraeus has pointed the finger at Iran instead.) But as clashes increase, they may not be able to dance around it for much longer.

In other words, the so-called "surge" (which is now an increased level of occupation) has "worked" because of the Sadr cease-fire, not because of any changes in U.S. policy or tactics. And what Sadr gives, Sadr can take away.

Ilan Goldenberg puts it all in perspective:

Iraqi forces clashed with Shiite militiamen Tuesday in the southern oil port of Basra and gunmen patrolled several Baghdad neighborhoods as followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered a nationwide civil disobedience campaign to demand an end to the crackdown on their movement.

The potential impact is huge and this could be the beginning of the end of the decrease in violence that we've seen over the past few months.

No knows for sure what is going on yet but this seems to be an internal Iraqi fight. This is Shi'a on Shi'a violence. It is a power struggle between some combination of the various Shi'a factions in Iraq including: the Badr Brigades (loyal to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq), Mehdi Army (loyal to the Sadrists), and the Iraqi Security Forces (Which include elements of a number of factions).

The Bush administration may try to blame this all on Iran and confuse the issue. Iran will likely get involved in any intra-Shi'a struggle because it has so many ties into Southern Iraq. But at the end of the day, this is about the still simmering civil war in the South and the fact that we still haven't figured out how to address it or facilitate a political agreement inside of Iraq.

The million dollar question is: what is "a nationwide civil disobedience campaign?" If it is strikes and protests that's one thing. But if it is the beginning of the end of the ceasefire that is something very different. We have to wait and see. The other central question is whether or not this is in fact a decision made by Sadr and the political leadership, or if it is rogue elements of his militia who are causing the fighting.

The issue is very serious. In fact it's huge. The drop in violence in Iraq has generally been attributed to four elements 1) More American forces and the change in tactics to counterinsurgency; 2) The Awakening movement; 3) The Sadr ceasefire; and 4) The ethnic cleansing and physical separation of the various sides.

It's hard to say for sure, which of these factors was the most important. The Bush administration will tell you it's all about the troop levels. I've tended to believe it's more of a mix and was most inclined towards the Anbar Awakening and the sectarian cleansing as the important factors. But when you look at the data it really seems to indicate that the Sadr ceasefire may have been the key.

If you look at the graph that the military has been using on civilian casualties it looks to tell a pretty clear story. The first major drop in violence came in early 2007 before the troop surge. It looks like it was mostly based on the fact that the worst of the sectarian cleansing in Baghdad had been completed (I outlined this argument more thoroughly a few months back).

And the Republican Who Would Be President is telling us that if we just clap our hands together and shout over and over again, "I DO believe we're succeeding! I do I do I DO believe!", that everything will be just dandy.

Labels: delusion, Iraq, John McCain, Moqdata al-Sadr

No, I'm not going anywhere. But that seemed an appropriate title for this warm and fuzzy story to end all warm and fuzzy stories:

THEY famously attempted to warn mankind of the Earth's impending destruction in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, only for their behaviour to be dismissed as playful acrobatics.

But now, solid evidence has emerged of the dolphin's altruistic nature. In a act of selflessness which has astounded experts and confirmed the friendly nature of the species, a bottlenose came to the rescue of two whales stranded on a beach in New Zealand.

The dolphin – nicknamed Moko by local residents, who said it spent much of its time swimming playfully with beachgoers – helped two pygmy sperm whales, facing imminent death after becoming stranded on a sandbar, swim to safety.

Until Moko's arrival, rescuers feared the mother and calf would have to be put down to prevent them suffering a prolonged death on Mahia beach, about 300 miles north-east of Wellington.

Malcolm Smith and his team from the New Zealand Conservation Department had tried in vain to rescue the animals for an hour-and-a-half. With their effort faltering, it seemed only a matter of time before the operation was called off.

"They kept getting disoriented and stranding again," Mr Smith said yesterday. "They couldn't find their way back past (the sandbar] to the sea."

Just as it seemed all hope was lost, Moko appeared. The dolphin approached the whales, leading them 200m along the beach before navigating them out to the open sea.

Mr Smith believes the dolphin heard the whales' distress calls and came to their aid.

"It was looking like it was going to be a bad outcome for the whales ... then Moko came along and fixed it," he said. "They had arched their backs and were calling to one another, but as soon as the dolphin turned up, they submerged and followed her.

"I don't speak whale and I don't speak dolphin, but there was obviously something that went on, because the two whales changed from being quite distressed to following the dolphin willingly and directly along the beach and straight out to sea."

Another rescuer, Juanita Symes, added: "Moko came flying through the water and pushed in between us and the whales. She got them to head toward the hill, where the channel is. It was an amazing experience. The best day of my life."

Indeed.


(h/t: Lynn)

Labels: animals

I still remember the morning when I first heard the news. I can still see my old white clock radio as it went off to get me up and off to school, the news radio station blaring the news about a murder in the town in which I lived, Westfield, New Jersey. It was early December, 1971, and I was a junior in high school.

At first I wasn't sure I heard correctly. That was in the days before 24 by 7 cable news. A case like this happening today and Jeremiah Wright would be gone from the airwaves. But then it was just a news report. It wasn't until I got to school and a girl I knew from the Westfield Drama Workshop grabbed my arm in the stairwell and looked at me in horror that it really hit me that what I'd heard that morning was true: Pat List was dead, along with the rest of her family -- killed by her father.

I'd been involved in the Workshop for about a year and a half at that point Pat and I hadn't been close friends, but that we were both in this theatre group gave me a certain amount of acceptability to the kind of kids that would have shunned me otherwise. Pat and I were in the same gym class that year, and she would talk to me about her boyfriend and we'd gossip about "the group." She was always nice to me in a way that pretty high school girls usually aren't to the short, overweight misfit with the sense of humor that no one really understands. You wouldn't know it from this ubiquitous family photograph, but Pat was by then a very sexy girl. I suppose her father knew this and it probably scared the shit out of him, as did her involvement in this drama workshop.

Most community theatre groups do lighthearted musicals, but not this one. This was a drama workshop led by someone who was teaching method acting to a bunch of suburban high school kids in between the kind of nonthreatening musicals that were the group's bread and butter. I had gone from being a spectator to a participant when I inherited the role of Mammy Yokum in L'il Abner from a friend whose mother (who ironically attended the same Lutheran church that the Lists did) refused to allow her to participate any longer. It wasn't exactly a method part, but I was a kid who wore her hair over her face and hid underneath a poncho every day, and I still remember the day I had to pull my hair back into a battle axe bun the first time, feeling like the French women I'd seen in a documentary on PBS having their heads shaved for collaborating with the Nazis. But the musicals were just there to pay the bills so that the group's leader, a frustrated opera singer named Edwin Illiano, whose name turned up later for accompanying the police to the gruesome discovery, could mount full-fledged productions of plays like A Streetcar Named Desire.

There was talk after the murders of Pat dabbling in the occult. I'd heard her talk about pentagrams and such a few times, and attended a Halloween party at the List home not three weeks before the murders took place; a party held in the very same ballroom where the bodies were found. I'd only been at the house once before, when we went to build scenery and their horrible pomeranian bit me. But I'd known that Mr. List was NOT happy at this bunch being in his house.

The only death I'd ever had to deal with was a grandfather with whom I wasn't close. So my first real exposure to death and funerals came with TV cameras outside the church and following us to the cemetery, a church with not one but five caskets at the front, and keening relatives. I remember that after the funeral, I took Valium for a few nights because I was terrified that if Mr. List had done this partly because Pat was involved in the drama workshop, he might come for the rest of us.

But time marches on. The drama workshop was disbanded shortly thereafter, probably due to the notoriety caused by the murders. I graduated high school, went to college, and went about my life. I've often thought about Pat over the years, and of course in my memory she is forever sixteen, strutting around a stage in a swimsuit as Stupefyin' Jones or whispering to me more information than I ever wanted about experimenting with sex with her boyfriend. I think about her swishing around the ballroom at her house in a nearly Elvira-like witch costume, mercifully unaware of how she would be laid out on a sleeping bag in that very room three weeks later. But as the years pass, those thoughts become less frequent.

I'll never forget where I was when I heard that John List had been apprehended after the case was profiled on America's Most Wanted. I was in the car, driving west on Route 4 in Teaneck. I whooped so loudly I nearly ran off the road. Finally, we were going to hear exactly why a man decided that killing his wife and children was the right thing to do.

In 2002, Connie Chung interviewed John List in one of the most chilling pieces of television I'd ever seen. He said, "It was my belief that if you kill yourself, you won't go to heaven So eventually, I got to the point where I felt that I could kill them, hopefully, they would go to heaven and then maybe I would have a chance to later confess my sins to God and get forgiveness.

"After I made the plan....It's just like D-Day, you go in, there's no stopping after you start."

In these days when we see so-called Christians attempt to justify just about anything, that this man who professed to be a devout Lutheran would find a way to make killing his wife, mother and three children, then going on the lam for eighteen years seem like a perfectly OK thing to do, no longer seems as shocking as it used to. But today, with many people in danger of losing their homes, one wonders if similar thoughts are lurking behind the placid exteriors of other fathers who find themselves out of work and unable to support the lifestyle to which their families have become accustomed.

John List got away with murder for eighteen years. He spent another seventeen years in prison, in the kind of ordered, neat and tidy world in which he probably thrived and probably felt comfortable. And now he has died -- on Good Friday no less -- in that place that was more haven than prison; gone off on the journey where he will find out if his beliefs were correct -- and if his God agrees with him that it's better to kill your children than let them play Stupefyin' Jones.

And now Pat and her brothers and mother and grandmother can finally rest.



More from Rix.

 

6/6/2022:  If you've clicked through from the "Father Wants Us Dead" podcast site, please note that I refused to share memories with the author of the article from which it was derived and will not respond to any emails again asking about it. I feel that after fifty years it is long past time to stop dredging this up and let these people finally rest.

...it could be worse. You could be Deborah Shank.

Today we've seen a taste of what the Corporate States of America are going to be like, after Hillary Clinton finishes the job of being 2008's Joe Lieberman and handing the presidency to John McCain to keep warm for her until 2012. We've already seen that there's no money for children's health care or to rebuild the Ninth ward of New Orleans, but $236 billion can be found overnight to help J.P. Morgan Chase take over Bear Stearns. And today we had another taste when a Federal court overturned New York's Passenger Bill of Rights law. This audacious law dared to claim that when passengers are held captive on grounded aircraft for more than three hours, they are entitled to things like water to drink and toilets to use. In declaring the law null and void, the court declared that only the Federal government is authorized to pass such a law. And you know how likely THAT is. After all, it might cost the airlines money, and it's the government's job to throw money at the airlines, not make them provide basic necessities to the human cattle they transport.

But even so, it could be worse. You could be Deborah Shank.

Our good friend and sometime colleague Jurassicpork explains:

In my three plus years as a political/social blogger, I’ve read and have written about some incredibly outrageous stories that had tempted me to try to alter my DNA so I could no longer be considered human even at the genetic level. Because what Wal-Mart is doing to this family, one that seems to attract tragedy like a magnet attracts iron filings, makes me ashamed to be a terrestrial human.

I’ll give you the abstracts:

Debbie Shank, former Wal-Mart employee, was hit by a semi eight years ago. To this day, she has no short term memory, is incapacitated and will live in a nursing home for the rest of her life. Her husband, just recovering from prostate cancer, has to work two jobs to pay for her medical costs.

Or, should I say her ex-husband, because he divorced her just so she could get more disability benefits.

When Debbie was almost killed by that semi, Wal-Mart’s health insurance paid the medical bills promptly. However, what they didn’t go out of their way to tell Debbie when she first signed on for that coverage was that the company (a self-insured entity, in case you’ve yet to come to that conclusion) reserves the right to recoup all the medical bill money if they receive a settlement, which in this case was $417,000.

When Wal-Mart got wind of it, they immediately sued the Shanks for that amount plus $51,739, making nearly $470,000 in all. The trust fund opened for Debbie now contains roughly $277,000, far short of the money Wal-Mart, which pulled down $90,000,000,000 (that’s ninety billion) in retail sales in their last quarter alone, is trying to squeeze out of them. In fact, Wikinvest states that Wal-Mart’s annual revenue, based on the 2008 fiscal year, would place it in the world’s top 25 nations’ GDP.

If Mr. Shank were to somehow magically pull the other $200,000 out of his ass, not only would the family be broke and unable to pay Debbie’s medical expenses, their 17 year-old son wouldn’t be able to go to college.

Oh, and a year and a half ago their 18 year-old son Jeremy was killed serving in Iraq.

So ask all those friends of yours -- you know the ones I'm talking about, we all have them -- the ones who are so troubled by the fact that Barack Obama's pastor said mean things about America that they're going to vote for John McCain this fall -- if they think Wal-Mart ought to be able to garnish money that's supposed to care for a disabled woman. And if they talk about greedy plaintiffs and trial lawyers, ask them what they would do if THEY were disabled and their employer tried to sue them for money spent on their medical care.

And meanwhile, because Hillary Clinton is showing herself to be every bit as narcissistic as George W. Bush, this clueless, babbling, senile man is very likely to be taking the reins on January 20 of next year:

Labels: corporatism, greed, icepick meet forehead

Because after all, the Republicans may someday let food stamp recipients in Ohio into their rich man's club:

Nearly one in 10 Ohioans now receives food stamps, the highest number in the state's history.

Caseloads have almost doubled just since 2001, with 1.1 million residents now collecting benefits, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Low wages, unemployment and the rising cost of groceries, gasoline and other necessities are to blame for financial hardships facing many Ohio families.

Caseloads have been rising steadily in the past seven years, said Brian Harter, spokesman for the state agency which oversees the food-stamp program.

"Look at unemployment during this time," he said.

Ohio's jobless rate is 5.3 percent, up from 4.4 percent in 2001.

"The economy and loss of manufacturing jobs are at the root of what's going on. But lately (it's) the rising cost of transportation and food -- people who were barely getting by, are not getting by," said Jack Frech, director of the Athens County Department of Job and Family Services.

"It has pressed folks to the edge to have to rely on food stamps."

Advocates estimate another 500,000 Ohioans are eligible but not enrolled in the food-stamp program.

Individuals in households with incomes up to 130 percent of the federal poverty level and with assets no greater than $2,000 in most cases are eligible for food stamps. That's earnings of no more than $22,880 a year for a family of three.

Recipients receive $100 a month. The federal government pays for the benefits while the state covers administrative costs.

But as the price of milk, fruits and other groceries climb, advocates say, recipients can buy less and less with that $100.

"Food stamps provide only about $1 per person, per meal. Who in the world is buying groceries with that?" asked Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Food Bank.

On average, food stamps are now providing less than two weeks of groceries.

"There's the presumption that folks have the cash to make up the rest. Well, they don't," Frech said.

Not surprisingly, food pantries and soup kitchens across the state have been reporting record demands. Like the families they serve, they, too, cannot keep pace.

This is why the media's hammering of visceral but ultimately unimportant issues like Barack Obama's former pastor saying inflammatory things is so dangerous. We've seen people in Rust Belt states like Ohio voting against their own interests for the last twenty-eight years. Those of us who eat, sleep, live and breathe politics and television news-o-tainment separate out the infinitesimal smidgen of wheat amidst the avalanche of chaff. But when voters whose sole perspective on current events is what they get from 15 minutes of cable or network news hear day after day about Barack Obama's pastor, they forget that their kids have had nothing to eat but macaroni and U.S. surplus cheese for the last month.

Labels: 2008 election

I can't decide whether this is funnier if it's serious or if it isn't:

Labels: 2008 election

I think perhaps "Obama Girl" might have more luck talking to another woman if she weren't writhing around sofas in Victoria's Secret lingerie, but this is pretty clever. Note the reference to Chris Matthews' mancrush about 3:28 in:

Labels: 2008 election

We've long known that the Bush Administration is allowed to do anything it wants, and no one -- not Congress, not the press, not an American population more interested in how much Heather Mills got in her divorce from Paul McCartney -- will ever hold them to account.

But we haven't before seen a major press outlet come out and admit that they are just not going to pay attention to anything this president does because of his lame duck status.

Earlier this month, George Bush, in a video conference with military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan, said:

"I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks."

And the press ignored the fact that the commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces doesn't seem aware that war isn't a video game.

That's no surprise; we're used to the press refusing to report on anything that might reveal what a sociopath we've had occupying the White House for the past seven years. What IS a surprise is the admission by the New York Times that just as George Bush lost interest in Osama Bin Laden just six months after the September 11 attacks, saying "I truly am not that concerned about him":



...so has the New York Times decided that even though George Bush is eminently capable of dropping nuclear bombs on Iran in a final blaze of glory before leaving office, the paper is truly not that concerned about anything George W. Bush says or does:

I would argue that that this is not news. You may see this as absurd, hypocritical fantasy, and as such, if he were a new president about whom we knew little, with many years ahead of him, his words would be worth noting. But this is a lame-duck president with less than a year left in office, who I would guess has said many things that you object to equally (if not more). His statements in that conference are of no particular significance, they reflect no new policy.

The media are generally not paying a lot of attention to Bush, focusing instead on the people who are competing to succeed him.

After the last seven years, you'd think the press would be all to well aware of the kind of havoc this man can wreak while our attention is elsewhere.

Labels: hack journalism

I'm not defending Eliot Spitzer, not by a long shot. Bill Maher can talk all he wants to about how it's perfectly OK for a married guy to fuck whoever he wants to because everyone needs sex, and if a guy doesn't want to fuck his wife anymore because she's not 22, there's no reason for him to "suffer" -- it's still a really sleazy, hurtful thing to do. That Maher is a raging misogynist isn't news, but hearing him last Friday vocalize his view that women are just holes for men to put their dicks into made me wonder if having him on our side is worth it.

But all that notwithstanding, Spitzer, as another one of those holier-than-thou virtuemongers isn't at all a sympathetic figure.

Until you find out that known Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone seems to be the one who tipped off the FBI about him:

Almost four months before Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal, a lawyer for Republican political operative Roger Stone sent a letter to the FBI alleging that Spitzer ''used the services of high-priced call girls'' while in Florida.

The letter, dated Nov. 19, said Miami Beach resident Stone learned the information from ''a social contact in an adult-themed club.'' It offered one potentially identifying detail: The man in question hadn't taken off his calf-length black socks ``during the sex act.''

Stone, known for shutting down the 2000 presidential election recount effort in Miami-Dade County, is a longtime Spitzer nemesis whose political experience ranges from the Nixon White House to Al Sharpton's presidential campaign. His lawyer wrote the letter containing the call-girl allegations after FBI agents had asked to speak to Stone, though he says the FBI did not specify why he was contacted.

''Mr. Stone respectfully declines to meet with you at this time,'' the letter states, before going on to offer ''certain information'' about Spitzer.

''The governor has paid literally tens of thousands of dollars for these services. It is Mr. Stone's understanding that the governor paid not with credit cards or cash but through some pre-arranged transfer,'' the letter said.

''It is also my client's understanding from the same source that Gov. Spitzer did not remove his mid-calf length black socks during the sex act. Perhaps you can use this detail to corroborate Mr. Stone's information,'' the letter said. It was signed by attorney Paul Rolf Jensen of Costa Mesa, Calif.

The letter also notes that while Stone believes the information is true, he ''cannot swear to its accuracy'' because it is second-hand.

James Margolin, a spokesman for the FBI's New York office, would not say whether the bureau had received the letter. A spokeswoman for Spitzer also had no comment.

The letter was written several months after allegations were leveled at Stone that he had left a threatening phone message at the office of Bernard Spitzer, the ex-governor's father, regarding ''phony'' campaign loans involving his son's unsuccessful 1994 bid for attorney general. Stone denied making the call but resigned as a consultant for state Senate Republicans in Albany.

So does anyone actually still believe that the IRS just "happened" to find Spitzer moving money around in a suspicious manner?

Right now the national polls are showing either Democratic candidate running neck-and-neck against John McCain. With Roger Stone still up to his old tricks from 2000, they'd better wrap this up soon and set about building a lead that not even Roger Stone can steal.

Labels: Republicans, sleaze