Ugly people, ugly country

What to the following people and organizations all have in common?

Bill Kristol
Bill O’Reilly
Sarah Palin
Mike Huckabee
Kathleen McFarland
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
Mark Joyella
Jeffrey Kuhner
Tom Flanagan, spokesman for Stephen Harper
New Gingrich
Bob Beckel
Bo Dietl
Marc Thiessen
John Hawkins
Christian Whiton
Jonah Goldberg

Answer: They have all called for the murder of Julian Assange.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Vice President Joe Biden are more restrained – Biden only called him a “terrorist.” Under the “who says A must say B” dictum, that is as good as a death sentence. Holder is merely pursuing Assange with all his heart and soul, apparently working with Karl Rove* to capture him and bring him to American justice via Sweden.
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Fun on the innertubes

David Crisp prides himself on saying a lot with a few words. He’s pretty good at it too. I wish I could do that. I’ve been trying to think of a three or four-word remark that would convey my attitude that Crisp masks the many failings of American journalism behind professional condescension.

Ok. Here goes: …

Damn! Can’t do it. I do not have his economy of words, “addition by subtraction,” as he says.

We apparently agree that Dave Budge is a “schmuck” (Budge’s word). An exchange between the two David’s led me to the following exchange between Budge and Jim Larson. The subject at hand is a Scott Brown campaign video Budge posted, a collage of sound bytes surrounding Obama’s painfully obvious statement that no one makes it on his own*.

Larson I’m sure Dave, that we both disregard a lot of what we hear.

Neither Kennedy nor Reagan argued for higher taxes, and I am glad not to pay higher taxes, but what they argued for doesn’t change what was.

What I would like to hear is your cogent explanation of how the high tax rates of the sixties and seventies coexisted with a juggernaut American economy.

I don’t make the request rhetorically. It’s been awhile since I’ve visited the blog, but I can remember reading some illuminating economic commentary here when you took the time to write something other than a glib reply.

Budge: What I would like to hear is you finding me arguing for lower taxes in the current environment – ever. In fact I’ll pay you $1000 if you can find such an argument that I’ve made. In fact, read this.

What your doing is arguing a point that isn’t made either by me or in Brown’s ad.

I’m not in the mood to argue something that I don’t subscribe to.

Larson caught him in one of those moods. Budge exhibits an authoritarian nature, unwillingness to confront evidence that everything he knows is wrong, and clumsy deflection.
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*American campaigns offer up stuff like this to allow American journalists to talk about American campaigns without delving in substance.

Why not ice cream for breakfast?

I have been struggling to come up with a way to incorporate the suffix “itute” onto the word “dietitian” as a means of conveying the essential bankruptcy of that profession. Another profession equally bankrupt, economics, lends itself quite easily – “econitutes.” They are, as Keynes reminded us, usually slaves of some dead and “defunct economist.”

It would be interesting to study the intellectual depth of every profession, including my own. Most of us are just going through the motions, repeating received wisdom. True depth and understanding is rare, and those who have it rise to the top. But in the dietary fields, along with economics, quite the opposite is true. With economics the driving force is easily understood. Powerful people who benefit from low taxes and little regulation want it kept that way, and so finance the schools that teach the horse shit that dominates the field.

Dietitians are different – I don’t know of any who are wealthy. Like chiropractors, they have to sell a low-value product and so dress it up as science. A few of them are lucky enough to latch on to some moneyed interest – Bronson Arroyo, a pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds, hired one during the offseason last year. And she, of course, preached to him the standard wisdom of the profession – eat carbs in large quantities, minimize fat. Watch out for them trans-fats! (As if such a thing even existed.)
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Aurora: Time to move on

Lizard, a bright young man of considerable depth, wrote a chancy post yesterday regarding the possibility that James Holmes, the accused shooter in the Aurora tragedy, might have been heavily drugged, and might not have been the only shooter. This sort of speculation usually brings out those of opaque mind frame who cannot embrace the thought of conspiracy. The others that usually chime in – those who automatically resort to ridicule, are absent in the comment thread under this post.

Conspiracies abound in this country, and it is not hard to understand why. The old chestnut says it best: If you like sausage, don’t ask how it is made. Americans are deeply indoctrinated in American exceptionalism. They will readily believe conspiracy theories about others* – a Soviet plot to kill the pope, 19 Arabs performing high-skill maneuvers in 757’s after learning to fly Cessna’s – but immediately cringe at the notion of Americans doing such deeds. That’s the mindset that Lizard entered. But I’m impressed with the bulk of the comment thread.
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I say there, jihad with your tea?

Man it has got to be hell for Brits wearing masks in the Syrian sun
The linked article is about two photographers who stumbled into the wrong camp in Syria and were taken captive for a brief while. It’s odd in that one of them, Jeroen Oerlemans, a Dutch photo journalist, claims that several of the men had British accents, “Birmingham”-like, and one he called “South London.”

The conclusion drawn by western media is that Syria is igniting a call for jihad from around the world, including Muslims from Great Britain.

Maybe so, but my own suspicion is that the two photographers stumbled on one of many camps where Western agents provocateur are posing as Syrian rebels for the sake of exacerbating that conflict.

After all, the Syrian “rebels” have to be on of the best-armed fighting forces in the region. Syria is one of seven countries* that, according to Wesley Clark, the Bush regime wanted toppled. Since it is clear that Obama is carrying forward the Bush agenda, and and since it goes without saying that the US is not truly interested in democracy or any other such window dressing, then I think it reasonable to be suspicious when one encounters the King’s English in a supposed rebel outpost.
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*Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan

Bernie Madoff sits in jail while other criminals are partying it up

Bernie scammed the wrong people and became a monster
Bernie Madoff sits in jail now, and deserves to be there.

It is a Saturday in July, and many other criminals of Madoff’s stripe are out today on their yachts, and will later today dine in fine restaurants, enjoy cocaine* and perhaps a call girl to top off the evening. In the meantime, there sits Bernie.

Why are so many called, but only one chosen? Why you, Bernie, and no one else?

It’s a no-brainer. Look at the victims. Bernie chose powerful people to scam. Others, say like Angelo Mozilo, former head of former Countrywide, chose weak people. It’s OK to scam weak people. That’s what the free market is all about. But rough up someone with money and connections, and you’ll wind up in jail.
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*There are no penalties for powerful people regarding use of drugs. However, a black person smoking a joint might easily end up in prison. That’s the American way. The “War on Drugs” is really a war on minorities.

Dog sense

Dear Neighbor:

Isn’t it a wonderful time of year? The mornings are cool, the scents of the forest invigorating. It must be wonderful for you to walk your dog each morning and take it all in.

But please, fellow human, clean up after him! This morning he left a pile on our newspaper at the bottom of the driveway. Some dignity, please!

Sincerely,
Mark
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Dear neighbor’s dog,

What a treat this time of year to be out taking in the smells each morning! I see your owner walks you, and if you are a normal dog, you’re checking out everything there is to check out. It’s dog heaven!

But please, when you take a dump, do it somewhere other than our driveway.

That aside, I am curious. We take two newspapers: The Denver Post and the Financial Times. You took your crap on the Denver Post.

How did you know?

Sincerely,
Mark

How to cook a frog

jacksmith wrote down below concerning ACA

There is no mandate to buy private for-profit health insurance. There is only a nominal tax on income eligible individuals who don’t have health insurance. This is a HUGE! difference. And I suspect that tax may be subject to constitutional challenge as it ripens.

This is a critically important distinction. Because under the commerce clause individuals would have been compelled to support the most costly, dangerous, unethical, morally repugnant, and defective type of health insurance you can have. For-profit health insurance, and the for-profit proxies called private non-profits and co-ops.

Equally impressive in the courts ruling was the majorities willingness to throw out the whole law if the court could not find a way to sever the individual mandate under the commerce clause from the rest of the act. Bravo! Supreme Court.

The penalty for failure to buy private insurance is $94, insignificant. However, one must understand the position of AHIP (American Health Insurance Providers) as they guided this bill from birth to passage. An onerous fine would have raised hackles and may have rallied support against it. The important objective at that time was the principle put in motion: AHIP has the power to force the government to impose fines on us if we do not buy insurance from them. These people are rent seekers, nothing more. The fine is currently a feather. In the end, it will be an anvil. They mean business.

Will the get bigger? It depends on us. If we do as we are told and buy their crappy products, the fine will stay small. But if we don’t, if we are recalcitrants, they will indeed stick it to us. The fine will go up, eventually approaching the cost of a health insurance policy. That’s why it is there.

That is the only reason to have a fine. The fact that it starts out small is akin to the old story about cooking a frog … start it out in lukewarm water. By the time he realizes it is hot enough to cook him, it is too late.

Alexander Cockburn, RIP

I was a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal in the early 1990’s and their editorial pages, then as now, were rabid right-wing. But every Thursday there appeared a man named Alexander Cockburn, a leftist. Things were a bit different in those days. People talked to each other.

WSJ described Cockburn, as I recall, as a writer for Village Voice (run by Rupert Murdoch, who never once censored him), and the “Anderson Valley Advertiser.” That was a bit of an inside joke, as AVA, run by another fine writer and wit and Cockburn’s friend, Bruce Anderson, was a small town newspaper in Boonville, CA with a circulation of maybe 3,000. Cockburn charged AVA $25 to run his weekly column. I subscribed for years, only drifting off after the Internet made everything available everywhere. I need to re-up.

Cockburn was loyal, fierce, original, insightful and witty. He had no admiration for powerful people who abused others. He angered many of them, and some will no doubt now crawl from their hovels to pay him back. Dealing with him in real-time was not easy. He was smart, quick, and did not suffer fools.

The best remembrances of Cockburn that I’ve read are at AVA, by Bruce Anderson.