Don’t ask me who Gus is. He (she?) is the author of one of those e-mails sent to a long list of people and forwarded to me. Whatever, Gus is a brilliant economist.
*
As you may have heard the Bush Administration said each and every one of us will now get a nice rebate.
If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, most the money will go to China. If we spend it on gasoline it will all go to Canada, Venezuela, and the Arabs. How would that help the American economy? We need to keep that money in America.
The only way to keep that money here at home is to buy beer or spend it on prostitution, since those are the only businesses still in the US that are plowing their money back into the US.
I would love to credit the following to its rightful author; but it arrived, as so many e-mail forwards do, without attribution. Astonishingly, it was forwarded to us by an unreconstructed conservative named Mike Geraci, who once headed advertising and PR for Rolls Royce North America and thus cannot be dismissed as an inconsequential symbol of disaffection from George Bush.
***
For all educators, both in and out of the education asylum:
1. All school football teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship their footballs and equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the championship.
2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time, even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents.
ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!
3. Talented players will be asked to work out on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren’t interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don’t like football.
4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th game. This will create a New Age of Sports in which every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimum goals.
If no child gets ahead, then no child gets left behind.
If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that can screen out the non-athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football players.
I’m beginning to have second thoughts about my forty-year allegiance to the New York Times.
Two weeks ago I complained about their headline writers, one of whom managed to make it sound as if stem-cell research causes cancer, thus handing a bludgeon to every right-wing religious charlatan trying to replace science with superstition.
Next, they switched to some cheap, generic newsprint stock that curls at the corners of pages – a sure sign of editorial incontinence.
Then they hired a new Op-Ed columnist — William Kristol, an unreconstructed neo-con who has learned absolutely nothing from his unbroken, seven-year string of disastrous mistakes staunchly supporting Bush and the Iraq war and lately howling for war against Iran.
And today the Times runs an editorial praising Michael Mukasey for appointing an utterly dependent prosecutor – a Justice Department employee — to investigate destruction of the CIA waterboarding tapes. The Justice Department was a party to that decision – and the decision to torture in the first place – as was the White House. So now the Department will investigate itself and its bosses.
Guess whom the fox will finger in that henhouse.
They’ll indict a second assistant deputy administrative aide in the Misfiling Department and the apprentice electronics technician in charge of changing videocam batteries in the waterboarding chamber – those heinous violators of all the irreproachable commands issued by eminently blameless higher-ups.
I expect that the New York Times will then have to investigate itself to discover that hiring Kristol and publishing a hypocritical editorial were exactly what god had in mind for great newspapers.
If it weren’t for the Times crossword puzzles, I’d go back to my home town’s Kittanning Daily Leader Times, where they can’t afford Paul Krugman or Frank Rich, but they can unfailingly smell a rat.
The Economist (one of my favorite publications) ran an article Dec.22 disputing Paul Krugman’s contention that the wealth gap is worse now than it was in the “Gilded Age” of the robber barons. They didn’t quibble with Krugman’s numbers; their point is that the lifestyles of the poor are now much closer to those of the rich. Both have cars, television sets, and refrigerators; both eat meat and milk – whereas a century ago the poor were on foot and without meat. Following is a letter to the editor of the Economist.
Sir
Your article on the wealth gap — “The New (Improved) Gilded Age”– is the 21st century version of “Let them eat cake.” I hope you’re right that lifestyles of the poor are closer than ever to those of the rich even though the income gap is growing wider. This will relieve the consciences of us progressives because it means that when we finally confiscate the obscene wealth of the billionaires, they can continue to live quite well.
The New York Times doesn’t like to publish our querulous letters, so we just publish them here. Since newspaper circulations keep shrinking while the audience for this web site has increased by over a billion percent since last year (when it didn’t exist) we may soon be able to cut them out of the loop entirely. Here are two of the latest.
To the Editor:
Get some new headline writers.
The ones you have are trying to destroy the paper and the country. Two sneak attacks this week alone.
1. For a story on Bush administration lies about CIA tapes, a subhead so bad that even Liar in Chief George Bush and Apologist-in Chief Dana Perino are able to demand and get a withdrawal and correction. That’s setting the bar so low even the centipedes can clear it.
2. On Friday’s front page, a headline that will enable right-wing religious fanatics to convince their zombie armies that stem cell research causes cancer. It says, “Scientists weigh stem cells’ role as cancer cause.”
Twenty-six paragraphs later, on page A-26, it’s mentioned that cancerous stem cells are not the same as embryonic stem cells. Who reads 26 paragraphs of anything?
So now the forces of darkness — enemies of science in the Bush administration, the honey-dippers of talk radio, and religious posturers of the far right — have all been handed an invitation to tell the world that the New York Times says stem cells are not only immoral but also carcinogenic.
You’re giving aid and comfort to Rupert Murdoch’s sinister subversion, and he didn’t even have to buy your newspaper to get it.
AND FIRE THE PROFESSORS
To the Editor
In “More Juice, Less Punch” in your Saturday (Dec 22) Op-Ed, authors Jonathan Cole and Stephen Stigler are statisticians who are violating the most fundamental rules of a statistical study.
They purport to show through statistics that pitchers and batters named by the Mitchell Commission actually fared no better after taking drugs than before taking them. They admit that the advancing age of these players might otherwise have worsened their averages but then brush off this factor as unaddressable by their data,
Worse, they ignore the need for a control group. Had they compared their statistics for drug-taking players with a group of pitchers and batters of comparable ages not known to have taken drugs, they might have a conclusion worth considering. How did the “clean” players fare as they aged, pitching and batting against players who were juicing?
The professors should take some research-enhancing drugs.
Following is an e-mail exchange with two conservative friends, both proud ex-military men and both unhappy with the reception given General Petraeus by the Senators at his hearing and by MoveOn.Org in its New York Times ad.
(John objects to the Times ad)
According to ABC News, the New York Times charged MoveOn.org $65,000 for the full page “General Betrayus” ad. That is a whopping $102,000 discount from the Times’ standard political advocacy rate of $167,000 for a full page. The $65,000 tab is, in fact, less than the lowest rate published on the NYT rate card.
Interesting. All-the-news-that’s-fit-to-print is actually subsidizing MoveOn’s promotional effort. Will NYT extend the same discount to a right-wing hate group?
(My generous offer)
Fair is fair, John. I’m offering a $64,000 rate on my blog site for a right wing hate group to run an ad with a rhyming couplet in the headline.
But I’ll be interested in seeing how this one plays out. Could be a major embarrassment.
On the other hand, if you had watched those hearings on C-Span you would have no inkling whatever about what is really going on because the testimony was half fiction and half evasion, garnished with a scanty figleaf of fact.
Al
(Michael chimes in)
Alan:
It will become a major embarrassment only if the main street media starts asking questions and I don’t believe that they will.
He’s a remarkable man … militarily and otherwise. He’d be tough to play poker against. His face gives nothing away. Even to the dumbest question or rude behavior by some of the congressional questioners. (I actually thought the interviews the four news anchors (CBS/NBC/ABC/PBS) had with him held far better questions than anything that was said or asked by the congress people (except, of course, for Hillary’s coy and insulting hissy fit).
Ambassador Crocker looks very capable as well. The nitwit representatives and senators don’t seem to realize the Iraqis watch TV, too, and it would not be seemly for the US ambassador to answer their questions about Iraqi government officials by declaring the Iraqi officials to be all buffoons to a man (true as that may be).
As a lifetime believer in civil discourse, I am disgusted with the behavior of, in particular, our congressional officials. With few exceptions, they seem to believe rudeness and aggressive hit and run attacks are the way to impress the public. Look at Nancy the P’s behavior with Bush yesterday or the way that General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were treated in the hearings. Shameful.
MRG
(reply to both)
Well stated, Michael, and eminently reasonable. Certainly Petraeus is a good soldier and a resourceful one — better than anyone in the administration — and a soldier has to believe in his mission or he ceases to be a soldier. In appearing before Congress, his mission is to put the best face he can on a disastrous situation as part of the effort to maintain his troop strength. You have to respect that. But for the same sorts of reasons, he wrote an Op-Ed piece in 2004 which was spectacularly wrong in its assessment of how the war was going and how it would unfold.
In the present case, positive military developments (the most positive of which have to do not with the surge but with the deals we’ve cut with Sunnis in Anbar, who would turn against us in a minute when it behooves them and shoot us with the arms we’re providing) cannot stabilize Iraq because the political situation. sectarian hatreds, civil disorder, and physical infrastructure are in utter chaos. The surge has failed miserably, as everyone outside the White House knew it would. The solutions are not military, and– even if they were–our military is too strung out, undermanned, and exhausted to carry it out, thanks to near-total lack of a strategy and a four-year string of appalling bungles in tactics.
The war was a tragic mistake, one we were tricked into based on the cherry-picked intelligence and outright lies of the mistake-makers, whose ideology left no room for countervailing evidence or logic, and it still doesn’t. Every catastrophic blunder between then and now has been announced with the same smug assurance of worthy outcomes, and anyone who doubted this triumphalist braggadocio has been branded unpatriotic.
You’re certainly right about the abysmal performance of the senators — of both parties — and I’d be delighted to see most of them thrown out. As for Move-On’s ad, it may have been tasteless; mainly, it was misdirected because it wasn’t Gen. Petraeus, it was draft-dodgers Bush and Cheney and arrogant idiots like Addington who betrayed us then and are betraying us still.
Al
Note (lest the blue pencils begin to volley and thunder): I do know how to spell cannons, honest.
Following is an exchange by e-mail with a right wing friend, to whom I had sent a New York Times article about the surprising extent of wiretapping and FBI snooping, some of it just now coming to light. He dismissed anything from the Times as suspect, unreliable, and probably selective in its information. So I sent this:
Gil
I’ve read the New York Times (and worked its fair-and-balanced crosswords) every day for over 30 years, and I’ve often wished it were as liberal as you and others think it is. But that’s a judgment call, so everybody’s right.
In our e-mail exchange on wiretapping, presidential power, etc., you rejected the NYT account out of hand as not to be trusted.
So here comes a book by a blue chip, pure-bred conservative, Jack Goldsmith, an insider on those issues — appointed by Bush to head the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) until he decided that a number of the things they were doing were illegal or of doubtful constitutionality – so he was fired.
The book is The Terror Presidency. Here’s a brief excerpt from the Preface.
Al
(excerpt)
“At first, I paid little attention to the beady stare from behind
the oversized eyeglasses in Richardson’s portrait. (He’s talking about Eliot Richardson of Watergate fame) Two months into my job, however, I had thought a lot about the sixty-ninth Attorney General. During those eight weeks, I was briefed on some of the most sensitive counterterrorism operations in the government.
“Each of these operations was supported by OLC opinions written
by my predecessors. As I absorbed the opinions, I concluded that
some were deeply flawed: sloppily reasoned, overbroad, and incautious in asserting extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the President. I was astonished, and immensely worried, to discover that some of our most important counterterrorism policies rested on severely damaged legal foundations. It began to dawn on me that I could not—as I thought I would eventually be asked to do—stand by or reaffirm these opinions.
(He considered resigning – drafted a letter of resignation – but decided to stick it out)
“So I decided to try to fix the opinions to save as many of the policies
that a sound legal analysis would support. I was pretty sure, in
December 2003, that this decision would put me on a collision
course with my superiors. But I figured it was more consistent
with my oath of office and professional responsibilities, and that my
superiors would let me know when I should leave. Seven months and many confrontations later, I was gone. “ — Jack Goldsmith, from his Preface
(Gil’s response)
Just because a member of the administration does not agree with the legality or constitutionality of certain actions does not make him right. Obviously others in the administration and outside of it - including me - are convinced that the wiretapping is both legal and constitutional. Just what do you not understand about the evil intentions of the radical Muslims. Are you aware of the terrible actions that occurred in the school in Beslin. Osama said that what happened in Beslin will be multiplied 100 fold in our country. In Beslin over 350 people were murdered - including over 170 children who were raped and than slaughtered. I am furious over the likes of the NYTimes and their ilk who by their actions put our country and our children in danger. We are living in different times.
If you do not understand this, I don’t know what else to say.
As far as Bush appointments, he also appointed the current head of homeland security and this guy is a real Bozo. I’m sure that over the years Bush has made a lot of dumb appointments like Chertoff and Goldsmith.
As I said before, the only good thing about the Times is the crossword puzzles.
(and my reply)
At least we both like the crossword puzzles. It’s a start.
As to the rest of what you said, I know all that. I knew all that before you said it. The “evil intentions of radical Muslims” include destruction of the American way of life, our democratic system, constitutional law, checks and balances, and values. For my money, Bush and the radical neocons have done half their work for them, and the judges they’ve appointed are ready to do some of the rest.
I don’t think it’s going to work. The people of this country have an uncanny way of coming to their senses. But it would help if some of the better, brighter, more successful people like you, who are capable of real leadership, would be more alert to the erosion of civil liberties and constitutional safeguards beneath their own feet. No radical Muslim, in his wildest dreams, could have hoped to cause as much damage as our own “leaders” have inflicted.
Just what do I not understand? That’s what.
So now we’ve compared notes again. Let’s see how it looks next year or the year after.
Dick Dell is an author and editor who lives in Chicago and, at one time or another, has lived almost everywhere. When we told him about the butter fudge you can order from the Toffee Shop in Penrith, England (http://www.thetoffeeshop.co.uk/) and that Prince Phillip has shopped there, he thought we meant Prince Charles, and that got him started:
—————
“Prince Charles often held up the buildings on the Thames waterfront in Richmond, where we lived, as examples of what modern architects should design. And, of course, it was a very undistinguished group of buildings that could have been designed and built in the 1890s. The guy is a jerk, a snob, and an organic farmer who personally owns a 40,000 acre hunting preserve in north England. What more is there to say. I hope you don’t get ripped off buying ‘organic.’
“The Europeans may be ahead of us in their religious and social mores and laws, but their refusal to understand the benefits of genetically altered grains and other foods is mind boggling. Genetically altering rice and corn (maize to the rest of the world) saved India from massive starvation in the 50s and has increased grain production in this country tenfold.
“When I was teaching at EWU in Cheney, Washington, an area of immense grain ranches 700 to several thousand acres each, barley grew over two feet high and left an incredible volume of mulch after harvest. Same for wheat. Because of genetic engineering, barley plants now grow about half that high and produce at least 50% more than when they grew higher.
“That fact, however, does not make me support and sympathize for the outrageous subsidies those grain ranchers get from the US government that hurts the grain growers in the rest of the world and is simply welfare to a group of quite wealthy people. These guys pay $150,000 for their harvesters and spend their winters in Florida. And vote Republican, of course.”
The New York Times doesn’t like to publish my querulous letters, so I’ve decided to publish them here. Since newspaper circulations keep shrinking while the audience for this web site has increased by over a billion percent since last year, when it didn’t exist, I may soon be able to cut them out of the loop entirely. Here’s the latest.
To the Editor
Re: “Reckoning with Gunter Grass’s Reckoning of Nazi Past”: Robert Galford’s letter on the subject prescribes, “Best practices would suggest that full disclosure, and the earlier the better, is most successful in mitigating these negative effects.”
Okay, I’m ready to admit my past mistakes. Where do I take them? Who will publish my youthful indiscretions?
Until you’re a big name, there’s no place to discuss your dirty secrets except employment applications, and they don’t ask – unless you have a criminal record, in which case it’s already public. For anything else, you would have to append an unwanted essay: “My Past Mistakes.”
Do that and you don’t get the job. If you’re Gunter Grass, you don’t get published. You avoid the problem of blighting your brilliant legacy by never having a brilliant legacy to begin with.
If, instead, you go ahead and make your mark, then it’s too late. You’ve missed your chance to miss your chance.
I have a better idea. Just keep hushing it up.
