Ignorant, stupid, idiotic

Trump doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. Trump is ignorant, stupid, and idiotic. Those three words don’t quite mean the same thing. By “ignorant” I mean he doesn’t know, at seventy years of age, a vast range of basic facts that the average reasonably intelligent 18-year-old has known for years. By “stupid” I mean he’s dull, slow, his wits are dim and weak; given a problem that the average guy could solve in a couple seconds, he will either take all day to work out the answer or he won’t be able to figure it out at all. And by “idiotic” I mean that he doesn’t seem to experience the “koinos cosmos,” the vision of the world we all have in common, at all. All he perceives is his own private “idios cosmos,” the world according to Donald J. Trump. As far as he is concerned, if any object or any event doesn’t involve him personally, either it’s only a nuisance or it doesn’t exist at all.

In memory of Dennis Ritchie, or I love the internet

...so I bought some really tasty liverwurst, and the sign said it had in it "Kassler." What's that? Let's look it up, and here's Kasseler, could be named after the city of Kassel, and it is an item in the category of [German] [cuisine].

Thence to "Germans," illustrated in Wikipedia with an awesome quilt made of pictures of the faces of:

on the first row, Luther, Bismarck, Beethoven, Kant and Goethe,
on the second, Gutenberg, Bach, Wagner, Hegel and Durer,
on the third, Marx, Weber, Adenauer, Schiller, Benz,
the fourth row, Zuse, Dietrich, Kohl, von Clausewitz and Planck,
and on the fift row, Merkel, Einstein (so even you can't renounce your Germanity, Albert, no matter how much you desire to evade the damned draft!), Kepler, Nietzsche, Diesel!

Oh My God, must read! Down, down, down we go, until we hit the noble and glorious Peace of Westphalia, q.v..

Where for peace's holy sake they decided on Cuius regio, eius religio. Which of course, q.v.. Where we learn that the Anabaptists were outside the tent, alas for them! Now to me with my rudimentary Latin, "Ana" + "Baptist" equals "no Baptists" in the same sense that "anisotropic" means "not isotropic" (having similar characteristics in any direction) and "Annapolis" means "not a polis, or city". So q.v..

No, they're not zero Baptists, they're double baptists, with the sensible though heretical opinion that an unthinking infant's confession of faith is, perforce, meaningless. Indeed, how do you think I got all tied up in the Pledge of Allegiance way back in eleemosynary school! And for this basic good sense, now codified into public laws everywhere which deny banksters the Galt-given right to extract a signature on a mortgage from a five-year-old, they were flogged extinct by both Catholic and Protestant, of course.

So anyway, one exotic aspect of their sixteenth-century heresy - to be specific, that Jesus did not absorb the impure flesh of his mother, but either a.) brought his body from heaven into her womb, or b.) had one made for him in situ by the omnipotent Lord, or c.) that he "passed through his mother, as water through a pipe, into the world" - from one Marcion, Bishop, of the 2nd Century, prior to the bureaucratic deadening of Christianity which started at Nicaea. Q.v..

Bringing us to a real, genuine heresiarch, Marcion of Sinope. How heretical was he? Heretical enough, and that's quite heretical, to note that the all-loving God Jesus went on about was somewhat different from the wild-eyed butcher of Joshua, in turn quite not the same fellow as the drunk, querulous gambler in Job. And thence to the Tetragrammaton. And thence a side trip to investigate "matres lectionis," or vowels for people too proud and traditional to break down and use vowels. Which brings us to the Masorah, to Cantillation, to the Tanakh, to the Didache...

C? You're swimming in it.

post-racial my ass!

I absolutely disagree with all the people who have been saying that Obama getting elected means that racism in U.S.A. politics is a thing of the past. Take a look at this chart:

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/StateVotebyRace2.php



In Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi - notoriously the worst racist states in the Union - despite the debacle of the Bush Administration, despite the wars, despite the swelling deficits, despite the growing gap between the ultra-rich and the working class, despite $4/gallon gasoline, surging unemployment and wages in decline, Obama still won less than 15% of the white vote there.

Keep in mind that, when comparing average income, these states rank 45th, 46th and 50th, so there was no sensible reason that these white voters should have so strongly preferred the candidate who offered tax cuts to millionaires to the one who offered tax cuts for the working class - on the contrary, in terms of simple economic self-interest they should have been more pro-Obama than the national average.

I can’t see any other way to interpret the results shown on that chart except to conclude that anti-black racism is as vigorously purulent as ever among the pinch-eyed pro-Klan swine who infest these pestholes. And that this country will never be free of their foul influence until they carry their unbending racist fanaticism to their graves.

looking back

I read here that George W. Bush is unhappy about how uncooperative fate has tarnished his legacy.

Do you remember January 2001? Right after Bush and his staff moved in and began "restoring dignity" to the White House, staffers complained to the press that the departing Clintonoids had pried off the "W" keys from the computer keyboards. They complained and complained and complained; the fuss over the insanely trivial issue of the missing "W" keys went on in the media for a solid week.

At that time, the unemployment rate was 3.9%, the Dow was at 10,600, the U.S. Army was currently fighting zero foreign wars, and the Federal budget had a surplus of approximately $100-billion.

If anybody has a right to complain about anything, it will be President-elect Barack Obama, not that horrible malicious fuck-up George W. Bush who has deliberately left him such an unspeakable mess to clean up after. And even this late the Bush Administration is still sabotaging the future President; see, for example, this article about last week's incursion into Syria.

Now there's a nice "welcome" present for the new President: dead U.S. soldiers, killed by the weapons and fighters currently swarming across Syria's now unpatrolled border with Iraq. What was that about "Country First"? Oh yeah: hogwash!

It will take not eight years for America to recover from the malign idiocy of this Administration, but the next twenty years.

five presidents (comment on "spare president")

When I was a kid I learned that spares should be rotated. But that was before radials and directional tread tires.

Now there's a concept, rotating Presidents. Five of them, like the five tires on or in your car, each on seventy-two day shifts, so all five Presidents-elect alternate every station every calendar year.

We don't want to give up the tradition of the White House, so we'll have them all live and work there. With the exception, of course, of the Vice President.

At any given moment, one of the Presidents-elect is the Vice President. Safe - pristine - in his cold, silent undisclosed-location underground bunker his one and only job all day and night is to sit and wait, coiled to leap, for the unlikely but ever-possible abrupt demise of the acting President himself. Deep in the dark bunker, the Vice President waits, and waits, and broods.

Next in the cycle is the job of Press Secretary. Here, seventy-two days in a row he looks the Main Stream Media and Helen Thomas straight in the eye, and says whatever needs to be said.

The next step is to appointed as a Cabinet Secretary of a random department. The department is chosen by lottery, but the lottery is supervised by the previous Secretary of whatever. Here intra-Presidential acrimony is sharpest and most naked, war indoors.

A brief purgative is necessary after all the horrible back-stabbing of the Secretarial phase; for the following seventy-two day task our President-elect is appointed White House cook.

Finally he arises to the glory of the active Presidency itself! Seventy-two days of majestic autonomy, of ultimate responsibility!

If you count carefully, this scheme leaves America for twenty-one days or so in every four-year term un-Presidented. These days are to be officially declared jubilee days. What I have in mind is something like Mardi Gras, but nationwide.

Jon Stewart To Sarah Palin: "F*** You" (VIDEO)

You know, I am totally against the McCain platform, but still I can understand your point of view. "Jon Stewart, Oprah and Oliver Stone" (of which Oprah is clearly the tops, as she only needs her first name, so immense is she) may be variously clever and/or insightful and/or inspirational, yet when you get down to it whenever you solely rely on their big-deal judgment you succumb to argumentum ad baculum (i.e. "mine is bigger, swings a wider swath than my opponent's").



What's really important is not what some rich teevee guy or gal thinks, but what the candidate will actually do if he gets in power, and how you judge it. That platform is everything. Go to each candidates's web site and read their platforms. I'm no celebrity so you don't have to give me any special credence, but as I see it, McCain proposes to continue to hand out a bunch more tax breaks to gazillionaires, continue to run huge currency-destroying deficits, continue to conduct foreign policy like an angry drunk with a baseball bat, and continue to pack the Supreme Court with pro-business robots. I'm 100% against all that, and that's why I'm voting Obama, period. It's nice that Famous Teevee Starz Jon Stewart and Oprah happen to agree with me, but even if they strongly recommended for McCain instead, I'd still vote for Obama.
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bailout! - whole lotta nothing

My feeling is, there’s nothing going on that can’t wait until January. The reason I say this is not because I am some kind of uniquely knowledgable insider, far from it. It is because I assume that former Goldman Sachs CEO and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson is a uniquely knowledgable insider.

Knowing what he knows about the state of affairs on Wall Street, he put forth proposed legislation late on the Sunday before last, a three page document. The name of the proposed bill was the ____________________ Act (that’s twenty underscores). It included, amongst very little else, the following two clauses:

Sec. 6. Maximum Amount of Authorized Purchases.

The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time…

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Now you can not tell me that anybody in his right mind, trying to get desperately needed emergency funds in the shortest time possible in order to avoid an economic catastrophe, is going to include a clause like Sec. 8 in his draft legislation. I mean, just read this thing. (Not you, Sen. McCain, I know you don’t ever read anything. "Iraq/Afghanistan border" indeed, you halfwit.)

If you read this text literally - and you should, it’s not poetry, it’s draft legislation - it says that if Treasury Secretary Paulson gets the money and proceeds to write out a check for $250-billion to himself, and then decamps to a palace in Dubai, not only can Congress and the courts do absolutely nothing to stop him, but they are not even allowed to know about what he’s done until three months later. That’s ridiculous. I can fill in the blank; this thing should be called the "Gimme Money NOW and STFU Act." One simply does not write legislation like this and expect it to get passed.

Next this farce proceeds to phase 2. The bill goes before the majority party in Congress, without whose approval it can not pass, and they make certain changes and present a counter-proposal - only give out a fraction of the asked-for $700-billion, demand some kind of equity in the firms being bailed out, require those firms to renegotiate mortgages in foreclosure, put a cap on executive compensation and so on. Then - here's the comedy part - for the love of sheer dray-ma, McCain cancels his campaign, jumps into a phone booth, takes off his glasses and suit coat, and leaps into the sky all Superman-like, to zoom across the country to the halls of Congress and save the day!!!1! Except he doesn’t; he zooms to a studio to make a teevee appearance, all chock full of campaign talking-points (almost as though he hadn’t cancelled his campaign after all) and then another teevee appearance and more talking-points, and then another.

Next the minority congressional allies of the Administration that is asking for this "desperately needed" "emergency" bailout put forth a counter-counter-proposal. That in itself is absurd, because they are in the minority in both chambers and have no leverage to make any demands at all, particularly in a life-n-death emergency. On top of that, the counter-counter-proposal is nothing else but the Republican idee fixe, to cut that capital gains tax! Oh, and the multi-centi-millionaire Paulson categorically rejects any pay limits on executives of failed banks; after all, cold talk like that hits kind of close to home.

What I’m saying is, based on the actions of the knowledgable insiders, this is all electioneering bullshit and there is no crisis. If the Administration really thought this bill was of the highest importance, they would not have led with a deliberate slap-in-the-face, nor would they have put on McCain’s laughable save-the-nation song and dance, nor would they have compounded the blatant insult of the original ____________________ Act by demanding yet another tax cut for millionaires.

So I will not take this so-called “crisis” seriously until the guys who say we need it so badly stop clowning around and start acting as though they really believe the hogwash they’re putting out. Fool me once, blah blah blah.

A footnote: in case the CNN link above goes flat, here's Bailout v.0 - the whole works, all 807 words of it. Paulson dished this crap up at the onset of this world-shaking "crisis," on Sunday night. In particular the White House sent this text out directly to all the Congressmen, stamped in red (as it were) "Most Urgent". Yet so I've heard, world-saving Senator McCain, whose day job is legislation, did not find time amidst his busy and glamorous non-stop media whirl to read these 807 words until at least Thursday. In contrast, I, a construction worker, made it my business to have got 'er read by late Sunday night. And I quote:

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL FOR TREASURY AUTHORITY TO PURCHASE MORTGAGE-RELATED ASSETS

Section 1. Short Title.

This Act may be cited as ____________________.

Sec. 2. Purchases of Mortgage-Related Assets.

(a) Authority to Purchase.--The Secretary is authorized to purchase, and to make and fund commitments to purchase, on such terms and conditions as determined by the Secretary, mortgage-related assets from any financial institution having its headquarters in the United States.

(b) Necessary Actions.--The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act, including, without limitation:

(1) appointing such employees as may be required to carry out the authorities in this Act and defining their duties;

(2) entering into contracts, including contracts for services authorized by section 3109 of title 5, United States Code, without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts;

(3) designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them;

(4) establishing vehicles that are authorized, subject to supervision by the Secretary, to purchase mortgage-related assets and issue obligations; and

(5) issuing such regulations and other guidance as may be necessary or appropriate to define terms or carry out the authorities of this Act.

Sec. 3. Considerations.

In exercising the authorities granted in this Act, the Secretary shall take into consideration means for--

(1) providing stability or preventing disruption to the financial markets or banking system; and

(2) protecting the taxpayer.

Sec. 4. Reports to Congress.

Within three months of the first exercise of the authority granted in section 2(a), and semiannually thereafter, the Secretary shall report to the Committees on the Budget, Financial Services, and Ways and Means of the House of Representatives and the Committees on the Budget, Finance, and Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs of the Senate with respect to the authorities exercised under this Act and the considerations required by section 3.

Sec. 5. Rights; Management; Sale of Mortgage-Related Assets.

(a) Exercise of Rights.--The Secretary may, at any time, exercise any rights received in connection with mortgage-related assets purchased under this Act.

(b) Management of Mortgage-Related Assets.--The Secretary shall have authority to manage mortgage-related assets purchased under this Act, including revenues and portfolio risks therefrom.

(c) Sale of Mortgage-Related Assets.--The Secretary may, at any time, upon terms and conditions and at prices determined by the Secretary, sell, or enter into securities loans, repurchase transactions or other financial transactions in regard to, any mortgage-related asset purchased under this Act.

(d) Application of Sunset to Mortgage-Related Assets.--The authority of the Secretary to hold any mortgage-related asset purchased under this Act before the termination date in section 9, or to purchase or fund the purchase of a mortgage-related asset under a commitment entered into before the termination date in section 9, is not subject to the provisions of section 9.

Sec. 6. Maximum Amount of Authorized Purchases.

The Secretary's authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time

Sec. 7. Funding.

For the purpose of the authorities granted in this Act, and for the costs of administering those authorities, the Secretary may use the proceeds of the sale of any securities issued under chapter 31 of title 31, United States Code, and the purposes for which securities may be issued under chapter 31 of title 31, United States Code, are extended to include actions authorized by this Act, including the payment of administrative expenses. Any funds expended for actions authorized by this Act, including the payment of administrative expenses, shall be deemed appropriated at the time of such expenditure.

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Sec. 9. Termination of Authority.

The authorities under this Act, with the exception of authorities granted in sections 2(b)(5), 5 and 7, shall terminate two years from the date of enactment of this Act.

Sec. 10. Increase in Statutory Limit on the Public Debt.

Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $11,315,000,000,000.

Sec. 11. Credit Reform.

The costs of purchases of mortgage-related assets made under section 2(a) of this Act shall be determined as provided under the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990, as applicable.

Sec. 12. Definitions.

For purposes of this section, the following definitions shall apply:

(1) Mortgage-Related Assets.--The term "mortgage-related assets" means residential or commercial mortgages and any securities, obligations, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages, that in each case was originated or issued on or before September 17, 2008.

(2) Secretary.--The term "Secretary" means the Secretary of the Treasury.

(3) United States.--The term "United States" means the States, territories, and possessions of the United States and the District of Columbia.