An interesting little article that argures that Alan Greenspan’s monetary policy helped set up a few prominent music scenes.

I giggle a little bit here because I used to be a fan of Alan Greenspan’s. Not in the sense that I agreed with any of his vaguely Randist policy and their effects on human affairs, but…

It started with that statement. You know the one.

How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values which then become the subject of unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade.

Immediately everyone started selling. Beginning with Asia before spanning the globe back to the USA.

Of course, the stock market bubble continued apace after its (very) brief slide, meaning “irrational exuberance” continued onward, and so a paradox is created with regards to Alan Greenspan circa mid to late 1990s:

Was he All Powerful — for he could create disruptions in the world markets by sending out cryptic messages that needed to be deciphered, or was it a case where the Emperor have No Clothes — for the ripples really didn’t last that long?

It’s a question that I quietly puzzled over back in high school without any answer forthcoming. An enigma inside of a riddle.

And those are misty water colored memories of the way… we were.

So I flicked past the Tony Snow Show on radio. He murmured about how the story of Joseph Wilson and Karl Rove will die soon. He’s right if he has anything to say about it; and he does indeed have a say in it, as a Fox News pundit/newsguy/somethingoid he will spin it as the White House sees fit and then move on to the next big story. (That would be the Supreme Court Battles, and probably a missing white 19 year old.)

It will resurface in due time, theoretically a better narrative for the Bushistas to play with will have been thought up. As it is the current narrative makes no sense. Tony Snow commented on Joseph Wilson’s appearance on the Today Show and how Joseph Wilson called his wife “Mrs. Joseph Wilson” by saying “I guess he won’t be invited by Gloria Steniem to visit the Hamptons!”

Huh? Though I understand the general “liberal elitist” slur he’s imparting on the audience, this is an amazing non-sequitur.

The other key part of obfuscation is that you stick the story into a “Donkey versus Elephant” narrative. This looks to me why Watergate didn’t gain any traction until after Nixon lost all of Massachusetts. George McGovern whisps sadly about how if all of Watergate had broken earlier, he might have been president (and has the Watergate-era poll numbers to prove it.) The news media is most wrapped around the Doneky Versus Elephant storyline, and the public most eager to buy it, during the campaign season, obfuscation easier to pull. Note this line:

Mr. Nixon, who appeared before a news conference in his Oval Office this morning, addressed the corruption issue in measured and at times almost inaudible tones that seemed deliberately designed to contrast with what he suggested was the shrill and irrespsonsible campaign tactics of his opponent.

“I think the responsible members of the Democratic party will be turned off by this kind of campaigning.” he said, “and I would suggest that responsible members of the press, following the single standard to which they are deeply devoted, will also be turned off by it.”

I wish one can extract the two-party system from all of politics. IE: so that a politico doesn’t feel obligated to sell his integrity to keep a boat he’s tied to, theoretically believes in but doesn’t totally, afloat. I don’t know which of these politicos have integrity, and for a bit less than half of the American public to not be invested into, but there seems to be no other way around it.

(Other items of note: when I find my play by play of a series of Iran-Contra hearing Bloom Countys, I’ll stick it up here.)

The other night Alan Colmes had on his show a guest who advocated two things: (1) Clean up Air Pollution and (2) Stop Eating.

The reason we should stop eating is because once the air pollution is gone, all the nutrients and nourishments we will get will come from the air we breathe.

So Alan Colmes’s guest was a man who advocated humans to… eat air?

Perhaps I should congratulate the talk show host. If you consider a typical political talk show (and political news coverage in general) as mired in the stifling air of the Washington Beltway…

A review: Neal Horsley. Fred Phelps. The Nazi Libertarian Green Party. The head of some White Supremist Group. A blogger and head of The Radical Communist Party of some sort. An “Eat Clean Air” Advocate.

(I may as well add every neo-conservative right-wing guest Fox News chooses to legitimize… ie: Swift Boat Veterans…)

One full year after publication, and the genius behind Mallard Fillmore discovers (or, as the strips suggest, the fans of said strip discover) a parody in the Jon Stewart America book.

The script to the strip found in the book , as Mallard the Duck wanders a landscape of Capitol Hill, prefixed with something about how a waterfoul is at the cutting edge of modern day political humour:

Panel 1: Liberals want to tie the hands of industry with more environmental regulation.

Panel 2: Why must we punish our most productive citizens with an income tax?

Panel 3: Oops! I forgot to tell a joke!

The Doonsebury “strip” was prefixed with a “Noted for its exceptionally dry humor”, and has 4 panels showing the White House, with a leaf blowing through on the third panel.

Ross Perot asked Stockdale to be nominated as Vice-President on the ticket in March 1992 telling him that he would be placeholder until Perot found a running mate. Stockdale thought that his name would be removed from the ballot when Perot temporarily withdrew from the race.

Perot eventually re-entered the race in the fall of 1992 with Stockdale still in place as the vice-presidential nominee for the Reform Party. Stockdale was not informed that he would be participating in the vice-presidential debate until a week before the event and he had no formal preparation for the debate unlike Al Gore and Dan Quayle. This lack of preparation was highlighted in the Vice-Presidential debate when Stockdale’s opening comments were “Who am I? Why am I here?” Later in the debate, Stockdale asked the moderator to repeat a question because he didn’t have his hearing aid turned on and his performance in the debate was widely criticized.

In a subsequent interview with Jim Lehrer, Stockdale explained that the statements were intended as an introduction of him and his record to the television audience:

“It was terribly frustrating because I remember I started with, ‘Who am I? Why am I here?’ and I never got back to that because there was never an opportunity for me to explain my life to people. It was so different from Quayle and Gore. The four years in solitary confinement in Vietnam, 7½ years in prisons, drop the first bomb that started the … American bombing raid in the North Vietnam. We blew the oil storage tanks of then off the map. And I never – I couldn’t approach — I don’t say it just to brag, but, I mean, my sensitivities are completely different. ”
Perot ran again for President in 1996 but Stockdale had returned to the Republican Party. He supported fellow former POW John McCain in his bid for the 2000 Republican nomination.
………….

Now I know (Stockdale’s name has) become a buzzword in this culture for doddering old man, but let’s look at the record, folks. The guy was the first guy in and the last guy out of Vietnam, a war that many Americans, including our present President, did not want to dirty their hands with.

Somewhere out there Paddy Chayefsky must be laughing his ass off.

— Dennis Miller.

Downtown I see the window displays of Abercrombie and Fitch. A bunch of instant-well worn jeans for your expensive pursual. (Ripped holes were popular in the late 1980s / early 1990s… ala “Thrasher”. Faded and worn in the early to mid 1990s — ala “Grunge”. Anti-fashion as Fashion, and priced fashionably to boot.)

The window displays show their brand identities to “Abercombie and Fitch” models. Particularly striking is this image of a handsome young man… the kind of young Aryan guy that we shall strive for and that everyone will look like as soon as our White Aryan bloodlines are purified.

The thing about this particular model is that he isn’t modelling anything. It’s a photograph of him from his chest up, and he’s not wearing a shirt. What at the store are you supposed to buy because of this guy? I’ll assume that somewhere in the catalouge you will see him wearing something that someone may want to buy, but right now all we have is… the striking White Aryan Brotherhood.

Is my viscarel distaste for Abercombie and Fitch misplaced? I don’t know. Perhaps. But my allies make me squemish here.
Or maybe they don’t.

Should I listen (very occasionally) to Michael Savage for even the perverse entertainment value that he provides? He’s on the edge of political thought in this country, but… you do know these people exist.

“When did the War on Terror Become Bogged down into a War of Liberation in Iraq? We need to march right on through the Sunni Triangle, and onto Iran and Saudi Arabia!”

Conflates away from his rhetoric in March of 2003 and frequently beyond. Saddam Hussein — Brutal Dictator — “We have come not to occupy, but to liberate” (as the old Proclamation from Britain in the 1910s went)…

“Bring the American Muslim Leaders Before a Senate committee and make them sweat a little!”

He did attack Brit Hume’s comments about the investment opportunities to be made from the terrorist attacks, though. But his sentiments about the supposed “Irrelevancies” of African poverty and Global Warming pretty much mirror the whole of Fox News.

Joe Scarborough’s editorial is pretty hilarious.

And rock stars replace grim Cassandras like Bush and Churchill as the prophets of pop culture.

Bush and Churchill? Don’t make me laugh.

I’m not entirely sure how many shows Joe Scarborough devoted to the Michael Jackson Trial, but I do know he devoted show after show after show after show to Terri Schiavo.

These links were pasted here when I accidentally deleted a long post yesterday. They would be relevant to further discussion of what I have said here.

“This bill is just another step down the road to Armageddon. It is time to stand up for the moral principles that made our country great.” — (Oregon State) Sen. Jeff Kruse, R-Roseburg, regarding a Same-Sex Civil Union Bill.

Well then. That’s the talking point??

… only cut and paste from a 100 year out of date screed that was used to motivate some pseudo intellectual idiot who could not make it in the real world.

The Russians had Communism for about 80 years which implementation was based squarely on Bulganin [The Great Anarchist], Stalin [more of the same], Lenin [his great vision was actually happening], etc, in which the “Whole of Production” was to come under State Control, i.e., NO PRIVATE PROPERTY, just the benevalence of said State in which anyone and everyone could just take from the Great State Controlled Pile what he/she needed. Surprise! Surprise! Seems the State suddenly did not work very well for an awful lot of people and some MILLIONS OF THE CITIZENS starved to death while the Newly Ordained Leaders got first crack at all the goodies.

Wot the hell happened to this Workers Paradise? What do you think? Sounds a lot like Capitalism in its worst form, I’m thinking. Then, my thought in progress goes something like this,

when Senarchus gets his overthrow of Society what does he think is going to happen? Each individual in the new Society will do what? Don’t anyone be silly and think that individually we/he will come into our Great Native Hunter-gatherer mode and produce any and all we/he/she needs to survive. It would take someone like me about 24 hours to start getting some kind of order in such a place; order that people would accept and follow “for their own good”. This is because people are NOT INDIVIDUALIST’s, they are instead a Social gathering of individuals, each having strengths and weaknesses of his own. No one can or does have it all; even the most primative culture ever known has its own form of social order and a well developed sense of what is “right and proper”.

Strangely enough, an Anarchist would do well initially
in such a setting but only because he/she/it would without doubt try to get some grouping to go along with what his new situation called for, and note carefully, that as soon as that occurred the Anarchy State of Being would immediately be over; A sub-grouping formed from individuals would have just come into being and a New Society would begin to form! Individuals to the rear, we have things to get done and all of us will be needed to do it! Either lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way!

In conclusion, if there ever was a start, Anarchy is really a contradiction in terms, it is unworkable because it is contradictory to all knowledge of human existance. Furthermore, it is not possible to form a Society without someone/everyone giving up some of his personal autonomy and joining with others for the betterment of the group; and, a Society will be formed no matter what else a group of individuals will find to do. Why so? Because human beings, from all experience, are just built that way.

The Max-train stops at the Rose Garden. Two police officers for every cart walk on, take a quick look at every passenger, meeting in the middle, and then walk off the train.

I tend to scratch my head.

can’t remember the last time I saw a Tri-Met rider who didn’t look either unusual or sneaky. Americans on public transit always look sneaky because it’s Not Polite To Stare, so we avoid direct eye contact.
……………

Tom Leykus’s show diverted away from the usual t and a act yesterday. It’s helpful to know that Rudy Giuliani showed up on CNN, and the television news network immediately went to a sort of “New York” centric coverage of the event.

At one point, a caller came in saying that we need to bomb the enemy. “Who?” “The Enemy! Islam!” “Huh? Give me the coordinates. Bomb a Mosque in L.A.??” “No! Hit them over there!” “Over where? What — are we suppose to hit every country that starts with an ‘I’?”

Pretty much, it seems.

Bush: I don’t–I don’t think we can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the–those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in part of the world, let’s put it that way.

Which always striked me as basically the truth. Excepting… well… the best I can come up with with the War In Iraq is that Kuwait now lets women drive cars. (That’s why it’s all worth it, you see. Freedom is on the March.) [One step forward; two steps backward, and the corruptible “Fly Paper Strategy” is shown as the farcical rationalization that it is… beyond which.)

I used to be surprised we didn’t have suicide bombers in the USA. It’s an easy, low-cost method of Terrorism that anyone and their brother can do. But now that I think of it, perhaps it just stylistically does not fit. Bin Laden (who I’ll guess is in Pakistan — and remember the recent “I think we know where he is — but we must recognize nations’ sovreignty” statement) prefers a big Event… and I guess al Qaeda is still centralized enough to the extent that they’ll occasionally throw out a “Big Event” in the Western World…

… at a time of their own choosing, I may as well add.

Which is Par for the Course.