Signs of the Times
As read on a military blog, passed along without comment, merely a sagely nod and a few puffs of the pipe.
"Detectors are simple enough to thwart. Throw a handful of fertilizer (which will almost certainly contain nitrates such as ammonium nitrate) onto the ground in the parking lot at the airport, where everyone walks through it. After the 600th false alarm, the detector is shut down as it's obviously defective. Once that happens, THEN you smuggle in your device. The detector-happy people are nuts with no sense of reality."
Along a similar line: “It's an interesting war. Billions of dollars worth of air strikes and covert operations versus exploding jock straps.”
As someone in the Nixon administration once said "Things that can't last, won't." This will be true about this stupid "War on Terror" , just hope that doesn't bankrupt our sanity and our society along the way. Far too many angles for people to make way too much money off of this shit* that would justify keeping it going.
On another side note, yesterday I read about a study that found that of the large majority of those with higher education degrees involved in either Fundamentalist Christianity or Radical Islam, that the propensity of those degree fields were all in Engineering. Fascinating. And there's probably something deep there. Politics seen as an engineering problem to whit is applied jerry-rigged explosives of some complexity and power on one side and high tech detectors and robot drones to thwart, on the other. Neither of which really conclude the problem or address the fundamental human questions underlying the conflict - mere false technological salves, which are eminently profitable, applied. It's a dumb engineers war, isn't it.
And lastly on a personal note - I have been pulled aside for "secondary screening" three times in airports. The underwear bomber, despite being on CIA watch lists, was not. I am starting to wonder if I need to be on one of those lists, you know for future travel expediency.
*see "Drugs, War On".
Why The NY Times Drives Me Nuts
I can't put my finger on it exactly, but it's this general hazy everyday-man stupidity that passes for some kind of common wisdom that's handed down from the elite gods in the NY Times like it's gold or some shit. Two years ago Times columnist Thomas Friedman did a column about "how america got carried away" with the fervor of vengeance after 9/11 and we "all got a little stupid". It infuriated me, because this douche spent 2001-2006 writing column after column in favor of the Bush Iraq war. He went on Charlie Rose and said that the Arabs can "suck on this". I knew about 49% of America that didn't get "carried away" with that particular stupidity, but Friedman did, and then he writes some smug, revelatory column like, "Wow, I'm an American elite and even I got carried away! Whew, imagine that, someone as smart as me getting caught up in this..well, I'm over it now, and so should you, America..." No, you're a douche. You got carried away, Tom. That infuriating stupidity paid your bills for five years. Fucking douchenozzle.
And in this Sunday's NY Times magazine, their primary financial reporter repeats the same fucking type of thinking. Turns out this douche took out a half-million dollar mortgage on $2,777 of monthly take home pay (he was paying child support on three kids apparently that was wiping him out...). So he say's this in the lede: "I joined millions of otherwise-sane Americans in what we now know was a catastrophic binge on overpriced real estate and reckless mortgages. Nobody duped or hypnotized me. Like so many others — borrowers, lenders and the Wall Street dealmakers behind them — I just thought I could beat the odds."
No douche nozzle. You WERE duped. You were duped into believing that someone with $2,777 monthly take home could afford a half-million dollar mortgage. You hypnotized yourself because you thought you were a fucking special little douche snowflake, and consequences didn't apply to you, and that you could "beat the odds". You had already duped yourself so that when you walked into the mortgage office you had a giant fucking neon sign above your head that said "Special Snowflake Douchenozzle, Please Take Advantage of Me". And they did.
He goes on to say:
"“My situation is a little complicated,” I warned [the mortgage broker]. I told him about my child support and alimony payments and said I was banking on Patty to earn enough money to keep us afloat. Bob cut me off. “I specialize in challenges,” he said confidently."
Dude, are you THAT much of a head in the sand douchenozzle that when a fucking mortgage broker says shit to you like "I specialize in challenges" you are not about to be handed a fucking giant pile of shit? Jeez, I'd love to watch you try to buy a used car.
You are a dupe. Dupe. Dupe. Dupe. Dupe. You got duped.
It was a ponzi scheme and you fell for it. You. Mr. Dickwad Elite Douche.
I like how he writes: "As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia meltdown in 1998 and the dot-com collapse in 2000. I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us."
Obviously not, dick. My god, YOU are the douche that reports on high level important financial matters in the country's primary, most-quoted newspaper?
Fuck.
- RANT OVER -
UPDATE MAY 21, 2009 - Ah, it seems our erstwhile NY Times financial reporter didn't mention that his wife in his "boo hoo, this can happen to anyone" article has declared bankruptcy before as reported here in The Atlantic. Twice. While having reported income in the six figures. Yeah. This douche was living in the same fairyland the entire financial industry was in. Don't try to pass off your insanity on the lot of otherwise sane Americans who didn't play the game.
Poem of the Day #1
One of my favorite poems, Ode by Arthur O'Shaughnessy, 1844–1881
WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
Washington Dispatches, Day One
Well here I am in the dark, vile ever-beating heart of the empire. It's 6am and I am sipping hotel coffee, updating from the comfort of my bed at the Omni Hotel.
Train rolled in around last night at 7:30...got to the hotel about 15 minutes later by cab, then went with Yumi and four other people (doctor couples also down here for whatever conference this is) to an excellent restaurant 1/2 block from the White House - the Old Ebbitt Grill, Washington's oldest, most historic saloon, founded in 1856. Food was awesome and cheap compared to NYC..dinner for 6 plus drinks, desert (I recommend the Peanut Butter Mousse Pie) and coffee came to $216 before tip. And the food rocked, service was stellar. After dinner we strolled past the Treasury and the White House, we snapped a few pics with some of the ninja-ed out machine gun totting White House guards, which I was surprised we could do. When asked how many sniper sights were trained on us we wandered around one guard nervously laughed and refused to answer, so my guess was at least six. But the White House was beautiful at night. As an American citizen I was disappointed that while walking by the Treasury building I did not see hundreds of staffers running about inside with their hair on fire, arms flailing like epileptic muppets in response to the ongoing crisis. Seriously, I want to see some around the clock panic in that building 24/7 at the moment. The patriot in me will assume that they're confining the displays of panic to when Chinese tourists roll by during the day. Also no discernible signs of printing presses running. Will check back on that tomorrow.
DC is totally a political town. In the three cab rides I took (from the train station and too and from dinner) the cabbies all engaged us in politics. That'd never happen in NYC. And all three had political talk radio running in the car. The first driver from the train station was piping the audio from the McNeil/Leher report for christakes. Tipping is better under Obama apparently. I feel that the old cliche - that DC is hollywood for ugly people - will hold true. There is a palpable sense of humming power underneath all.
In the cab, rolled past the Watergate (now condos, which is probably telling of something) and the Cato Institute. I know where you fuckers are now. I gave them the appropriate salute from the back of the cab silently.
Today will see us move to another hotel and some sort of snapping of photographs in front of large stony monoliths depicting America's greatness. Bring it on, Ozymandais. I'll probably tear up a bit at the Lincoln memorial, but don't tell anyone.
- END DISPATCH -
RIP Joe Ades
New York City's very own singular Gentleman Peeler Salesman passed away this last Sunday. He seemed a fixture at NY's Union Square for as long as I can remember. The NY Times has a small piece on his passing. I only recently got around to buying a peeler from him about six weeks ago. NYC suddenly seems a little dimmer now. Godspeed good sir, godspeed.
Update 2-7-2009: David Galbraith deconstructs the NY Times tribute to Ades. And as a bonus, here's Joe Ades on the NBC Today show.
