One thing (among many) that I find amazing about conservatives.

I was surfing through the web after the pretty amazing ending to the World Cup match between the U.S. and Algeria. Lots of very happy fans, but there were a number of people who actually took the time to log on and throw in their comments about hating soccer and hoping the U.S. loses. I won’t link, but you can find them easily enough. I then saw one post that talked about how Glenn Beck was on a rant about how much he hated soccer and was tired of “them” (whoever they are) “ramming it down our throat.” Here’s Bob Cesca’s post on that.

"It doesn't matter how you try to sell it to us, it doesn't matter how many celebrities you get, it doesn't matter how many bars open early, it doesn't matter how many beer commercials they run, we don't want the World Cup, we don't like the World Cup, we don't like soccer, we want nothing to do with it. [...] I hate it so much, probably because the rest of the world likes it so much, and they riot over it, and they continually try to jam it down our throat." Glenn Beck

Good grief… I can understand why someone wouldn’t like soccer. It does take some getting used to for Americans raised on football, baseball and basketball. But Beck sounds absolutely offended that a number of people in this country will watch ESPN for World Cup coverage. And we will even watch matches that don’t involve the U.S.! What is up with this? Does everyone in the world have to agree with Glenn Beck about everything? There can be no difference of likes/dislikes, ever? Jeez.

I remember seeing a letter to the editor in the local newspaper a year or so ago. It was from a man who passed a hybrid car on the freeway. I guess the driver of the hybrid wasn’t going fast enough for this guy’s tastes. He said he was “disgusted” about this car and made more disparaging remarks.

Again, what’s up with this attitude? You don’t like hybrids? Don’t buy one! You don’t like soccer? Don’t watch it! But what’s with this sense of outrage? Yeah, we expect differences of opinion about rather important things, such as politics. I can see how people can get pretty emotional about those subjects, even if I don’t understand their specific positions. But on things that don’t matter, what’s the deal with this sense of outrage and indignation? It’s like these people are personally offended by even being in the presence of something they don’t agree with.

I don’t like NASCAR. I think it is a huge waste of increasingly scarce petroleum products, and it is very polluting to the local environment. But I am not offended that it exists. I just don’t support it. But a lot of conservatives seem to take soccer and other matters of personal likes and dislikes as a personal insult.

I am wondering what insight into the psyche of the conservative mind this gives us. Are Glenn Beck and people like him so convinced that they are right about every single thing they might express an opinion about that they expect everyone in the country to actually agree with them? Do they see things like soccer and hybrid cars as some extension of “creeping liberalism” that they cannot abide their very existence? Or are they so used to bitching and complaining about every single thing they don’t like that this just seems natural, like scratching an itch?

I suppose this makes perfect sense to conservatives, but it sure seems really stupid to me.

Wow. U.S.A. 1 - Algeria 0

The U.S. is through to the final round in the World Cup. What a tense game, and I am not even that huge of a soccer fan. I was all ready to be very upset, as the U.S. got jobbed AGAIN by the refs with another disallowed goal that replays show was good.

That was tense.

Is the Republican Party committing suicide on purpose?

Here’s a bit of a post from Washington Monthly about the continuing purge that is going on within the Republican Party.

South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis has been bounced from his longtime seat by a well-known prosecutor after challengers questioned the Republican's conservative credentials.

Trey Gowdy of Spartanburg won the GOP primary runoff Tuesday.

Inglis has always scored well with conservative organizations. But his challengers this year painted him as a liberal who voted for Wall Street and banking bailouts in 2008.

It wasn't close -- despite having represented the area for 12 years, Inglis lost by a ridiculous 42-point margin, 71% to 29%.
Given the one-sided nature of the results, it's tempting to think Inglis must have been caught up in some devastating scandal, since incumbents in good standing just don't get humiliated like this often. But Inglis' only crime was taking on a moderate, pragmatic tone, which led Republicans to revolt.

I emphasize "tone" because Inglis had a very conservative voting record, and scored well among the far-right organizations that grade lawmakers on their positions.

But Inglis expressed a willingness to work with Democrats on energy policy; he urged his constituents not to take Glenn Beck too seriously; he thought Joe Wilson was wrong to heckle the president during a national address; and he said his main focus as a lawmaker was to find "solutions" to problems. Last year, Inglis said the Republican Party has a chance to "lose the stinking rot of self-righteousness" and "to understand we are all in need of some grace."

…

Inglis' humiliating defeat also sends a message to Republican lawmakers who might consider constructive lawmaking: don't do it. The GOP base doesn't want responsible leaders who'll try to solve problems; it wants hard-right ideologues.

Wow, that’s a pretty big margin to lose by for anyone. But when it happens to someone with a pretty solid conservative voting record and who has served in the same district for 12 years, that’s pretty amazing. You would think that a huge defeat of someone like that would mean the person was engaged in a huge scandal. But no. This guy made noises that he might actually think like a reasonable person at times. And the hardcore Republican primary voters do not like that. They will punish anyone who might actually think about working with the enemy or might criticize their own side.

So, the question becomes, why are the Republican voters doing this? Do they not realize what they are doing? They are marginalizing their own political party. They may become “ideologically pure,” but, except for a few elections in places like Kentucky and South Carolina, this is not going to win general elections.

Do these voters care? Or do not realize what they are doing? My vote is the latter. I firmly believe that these people really believe that they represent mainstream thinking. Anyone who doesn’t think and act exactly like they do (at least in public) is obviously an extremist. They truly believe that their viewpoints are normal and mainstream, and nominating people who express those same viewpoints will obviously lead to electoral success.

This is the same point of view, of course, that leads these same people to believe that any time a Democrat wins an election, it must have been “stolen,” probably by ACORN. Any time a Democrat wins, democracy has somehow been usurped. And this thinking, then, leads to some politicians such as Sharron Angle in Nevada to declare that elections where their side doesn’t win should obviously be overturned by “Second Amendment Rights”, i.e., armed force.

I truly hope that a large majority of non-insane people end up voting in November. I think we can concede that tea partier extraordinaire Rand Paul in Kentucky will become a U.S. senator, even with all the insane things he was spouting off before the national Republicans told him to knock it off if he really wants to be elected. But I am hopeful that Harry Reid will come back from the dead and beat Sharron Angle. If the state of Nevada can actually elect someone like Angle, no matter how conservative the state, then I have a difficult time believing that the Democrats will be able to hold on to their precarious position in the face of the overwhelming stupidity of the American public.

I am usually a very cynical and negative person. But I do hold enough idealism to think that America, that great shining beacon of democracy that I learned about in grade school, will reject extremism. I truly do not mind if Republicans are elected to office. A government run exclusively by a single party, on either side of the political spectrum, is not a good thing. In fact, very bad things can happen. But I will temper my statement by the fact that the Republicans need to be sane and be willing to work with the other side for the common good of the country. Unfortunately, sane Republicans seem to be a vanishing species.

Sharron Angle and tea partiers.

(Sorry that I haven’t posted in the last week. I was on a business trip. I’m very glad to be back home, not that I have anything against Iowa…)

It appears that things haven’t improved since I last examined blogs and newspapers. Same old crap that just seems to be getting worse and worse each day. Now, I am not really talking about the uncontrollable leak of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. No, I am talking more about the insanity of those people who are believe they are the sole owners of the United States of American and are really pissed off that Democrats and President Obama are sitting in positions of power that they believe are rightfully theirs.

For example, Sharron Angle, the tea party candidate that the Republican Party nominated to take on Harry Reid in Nevada seems to believe that if they do not get elected to whatever office they are running for, they should resort to armed violence. From HuffPo:

Angle: I feel that the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This not for someone who's in the military. This not for law enforcement. This is for us. And in fact when you read that Constitution and the founding fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny. This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical...


Manders: If we needed it at any time in history, it might be right now.

Angle: Well it's to defend ourselves. And you know, I'm hoping that we're not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.

When pressed by what she meant by this by a local television reporter, she attempted to blame Harry Reid and literally ran away from the reporter.

These tea party people seem to think that the entire country thinks just like they do. They apparently believe that they need to throw “red meat” at their base voters to get them really excited about her candidacy. They just don’t seem to expect that they might actually have to explain what they really mean when the non-extreme right wing gets a bit alarmed.

What else could Ms. Angle mean than referring to an armed insurrection if they don’t get elected? What is it, exactly, that they would be “defending themselves” from? I don’t see armed troops banging down doors and hauling off people to concentration camps. What is it that they are threatening to shoot people over? I have not the faintest idea. I do know that they have absolutely no concept of democracy. Apparently, tea partiers believe that when they are voted into office, they are free to do whatever they feel like without consideration for things like working with the minority party or even the rule of law (if the presidency of George W. Bush is any indication). But when their opponents are voted into office instead of them, well, something is obviously wrong with our system and must be fixed by any means necessary, including “second amendment remedies.”

My question is, are these people insane? I cannot believe that they are just “playing to their base.” Can they not glimpse the hypocrisy of their position? Or the fact that what they apparently believe in has no connection to democracy or freedom?

The biggest problem that we, as a country, face from these lunatics is not that lunatics run for office. That’s their right, after all, if they meet whatever lawful requirements were set up for that office. No, the real problem is that, in certain places in the country, there are enough voters who will vote for people like Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Jim DeMint and Michelle Bachmann to actually put them into office. That’s a scary thing. If the consequences of electing lunatics to office were limited to the confines of those voters who put them into office, I think the overwhelming response from the rest of the country would be “Hey, you made your own bed…” But that’s not how it works. These people become sitting U.S. senators and congressmen. As we have all seen over the last few years, these people can really gum up the works of government so that nothing gets done. And that’s the best-case scenario. The worst case is if these nutjobs actually get to enact their own legislation.

If we had a government where tea partiers controlled the presidency, the Senate and the House, I have no idea what would happen to our immigration policy. I have a feeling that all illegal aliens would become huge targets, which would bad enough. It wouldn’t matter how long you have been here, if you have been paying taxes and holding down jobs. It wouldn’t matter if you were a child who, by law, is a citizen of the United States. If your parents were here illegally, then you would be gone. We would see what is going on in Arizona enacted on a national level. American citizens would be harassed and targeted, just because they “look illegal.” I think there would also be an attempt at trying to suppress any and all dissent. Freedom of speech and press would be a target. George Bush already attempted this during the Iraq war. With tea partiers in charge, I believe that anything that did not fit into their preconceived notions of right and wrong would be made illegal.

I hope that the majority of the voters of this country see the potential danger here. The one good thing about the 24 hour news cycle and instantaneous and always available information via the internet is that everyone now gets to see exactly what these people are advocating. It’s very difficult to hide outrageous positions. You cannot say one thing to one group of voters and then something different to another group. That just does not work, if the electorate is paying attention.

OMG, this is the end of the world as we know it!! But first, a bit about the ongoing NCAA realignment.

As I write this, the University of Colorado has jumped the Big-12 rapidly sinking ship and has joined the Pac-10/11 and counting. The University of Nebraska seems to be about to accept a bid to join the Big 10/11 and counting. All of this could change within the next few days, heck within the hour, so I wanted to give readers a context in which I am writing this.

Well, my take on all of this is that this is a bit like airlines charging exorbitant fees for checking your luggage. 1) To make outrageous sums of money. 2) Just because they can. 3) To keep up with everyone else who is doing it or will be doing it in the very near future. In each case, the welfare and well being of the main players in not the first or even the fifth priority. The airlines do not care one whit about sucking every penny they can from their customers. The conferences are intent on making as much cash as they can. The welfare of their “student athletes” is not really part of the equation here.

In the case of the conference realignment process, there do seem to be some very real and valid concerns here that are driving all this. With money tight all over (except for Wall Street CEO’s and hedge fund managers), it is pretty unreasonable for the universities of this country to expect taxpayers to fund their athletics programs. Even historically successful programs are hemorrhaging cash, and something must be done.

I won’t go further into the reasons behind all this. You can find that elsewhere. I just wanted to put down some of my thoughts and impressions here. I have two college degrees, one from a SEC school and one from a PAC-10 school. I had season tickets to the University of Washington men’s basketball for a number of years, before they started treating their season ticket holders and athletic dept. donors as major sources of revenue that must be milked dry each and every year. But I still watch them on television quite a lot.

Football is driving all of this, of course. Basketball is an afterthought, if even that. Just ask the Kansas and Kansas State, which may be left out in the cold. Having read some of their local papers, they are not at all pleased with this prospect of joining the Mountain West conference. The most hope they seem to hold out is that not all of the potential invitees from the slowly imploding Big 12 conference (Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State) will accept the invitation from the Pac-10/11 and they get picked up as replacements. Having read most everything that is being written on the subject on the west coast, I haven’t ever seen this one proposed as even a long shot possibility. I feel very badly for those schools that will be left out in the cold, just because they aren’t super-desirable. Not terrible, but the circumstances just weren’t “right” for the current situation. That sort of resembles my situation during high school, so I do have some empathy there.

Now, to the Pac-10 or whatever it will be called and whatever teams might end up joining. I can’t see it staying at 11. That just screws up a lot of things, primarily basketball scheduling. Utah seems to be most often mentioned as “Plan B” if “Plan A” involving the Texas and Oklahoma schools falls through. I’m not sure how Utah would feel about all this, being invited into a conference when they know they were Plan B. But hey, pride takes the back seat when it comes to increased money and prestige, no matter how badly you feel you have been treated.

And while I am on that note, I read a lot yesterday about how it was a “slap in the face” of the University of Texas for the Pac-10 to have invited and accepted Colorado FIRST, before Texas. As Steve Martin used to say, “Well, EEEXXXCUSE MEEEE!!!!” Jeez. Is this how this is going to go all the time? They got their collective panties in a bunch because the situation for Colorado was just right and Texas and its little brothers are waiting to see what Nebraska does first? I am really concerned that the Pac-10/11 will be bringing in a LOT of baggage with the addition of the Texas schools, baggage that ultimately led to the likely demise of the Big 12. Will this be an ongoing and continual soap opera? Will Texas actually accept a role where they are not the only “big dog” on the block? Hey, USC (even with the NCAA penalties imposed) is still a heavyweight. Even though, as a UW Husky fan, I don’t like to admit this, the University of Oregon with Phil Knight’s money is a wheeler-dealer. UCLA is one of the biggest names in college basketball. Washington, although down for many years in football, is still a major player, as is Stanford, California, Arizona and Arizona State. Will Texas accept being just “one among many?” I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem really likely, no matter how much money is involved.

I am also wondering about the potential for cultural differences. LA is pretty laid back about most everything, where football may be equal to religion, in terms of the importance it plays in people’s lives, in the state of Texas. How will people from Texas and Oklahoma deal with being in the same conference as those liberal bastions, Seattle and California’s Bay Area? What will they think of the trip to Pullman, Washington (home of WSU)? Pullman is very nice, for a small town with not a lot to do. It is home to Keith Jackson, football announcer extraordinaire, Edward R. Murrow, and the Giant Palouse Earthworm. But it is certainly not a travel destination in any sense of the word. How many people will make the trek from Lubbock, Texas, to Pullman, Washington, to see a football game?

Yeah, if this happens as many people expect, I will probably pay some extra money to see Pac-Whatever sports on the new Pac-Whatever television network. I will probably still go to some games. But I can’t help but wonder what will happen to these soon-to-be mega-conferences that have truly terrible travel arrangements within the conference if the economy really tanks and real hardship continues and increases within the country. Sports, including college sports, in a commodity and, as such, is subject to discretionary spending by its consumers. Will these conferences be able to survive in their bloated states when the customers are no longer beating down the doors because they are too concerned about their own survival?

I have lots of mixed feelings about this. At least my teams will not be on the short end up the stick after this coming nuclear war. My schools will still be part of a major conference, which is a lot more than can be said of many schools that are now part of the Big-12, ACC and Big East. It might be exciting to see Oklahoma and Texas coming to play in Seattle on a regular basis. But something fundamentally is changing here, and that never really feels good unless your current situation is truly terrible. And, truth be told, our current situation regarding college athletics is not terrible. At least for the consumers of the product, it isn’t terrible.

I can’t help but think we are all making a huge mistake, one that we might end up regretting in the long run. The influence of huge money is ruining many aspects of our society. College athletics is no longer pretending to be about anything but making as much money as possible. That doesn’t feel very good. "Student athlete?" Phht. Don't make me laugh. As someone else somewhere on the web said yesterday, we might just as well call these professional football teams that are stationed near colleges.

UPDATE: Yes, well, I rather suspected that things would not turn out as predicted. Texas and the rest have decided to stay with this Big "12". Texas got lured by the promise of a bigger pot of money. They will have their own television network, which I understand would not have been allowed if they joined the Pac-10. There were a lot of other factors, mostly about money. And it appears that someone fabricated a reason to blame the Pac-10 for the deal falling apart, claiming that the Pac-10 all of a sudden wanted to include Kansas instead of Oklahoma State. The Pac-10 commish says this is not true, and I believe that. If they wanted Kansas, that would have been their going in position. They didn't really want Baylor and had no problem about aiming at Colorado instead.

Anyway, the Pac-12 now includes Colorado and Utah. Not necessarily a blockbuster, certainly not a "Super Conference." I would really rather have stayed at 10. But you know, if the Pac-10 was really intent on expanding, I am not at all unhappy with this deal. We have two schools that really wanted to be part of the Pac-10, and I think they will fit within the culture of the Pac-10 very well. They most certainly won't demand that everyone else cave into their demands, which is what I believe probably would have eventually happened with Texas. I read some columns out of the newspapers in SLC, and they seemed overjoyed to now be part of a BCS conference. Welcome, Colorado and Utah.

Now, is this nonsense about done with? Can we stop now?

Yeah, my blogging is getting seriously craptastic.

I don't post that much anymore, and when I do, it's just a rant about the latest insanity. I can't get over how many insane people this country has and how many of them decided to run for political office or become bloggers or "media personalities." In what sane world does Glenn Beck have a radio program, much less a prime time television show?

Anyway, for those of you who actually stop by this blog on purpose, rather than just by something I wrote on this blog showing up on a Yahoo, Google or Bing search, well, I sincerely apologize. I wish I could have something interesting for everyone to read or look at on a relatively quick turnaround, but I seem to be failing on that account. I was actually kicked out of a multi-author blog not that long ago for not keeping up. Hey, what can I say? This is a voluntary exercise (meaning "no cash rewards") and my time and energy is rather limited these days. I can't keep up with the insanity, much less make intelligent comment or humorous snark about it. It all just saps the psychic energy out of me and it's all that I can do to keep up with my job and my day to day life, such as it is.

This is certainly not a "goodbye, cruel blogging world" post. I like to keep it up just for my own entertainment. But I have recognized that whatever momentum I had with this place about two years ago is all but evaporated. So, keep coming back on occasion, if you can. Maybe I will have something for you from time to time.

Here's some serious hoping that someone finds a way to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico soon, and then figures out a way to minimize the huge ecological disaster that is happening right now, even if they shut down the oil geyser today.

Arizona isn't racist?

They certainly are doing their best to convince the rest of the country they are.

There's not enough evil and bad things happening right now, these racist morons have to make more trouble? At the expense of elementary school students? And gutless school administrators that cave to these people?

What a country we live in. Hell, we might just as well go waterboard the artists for painting such a offending picture... Why not?

BREAKING STORY: John Boehner wants an apology from Paul McCartney!

This is what the top Republican in the House thinks is important. From HuffPo:

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is demanding that Paul McCartney apologize for expressing his gratitude that America again has a president "who knows what a library is," Human Events' Connie Hair reports.
"Like millions of other Americans, I have always had a good impression of Paul McCartney and thought of him as a classy guy, but I was surprised and disappointed by the lack of grace and respect he displayed at the White House," Boehner said in a statement. "I hope he'll apologize to the American people for his conduct which demeaned him, the White House and President Obama."

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh call President Obama all sorts of names on a daily basis, and pretty disgusting and evil names at that. I won’t bother to find links. You know what they are. "Nazi." "Socialist." "Racist." Someone who is working actively to "destroy this country." These insults go out over the national media to a listening audience of several million people. That is apparently fine with most everyone, based on the collective yawn from our national media. Just people exercising their right to free speech. Just "entertainment", you know. Yet, an aging entertainer whose best days are long past makes a small little jest about the former President at a private function with a limited audience, well… That cannot be left unchallenged! How DARE McCartney make a joke about President Bush! Even though many people, including many media figures, do just that on a daily basis… An apology must be forthcoming!

Sheesh. This guy is the top Republican in the House. 1) Doesn’t he realize or even care that he sounds like an idiot? 2) Doesn’t he have more pressing problems to deal with than demand apologies from entertainers?

I wonder what Abe Lincoln would think of the present day Republican Party? These people are morons who have absolutely no sense of responsibility to this country. Politics is just a game to them, but one that must be “won” at all cost, even if it does make them look like complete fools to the remaining 70% of the country who don’t think the same way they do.

“I want my country back!”

That became the Right’s rallying cry last summer during the height of the Healthcare Reform “debate.” Well, you know what? I feel the same way. Although, in realistic terms, I fully realize that my country was never like what I once imagined it to be, I would still like to live in a country where I didn’t have to be fearful every single day of having these stupid, mean-spirited, lying nutjobs getting control of the government. I would like to live in a country that wasn’t run by corporations who compete with each other to see who can gather the biggest pot of money, all at the expense of their customers and the taxpayers who will bail them out, each and every time, when they get themselves into trouble. I would like a country whose ex-president and vice-president didn’t glibly and proudly boast about torturing suspects.

I would like to live in country where sanity and logic ruled the day, not emotions and blind adherence to an ideology, political or religious. I would like to see science put back in its rightful place as a method of finding out how things work and what is going on with the universe, rather than some stalking horse to make fun of and trash just so your side can “win” the debate.

I would like to see a country whose government actually had the best interests of its citizens in mind, rather than moneyed corporations who contribute millions to re-election campaigns, and one that actually respected and lived by the rule of law. One that actually punished lawbreakers, even rich and politically well connected law breakers. A country whose government balanced allowing technological advances in critical industries with firm safety regulations and strict oversight that wasn’t susceptible to bribery and corruption.

I wish I had my country back that actually had a nationwide news media that uncovered the truth about stories and does not make everything into a “he said, she said, you decide” debate. A country whose news media actually felt it was their collective job to act as the official watchdog of the government and report on excesses and wrongdoings concocted by the people in power. A country whose news media didn’t feel compelled to be a cheerleader to get the country into unnecessary wars.

I wish I had a country that was actually enjoyable to live in.

Sadly, no. That is not the country we have, and probably never did have. I suppose it all just feels like it is coming apart at the seams, even though it was always this way. It was just better hidden from view.

Silly rabbit. Trix are for kids.

Bill Kristol: "Offshore drilling is perfectly safe, except where there is a disaster like this."

The quote in the title is from Mahablog.

Wow, can anyone play this game?

It is safe for kids to play in the freeway, except when there is traffic.

Investors will always make millions of dollars in the stock market. Except when it crashes and their holdings lose 45% of their value in six months.

It is safe to run with scissors. You won't ever slip and fall on them, except when you run on the shag area rug on the slippery wood floor.

It is safe to tell Darth Vader that the Force is part of an outdated religion. I'm sure he will take it in the spirit that it was given, except possibly when he is in a bad mood.

It is safe to play goalie in the NHL and not wear any pads or mask. No one will ever shoot a puck that you can't stop with the stick. You probably won't ever have to make that trip to the dental surgeon for emergency surgery.

Do you see what you can do with the word, "except?" What a wonderful word! It absolves you of everything, because WHO could have POSSIBLY imagined that anything would ever go wrong?

Where does the conservative movement of this country come up with these people? Can't anyone have even an iota of intelligence when debating issues? Having a rational argument with someone really requires both sides to practice some intelligence and logic. The problem with arguing with morons is that they will never, ever admit or even realize they are completely wrong.

UPDATE: I think this is a great example of how conservatives actually think. In their universe, nothing will ever go wrong. Everything will always go according to whatever plan they have devised. This leads to some amazing conclusions, such as the U.S. will be in and out of Iraq in two weeks and will be greeted as liberators, no one really needs health insurance because no one ever gets sick, we shouldn't give unemployment benefits because everyone who wants a job can get one, et. etc. And when something DOES go wrong, it's obviously someone else's fault, because they can never be wrong.

Like I said, it's hard to argue with a mentality like this. You might as well go try to teach a pig to recite Shakespeare. You'll have just about as much success.

God, what an idiot.

From TPM:



Jesus, can't we just go back to talking about her being "stalked" by her neighbor and building a really big fence?

How is it that people can just make such asinine, obviously untrue statements and think that no one notices? Do they not care they look like idiots? Sure, she wasn't at all talking about drilling offshore deep water oil wells for the last two years. Nope. And notice, at the same time she is trying to make it look like the events in the Gulf over the last haven't proved her to be 100% WRONG, she is ALSO attempting to blame "extreme" environmentalists for the current oil spill. Yeah, complete lack of oversight of the oil industry and the desire to cut as many corners as possible to save time and money had NOTHING at all to do with this. It's all those evil "extreme greenies" fault. I wonder how long it took her to come up with this approach? She probably had some help...

No wonder our country is in such sad shape. We have people like this running what passes for our national discourse. I'm serious. Our democracy stands absolutely no chance if people like her ever get in charge. We can't even stand an electorate that stupid, much less our politicians.

"I dunno, Hal. We're supposed to release the ones under four feet tall."

I hope that kid didn't wake up during the photo shoot. That could scar a kid for life.

Photo from Picture Is Unrelated.

It's really nice that President Obama takes responsibility for the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

I am wondering just what the hell that means, tho. Does he have an army of deep sea submersibles and giant robots ready to staunch the flow of oil by stuffing material from neutron stars down the pipe at a depth of a mile below the surface? Is he going to order the use of some of our stockpile of nuclear bombs to bomb the open wellhead and shut down the flow of oil?

If not, I am not sure what the hell the President is going to do about this. It is an unfortunate fact that the people who have the most knowledge that might be able to help us out here are the same flippin' people who got us into this mess in the first place. It isn't like the federal government has the technology at hand to fix this.

Now, of course, if this had happened during the Bush administration, we could have had Karl Rove just conjure us an alternative reality of their own making, where millions of barrels of oil weren't going to contaminate every single beach and marshland on the Gulf Coast, kill off all marine and animal life in the area and generally fuck up the environment for decades to come.

So Rand Paul thinks that accidents just happen all by themselves?

Here is a recent quote from Mr. Paul on the ongoing BP-caused ecological disaster.

What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,’ ” Mr. Paul said, referring to a remark by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar about the oil company. “I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.”

I cannot begin to explain how many misguided notions and outright lunacy those few sentences contain. And to think that this is from who will probably be a U.S. senator by the end of the year is absolutely frightening.

But let’s talk about that bit about accidents “happening.” Paul’s quote makes it sound as if accidents don’t have a cause. They sometimes just appear for no reason and are totally unexpected. This is absolutely incorrect, and this is a very ridiculous thing to say about very complex, man-made technology. This happens to be an area that I know something about.

Since the beginning of the 20th Century, there has been a study of industrial accidents -- why they occur and what can be done to prevent them. If you put in the correct search words, you can find all sorts of books on Amazon that talks about accidents and their causes. This is a very specialized field of study done by a number of very dedicated and intelligent people. Accidents do not just “happen.” There are causes, usually multiple ones, for every serious industrial accident. The response of our society has been to mandate certain safeguards and minimum acceptable safety standards by the Code of Federal Regulations. Every important and potentially hazardous industry in this country is regulated in this manner – aviation, railroads, finance, drugs, mining, nuclear power… The list goes on and on. We do this for the common good of the American people.

When things start going wrong is when companies start taking shortcuts or bypassing these regulations. This is not to say that these regulations are perfect and, if followed, would prevent every accident. That is not true. But it would be much less likely that a catastrophic accident occurs if the appropriate regulations are followed. And, of course, there is always the inevitable pushback from the industry and their lobbyists. Money and political pressure can do wonders to weaken and even remove protective legalization. Alternatively, companies can just ignore the rules and fight tooth and nail when challenged. This appears to be what Massey Energy was doing when a coal mine they owned in West Virginia, the Upper Big Branch Mine, experienced an explosion that killed twenty nine workers. From Wiki:

In 2009, the company, Massey Energy, was fined a total of $382,000 for "serious" unrepentant violations for lacking ventilation and proper equipment plans as well as failing to utilize its safety plan properly.[18] In the previous month, the authorities cited the mine for 57 safety infractions.[19] The mine received two citations the day before the explosion and in the last five years has been cited for 1,342 safety violations. The CEO of Massey Energy, Don Blankenship, has received criticism for his apparent disregard of safety.[20]

Accidents do not “just happen.” There are causes. They might be from heretofore unknown or truly unexpected causes, but there are causes. In the case of the catastrophic explosion about the Deep Horizon oil drilling rig and subsequent oil release from the bottom of the sea floor, it appears that many regulations were not complied with and many warning signs were ignored. Yet, BP and Transocean pressed ahead. The most important considerations were schedule and cost.

There is a concept called “magical thinking.” I even wrote a post about it myself a while back. But this concept seems to have taken firm root in the boardrooms American corporations and the front line management of American industry. The thinking seems to go, “We don’t need to follow these regulations. They are not doing any good and just costs us money to follow them. Nothing bad is going to happen. Trust us.” That’s what it can be boiled down to. “Trust us. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

This is the thinking that has given us the worst ecological disaster in American history, which no one knows how to fix. Even if these geniuses figure out how to stop the huge flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico today, we will still be faced with decades of the effects of the oil that is already there. This thinking gave us the worst financial meltdown this country has seen since the Great Depression. This thinking gave us twenty nine dead miners in West Virginia.

Accidents occur for reasons, and regulations have been put in place to reduce the likelihood of something going terribly wrong because of the reasons that we know about. Willfully ignoring these regulations in the chase for ever-expanding profits for people who are already rich is obscene.

The corporations in this country, along with the government agencies that are tasked with oversight, need a drastic change of focus and purpose. Regulations are not evil. Accidents do not “just happen.” Unfortunately, I believe that this country is too far gone. Huge corporations are too voracious, too powerful, too willing to do whatever it takes to retain and expand their profits. Following rules are for little people.

O.K., let's recap what's going on here....

- We have an uncontrollable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that's already the largest ecological disaster in the country's history. No one really knows what to do about it, except the perpetrators want to cover their butts so they don't have to pay any more in damages and cleanup than they believe they absolutely have to.

- North Korea is threatening to declare war on South Korea, which the U.S. will no doubt have to respond to if it actually comes to that.

- We still have two wars going on that we are only not winning, but we have no idea how to get out of. Yet, people keep dying, money is being spent by the billions on a weekly basis.

- An ongoing financial crisis that can still unravel our economy if we don't watch out, with literally millions of people out of work. Yet, some politicians seem to think this is all somehow their fault and they are just lazy because they don't really want a job.

- The big volcano on Iceland, Katla, seems to be having some rumblings, which does not bode well for anyone.

- Our political system seems to be crumbling before our eyes, where the biggest issues of the day seems to be driven by chickens, job offers, holier-than-thou politicians who keep getting caught with their private parts messed up with other people's private parts, insane television personalities, etc. etc....

You know what? I would really like to go back to bed. This really sucks.

Saturn

Above photo and text from here.

In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.

That may be the most beautiful photograph ever taken. Click on the photo to get a larger version, and then look for the dot in the upper left hand quadrant. That's Earth. Everything that you and I have ever read about or heard about took place there. Except for a few things that happened on the moon, of course.



The surface of Saturn's moon Dione, up close.



Tiny moon Janus, seen before Saturn's rings, with massive moon Titan beyond.



Saturn’s polar region.



Saturn's moon Enceladus, seen just in front of Saturn.

The four bottom photos from here, courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Harvey Fierstein as Tevye!?!

O.K., I admit, to my knowledge, of never having heard Harvey Fierstein sing. But in the films I have seen him in (say, oh, Independence Day), his voice sounds somewhat like he had his vocal chords sent through a food processor. I am just having a difficult time envisioning this. And having seen the stage version with Topol, I am thinking I probably won't be taking the time to see this one.

My own dalliance with racism and bigotry.

The year was very late 1969 or early 1970, when our family, now under the control of new a stepfather, moved from Colorado to rural Alabama. It doesn’t take a huge amount of imagination to understand that this was a huge change for me, a rather shy, unhappy, impressionable and neurotic teenager just starting high school, moving from a relatively progressive place to a very small town in the Deep South, where the Civil War was still very fresh in the cultural consciousness. The Civil Rights movement was not some distant event that today’s kids read in their history books. We were less than seven years removed from the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, attack dogs and fire hoses unleashed on peaceful protestors, also in Birmingham, and the abduction and murder of three young people in Philadelphia, Mississippi whose only crime was attempting to sign up black people to vote. This was the environment into which I found myself dumped, terribly unprepared and uninformed.

My new hometown, which shall remain nameless in this telling, was very similar to every other small town in the Deep South at this time. There was an almost identical town about seven miles to the west. They could have swapped names and it would have hardly made a difference. Unemployment was high, alcoholism was a problem. The towns had very little to offer in terms of employment or entertainment. Both had a white population and a black population that got along marginally well. For the most part, there was no overt hostility between the two groups and there were true positive feelings among a number of individuals. But the subject of race was there. It was always there.

It wasn’t very long after I started in the local high school that I found myself labeled as a “Yankee.” That was, without a doubt, not a compliment. After all, I talked differently. I wore different clothes and tended to have longer hair those days. This was before it became acceptable for country music stars to have long hair. I was an outsider, and that usually means “not acceptable.” Yankee! Outsider! Alien! Looking back, I certainly didn’t do myself any favors. But, at the time, I was just trying to cope with a new family, a sometimes hostile and drunk stepfather and the loss of every friend I had ever managed to make up that point.

At some point in time, I remember being surrounded by a number of the white kids who demanded to know whether or not I was a “nigger lover.” I remember being rather confused by this at the time. I wasn’t certain what that actually meant. My school in Colorado had a total of one black kid in the entire high school, and the football season before I moved away, he had just been voted by the student body as Homecoming King. I don’t remember my reaction to that. I think it was probably confusion, more than anything. I certainly didn’t believe it was somehow “wrong.” However, I do remember that I instantly knew what the answer that my new classmates were expecting from me. I said something to the effect of a very indignant, “No!” I don’t know what would have happened to me if I would have answered otherwise. Probably nothing except some additional ostracism.

The drive-in restaurant in the town (which my stepfather later bought and I was forced to work in when I wasn’t at school or doing school work) had “WHITES ONLY” painted above the walk-up window at the front of the building. There was, of course, the corresponding “COLORED ONLY” sign over the window at the side of the building. This was 1971, not all that long ago. There wasn’t a sign, but it was just an unstated rule that blacks were expected to not come inside into the dining area. Outside was fine, but not inside. During my hours working at the windows at the restaurant, of which there were to be many over the next five years or so, I remember those became my expectations as well. I felt that some unknown code had been violated when a black kid used the window designated for WHITES ONLY to order an ice cream cone. I didn’t say anything, I filled the order. I think it might have been a kid from school. After a few years, that code seem to become relaxed so that the COLORED ONLY window got covered up by equipment so that no one could have used it if they had wanted to. But when it first happened, I do remember feeling uncomfortable.

There was some outward conflict at the school on occasion. I remember one event, which may have lasted several weeks, where there was definitely some animosity going on between the white boys and black boys. It was kid of like a “Jets vs. Sharks” thing from West Side Story. I think it was centered in the higher classes, and I was just a freshman. I remember a bunch of kids standing around, talking, and there were actually some cooler heads trying to prevail. I remember one white kid trying to reason it out saying something like, “Look, if the football team wins, who is it that wins? Is it the colored boys? Or the white boys? No, it’s the team that wins.” Looking back now at that environment and who I remember it was saying that, I am rather impressed. That situation could have easily spiraled out of control. But it didn’t. Everything just went back into the pressure cooker to be heated up a bit more.

The biggest flare up between the two groups of people came not at my town, but the aforementioned town seven miles to the west. It could have just as easily been our town, I suppose. But it wasn’t. The conflict started, if I remember correctly, when several of the white cheerleaders started dating a couple of the black kids who starred on their football and basketball teams. Now, this was definitely crossing a line that the townspeople did not want to see crossed. It came to a head when the two or three couples wanted to go to the prom together. Maybe they succeeded, maybe they didn’t. I honestly don’t remember. But what I am attempting to convey here is my reaction. I don’t remember being outraged. I think my own reaction went something along the lines of, “Gee, those are cute girls. I don’t understand. They couldn’t get a date with a white boy?” No doubt I was feeling a bit left out, like I always did, as I wouldn’t have been able to get a date at that time if my life had depended on it. I cannot say with any amount of certainty what the girls’ motivations were. No doubt they truly liked the black kids, and they were stars on the sports teams, after all. But I imagine a healthy dose of rebellion was in there as well. “You aren’t going to tell ME who I can and can’t date!” I can now respect them for that.

I got along, for the most part, O.K. with the black kids in my class. I didn’t know what to say to them, really. The black boys were on the basketball team, on which I also played. By “played”, I really mean, “sat on the end of the bench a lot.” The black girls, I just didn’t know what to say to them. But then, I usually didn’t know what to say to girls anyway, so that’s no big surprise. Two of the black girls seemed really nice kids and they were rather well liked. The black boys got into no more or less trouble than did the white kids. Maybe less, now that I think about it. I was treated no better or worse by the black kids than my white classmates.

So, now I come to the reason I started to write this. Racism and bigotry have raised their heads again. We have a black man as president, and that doesn’t seem to be going over very well with a segment of the populace. Thoughts and feelings that have been submerged but still present in our society since my days in high school are popping out all over. Things that used to go unsaid are now being overtly trumpeted by the right wing media personalities and even some local politicians. The focus is now more on Latinos and Muslims instead of blacks, but it’s the same thing. “You are not like me. Therefore, you are bad and are to blame for all of my problems.” I won’t try to rehash the current societal mess. It’s just that I can’t help thinking that I have seen all of this before. I “know” the people who say these things that you would not expect to hear in America in the 21st Century.

Why? What is it with people that we can be trained to view with hostility anything different than ourselves? Based on what I know of history and from my own experiences that I recounted here, I have come to believe that human beings are extremely susceptible to manipulation. Some people may call this “tribal knowledge” or “learning at the feet of your elders.” However, manipulation is as good as any term that I can come up with. I believe that you can get a human being to believe anything if you start early enough and repeat it often enough. Children can be taught values when they are young that they carry with them for the rest of their lives. I remember being taught about The Golden Rule when I was in kindergarten. Now, I may not have always practiced that as diligently as I should have, but I have always believed it. Of course, there is the other side of the coin. Children can be taught distrust, hatred and prejudice as well as what most of us would consider to be more positive attributes of society. Protestants can be taught to hate Catholics. Germans can be taught to hate Jews. Many tribes of Native Americans hated each other and were in a constant state of conflict.

For my part, I am rather ashamed that I fell so easily into that trap. Of course I was not a “nigger lover!” How dare you think that about me! I now hope that was more just a knee-jerk reaction to my intense desire to be accepted than it was to my real beliefs at the time. As I said, I do not remember ever really disliking black people because they were black. I have been uncomfortable around them sometime, as I never knew how I was supposed to act or react, and whether they were going to be hostile to me. But then, I can also remember other times, like working with a black guy at a job at an office supply store, and we got along very well together. During one delivery trip, he and I, along with one other white guy, stopped off at a nightclub where a lot of black people hung out. The club band was practicing and we sat and listened to them for a while. My work buddy introduced us white guys to the rest and we sat around and got high. Being a head trumps being a racist, I suppose. I suppose I can feel somewhat mollified by the fact that really don’t believe I ever felt any animosity toward anyone because they were black. I was just reacting to the pressures of the times and of high school.

I am now married to a very nice Asian woman and have been for almost 20 years. We adopted her niece, who is also Asian, it should go without saying, as our own daughter. I have known many black people and gotten along with them well, as I have other “different” people such as gays and lesbians. I am a “good” progressive. The only time I really dislike someone is not because of their skin color, religion or sexual orientation, but because I perceive the person to be a jerk. I am extremely proud of the fact that the United States of America, with its very messy and unfortunate history regarding race relations, has a black man as President. I am the epitome of open-mindedness and acceptance. Until I look past the surface and into my own thoughts and history. Then, I sometimes begin to wonder. Why did I not object to the WHITES ONLY sign above the serving window of our family restaurant? I never questioned that at all, and I wonder why and am rather ashamed that I don't have a good answer. Should I have stood up to the bullies who demanded to know my feelings about my black classmates and told them where to get off? I still dislike thinking about that event and the answer that I so immediately and easily came up with.

Are we ever really truly free from fear and distrust of “The Others”, especially if we have been immersed into a culture that condones that fear and distrust?

It’s an interesting discussion I sometimes have with myself.

O.K., we always knew it was going to be something like this, didn't we?

It seems to me that Mexico has a very large coastline on the Gulf of Mexico.

That might be one reason it is referred to as "The Gulf of Mexico." So, if huge amounts of oil and dead birds and sea life start showing up on Mexico's beaches, I am wondering what they might do. Can a foreign country claim more than $75 million in liabilities from BP?

I am actually very sorry I feel this way, but I find myself somewhat hoping that the beaches around Miami and St. Pete get really fouled with oil. That should get someone's attention. Finally. I have had it with these cretins that are trying to minimize this catastrophe.

Arizona's draconian laws aimed at immigrants take a toll on kid's birthday parties.

First, they came for the piñatas, and I was silent.

Next, the came for the party clowns who make balloon animals, and I said nothing.

Then, then came for the mimes, and still I said nothing.

Actually, that's not exactly true. I cheered when they came for the mimes.

From Oddly Specific.

Apparently, the Tea Party elite think they can say whatever they are thinking.

From TPM:

Tea Party Leader: Allah Is 'Monkey God'

Well.... That's certainly an fine example of speaking your mind, regardless of the consequences. I can't really imagine any one of Arab heritage ever voting for any of these people. The one good thing about this is that we all know what they really think now. There’s nothing really left to the imagination. The ultra-conservatives of this country seem to be purposely trying to alienate every single person who isn’t white and conservative. That can only be a good thing for us progressives, but it certainly is frightening to watch. Just think if Arizona’s “Show Us Your Papers!” law went national….

Four Year Anniversary for Barking Rabbits.

“Never underestimate the power of denial.” - Wes Bently

My, how time flies. I would like to say something insightful about things that I have learned or enjoyed over the last four years. Unfortunately, my time and insight is rather limited today. Anything I might say would probably be a repeat of some post I have made previously.

I would have never thought that BP wouldn't have a way to plug a gushing underwater oil well that was already figured out.

Incredible. "Hey, who would have thought that this could happen?" Well, anyone with any sort of engineering background or even a vivid imagination. Anyone who has ever watched any cheesy "scientific experiment gone horribly wrong" B sci-fi movie from the 50's or 60's, that who. This sort of reminds me of a rather old but apparently very rare sci-fi film called "Crack in the World." Some scientists get the brilliant idea to turn a rocket upside down and shoot it INTO the earth. I forgot the point of this little experiment. It all goes horribly wrong and the resultant hole starts a large crack in the ground (hence the name of the film). Actually, two cracks start. Panic ensues. Calamity results. The two cracks eventually come around and merge. The result is that it was like an apple corer had been applied to the Earth. A large chuck was forcibly ejected and, viola! It became another moon.

Oops.... Sorry about that. Certainly didn't see THAT one coming.

O.K., silly analogy. I just am an old sci-fi film buff, so almost everything reminds me of a movie these days.

But what kinds of black belt morons do these people have to be to do something that, in retrospect, looks as dangerous and prone to accidents as it turns out it is without any sort of backup plan?

Unfortunately, that seems to be the way our society is evolving. Risks are not considered. To consider risks and have contingency plans is to "plan for failure." I was actually told that once at a previous job. Anything that anyone can imagine automatically becomes "the plan", which will be wildly successful.

Balls. People have forgotten that life itself is a dangerous business. Pushing the technological envelope in ways that haven't been tried before (such as drilling to such depths in very deep water), by definition, is a dangerous business. To not recognize some possible but somewhat likely outcomes other than the one that you really want to occur is to be blind. Stupid. Idiotic. Which about sums up my feelings about our current society.

Hybrids and electric cars are not “green.”

I find myself very annoyed at television commercials about these so-called “green” automobiles that show all sorts of flower, trees and animals, thus implying that these things are actually great for the environment. Hey, they aren’t, O.K.?

What the companies that make these vehicles are implying is that it is a matter of degrees. Nothing that contributes pollution to the environment is good for the environment. It is just “less bad” than the alternatives, and even that may be a red herring. I maintain that "less bad than the alternative" is not really "being green." And, when the big picture is considered, even being "less bad" is something that really hasn't been proven yet.

What is not being considered about electric cars that need to be recharged fairly often is that this electricity must come from somewhere. It must be generated, and the overwhelming source of electrical power in this country is from coal-fired power plants. Burning coal on a large scale is not and never will be “green.” If everyone were to stop driving vehicles that burn gasoline, that would indeed be a major contribution to the removal of pollutants in our air. However, has anyone ever checked to see how much more electricity that we might need to support this huge increase for demand? I suppose some of the effects of that demand might be mitigated if everyone were to charge up their vehicles at night when the normal demand is lower. Still, that’s a lot of juice that needs to come from somewhere.

Let’s talk about the batteries needed for a bit. Batteries can be considered to be a hazardous material. If we have huge amounts of electric cars and hybrids that need to have significant battery capacity, what happens to these batteries when these cars start to be junked in huge quantities? We are going to need a complete new industry that deals with recycle of used automotive batteries. There are many problems with the normal lead-acid battery that are normally used in today’s vehicles. There are also problems with lithium-ion batteries that are being used in aviation applications. Perhaps the most promising approach would be to use fuel cells, which convert a fuel, such as hydrogen, into electricity. However, if we were to want to use massive amounts of fuel cells in our transportation system as it exists today, when we are going to need a huge source of hydrogen. How are we going to do that? It takes a huge amount of electricity to disassociate hydrogen from oxygen in water. Now we are back to the problem of how are we going to generate that much electricity? And we all remember what happened to the Hindenburg, right? Hydrogen is a very explosive gas.

The problem, ecologically speaking, with hybrids is that they indeed reduce the amount of gasoline consumed, and therefore reduce emissions. However, hybrids also introduce the same problem with batteries that was not present with purely gasoline-powered vehicles. These batteries need to be produced, and produced in an environmentally friendly as method as possible, and a way must be devised to dispose of these batteries in a similar manner.

I am not arguing that our society should not use these types of vehicles. I am just saying that we should not let ourselves, once again, be deluded into thinking that we are doing the “right thing” by an industry who wants to sell you something. Let’s not just fix one big problem by introducing new problems. And, most certainly, let's not just pretend we are doing our part because we happen to drive one of these new vehicles and figure that everything else is just "someone else's problem."

Another great shot from Hubble.

Because I am really bummed out by everything else that's going on....

(You can click on the picture to get a slightly larger version.)

I have maintained, for quite some time, that the stock market is just legalized gambling.

If you know what you are doing, there are opportunities there for you to make a killing. There are also opportunities for you to lose your life’s savings, even if you do know what you are doing. I remember one person at work was very offended when I said that during a discussion. "No, it's not!" It was like I had insulted his mother. That was the depth of his reaction. But I think I have been proven to be correct. The stock market is just one big roll of the dice, in my mind.

May 6, 2010 is a case in point. Getting near the end of the trading day, The Dow Jones Industrial dropped almost 1000 points. It was in total freefall. Brokers were panicking, CNBC “analysts” were panicking, and certainly those people heavily invested in the stock market that set up their Blackberries to get programmed alerts if certain things happen were panicking.

From HuffPo:

At this point no one knows why. Some say it was sudden burst of worries about Greece's debt and the increasing possibility of a default that might cause a run by global investors. Others point to a "trading error." Giant high-speed computers generate millions of trades based on instructions embedded in computer programs designed to move fast enough to beat everyone else. So when there's a glitch in one of them it can immediately spread to all the other programs designed to move just as fast. Some say it was an erroneous trade entered by someone at a big Wall Street bank who mistyped an order to sell a large block of stock, and that the big drop in that stock's price (Procter & Gamble?) triggered "sell" orders across the market.

Regardless of why it happened, it's further evidence that the nation's and the world's capital markets have become a vast out-of-control casino in which fortunes can be made or lost in an instant -- which would be fine except for the fact that most of us have put our life savings there. Pension funds, mutual funds, school endowments -- the value of all of this depends on a mechanism that can lose a trillion dollars in minutes without anyone having a clear idea why. So much of the market now depends on computer programs and mathematical models that no one fully understands, so much trading is in the hands of a few people whose fat thumbs or momentary carelessness might sink the economy, so much of global wealth now depends on who can move their money quickest at the slightest provocation -- that we are toying with financial disaster every day. The luck or foolishness of a few traders, and inside knowledge and information that some possess and others don't, combined with ultra high-speed computers, put us all at the whim of a system whose risk is way out of proportion to any public benefits.

The stock market now is just one more out-of-control element in our out-of-control society, and this event, if there was still a doubt after the the Big Meltdown of 2008, should give absolute proof for anyone willing to actually see. That’s the problem, though. There are very few people who are willing to actually see what is going on and to take action. There are too many vested interests that want to maintain things exactly the way they are.

This is just such an obvious indication (to me, anyway) that we have lost control of the beast who once served us so well. If this article is true and no one really knows what happened, or if they do know for certain that it was some sort of “error” on a big trade that triggered all sorts of computer programs to automatically kick in with their sell orders, then we have big trouble on our hands. This is Frankenstein’s Monster. We will never know when it will turn on its “Masters.”

The stock market is a very strange thing, in my mind. It’s original intent was to provide industry the working capital it needed to invest in itself. Money has to come from somewhere in order to expand. Therefore, stocks and stockholders were invented as a way for the company to obtain the capital it needed and for the stockholders to have an investment in that company. I wasn’t around back then, of course, but my understanding of the early Twentieth Century mindset is that stocks were regarded as long-term investments. They were something to be held on to, rather like U.S. Savings Bonds are today. The stock market was not really invented for people and corporations to make a quick buck or huge fortunes by manipulating their holdings on a daily basis. But that’s what it has become, and everyone has gotten in on the game.

I haven’t trusted the stock market in a long time. I have had almost 100% of my holdings (mostly two 401K accounts) in bonds and stable growth funds. Yes, I know that is terribly, terribly conservative. Financially, that’s who I am. If I don’t understand something, I don’t get involved. And I certainly didn’t understand what was going on in the late 90’s and early “aughts.” As a result, I wasn’t pulling down 15 to 20% a year on my investments, like everyone else in this country seemed to think was some sort of God-given right. If they weren’t making that much, there was something terribly wrong and they were going to go find somewhere else to put their money. I have talked to those kinds of people, so I know that mindset existed. However, all these mutual funds and other types of investments that were packaged such that people thought their investments were diversified all collapsed pretty much at the same time, for the same reason. Many people lost 50% or more of their investments, which they had regarded as safe. My investments, on the other hand, kept plugging away at their usual very slow growth, without a single drop in value through this period. Who knows? Maybe I would have come out about the same if I would have been making all sorts of money on my investments and then lost it back. I might be just about in the same place as I am now. But I know that I didn’t really want to experiment with what I see as my retirement. That is not a place for me to be playing around in something I know that I don’t understand. But yet, I seem to be one of the few people in the country who thought like that. Even now, people and companies are still trying to find a way back to those heady days of 20% return on investments. Maybe so. Maybe those days will return eventually. But I know one thing. Until I can be convinced that our financial system isn’t some sort of out-of-control monster that will turn around and devour its “master” without warning, I know that I am going to remain a very conservative investor.

UPDATE: Via Attaturk.

Reports from CNBC and our own sources suggest that it was a Citigroup (C) trader that accidentally entered a sell BILLION-size sell trade, when they meant to do million.

Since the market came back and only ended down over 3%, all the focus now is on what happened. There's going to be an investigation into Proctor & Gamble (PG) trading, Accenture (ACN) and the market as a whole.

O.K., this pretty much makes my point. Any time we can experience an almost instantaneous meltdown of the Dow Jones due to a single keystroke error, then this system is really screwed and we are f*cked. I don't care if the market recovered pretty quickly. This is a screwed up system. One more thing in our society that no one really understands, but is yet entirely of our making.

UPDATE II: It appears that people who should know still have no idea of what caused this instantaneous crash and almost as instantaneous recovery. People, human beings, are going through a huge number of trades to try to figure out what happened. They don't know. I am very intrigued by several reports that a number of trades were "obviously in error" and were being cancelled. Really? Now, just how do people know that? We couldn't tell with the Florida ballots in 2000. What makes for an "erroneous trade"? And how do you "cancel" them without screwing over someone else? Maybe it was because some huge corporations lost lots of money, and that is what made their trades "erroneous?" I wonder if the little guy is getting as good attention.

This all reminds me of that old movie "War Games", where a computer sort of takes over and mixes reality and a test exercise to the possible elimination of the human species. Rather silly movie, if nothing more than the presence of Matthew Broderick. However, the part about the computer taking over and causing vast destruction, without the slightest comprehension by the people who designed the computer and without a hope in hell of heading off the catastrophe? That seems really plausible right now.

10 Minute History Lesson: Was Katherine Howard a slut?

The final season of Showtime’s The Tudors is having a sexy old time with Katheryn Howard, who viewers first saw as a naked nymph on a garden swing. For subsequent appearances she donned clothes, though given the high-school-cheerleader mien adopted by actress Tamzin Merchant, you’d think that a short skirt and tight pep sweater would be more appropriate.

The real Katheryn was young, no doubt about that, and foolish, impulsive, imperious — but probably not as much of a knockout as the series would have us think. Since no absolutely authenticated portrait of Katheryn exists, we have only the words of her contemporaries — one of whom calls her “a young lady of moderate beauty but superlative grace, in stature small and slender.” The portrait shown here is often identified as Katheryn; if so, it looks like she unfortunately inherited the Howard nose.

Not that an oversized sniffer or her moderate beauty were handicaps. By all accounts, she was full of life: dancing, smiling, entrancing all who saw her. We’d call her bubbly today, and that was a large part of her charm. She certainly dazzled Henry, as she’d dazzled men like Henry Mannox and Francis Dereham before him.

She grew up as the daughter of one of the least wealthy of the Howards — her father was Edmund Howard, brother of the third Duke of Norfolk. He seems to have been a bit of a flub, never gaining Henry VIII’s affection or even his trust. His first marriage was to Jocasta Culpepper, and one of their ten children was Katheryn Howard. The impecunious family welcomed the chance for Katheryn to live with her grandmother, the Dowager Duchess, joining young people of her relatively high birth but low economic standing in what amounted to an aristocratic boarding and finishing school. Living in a super-heated (but half-supervised) atmosphere of courtly pubescence, Katheryn must have shared in the declarations of love that preceded sexual dalliance. Our own age might label her emotionally neglected by her family; certainly she and Dereham seem to have made promises to each other that she’d later claim amounted to a pre-contract of marriage. Her grandmother called it something else when she caught wind of the affair, beating Dereham and sending Katheryn to the chaplain for moral correctives.

It was her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and Bishop Gardiner who probably brought her to Henry’s attention — not the work of Francis Bryan, as the TV series would have it — as a way of breaking the Anne of Cleves marriage and bringing down Thomas Cromwell. Did Katheryn tell the anti-Cleves faction about her chequered past? Unlikely; though sexually experienced, she was a political innocent and probably saw only what was dangled before her: the chance to be queen of England.

Why did she throw the chance away, first by engaging Dereham as her secretary, then by having an affair with one of Henry’s gentlemen of the bedchamber, Thomas Culpepper? That secret died with her, but in the case of Culpepper — most likely a cousin — it seems to have been an 18-year-old’s love for a young man universally praised for his good looks. Her barely-literate declaration of that love pulses passion across the centuries:

Master Culpeper,

I heartily recommend me unto you, praying you to send me word how that you do. It was showed me that you was sick, the which thing troubled me very much till such time that I hear from you praying you to send me word how that you do, for I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and to speak with you, the which I trust shall be shortly now. That which doth comfortly me very much when I think of it, and when I think again that you shall depart from me again it makes my heart die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company. It my trust is always in you that you will be as you have promised me, and in that hope I trust upon still, praying you that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here for then I shall be best at leisure to be at your commandment, thanking you for that you have promised me to be so good unto that poor fellow my man which is one of the griefs that I do feel to depart from him for then I do know no one that I dare trust to send to you, and therefore I pray you take him to be with you that I may sometime hear from you one thing. I pray you to give me a horse for my man for I had much ado to get one and therefore I pray send me one by him and in so doing I am as I said afor, and thus I take my leave of you, trusting to see you shortly again and I would you was with me now that you might see what pain I take in writing to you.

Yours as long as life endures,
Katheryn.

Then to Culpepper. The Tudors is an intriguing series — not because of what they get wrong, because there’s a lot of that, but because of what they get right. In this case, theirs might be the first historical retelling to include the nasty back story on Thomas Culpepper, so often shown as an innocent young man who unfortunately bites forbidden fruit. Yes, the episode showing Culpepper raping the wife of a park-keeper is accurate; he was convicted of that crime and of the murder of at least one person who came to the woman’s aid. However, he was pardoned by Henry, who sometimes favored such high-spirited young gentlemen. (He did the same for the Earl of Surrey, but don’t get me going about the series’ inaccuracies regarding that scion of English nobility.)

With Culpepper and Katheryn, who seduced whom? Possibly Katheryn was hoping to become pregnant by Culpepper and pass off his baby as the king’s, since Henry’s health and obesity made another heir a long shot — but it’s more likely that once she realized how under the gold-tissue trappings of royalty lay an aging, ailing man, Katheryn became disillusioned and ripe for an emotional connection of her own making.

In any case, though several romances of Katheryn include in her dying words on the scaffold the statement “I die queen of England, but I would rather have been the wife of Thomas Culpepper,” there’s little doubt she felt the sentiment. Ill-educated, hungry for affection and fed on visions of courtly love, Katheryn inspires considerable pity. In the bare-bones picture we have of her inner life, there are hints that she was playing at a game of the courtly ideal, armed with little beyond her youth and energy. It wasn’t enough. Abandoned by Henry, repudiated by the Howards, she had to face death alone. The night before her short life ended, she had an executioner’s block brought to her rooms so she could practice placing her head properly. The image is heartbreaking. Was she hoping, perhaps, that the physical grace she’d relied on for sustenance would be enough to take her into the next world?

(Posted by Philm Phan. For more on Henry's wives, this one about Anne of Cleves, click here.)

The Georgia legislature is at it again, gives thumbs up to carrying guns in Atlanta Hartsfield airport.

From U.S.A. Today:

Lawmakers in Georgia have approved a bill that would allow gun owners to carry their licensed firearms at parts of Atlanta Hartsfield, despite the airport's vigorous opposition.

The legislation, which is waiting for Gov. Sonny Perdue's signature, would permit carrying of firearms in areas that are not controlled by the federal government, such as terminals and parking lots.

It expands on a state law passed in 2008 that allows Georgia residents with firearm licenses to bring concealed weapons onto public transportation, in parks and recreational areas and into restaurants that serve alcohol. Gun advocates have since been lobbying to expand the law to include the airport.

Well, now. Isn’t that just the most wonderful thing you could imagine? I am betting that if they could have gotten away with it, they would have approved carrying guns into areas controlled by the federal government, including airplanes. That’s how insane this seems to have gotten. There is absolutely no reason to need to carry weapons anywhere near an airport. What’s the point? Does the Georgia legislature really think that people with guns will deter hijackers or terrorists? Or is it more just because those evil lie-burals don’t want guns at airports, as well as many other places? This goes to the point I made in an earlier post. It just has to do with human psychology and what passes for social norms these days. Conservatives promoting gun ownership are now hard-wired to not accept ANY limits. There doesn’t have to be a reason, other than “no one tells ME where I can carry my gun!” That’s obviously the only rationale at play here.

Christ, don’t these people have real problems to fix?

Update: Louisiana, not to be outdone, introduces a bill that would allow carrying people to bring guns into churches.

"God gives us locks on our doors," said Horton, adding: "We buy fire extinguishers in case there's a fire." This bill would simply offer a "final stage of security" for those churches that choose it.

Uh-huh...

Well, it's good to know that the state of Louisiana doesn't have any REAL problems that they might try to deal with.

Rush Limbaugh thinks SWAT teams blew up Deep Horizons drilling rig.

From Think Progress:

LIMBAUGH: I want to get back to the timing of the blowing up, the explosion out there in the Gulf of Mexico of this oil rig….Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day. I remember that. And then it was postponed for a couple of days later after Earth Day, and then of course immigration has now moved in front of it. But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they’re sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they’re sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here.

So… SWAT teams, no doubt at the beck and call of President Obama, went down to the Gulf of Mexico and blew up an oil drilling rig, causing perhaps the biggest environmental catastrophe this country has seen, because… environmentalist wackos are very concerned that more drilling will likely result in a catastrophic accident, so.... they cause an environmental catastrophe on purpose?

Is that what Rush is really saying? I think that is the point he is making, but I can’t tell. That would sort of like be burning down your house because you are afraid that your house might burn down. Is that what Rush is insinuating there?

These people don’t even care if they are making sense. They just say whatever comes into their tiny, tiny little minds that is critical of Obama and the Democrats. Nothing needs to actually make any logical sense. The only objective is to get crap out there that shows how evil Democrats really are.

Absolutely insane….