Does God Love SUVs?

The above picture is from yesterday's Times. What are they thinking? One of Detroit's problems is that they make cars America doesn't want. What, is God going to buy them?

Pentecostal Bishop Charles H. Ellis III, who shared the sanctuary’s wide altar with three gleaming sport utility vehicles, closed his sermon by leading the choir and congregants in a boisterous rendition of the gospel singer Myrna Summers’s “We’re Gonna Make It” as hundreds of worshipers who work in the automotive industry — union assemblers, executives, car salesmen — gathered six deep around the altar to have their foreheads anointed with consecrated oil.

Oy vey! First, God doesn't care what happens with the auto industry. Second, the Big Three are not a governmental welfare agency. They are a business. And they don't want to change. Declare bankruptcy, dump your high-salaried corporate boobs, and restructure your legacy costs.

God helps those who help themselves.

Sign 'O The Times

The above picture comes from Sunday's New York Times. Republic Window and Doors on the North Side of Chicago closed its doors on Friday. Except the workers haven't left. Some of them occupied the factory all weekend. Good for them.

The workers, members of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, said they were owed vacation and severance pay and were not given the 60 days of notice generally required by federal law when companies make layoffs.

And where are the jobs going? Of course, overseas. Republic owed money to Bank of America, late of the Paulson bailout, which stopped Republic from giving its employees the back pay they were owed.

“Here the banks like Bank of America get a bailout, but workers cannot be paid?” said Leah Fried, an organizer with the union workers. “The taxpayers would like to see that bailout go toward saving jobs, not saving C.E.O.’s.”

We sure would, but I'm not going to start holding my breath. We know with whom the politicians go to dinner, and it isn't us. We need to celebrate the collective action of workers again. We need unions in this country, again. Someone has to speak for the needs of labor when the spoils are divied in Washington.

- Why did I pull the Republic story from the Times, and not the Tribune? Great question. Energizing redesign notwithstanding, the Trib sucks. I subscribe to it because I always have.

Today, the Tribune announced it was filing for bankruptcy. I still can't get over it. Sure, the paper will still run, and 'GN will remain on the airwaves, but the TRIBUNE CO. filed for BANKRUPTCY!!? The largest media company in Chicago, the owner of the Chicago Cubs, is BANKRUPT? Wow. I never thought there would be a time when the Trib didn't exist. But it is coming. The end of the newspaper era is upon us. The place where nearly every writer got started, the urban daily, will soon cease to exist. As both a writer and newspaper lover, I can't help but get a little misty.

And scared. What will replace newspapers? Who will speak truth to power?

Odetta: 1930-2008

Odetta, one of the leading voices of the '50s folk revival, died Tuesday. Odetta coincidentally died a few weeks after Studs Terkel, who introduced her to me through his WFMT show. Odetta sounded like no one else; like a cross between Bo Diddley and Nina Simone maybe. Her guitar-playing was as spare and plain as could be, but her voice, well, her voice was like the dark side of soul music. Sam Cooke and Ray Charles brought soul to Whites by taking out the pain. Odetta reveled in the pain. It was very much heavy metal folk.

Odetta influenced many. From Odetta, we get the Staples Singers, Bob Dylan, and The Band. She played at the March on Washington in 1963, so we can also thank her for President-elect Obama. I know she will be rocking out on January 20 of next year, and Studs will be close at hand, passing a hat through that heavenly bar.

The New York Times has a great interview with her last year here.

Torture Just Doesn't Work

I know it seems like, no matter what President-elect Obama says, we are already post-Bush in this country. The messy economic picture, the war drums sounding from India and Pakistan, and the imminent celebration of Christmas in January (Obama's inauguration!) make the chore of looking back on the last eight years truly disheartening. But as a history student, I am a firm believer that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And one lesson I hope was learned by the 110th Congress is how truly awful and nation-staining our interrogation policy is. We should do whatever we can to rewrite those rules immediately.

Matthew Alexander led a Special Forces interrogation unit in Iraq during the bloody chaos of 2006. The title of his op-ed piece in Sunday's Washington Post says it all- 'I'm Still Tortured By What I Saw In Iraq'.

Our new interrogation methods [investigative instead of physcially and mentally punishing-Ed.] led to one of the war's biggest breakthroughs: We convinced one of Zarqawi's associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader's location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders.

But Zarqawi's death wasn't enough to convince the joint Special Operations task force for which I worked to change its attitude toward interrogations. The old methods continued. I came home from Iraq feeling as if my mission was far from accomplished. Soon after my return, the public learned that another part of our government, the CIA, had repeatedly used waterboarding to try to get information out of detainees.

I know the counter-argument well -- that we need the rough stuff for the truly hard cases, such as battle-hardened core leaders of al-Qaeda, not just run-of-the-mill Iraqi insurgents. But that's not always true: We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, "I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate."

Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there's the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

The damage our interrogation policy has done to our image as a beacon of light to the world will take many administrations to correct. Terrorism is a crime, and it should be dealt with by trained criminal investigators. There is no armed military solution to terrorism, as Gen. Petraeus has shown us during his tenure leading our forces in Iraq. If you beat people enough, they will tell you they are Santa Claus. That is the truth.

24 is a popular TV show. It is not the real world. When you torture people you exacerbate crime, not eliminate it.

- On the same tip, in Sunday's New York Times Jonathan Mahler writes that the war on terrorism will never be only fought through our judicial process.

Mr. Obama may be more inclined to prosecute suspected terrorists in the federal courts than Mr. Bush has been, and he may even avoid referring to the battle against terrorism as a “war.” But ceding the military paradigm altogether would severely limit his ability to fight terrorism. On a practical level, it would prevent him from operating in a zone like the tribal areas of Pakistan, where American law does not reach.

“If you seriously dialed it back to the criminal-justice apparatus you will paralyze the executive branch’s ability to go where they believe the bad guys are,” says Benjamin Wittes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. “When people talk about a return to the criminal-justice system, they’re ignoring the geographical limits of that system.”

OK, then we need to set up a national security court which provides some recourse for those apprehended in other countries. Flying around the world and picking off the bad guys will continue to bite us in the ass. We need to make sure we are giving all detainees as much due process as we can. We're America, for God sakes. We don't stand for unwarranted imprisonment.

The Trouble With Citigroup

Citigroup became the very latest domino to fall in '08's Great American Bank Bailout. According to today's Economist, we will guarantee $306 billion dollars of bad mortgage debt and give them $20 billion in cash in return for $27 billion dollars in rapidly dropping Citgroup stock. What a deal!

How did America's largest bank find itself in such desperate straits? Greed, lack of oversight, and...did I mention greed? According to the Times, David C. Bushnell, Citigroup's senior risk officer, was buddy-buddy with the traders he was meant to oversee.

It was common in the bank to see Mr. Bushnell waiting patiently — sometimes as long as 45 minutes — outside Mr. Barker’s office so he could drive him home to Short Hills, N.J., where both of their families lived. The two men took occasional fly-fishing trips together; one expedition left them stuck on a lake after their boat ran out of gas.

Because Mr. Bushnell had to monitor traders working for Mr. Barker’s bond desk, their friendship raised eyebrows inside the company among those concerned about its controls.

"Hey, Dave, remember that time we ran out of gas on your boat?"

"Yeah, Randy?"

"That was awesome!"

"Sure was, Randy. But not as awesome as the time I helped you take on billions in unsecured mortage debt, which would later almost cause our whole bank to collapse!"

"Yeah, that was wicked. But, hey, we still have our jobs."

And there's the rub. The good news today from the Washington Post is that the Obama Deal sounds like it will be $700 billion on infrastructure and jobs. The bad news is that tax cuts are included with that package, which will make it all the more expensive eventually. And that Obama is being advised by former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, who was (who woulda thunk it?) an 'influential director and senior advisor' at Citibank!

NO, President-elect Obama. No damaged goods. They made the mess, they do not advise on the clean-up. Or do you need to be reminded of the current Treasury Mess, Hank Paulson? Send Rubin away. Now. We're watching.

Detroit Broke City

Paul Ingrassia in today's Wall Street Journal writes that bailout or not, Detroit is broke.

Yesterday, congressional leaders gave the car companies until Dec. 2 to come up with viable business plans and renew their request for aid. Meanwhile, it's worth examining the myths that are shaping this debate. One is GM's assertion that "bankruptcy is not an option." In truth, GM already has conceded that it's bankrupt -- by publicly stating it's nearly out of cash and needs emergency assistance. The company hasn't made a formal bankruptcy filing, which is no small matter. But it has declared bankruptcy everywhere else. Chrysler, at this week's Senate committee hearing, did the same.

A second myth is that management changes in Detroit would be pointless. GM CEO Rick Wagoner said he wouldn't resign to secure federal aid for his company. This was like Louis XIV saying, "L'État c'est moi." Mr. Wagoner explained that he didn't see "what purpose would be served." Well, the same one served by the presidential election in this country three weeks ago: to bring in somebody new to try some fresh ideas to fix things.

Mr. Wagoner has been GM's chief executive officer for eight years. Even before this year's calamity struck (the company lost $181,000 per minute in the second quarter), the company's U.S. market share, financial results and stock price had plunged precipitously.

$181, 000 per minute! I don't know about what Paul thinks, but it takes real talent to blow that kind of money. Hell, I don't know if Hank Paulson could come up with that kind of money loser.

Let Detroit go bankrupt. Under bankruptcy protection, they can start to open up the union contracts and other legacy costs which guarantee they lose money on every car they sell (yes, you actually read that right). The restructuring should come with the resignations of Wagoner from GM and Nardelli from Chrysler.

Congress passed the first important step-a step which I was very skeptical they would make. They turned down the Detroit 3 once. They stripped Hot Rod John Dingell of his chairmanship. All very impressive. But the automakers shall return in January for round two. We must make sure we don't throw more of our money toward a broken industry.

- Mitt Romney, scion of Detroit's ruling class, wrote in Tuesday's New York Times that we should let Detroit go bankrupt.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check

When I agree with Mitt Romney, you better believe we're reaching some kind of consensus on this issue.

Paulson's Pot Of Gold

Shambollocks is on record as against the bailout. Open taxpayer checkbooks will not get us out of this crisis. Responsible leadership will. When Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asked for $700 billion dollars of our money from Congress, I was more than a little skeptical. First, he wanted complete control of the money with very little oversight. Second, as a life-long employee of Goldman Sachs, he would personally profit from a government buyout of Sachs' bad debt. Third, he did not lay out a coherent vision for where the money would go.

I don't like to say I told you so, but today's New York Times reports that Paulson doesn't know what he's doing. Plan A, buying bad debt, is out the window. Plan B, creating some kind of government 'bank' which would foster lending, sounds thoroughly half-baked. The Democrats want to give money to Detroit to save the unions. President-elect Obama remains silent. One, he's not President. Two, this is a seemingly no win situation. I have an idea. Why don't we sit down and take a little time to come up with a coherent strategy between the incoming and outgoing administrations instead of playing the 'React to the Dow Jones' game? The economic teams from both sides get into a room for a week, come out and tell the American people where we're going. Even if a solid solution isn't reached, it would at least show that both parties can lead through a crisis together.

Bad money has already left the building. Let's make sure the next semis of cash that leave the Treasury have a well-thought out plan behind them. Please.

- Details on the complete lack of congressional oversight on the $700 billion (of which $290 billion is already gone) in today's Washington Post.

What The World Can Do For Us

Thomas Friedman, resident sage of the New York Times and Shambollocks favorite, wrote yesterday on what an Obama presidency should expect from the global community.

So to everyone overseas I say: thanks for your applause for our new president. I’m glad you all feel that America “is back.” If you want Obama to succeed, though, don’t just show us the love, show us the money. Show us the troops. Show us the diplomatic effort. Show us the economic partnership. Show us something more than a fresh smile. Because freedom is not free and your excuse for doing less than you could is leaving town in January.

Hmmm...I don't think the world is going to snap back into line behind an Obama administration. Further, I believe that Friedman's wish reflects the exact same type of arrogance which earned us international calumny. The mess we created in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be shared by the international community just by an Obama victory. No, I imagine it will take some diplomatic effort and Obama charm.

Instead of these high expectations, how about an Obama administration which begins its diplomatic dialogues with a dose of humility? Just as this momentous election reflects positively on all Americans, the last eight years reflect negatively-and the misdeeds of the last eight years need to be addressed. By all means, President Obama need not apologize for his predecessor, but he should acknowlege how we found ourselves here. After that, President Obama can demonstrate that he has learned from our mistakes and is willing to be more cooperative with our allies. Only after those conditions have been met should we expect to receive any international assistance in Iraq or Afghanistan.

We lack the superpower strength we held at the beginning of the Bush administration. China and Russia, in particular, realize that we do not have the same support amongst our allies, particularly in Europe. An honest effort to open dialogue with Iran would be a terrific first step. But until we show a willingness to eat a little crow, I don't know how we can expect ridiculous offers of monetary and military aid to clean up our own international messes.

Friedman Field Dresses Palin

Shambollocks has made itself very clear before- we believe the next American president should raise taxes across the board, but most heavily against the rich. America is drowning in debt, and now we have to pay off a $700 billion dollar buyout of bad bank debt to boot. Somebody, somewhere has to pony up the cash. If we don't pay it off with tax revenue, we have to pay it off by borrowing more money from China.

The Republicans don't like taxes. They don't think they should pay them. They think the other guy should. Sarah Palin even said that paying taxes was not patriotic during the VP debate. Good ole Thomas Friedman takes her down in yesterday's New York Times.

Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”

What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.

I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.

Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”

I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.

How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now?

Yes they do, Thomas. But they don't care. The Republican party represents the haves, and the haves will walk out of this crisis quite alright. It will be the have-nots who take it on the chin, have to make career switches and put off retirement, and get told that they're 'real Americans' and that their values are protected. The Republicans will leave us all destitute, but by golly, our marriages will still be sacred!

How Tom Wolfe's Masters of the Universe Are Faring

Even though we Americans still await someone, anyone to step into the Great Leadership Vacuum of 2008 (seriously, is there ANYONE out there who wants to be the adult and speak bluntly about what lies ahead of us, post-bailout? McCain? Obama? Jim Belushi? Every passing day makes me a bigger fan of Lincoln and FDR), our great writers have begun to add their two cents. Saturday it was Tom Wolfe, who checked in on his 'Masters of the Universe' for the New York Times. Shambollocks' long and passionate admiration for Mr. Wolfe's career has already been noted. Take it away, Tommy:

So where does this leave the Masters of the Universe? In Greenwich, Conn., mainly. The hottest, brightest, most ambitious young men began abandoning investment banking in favor of hedge funds six years ago. Your correspondent can describe scenes of raging carotid-aneurytic anger as the young hotshots resigned. Security goons seized them by the elbow and marched them off the floor at six miles an hour. They couldn’t touch anything in or on their desks — not even the framed picture of Mom and Buddy and Sis, propped upright from behind by little cardboard wings covered in synthetic velvet — so furious were their superiors. Their biggest producers and future leaders were walking out on them.

Greenwich is the center of the Masters’ hedge-fund world, replacing Wall Street. For five years, the heart of Wall Street, the fabled Floor of the New York Stock Exchange, has been gradually emptying out. A hundred years ago, the Floor was a club for gentlemen oligarchs. Only men with social credentials could have one of the insider “seats” on the Floor. By last year, when your correspondent paid his one and only visit to the Floor, one member came up to another and informed him that he, like so many others recently, was leaving the Exchange for good.

“What will you be doing?”

“I’m joining the Fire Department.”

“The Fire Department? In what capacity?”

“I’ll be a firefighter. The pension plan is awesome.”

Incidentally, there are no seats on the Floor, none that this correspondent ever saw. The Exchange is already an anachronism, like Broadway. Everything is done by computer today. Hanging out on the Floor of the Exchange is like hanging out at OTB. Broadway and the Exchange are like the first thing you see when you enter Disneyland in California. You find yourself in a turn-of-the-last-century town with a trolley and an apothecary and a barber shop. That’s Broadway and Wall Street today.

It may dash your hopes for that nice warm feeling called Schadenfreude, but the Masters of the Universe are smarter than the people they left behind at the investment banks. Their hedge funds have blown up here and there, but unlike the investment banks, they are still very much in business. They have hurriedly pulled themselves into defensive positions inside their shells, like turtles. Their Armageddon, if any, will not come for two more days, which is to say, Tuesday, Sept. 30.

Most hedge funds open up a crack on Sept. 30, Dec. 31, March 31 and June 30 to give investors the chance to “redeem” their investments, meaning take their money out. These moments are called gates, like a series of gates in a prison. The gate is the limit, the fixed percentage of your money, that the fund will allow you to take out at one time. Even with these strict caps on withdrawals, some funds may end up nothing but shells.

Shed no tears for the Masters of the Universe, however, not that your correspondent actually thought you might. Most of the young Masters already have their own personal nut free and clear. “Nut” is the term for the amount of money you need salted away in weather-proof investments in order to generate enough interest to live comfortably in Greenwich on Round Hill Road, Pecksland Road or Field Point Road in a house built before the First World War in an enchanting European style, preferably made of stone featuring the odd turret, with a minimum of five acres around it and big enough to be called a manor. Every Master of the Universe knows the number.

Well, thanks Mr. Wolfe. Now I look toward the end of the month with dread, knowing that this could be The Day The Hedge Funds Die. But that is what writers should do-inform us. And leaders should lead us. Which means someone, please, anyone, step up to a podium this week and, damn the election year, tell us where we are going. I would have much more faith for this bailout if those representatives of ours who have pushed for it could tell us where we will be afterwards with confidence. Scaring people is not leadership. It's fraud.

David Byrne's Bike Racks

I grew up in love with David Byrne. Not only did he share my mother's maiden name, but, along with colleagues like Joey Ramone and Elvis Costello, he made pop music an arena for nerds. Sure, we still got beat up and picked on, but all we had to do was listen to Fear of Music and we knew that someday our ship would arrive. Although the Talking Heads remain a legendary act, I've found the opinions on Byrne himself somewhat split. Some blame him for the break-up of his band (true enough), some find his other art projects since self-aggrandizing noodling (maybe valid).

Me, I still dig David. The man loves culture, high and low, and is an ardent champion of enlightened art in the public square. New York City's Department of Transportation installed the above Byrne-designed bike racks to bring attention to and promote biking in the city. The New York Times has a post about the installation here.

Do You Want To Stop Fighting The Vietnam War?

I do. I was born five years after the last American soldier left. I am thirty-years old, and I wish to live in a country which can get past the scarring, divisive wars of yesterday and settle on ending the wars of today. I do not wish for the next President of the United States to be, physically, carrying around the scars from that conflict.

As Col. Trautman told John Rambo, I believe we should all tell Sen. McCain.

"It's over, Johnny."

Do you want a hawk who was, days after 9/11, ready to attack Syria, Iran, and Iraq according to the New York Times?

“There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” Mr. McCain said the next morning on ABC News. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he added, on MSNBC. “I don’t think if you got bin Laden tomorrow that the threat has disappeared,” he said on CBS, pointing toward other countries in the Middle East.

Within a month he made clear his priority. “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN. By Jan. 2, Mr. McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!”

Do you trust this man with the security of our country and armed forces? A man who cannot, understandably, see outside the context of his own Hanoi imprisonment?

A vote for McCain means we will be dealing with the Iraq and Afganistan wars in 2012-guaranteed. Let's bring the soldiers home.

The Truth Behind the Energy Ads

I'm really digging the Olympics this year. Maybe it's because I just fell for the hype, or that I am thoroughly engaged by a gigantic country's coming-out party (this is the most historically significant Olympics since those of 1936 in Berlin (and let's hope it's not that kind of history in fifty years)). I like to think it's because I have a DVR and can FF'd through the non-stop Coca Cola and Nike ads. Two ads I do run across frequently are those by John McCain and Barack Obama. The two ads are freakishly similar, down to the same stock footage, and state that either candidate has the best energy plan and their opponent's sucks.

Thomas Friedman wrote in Tuesday's New York Times that neither McCain or Obama was around to vote in an extension of solar and wind energy tax credits, thereby basically putting a moratorium on alternative energy for '09.

The fact that Congress has failed eight times to renew them is largely because of a hard core of Republican senators who either don’t want to give Democrats such a victory in an election year or simply don’t believe in renewable energy.

What impact does this have? In the solar industry today there is a rush to finish any project that would be up and running by Dec. 31 — when the credits expire — and most everything beyond that is now on hold. Consider the Solana concentrated solar power plant, 70 miles southwest of Phoenix in McCain’s home state. It is the biggest proposed concentrating solar energy project ever. The farsighted local utility is ready to buy its power.

EIGHT TIMES? Wow. Hey, the Democrats are actually trying at least.

People, the Republicans are devastating our energy plans. Do not believe McCain's distortions.

And Barack, you got to show up for the big votes, brother. No free passes here.

Aye Yi Yi!

Barack Obama has reversed his energy policy, and now wants to open up the strategic oil reserves according to the Washington Post. At this very moment, House Republicans are trying to pass legislation that will expand Arctic drilling. Yes, Virginia, this really is an election year.

The politicians have heard it loud and clear-Americans are sick of high gas prices. Guess what, America? THEY'RE NOT GOING DOWN!

Not in the short-term. Not in the long-term. The days of the under $4.00 gallon of gas are over. No matter how much we attempt to increase our own domestic production, the people of China and India will still control the market through their vast energy needs. This is Global Economics 101.

This is not the '70s. We are not the largest consumer of oil anymore. China is.

Why can't we have leaders who talk to America straight and let them know the truth? Barack, my principled friend, I'm looking in your direction. We need to ween people off oil.

Related: The New York Times reports on how the high price of oil is affecting the global economy. Good news for Mexico. Bad news for China.

The American University Scam

Nothing gets my goat more than American higher education. Our institutions of higher learning continue to increase their tuition and fees at an extreme rate while not interrupting their boondoggling of our youth and their parents. Want a great job for Sally? Well, Sally better go to an Ivy. Not for the education, but for the status that it will set for her. The whole practice is unseemly, and the definition of undemocratic. And unfortunately, this scam receives almost no ink from the press.

Well, The New York Times corrects that today. Some young phone fundraiser for Brown or Columbia must have really struck some reporter's nerve, or else they've decided to chase economic stories that don't involve food or gas (finally!).

In January, the Senate Finance Committee requested detailed endowment and
spending data from 136 colleges and universities with endowments of at least
$500 million, with a possible eye to forcing them to spend at least 5 percent of
their assets each year, as foundations are required to do. Large, tax-free
endowments “should mean affordable education for more students, not just a
security blanket for colleges,” said Senator Charles
E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who is reviewing the data.

Wow! You mean universities should use some of the money they raise to offset their higher costs, instead of just passing the bills to the student/consumer? What a crazy idea!

Wake up America. Today's college degree is primarily worthless unless you utilize a university's resources to find your dream job, or just want to learn a secret handshake. And even with all that, there's not much guarantee. Have your kid get a job, save their money, go to the local juco, and figure what they really want to do. Because university's breed confusion and exhaustion. That's how they keep you coming back for more degrees.

Related, a Harvard TA describes life at the square in The Times Higher Education.

Barack in the Middle

So Barack is getting it pretty good of late from us liberals. Seems some of us thought that we had a leader on our hands, someone who would fight for some key guarantees we Americans take for granted.

It turns out we were wrong. Barack has decided that now is not the right time for controversial votes, so he up and gave Bush what he wanted on FISA. In today's New York Times, Gail Collins writes that this is what Barack preached all along. Apparently, we liberals were duped. According to Gail, the FISA vote:

Put[s] some restrictions on the government’s ability to wiretap[, and] is
better than nothing, even though he [Barack] would rather have gone
further.

Really? Because to me the vote legalizes the criminal actions of this administration and the telecom industry while allowing for increasing privacy violations.

Barack is the one who has been duped, Gail. And he and his advisors better get back on point before bad votes like this leave a stain his charisma can't clean.

Dress Like A Stepford Mormon

You sat at home throughout the news of the Yearning for Zion raid, and later court actions, and your first thought wasn't, "These are some severely brainwashed and backward-ass women," but "I would look terrific in one of those Laura Ingalls Wilder dresses these ladies rock." You're in luck! You can buy the dresses here, at the Church's website. Yes, you too can look like the accomodator for the rape of your own daughters!

Next time some conservative wingnut tries to state that urbanites live in pestilence and sin, someone remind him about this group of rapists out in the Texas bush.

Seriously, anyone else want to vote Texas and Florida out of the union?

From an article in the Times.

Your New Milk Jug

I'm a big fan of process. I loved when Mr. Rogers would show us how your mail arrives, or how milk gets to your table. Well, watch out. Our milk is changing. It's getting square.

I felt like George Costanza a few months ago when I ran into the new carton at my folks (they're so hip it hurts). George believes that toilet paper will never change, and I thought milk delivery would remain the same. It isn't. According to the New York Times, the new cartons are greener and cheaper. Cheaper they must be, or Bill Brett would never have it in his house.

Get ready to learn how to pour milk-all over again.

Your Farm Report

The Times has an article today about the effects the wild weather in the Midwest this spring will have on food prices in the coming year. As I am marrying into an agricultural family, I now have some first-hand knowledge of this world. I can't do justice to the level of frustration Kara's father expressed
while Iowa absorbed inch after inch of rain. The picture above is of a corn field in Indiana, and that crop should be more than a foot tall by now. When the Midwest doesn't produce their usual amount of corn this year, we will see this reflected in the price we pay for everything at the grocery store.

Farmers will remain much more susceptible to the effects of climate change as the indictators of global warming increase. Of course, much of their livelihoood depends on their ability to adapt to changes in soil, climate, and technology. But the years ahead will present even greater challenges as I have not read many studies on how farmers should adapt to a world warmer than any they've ever known.

Times Travel Writer Sox It To The Cell

Yep, some Times travel writer gets the sweet gig of visiting all the ballparks in the country, and then turns around and dumps on the best ballpark food in America. And the worst part? He recommends the Italian Sausage at Wrigley over ANYTHING at the Cell.

I was going to post a lacerating comment, but enough of us ChiSox fans rallied to save our rep I felt no need.

The guy says he's a native Chicagoan, but then says he likes Vienna Beef dogs over Best Kosher? Get real.