Bush Breaks the Crazification Barrier

Did you know that by hitting a 19% approval rating, Bush has broken a major law of politics? I bet you didn’t….

John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is –

Tyrone: 27%.

John: … you said that immediately, and with some authority.

Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgment. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.

John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behaviour? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?

Tyrone: Hadn’t thought about it. Let’s split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification — either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.

John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?

Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?

John: … a bit low, actually.

(the whole post, a golden oldie, is absolutely hilarous – do read it)

Still, he still hasn’t quite caught up to Big Time’s 18%. However you look at it, we’re (thankfully) a long, long way from the days where the LBEONT* measure of political popularity is a useful tool.

* Whether or not a particular figure’s political base would survive that person eating a live baby on national television. If yes, then how many babies. Think anyone in the GOP leadership immediately post 9/11 (except for Darth Cheney). I can’t claim credit for this one, and don’t remember who it came from.

Is It Funny?

I read over at Shakesville and Feministing about Margaret Cho’s blog entry on Sarah Palin.

I gotta say that it didn’t seem that bad, and kind of felt like a “shorter” expression of this set of ironic and satirical sentiments:

Livening Up the Party

According to William McChesney Martin, Jr., former Fed chairman, the Fed’s job was “to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going.”

I’d sort of agree with that, but also suspect that job description would aptly suit the Treasury as well.

Unfortunately…

Wall Street extended a huge rally Friday as investors stormed back into the market, relieved that the government plans to rescue banks from billions of dollars in bad debt. The Dow Jones industrials rose more than 375 points, giving them a massive gain of more than 785 points over two days, and Treasurys [sic] fell as money flowed into equities.

A new ban on short selling, or placing bets that a stock will fall, was likely adding to the market’s gains.

“A big chunk of this is scaring all the shorts to cover their bets,” said Joe Battipaglia, market strategist at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, speaking about the rescue plan said a bold approach is needed to remove troubled assets from the books of financial firms. He offered few details, but said he would work on it through the weekend with congressional leaders.

So not only did they not take away the punch bowl, they’re cleaning the carpets, ordering more booze, and breaking out the munchies. One more laugh line:

The government took other steps Friday to restore stability to the financial system. The Federal Reserve said it will expand its emergency lending and let commercial banks finance purchases of asset-backed paper from money market funds. The Fed will also buy short-term debt obligations issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks.

Translation: “In response to complaints such as ‘this party sucks,’ the government broke out the hookers and blow, announcing that a plan to hide the bodies of any overly-enthusiastic party-goers was ready for implementation, should it be needed.”

I need an antacid.

Update: CNN Does Stupid Polls:

BadgerCaption: Stupid Choices are Stupid

How about “has no idea what to do in response to a fundamentally ugly and impossible situation, and is doing their best to conceal that fact?”

Telling Humor

I just found this joke, and (like most humor I “get”), is amusing and horribly depressing at the same time.

A USMC sniper was real good at his job, and he had a method. He would yell out some insult at the enemy and when someone stood up to reply, BANG – one less insurgent!

After every mission the company commander would ask “How many insurgents have you shot today?” However, on this particular day when asked about the number killed, he reported “Five killed and I let one go, sir.”

“Let one go?” roared the company commander. “What do you mean, you let one go?”

“Well, sir, I yelled out ‘Osama is a Homo!’ Then this big insurgent stood up and yelled ‘Hillary is a Bitch!’ I just couldn’t shoot a fellow Republican!”

I leave the facepalm-inducing subtextual analysis as an exercise for the reader.

What Is Happening To Our Money???

I was going to write a post taking a stab at “where the hell is all of our money going in the U.S.?”. Instead I’ll take a stab at a crappy armchair answer: most of it didn’t exist in the first place as anything other than either loans or the multiplier effect of the Fed allowing banks to lend out ten times as much money as they actually have minus about 20 percent which must be retained as capital reserves. No, I’m not kidding.

So what’s happening is that more and more people and organizations are unable to pay these loans back, which means banks have less money to leverage into loans, which means less money to lend, which in an economy driven by debt means “you’re screwed.”. Yes, that’s a technical term.

Blogroll

I know, I need to do it. Give me some time; I just got the damn thing back up, for chrissakes.

It will be back.

Rev. Magdalene has a request.

Update: My original post about Rev. Magdalene’s fight, here

Don’t know how many of you remember Reverend Magdalene’s custody dispute case, where her ex dropped pictures of an X-day event in front of a Fundamentalist judge (with the predictable, if depressingly close-minded Shock and Outrage). Well, this judge – shortly before retiring – eventually handed custody back to the good Reverend. The problem is, that it’s not over yet:

Dear Friends,

Thank you so much for all your support over what has turned into years since this case began in December 2005. I’m sorry to have to intrude in your inbox again, but my ex is starting the custody case up again. This time, though, it might not go so horribly awry. Let me start at the baginning:

It has been a little over a year since August 2007, when I was finally allowed to return to Georgia with my son. Judge Punch reinstated himself on the case and removed custody from my ex after he was arrested for felony DUI. Although we were allowed to return home last August, it took us until last December to put our home back together more or less as it was, just in time to welcome home our newest family member,Valentine Bevilacqua! He was born a few weeks before Christmas and is nine months old now and full of rambunction. I usually spend my days stopping him from taking things apart and putting them in his mouth, as well as helping Kohl with his homework, and working at my job as a freelance corporate transcriptionist, and finding time once in a while to blog.

I have a pretty busy schedule, as you can imagine, so I was glad when in February we finally received a finalized Order from Judge Punch which, for the first time in these eleven years of strife, did not explicitly retain jurisdiction over future matters with Orleans County. This means that I have a shot at getting the jurisdiction of future cases changed to Georgia, the “home state” of the child in question. This is what normally happens when parents live in different states, but for eleven years Judge Punch chose to exercise his legal prerogative to keep the case in his jurisdiction. I won’t speculate on why, but last August he changed his mind and decided he would no longer keep the case in Orleans County.

Changing the jurisdiction of the case to Georgia would mean that my ex could no longer hold the threat of filing frivolous petitions over my head, as he has all these years. He would have to be serious enough about the matter to travel to Georgia to file. Changing jurisdiction would mean that any time there is a dispute, I wouldn’t have to give up my entire life, leave my husband and home, and go to a remote county in Upstate New York and stay until the matter ends, even if the case goes on for years. Also, any time the court had a question about Kohl’s schooling, home life, social life, healthcare, etc, all the evidence [doctors, teachers, friends, coaches] would be right there at hand. Basically, this jurisdictional change would be a huge weight lifted off our family.

Before jurisdiction could be changed, however, someone had to file in the old jurisdiction and then someone would have to put up a jurisdictional challenge at that time. You can’t just switch it automatically, I tried. Predictably, I didn’t have to wait long for my ex to file a new petition in Orleans County. Just six months from the final filing of the order, on August 19, 2008 I received a summons to appear on September 5, back in Orleans County to answer yet another handwritten petition from my ex, alleging violations of the order. Since February, Judge Punch has retired for health reasons, and the case is now going before Judge Michael Griffiths, who has no knowledge of the long and painful history of the case and may or may not agree with Punch’s decision to let it go to Georgia.

Although this new petition didn’t explicitly mention the SubGenius, neither did the original petition in December 2005. Anything can happen in Orleans County, so I was very frightened at opening this up again after only six months of respite. I passed the summons on to Mr. Mattingly, the “weapons grade lawyer” who got us this far, but he replied that he couldn’t represent me anymore, since, although I make payments to him when I can, I still owe him $32,000 from the case that ended in February.

When I first found that out, I seriously panicked. I only had about two weeks to find a new lawyer and come up with a retainer fee! I knew I couldn’t use a court-appointed lawyer, because the last time I did that, back in 1999, my appointed lawyer agreed not to tell me about a hearing they held without my presence, because Judge Punch didn’t want me to know he had switched custody. He felt I was a flight risk and it would be better to let me ignorantly come to New York for a Christmas visit, and then have sheriff’s deputies show up to collect my then-3-year-old son. So, I need a lawyer from the big city of Rochester, or Buffalo, not another one from Orleans County.

After a lot of exhaustive internet and phone research, I was able to secure some concessions from the court, such as a postponement to September 26, 2008, to give me more time to find a lawyer, and permission to testify by telephone rather than in person. Further, I was able to locate a lawyer who is a civil rights crusader, Mr. R. Brian Goewey, [GO-wei], who is not only available on the 26th, but is also willing to represent such a degenerate artist as myself, and who is willing to do it for half of what every other lawyer has quoted me! Truly the Luck Plane tilted my way when I found him.

We’ve made it so far from the days when I lived in a 10 by 12 box apartment crying myself to sleep every night, never knowing how my son was, never knowing if I would ever get him back. We’re so close to being free from the threat of being compelled to return to Orleans County, which has hung over our heads since my son was a baby. All we need is $2,500 to get started, with a full retainer of $5,000. Of course, if things go badly, it could run into another $80-$100,000, but I’m focusing my slack waves on the thought that this new Judge Griffiths is going to be reasonable and let us go. If everyone who receives this email donates just $10, it would easily cover Mr. Goewey’s fees. I realize this is the worst possible time to ask for money again, with gas prices and food prices and unemployment the way they are, but I can’t raise more than about $1,500 on my own, not by September 26 anyway. I’m forced to once again appeal to you, who’ve helped our family so much in the past, for one more push to finally get free.

Thank you so very much for everything you’ve already done. I apologize for asking for more; I know I already owe you a debt of gratitude that I could never repay. When my son was taken from me, the pain was unbearable, too much to take, and it went on and on, seemingly forever. My mind will always carry those scars, and if it had gone on much longer I’m sure it would have broken me. How can I thank you for helping save me from that? Words can never express the emotions in my heart when I think of how friends and strangers from all over the world came together to help my family, so please just know that you helped someone out of a living hell, and it mattered and made a difference, and someone’s life is so much better now, because of your compassion.

Thank you!!! May the Luck Plane always tilt your way.

-Rachel Bevilacqua

CLICK HERE TO MAKE A DONATION

This is someone who has been fighting for three years to get to a point where she can have enough stability to raise her children. Maybe I’m reading too much into the words, but that seems to me to be from the heart of someone whose fight has been the grim, central fact of her existence for a very long time.

Please help out a little, if you can.

Okay.

So (for better or worse), I’m back. My e-mail address has been resurrected, which is something. The old posts are sitting in a database export file somewhere, and I may or may not get around to restoring them; there are only a few I’d really be interested in recovering, but hey.

Where have I been? Doin’ stuff. Mostly working (still am, actually).

What inspired me to come back? Mostly missing my usually-daily place to vent my outrage at the universe.

How long will I be back this time? Let’s find out.

In the meantime, I thank you for your patience regarding the mess.

Gimme a sec here…

I know I’ve been gone a while, but my blog-fu is a little rusty (not to mention I’m spoiled by running my own servers, and Google and WordPress aren’t helping much in the transition to UserLand).