...same as the old Boss."

"Chances are fading for an expansive and searching review of the USA Patriot Act, which was the whole point of having some of its central provisions expire. The Judiciary Committee’s deliberations are scheduled to resume on Thursday. It is one more critical chance to add missing civil liberties and privacy protections, address known abuses and trim excesses that contribute nothing to making America safer."
NYT Editorial

Years pass. The number and frequency of my posts here (or anywhere else) grow smaller. This is why: nothing has changed. No matter how strident our protests, no matter the degree of indignation, the Powers That Be grow more alike every day, just like the pigs in Animal Farm.

Remember when the Democrats took power in congress? How happy we all were? How we were all "NOW we'll see some regieme change around here..."?

I check in every once in awhile with the folks over at Lawsuit Abuse just for the entertainment value. Ever since I joined The Agonist, I've held on to the tagline "Lord! What fools these Mortals be!"...a quick read of some of the lawsuits in progress will confirm for you that truer words were never spoken. To wit:

Tourist sues hotel, claiming swimming pool got daughter pregnant

Man sues Burning Man festival after tripping and falling into fire

Man sues Apple, claiming iPod equipped to receive threats from Mafia

First, suffer through this one:

Five hundred thousand dollars — the amount President Obama wants to set as the top pay for banking executives whose firms accept government bailout money — seems like a lot, and it is a lot. To many people in many places, it is a princely sum to live on. But in the neighborhoods of New York City and its suburban enclaves where successful bankers live, half a million a year can go very fast...
For more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover.

Now swallow this:

Welcome to the American dream in high reverse. Lehigh Acres is one of countless sprawling exurbs that the housing boom drastically reshaped, and now the bust is testing whether the experience of shared struggle will pull people together or tear them apart.

Which America needs the help?

The ramifications of a woman, married or single, wealthy or indigent, mentally enabled or non compos mentis electing to add eight babies to her already, barely-manageable brood of six has drawn myriad opinions from myriad cultural niches: religion, theology, science and, of course, politicians. Today's WaPo has a good compendium of these opinions and brings the reader up to speed where things now stand.

The last couple of graphs of Maureen Dowd's otherwise whiney, snarky, cheap-shot-as-usual column today, she changes gears and raises some really good points:

Companies that have gotten bailouts continue to make a mockery of taxpayers.

Until it came to light Tuesday, Wells Fargo, which received $25 billion in federal funds, was blithely planning a series of “employee recognition outings” to Las Vegas luxury hotels this month.

As ABC reported, Bank of America took its $45 billion in bailout funds and sponsored a five-day carnival outside the Super Bowl stadium, and Morgan Stanley took its $10 billion in bailout money and held a three-day conference at the Breakers in Palm Beach. (Morgan Stanley had also still planned to send top employees to Monte Carlo and the Bahamas, events just canceled.)

The New York Post revealed that Sandy Weill, former chief executive of Citigroup, took a company jet to fly his family for a Christmas holiday to a $12,000-a-night luxury resort in San José del Cabo, Mexico. No matter that the company just got a $50 billion federal bailout and laid off 53,000 worldwide.

The interior of the 18-seat jet, as described by The Post, is posh, with a full bar, fine-wine selection, $13,000 carpets, Baccarat crystal glasses, Cristofle sterling silver flatware and — my personal favorite — pillows made from Hermès scarves.

Aux barricades!

Click this. An unbelievable view. Have fun with the zoom...you can see Cheney's nostril hairs...if you're of a mind ;)

We all have themes, memes and, well, "hot buttons" that give our consciousness, our consciences and our adrenal glands a little extra squeeze,when, in the course of a day, one of our oxen is gored.

Personal Responsibility--and the lack thereof in 21st century life--is one of mine.

Walter Kirn, writing in today's NYT Magazine, continues the debate very well, I think:

"Blame is real, assignable and calculable, and the true measure of a person’s character — the sort of character that all should cultivate, but especially people of power and position — consists, first of all, in the strength to say, “I did it.”

More at the link.

When Chrysler spent more than $100K on a full-page ad in the NY Times, did anyone wonder if the Idiot Management was, yet again, completely clueless with regard to financial decision-making? Apparently Mark Cuban did...

This is me eating humble pie...or crow...or whatever metaphor or aphorism seems to fit.

More than two years ago, when the Obama movement was beginning to stir, I bluntly and pompously stated that America would not elect a black or a woman President; I said that we "weren't there yet," and that while I shared this community's desire for positive change, I didn't think it was going to come from anyone other than an establishment white guy.

I'm very glad to be wrong. Here's to you, America.

A conversation with Bill Tancer, a mresearch manager for online intelligence firm Hitwise, on his His first book, "Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters."

Did you really think no one would notice what you're Googling?

NYT Magazine As our emotional investment in the Internet has grown, the stakes for trolling — for provoking strangers online — have risen. Trolling has evolved from ironic solo skit to vicious group hunt.

More at the link...

Commenting on the Supreme Court's ruling on the Second Ammendment and gun rights yesterday Senator Obama said, in the NYT:

Mr. Obama, who like Mr. McCain has been on record as supporting the individual-rights view, said the ruling would “provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country.”

He praised the decision for endorsing the individual-rights view and for describing the right as “not absolute and subject to reasonable regulations enacted by local communities to keep their streets safe.”

This is fence-straddling of the first order. No opinion will be rendered here about the pros and cons of gun control; it's about getting up on your hind legs and taking a stand.Talking from both sides of the mouth makes one inaudible, incomprehensible and irrelevant.

Obama cannot get elected if he keeps talking like this.

3 legs, 1 eye, no hair

Betty Bowers (a.k.a. "America's Best Christian") comments on polygamists' & pope fashions as well as the latest and greatest in vulgar American moments...

Following the death this week of Richard Knerr, founder of toymamker Wham-O, a look at what we play with--and why:

Our toys, Dr. Tenner said, flow from the cycles of innovation and refinement that define all technologies. The playthings tend to be the byproducts of a new technology and a fertile imagination. So Silly Putty came from failed experiments in making artificial rubber, and the Slinky was a tension spring that a naval engineer saw potential in — and not just potential energy. The postwar period from 1945 to 1975 was especially rich in innovation, and thus toys, Dr. Tenner said.

But the cultural moment has to be right as well. “You can see pictures in Bruegel of kids running after a hoop and a stick,” he noted, but in the Hula Hoop the technology of cheap, plastic manufacturing dovetailed with a nation ready to shake its hips. The message of the Hula Hoop, and for that matter of Elvis Presley, he said, emerged in a time for many of intense optimism, which seemed to say: “You can let yourself go. You can dance wildly. You can swing wildly. You don’t have this dignity to preserve.”

Whew, what a relief: according to this Americans are tightening their belts.

" Any growth in real income is all but canceled out in consumers’ minds by falling home prices and rising energy costs. Michael J. Kowalski, the chief executive of Tiffany, calls this 'the wealth affect.'"

The new president might do well to first ask him- or herself the following question: What do a deaf woman in Los Angeles, a first-century Jewish sandal maker and a red-cockaded woodpecker have in common?

Almost daily, the question of whose rights take precedence over others rises over the din of public policy debate. This story, from the NYT Magazine turns up the headlights on the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"If there is any law more powerful than the ones constructed in a place like Washington, it is the law of unintended consequences."

Doonesbury shows it isn't always shrapnel that causes the wounds...

Opus in a prisoner exchange we might want to re-think...

Repulsed by Pundits? Another good reason in This Modern World...and sports Pundits are just as bad, as Non Sequitur explains...

Think softly: Get Fuzzy...

The Theater of the Absurd comes to The Office, starring Dilbert...

Frazz, where past and future collide...

The Huckabee wonder diet explained in A Town Called Dobson...

The headlines you won't see anywhere else in Bad Reporter...

And for the cat-slagging crowd, there's Piranha...

“I’m having a midlife crisis” sounds a lot better than “I’m a narcissistic jerk having a meltdown.”

Possessing--and using--grace, wit & charm while under pressure is one of the traditional earmarks for separating the evolved from the assholes.

So...how are you dealing with your existential angst? The doctor is IN:

Which camel fits through the eye of the needle and who gets stuck: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug?

NYT Magazine A deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.

Do we have different yardsticks to measure altruism these days or is it timeless?

Back to Iraq in Doonesbury...

Opus shows you what happens when you pray to the wrong diety...

The collected aphorisms of William Kristol in This Modern World...

Got rocks? Get Fuzzy...

Frazz reviews the Rules...

Dilbert finds out where he is on the corporate food chain...

Snow horrors: Bizzaro and Non Sequitur...

Return of the Bad Reporter...

Now this is just silly.

The NYT would like us to be concerned that lawyers and doctors are suffering from a downwardly-spiralling quality of life.

Make no mistake, law and medicine — the most elite of the traditional professions — have always been demanding. But they were also unquestionably prestigious. Sure, bankers made big money and professors held impressive degrees.

But in the days when a successful career was built on a number of tacitly recognized pillars — outsize pay, long-term security, impressive schooling and authority over grave matters — doctors and lawyers were perched atop them all.

Now, those pillars have started to wobble.

Almost makes you start to believe all those people who work in Wal-Mart and Mcdonalds have achieved Nirvana, doesn't it?

The art of the Washington Schmooze, in Doonesbury...

Opus needs a piety check...

This Modern World presents even more political idiocy from 2007...

Think your eating habits are bad? Check Get Fuzzy....

Frazz, caught in an existential time warp...

Sleep deprived or depraved? See Dilbert...

Jeff Danziger notices why it's different in New Hampshire...

When rocks talk, in Zippy....

Christmas in Berzerkistan, in Doonesbury...

A guilty conscience in Get Fuzzy...

Just try talking to a kid these days, in Frazz ...

A jaundiced look at some of the year's events in This Modern World...and for those of you who really hate year-end lists, try Bad Reporter...

A different view of "the circle of life" in Bizzaro...

Opus separates the pulp from the pap...

Dilbert, on managementspeak...

Zippy on dogs & dead celebrities...