A moral dilema

Is it wrong that I just spent a decent amount of time wondering which would upset me more - the death of one of my cats or the breaking of my favorite hammer?

Is it wronger that I still don't know. I mean cats are cats, but the perfect pipe is something special.

Health care, statistics, and vadge

In my last newsletter I gave you some statistics. I did not do this to attempt to set a hard base line, rather to point out the fact there is no “silver bullet” solution to our current health care situation. A few years ago a person testifying before a committee said “statistics are like a bikini, what they reveal is enticing but what they conceal is critical”. One should view any numbers under deliberation from such a perspective, as they often don’t tell the whole story.

-- Jeff Kruse, OR-1 (R)

TGIF

Listen To Her Heart 1978 Tom Petty


If this isn't working for you, you can watch it here.

You know, I don't get the Petty hate out there. Maybe if you're only knowledge of him was Full Moon Fever, which is middling rock over-played to the point of annoyance, then maybe. Then again, it could be just me. It could be that you needed to be a ten-year-old Solid and watching MTV in 1982 and have "Refugee" be the most interesting thing you had seen on the box. Although how you could deny "You think you're gonna take her away, with your money and your cocaine" is beyond me. Give Tom three minutes, you got nothing better to do on a Friday.

Isn't Jolie French?

I know all of you have been getting excited about the possibility of an Atlas Shrugged movie coming out soon. I mean it doesn't have a writer, or director or anything, but with just about everyone going Galt and attending tea parties and whatnot, you just know it is going to happen soon.

Our good friends over at Big Hollywood, perhaps America's best website for wingnut discussion of popular culture, are already speculating on who should be cast in the lead roles, especially that of Dagny Taggart. She is not only the heart of the book, but she has been the main source of wingnut masturbation fantasies since 1952. As such, it is crucial that the actress be hotter than the proverbial baker's oven. But does she also have to be ideologically pure? The answer, at least from the comments I read, is no. Actually, the answer seems to be that one Angelina Jolie, who is hotter than the proverbial baker's oven, would be so awesome there is some effort to rehabilitate her.

Actually Ms Jolie is a pretty good choice for the role. She is nowhere near as far left as her fellow actors, gave a fairly good interview in '08 about McCain and the good he might bring (apostasy!) and from what we've gathered is a serious woman that the world takes seriously- she supposedly holds her own quite well in cabinet level meetings and knows more than her UN counterparts about Darfur and whatnot.

Scrolling through the comments, I see no objections to her on the grounds that she is twice divorced, a home wrecker, and/or living in sin with children. My how the wingnut opinion of single mothers has changed over the last year.

Anyway, the biggest fear, of course, would be that "Hollywood" would destroy the story because they don't "get it." This has been my biggest fear for some years. It also serves as a ready-made excuse for the all-too-predictable failure of the movie at the box office. I mean, we all know that Americans are dying to see a movie in which the richer/betters in our society laugh as civilization disintegrates. Especially if the last half-hour of the movie features a twenty-five minute radio address from a character who has only briefly appeared in the film up to that point. Can you imagine the cuts to all of our heroes listening intently to their radios while John Galt explains to the word that they will all die unless they cede complete control of the world to him and his chosen few? Riveting film going to be sure. America is ready, but Hollywood couldn't handle it.

Of course, it has been suggested that the book would work better as a seven-part miniseries a la John Adams, which is, of courser, even more true. Then, Galt's speech could take up a whole episode and we wouldn't have to cut any of the brilliance. That way we could spend an hour watching scenes of bridges collapsing and roving bands of marauders killing each other and rich people packing for the big get away all while listening to a disembodied voice tell us that all of that was a result of taxes. Obama would never let it happen.

Anyway, you buy the tickets, I'll buy the popcorn, and we'll laugh and laugh and laugh.

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Twilley/Seymour Sunday Horn

Robert Kuttner: Obama's Banking Rescue: O for Opaque
Obama Officials Think Krugman Is Naive: Newsweek's Evan Thomas
Frank Schaeffer: The Krugman/Limbaugh Nightmare: President Obama Might Succeed

Well, the story of my wk is pretty much a) Dwight Twilley doing 'Looking for the Magic' and b) my rapidly-deflating faith in the Obama administration's ability to get us outta this mucky political economy-y quagmire. You?

Oxdown Gazette » Shorter Elizabeth Warren: Timothy Geithner, WTF?
We're Still Getting Screwed: Geithner Plan Will Make the Rich Richer! | Dean Baker
Dean Baker, "Unemployment Jumps to 8.5 Percent, Economy Sheds 663,000 Jobs"
Bankruptcy Would Be Tinkering Around the Edges of Detroit's Problems

No, seriously...I think we're very effed here.

Benjamin Dangl and Michael Fox, "Beyond Elections in the Americas: An Interview with Michael Fox"
Reid to liberals: Back off - Manu Raju - POLITICO.com
Van Hollen asks liberal groups to lay off - Alex Isenstadt - POLITICO.com

Better look elsewhere for some inspiration, because there's nothing about Evan Bayh that's ever going to get you too hot/heavy. At the same time, it's apparently very important that all we 'liberals' remember that anything that upsets Harry Reid's re-election plans is terrorism, indeed.

Salute Your Shorts: Godard, Truffaut and A Story of Water :: Paste
L'arrivée d' Sylvia Kristel
Badiou-101-for-the-rcpusa
On The Idea Of Communism: Badiou On Politics, Economy And The State « Kasama
The US maoists are reading Badiou, eh?