Panglossian Notes

Short note in case you're a grad student

Giapedia has, if you don't know already, morphed into

http://library.nu/.

Still a great site, though their audio book cache seems to have not made the transfer, oh well. Me, I love pdf copies of books I already have, yes I'm somewhat of a bibliomania. No matter how good and index may have been compiled for any book sometimes all I remember is a phrase or a piece of a sentence and with a searchable pdf version of a book I can find the reference I need without pain.

Confusing - Good story Maddow but the Obama Democrats?

I watched a clip of the Rachel Maddow show today. It's not something I do much, if ever. I guess the reason I did today was because the LRB tweeted a reference to it and I was curious why they would. The clip was Maddow speaking about the Madison WI protests and providing some background regarding how that State's fiscal deficit seems to have magically appeared since the November elections. Long story short, give aways to select segments of the local economy in terms of tax cuts thus lowering expected future revenues producing a situation in which expenditures will exceed revenue and voilà a deficit.

I found two elements interesting about the clip. First, Maddow developed a plausible story behind why the governor had, shortly after taking office, decided to lead his State into potentially difficult financial times by creating a revenue problem - i.e. giving some of the State's revenue away by lowering some taxes.

I suspect most of the world knows that raising government revenues to balance public service expenditures is a particular problem in the US. The vast majority of people in the country seem to want to consume public goods but very few want to pay anything for them so why create a problem, eh?

Rachel had set the stage in fairly short order that the governor wanted to pick a fight with public service unions by attacking their pension right contract provisions.

To move to the second element of the story she asked, rhetorically, why were the police and firefighters unions exempt from this particular dust-up? Hmm, yes why? Cause, of course, the brave people in blue and the iconic fire-eater heros had donated monies to the governor's run for the office in November. Had I mentioned that the governor is a Republican? No. Well he is. So, and this is the second element that interested me in the clip, she had built a creditable story quickly outlining all the connecting links within a fairly complex situation and was now able to deliver her conclusion. Which was: that the issue wasn't about being fiscally responsible in the face of incorrigible public sector employees but about destroying particular unions which support the Democratic Party and which may pose a problem in the upcoming 2012 federal election.

Now I think Maddow can construct a good storyline - Obama should hire her as a coach he needs help in this but that would require likely having a clear point-of-view - which, for me, pretty accurately describes the mess in WI. And I understand her sympathy for the Democratic Party but here I think she is talking about the Democratic Party from long long ago.

Remember Obama, or the Democrats, lost the union vote for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. Wonder why? Likely because Obama never delivers anything for unions. Rather, he ensures that long fought for benefits, some unions sacrifice wages for, were undermined. Think of those "cadillac" health benefits which he made sure would be taxed under his faux health reform snafu.

MSM seems to be making a big deal out of the Obama comments made to a local TV station in Madison WI regarding the protests:

“Some of what I've heard coming out of Wisconsin, where you're just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally seems like more of an assault on unions,” President Obama said Wednesday to WTMJ TV “And I think it's very important for us to understand that public employees, they're our neighbors, they're our friends.”

That's support?

Boy I could go all around that statement clockwise and not show any commitment to anything then spin around counter-clockwise and show just the opposite. Christ, this is a statement to signal his business support that he is just playing a political game for dumb hicks in the Mid-West. Note the touch of the Tucson great grief councillor: those union people - should have said folks - "... they're our neighbors, they're our friends". Gee whizz didn't BO just freeze the wages & salaries of "our neighbors ... our friends".

Anyone who falls for this shmegegge's malarkey is a shlimazel.

Note latest news as BO's flunkies started to spin his few short "I can go this away or that away" comments. Malarkey is malarkey: a word I'd expect BO, mainly raised by older people, would know if he known what a shellacking was, when he got whopped in November.

A picture for the mantel

My Favourite song

from Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of light:

Steveie Wonder 1

 

Thinking of journalist, aka the jokes that try to write stories.

I understand propaganda, I think. Do I? I read The First Casualty back in the mid-70's which, if you remember, the opening chapter is titled "The miserable parent of a luckless tribe 1854-1856", so though brave souls like John Pilger link the shit we see as truth - do any of the "folks" read any longer? - to WWI the utter crap goes back longer eh. Likely our pretendings about us killing & torturing each other goes back to the beginning of us whacking each other with clubs and trying to justify our monstrosities.

Do I have any trust in "journalist" or the nonsense of "journalism" as a profession? I view, these likely nice, individuals - my definition mild: an individual who wouldn't let their dog shit on my lawn pretty low eh - as not much different from the normal scum at the bottom of any toilet. Hey, most times I response like a troglodytic, for the first 5 or 10 minutes of any emotional drama incident, but then, I find myself being a human being, one who lives in a time past the enlightenment. I don't find most self anointed "journalist" to be like me. I find most "journalist" - who the hell knows what the now useless word means - to be pre-enlightenment creatures, human beings, maybe, of course they are but just schmucks or worst shmegegges.

I have even a lower view of politicians. Least certain of them, eh.

A bit pissed

Just received my 3 volume set of The Arabian Nights Tales of 1001 Nights, Malcolm Lyons new translation, and found out that The Fall from Grace, aka How Abu Hasan Brake Wind or The Historic Fart, isn't part of the original. Oh, Sir Richard Burton you bugger.

I'm now reconsidering my planned visit to Sir Richard's grave this spring on my visit over to see my son in London, or there about.

I'm just now reading Geoff Nicholson's The Lost Art of Walking and I know he has a reference to walking to Burton's grave from his place in London, but I'm also reading Will Self's Walking to Hollywood and might have confused, who was walking, where, cause I can't find the bloody reference in Nicholson's book.

Shit, just found the chapter in Nicholson's book, #7, Death and Pedestrianism. God don't tell the walker/biker hating type 2 diabetes poster boy, the mayor of Toronto, he'd maybe use it as a bumper sticker and his neanderthal's be celebrating given the fucks they are.

Anyway, given the devastation on me, that The Historic Fart might have been a Sir Richard fabrication, I'm listening to some Rimsky-Korsakov stuff, you guess what, a hint, he wrote some music about the 1001 Nights.

Now, I'm knowing why Isabel burned the papers, eh. It weren't the pornography it was the bloody lying about the fart.

All above nonsense, an aside to the worry about Egypt and what Mr. Obama may have been trying to do off camera. I really don't trust the BO character. He's the standard US imperialist shmuck but - a break through? - multiracial. If I was black I could say he's put a black face on US thuggery, friggin awful I think. But I'm not black.

Two of my favourites cartoons

A new one from Mr. Fish, celebrating the newest American mythical creature:

and an older one from Martin Rowson showing the cute pair currently screwing the UK:

I know I'm in a grumpy mood - update

Yes I do know because I woke this morning, per usual, listening to the CBC World News delivered by the uninspiring monotonic excuse Peter Armstrong - take paternity leave again man, give Canada a break. Where's Dzintars Cers to give my ears a break?

The top item on broadcast was the "good" news that 3 CBC journos had been released, unharmed, by some Egyptian authority. They had been detained for an hour or so which seemed to me not bad given the length of time & treatment of people, including journos, handed out by Canada's organized government thugs at the recent G-20 in TO.

Featuring this item as the lead story left me wondering whether the current batch of neophyte journos aren't using the Cairo demonstration to make their bones, so-to-speak. The embedding gig, with our troops in the US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan, may actually be dangerous. This route in the ritual of obtaining journo credibility also has the real draw back that any reporting, originating from the assignment, is increasingly being considered as simply military propaganda. If you're going to be an actual shill for the military or maybe just even considered so, might as well do it in luxury far far away from any real or imagined danger eh or not do it at all. Thus these relatively tame out breaks of mayhem like Tunisia and Egypt, overseen by likely the entire world with access to Aljazeera and even now those in the USA, with access to their Johnny-come-lately corporate media, are a pretty safe way of earning journo kudos.

I'd better head out to the Plant Baths pool for 20 lengths and shake this cynical grumpy mood off before the weekend. I'm hoping for some good news out of Egypt for the people which would exclude any pontifications from Obama et gang who I know are likely putting in an undemocratic fix to have their preferred torturer take power.

_____________

Update: Home now, after 20, 25 meter laps - hey, I know but I'm working towards 100. I do 10 of what I call the Australian crawl and 10 with a flutter board used as resistance to work the legs. Next week I add 2 laps of each. But 'til then I'm sipping on an Irish whiskey, and not daring to look at Aljazeera on my TV, I've the channel through Rogers, nor online through Livestation. But not grumpy either.

As I walked down the street from the Plant Baths into Little Italy, then up to my grocery store - needed stuff & downtown Ottawa still has a number of actual supermarkets you can walk to - I was listening to the podcast from Lapham's Quarterly. I'm not sure what cheered me up the most: my halting one sided Mandarin chitchat with my usual group of older Chinese swimmers - at times, in the pool, I feel I'm part of that famous picture of Mao during the breast stroke in the Yangtze - but think, now from their charitable smiles, and queer looks they only speak Cantonese, or listening to P Seymour Hoffman read a Fall from Grace and think isn't this the standard plot line of any Ian McEwan novel - some poor bastard has a large dump and the girl of his dreams, in an adjacent room hears it and says fuck-off. Oh well, ever I ignore my evening insights.

Oh well here's Phillip:

P Seymore Hoffman doing a fart for Lapham

 

 

 

 

 

Short Clip of Martin Ronson

at the Frontline Club detailing his last cartoon, ever, for The Times:

Wonderings about Egypt

Late at night, as I wait to fall asleep, and, increasingly, as I wander the streets, but have forgotten to charge my iPod with a new dose of current analysis, book reviews, or LSE lunchtime talks, I wonder about some idea, or profession, I've heard about, or read mention of, in passing, as I glance at a newspaper. Last night I fell asleep puzzling over the idea of "grief counsellor".

I suppose that particular set of words popped into my head because of the events that had occurred in Cairo and maybe because I was feeling a little grief. Whether it was good grief - frustration, irritation, - or bad grief - sorrow - I'm not sure but think it likely the former.

I wondered, waiting for the sandman, if given the days events, Obama would be sending plane loads of grief counsellors to Egypt to soothe the nerves of the thwarted pro-democracy patriots who are seeking to emulate our putrefying Western democracies. Or, and you'd expect this would be the more likely case, given Obama's full bodied embracing of neoliberal theology he'd order mass shipments of GlaxoSmithKline's favourite antidote for what the Japanese call a cold of the soul, Paxil (pdf).