Brainiac Conspiracy

General Electric

Gets nearly a billion dollars a year in military contracts. So of course they were going to make Chris walk the plank for daring to infer that, you know, that maybe the military is not the most awesome career path a young person can take since your service is only going to be manipulated by self-interested political figures and praised by people in our media who don't really give a rat's ass about you. For telling the truth, in other words. Welcome to the bigs.

---Vitelius

They Might Have Considered Doing Something

To solve this little problem before we got this deep into a re-election campaign:

Lot of electoral votes there. Sure would hate to see anything happen to them.

And it's not like they haven't had opportunities, even from before the beginning:

The mortgage crisis was worsened this past time because critical decisions were made during the transition between Bush and Obama. We voted the TARP out. The TARP was basically being administered by Hank Paulson as the last man home in a lame duck, and I was disappointed. I tried to get them to use the TARP to put some leverage on the banks to do more about mortgages, and Paulson at first resisted that, he just wanted to get the money out. And after he got the first chunk of money out, he would have had to ask for a second chunk, he said, all right, I’ll tell you what, I’ll ask for that second chunk and I’ll use some of that as leverage on mortgages, but I’m not going to do that unless Obama asks for it. This is now December, so we tried to get the Obama people to ask him and they wouldn’t do it.

---Vitelius

The Banality of Drone Strikes

Feeling a lot safer these days knowing that our leaders are only targeting real militants, militants-in-training, militant-wannabes, or people engaging in militant-related program activities:

Probably the most disturbing of which is that one of the reasons why the Obama administration runs around claiming that the casualties of civilians are so low from their drone attacks, which everyone knows is false, is because they have redefined what a militant is. A militant in the eyes of the Obama administration formally means any male of fighting age, presumably 18 to 40, who is in a strike zone of a missile. So, if the U.S. shoots a missile or detonates a bomb by drone or aircraft and kills eight or a dozen or two dozen people without even knowing whom they have killed or anything about them, they will immediately label any male of a certain age a militant by virtue of their proximity to that scene.

What the New York Times article said, was that the rationale for this is that they believe that anybody who is even near a terrorist or any terrorist activity is "Probably up to no good." Ironically, that is, as Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News pointed out, the exact phrase that George Zimmerman used when describing Trayvon Martin to the 9-1-1 call, that he must be up to no good. The sort of suspicion, that even though we don’t know anything about somebody, the mere happenstance of where they are or what they’re doing entitles us not just to harbor a suspicion about them, but to kill them. And it is amazing that American media outlets continue to use the word "militant" to describe people [who] are killed by American drones without knowing their identity, even though we now know that the Obama administration uses that word in a incredibly deceitful and propagandistic way.

Well, it's not really all that amazing because, frankly, they just don't give a shit about who those people are on the wrong end of a Predator strike. And neither, outside of a few Unserious Persons like Glenn Greenwald and Ron Paul, do very many Americans. This is one reason of many why I wonder if we can no longer be considered a functioning liberal democracy anymore.

---Vitelius

Minimal Blogging Day

Got a meeting to attend today with a bunch of guys in suits, so go Occupy something until I return.

---Vitelius

Nice Work if You Can Get It

It's hard work trying to impose a little discipline on the freeloaders:

Lagarde, predicting that the debt crisis has yet to run its course, adds: "Do you know what? As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax." She says she thinks "equally" about Greeks deprived of public services and Greek citizens not paying their tax.

"I think they should also help themselves collectively." Asked how, she replies: "By all paying their tax."

Asked if she is essentially saying to the Greeks and others in Europe that they have had a nice time and it is now payback time, she responds: "That's right."

Especially when one leads by example:

Christine Lagarde, the IMF boss who caused international outrage after she suggested in an interview with the Guardian on Friday that beleaguered Greeks might do well to pay their taxes, pays no taxes, it has emerged.

As an official of an international institution, her salary of $467,940 (£298,675) a year plus $83,760 additional allowance a year is not subject to any taxes.

---Vitelius

Tuesday Night Folk Blogging

I never knew until I read the obits tonight that he was blind from infancy. R.I.P.

---Vitelius

Market-Based Solutions

Sure is a good thing we're going to be requiring everyone in America to purchase health insurance, assuming the Federalist Five doesn't fuck up the program:

Unknown to most consumers, many hospitals and physicians offer steep discounts for cash-paying patients regardless of income. But there's a catch: Typically you can get the lowest price only if you don't use your health insurance.

That disparity in pricing is coming under fire from people . . . who say it's unfair for patients who pay hefty insurance premiums and deductibles to be penalized with higher rates for treatment.

The difference in price can be stunning. Los Alamitos Medical Center, for instance, lists a CT scan of the abdomen on a state website for $4,423. Blue Shield says its negotiated rate at the hospital is about $2,400.

When The Times called for a cash price, the hospital said it was $250.

What it means, of course, is basically:

This election will be fought between two men whose "solutions" to this debacle are based on a system that cannot possibly solve it [...]

Maybe we'd be better off if we encouraged people not to buy health insurance? It just might drive down the cost curve a bit if several million people opted out of their coverage all at once, don't you think? I guess this is yet another reason why I probably won't lose any sleep if the Roberts Gang throws out the Affordable Care Act next month. It may be an egregious violation of stare decisis and all that legalistic stuff, but if it forces our leaders to come up with a universal health-care plan that actually makes care affordable and doesn't reward profiteering, well, good. Because up to now, they haven't tried that approach.

---Vitelius

Variations on a Theme

Here, we call it "extend and pretend":

Spanish banks are masking their full exposure to soured property loans while they continue to prop up zombie developers, leading to credit-rating downgrades and plummeting share prices.

Spain is working to clean up its banks, requiring lenders set aside more for possible losses on loans deemed performing to developers like Metrovacesa SA (MVC), which hasn’t completed a project in more than a year and has none under way. While that represents about 30 billion euros ($38 billion) of increased provisions, it’s not enough because many loans said to be performing aren’t being repaid, according to Mikel Echavarren, chairman of Irea, a Madrid-based finance company specializing in real estate.

“Spain has engaged in a policy of delay and pray,” Echavarren said in an interview. “The problem hasn’t been quantified by anyone because there is huge pressure not to tell the truth.”

This, of course, is why those slothful Spaniards need to relinquish their unsustainable pensions and health-care benefits: Because they have forsaken their nation's shared cultural values, which are deeply rooted in the Franco-Torquemada Equilibrium. Again, for their greediness, they will simply have to pay.

---Vitelius

Are There No Prisons?

Too bad I've hit my limit of Times articles this month, otherwise I'd quote directly from the source, a.k.a., Davey the Salad Tosser at the Georgetown Applebee's:

Lyndon Johnson was right to use government to do more to protect Americans from the vicissitudes of capitalism. But he made a series of open-ended promises, especially on health care. He tried to bind voters to the Democratic Party with a web of middle-class subsidies.

A government that was energetic and limited was turned into one that is omnidirectional and fiscally unsustainable. A government that was trusted and oriented around long-term visions is now distrusted because it tries to pander to the voters' every momentary desire. A government that devoted its resources toward future innovation and development now devotes its resources to health care for the middle-class elderly.

Health care for the middle-class elderly? Clearly, a foolish misallocation of government resources. Thankfully we don't need to look far into the future for a solution. It's staring us in the face right now:

The Catsoula family, who live in the suburbs of Athens, are at breaking point. The two sisters and their elderly grandparents need various forms of medicine. Seventy-year-old Heleni Catsoula uses oxygen to help her with respiratory problems.

But she told Sky News: "The government reimburses me for the 100 euros I pay for the oxygen, but now they have stopped. They also used to pay the chemists for my drugs but they have stopped.

"Now I owe my local chemists 400 euros and I find it difficult to get my medication. If I have an attack, I don't even have petrol in the tank to get to the hospital. And nor can I afford the five euro entry fee" [...]

The family, who live in the industrial area of Aspropirgos, has sold all their jewellery including wedding rings and christening gifts to pay for food and medication. Ms Catsoula's daughter Vicki, who is diabetic herself, now regularly makes a three-hour journey to a central Athens refuge centre to try to get hold of the drugs her family needs.

For the Catsoulas, austerity has meant the state no longer provides them with the support they need.

Their home sits in the shadow of the Aspropirgos power station and yet they cannot afford to service their electricity bills. One of the sisters lost her job at the factory three years ago.

It never fails to amaze me how Serious Persons like David Brooks get taken seriously by the other Serious Persons in Washington for waxing seriously nostalgic for the good old days of the early 20th Century, before left-liberal politicians overreached and shamelessly bought the loyalty of voters with unsustainable social-welfare programs like Medicare. Because, well, it's not like any of those voters actually needed those programs since their presence would upset the Jeffersonian-Hamiltonian Equilibrium, which I guess is some kind of Grand Unifying Theory that defines our values and has Made Us Exceptional. Perhaps if those greedy Greeks, like their American counterparts, would understand the universality of this principle and respect their own Platonic-Aristotelean Equilibrium, they'd once again be able to assume their rightful position among the league of democratic nations. Until then, however, more of them will apparently need to expire, victims of their own moral deficiency.

---Vitelius

Am I Glowing Yet?

I rarely ever eat bluefin tuna anymore. It's been horrendously overfished to the point where 90 percent of all known wild stocks have been depleted. But the fishmonger at the Larchmont Farmer's Market had such a smokin' great deal on "sashimi-grade" ahi last week, I decided to plunk down for a pound.

I guess I know now why it was such a bargain:

Across the vast Pacific, the mighty bluefin tuna carried radioactive contamination that leaked from Japan's crippled nuclear plant to the shores of the United States 6,000 miles away---the first time a huge migrating fish has been shown to carry radioactivity such a distance.

"We were frankly kind of startled," said Nicholas Fisher, one of the researchers reporting the findings online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The levels of radioactive cesium were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years.

----Vitelius

Forward Never Back

Hard to know where to begin here:

The president “was very interested in obviously trying to understand how a guy like Awlaki developed,” said General Jones. The cleric’s fiery sermons had helped inspire a dozen plots, including the shootings at Fort Hood. Then he had gone “operational,” plotting with Mr. Abdulmutallab and coaching him to ignite his explosives only after the airliner was over the United States.

That record, and Mr. Awlaki’s calls for more attacks, presented Mr. Obama with an urgent question: Could he order the targeted killing of an American citizen, in a country with which the United States was not at war, in secret and without the benefit of a trial?

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel prepared a lengthy memo justifying that extraordinary step, asserting that while the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch.

Mr. Obama gave his approval, and Mr. Awlaki was killed in September 2011, along with a fellow propagandist, Samir Khan, an American citizen who was not on the target list but was traveling with him. (Emphasis added.)

I guess we know now why nobody from the Bush Justice Department was ever charged with a war crime, and never will be: heck, they only contrived Constitutional arguments to torture foreigners. In the Obama Justice Department, they contrive Constitutional arguments to kill U.S citizens. What's even scarier to me is the fact that no one in the administration will pay any political price for this behavior; the media will simply monitor the body count, and the public will applaud approvingly. At least until the next successful terror strike, which this policy would seem to make inevitable, eventually.

Meanwhile, winning hearts and minds.

---Vitelius

FIscal Kabuki

It's all over but the obligatory statements of fealty:

Greece’s Democratic Left party, which may determine the governing coalition following June 17 elections, said its backing for the biggest anti-bailout party depends on getting a guarantee to stay in the euro.

“We have two red lines: one is a policy which serves the country’s steady presence in Europe, the euro, the euro area, and the other is a gradual disengagement from the terms of the bailout,” party leader Fotis Kouvelis, 63, said in a May 25 interview in Athens. “All this needs to be set out because red lines may exist but the policies you choose is what matters.”

It's also a good way to avoid taking the blame for the all-but-inevitable outcome, and the people who make their living poaching off disasters like this have already placed their bets:

Greece will probably leave the euro as soon as next month as the government runs out of cash and European institutions fail to lend more to the nation, according to John Taylor of hedge fund FX Concepts LLC.

“This summer I think is very likely,” Taylor, founder and chief executive officer of FX Concepts in New York, said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Inside Track” with Erik Schatzker and Sara Eisen. “The Europeans aren’t going to give them the money, the International Monetary Fund’s not going to give them an OK. They will be out of money in June.”

---Vitelius

Light Blogging Afternoon

Family crap in Goldwater Country tonight. Go bloviate an ignoramus while I'm away. Yes, it's legal.

---Vitelus

Income Redistribution We Can Believe In

Might want to entertain the notion that the financial innovations of America's job creators

may have permanently dented America’s productive capacity. If so, the “output gap” between the economy’s current level of production and its potential level is much smaller than expected. Unemployment has fallen because there are fewer people available to work. Inflation is stable because there is less idle capacity to restrain prices. This would be bad news all round. America would be permanently poorer than would otherwise have been the case. The Federal Reserve would have less room to ease policy before inflation revives. More of the budget deficit would be structural, rather than the temporary result of a depressed economy. (Emphasis added.)

Policymakers do not embrace this scenario.

Of course they don't. If they did, it would be a tacit admission that they're either (a) incompetent, or (b) accessories to the looting. Since we're basically talking about Tim Geithner's Rotary Club lunch buddies here, my bet's on the latter. Not that Glen Hubbard's lunch buddies would be preferable (they wouldn't), but we shouldn't paper over the fact that our policymakers thus far have succeeded in one thing only: Preventing a global Great Depression for the last three years by pumping trillions of dollars of taxpayer liquidity into the vaults of otherwise insolvent nonbank Job Creators, which have expressed their gratitude by either hoarding or hedging the money. Other than that, really, nobody's done much of anything to solve the actual problem.

---Vitelius

Colonialism We Can Believe In

Riffing off the previous post, yet another reason why, in the realm of foreign/military policy, our leaders must be either neoliberal or neoconservative interventionists dedicated to upholding the primacy of Empire: Because, frankly, there's a lot of money riding on it:

The New Alliance was announced in conjunction with the G8 meeting last Friday. Under the scheme, some 45 corporations, including Monsanto, Syngenta, Yara International, Cargill, DuPont, and PepsiCo, have pledged a total of $3.5 billion in investment in Africa. The full list of corporations and commitments has just been released, and one of the most notable is Yara International's promise to build a $2 billion fertilizer plant in Africa. Syngenta pledged to build a $1 billion business in Africa over the next decade. These promises are not charity; they are business.

---Vitelius

Honoring Our War Dead

It's something to be mindful of in the midst of all the holiday barbecue and beer:

Biden, like Obama, said U.S. combat troops have returned home from Iraq, the conflict in Afghanistan is winding down and American commandos killed al-Qaida terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

"Those warriors sent a message to the world that if you harm America, we will follow you to the end of the earth," Biden said.

Meanwhile, why we fight:

A suspected NATO airstrike killed eight civilians---including six children---in eastern Afghanistan, a provincial spokesman said.

The airstrike took place Saturday night in Paktia province, said Rohullah Samoon, spokesman for the governor of Paktia. He said an entire family was killed in the strike.

Now I know what the standard rejoinder is, that The Enemy® uses these poor and unfortunate wretches as Human Shields™, and while collateral damage is always unfortunate, incidents like these are further proof that the Islamonazis hold no value for human life and we must redouble our efforts, etc., but I think it underscores the reason why so many people of my generation can't get too amped up over this particular holiday. Not because we don't care about honoring those who have fallen in battle on our behalf, but because too many of those who have fallen in our lifetime---in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and before them in Vietnam---died for no fucking reason whatsoever; because the leaders who lied to the nation and sent them off to their deaths have evaded all accountability for their actions; and because hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, from Haiphong to Fallujah to Kandahar, have been slaughtered over decades so one President or another could emerge victorious in some geopolitical dick-swinging contest. This sure is not the kind of change I voted for four years ago, but I guess in the realm of foreign policy, it scarcely matters who's President anymore. The hegemony of the Empire must be ever upheld, and never questioned. Only deeply unserious persons would deign to think otherwise.

---Vitelius

Of Course He's Wrong

That's how you get taken seriously in Official Washington.

Perhaps someone can explain to me why this truly awful and abusive person was chosen by our Kenyan-in-Chief to bring his perpetual wrongness to our equally wrongheaded budget debate.

---Vitelius

Media Blackouts

As a rule in this country, they're reserved for matters of grave national security (or to sell more football tickets, take your pick), so it's difficult to understand why there's been virtually no US press coverage, outside the usual lefty blogosphere, of what's been happening right across the street from us. Or maybe it's not so difficult to understand after all:

Might be something instructive for the Occupiers here: Namely, pick a bread-and-butter issue that resonates most deeply with the base---rather than the grab-bag of lefty causes that were on display last May Day---then get out in the street and make some noise about it. Might not get a lot of media coverage at first, but if enough people turn out, day after day, the ink-stained wretches will have to take notice, eventually.

---Vitelius

Saturday Night Opera Blogging

Out for a little diversion from the usual blather at the Rodent Room tonight. See y'all tomorrow.

---Vitelius

Doing Everything But The Obvious

This administration just kills me with its clever solutions to systemic problems:

States have diverted $974 million from this year’s landmark mortgage settlement to pay down budget deficits or fund programs unrelated to the foreclosure crisis, according to a ProPublica analysis. That’s nearly forty percent of the $2.5 billion in penalties paid to the states under the agreement.

Oh well, it could have been worse. We could have just handed more money back to the banks. Oh, wait:

That $26 billion is actually $5 billion of bank money and the rest is your money. The mortgage principal writedowns are guaranteed to come almost entirely from securitized loans, which means from investors, which in turn means taxpayers via Fannie and Freddie, pension funds, insurers, and 401 (k)s. Refis of performing loans also reduce income to those very same investors.

---Vitelius

The Undeserving Poor

They're always undeserving because, well, because they're morally deficient:

In later research, Ron Haskins and I learned that if individuals do just three things---finish high school, work full time and marry before they have children---their chances of being poor drop from 15 percent to 2 percent. Mitt Romney has cited this research on the campaign trail, but these issues transcend presidential politics. Stronger public support for single-parent families---such as subsidies or tax credits for child care, and the earned-income tax credit---is needed, but no government program is likely to reduce child poverty as much as bringing back marriage as the preferable way of raising children.

Boy, and to think that liberals are the ones who always being accused of wanting to engage in social engineering.

Either way, though, now that gay marriage has gained much broader public acceptance, we're creating the conditions where more people than ever in our country have the opportunity to form two-parent households and raise children to be non-poor productive members of society. I am wondering why this positive development wasn't mentioned. Any guesses?

---Vitelius

Good Luck With That

I think "15 to 30" years is a bit, er, premature for this to happen:

Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history.

Not that the avowed atheist has any doubts himself.

Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that "even the skeptics can accept it."

The "skeptics"---a loaded word, since it suggests people who are basing their doubt on some rational equation rather than on religious prejudice---have had 150 years to get accustomed to the idea of Natural Selection, and up to now, the only accommodation that the members of homo horribilus have been willing to make to the validity of the theory has not been in the realm of biology but of market economics.

---Vitelius

Winning Hearts and Minds

Honestly, people, this is not how it's done:

Bill Clinton had his Sista Souljah Moment during the '92 primary season, and by showing our media watchdogs that he could be tough on uppity colored people and other Democrat interest groups, he was able to claim the mantle of sensible centrist going into the convention. The Obama administration, by contrast, has already staked out the political center and has done so for years. Why they still feel the need to stage a Sista Soujah Moment at least once every month, I have no idea. But they do seem to be quite adept at it. I'm still not sure how pissing off your most ardent supporters translates into a winning electoral strategy, though.

---Vitelius

Two to Tango

Riffing off the previous post, I suppose it's good to remember that while Goldman, JPMorgan et al may indeed be bad actors on the financial stage, they wouldn't be able to act as badly as they have, and as often as they have, without an assist from their many dear friends, not all of whom are right-wing conservatives.

---Vitelius

Not Even a Casino Anymore

Because in a casino---even one that's rigged---there's at least a theoretical chance that you'll win back a few of your wagers, just to make the action look legit. At this point, I think what we are looking at is just a sophisticated variation on your basic bait-and-switch boiler-room operation:

Anger over what critics see as the botched flotation of Facebook moved to Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan yesterday, after it emerged that the giant Wall Street banks had been aiding hedge funds to bet that the shares would fall.

With shares in the $104bn (£66bn) internet giant way below the float price and investors seething, the revelation that the two most powerful US banks lent shares so that they could be "shorted" again opened up controversy about conflicts of interest on Wall Street.

The issue could increase pressure on regulators and politicians to push for a break-up of the biggest banks, which critics say routinely bet against their own clients.

---Vitelius

What They Mean

When the Friedmans and Brookses talk about the need for our government to enact big, bold ideas to spur structural economic reforms, it's code for our government giving them more of the things that benefit them (e.g., lowering their top marginal income tax rate) and giving other people less of what doesn't (Medicare, Social Security). Of course they realize that if they actually said what they really meant, most people would hurl them down the stairs, so they resort to speaking elliptically, if at all, about some vague and ill-defined need for "entitlement reform" that some sensible centrist like Mike Bloomberg could deliver to a nation in need of good governanace. But it's just a variation on the time-honored mantra that's recited regularly by our privileged classes: Give us more of your money because we're entitled to it.

---Vitelius

Friday Infrastructure Blogging

Good thing they built this thing when they did. It would never happen today, for obvious reasons.

---Vitelius

Discontents of Affluence

Yes, it's possible that the "bully pulpit" of Presidency can change public opinion to some degree, though there is statistical analysis out there that largely discounts the idea. It certainly it's possible for public opinion to be at least nudged in one direction or another by the power of Presidential persuasion, but in the case that everyone's talking about today, I think it's really pretty simple:

When you're out of a job and running out of money, the domestic lives of homosexuals is probably not of singular importance to you.

When you've lost your health insurance and are facing expensive surgery, the liberal War on Religious Liberty® doesn't occupy much of your time.

When you're on the verge of being evicted from your foreclosed home and are facing the prospect of having to live out of your car, you're probably not thinking about the looming threat of shariah law. Except maybe for the ban on usury.

When you look at it that way, the shift in public attitudes on gay marriage is not hard to explain at all.

Either way, because bread and butter generally take electoral priority over homos and abortionists, it's probably a good thing for Democrats to keep encouraging Republicans to prattle on about these bullshit cultural issues since, in the long run, it only makes them seem silly---irrelevant at best, punitive at worst. On the other hand, it would be nice for Democrats to make some more concerted efforts to, oh I dunno, be a little more proactive in pushing for legislation that would help those same Americans actually get the jobs, and money, and mortgage relief they want, and health insurance coverage that they can afford, and maybe prison time for the people who looted their 401(k)s. Heck, it might even give the voters another reason or two to pull the lever for Team Democrat come November. Just a thought.

---Vitelius

Guardians of Democracy

Funny how quickly they can find the money when they need to:

The Spanish government is poised to invest up to €19bn in its most troubled lender, Bankia, the FT is reporting. Miles Johnson in Madrid and Patrick Jenkins in London write:

The injection, which would give the state as much as 90% control of Spain's second biggest domestic lender, is set to be confirmed later on Friday evening.

Given average incomes, they could provide jobs for a year for nearly a million people for that amount of money. Good thing they've achieved full employment so they needn't consider the option.

Meanwhile, responsibility:

Asked if she is essentially saying to the Greeks and others in Europe that they have had a nice time and it is now payback time, [Lagarde] responds: "That's right."

---Vitelius

Hard to Enjoy What You Can't Afford

Lots of verbiage in recent months about the American Love Affair with The Automobile and wondering whether the romance has gone for good. I suppose there's some truth to that, what with city planners creating more walkable communities with greater transit options in urban cores, which has rendered car ownership nonessential to a new generation of Americans. And of course, heightened public awareness of greenhouses gases and the dangers of global warming have inhibited car sales to an extent as well. But mostly, cars are expensive to own, to operate, to insure, and above all, to fuel. (Electric cars are an obvious alternative, but they're even more expensive than gas models, and the infrastructure to support them in large numbers is at least a decade or two away.) And since most people's wages haven't even kept up with inflation over the past generation, fewer and fewer people can afford to use them as frequently as they once did, or even to own them at all. Which is another way of saying, the American "love affair" with the car was always a marriage of convenience, and now that cars are increasingly inconvenient conveyances, more Americans---and city dwellers in particular---are discovering that they can live perfectly well without them, just like those cheese-eating surrender monkeys overseas. Not saying whether that's a good thing or not; it's just a reflection of the economic reality that many things that were once accessible to working-class people are now increasingly unaffordable luxury goods.

---Vitelius