brainiac conspiracy

Revenge of The Girlie Men

Hopefully the West Wing brain trust will ponder the snapshot below before deciding whom to hire as their next green energy czar.

---Vitelius

You Know We Are Doomed

When news that a million Americans are joining the ranks of the unemployed every 77 days is hailed as sure sign of progress. Maybe one day our rulers will consider putting some of these people to work fixing stuff. Or perhaps not.

---Vitelius

Gonna Party Like It's 1899

Digby goes hyperbolic:

It's vastly important that people understand just what "austerity" really means. Elderly Americans used to know all about it. And then we became civilized. At least for a while.

I realize that I will be flayed for being hyperbolic by even linking to this. There is no chance that the US will ever revert to that level of poverty, right? It's unthinkable.

Well, I'd only add that torture used to be unthinkable in this country, too, and look what an effective course of action that was. Who knows, maybe one of Beck's doomsday scenarios is right after all, and in the future all of us on the wrong side of 50 are going to be hacking each other to death with machetes over 40-pound bags of Eukanuba. I see it frankly as more-or-less inevitable unless our citizens start consistently sending more well-adjusted adults to govern us in Washington. I'm not holding my breath on that one.

---Vitelius

Not-So-Random Thought of The Day

Could we at least talk about extending the gas-guzzler tax to SUVs? Currently, they're not covered but ordinary passenger cars are. What if we called it a "surcharge" or a "destination charge" instead of a tax? Or is this another case of jack-booted Stalinist tyranny?

Sometimes I think our wise leaders are rather weak individuals. They can sure be bullied around enough.

---Vitelius

Frederick Douglass, Confederate Stalwart

Nobody could have possibly predicted that institutions controlled by deluded zealots would generally not do a bang-up job of educating their young'uns. That might not be so bad if that was the end of it, but unfortunately the consequences of a mis-education extend well into adulthood.

---Vitelius

Random Thought of The Day

If our wise leaders in Washington wanted to raise some revenues to pare down the deficit, stimulate consumer spending on greener technologies, and accelerate the return on their investment in a bailed-out company like General Motors, they might think about, oh, maybe raising the federal fuel tax or something. Not that I expect it to happen, but it's what a government of grown-ups would have probably done by now.

---Vitelius

Buddy Can You Spare $1.8 Trillion?

Because apparently that's not enough money for our beleaguered private sector to be hoarding when there's so much uncertainty in the markets because our President is a Kenyan anti-colonialist who hates capitalism and stuff like that:

All signs point to President Barack Obama pursuing far-reaching changes to the corporate income tax, seeking to lower one of the highest statutory corporate-tax rates in the world by eliminating deductions, credits and loopholes.

If he proceeds, the administration will insist that any changes raise as much revenue as the existing, 35% corporate tax. That's to constrain those who want to lighten the business-tax burden and those who want to get more money from business. But the constraint means that for every company that saves a dollar, another will pay a dollar more.

The White House says no decisions have been made and that the president has yet to have a session with his economic team devoted to corporate taxes. But Treasury tax technicians are sifting through options, CEOs are buzzing and the president has voiced his druthers: "We would be very interested," he said in October, "in finding ways to lower the corporate-tax rate so that companies that are operating overseas can so do effectively and aren't put at a competitive disadvantage." In a recent interview with National Public Radio, Mr. Obama talked about "a conversation over the next year" aimed at "simplifying the system, hopefully lowering rates, broadening the base."

Sometimes, when I read about the passage of some piece of progressive social legislation like the Food Safety Modernization Act, I think it's still possible for us to use the levers of government to solve problems that arise from the excesses of an unregulated private sector. And other times, I think that our capitulation to the Self-Correcting Rand-Hand® is nearly complete.

Update: Is our corporations struggling? You betcha!

Businesses in the U.S. expanded in December at the fastest pace in two decades, adding to evidence the world’s largest economy is accelerating heading into 2011.

The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago Inc. said today its business barometer rose to 68.6 this month, exceeded the most optimistic forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and the highest level since July 1988. Figures greater than 50 signal expansion.

Gains in business investment on new equipment and growing exports to emerging economies will keep factories churning out goods in the coming year, contributing to the recovery. Reports showing consumer spending is also picking up mean retailers will need to restock shelves, giving manufacturing a further lift.

“The economy is gathering momentum,” John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities Inc. in Charlotte, North Carolina, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “New orders will follow the better business confidence that is showing up. Once the American consumer starts kicking in, we will see stronger orders data.”

---Vitelius

What I Learned From Reading Reason

That libertarians are just as genuinely insane as movement conservatives, though the odds are good that they throw better parties:

"We need a libertarian Che Guevara," says libertarian activist Starchild, who makes a living as an erotic services provider.

Reason.tv's Tim Cavanaugh sat down with Starchild, who recently ran for San Francisco School Board as the Libertarian candidate, at the Libertopia 2010 conference in Hollywood. Their discussion covers topics such as the history of the libertarian movement, why San Francisco actually is a very libertarian city despite being named Reason.tv's Nanny of the Year, why libertarians need to look to groups such as the Black Panthers as models for political activism, and how Starchild managed to convert Tim Cavanaugh to libertarianism.

So, in order to stop the spread of socialism, we should emulate a guy who devoted his entire adult life to spreading socialism. Makes sense to me.

Whether history records the fact the Che was accompanied by an erotic services provider on his many revolutionary sojourns, I know not, but we do know at least this much about the legendary freedom-fighter:

In January 1957, as his diary from the Sierra Maestra indicates, Guevara shot Eutimio Guerra because he suspected him of passing on information: “I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain.... His belongings were now mine.” Later he shot Aristidio, a peasant who expressed the desire to leave whenever the rebels moved on. While he wondered whether this particular victim “was really guilty enough to deserve death,” he had no qualms about ordering the death of Echevarría, a brother of one of his comrades, because of unspecified crimes: “He had to pay the price.” At other times he would simulate executions without carrying them out, as a method of psychological torture.

Luis Guardia and Pedro Corzo, two researchers in Florida who are working on a documentary about Guevara, have obtained the testimony of Jaime Costa Vázquez, a former commander in the revolutionary army known as “El Catalán,” who maintains that many of the executions attributed to Ramiro Valdés, a future interior minister of Cuba, were Guevara’s direct responsibility, because Valdés was under his orders in the mountains. “If in doubt, kill him” were Che’s instructions. On the eve of victory, according to Costa, Che ordered the execution of a couple dozen people in Santa Clara, in central Cuba, where his column had gone as part of a final assault on the island. Some of them were shot in a hotel, as Marcelo Fernándes-Zayas, another former revolutionary who later became a journalist, has written—adding that among those executed, known as casquitos, were peasants who had joined the army simply to escape unemployment [...]

Che was in charge of the Comisión Depuradora. The process followed the law of the Sierra: there was a military court and Che’s guidelines to us were that we should act with conviction, meaning that they were all murderers and the revolutionary way to proceed was to be implacable. My direct superior was Miguel Duque Estrada. My duty was to legalize the files before they were sent on to the Ministry. Executions took place from Monday to Friday, in the middle of the night, just after the sentence was given and automatically confirmed by the appellate body. On the most gruesome night I remember, seven men were executed [...]

[T]here were about eight hundred prisoners in a space fit for no more than three hundred: former Batista military and police personnel, some journalists, a few businessmen and merchants. The revolutionary tribunal was made of militiamen. Che Guevara presided over the appellate court. He never overturned a sentence. I would visit those on death row at the galera de la muerte. A rumor went around that I hypnotized prisoners because many remained calm, so Che ordered that I be present at the executions. After I left in May, they executed many more, but I personally witnessed fifty-five executions. There was an American, Herman Marks, apparently a former convict. We called him “the butcher” because he enjoyed giving the order to shoot. I pleaded many times with Che on behalf of prisoners. I remember especially the case of Ariel Lima, a young boy. Che did not budge.

Tell me again, in what other developed nation would a publication like Reason be considered a journal for serious intellectuals?

---Vitelius

Opinions Differ Over Ownership of Manhattan

Why oh why do members of our Beltway media take this nonsense for serious political discourse?

The ongoing debate over the recent health-care overhaul is rooted in questions of constitutionality. The Constitution does not explicitly allow an individual mandate for health care, but supporters of the law make several arguments including that the Constitution gives Congress the authority to "make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper" to provide for the "general Welfare."

Opponents, however, argue that the courts have never interpreted the Constitution as guaranteeing a right to health care, and see the health-care law as a legislative overreach that the nation's Founding Fathers would condemn.

This debate over constitutionality has split largely along partisan lines, leading some legal scholars to say the new House rule might be more about playing politics than anything else.

"I see this as a statement of the Republican Party, heavily influenced by the tea party, that we are the defenders of the Constitution and we will exercise our constitutional responsibilities seriously in ways the Democrats did not," said Neil Siegel, a law professor at Duke University.

Oh please. The "debate" over the "constitutionality" of Romneycare has nothing to do with any actual interpretation of the law. These Tea Party people don't give a shit about the Constitution, and never have. How can they when they want to re-write half of the fucking document from scratch?

No, the "debate" over the "constitutionality" of Romneycare is no different from the "debate" over the constitutionality of the federal income tax, the constitutionality of federal civil-rights legislation, the constitutionality of Medicare, and Social Security, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Food Safety Modernization Act, and the Energy Department, and the EPA, and municipal bike lanes. It's an ideological fig leaf these people employ to de-legitimize their political opponents, period. I mean, when your party's leading ideological lights believe that much of what comprises our current government in Washington is the result of a century-old conspiracy of Marxists, militants and Nazi enablers, what other conclusion can you possibly reach when arguing against liberal policies? Especially on a day when this bit of insanity is making the rounds in Wingnutopia, you'd think it would be fairly obvious to the folks at the Post's national-affairs desk, but it all simply boils down to this:

Look, this is fun and all, and yes, people spending even seconds seriously considering the notion that Barack Obama could or would just hand over chunks of the US to whoever he wants need medical help (where are those damn meds, honey?), but as usual, this isn’t about what the folks weighing in so ponderously on Fox say it is.

The Republican Party has only one genuine political goal now: to destroy Obama’s presidency, and more generally the idea that the Democratic Party is a legitimate party of government. Which is to say that our Republican friends view elections in which the other side might actually gain access to power—actual democracy—as an accessory. Such theater is fine as long it produces the desired result, the GOP on top. When it does not, then it is dispensible.

This really isn't so difficult to figure out, is it? The "liberals are traitors" meme is really nothing new----its roots go as deep as the McCarthyite '50s and the John Birch '60s, but since 1995 it has become the dominant GOP political narrative to the point where now, any Republican member of Congress who dares to suggest otherwise runs the immediate risk of drawing a primary challenge whenever s/he comes up for reelection.

This is all part of a bigger problem that has affected most of our national media outlets, including the Post, and it is this: One of the two major political parties in the United States has, over the past ten to 15 years, been literally hijacked by a gang of grifters and psychopaths posing as strict constructionists. To actually mention this fact in polite company, however, is seen as either inappropriate, irrelevant, or simply a matter of false equivalencies, e.g., "Yes, the Republicans have their bomb-throwing zanies like Bachmann, Beck and Palin, but you liberals have Michael Moore and Bill Maher too." Thus does encroaching institutional insanity gain a veneer of respectability as it actively works to de-legitimize its sane and rational opposition---which happens to include the same "liberal" media that works overtime to accommodate the delusions of mouth-foaming madmen, who show their appreciation by openly cheering its demise.

---Vitelius

Heap Big Reparations

I've got a better idea: Let's give Texas and Arizona back to Mexico instead.

---Vitelius

On The Other Hand . . .

So as to avoid sounding like a member of the Obama-Betrayed-Us echo chamber, credit where due for this and this, both of which are significant pieces of social legislation that will immediately affect for the better the lives of millions of our citizens. Or they will, if we can prevent the Tea Party assholes from de-funding them. Looks like rear-guard skirmishes are going to be the order of the day through 2013, and most likely beyond.

---Vitelius

Midterm Report Card

I suppose in the interest of fairness I could compose a long list of the administration's individual achievements, as others have done, and I'd certainly concur that the 111th Congress has been the most productive Congressional session since the 1960s. I'm not sure if that indicates how awesomely Obama, Pelosi et al have performed or how utterly lame our last generation of political leaders has been, and I suppose we'll have to wait several years or longer to assess the social repercussions of pieces of legislation such as the Affordable Care Act, DADT repeal, etc. to properly judge their historic impact.

But in the end it all boils down to jobs, and incomes, and how money gets redistributed, and in that regard, the administration and its Congressional allies barely merit a passing grade. Yes, they averted another Great Panic, but that's about all they were ultimately willing to do. The institutions that created, drove, and profited handsomely from the recession through systemic fraud are all still largely intact. Their quasi-legal/blatantly illegal business practices have modified only slightly, if at all, and their power to blow another multi-trillion dollar hole in the economy has only increased since the Too Big to Fail institutions that were at the heart of the Crash of '08 are bigger and fatter than they were two years ago. Worst of all, the inability of our leaders, including the President, to honestly confront the systemic nature of the problem, and offer up systemic changes, helped to spawn a level of populist anger and resentment that propelled a generation of latter-day Know-Nothings to power in Washington. In the wake of the technocrats, we are now about to be ruled by a gang of Ayn Rand disciples who are convinced that the way to fix our corrupt private sector is to eliminate its tax burdens and blow up the federal government. The effects of this on our economy are likely going to be felt for years, and one imagines they will not be felicitous.

Basically, it's like this: Two years ago, voters elected a new sheriff to bring law and order to a lawless town. The sheriff and his posse managed to prevent the crime rate from growing, but the outlaws who terrorized the town and drained its treasury have mostly gotten a free pass; the impoverished citizenry is still outraged, and the town council is now in the hands of people who think that the way to solve the crime problem is to hand the crooks the keys to the city and shut down the sheriff's office. I just don't see how you can spin this as a positive development in any meaningful way, but I still hope the next few years prove me wrong.

---Vitelius

Creators of Great Wealth

One of these days, people will wake up and realize that a great deal of activity that goes on daily in our financial markets is just a highly ritualized dick-swinging contest. I'm not sure if there's a credit or a depreciation in the tax code to cover that, but if there isn't, there should be. Hopefully our wise leaders will take this into account when they start debating Tax Reform™ next year.

---Vitelius

Random Thought of The Day

Instead of laying people off and freezing salaries, maybe our wise leaders should consider hiring a few workers to, you know, fix stuff. Just a thought.

---Vitelius

Sure Didn't See This One Coming

I mean, these upstanding institutions were given a clean bill of health after passing those rigorous Treasury "stress tests" last year, weren't they?

Nearly 100 banks previously rescued by the federal government are again poised to fail, despite billions of dollars of support from the American Treasury.

The number of banks on the brink of collapse rose from 86 to 98 during the summer months, according to analysis of federal data from the Wall Street Journal. The banks in question have received $4.2 billion dollars in aid through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Most of the troubled institutions are relatively small.

The latest sign of distress in the financial system suggests the bailout may have simply been a stopgap solution for a sector still contending with the aftershocks of the greatest banking crisis in 80 years.

The continued weakness of some banks now threatens to impede a tentative economic recovery, say experts. With many banks still troubled, lending remains tight, depriving businesses of capital to expand and hire. With expansion and hiring rare, the economy remains weak, depriving the banks of healthy customers---in short, a feedback loop of trouble.

The Wall Street Journal defined "troubled banks" as those with less than 6 percent of their primary assets both reliable and liquid.

Through TARP, the government has purchased hundreds of billions of troubled assets from banks in danger. Though the program was purportedly meant to benefit healthy institutions with a good chance of survival, these latest failures suggest that many banks were in tenuous shape to begin with. Seven TARP recipients have already failed, at a loss of $2.7 billion.

Fire Tim Geithner. Fire him now. Then do what this guy recommended two fucking years ago. At least, make an honest attempt.

---Vitelius

Green Energy for Me But Not for Thee

The Wiki-hits just keep on coming:

US diplomats privately pressurised the Bangladeshi government into reinstating a controversial coal mine which had been closed following violent protests, a leaked diplomatic cable shows.

The US ambassador to Dhaka, James Moriarty, last year held talks with the country's chief energy adviser, urging him to approve plans by the British company Global Coal Management (GCM) to begin open-cast coal mining in the country's Phulbari area, in the west of Bangladesh.

GCM were forced to shut down operations in the country in 2006 after a grassroots demonstration turned violent. Three people were killed as soldiers fired at protesters, and several hundred were injured.

But the company has continued to maintain a strong presence in the country and has continued to lobby for rights to operate the coal mine ever since. Earlier this month, Steve Bywater, GCM's chairman, said that a Bangladeshi parliamentary standing committee had recommended that the country moves towards extracting coal reserves using open-cut mining methods.

The government of Bangladesh has not yet given any firm assurances over whether they will give the coal mine project the go-ahead. It remains a deeply contentious issue, with activists fearing the country's natural resources are due to be sold off to a string of foreign investors.

Revelations that the US government continued to push for the Bangladeshi energy adviser to reinstate the plans are likely to cause greater anger among activists, who last month staged a "long march" from Phulbari to Dhaka to demand Asia Energy leaves the country.

In a cable posted by WikiLeaks which was sent in July last year, Moriarty says he had urged Tawfiq Elahi Chowdhury, the prime minister's energy adviser, to authorise coal mining, saying that "open-pit mining seemed the best way forward".

In case you were wondering why the presence of an open-pit coal mine---which would, after all, bring much-needed jobs and revenue---would be such a source of contention in a poor nation like Bangladesh:

If implemented, the Phulbari Coal Project would displace as many as 220,000 people, including some 2,200 indigenous households, while also reducing their water supplies. The vast mine would destroy one of the most important agricultural regions in Bangladesh, a country where nearly half of all people do not have enough food. The project also threatens a wetlands UNESCO-protected mangrove forest that serves as a vital barrier against cyclones and floods, poses the risk of acid rain contamination of soil and water, and would spew massive amounts of greenhouse gases into our troubled atmosphere [...]

On August 26, 2006, as many as 70,000 people marched toward GCM’s office in Phulbari to protest the proposed coal mine. Tragically, paramilitary forces opened fire on the unarmed demonstrators, killing three people, including a 14-year old boy. Over 100 people were wounded, with some suffering severe and permanent injuries. Nation-wide protests and a four-day strike ensued, and were brought to an end only when the government agreed to halt the proposed project and evict GCM.

Glad to see our diplomatic corps has its priorities in order. I'm just trying to figure out what they've got against Happy Meals.

---Vitelius

Exhibit A for Smaller Government

But I'm not holding my breath waiting for any member of the Teabag Militia to argue for abolishing this government agency:

[T]hose [cables] describing the drug war do not offer large disclosures. Rather, it is the details that add up to a clearer picture of the corrupting influence of big traffickers, the tricky game of figuring out which foreign officials are actually controlled by drug lords, and the story of how an entrepreneurial agency operating in the shadows of the F.B.I. has become something more than a drug agency. The D.E.A. now has 87 offices in 63 countries and close partnerships with governments that keep the Central Intelligence Agency at arm’s length.

Because of the ubiquity of the drug scourge, today’s D.E.A. has access to foreign governments, including those, like Nicaragua’s and Venezuela’s, that have strained diplomatic relations with the United States. Many are eager to take advantage of the agency’s drug detection and wiretapping technologies.

But Julian Assange is a pervert. And Al Gore is obese. And no one need bother tracing the origins of this 40-year old monstrosity:

In January, 1969, only a few days after he had assumed office, President Nixon convened a meeting in the White House on possible law-and-order initiatives. The small inner circle of advisors who attended that meeting included John Mitchell, who in those early days acted as a "prime minister" to the president; John Ehrlichman, a Seattle land-use lawyer who had served as tour director in the 1968 campaign and was now counsel to the president; Egil Krogh, the young deputy to Ehrlichman; Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson who was then the counsel for domestic affairs, and Donald Santarelli, a twenty-nine-year-old lawyer who had drafted many of the position papers on crime for the 1968 Nixon campaign, and who was in the process of joining the Justice Department as a strategist for the crime-control program.

The meeting began with President Nixon's defining law and order as his "principal domestic issue." In the extensive interviews that Egil Krogh had with me over a two-month period in 1974 he recalled that in that January meeting the president used general terminology such as "we are a tough, law-and-order administration, and we are going to crack down on crime." Since the rhetoric used during the campaign in 1968 was basically "get tough," Krogh explained, "there was a clear motivation to be able to deliver to the electorate In 1972 a record of improvement in crime control." Nixon stated that the two categories of crime that would be most useful to diminish were armed robbery and burglary, since they "instill the greatest fear" in the electorate. As Nixon continued to describe his objectives for crime control, John Mitchell began slowly shaking his head in a negative manner, and pulling on his pipe as if it were some sort of semaphore signal. Asked whether he thought there was any problem, Mitchell leaned back and explained that most of the crimes that the president was interested in controlling did not fall under the jurisdiction or powers of the federal government. Except for Washington, D.C.. where the federal government did have direct Jurisdiction, crimes such as homicide, assault, mugging, robbery, and burglary were not violations of federal law but of state or local law, and even the federal government found an indirect way of intervening in the problem, the local government would get the credit for diminishing those classes of crimes. Moreover, John Ehrlichman pointed out, the established agencies of the federal government, such as the FBI, the IRS, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), and the Treasury Department, had traditionally been reluctant to involve themselves in any sort of offensive against such local crimes. In all, there were only a few thousand federal agents (not including the CIA or the Department of Defense) and they could not realistically be expected to have much effect on street crimes in the urban centers of America. Such crimes were committed, according to the best police estimates, by teenage youth acting on spur-of-the-moment inspirations or on targets of opportunity. Nixon quickly comprehended, Krogh said, that "the reach of the federal government's power in law enforcement did not penetrate to the state or local level ... where most of the street crime people were afraid of existed" [...]

The new strategy thus emerged. Ehrlichman suggested to Krogh that since "there were clear limits on what the federal government could do," the alternative was to "jawbone ... to stimulate action at the state and local level simply by making the issue [verbally]." Though the administration lacked the "tools" actually to reduce crime, it could wage a symbolic war on crime. In 1974 Krogh explained to me that during the first year of Nixon's administration, a whole range of "symbolic strategies" were discussed. Harsh-sounding legislation could be proposed to Congress which would have little effect on law enforcement but would greatly enhance the administration's public reputation for toughness (and if Congress failed to enact these laws, it could be blamed for "softness" toward crime). Repressive-sounding words such as "preventive detention" could be bandied about by administration officials, thus provoking an outcry in the "liberal press" which would add to the appearance of the relentless war on crime by the administration. A presidential spokesman could also directly attack judges in the courts for being sympathetic to criminals in order to make the administration seem, by contrast, hardline. The Nixon strategists thus decided early on that though they could not directly reduce street crime in America, they could gain enormous publicity for their crime offensive by calling attention to their repressive-sounding plans and ideas for law enforcement, and thereby create a bete noire for the liberal press to focus on.

Yep, the whole fucking thing was premised on a PR campaign---a bureaucratic extension of a GOP political operation to improve a President's re-election chances by pretending to get tough on crime while baiting the mainstream press in the process. Naturally, our watchdog media swallowed it whole. And we have spent God-knows-how-many-tens-of-billions of dollars to keep it alive since Operation Intercept. Then, as now, nothing much changes, eh?

---Vitelius

Diplomacy is a Racket

But Julian Assange is a traitorous creep who deserves to be waterboarded for life:

Mission Paris recommends that that the USG reinforce our negotiating position with the EU on agricultural biotechnology by publishing a retaliation list when the extend "Reasonable Time Period" expires. In our view, Europe is moving backwards not forwards on this issue with France playing a leading role, along with Austria, Italy and even the Commission. In France, the "Grenelle" environment process is being implemented to circumvent science-based decisions in favor of an assessment of the "common interest." Combined with the precautionary principle, this is a precedent with implications far beyond MON-810 BT corn cultivation [...]

Both the GOF and the Commission have suggested that their respective actions should not alarm us since they are only cultivation rather than import bans. We see the cultivation ban as a first step, at least by anti-GMO advocates, who will move next to ban or further restrict imports. (The environment minister's top aide told us that people have a right not to buy meat raised on biotech feed, even though she acknowledged there was no possible scientific basis for a feed based distinction) [...]

Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits.

The nerve of those Frenchies! One can only imagine the indignation that would ensue in official policy circles in the US if, say, the Chinese foreign ministry was strong-arming our government to allow the importation of food products treated with questionable chemical additives, and threatening retaliation if we balked. Oh, wait.

What I wanna know is, when did our State Department turn out to be such a shameless whore for America's corporate worst offenders? Is this a relatively new phenonemon, or has it always been this way?

---Vitelius

Handicapping the 112th Congress

Yes, it's early yet, but I'd say it's better than even odds right now that the GOP members will conclude sometime next spring that adopting the economic model of Argentina is the most awesome way to go to balance the federal budget, don't you think?

---Vitelius

Just Desserts

Not sure how I missed this from last week, but it's nice to see that there's at least one arts institution in our country that hands out awards based on true merit. Just Kids contains some of the most perceptive and poignant prose that you will ever read, it really is that good. So go buy it already.

---Vitelius