Category: Wanker

Obama Just Did Something Mindboggling Stupid

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I don’t care what the calculus behind this is, his decision to appear on Fox News Sunday is very very stupid.

Because top line Democrats no longer appear on their show, Fox has lost credibility, and they know it, and now Obama is sitting down because he thinks that he’s somehow going to charm them into liking him.

Even if they weren’t dishonest excuses for journalists, this would not happen. Journalists are small people who hold grudges over stuff like this, and they buy ink by the hogshead,* so this is a lose-lose.

It’s sh%$ like this that makes me wonder if he’s not ready for prime time.

*OK it’s hundreds of TV stations, but the analogy holds….

Capital Gains Tax Bullsh$# Deconstructed

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Well, it appears that at the debates, Charlie Gibson echoed the latest right wing talking point/lie, that recent cuts in the capital gains tax rate have increased revenues, and that tax increases cut revenues. (I must have missed this because I found the debates too painful to watch).

This, along with the assertion that people making $200,000/year (the top 3%) are somehow middle class show why one should not put innumerate idiots in positions of authority in journalism.

Saying that tax cuts in capital gains increase revenue is like saying that running a year long sale in a store will increase profits.

What does happen is that one the eve of a change in the capital gains tax, you have accelerated (in the case of a future tax increase) or deferred (in the case of a future tax cut) profit taking. This is a one time per tax change effect.

It’s exactly like a store sale. It produces a temporary effect, and any attempt to use it to guide long term fiscal policy is dishonest.

The Debates

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Switched over to them after 5 minutes from Olbermann, because I didn’t want to hear the intro.

Should have waited 10, but the whole Olbermann hatin’ on Hil is getting really old.

Then the questions. Stupid, really stupid vacuous question. Back to Olbermann. More hatin’ on Hil, back to the debate, and more evidence that Mike Judge was an optimist when he wrote and directed Idiocracy.

At the rate this is going I expect Gibson to ask about the designated hitter rule.

Can’t take it. I’m switching to Good Eats (Alton Brown) until “Bushed” on Olbermann.

I am not alone in my opinions, see here (“shoddy, despicable performances), and here (“perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years”).

I watched perhaps 15 minutes of the debate, it was all I could take.

Next time, I’ll do the home root canal kit instead, or if I can’t do that, then I’ll watch a Fox TV reality show **shudder**.

Power Drunk Psychopath Control Freak Principal Bans Tag

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In this case, I’m referring to Robyn Hooker, principal of Kent Gardens Elementary School in McLean, VA, who issued the edict because tag had become a game, “of intense aggression.”

One of the peculiarities of being a principal in the US, at least at public schools, is that you cannot work your way up through the ranks. You have to get a certification specific to being a principal.

Generally, this means that either you went in with the goal of being a principal, i.e. that you wanted to be “in education” but you did not want to teach, or you decided that you really didn’t like teaching that much.

So you get profoundly dysfunctional people like this, who think that any problem, and it appears that the tag was getting a bit rough can be solved with a mindless punitive over-reaction.

What’s more, they lack adult supervision, which is why teachers’ unions are the way they are. Would you want to work for someone like her?

Wanker of the Day: J.K. Rowling

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Yes, the author of the Harry Potter series is suing a small publisher over their publishing a Harry Potter encyclopedia.

It appears that Rowling , “feels like her words were stolen”.

Tough. Copyright is not ownership, and it was never intended to be ownership. It is a limited time exclusive license, and people are allowed to do things like create encyclopedias.

In fact, this was the sort of activity that was specifically intended under copyright.

Under your view of copyright, Shakespeare’s folios, from which the plays were published, would have been suppressed, which would make all of us poorer in a most profound way.

She “loves” the Harry Potter Lexicon Web site, but had to “draw the line” at his publishing a book based on this material.

Frankly, you have no right to do this. Literally, unless the person has fully appropriated large blocks of your text.

Names, relationships, a plot chart of the story line (assuming that author Steven Vander Ark developed himself), they aren’t your property.

Copyright was created to promote the useful sciences and arts, at least in the USA, the fact that someone is diagramming the finer points of your tale is none of your damn business, though I’m sure you can probably bankrupt the publisher.

Rand Could Not Write Her Way Out of a Paper Bag

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So says Harold Bloom, a professor of humanities and English at Yale, in response to an interview about the increasing number of grants from various titans of industry making grants requiring the study of, or chairs in, the studies of the works of Ayn Rand.

I would have to agree. I took an elective course in high school, Philosophy of Literature, and as a part of an extra credit assignment, I read, The Virtue of Selfishness, which I found to be less comprehensible, and more poorly written than Emmanuel Kant.

I’ve come to realize that in addition to piss-poor writing, it was incomprehensible because it was piss-poor thinking.

I recognized it as bullsh#@ as a 16 year old, and it was painful enough that I wanted nothing to do with her fiction.

Full disclosure, to the degree that I place myself in a philosophical school, and I try not to, I find it a waste of time, I consider myself to be a Jewish Existentialist Utilitarian with a rather Deist view of the universe.

As Daniel at Crooked Timber notes:

Although the Ayn Rand Institute is quoted as being basically approving of the trend, I think that a decent case can be made to the effect that the article is wrong to say that “While Rand, an advocate of free markets, would support a university’s getting paid to teach her works”. This is essentially a bribe to the university and as far as I can see, taking a bribe to compromise your own vision of an undergraduate reading list doesn’t fit in particularly well with Rand’s particular ethics of self-reliance and independent thought. I don’t even really think that having a university professorship endowed by a charitable foundation is particularly consistent Objectivism but there you go.

I’m a bit more cynical though.

She was a self parody in life, and now her philosophy is a self parody.

FWIW, the Chronicle of Higher Ed has some names and programs their report.

Tonya Harding Option? I Call Bull$#@&!

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So we have Jake Tapper of ABC News reporting that a “Democratic Party official, who asked for anonymity”, which could be anyone from Howard Dean to the guy who gets the coffee, saying, “Her securing the nomination is certainly possible – but it will require exercising the ‘Tonya Harding option.'” and then adding “Is that really what we Democrats want?”

While I appreciate Tapper’s skills in parlaying a couple of dates with Monica Lewinski into a heavy duty “reporting” gig, first with Salon, and then with better paying media, he’s a still a wanker.

He spent all of 2000 hating on Al Gore, because he missed a flight because they did not hold the press plane for him.

First, if this were someone senior, say someone of my generation (I’m 45) or older, they would not use this term.

Second, he didn’t use the term “senior”, which he would have used if it were defensible.

Furthermore, notwithstanding the use of the quote by some of the hyperventilating elements of the blogosphere, what we have here is someone, and someone not particularly senior saying what has been the standard line for places like MSNBC for some time: that Hillary Clinton is “destroying the party”.

A lot of people are hyperventilating about a story with no “there” there, which I’m sure tickles Mr. Tapper no end.

Got Everything Wrong

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So says John Cole of Balloon Juice.

While it is amusing to read that he finds it, “amazing I could tie my shoes in 2001-2004“, my question is more direct. What the hell are your going to do to fix it?

I’ve wrong on most of my predictions, but I have not pushed policy prescriptions on the basis of those predictions.

You were were more than wrong, you were an accessory to evil, and an enthusiastic one at that.

You contributed to making us less safe, killing in excess of half a million Iraqis, driving more than a million from their homes, and damaged the United States for decades to come economically, diplomatically, and morally.

You cheer led for this evil.

The Julius Streicher, the publisher of Der Stürmer was put to death for his cheer leading, and while your misdeeds are far more milder, simply saying, “oops, sorry”, does not cut it

What Are you going to do to make it right?

Well, It’s Not Like USA Today is a Newspaper

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But does not mean that I’m not disappointed that USA Today declared Lawrence Yun, the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors as one of the top economic forecasters in the US.

Ummm….Covering your ears and saying, “there is no housing crash” does not make one a “top economic forecaster”. He is a paid shill of the realtors, and as such he only reflects reality to the degree that he doesn’t reveal himself as a complete and total pratt.

His record is worse than mine, though it might be better than his predecessor at paid shill for the NAR, David Lereah.

USA Today‘s Barbara Hagenbaugh and Barbara Hansen, and possibly their entire business journalism department, are my wankers of the day.

Journamalism at its Worst

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Yep, we have Brian Ross at his wankerriffic worst.

Hillary Clingon’s travel records as first lady are released, and what is the lede?

Is it whether or not she is imporperly claiming experience? NO.

Is it evidence of some sort of evidence of wrong doing? NO.

Nope, what’s important to Brian Ross is that Hillary Clinton slept at the White House on “blue dress day”.

What a bunch of shallow wankers.

This is high Broderism at its worst.

A Big Wet Kiss, With Tongue, and Possibly on the Genitals, to the Upper Management of Bear Stearns, Courtesy of the New York Times

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Maybe I’ve grown hard hearted in my middle age, but somehow, the plight of upper management at Bear Stearns does not inspire the empathy in me that it does Landon Thomas Jr. of the New York Times.

Bear Stearns has always been one of the shadier brokerages, with line fuzzing being a part of their investment strategy, so I’m just not upset that James E. Cayne “billionaire just over a year ago when Bear’s stock soared past $160, his 5.8 million shares are now worth about $28 million at Monday’s closing price of $4.8”.

Nor am I distressed that, “Some executives had moved quickly, putting their weekend homes on the market”.

Because of their work there are now people with no home at all.

And then there are the poor investors, “Bear executives were not the only big losers. Joseph Lewis, the Bahamas-based financier, invested $1 billion at prices above $100 last year, and top institutional investors like Morgan Stanley, Legg Mason and Barrow, Hanley, Mewhinney & Strauss, a value investor in Dallas, have been recent buyers of the stock.”

Boo F*&%ing Hoo.

Disgraceful.

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Representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Kendrick Meek have declined to support Democratic candidates running against Republicans incumbents in Florida.

Here’s the kicker. If you want a house leadership position, and Meek is a member of the 30-Something Working Group, and has been a vice chairman of the DCCC, and Wasserman Schultz is co-chair of the Red to Blue committee.

These are leadership positions. If you take those positions, you have an obligation to do your damn job.

I don’t care if your daughter is running as a Republican, and her alleged rapist is running as a Democrat, you work for the Democrat. If you can’t hack it, then go and be a back bencher.

We need to go after both of these folks in the 2010 primaries, hard.

Money quote on the real reason:

However, Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, which tracks political campaigns, said the lack of support from top Democrats could make donors leery.

”Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a favorite of leadership, somebody on the move,” Rothenberg said. “When somebody like that doesn’t want to be a major player in taking on a Republican, that’s a signal.”

Yet Rothenberg says the situation is not without precedent: He noted several Republican and Democratic senators from the same states honor nonaggression pacts.

Both Meek and Wasserman Schultz have benefited from a close affiliation with the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, which since its founding in 2003 has contributed $22,000 to Wasserman Schultz’s campaign committee and $10,500 to Meek’s.

Wasserman Schultz said the PAC support played no role in her decision, but she acknowledges she’s closer to the Republican incumbents on Cuba issues than she is to the Democratic challengers, who favor easing restrictions on family travel to the island.

When Castro dies, can we send tham all back to Cuba? Let them f$%# up that country.