Guidepost to Kulchur

Above: Don't fuck with Adam Sandler University!
This is the latest "signature" image added to the rotation of pictures that load up on the NYU email page. It joins a series that unconsciously captures the quintessence of corporate college alienation, something previously discussed here.

YET, A NEW VIOLENCE HAS EMERGED!







Addendum: You really can get your fill of Queens Life on the Q44.

207th Street Way Home

Above: A conspiracy revealed in Inwood.

Above: At home with the flock.

Sketches from a Hunter's Album: 69th Street Station

Above: Feeling the same impulse.

The Republic We Kept

Straight Talk Excess (I Make Joke)

Well, wasn't that a dispiriting charade?

We Americans suffer from a ridiculous number of pathologies. A neurotic and childish avoidance of unpleasant truths and those who embrace them is probably the worst in our nutball portfolio. We much prefer meaningless focus-grouped verbiage to dull the sharp edges of our anxiety, and we love those who relentlessly shovel the sugar-shit down our throats.

Taking my cues from Ms. Ifill, here are a few difficult truths behind some of tonight's "debate" "issues."

The Bailout

The House bill that failed, almost in spite of all the Republican tomfoolery, was a shit sandwich. The Senate bill is even worse. The GOP is out to take the con to new heights while most Dems are hemming and hawing about how far to turn the screw.

Partisanship

Listen, partisanship is not a bad thing. In fact, in politics it's essential. Otherwise, what the fuck is the point of having an election? If you're not out there advocating for a position or idea, then you're just rolling over for the other guy. So, when most Republicans and pundit lickspittles cite bipartisanship as a sacred ideal, they're really talking about Dems bending over for the Party of "Oops! I Crapped My Pants: '08 Collector's Edition."

See, e.g., Deregulation

Deregulation (AKA the "Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? Futue te Ipsum!" impulse of late capitalism) has been a bipartisan boondoggle since before Reagan was dealing anti-tank missiles for American missionaries.

Redistribution of Wealth = Governing

Guess what? Any time the government spends revenue generated from taxes, that's an example of "redistributing" wealth, even when it's pissing it away on abstinence-only education, Iraq, or any other of God's happy accidents. Since 2000, my taxes dollars have been "redistributed" to upgrade Bush's fake-ass Crawford ranch, keep Denny Hastert awash in cupcakes, and ensure Mark Foley's office computer had the latest in communications software.

Healthcare

McCain's plan takes a bad situation and makes it unfathomably worse. I mean, it gives the authors of our misery (psst! I mean insurance companies) greater oceans of taxpayer funds. This is like shipping a crate of Sudafed to a meth lab and hoping that, instead of low-grade crystal, the cookers will fashion some magic pill to cure cancer.

Bankruptcy Act of 2005

This law was intended to benefit the banks. The reason only 10 percent of those declaring bankruptcy have been affected by "this whole switch from Chapter 7 to Chapter 13" is because the bill's crafters flubbed their opportunity. Also, the Senator from MBNA, Joe Biden, was totally hot for this shit.

Energy ≠ Duchess Wasilla's Area of Expertise

"Drill, Baby, Drill" is the most reckless and ignorant catch-phrase of a campaign drowning in idiotic slogans. Hey guys, we can't drill out of our energy woes--anyone who is a supposed expert in energy fucking knows that. To begin, and as Biden correctly pointed out, we have something like 3% of the world's oil reserves and consume nearly a quarter of the annual output. Secondly, any new drilling projects wouldn't come on line until ten or more years after they began.

However, that isn't the half. We may hold 3% of the world's reserves but both the global total and our meager share are slipping year by year. Gascans don't grow on trees, current alternatives are for shit, we're fucked, etc.

Israel

If you love Israel, then you better push for a true two state solution. Look at how the demographics are trending: without giving Palestinians some shot at a functioning civil society, there will simply be no Israel in 100 years if it continues to sit on the fence.

Now, to create a viable Palestinian state, some West Bank settlements will have to be removed. Robert Farley recently rehashed the sensical argument: "If not abandoned, the settlements will require either the construction of a full apartheid state, or the extermination/expulsion of the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank. Either way, Israeli democracy dies, and Israel cannot survive without democratic institutions." Bingo. The current course will lead to an end of Israeli democracy, which will in turn spell the end of Israel.

Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud is not the leader of Iran, nitwits. The "Supreme Leader" is the Ayatollah (a sort of Cheney-like cleric).

Mavericktude

Mav·er·ick   [mav-er-ik]   noun:

    1: unbranded range animal; especially: motherless calf
    2: independent person who does not go along with a group or party
    3: person who defines "Achilles Heel" as "greatest strength"

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Addendum: Politics are an atrocious consumerist business in America, where debates more resemble the stop-start blitherings of ass clown "marketeers" than the disputation of competing ideas. Forget Lincoln-Douglas 1858, tonight almost makes one yearn for Clinton-Dole 1996:

LEHRER: I'm Jim Lehrer of the News Hour on PBS. Welcome to this second presidential debate between Senator Bob Dole, the Republican nominee, and President Bill Clinton, the Democratic nominee. ... We begin now with Senator Dole and his opening statement. Senator Dole.

DOLE: Thank you very much, Jim. I thank you very much, Jim. Let me first give you a sports update. The Braves, one; the Cardinals, nothing, early on.

Clown of the Organic State

Best line on Palin's performance at the RNC goes to Matt Taibbi:

It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.

Above: "Hiya, herrenvolk!"

Laissez-faire c'est Fini

French president Nick Sarkozy laid into late modern capitalism pretty hard last week:

A certain idea of globalization is dying with the end of a financial capitalism that had imposed its logic on the whole economy and contributed to perverting it. ... The idea of the all-powerful market that could not be contradicted by any rules, by any political intervention [was] a crazy idea. The idea that the market is always right is a crazy idea.

Self-regulation, to fix all problems, is over. Laissez-faire is over.

Say what you will about Sarkozy's policies, but his brand of populist rhetoric is exactly the kind of talk you'd expect in a functioning democracy. Yet, imagine the hue and cry if President Mongo were to speak against the free market. O! can't you hear the insane sputterings on CNBC? Envision Jim Cramer's aneurysm or Larry Kudlow's angry tears?

Plus:

"Still, France has so far been reasonably well insulated from the American crisis, in large part because French banks are still heavily retail, mortgages normally require significant down payments and French regulations do not allow subprime mortgages."

Wow. No predatory sub-prime lending? What's that shit like?

Retard Semiotics

Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (1983):

[T]he age of simulation thus begins with a liquidation of all referentials... It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself, that is, an operation double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. ... A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and the simulated generation of difference.

Above: Superkraut and Duchess Wasilla make nice, make believe.

Va te Faire Foutre, Ancien Régime!

Classy send off, Mr. President:

Fellow citizens, if the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain's resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry left never will.

Above: Average GOP voter dismayed by "angry left."

Final Examinations

Above: I can't lose.