Fascinoma

This object becomes a very meta comment on the relationship, or perhaps distinktion, between between graffiti and art when considered with Audens' reflection that: "Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts."

I've been away from the Ministry for a bit of vacation, lounging with The Lobbyist in a cabin by a high mountain lake. Bears, eagles, chipmunks, coyotes, trout and mosquitoes, but no intertubes or cellphones and this was good. I did pick up on the Sherrod episode, apparently yet another shameful episode in bullshit, cowardice and incompetence by the Looking Forward Not Back Adminstration. Jayzus.

Kathleen Parker, right-wing asshole and soon, in view of her Aryan appearance, to be an obersturmbannführer at Crap Not News, unwittingly admits to something almost universally true about self-styled conservatives -- they're not fully people per se, they're contrarians, adolescent againsters. This is to say, they don't really have principles, ideas, adult character or individuality of their own, they define themselves tribally and especially as enemies of of various persons, places and things. Their highest purpose in life is to vex their enemies, real or imagined. Someone seems to have reprogrammed Parker, who once said true things about Grifter Barbie, things like, "If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself." In today's column she walks back from that accurate assessment faster than a Brownshirt who has crossed Limbaugh, saying, at the top of her mashnote to Sarah Palin:

For what it's worth, I get a kick out of Sarah. May I call her Sarah?

I'm totally sure all those humorless feminazis were completely steamed about the hated bows Kathy wore just to spite them, and this more or less negated the egregious studpidity of Parker's book. But more importantly: Kathleen, like all Republicans, can't see irony and is totally selfblind, therefore she can't know that the of all people in the universe, it is her own ilk who take their ideology a highly lethal tad too seriously, that is why they have our troops engaged in folie a deux with the more ignorantly murderous Moslems.

Palin remains a grifter, liar, bigot and bully, but according to Parker, not someone to be "feared or loathed." If not for the Sarah Palins of the world, what purpose do fear and loathing serve?

So I was watching Olberman last night and they had Barney Frank on, and he was as usual making more sense than the average politician -- not that I expect that this matters much. He pointed out how America spends as much on our military as the rest of the world combined, how given its virtually unlimited and unaccountable budget the Pentagon has absolutely no incentive to economize (It a Basic Law of Ecconomy* that people with no reason to economize don't.), thus we get the $700 hammer et cetera, and also that independent of the wars we're losing so expensively in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're still throwing a lot of money at the last one we won, in the form of lots of troops in Japan and Europe, doing what exactly?

This makes me wonder: if we're so threatened on our borders, why don't we bring those 15,00o Marines back from Okinawa and have them march the deserts of the southwest. At least then their paychecks will go into the bras of American hookers.

The sad truth is this: all governments are schemes for "wealth redistribution," as Glen Peckerwood's Tea Partiers say. In the absence of this function the most piratical simply end up with everything of worth -- in which case a rapacious few live slightly better in armed camps precariously protected from the squalid masses -- and other pirates. (We can see this sort of devolution in places where "the market is free;" that is to say the narcocracies of northern Mexico. ) Progressive or socialistic governments redistritbute the wealth in welfare, cultural enterprise, and payola; fascist governments redistribute it in arms and payola. There's a lot of skimming either way, but the difference isn't moot. Investment in arms actually gives a very, very poor return on the government's investment, besides being morally deplorable. This is just an economic fact. A billion dollars put into a bomber is of benefit to a few thousand people who build and a few dozen who crew the bomber. A billion dollars put into a social program or a brick and mortar project of almost any other sort puts the same billion into the pockets of the recipients or builders, et cetera, and then we end up with something of potential long-term benefit to people of the community or even the nation. There is only a sweepstakes chance that the bomber, after it's done, will ever do anything for anyone -- though it might well explode an Afghan wedding or two. After all, we had a multi-trillion dollar Air Force on the job on Septemeber 11, 2001, and it didn't ameliorate the situation even slightly in any fucking way. So, we can contuinue to piss money into the rathole of bloody boondoggles and fetishized objects, or we can actually return some of the wealth of the people to the people. Which will Washignton opt for?

*

Other basic economic laws include:

Good; quick; cheap -- pick two.

Ex nihilo nihil fit, or: People who try to get something for nothing end up getting nothng for something.

Perhaps it is unfair to single out Wolf Blitzer for the accumulated sins of our mass media. On the other hand he's famous, rich, and a total fucking moron, as the link's snippet of him on Jeopardy illustrates perfectly. At the end Alex says, very awkwardly, "Wolf, things didn't work out as you'd hoped..." a Masterpiece of understatement.

The Ted Baxter of Crap Not News!

The Lobbyist and I just got back from Clifton Forge, Virginia where we went to see a concert by one Scott Miller. I used to go there a lot when I was college student as I had friends there and we did the hippies-in-the-mountains thing. Very, very beautiful area but Clifton Forge is a depressed, rusting little railroad hub in the groin of a steep valley. Still lots of (freight, coal etc) railroading through there, but not much employment on today's automated systems. Still, they are desperately trying to gentrify and come back as tourist, outdoorsy destination, selling the local rivers and vast National Forests thereabout. There seems to be a cadre of come-heres who have bought up dirt-cheap housing and retail property for their own private Idahoes. There's one fairly spiff little bistro/bar run by refugees from Tidewater, an outdoor outfitter, lots of junk/antique places (very depressing most of the wares) and a thriving home-hospice supplies emporium. Best not dwell on their clientele.

Anyway, they're trying to fix up the old Masonic theater there (in 1905 the local Masons decided the hillbillies needed an opera house!) and Scott Miller was playing a benefit in view of his family roots in the area. The building is quite lovely in a Rose for Emily sorta way, and the concert was fabulous and funny, with wine and birthday cake (the place opened on July 4th) and all the area bourgeois in attendance.

Anyway, the Lobbyist and I also went hiking Friday and Saturday in the gorgeous Douthat State Park and even she, whose city-girl motto is "Ewwww -- nature," seemed to have a good time on said hikes. She didn't care much for the big blue Spotted Salamander I caught ("It's related to a snake.") and released, but she did like lunch in the lakeside park restaurant -- a time capsule of simple WPA-era rustic styling, staffed by gorgeous hillbilly girls in the last moments before their double-crossed genes, egregious diet and the Oxycontin kick in.

It was very nice to get out of DC for awhile.