What I've Been Reading on the Intertubes

I just caught the Taibbi-McArdle smackdown at Tbogg’s place, and my mind is further boggled by McArdle’s career ascent. She is woefully unprofessional: a serious lack of preparation, a shifty-eyed demeanor, and a distractingly unattractive hairstyle.

She doesn’t do research, so she is left with only the most threadbare of arguments. Of course, Goldman Sachs ripped off their clients – every seller does! She accepts a second-hand report that GS perfomed proper disclosure; Taibbi, who actually read the pertinent documents, says no they didn’t. Who should the audience believe? She finally falls back on her classic assertion that everything is very complicated, so no one can really understand it.

Anyone in the public eye knows that you need to look at the camera, not off to the side as if at a shiny object, and not have your hair hanging limply in your face. I’m not elevating style over substance; it’s called engaging the audience. This is basic advice she should have gotten in any class where she had to make a presentation, but then I’m assuming she paid attention in school.

It's the Teachers' Fault Schools Are Bad

This NY Times article is about Brockton (Mass.) High School, where featherbedding, change-resistant union teachers have brought the school from failing to outperforming 90% of Massachusetts schools in the past 10 years.

Obama Declares Victory, Calls Troops Home

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/world/01military.html?_r=1&hp

Except, of course, for about 50,000 who are still there. He did give GW Bush a little stroking. To his credit, it was not quite a handjob to orgasm.

OMG, I must be reading too many leftward blogs; I can't keep my snark under control. I support President Obama, but I don't agree with everything he does.

Major rant

Yelling at the news on the radio today -

Why are 1 out of 8 Americans on food stamps? Why are people on years-long waiting lists for subsidized rentals? Why can't average working people afford health care?

The wages of middle- and working-class Americans have stagnated over the past 30 years, while the incomes of the top 1% or 2% have skyrocketed. Maybe that has something to do with it? I'm not an economist, so how can I know?

Unions are demonized - teachers' unions fighting for decent salaries and working conditions, auto workers' union fighting to hang on to previously agreed to pension and health benefits - while the Wall Streeters get to keep obscene bonuses based on contracts signed before they drove the economy into the swamp. Contracts are legally binding, except when they're contracts with working stiffs. Full disclosure: I worked for the Commonwealth for a couple of years; the union contract was meaningless because the legislature simply declined to fund it.

Wall Streeters, banksters, and the other fraud artists at the top of the economic heap don't need unions. Political contributions do their talking for them.

Class warfare, anyone? Eat the rich.

Edward Kennedy

I watched the Kennedy funeral on the Boston Globe's website today, and thought back to the other Kennedy funerals I watched on black-and-white TV. Where would we be as a country if Jack and Bobby had lived?

The Kennedy brothers were complex people, that is to say, no different from anyone else, with faults and virtues. What strikes my jaded, cynical heart is that they saw government as an instrument to improve people's lives. That practical idealism has almost disappeared from our politics; it remains to be seen if the Obama administration can revive it.

I lived on Mission Hill for many years, and I remember walking up the hill in all weathers, seeing the weather formations coming in, and how the clouds would let loose as they rose in altitude. The steady rain in Boston today seems somehow fitting for Edward Kennedy's funeral - the sky and the earth solemn and contemplative.

Classic Bobo

This is classic Bobo - he gives the reader reason after reason why his premise is wrong. McCain/Palin lack a clear governing philosopy; most problems are not battles between virtue and vice; personality is not enough.

If you read this essay not knowing that Brooks is a Republican hack, you might think he's a Democratic hack.