Cartoon of the day. (Piracy edition.)

From Mr. Fish. One Man’s Booty…

Tell me about it.

Interesting article on how the current recession has impacted those of us in the baby boom generation. And some of us don’t have much hair left to die black.

Many out-of-work baby boomers have despaired as they wonder whether to trim their résumés to avoid giving away their decades of work experience, or to dye their hair.

Yes the blogging hiatus has failed to bring a job.  So I am off this morning to my regularly scheduled Monday morning volunteering for the growing group of homeless men and women in the Beverly Hills area. We have gone from an average of 80 -90 each Monday to a high, about two weeks ago of almost 190.

Today I am off to slice 130 pounds of ham.

The Old Fart’s Sunday Recommendations.

• Cathleen Falsani has interviewed faith leaders and learned what they tell people who are suffering through this current economic hard time.
• A few summers ago (wow, it was 2001 immediately before 9-11) the media circus focused on the murder of Chandra Levy and the possible involvement of then Congressman Gary Condit.  Here’s an update from which the most interesting point to me is that her family is opposed to the death penalty for her killer if he is convicted. Robert Levy said he and his wife, Susan, were not told the identity of the person to be arrested “but we all know who it is.” He would not elaborate but said they would favor a life sentence for the killer.
• David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch, coming from two different points of view, propose an interesting compromise on the issue of gay marriage.  I’m not sure how I feel about this after only a first reading, but it’s a proposal worth exploring.
• And, if you’ve been living under a rock, just a reminder that tonight is the 81st annual Academy Awards from down the street in Hollywood.  I usually miss most of the show but tonight am heading out to a party at friends which should be fun. Enjoy but better yet, see some of the movies worth seeing–Doubt, Frost/Nixon, Frozen River and Milk were my favorites.

Cartoon of the Day. (Response to GOP BS edition.)

Politicians of both parties are good at creating straw men and talking in sound bites that completely distort reality. One that recently got under my skin is feature in this cartoon. (Hat tip: Ellie).

The Old Fart’s Thursday Recommendations.

• A bit of humor to start. “Although it was promised that the Meek shall inherit the Earth, there appear to have been some delays fulfilling this aspiration.”
• Joshua Kezer exonerated after spending 14 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. “This is proof that God is real,” Kezer said from prison. “This is proof. This is wonderful.”
• David Ignatius, on the media obsessing over the political ball game of the stimulus package while the Country suffers. “Did President Obama have a good day Tuesday when he signed the stimulus bill? You bet he did. But the point that weirdly seems to get relatively little attention is that it was a good day for millions of Americans who are getting hammered by the recession.”
• Arnold defends Obama and the stimulus package.
• Hypocritical GOP legislators now fight for money they opposed. Is anyone surprised?

The Old Fart’s Wednesday Recommendations.

After a couple of days where I was doing other things, mostly cooking, I’m back with a few recommendations for you:

• MoDo on “Cheney and the Goat Devil.”
• Marc Ambinder on the shifting tone among potential GOP presidential candidates on the issue of support for gay civil unions/marriage.
• Lots of interesting editorials and op-eds on bipartisanship and on the GOP just saying no. Thomas Frank on the media obsession with bipartisanship, James Morone on a historical picture of bipartisanship, and even Bush’s former speech writer, Michael Gerson thinks the GOP needs to move from its “No” posture.
• Thanks but no thanks for that senator from Chicago. As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, “you have your black senator now, isn’t he a dandy.”
• A great article in The Atlantic on how the current economic crash will reshape America. It’s long so take the time to read it and weep (or not).
• Cathleen Falsani on is A-Rod forgivable.
• Paul Martin posts a new creed for the “Church of the Free Market.” All I have to add to that is, “Amen!.”
• And, finally, an interesting blog post on “Amish Hackers” by Kevin Kelly. Having grown up not too far from Amish Country in Pennsylvania, I found it an interesting read.

Patience People!

Deep though.

Will anyone care if the stimulus bill was bipartisan a year or two from now?  Won’t the issue be did it work or fail? (But, all the idiot talking heads can focus on is the former.)

The Old Fart’s Sunday Recommendation.

• Frank Rich on the GOP’s early declaration of the death of the Obama presidency. “…Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the “inevitable” Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa. The G.O.P. doesn’t recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started.”
• Michael Moore’s next target–bankers.
• A win for equal rights in Utah as their GOP governor endorses civil unions and gay adoption. It won’t change their legislative action but it sure points to the way the wind is blowing on this issue.
• I missed this one yesterday but it’s worth pointing you to, as the NY Times editorial writers hit the nail on the head regarding the California Prison System and what needs to be done. “Like many states, California is putting too many people behind bars for too long, and it doesn’t have the money to build more facilities. Instead of appealing, as it has vowed to do, California should get to work overhauling its misguided incarceration policies. [.....] A large number of California prisoners are behind bars for technical parole violations. Others are in for minor, nonviolent crimes. Inmates like those can and should be released, and given help to reintegrate into society. The state’s limited prison space should be used for people who truly need to be there. It is not ideal when a court has to intervene so directly in managing prisons. But California has been unwilling, on its own, to run a prison system that complies with the Constitution.”
• And, from earlier in the week, the NY Times delves into the serious art of updating your Facebook status.

Deep thought.

If 67% of Americans, according to this poll, believe they could do a better job managing the economy than our congress, why do so few participate in the system?

Economic Recovery–Everything Must Change.

I was unable to watch President Obama today in his town hall meeting in Indiana, but I think Brian Mclaren has a very interesting take on the kind of recovery needed. You can read it all here. Here are some of the highlights.

For many people, economic recovery means “getting back to where we were a few months or years ago.” That means recovering our consumptive, greedy, unrestrained, undisciplined, irresponsible, and ecologically and socially unsustainable way of life.
I’d like to suggest another kind of recovery … drawing from the world of addiction. When an addict gets into recovery, he doesn’t want to go back and recover the “high” he had before, or even to recover the conditions he had before he began using drugs and alcohol. Instead, he wants to move forward to a new way of life – a wiser way of life that takes into account his experience of addiction.

[.....]

Similarly, I’d like to suggest whenever we hear the word “recovery,” we as a nation see it not as a call to get back our old addictive high, but rather as a call to face our corporate and personal addictions, including the following:

1. Our addiction to carbon…
2. Our addiction to weapons…
3. Our addiction to fear. Religious leaders, media leaders, and political leaders have all discovered that you can raise quick votes, dollars, and members through the hallucinogenic stimulant of fear. By making straights afraid of gays, conservatives afraid of progressives, Christians and Jews afraid of Muslims, citizens afraid of immigrants, and vice versa, these leaders get a quick organizational high – crack for their unity and morale. But the more fear you pump into your system, the more fear you have, and pretty soon, you go from being stimulated to paranoid, seeing things that aren’t there and missing things that are. And soon after that, you move from paranoia to paralysis, leaving you in greater danger than ever.
4. Our addiction to stuff…
5. Our addiction to a single bottom line…
6. Our addiction to easy answers…

Brian provides additional info on each of the points that I didn’t quote here so, do yourself a favor and read his entire take on the issue. His bottom line, EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE.

The Old Fart’s Sunday Recommendations.

• Randall Balmer on The Daily Show, about God in the White House. (Click on the Randall Balmer segment in the “Coming Up Next” box.
• Paul Krugman on the impact of the centrist cuts in the stimulus plan. 600,000 fewer employed Americans. DAMN! I could be one of them.
• I know this is not the point of this NY Times story, but I thought it was interesting (in a weird sort of way) that Mike Tyson was once married to the sister of Michael Steele, the new GOP head.
• SNL’s Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi press conference. Sometimes we have to laugh at ourselves. “Maybe if we spent more money on education and sex ed the next generations won’t have so many stupid people…”
• Brad Gooch on Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, two artists whose work first got me interested in contemporary art.  In fact my first piece of real art I ever purchased was by Rauschenberg.
• And then there’s The Grammys tonight. I won’t watch but am always interested.

Quote of the Day. (Stimulus edition.)

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.

-Otto von Bismarck

Forgive me Lord, for Mitch has sinned.

A reader at Talking Points Memo makes a great point shooting down Mitch McConnell’s line that if you spent $1 million every day since the day Jesus was born, you still wouldn’t have spent $1 trillion:

This may be maddening and juvenile but Democratic lawmakers have to knock these sound bytes down with their own.

Please, anyone:

“Senator McConnell is flaunting his economic ignorance because if you started the day Jesus was born and created TWENTY million dollars in wealth every day you would have the wealth created in the US economy each year. AND if you flushed TWO million dollars down the toilet every day since Jesus was born you would have the credit losses in the US economy just last year. AND if you flushed THREE million a day, you would have lost less than the money that this recession is projected to cost by the end of next year. We no longer measure boats by cubits and we should not design economic stimulus based on a Jesus’ birthday, so will the Minority Leader please either engage in a serious talk about economic policy or step aside and let the adults handle it?”

Republican answer to stimulate the economy.

From Jesus General

The Old Fart’s Friday Recommendations.

• Check out the Rock and Theology project.
• With all the Republican talk of spending in the much needed stimulus bill, they forgot to look at the Bush administrations wasteful overspending on the first half of the TARP. $78 billion worth.
• Paul Krugman continues to warn us of the dire consequence of failure to stimulate/spend enough.

The Old Fart’s Friday Recommendation.

• Paul Waldman, at The American Prospect, on the Obama Administration and separation of church and state.
• A video interview by Sojourners with musician Moby.
• Paul Krugman on  the economic crisis and the coming health care catastrophe.
• The congressional Republican unanimity on the economic stimulus and its impact is explored by Eugene Robinson.

Another impact of our economic crisis.

Apparently this is the 5th family murder-suicide pact in LA in the past 12 months. (According the KPCC radio new this AM.) How sad.

Scary Chart.

Here’s an illustration to give you an indication of the relative size of the Wall Street Bailout (from Propublica). Click on the link for history of all the bailouts.

Off With His Head!

Longtime conservative columnist, George Will, provides his take on the two candidates reaction to the fiscal crisis. And, it’s a doozy.

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

*****

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?