In his address to the nation Tuesday night about Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama took a refreshingly frank approach: “Today we mark the end of our nation’s military commitment in Iraq. Our foolish adventure there has been a catastrophe, a nightmare inflicted on us by a past president whose stupidity was exceeded only by his arrogance. Iraq was a disaster that cost thousands of American lives, God knows how many Iraqi lives, and increased our national debt by an amount that is almost beyond counting. What did we get for this immeasurable investment? Nothing.

“Here’s where things stand now. The Iraqi government, if that’s what you’d call it, is a shambles. The economy is wrecked, and life in Iraq is still so dangerous and unstable that nobody wants to be there anymore. And neither do we, baby. We’re outta there.

“Now we can turn our full military attention to Afghanistan where we’ve been fighting for ten years without any success whatsoever. We’ll be putting lots more troops and treasure into the effort, which will result in many more American casualties and plenty more dead Afghanis, including lots of hapless women and children who keep getting in the way of our smart bombs and missiles. But, hey, don’t look at me. I didn’t start this and there’s no way, politically speaking, that I can just pull out of it. Which would be the smart thing to do.” The President had some other things to say about bravery and sacrifice, etc. etc., but nobody bothered to write it down or record it.

Meanwhile, down the road at the Capitol, Democrats and Republicans in both houses of Congress adopted a resolution to stop acting like willful little brats. Rep. John Boehner, the Republican obstructionist from Ohio and minority leader in the House, said, “We thought it might be interesting to pass some laws that would actually be good for the country.”
Boehner’s counterpart in the Senate, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky obfuscator, announced that from now on he would work with senators from both parties to respond to the needs of the American people. “Tantrums will no longer be tolerated,” McConnell said. “We are also going to try to keep lying to a minimum. We want the Senate to be a kinder, gentler place where work actually gets done.”

Cynical observers of the Senate noted the timing and language of McConnell’s statement, which closely followed a threat by his fellow senators to stone him to death if he didn’t stop acting like a five-year-old with a skin rash.

Many Democrats of dubious standing also clamored to partake of this new Era of Good Feeling. So-called Blue Dog Democrats in the House, who have been trying for many months to play both sides of the fence while also sitting on it, came out in favor of the resolution. The Blue Dogs issued a statement that said in part, “The American people do not want…” Nobody bothered to record the rest of the statement because everybody knows that the Blue Dogs haven’t the slightest idea what the American people want or don’t want. And also, because nobody cares what the Blue Dogs think or don’t think, say or don’t say, stand for or don’t stand for.

Glenn Beck issued a refreshing statement in which he apologized for being a contemptible scumbag and announced that he was retiring from broadcasting to raise pigs. “I’m going to quit while I’m ahead,” said the now wealthy conservative ranter. “I sense that people are about to catch on that I am the worst kind of hate-mongering, lying phony. Even my mother thinks I’m disgusting and I kind of agree with her.”

Over at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, the liberal blabber, announced that she was not going to be cute anymore. And her colleague, Keith Olbermann, said that while he intended to continue his arch ways, he was giving up his insufferable “special comments,” having recognized that what was special about them was that they were pompous and embarrassing.

Rush Limbaugh issued a one-sentence statement. It said, “Who the hell is Glenn Beck and who cares if he’s retiring?”

Bill O’Reilly also issued a statement that said, in part, “Who cares what Rush Limbaugh says on the radio? Doesn’t he know that nobody listens to the radio anymore. Hey, Rush, get a life. Join the parade. This is the twenty-first century and you’re just a fat loudmouth with bad breath.”

Limbaugh is said to have issued a response but nobody heard it.

For the past 15 or 20 minutes, hummingbirds have been strafing each other over the feeder outside my window. Whenever one gets close enough to feed, another darts down and drives it away. There is plenty of sugar water and three sipping holes, each in the center of an imitation flower, but so far no bird has been allowed by the others to perch and feed. Hummingbirds are so cute. Sometimes they seem almost human, only they never actually hurt each other.

Hardly a CEO in the country would not argue that high wages are necessary to attract the very best type of chief executive. They make precisely that argument in defense of their own bloated paychecks. Paying less would put the stockholders at the mercy of a lower type of CEO altogether — a less competent and less efficient steward entirely.

But not a one of these CEOs, obscenely overpaid or merely grossly so, would give a moment’s consideration to the idea that low wages might result in less efficient and less competent workmen as well. Nor that higher wages might attract a better class, likely to work smarter and harder. Somehow workers do not need the motivation of good pay, while managers can hardly exist without it.

As we see in this uplifting story from CNN:

According to the report “CEO Pay and the Great Recession,” chief executive officers of the 50 firms that laid off the most workers since the start of the economic crisis earned nearly $12 million on average in 2009. That’s 42 percent more than the average pay of CEOs at S&P 500 firms as a whole.

“I think that really shows a really perverse incentive system in this country,” said Sarah Anderson, lead author of the Institute for Policy Studies’ 17th Annual Executive Compensation Survey. “You are handsomely rewarded for slashing jobs in the middle of the worst economic crisis in 80 years,” she said…

Another disconcerting finding of the report: 72 percent of layoff-leading firms announced mass layoffs while delivering positive earnings reports. Anderson explained layoffs are really driven by efforts “to boost short-term profits even higher and also just to continue to have such high CEO pay levels.” She said these mass cuts are often bad for business over the long-term because they impact worker morale, which can lead to lower productivity. She said they also result in additional costs related to hiring and training new workers down the road.

Should we let those terrorists build that mosque on what Chris Matthews keeps calling hollowed ground? Or not until they let us build a megachurch in Mecca? Or until hell freezes over? Or is the whole squalid fuss actually, literally, about nothing? It looks that way, to judge by a Politico story which has so far attracted zero attention.

In GOP World, however, enormous structures can be fabricated easily and profitably on the basis of impossible hypotheticals. One might think the suckers would have wised up by now, but one would be wrong. Look at the birther myth, which has no more substance than a floating figure in a Macy’s parade. Or than a nonexistent non-Mosque never to be built on the unhallowed ground formerly occupied by a Burlington Coat Factory.

When President Barack Obama turned the battle over a planned New York Islamic center into a national debate over religious freedom, he unwittingly allied himself and his party with an ill-planned, long-shot development project described by one of its most prominent allies as “amateur hour.”

The efforts to launch the $100 million Cordoba House (now dubbed Park51) two blocks north of the World Trade Center site have been an uphill battle from the start, and not just because of controversy. And even as the “Ground Zero Mosque” emerges as a hotly debated national symbol, New York government officials and real estate insiders are privately questioning whether the project has much chance of coming to fruition.

The Cordoba Initiative hasn’t begun fundraising yet for its $100 million goal. The group’s latest fundraising report with the State Attorney General’s office, from 2008, shows exactly $18,255 — not enough even for a down payment on the half of the site the group has yet to purchase…

I just banished three of the most loathsome words in our language from my life, Chase Card Services. I actually paid them off last month, but I didn’t specifically request that they close the account. They didn’t, and two weeks ago I received a statement saying I owed them a $1.50. A $1.50! I guess I neglected to read the fine, arcane print at the bottom of the page that told me about an obscure, arcane fee I had to pay for some mysterious, arcane reason that even the Gods themselves can’t comprehend.

I’m an easy going guy. Rather than call them up and complain I just decided to buckle under and pay them their damn $1.50 — in pennies! I was going to include a note requesting that they close the account and attach a picture of Alfred E. Neuman sticking his tongue out. Not a heroic gesture, perhaps, but this is not a heroic age and I’m a creature of my time. Spiteful pleasure is better than no pleasure at all. Then somebody told me you can’t send actual currency through the mail. I don’t know if this is a consequence of our war against drugs or our war against terror or our war against some other evil that’s gunning for the American Way Of Life. Fill in the god damned blank. I’m a bit slow and I get all our wars confused. Law or not, I knew those bloodsuckers would use my little act of juvenile revenge to slap me with some kind of penalty or late fee, so I just wrote them a check and finished it. Pride only causes pain. It was worth it just to get them out of my life.

One down, two to go.

Ah, credit cards. They giveth and they taketh away. I used to have an account with the now defunct Washington Mutual. Remember them? They billed themselves as the “friendly bank,” which means, of course, that they were the most rapacious sons of bitches in the entire racket. I transferred my balance from them to a different group of sharks but still sent one last minimum payment to cover my ass. You can never be be too cautious with those eels. The result was that they wound up owing me some paltry amount. I think it was something like $5.75. Being a normal human being and not a banker, I forgot all about it, but every month they sent me a statement showing a negative balance of $5.75.

Then one day, while staring idly at the clouds, I got to wondering about that $5.75 …

Except for the pecs and the lats and the delts and the abs, this could be John A. Boehner getting made up for a Fox News love-in with Chris Wallace. But actually, Reuters says, it’s just some guy with a severe case of melanin envy getting all pretty for a bodybuilding contest in Tehran.

Elise Foley reports in the Washington Independent:

One of the major complaints against immigration — both legal and illegal — is that non-Americans take jobs that could be occupied by citizens during a time of high unemployment. But immigrants actually boost incomes and productivity over time, according to a paper released Monday by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The study’s author found immigration has no “significant” effect on the number of jobs available to U.S.-born workers.

The main reason, economist Giovanni Peri argues, is that U.S. and immigrant workers tend to take different jobs, particularly because immigrants often face language barriers that make them less likely to take higher paying jobs requiring strong communication skills. This allows U.S.-born workers to shift toward these jobs, Peri writes…

From the Times coverage of the Reverend Glenn Beck’s revival meeting:

Becky Benson, 56, traveled from Orlando, Florida, because, she said, “we believe in Jesus Christ,” and Jesus, she said, would not have agreed with the economic stimulus package, bank bailouts and welfare. “You cannot sit and expect someone to hand out to you,” she said. “You don’t spend your way out of debt.”

People in the crowd echoed Mr. Beck’s ideas that “progressives” were moving the United States toward socialism and that entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid must be ended.

From the New York Times:

According to data released last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a quarter of Americans now believe in reincarnation. (Women are more likely to believe than men; Democrats more likely than Republicans.) Julia Roberts recently told Elle magazine that though she was raised Christian, she had become “very Hindu.” Ms. Roberts believes that in her past life she was a “peasant revolutionary,” and said that when her daughter sits in a certain way she knows “there’s someone there I didn’t get the benefit of knowing ... It’s an honor for me to continue to shepherd that.”

From CNNWorld:

British media reported Williams’ body was found stuffed in a bag in the bathroom of his apartment with no obvious signs of foul play.

This is so 20th century. Get with it, people. Just implant chips in everybody’s head. Sure, they’ll whine a little at first, but they’re Americans. They’ll get used to it.

(CNN) — Law enforcement officers may secretly place a GPS device on a person’s car without seeking a warrant from a judge, according to a recent federal appeals court ruling in California.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Oregon in 2007 surreptitiously attached a GPS to the silver Jeep owned by Juan Pineda-Moreno, whom they suspected of growing marijuana, according to court papers.

When Pineda-Moreno was arrested and charged, one piece of evidence was the GPS data, including the longitude and latitude of where the Jeep was driven, and how long it stayed. Prosecutors asserted the Jeep had been driven several times to remote rural locations where agents discovered marijuana being grown, court documents show.

— Marie Prentice

From the Dallas Star-Telegram:

BEDFORD — Olivia Harrison’s pink Hello Kitty backpack and matching lunchbox were ready for her first day at St. Vincent’s School. And all summer, when her family drove past the campus, the 4-year-old was told that she would be starting pre-kindergarten there in August.

But on Monday, Olivia was not among the youngsters starting school at the campus. Administrators at the private Christian school denied her admission because her parents are lesbians…

“The only responsible thing was to say this is not a good fit,” Foster said. “We were trying to protect Olivia, protect the other children from being exposed to the culture wars and stand up for our theological position…”

Although the sign outside St. Vincent's School identifies itself as Episcopal, the clergy left the national Episcopal Church in 2007 and is now affiliated with the Anglican Church in North America, Foster said. The church was among several that left the Episcopal Church over issues including the ordination of women and support for same-sex unions.

Below is an August 26, 1875, letter to the Bristol (Connecticut) Press. For the word “tramps” may be substituted, depending on the period, French, Irish, Negroes, Catholics, Polish, Germans, Czechs, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Italians, Muslims, illegal immigrants, or an oppressed, defenseless minority of your choice. Tea Partiers will want to choose themselves…

There would appear to be no immediate prospect of abatement of the tramp nuisance. Rather, the tramp seems to have become ubiquitous and the growth of his order is only equaled by his capacity for villainy and “general cussedness.) The few mild measures taken in some sections for the suppression of this dangerous class have proved wholly inoperative, thus far. How long the community at large will continue to bear the afflictions before resorting to a more vigorous and wholesome treatment is difficult to determine.

From the way in which people permit themselves to be imposed upon and cowed into acquiescence with all that these rascals insolently demand, we should judge that this is sort of a tramps’ millenium and is to be of indefinite duration. At any rate the tramps are increasing and with their multiplication, robbery, incendiarism, intimidation, rape and murder in like ratio become more and more common.

This tramp nuisance will continue just as long as people submit to it and no longer. The remedy is within reach. It is a simple remedy, easily supplied. It may appear to some to be harsh, but if people would be rid of the evil, they must first make up their minds that harsh measures are the only ones that can be made effective.

In the first place, stop feeding tramps. Secondly, let every man, woman, and youth learn now to use a revolver and have one or more of these useful articles in every house, especially if in an isolated situation. Then whenever a tramp appears, peremptorily refuse him food or shelter and escort him off the premises at the muzzle of a cocked revolver and if he isn’t easily scared and attempts force, shoot.

A trusty weapon in every house and a disposition to use it on very slight provocation, will do more to squelch this abomination than any other means possible to use. And when people drop their squeamishness and sickly philanthropy and all other classes of criminals with that promptness and fidelity which is possible only by taking the law into their own hands, the moral atmosphere will improve wonderfully and life, property and virtue will be properly respected.

You may have noticed, to the point of nausea, how deeply in love Republicans are with small business. They just have a funny way of showing it, as George W. Bush demonstrated after Katrina:

While stories of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s contaminated trailers and the Army Corps of Engineers’ inability to shore up the levees captured the headlines in the aftermath of the deadly storms of 2005, the bungling of the SBA, the lead federal agency helping people rebuild their homes and businesses, has largely been untold.

The sagas of Schmitz, Bazile and the SBA’s Young, who worked out of the agency’s massive loan processing center in Fort Worth, Texas, collectively reveal how the SBA failed in so many ways, an ominous experience as the agency prepares to play a similar role in the aftermath of the massive BP PLC oil spill.

These are stories of a mismanaged bureaucracy that still hurt half a decade later: tales of applications for low-interest disaster loans that should have been approved but were not, of applications deleted from the SBA computer system for no valid reason, of impossible-to-meet deadlines manufactured to clear backlogs, and of a process so chaotic and painful that thousands simply gave up…

However… [my note]:

• Country clubs, yacht clubs, exclusive private schools and megachurches received millions in loans from the agency founded in 1953 with a mission to “aid, counsel, assist and protect the interests of small business concerns.” Some of the more substantial operations rebuilt bigger and better, often contradicting SBA rules that say damaged buildings should be repaired only to their original state.

• Homeowners and businesses in higher-income areas were more likely to get a loan than those in lower-income areas, according to AP’s analysis of SBA data by ZIP code. “The truth is that only the wealthy moved through the system easily,” said Gale Martin, another former SBA loan officer. “If you were of a certain income, we funded you first, which is not the way the system is supposed to work.” Martin contended that contrary to the SBA mission to especially help people who didn’t always have the means to rebuild, applicants with higher credit scores and bigger incomes were cherry-picked for processing first because those files could be closed quicker.

Billionaire tax dodger Sam Wyly says:

In the six years since the Securities and Exchange Commission started investigating the Wylys, the brothers have not spoken publicly about the business enterprises that produced so many unflattering national headlines about them: a maze of 58 trusts and shell corporations based in two well-known tax havens, the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands…

If filing the case was intended to push the Wylys to accept harsher terms, Sam vows it will not work. It’s not just that he and his brother did nothing wrong, he said:

“We made all the shareholders money, we made all the employees money, we did a good job for the customers, we did a good job for the vendors. We did everything you’re supposed to do with a company.”

Speaking softly, he smiled like a guy at low boil. “I could write them a check, but that’s not the point,” he said, unleashing another chortle. “It’s not about the money.”

H.L. Mencken says:

When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.

Things seem to be spinning out of control on the Olympic Peninsula. Martha sends this story from Washington State:

Carlton Jeffery Kohnert, 21, who is apparently in the Marine Reserve, was arrested for investigation of reckless endangerment, aiming or discharging a weapon and indecent exposure, said Clallam County Sheriff’s Sgt. Randy Pieper.

Police believe Kohnert — fully costumed in the yellow banana costume — exposed himself to a woman at the Port Angeles Wendy’s restaurant and drove through Four Seasons Ranch brandishing a shotgun…

After leaving Port Angeles, the group made a stop at Four Seasons Ranch, where Kohnert — still dressed in the banana costume — brandished a shotgun and began yelling, Pieper said.

“We believe he was yelling something or other about white supremacy,” Pieper said.

Okay, so now you know. And while you’re at the Peninsula Daily News, might as well read yourself in on this. too:

“They all got together and said they really wanted to see me kiss a pig, so it was really their efforts that got me here,” Gordon said.

From the Associated Press:

NEW YORK — The New York Times reported on its website Thursday that federal authorities have decided to indict Roger Clemens on charges of making false statements to Congress about his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

What kind of a society indicts a baseball player while Blankenship, Blankfein, Dimon, and Hayward walk free?

This story, shyly hiding on page A15 of today’s New York Times, unarguably exposes the Glenn Becks, the Rush Limbaughs and the Sarah Palins — among so many others — for the filth they are. And ignorance, as in Palin’s case, is no excuse. The truth is out there, Sarah, hidden in the pages of books and the tubes of the internet. Go look.

As for the Becks and the Limbaughs and the Congressional troglodytes of both parties, a just Lord would, as their ends approached, bring each of them before life panels. There they would be sentenced to death by modern medicine — weeks or months entombed in dead bodies kept warm by pumps and tubes as the tenants cursed their own cruelty.

In a study that sheds new light on the effects of end-of-life care, doctors have found that patients with terminal lung cancer who began receiving palliative care immediately upon diagnosis not only were happier, more mobile and in less pain as the end neared — but they also lived nearly three months longer…

It shows that palliative care is the opposite of all that rhetoric about ‘death panels,’ ” said Dr. Diane E. Meier, director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and co-author of an editorial in the journal accompanying the study. “It’s not about killing Granny; it’s about keeping Granny alive as long as possible — with the best quality of life…”

Those getting palliative care from the start, the authors said, reported less depression and happier lives as measured on scales for pain, nausea, mobility, worry and other problems. Moreover, even though substantially fewer of them opted for aggressive chemotherapy as their illnesses worsened and many more left orders that they not be resuscitated in a crisis, they typically lived almost three months longer than the group getting standard care, who lived a median of nine months.

Replying to Pat’s comment on one of yesterday’s posts, I was reminded of a list called “Writing Wrongs” which I used to hand out to my students at Harvard. Cute title, huh? There should have been a 47th rule, “Don’t be cute,” but let it stand. The other 46 are after the jump, for whatever use they may be to anyone.

Don’t know why, but I find this article to be not only not uplifting, but deeply disturbing. Full story and video here.

A two-legged dog who has learned to walk upright has been made an honorary sergeant in the U.S. army for inspiring disabled war veterans.

Faith, an eight-year old labrador-chow cross is a favourite at army bases and hospitals, where she 'marches' around on her hind legs, dressed in a military jacket…

From the Associated Press:

Harvard pulled ahead of Ivy League rival Princeton in the latest edition of the influential U.S. News & World Report university rankings, while a stronger emphasis on graduation rates drove other changes in the Top 10…

How did Harvard edge Princeton by 1 point on an 100-point scale? Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News & World Report, credited Harvard's higher scores on graduation rates, and financial and faculty resources…

Most notably, graduation rate performance was given greater weight, accounting for 7.5 percent of the final score for national universities and liberal arts colleges, up from 5 percent last year. The variable is the difference between a school's actual graduation rate and one predicted by U.S. News based on test scores and schools' resources.

Why am I not surprised? Because I taught at Harvard for five years, and four of my sons are Harvard graduates. Consequently I know that it takes a long and determined effort not to graduate from Harvard once you’re admitted. You have to cut classes and flunk tests for months or even years. Even then you are generally not expelled but “rusticated,” Harvard’s term for telling you to take a year or two off and then reapply.

I required three papers from my students in order to pass. A girl in one of my first classes had produced none by the end of the semester, in spite of numerous warnings and extensions. So I filed the considerable paper work necessary to flunk a student.

In midsummer I got a call from the dean’s office, asking if I could see my way to passing the girl if she coughed up the papers over the summer. Whatever, I said. It’s your university. The student eventually sent me three C- papers (meaning, on Harvard’s grade scale, total crap). Three years later, presumably, she made her tiny contribution to the university’s “graduation rate performance.”

A teaser from Yale political scientist Jacob S. Hacker’s terrific summary of what lies ahead for Obama’s health reforms. Read it all here.

No one who has studied the medical market in recent years can fail to recognize the unhealthy consolidation that has taken place. An ironic coda to the public option’s demise was the release this February of the American Medical Association’s latest report on insurance competition. Its verdict? A “near total collapse of competitive and dynamic health insurance markets,” with more than half of metropolitan areas dominated by a single insurer enjoying at least half the market (up from 40 percent of areas in 2008). Of course, what the AMA neglected to mention is that massive consolidation has also taken place on the provider side, with most metropolitan areas dominated by a single hospital or flagship system.

Comparative-effectiveness research, changes in Medicare payments, encouraging greater competition through exchanges, even taxing high-cost health plans — none of this will seriously restrain costs without the creation of countervailing power to pressure consolidated insurers and provider systems to change their prices and practices. And the only place where this power can ultimately come from is the public sector. For better or worse, the ultimate fate of reform hinges on progressives’ efforts to rehabilitate American government…

Yesterday’s Times article has me wondering once again whether the White House brain trust can really be this dumb.

In roughly a dozen countries — from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife — the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.

The White House has intensified the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone missile campaign in Pakistan, approved raids against Qaeda operatives in Somalia and launched clandestine operations from Kenya. The administration has worked with European allies to dismantle terrorist groups in North Africa, efforts that include a recent French strike in Algeria. And the Pentagon tapped a network of private contractors to gather intelligence about things like militant hide-outs in Pakistan and the location of an American soldier currently in Taliban hands.

While the stealth war began in the Bush administration, it has expanded under President Obama, who rose to prominence in part for his early opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Virtually none of the newly aggressive steps undertaken by the United States government have been publicly acknowledged. In contrast with the troop buildup in Afghanistan, which came after months of robust debate, for example, the American military campaign in Yemen began without notice in December and has never been officially confirmed.

Now I want to be clear that I’m not accusing Obama and his fellow war criminals in the administration of striking out on their own with an unknown and untried strategy; not a bit of it! In fact the very threadbare nature of the strategy is precisely my criticism, to wit, WTF? How many times do we have to fail the same way? And with the same people the Reagan administration used to attack Central America!

This whole Obama as war criminal progression should, but probably won’t, be very educational to both the professional and the amateur left. We might be expected to realize that what we need is not a nice guy but a flat-ass bastard, not a compromiser but a fighter, and not someone who climbed the ladder by representing the interests of the rich. The question is how such a person might make it onto the ballot in the first place; certainly the two major parties conspire rather openly to prevent such an occurrence.

Seriously, what is the President’s top counterterrorism adviser doing talking about a multigenerational campaign? Has it occurred to anyone to ask why we might have an enemy so committed, so resolute, that they would be willing to engage in such a conflict with the world’s only superpower? Can we ask ourselves what we might have done to create such hatred, or are we still going on the old “they hate us because we’re free” bullshit? (If that were true terrorism would hit the Swiss and the Swedes.)

Most importantly, has anyone read recent American history, or consulted people who were around to witness the last time the US engaged in a such a fundamentally wrong-headed and stupid policy? I remember it, and lots of other people do too. So why are we doing the same moronic stuff again?

Because war in remote lands using high-tech equipment is the most effective concentrator of wealth we know of. That’s why we keep having such wars, that and the oil. Which is also a pretty decent wealth concentrator.

There’s no “we” in memoir, but there’s an “I” and a “me.” Here’s Walter Benn Michaels in The Baffler, explaining how our literature got where it is. He doesn’t mention that other philosopher queen, Ayn Rand, but I will:

…It was also in 1987 that Margaret Thatcher, as canny a cultural critic as Toni Morrison, pronounced herself tired of hearing about society’s problems and, in the wake of her triumph over the National Union of Mineworkers, took a stand against the idea of society itself, proclaiming: “There is no such thing! There are individual men and women, and there are families…” Anybody looking to explain the appeal of the memoir in contemporary writing need look no further. Every sentence in every one of them, true or false, literary or non-, tells us that there are only individuals and their families. Thus, for example, the proper way for workers to see themselves is not as workers or union members, but as entrepreneurs or husbands and fathers…

A thought for the weekend, from Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, by John Maynard Keynes:

When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtue.

We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from he love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.