Sadly, No!

Disgraced boss Ken Lay dies at luxury ski chalet

· Former chairman collapses at Aspen holiday home
· Family friend says cause was massive heart attack

Andrew Clark in New York
Thursday July 6, 2006
The Guardian

The former Enron chairman whose name became a byword for boardroom deceit and corruption, Ken Lay, died in an exclusive ski resort yesterday while awaiting sentence for his involvement in America’s biggest ever corporate fraud.

Police were called to Lay’s holiday home near Aspen, Colorado, in the early hours of the morning. The 64-year-old was rushed to the casualty department of a nearby hospital but was pronounced dead by doctors.

There was no official confirmation of the cause of his death but a family friend, pastor Steve Wende of Houston’s First United Methodist Church, said Lay had suffered a massive coronary: “His death was totally unexpected. Apparently, his heart simply gave out.”

I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone,
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command…

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

At 1:12 p.m. this afternoon, Kevin Drum posted the following:

Foreign Policy magazine has a survey of 116 foreign policy heavyweights in this month’s issue and the results are pretty easy to summarize: they think America’s efforts in the war on terror are failing on practically every measure. The chart on the right shows the consensus.

Hmmm. That doesn’t look too promising.

But on the bright side, Perfesser Reynolds has already devised his escape plan:

I’m sure you are, Perfesser, especially since your buddy Dubya seems intent on bringing the world to an end by the end of his second term. You’d better hope the Singularity comes to pass in two years’ time, or we’re all totally boned.

Gavin adds: Here’s a choice knucklebone from Ann Coulter’s latest book, in which ‘we’ denotes Republicanoid conservatives and ‘they’ stands for libbity-lib-liberals:

We believe in populating the Earth until there’s standing room only and then colonizing Mars; they believe humans are in the twilight of their existence.

Does one detect a pattern here? I mean seriously. Let the Earth go to shit (woohoo!), while the elect escapes to some other planet via the mystery-god of technology.

See here for add’l context. ‘John Barlow.’ Spooky, huh?

I’m not even being sarcastic when I tell you that this sort of semi-accurate report is precisely why I’ve bookmarked RenewAmerica (italics mine):

On the 230th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, STS-121 Shuttle commander Steve Lindsey said (and we may not be quoting him exactly) that “I am proud to be going up on the fourth of July and soon people will see the rocket’s red glare.” That hit us so hard that we both watched the launch over the next few minutes with tears in our eyes and patriotic pride in our hearts. How brave of that man to say that, just moments before his life could have ended. How inspiring!

Tell me about it! That hit me so hard that I read the entire article over the next few minutes with tears in my eyes and lung-emptying hoots in my heart. How brave of Guy & Joanne Adams to write that, sacrificing not even a few precious moments to Google the exact quote. How hilarious!

Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Friedman actually wrote something somewhat interesting today. I know, it’s shocking because he hasn’t written anything worthwhile since he covered Beirut in the ’80s, but bear with me.

Tommy’s normal schtick is to travel to some faraway place like India or China and marvel at how neat it is that formerly swarthy people in those countries can now work and communicate with rich white guys in America and Europe. But this time, Tommy was hanging out in a Peruvian rain forest where there was no wireless Internets connection or cell phone service. And remarkably, he concluded that this wasn’t such a bad thing because people were spending time talking with each other face-to-face and doing things outdoors- things that Americans don’t do very much of anymore:

What struck me about our Preuvian rain forest guide… was that he carried no devices and did not suffer from continuous partial attention deficit disorder. Just the opposite. He heard every chirp, whistle, howl or crackle in the rain forest and would immediately stop us in our tracks and immediately identify what bird, insect or animal it was… He was totally disconnected from the Web, but totally in touch with the incredible web of life around him. I wonder if there’s a lesson there.

What makes this so remarkable is that for perhaps the first time, Tommy is acknowledging that the flattened globalized flat world of global worldwide flatness he’s enthusiastically endorsed for the past decade might not be as good as advertised. In fact, he seems to almostkindasorta acknowledge that such a world could be a very lonely and desolate place. A quick glance at modern America bears this out– we’re increasingly becoming a nation of suburban and exurban homebodies who spend lots money on goods designed to keep us in our houses, such as laptops, flatscreen TV’s and iPods. This sort of self-imposed isolation is not a healthy thing, since it produces weirdos like the Ole Perfesser, whose end goal in life is to have his brain transplanted into a robot body so he can fly away on a rocket ship to escape the coming onslaught of grey goo.*

I guess my point is that if Tom Friedman can see the downside of techutopianism, then there’s hope for everybody.**

*Incidentally, I’ve been thinking of setting up a PayPal account dedicated to raising money to give the folks at the Lifeboat Foundation their wish by launching them into space. You think I could raise enough money?

**Almost everybody. Jeff and the Perfesser have eaten too much paste to ever return to Earth.

There’s a time to fuck and a time to crave, but the Shah sleeps in Lee Harvey’s grave.

Shorter Jonathan Garthwaite: As editor-in-chief, I invite you to behold for yourself our extensive array of bells and whistles.

Shorter Thomas Sowell: I read a magazine article about Teddy Roosevelt, which made me wistfully nostalgic for the days of industrial capitalists, robber barons, monopolies and child labor.

Shorter Jacob Sullum: As a libertarian, I urge you to take up smoking.

Shorter Walter Williams: No one can solve the educational problems that black people confront except black people and white mayors.

Shorter Mike S. Adams: You know how that one T-shirt says “Diversity” and has all those handguns on it? That T-shirt is pretty cool.

Shorter Kathleen Parker: If we don’t restore boys to their educational primacy, our species will eventually die out because women cannot find suitable mates.

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: Egotistical journalists are very arrogant when they insult conservatives for meekly suggesting that perhaps the media ought not reveal secrets that are damaging to national security.

Shorter Paul Greenberg: The prisoners at Guantanamo Bay remain in legal limbo because the Supreme Court told the president what he can’t do with them, without recommending what he should do.

Shorter Rich Lowry: No one can solve the violence problems that black people confront except black people and white mayors.

Shorter John McCaslin: I read several newspaper items that fit neatly within my worldview.

Shorter Roger Schlesinger: Nice blog! Very original & interesting content. You may also want to check out this resource on home mortgages.

Shorter John Leo: I will not be swayed by evidence that undermines my cherished belief in an educational crisis among boys.

So I’ve decided I’m going to become a Christian again. Shocking, I know.

To be clear, I’m not un-lapsing myself because I want to become a better person, or develop a relationship with Jesus, or any of that fruity shit. No, I’m reconverting to Christianity because I’m terrified of being in hell. And why does being in hell scare me so, you ask? Because I know that Satan will strap me down to a burning lava chair and force me to watch Atlas Pam’s vlogs over and over again… forever. This one is particularly painful- it’s a lot like being infested by flesh-eating bacteria, except you don’t get the satisfaction of dying after it’s over.

(Via TBogg, who will probably be watching these things in hell with me.)

Via Roy at alicublog, we catch up first with Peter Robinson, which then takes us to EU Referendum, or as we like to call it Son of Trying to Grok. (We point this out because according to Robinson EU Ref “looks at some of the math” if by that one means “writes many numbers.”) And there we learn that a recent poll done in the UK that shows a small minority of Britons holding positive views of America (the country, not the book) is full of the shit:

We are told that, as Americans prepare to celebrate the 230th anniversary of their independence tomorrow, the poll found that only 12 percent of Britons trust them to act wisely on the global stage.

Fear not however, for there is a snake in the survey:

On the other hand, there is one figure (in an EU Barometer poll) which stands out, which makes a mockery of the whole survey game. As many as 53 percent of respondents “tend to trust the television”.

Because if you tend to trust the television, that means you are not qualified to have an opinion about US policy. (In an excessive display of enthusiasm, EU Referendum’s author skips over the fact that the figure for “tend not to trust the television” stands at a healthy (using his logic) 42%. Fortunately for us, the wingnutty goodness continues:

Given that this medium – still dominated by the BBC – churns out a relentless diet of anti-American propaganda, revelling in the Guantanamo issue, and lovingly following every twist and turn of the “Rendition affair”, to say nothing of the torrent of coverage on Abu Ghraib, it is surprising that the trust factor is still so high.

Say what you will about the BBC, but you probably should start by making sure your assumptions are a somewhat accurate reflection of reality. In this case? Sadly, No!:

Channel 4 is the only terrestrial station not to have experienced a decline in audience share. ITV1’s share has dropped 5%, both BBC1 and BBC2 have seen falls of 6% and Five’s share of viewing has decreased 2%.

Or our favorite:

Viewing figures for BBC1 are heading towards an all-time low (…) Figures produced by Barb, the Broadcast Audience Research Bureau, for the week ending August 14 show that the channel had only six programmes in the national top 20 – four of which were editions of its ailing soap, EastEnders.

Must surely be all those Abu Ghraib story lines on the EastEnders that are behind the hate. That, and the BBC’s “domination.”

So there you have the total wingnut circle of logic. One day the BBC (like the dreaded MSM in the US) is losing viewers at an amazing rate. The other it can manage to lead a nation of TV zombies into hating America for no other reason than the multiple clusterfucks that have taken place on the current administration’s watch. (Where propaganda is defined as “reporting shit that’s happened” something that only recently started and only ever happens on “liberal” networks War on Xmas War on Christianity War on Whites War on Conservatives War on Secret Government Programs War on Wingnuts War on Falafel War on Mustache of Knowledge War on Price Gouging.

Time for the punch line:

But what this also says is that a nation which counts amongst its number 53 percent who still trust what they see on television is not a nation whose judgement itself can be trusted.

Because if you don’t see the bad things that happen on the TV, they didn’t really happen. (How we wish someone had mentioned that nugget before Italy scored 2 goals in the last two minutes against Germany.)

Glenn Greenwald does the Lord’s work with this piece on Wingnuttia’s shrieking anti-New York Times hysteria. Their latest insane conspiracy theory is that the Times has been sending secret signals to their terrorist allies to take out Rumsfeld by printing pictures of the SecDef’s Summer home in their Travel section. These are pictures, by the way, that Rumsfeld gave them permission to print.

Predictably, Michelle Malkin has the second*-craziest reaction to this anti-controversy:

What news value and journalistic end was served by publishing the Cheney/Rumsfeld vacation home piece and the accompanying photo? “Because Rumsfeld gave permission” may cut it with the moonbats and fairweather privocrats. Not with me.

Put another way, “I will not be swayed by evidence that undermines my insane theories.”

I think it’s time to start scouting for higher-quality wingnuts. The current batch has clearly passed its freshness date.

*For the craziest reaction, see here. Thanks to Norb for the tip. Incidentally, everytime Mr. Bizness shows up on this blog, I feel like it’s an episode of Cheers. I just want everyone to shout out “NOOOORB!” at once. In fact, that gives me an idea for an official motto for Sadly, No!: “Sometimes you wanna go where nobody knows your real name.” Yeah, I suck. Whatev.

Seb adds:  Slightly reworded Michelle Malkin: I can judge what threatens our nation’s security better than the DOD.

It’s easy these days to be cynical about patriotism, now that it’s apparently been reduced to simply shutting the hell up, performing empty gestures such as slapping a “Support our troops” magnet on your car (which, if you think about it, is literally the least you can do) or calling for the state-sponsored execution of disloyal journalists. That’s why it’s so genuinely refreshing to read something that fills you with pride to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave:

In November, 2003, Lt. Cmdr. [Charles] Swift, a Navy judge advocate general, was assigned as Hamdan’s military appointed attorney. A superior officer ordered Swift to secure a plea bargain. But Swift instead decided to argue that Hamdan should be accorded the rights and protections of the Geneva Convention and that the military commissions at Guantanamo were themselves invalid.

According to reporting in The Los Angeles Times, Swift was fearful of the dangerous precedent that could be set by denying international standards of justice even to terrorists.

“I feel like we all won, that the rule of law won, and that is essentially what we are all about,” Swift told the Times.

Swift also told the Associated Press yesterday that he had informed his client about the ruling by telephone. “I think he was awe-struck that the court would rule for him, and give a little man like him an equal chance,” Swift said. “Where he’s from, that is not true.”

Reading that last quote made my heart swell with a sort of pride I don’t feel too often anymore – and right on time, too, as we celebrate our country’s 230th birthday. What we’re celebrating is not a culture or even an ideology, but a system of laws that permit cultures and ideologies to co-exist, if only uneasily. As I head out the door to go drink beer and light off some illegal fireworks, it’s nice to know I’m not drinking to nostalgia, but to a way of life that just might survive the shortsighted, self-absorbed cowards who are running the show right now. It’s enough to make a man start chanting “U-S-A” until he goes in-sizzy in the mem-brizzy.

I promise not to post anymore damn videos of David Ortiz for a while. But this sucker is just too awesome to pass up. (Dedicated to the Uncanny Canadian, whom I met last night along with Adorable Girlfriend and Chuckles. A good time was had by all.)