The Thin Green Line

chillin' (sotd)

2009-04-12T17:56:00.000-04:00

so that surprise is coming, but delayed.

in the meantime:

quote of the day

2009-04-12T00:14:00.004-04:00

so i go back and read the archive of humorous political blogs when i'm bored. yes, yes.

brad at sadly, no, four years ago, mocking the infinitely mockable dennis prager:

Well, I’ve read Foucault and watched plenty of Queer Eye episodes, but I don’t feel sexually confused because of it (OK, so Foucault made me feel “confused,” but not in a sexual way).

i think all of us left-coast volvo-driving latte-drinking hippie elitists who took literary theory courses in our left-coast volvo-driving latte-drinking hippie elitists colleges can agree (yes, my college drove a volvo - it's since traded up for a prius).

catchy songs about complex political/intelligence scandals (sotd)

2009-04-11T20:51:00.002-04:00

posting remains light, but for good reason - if all goes well, there will be a big fun surprise tomorrow!

in the meantime, enjoy one of the very few songs under the titular heading.

light posting today (sotd)

2009-04-10T15:09:00.002-04:00

still recovering from hangover. and about to see the orioles play the rays. but i'm gonna take this blog seriously, which means there is a SONG OF THE DAY EVERY DAY UNTIL THE END OF TIME.

for reals yo.

pawn shops (sotd)

2009-04-09T15:22:00.003-04:00

i always feel bad about going to pawn shops. traditionally, the economic function of middleman has been misunderstood and undervalued, and middlemen have been shamed or despised as a result. but pawn shops aren't merely retailers - to a significant extent they are exploiting people who are going through hard economic times.

these days, though, like many other services, pawnbrokers are being rendered irrelevant by the internet. between ebay and craigslist, individuals are able, through aucitoning or direct negotiation, to find suitable prices that leave them both better off.

for example, if i sell some dvds to a pawnbroker he might give me like $2 a pop for them. then he'll offload them for like $10-15 a pop. which is fine - he has to pay rent and utilities on his location, plus other business costs, plus some profit so he can buy things like food and clothing and a place to live. but if i use craigslist i might be able to sell them for like $6-7 a pop to someone directly, and both of us win: i get more for selling them, and the buyer pays less for the same product. the only loser is the now-unnecessary pawnbroker.

the big problem with this is not that it will put pawnbrokers out of business - if that happened they can find other jobs and those shops will become something economically more useful. the problem is that they won't, because internet usage hasn't fully penetrated the population. so the people left using pawnshops are overwhelmingly either people who are too poor to use the internet, and therefore in desperate straits and easy to exploit, or people trying to offload stolen goods. thus, even though one does nothing directly ethically wrong by buying from a pawnshop, one is buying into a system that really is exploitative and possibility criminal.

all i needed was an alarm clock, which is something that is frankly one of the harder things to get on ebay or craigslist - it's not unique, like a specific dvd, or expensive like a video-game console or other electronic equipment, or rare like memorabilia. it's just a cheap radio alarm clock. but assuming it wasn't stolen, that used to be someone else's alarm clock. and maybe they pawned it because they simply didn't need or want it. but maybe they pawned it because they felt they had no choice. and it although it was the best way for me to get an alarm clock, in terms of product quality relative to price, i still feel a little icky about it.

man this subject depresses me, perhaps irrationally, but nevertheless. great time to bring back the sotd. and what better:

progressive chic

2009-04-09T11:10:00.002-04:00

yo check out atrios:

king of blogosphere decrees: from now on, all "what atrios said" posts must include this picture.

british spy fail

2009-04-09T11:06:00.001-04:00

graylady:

Britain’s most powerful counterterrorism officer resigned on Thursday, a day after being photographed carrying a document that outlined details of a major antiterrorism operation in northwest England and was clearly marked “Secret.”

i mean, look at this guy:

what a clown.

my thoughts on twitter

2009-04-09T11:04:00.000-04:00

fuck that horseshit.

my most beautiful dreams can be expressed in three panels

2009-04-08T21:56:00.004-04:00

every night i sleep. and in my sleep i see the us senate.* and every night i imagine the senate as i wish it were, not merely as it is.

apparently, the immortal scribes of penny arcade see it similarly:

drool. it's like cheney v. leahy every minute of every day.

*yes i am a dork. but if you're reading this you know me. and if you know me you know i'm a dork. so stfu already.

ericberto holdzalez?

2009-04-08T09:45:00.002-04:00

assrocket:

Since he became Attorney General, Eric Holder has moved to politicize the Department, putting it in service of a left-wing agenda. But there is no reason why the Democrats' misuse of Justice could not have begun when the Department was nominally under Republican control.

response to sentence one: what are you smoking? how much? boy it sounds yummy.

response to sentence b: yes there is. in fact, there are many, many reasons.

notice the depth of conservative psychosis - the total denial regarding the gop justice dept was plagued with incompetence and corruption and the projection of those qualities onto political opponents even when it is literally impossible for that to be the case.

everyone will die

2009-04-08T09:10:00.002-04:00

that's what i've been trying to tell people!

read my blog and you start the morning right - with a slew of glenn beck-related videos. enjoy.

glenn himself, explaining how bernake = fascism.

fox news' last sane personality, shep smith, unable to contain his disdain for glenn.

a delightful cartoon about glenn! for the kids!

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The 10.31 Project

comedycentral.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

NASA Name Contest

and, of course, if you haven't seen it, stephen colbert's miraculous evisceration of glenn beck.

bonus video!

a meeting of kindred souls - glenn beck and michele bachmann!

i just love my country. and, after watching all these videos, i fear for it.

*tear*

harold and kumar go to the white house

2009-04-07T12:10:00.003-04:00

ok, so it's just kumar.

but seriously - kal penn is the new assoc. dir. in the White House office of public liason.

!!!!!!

teh gay is coming!

2009-04-07T11:45:00.001-04:00

in - oh noes - vermont.

and bizarrely foolish vt. gov. jim douglas is pwned in the process.

social justice +5.

enjoy some san fransisco values!

modern america

2009-04-06T11:25:00.003-04:00

isn't it amazing that, in 2009, this is still considered news:

of course, we are at war with quakers. we needed one war that couldn't possibly go wrong. sorry guys, you're pushovers. no quantity of oat squares and folksy pacifism can defeat the 500,000 predator drones on their way to pennsylvania as we speak.

my blog summarized

2009-04-05T23:13:00.001-04:00

blah blah blah assrocket

shit happens

2009-03-11T18:54:00.002-04:00

yes it does, chas, yes it does:

A few stops after I got on the 42 bus this morning, Charles Freeman plunked down across from me. He was reading an old paperback copy of Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds, and looking more like a high school English teacher than an existential threat to the state of Israel.

I introduced myself and told him I was sorry that he resigned. He recoiled only slightly when I mentioned I worked for the Atlantic, then smiled broadly. "Shit happens." He added a little wistfully: "I wasn't so eager to go back to the government, anyway."

I asked him what he thought of his critics. "I don't pay much attention to the blogosphere. But I did read Jim Fallows. Fallows actually seemed to have read what I said."

The woman next to me suddenly pieced it together. "Now I know who you are!" She hesitated for a second. "I still disagree with you." Others on the bus started to look confused, even a little worried.

Freeman smiled again, and laughed. "I guess now I'm a notorious personality." He went back to reading his novel. A few stops later, he got off the bus.

i've been blogging nada lately, but let me opine for the record that chas freeman really ought to be nic chair right now, that most of the criticism of him was disingenuous or small-minded, and that chuck schumer is just such a douchenozzle.

modesty

2009-03-10T08:06:00.001-04:00

andy mccarthy:

Congratulations David Frum [Andy McCarthy]

Well, well, well, David has arrived! From nowhere to Newsweek in a nanosecond...

ummm, you do know that mr. frum wrote for your publication until like, two months ago, right? andy? andy?

taxpayer stadium

2009-02-27T10:15:00.000-05:00

36%

more cooler verbs!

2009-02-18T17:10:00.002-05:00

rep. greg meeks chattering on msnbc just said (accidentally) "publicated" instead of "published."

i much prefer the former, and will start using it all the time.

ummm

2009-02-17T12:57:00.001-05:00

have you ever actually read anything on dailykos?

i guess this is what to expect from the publication that named powerline the "2004 blog of the year." how's that working out, assrocket?

silver v. sirota

2009-02-15T19:10:00.000-05:00

oh it is on, yo.

time for...recheck your premises!

2009-02-13T16:40:00.003-05:00

ross douthat, pissing me off more every day, lobs up an easy one:

Here I'm starting from the premise that American politics has been fitfully sorting itself into a meritocracy-versus-populism dynamic, with one party (the Democrats) dominated by the mass upper class and the other party (the GOP) representing the middle and working-class voters who resent this newish elite, for good reasons and for bad.

hey, ross? maybe you should...recheck your premise!

Family Income Size Obama McCain Other
Less than $15,000 6% 73% 25% 2%
$15,000–$29,999 12% 60% 37% 3%
$30,000-$49,999 19% 55% 43% 2%
$50,000-$74,999 21% 48% 49% 3%
$75,000-$99,999 15% 51% 48% 1%
$100,000-$149,999 14% 48% 51% 1%
$150,000-$199,999 6% 48% 50% 2%
Greater than $200,000 6% 52% 46% 2%

i think ross' premise holds if you only count white people, but heck, doing that would be really stupid. as john mccain learned in november, everyone gets to vote!

do as i say

2009-02-13T01:02:00.002-05:00

david brooks:

The nation had essentially bet its future on economic models with primitive views of human behavior.

isn't this what david brooks has been doing since forever?

j-gregg

2009-02-12T17:51:00.001-05:00

will not be

a) commerce secretary
b) running for re-election
c) all of the above

if you said "c," congratulations! you're an informed citizen (the "c" is for citizen).

is it just me, or is this not the best-case scenario?

come again barney?

2009-02-11T21:11:00.001-05:00

did rep. frank really just say that john thain was on the top of john mccain's list of potential treasury secretaries?

fail.