To anyone still holding out that the US government is anything close to effective, competent, or benevolent:

The Morality Police FBI is initiating a War on Porn, and funding a road to nowhere. All the while losing a billion dollars of your money that was allotted for fixing up the Iraqi millitary. Which means we're hosed in the states, and they're hosed overseas.

Your US Government at work, people.



(Hat tip(s): The Agitator.)

-sam

sam? is that you questioning the Faith? have the seeds of caring and human kindness that I so carefully tried to sow inside your head actually sprouted a fledgling doubt? sweeet.

self-interested action cannot be inherently good, for the obvious reason that it is self-interested. it could be inherently smart, productive, worthwhile, etc...but not good. the problem with capitalism par excellence is that it takes the concept of 'others' out of the equation. and sure, while in theory that system might work rather well--producing all sorts of shit i'd love to have--i don't think i'd really like the people it created, the state of mind. after all, the closest thing that's ever come to it is the system we've got right now, and i fucking hate everybody.

i'm sure we can come up with a way to encourage progress and productivity and efficiency and whatever else capitalism promises, while at the same time keeping in mind that the happiness of all is central to the happiness of each. at least it's something worthwhile to work toward.

so, you can keep waiting for someone to answer your call for help, or you could just start thinking a little harder about what i suspect is your gut instinct.

[daniel]

It's apparently Crazy Week here in DC:

Bush actually accepted the blame for something (the Gov't failure in respect to handling Katrina, no less). To which I say: You could've picked a better god-damned time. The supply of heating oil's already gonna go down because of the damage to the gulf coast, and now the demand's gonna go up because the Devil's gonna have to heat Hell. Thanks a lot, Bush.

Not only that, but Tom DeLay actually said that there's no more fat to trim on the federal budget. I'm honestly shocked that Don "Fuck you, New Orleans, I want a bridge" Young didn't burst out into peals of laughter.




-sam

I. I guess our "vacation" was a little longer than expected. But if it's good enough for the president, it's darn good enough for us! (Unless by "it" you mean "cocaine" or "living in Texas.")

II. Michael Brown, the Bill Buckner of national disaster management, resigned. On the one hand, hoo-friggin'-ray. The guy was fired from his last job, as Comissioner of Judges and Stewards for the (International) Arabian Horse Association, a group of people who breed horses. Yeah. I guess we're lucky a massive whirlwind of improperly credentialed fillies didn't consume Louisiana, or else we'd really be in trouble. On the other hand, there is always the question of whether changing horses in midstream (or, as it were, changing ex-horse-standards-enforcers in mid-faeces-and-corpses-filled-floodwater) is more trouble than it's worth. On the other other hand, the distinct possibility exists that the FedGov has simply fucked it up as badly as they possibly could, and that no more harm could be done. We, I suppose, will have to see.

III. Speaking of the FedGov fucking things up, they're still trying to get people out of their homes. This has proven more difficult than first imagined (I think that "More Difficult Than First Imagined" should be the official motto of the Bush administration), and, understandably, things have gotten ugly. But, come on, no law enforcement would tackle a 90-lb, crazy-looking old lady, surely? Well...maybe. (In the policemen's defense, the old woman was armed with what appeared to be a pocket knife and Captain Jack Sparrow's pistol's little brother, so, y'know, that's dangerous, and stuff.) (Shouts to his Radness for the link to the video.)

IV. One good thing that can be said about the relief situation so far is that, despite the aforementioned mix of dead bodies, sewage, downed power lines, and witchcraft and false religions, New Orleans remains, thankfully and bizarrely, entirely free of zombies...for now.

V. I need help, of a sort: as I'm willing to bet 99.997% of the people who read (or used to read, before we stopped updating for several weeks) this thing know, I attend the George Washington University in the belly of the beast, Washington DC. The thing is, GDub (as the kids call it) is a private industry, and is yet somehow totally evil and inefficient. They do things like charge people rediculous amounts of money for crap and build retail space and parking lots instead of science classrooms, despite the fact that there are way not enough classrooms anywhere on campus. The thing is, both of these aforementioned actions appear to be motivated purely by self-interest, i.e. they want to make money, so they build high-revenue stuff instead of more classrooms. And yet, it's totally evil. So I need someone to explain to me how this meshes with the inherent goodness (for lack of a better term) of self-interested action. I suspect it has something to do with being a university, or some sort of small-picture thinking on my part, or something, but I'm just not sure. Help me, Libertarian-Wan Kenobis, you're my only hopes!




"I will suprise you sometime, I'll come around..."


-sam

Jon Stewart: "If I had a nickel every time Bush mentioned 9/11...I could raise enough reward money to go after Bin Laden!"


Whatever Mike "Nobody can talk about politics without a graduate-level knowledge of economics" Myers says, JStew is genius.



-sam

I don't really have anything to say, other than I've just read the last few posts on Radley Balko's Blog. It's really really disturbing. Not the blog itself, just the stuff in it. I watched most of the video where the drive-through girl is pepper-sprayed by a cop for supposedly short-changing him, and it makes me sad in the very core of my being.


Ughhhh...




-sam


(p.s.: Greg is in need of positive reinforcement. So go read his blog and say nice things about what he says, regardless of how you actually feel about the actual content.)

Umm...I guess we're on vacation.

I know I'm on vacation, and I guess Daniel's just not posting. Or something.

Anyhoo, while you wait for a resurgence of witty, blistering, insightful critiques of all that you hold dear, get your geek on by going over to Labyrinth Books and scoring cheap used college-worthy books of all varieties. I had a field day in the classics section, I'll tell you what.


-sam