Category: No Politics Friday

At some point during the State of the Union coverage every year, usually during the extended "Entering the chamber and shaking hands with everyone and his brother" sequence, the commentators will note the absent Cabinet member, aka the Designated Survivor, who will accede to the Presidency if…well…everyone dies. This practice was born of Cold War paranoia about a Soviet nuclear "decapitation strike" that would wipe out the Federal government in the blink of an eye. It's rare that the entirety of the government is located in one room and the godless Communist was simply waiting for such an opportunity to pounce. A member of the Joint Chiefs once described the overall Continuity of Operations Plan as a means of protecting the presidency, not the President. In other words, it doesn't really matter who it is. Our system is designed to operate as long as someone fills the required roles, be it a low-ranking bureaucrat or the White House janitor. Pretty inspiring stuff, our government.

Curiously, it was only recently that four members of Congress (one Senator and Representative of each party) were included. Legislative continuity apparently did not strike anyone as important, but the survival of a small group of Congressmen would be necessary to nominate new individuals (presumably themselves) to the Vice-Presidency and Presidency Pro Tempore of the Senate.
buy augmentin online buy augmentin no prescription

Part of me thinks it would be interesting to see a pitched battle for the Vice-Presidency between Robert Byrd and Chuck Grassley in a two-man Senate. Then again, in the wake of a nuclear strike I don't think many of us would be too concerned about finding someone to inhabit the smoldering ruins of the Blair House.

This year's DS, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, was in for a big disappointment if a nuclear strike hit the Capitol on Wednesday night. Since Hillary Clinton was attending a conference in London she would have become President and, well, at least the new post-apocalyptic government would have HUD covered. But Madame Clinton was not in a secure location; hypothetically she too could have been killed while out and about in London. So where was Mr. Donovan? Our secure locations, interestingly enough, are most likely the same as Dick Cheney's infamously undisclosed ones.

Even after all these years it is unlikely that there's anything more secure than the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain complex. There are also some underground facilities at Offut AFB in Omaha, home of the former Strategic Air Command (intentionally located in the dead middle of the continent, hence giving our land-based air defenses ample opportunity to shoot down incoming Soviet bombers). But Designated Survivors probably stay a lot closer to home.

Everyone has heard of NORAD, but the undisclosed locations of choice in recent years are less famous.
buy stromectol online buy stromectol no prescription

"Site R", aka the Raven Rock Mountain complex located 6 miles from Camp David, remains largely classified. Its primary tenant, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, is known to keep the facility prepared as an emergency Continuity of Government site but little information exists about the contents or other tenants of the bunker. The second option, Mount Weather in Berryville, VA, combines two facilities. The above-ground complex is the headquarters of FEMA while the underground portion remains a comparative mystery. The odds are excellent that Designated Survivors spend a few hours in one of these locations every year.

A few years ago I chuckled at a cable program that promised to count down "The greatest spies who ever lived." The greatest spy would, by definition, be someone we've never heard of. If he or she deserves the title, s/he maintained cover and was never identified. Such is the case with these "secret" facilities. If I can tell you about a place, it's not really the secret secret facility. There's probably something else out there, hidden beneath a rural mountain or hundreds of feet below some nondescript office building in Arlington. Then again in the age of satellite imaging and ground-penetrating radar it's awfully hard to keep secrets. When the Russians began digging an end-of-world superbunker to put NORAD to shame at Mount Yamantaw in the Urals, satellite data let the American intelligence community feel like it was there digging the hole. But who knows? The U.S. government can be good at keeping secrets on occasion and sites that are actually secret may exist. Only Cheney knows for sure.

You don't need experience teaching at the college level to figure out that students don't go to office hours until immediately before (as in, the day of) and after exams. This phenomenon gives rise to one of my favorite awkward/terrible moments in academia. In the last hour before an exam a parade of frenetic students pass through the office to deliver unintelligible bursts of words at a mile-a-minute, pupils unnaturally dilated and extremities restlessly twitching. Let's just say the studying to Exam Day Adderall Abuse ratio is lopsided in favor of the latter.

Adderall is amphetamine combined with Dexedrine, the wonder drug that brought you such hits as Charles Whitman in a bell tower.
buy prednisone online pmilv.com/wp-content/languages/new/cheap/prednisone.html no prescription

That its effects are so similar to methamphetamine should not be surprising. As any high school or college student can tell you, it's a pretty potent performance enhancer that makes focus and concentration easier (at low doses). Not only is it readily available from peers but doctors give it out like candy irrespective of the fact that it's basically speed. There isn't a lot of careful drug-seeking behavior necessary; I'm pretty sure people between the ages of 13 and 21 just have to say "I have trouble concentrating in school" and they'll be full of uppers in no time.

Is taking Adderall or Ritalin or whatever before an exam cheating? Well, it's performance enhancing. It's not "natural." So inasmuch as you think Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, or Floyd Landis are cheaters, I guess the students are too. We get a lot of mileage out of belittling high-profile steroid cheaters like Mark McGwire, but we have little trouble ignoring other kinds of drug-related cheating.

Admit it, when the Atlantic blew the lid off the drug-addled world of classical music (seriously, your average violinist or cellist pops beta blockers like Pez before auditions and performances) you didn't get indignant and label them all cheaters. It seemed kinda funny, right? The idea of performance-enhancement for playing the tuba was just too silly to serve as the basis for moral outrage. Don't hold your breath waiting for Congress to grill the Boston Pops in the name of fairness and setting a good example for our youngsters.

We really do have a problem in this society with the win-at-all-costs mentality and subjective morality; like all drugs, Americans are willing to do some significant rationalization for the ones upper-middle class people use. Mr. McGwire's media moment last week cast our hypocrisy in high relief.

Like many Americans I believe he and the other glandular freaks of baseball are cheaters, but perhaps we should enforce a little consistency in applying that label.
buy xifaxan online pmilv.com/wp-content/languages/new/cheap/xifaxan.html no prescription

(Recommended reading/viewing: The Cheating Culture by David Callahan and the 2008 documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster*)

If you have an internet connection and friends you've probably been sent a "Hey look at this!" email regarding the blog-in-pictures This is Why You're Fat. Readers send in pics of hilariously high-calorie foods that no sentient person would ever eat, ostensibly to help explain why Americans are so goddamn fat. Yes, it's funny. Limited in range, but funny. I mean, 99% of the content repeats one of these themes:

1. Like normal food, only bigger
2. (Thing that isn't healthy) + (bacon)
3. (Thing that isn't healthy) + (gravy or cheese)
4. One unhealthy food stuffed inside another
5. An enormous number of things simply piled atop one another (plus gravy)

While the website is both funny and probably correct to some extent, I have a much better theory about why we're fat. We've become food crazed, and it's a relatively recent development. Let me explain what I mean.

I saw a fabulously interesting interview with Wolfgang Puck several years ago on a network TV show and he recounted a story of when he moved to L.A. in the 70s. He'd go to a club and try to talk to a woman, and he said when they asked what he did for a living he'd either lie about it or admit that he was a chef and the conversation would be over. It was a shit profession for people who were either pretentious French assholes or unemployable borderline-criminal types. And now, Puck told the host, you're interviewing me on national TV. Being a chef went from one step above being a child molester to being a high-glamour profession.

There is a network devoted to 24-hour food/cooking related programming. Dozens of other cable networks (Discovery, Bravo, etc.) have food shows. The Culinary Institute of America now includes media training – how to give an interview, how to court the press, and so on – in its curriculum. Anthony Bourdain is wildly famous for writing a book about how shitty it is to work in restaurants. Enormous stores sell nothing but cookwares most of us would never use. People spend $1200 on sets of knives. High-end restaurants and grocers – some of which will mail exotic ingredients to your door – are doing well even in a horrible economy as people shell out per-ounce prices for spices and cheese that were formerly associated only with heroin. We are absolutely food loco as a nation.

Why? There are a lot of explanations – diet and kitchenware as status symbols, better education about the downsides of processed food, etc. – but I favor the following one. First Americans had to accept that drinking was bad for them. No more three martini lunches. Then they found out that smoking was a killer, so the educated middle class shunned that too. Then the 1980s arrived and it turned out that indiscriminate sexual activity could end up killing you, so the bourgeois who spent the 70s doing blow and nailing everyone in sight had to put a stop to that. Then we started hacking away at the middle class lifestyle – salaries stopped going up, paid time off became a thing of the past, and many people saw their standard of living collapse – so people couldn't enjoy escaping on vacations or trips to the lake with their boat. In short, everything Americans used for sensory pleasure has been taken away (although not from the poor; we wanted to make sure we could still market the cigarettes and booze to someone, and who really cares if they die of AIDS?)

Food is what's left. We are fat because we use food as an escape. The pleasure we might have once had from functional alcoholism, chain smoking, or wild partying has left us with endless sublimated desires for physical pleasure and nowhere to satisfy them. So we eat. We eat and look for ever more exciting sensory experiences from our food. We not only shovel down more food to fill the void but we're constantly looking for more indulgent things to eat. If you're ever in Chicago, go wait in line at Hot Doug's some afternoon and watch dozens of hipsters and young professionals – people who have two or three degrees apiece – wait in a lengthy line to eat french fries cooked in rendered duck fat and a hot dog covered with 1000 calories of foie gras. Then you'll see what I mean.

That's my theory, anyway. The bacon-laden peanut brittle isn't helping either, admittedly.

1. The interchange from I-74 into the new Indianapolis Airport is called the Ronald Reagan Parkway. Appropriately, I found driving on it wildly overrated and not very bright.

2. I am responding to every "Merry Christmas" I get from strangers today with "That's not funny, man. My brother died that way." Hilarity ensues.

3. As much as I am a fan of people not working, it is disconcerting to see the TSA people standing around to the extent that no one noticed the 24 oz.

bottle of sports drink in my carry-on. Thank god we have the war in Iraq to make us safer; these people certainly aren't.

buy nolvadex online buy nolvadex no prescription

Early Thursday morning I flew back to my beloved Indiana in preparation for the graduation ceremony on Saturday morning. Not wanting to be a burden to friends and family the entire time I am in Bloomington, Chicago, and points inbetween I rented a car.

Upon confirming my reservation for a "compact" with the esteemed gentleman from Alamo, he proceeded to solicit additional money from me with promises of a larger vehicle in return.
buy premarin online buy premarin no prescription

"Kind sir," I replied, "try not your snake-oil salesman's tactics and cheap conjurer's tricks on me! I wish only for the mode of conveyance stated, and at the price agreed upon!

" Since I normally drive a 10 year old Nissan Sentra the idea of needing a larger vechile for just a few days seemed silly. Chastened, the would-be huckster directed me to a row of identical Chevrolet Aveos.

I hesitated.

"Perchance I have been too rash, honored salesman," said I, trembling in awe at the sheer shittiness of the alleged automobiles before me. But my inner Polack won in the end and rather than shelling out an additional $50 for the 10-day rental I figured, how bad can this Korean chariot (via the Kingdom of Detroit) be?

I learned an important lesson today. Do not ask questions if you are not prepared for the answer.

Now, if nothing else about this scenario amuses you, just enjoy the physical comedy of someone who is 6'4" and essentially all limb tucking his knees to his chin in this:

The effect is not unlike seeing the Yeti seated on a roller skate.

Upon first entering the vehicle one recoils and asks, "Can there be any gray plastic left in the world after GM is done making Aveo interiors?" The entire world must suffer shortages of molded Chinese gray plastic every time GM/Daewoo fires up the production lines for another exercise in futility. "Oh well, I am not interested in its beauty; it need only convey me from kingdom to kingdom for a few days.
buy singulair online buy singulair no prescription

"

Having been happily off the GM wagon for many years, a lifetime of corner-cutting manufacturing techniques nonetheless came flooding back to me the instant I attempted to accelerate. Getting to highway speed is a leisurely, contemplative process, and the vehicle no doubt possesses the loudest engine I have ever heard that is less than 8 cylinders, not powering a lawn mower or air compressor, and not attached to the wing of an airplane.

But since said engine is so tiny, the tone is ear-splitting but pathetic, like an enormous dragon with emphysema trying to roar. I can best compare it to driving an oversized Dustbuster, or perhaps a cross between Fran Drescher and Soundwave.

The ancient four-speed transmission reminded me of why GM has not moved to equip all of its vehicles with five-speeds like other manufacturers. Indeed, why attempt the five-speed before having mastered four? After a quick inspection to see if the transmission was filled with grape Smuckers, I ascertained that the curious performance quirks I experienced are inherent to the design.

Last but not least I was reminded of my favorite memory of years of driving Pontiacs. I like to call it the "GM shakes," the terrifying sense that the vehicle is about to disintegrate into 1000 pieces as you approach 70 mph. I suppose 70 mph is pretty fast, although not unreasonable. In a GM car, however, 70 mph sounds and feels like one is in the cockpit of the Apollo capsule atop a Saturn V rocket – just as the boosters kick in. In the Aveo, 70 mph inspired me to make sure that my will is up to date. The combination of plastic bodywork, cheap tires, and brittle third-world steel frame may appeal to younger buyers, though, because it always feels like you're going really fast in an Aveo. Even at 35 mph the cacophony of tire, wind, and engine noise sounds like an alcohol-fueled rocket car blasting across the Bonneville salt flats en route to the land speed record.

Upon arrival at my destination I immediately called the director of marketing at GM and proposed two slogans: "Aveo: American Trabant" and "The New Chevy Aveo: isn't it marginally better than walking?" Both struck him as genius. I was paid a handsome six-figure sum, part of which I used to purchase this Aveo from Alamo and have it compacted into a tiny cube, which I then set on fire.

I tend not to watch a lot of TV, and what I do watch tends toward either surrealist comedy (Frisky Dingo) or non-fiction programming (think Discovery Channel specials about how coffee beans are harvested and processed). For someone who enjoys getting angry at glorified mediocrity and outright stupidity, TV is not a good way to enhance health and sanity. Lots of things on television make me want to punch someone – American Idol, any sitcom with a laugh track and/or on Fox, The Real Housewives of Wherethefuckever, and that show on cable that is honest-to-god called I Want That! – but the programming that has me on my knees every night praying for a comet to hit the Earth is the recent proliferation of bride-themed "reality" shows, namely Bridezillas and to a lesser extent Bulging Brides, Rich Bride Poor Bride, and Say Yes to the Dress.

It's bad enough that we raise girls in this country to believe that getting married is life's ultimate accomplishment, one's wedding is the most important day in life (not because marriage is important, of course), and getting married is a process one must start planning at age six and, when it finally happens, nothing less than Barbie's Dream Wedding will do. Having dipped my toes in the wedding industry during my engagement, I became aware of just how powerful the external factors encouraging this sort of behavior are.

Men don't spend their entire lives getting bombarded with this shit, thank god. But that privilege means that it is all the more shocking when we are finally taken behind the curtain. To this day the words "Bridal" and "Expo" used sequentially are enough to make me reach for a weapon. I/we quickly discovered that it is impossible to have a wedding industry wedding for less than $10,000, as ten-cent napkins magically become $4 "wedding napkins" and the scum of the retail world do their best to convince you that conspicuous spending on trivial bullshit will determine your worth as a human being.

Yeah. We're currently planning a very pleasant ceremony in someone's backyard with catered tacos. But I digress. Why do the television shows piss me off so much?
online pharmacy symbicort best drugstore for you

This already unbearable experience has gotten dramatically worse on account of contemporary movies and television that not only reinforce the Barbie Dream Wedding, everything-must-be-perfect-for-your-special-day mantra but they add to it the idea that women have a right (perhaps even the responsibility) to act absolutely psychotic throughout the process. Wedding Time is a twelve month excuse to be, in the common parlance, a complete bitch. To everyone. About everything. Even when the brides on these reality shows are shown at their worst in an effort to get the audience to hate them, I can only imagine what effect it has on the subconscious of a ten year-old girl. Whether or not they realize that the show is no different than Springer or Maury Povich – a freakshow intended to make viewers feel better about themselves – the message is clear: this is how people act when they are getting married. If anything isn't exactly how I want it I can fly off the handle and shriek hysterically at whoever happens to be nearby. He or she will forgive me because I'm planning a wedding. It's OK to act like an asshole. It's OK to engage in behavior so socially aberrant that it fits the definition of an actual psychological diagnosis (see title).

My better half was involved in a wedding party for a Bridezilla a few years ago and it was one of the most unpleasant experiences imaginable. Friendships were strained, money was pissed away, and even those of us who only had to watch from afar could scarcely wait for it to be over.
online pharmacy clomiphene best drugstore for you

Now that my social circle is getting to That Age I get the sneaking feeling that I'll have a few more of these experiences in the near future.

Is it all the fault of some bad cable television shows?

Of course not. But if you wanted to present a solid counterargument to the claim that allowing same-sex marriage would in some way be derogatory to the institution, you could do a lot worse than asking what could cheapen it more than the cynical cash grab and bridal freakshow that is a modern American wedding.

If any country could make a holiday out of going to the mall, it's the U.
buy clomiphene online buy clomiphene no prescription

S.

On Black Friday I suppose I am expected to deliver some sort of trenchant anti-consumerist monologue.
buy wellbutrin online buy wellbutrin no prescription

Unfortunately I think that the lack of consumer spending is exacerbating our current economic difficulties. This leads a lot of dolts to claim that spending money is intrinsically good and should be considered a patriotic duty, or they advance the notion that we can shop our way out of a recession.

This fails to draw the crucial distinction between spending money you have, which is a good thing, and spending money you don't have, which merely digs us into a deeper hole individually and collectively.

The more interesting question on Black Friday is whether one enjoys holiday shopping as an experience irrespective of ability or desire to buy lots of crap. Since I am financially able to afford some gifts for the first time in five years I would be a candidate to hit the mall tomorrow – if not for the fact that I finished shopping a week ago without leaving the comfort of my home.

You and I both know that internet shopping makes a lot of sense.

We get the best prices and devote nearly no time at all to what could otherwise be a long day in and out of the car. For me the choice was simple. But I can't shake the feeling that the last thing Americans really need is another way to avoid having contact with one another. More retail activity migrates online every day, though, and it is only a matter of time until the only people doing in-store holiday shopping are like the people who ride Amtrak or pay for things in cash – people who either fear change or love nostalgia. It's very difficult to construct a valid argument in favor of participating in the Black Friday mob without resorting to one or both.

I'm not criticizing people who choose to join the crowds. If you enjoy it, go for it. I do not. I do wonder, though, for how much longer this phenomenon can hold out in the face of relentless pressure from cheaper and easier online shopping – not to mention from our increasing aversion to leaving our homes and interacting with one another.

A lot of attention has been paid recently to this post on Black Informant showing a scan of a fifth grade civics exam from 1954. The exam is 100 questions and required students to name, among other things, the nine justices of the Supreme Court, the first 22 amendments to the Constitution (!!!

buy amitriptyline online www.epsa-online.org/wp-content/languages/new/prescription/amitriptyline.html no prescription

), and the definition of the writ of habeas corpus. Most of the reaction has been along the lines of "Oh, look how far we've fallen." If you browse the comments after the link, though, you will also find a good amount of the polar opposite – it's just memorization, it demonstrates no real learning, and today's educational standards are actually far higher. My personal favorite in the latter category has to be:

The comparison of education from the year 1954 to now is completely irrelevant. With the integrated use of smart phones and the internet, it is completely unnecessary to memorize all of these facts that reduce the amount of teaching effort put towards CRITICAL THINKING. Facts are easy things to look up; the connection between these facts and being able to understand the reason things exist the way they do because of the influence of various related factors is what education should be moving toward…and memorizing facts is not something that is necessary anymore for anyone who can look up those facts in 2 seconds on their iphone. It is simply a waste of time.

Our integrated use of smart phones and the world wide hyperweb aside, I do consider this a legitimate question. Should our educational system emphasize information retention or "critical thinking?

" Here's the problem. We do neither. Exams like this are no longer given, at least not commonly, but has it been replaced with anything more useful? In my limited experience we are producing wave after wave of students who reach adulthood utterly unable to distinguish between their puckered assholes and a hole in the ground but with access to information they lack the desire or ability to use. They're loaded to the gunwales with iPhones, laptops, and 24-7 access to all of humanity's collected knowledge, and they can't do basic research on Google to save their souls. I just said all of this two weeks ago so I'll stop repeating myself.

There is value in knowing basic facts. Should we be encouraging kids to memorize the 435 members of Congress or pi to 100 places? No, that would be a pure waste of time. But I shit you not – and I wish I could have a student verify this – I just quizzed my Presidency class, all junior and senior political science majors at a college with an average incoming SAT score of 1400, on the Bill of Rights and not one of them named more than half. Not one. Most could only stammer out a partial description of the 1st Amendment, maybe something about the 2nd. This is bad. "Memorization" for the sake of memorization probably would not help our educational system, but can we start sending people to selective universities with a grasp of some incredibly basic goddamn facts? I do not ask a lot. Call it rote memorization if you'd like, but I'm comfortable making a judgment call here: people should know the Bill of Rights.

This is my argument about the educational system in this country as a whole. We have spent 40 years trying to build pretty houses without building a foundation first. If people are not graduating from high school with a grasp of basic math, the ability to intelligibly express a thought in English, and perhaps a rudimentary understanding of American government, nothing else matters. It is all irrelevant if they lack that basic foundation, and trust me, most of the kids I deal with lack the everliving hell out of it.
buy wellbutrin online www.epsa-online.org/wp-content/languages/new/prescription/wellbutrin.html no prescription

Maybe the student from 1954 was just learning a bunch of facts and never developed the ability to utilize them or put them in context. Is it markedly better to have students who (allegedly) have the latter skills but not the facts? Why is information without skills patently silly but skills without information isn't?