Category: Quick Hits

Buddy died on Tuesday at the age of three years and six days. He had a long and happy rat life, although it saddened both of us that he spent his last year without a rat companion after the death of his brother Seymour. He and I had a really strong bond, and we spent a ton of time together.

As he got weaker over his last two weeks, he slept next to me on my pillow. He was the first rat I've owned from thumb size to old age.
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I'm sad that I was at work when he died. I just wanted to make him feel loved, and like he wasn't alone. But on a selfish note, I'm glad that he died at home rather than getting jabbed with a needle at the vet. That doesn't seem like a good way to go.

He went through a couple of different procedures over the past month, but the vet and I agreed that Buddy reached a point at which more treatment wasn't going to help him. As hard as it is to make that decision with a pet, I really don't envy anyone who has to make these kinds of decisions with (human) loved ones.

Thanks for everything, Budward. I'm glad I got to know you.

Quick reactions:

1. The way that the candidates and the parties they represent have fundamentally identical views on foreign policy issues – Drones? Cool! Israel? My favorite! Iran? Bad! – goes a long way toward explaining why some Americans feel like there is no real difference. Granted, those differences appear stark on social issues and kinda-sorta-I-guess there are economic differences. But if this debate was the only thing you saw, it would be easy to conclude that these are two sides of the same coin.

2. Mitt's dead eyes made it more obvious than in the previous debates that he really doesn't give a flying shit about any of this, he's just saying whatever he thinks he needs to say to round up enough votes to get into office and address the only issue he cares about: insulating his economic bracket from any threats from below. That's it. Everything else is so much noise to him.

His self-presentation in this debate was, "Look, I know I've taken like five different positions on this.
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I know that you know. And frankly I give zero shits."

3. I can't even imagine how much you would have to hate Obama to listen to Romney and think "Yeah, this guy sounds great!" He doesn't sound interested, he talks in circles, he takes scripted potshots at Obama and then admits that his positions are basically identical (i.e. on Afghanistan), and he talks about comprehensive strategies that he never explains. Unlike in the economic-themed debates where he throws out slogans people can respond to – Low taxes! Job Creators! Loud Noises! – he can't even do that much with foreign policy. How anyone convinces themselves that he scored a resounding victory on Monday night is beyond me. First debate? Sure. Yesterday? He did everything but take a dump on the stage.

4. The overwhelming sense I get when Romney talks is a guy shaking a handful of beads at some Indians and saying in an unnaturally loud voice, "LOOK! SHINY! I GIVE YOU BEADS, YOU GIVE ME ISLAND!" It's so easy to picture him alone with his advisers back-slapping and laughing, telling each other, boy, I bet those morons just ate that up. Can you believe they're buying this crap?
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I can't either, Mitt.

Today please spend whatever time you'd ordinarily use to read Gin and Tacos to watch "The Hunted and the Hated: An Inside Look at the NYPD's Stop-and-Frisk Policy." It's only 13 minutes. A young man secretly recorded a stop/frisk incident and the audio is included along with interviews with NYPD officers who describe the way the NYPD and Mayor's office pressure cops to make as many as possible. Originally appeared at The Nation.

There are some neat Stop & Frisk apps as well as an ACLU app that allows smartphone users to secretly record interactions with the police. This technology coincides with states' efforts to outlaw audio/video recording of on-duty police. They've failed so far, but why would such laws even be necessary? From what I've heard, if the cops aren't doing anything wrong they have nothing to worry about.

NPF is ready to go but I couldn't resist bumping it in light of the vice-presidential debate on Thursday evening. Rather than making any attempts at analysis (If your post-debate spin is Mitch McConnell whining about the moderator, you just got your ass kicked. What more is there to say?) all I want to do is come up with analogies for what we saw on that stage last night. In politics, I can't think of a debate that ended with one person being that thoroughly humiliated when that person was not named Dan Quayle. Here I will try to list ass beatings as lopsided and complete as the one Paul Ryan just received:

– That one Super Bowl that the 49ers won 55-10, where the game was effectively over 10 minutes into the first quarter. (Honorable Mention: The 1985 Bears clobbering New England 46-10)

– Mike Tyson vs. Marvis Frazier. Or Michael Johnson. Or Michael Spinks. Or Robert Colay. Or basically anyone he fought before he went to prison and completely lost his mind.

– BluRay vs. HD DVD (Honorable mention: DVD vs. DIVX Disc)

– The Battle of Cold Harbor, American Civil War (Honorable mention: Henry V at Agincourt)

– Man vs. Nature

– Pepsi vs. New Coke

– The one guy who kept fighting WWII for Japan until 1974 vs. the entire world

– Crops vs. locusts (Honorable mention: Cane toads vs. Australia)

That could not have gone worse for Paul Ryan unless he pulled out a Koran and the severed head of Michael Phelps and thrust them both toward the camera. Unfortunately it won't matter much, as is usual for the debates. Nonetheless, it will replace Romney/Obama I as the topic for the grist mill over the next few days and it gave us this excellent excuse to think of metaphors for getting the crap beaten out of you.

Apparently I have pneumonia. Buddy is still quite sick. I got a speeding ticket. It wasn't the best day.

The only topic I can offer for discussion today is whether I should adopt this dog. The local police took the adoption fee ($150) from me, but thank god they stopped me before I drove 38 in a 30 on a deserted country road between an animal shelter and a prison again.

I'm sick and so is my rat. But I bet you hear that excuse a lot.
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Today I'm farming you out to Mike Konczal, who nailed this Post of the Year caliber look at how little the Romney 2012 agenda differs from that of previous GOP candidates in 2008, 2006, or 2004. The short answer is that it doesn't. Like, at all. It's a one-size-fits-all agenda for economic times high and low.
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If the economy's growing, great! Cut taxes and privatize everything. If the economy is mired in recession, there's a plan for that too!
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Cut taxes and privatize everything.

So the answer is to cut taxes. Now what was the question?

I really appreciate that post because that is the hardest kind to write – the kind that begins with a premise we know intuitively to be true but which requires a lot of legwork to actually prove. Well done. Yet I suspect that Mike is prouder of this lengthy explanation of current monetary policy using only animated gifs.

Thank god I have such a weirdly specific memory that hoards unimportant pieces of information. Otherwise I might not have remembered Newt Gingrich getting all self righteous and faux outraged like only a true conservative blowhard can over rhetoric about "the 99%" in November of last year.

I repudiate, and I call on (President Obama) to repudiate, the concept of the 99 and the 1. It is un-American, it is divisive, it is historically false.

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You are not going to get job creation when you engage in class warfare because you have to attack the very people you hope will create jobs.

Here's a video if for some reason you desire to hear Newt Gingrich's voice:

Two quick questions.

First, is Gingrich still supporting the guy who wrote off 47% of the country as useless parasites on the heroic Producer class?
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Second, can you recall or find a single instance of anyone in the media referring to Romney's comment as "class warfare"?

I guess it's only class warfare when there is a proposed reduction in the amount that the asses of the wealthy are kissed.

We cannot agree about much in this country, but over the past few weeks we have formed a single united front in opposition to the scabs officiating our football games. The NFL referees are on strike and the league, being a trillion-dollar industry based on providing a product people actually enjoy watching, decided to hire a gaggle of "replacements" from the ranks of high school and small college (non-NCAA) officials.
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Since professional and amateur football have different rules – in some cases very different – the results have been predictably disastrous. From their failure to do basic things like spot the ball and operate the game clock to major rules of which they appear to be totally ignorant, they have proven thus far that there is nothing they can't botch.

So why is this not reserved for NPF and the "Skip this if you hate sports" tag?
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You might think that a tiny light bulb is appearing over the heads of a lot of white American males – the only group that cast a majority of its votes for John McCain in 2008, and also the primary audience demographic of the NFL – as they realize: Hmm, maybe all human capital is not interchangeable, and maybe there are some noticeable downsides to a market in which whoever will work for the least gets the job. On the one hand, the scab referees are much cheaper than the unionized "real" refs.

On the other hand, they are fucking terrible. On this point there is no disagreement.

Applying this concept to other areas of the economy (replace "NFL ref" and "scab" with "union airplane mechanic" and "some guy in Alabama who took a 10-day training course and will work for United $11/hr") would be logical at this point, but I wonder to what extent this is sinking in with the great masses of people who spend Sundays in front of the TV appalled at the incompetence of these replacements. The evidence is right in front of us and it's bleedingly obvious – In a surplus labor market you can always find someone willing to do a job for less, but they're probably not going to do it well. Even the type of person who blames the work stoppage on the union – They're "greedy", after all – can't deny that the end result is the replacement of trained, experienced professionals with a clown car load of knuckleheads who act like they've never seen a football before.

We (or at least half of us) continue to believe that everyone is easily replaced in this economy.

If the teachers want too much money, just fire them all and bring in someone else.

There are lots of unemployed people and, hell, anyone can teach high school! That we have evidence to the contrary provided by our new national pastime should, but probably will not, disabuse us of this notion.

Three vignettes.

1. In Flagstaff, AZ – And I'd like to take a moment to point out that pretty much any headline regarding a news story from Arizona elicits a well deserved "Oh this oughta be good" these days – a police officer accused of sexual assault was sentenced to two years…of probation. It's OK though, because he lost his job and that's punishment enough.

And more importantly, everyone involved in the case learned some valuable lessons.

The judge sentencing Evans, Coconino County Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Hatch, said she hoped both the defendant and the victim would take lessons away from the case. Bad things can happen in bars, Hatch told the victim, adding that other people might be more intoxicated than she was.
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"If you wouldn't have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you," Hatch said…

Hatch said that the victim was not to blame in the case, but that all women must be vigilant against becoming victims. "When you blame others, you give up your power to change," Hatch said that her mother used to say.

That's a really good point, like when President Bush told all the World Trade Center victims that if they hadn't gone to work that day, nothing would have happened to them.

Note the gender of the judge and perhaps reflect on how misogyny is a function of power and institutionalized prejudices, not necessarily the possession or lack of a dong. But then stop reflecting on that because, like race, gender is not an issue in our society and certainly not in the legal system.

2. Across the pond, our friends in Derry, Northern Ireland have decided to install video cameras in the city's taxi fleet to "guard against false rape allegations." The cameras are not intended to make passengers feel safer or prevent, you know, rape. Any crimes or evidence thereof recorded on these cameras will be purely incidental. They are being installed to reduce the incidence of the most serious and pervasive of crimes in the UK: the ol' "fake like the cabbie raped you" scam.
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Oldest trick in the book.

3. A woman who admitted to the American public that she has had sexual intercourse on occasion spoke at the DNC and then some prominent right-wing media personalities had some very cogent points to make about the substance of her address.

Oh wait. I might have gotten that wrong.