Monday, November 24, 2008
Film Attention Waterworld Superfans
Posted by Lindy West on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 10:45 PM
To anyone wondering—based on my comment here—how I got the stupid idea that Waterworld was "never before on DVD," maybe it was because of this:
Apparently this copy is defective. It is covered with lies.
Film Christmas On Mars
Posted by Unpaid Intern on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 6:26 PM
Posted by Aaron Pickus
Pop music is hero worship. And, as such, a forum is required for both the worship of the heroes and for the heroes to perform their feats. Think of The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. Think of both Woodstocks, every summer at The Gorge, CBGB in New York, Bruce Springsteen at Giants Stadium and the Beach Boys touring the casino circuit. Until last summer, the forums in which The Flaming Lips was worshiped were limited to music venues and the occasional Zaireeka listening party. After Christmas On Mars, The Flaming Lips can be worshiped on the big screen.
News Doom and Gloom in King County
Posted by Unpaid Intern on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 5:59 PM
Posted by News Intern Aaron Pickus
If you're looking for a good time, you might want to steer clear of the King County Courthouse.Here's what a few county officials had to say this afternoon, after the King County Council unanimously adopted a 2009 budget that included $93 million in cuts:
County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg: "We just can't do this again."
County Council Member Reagan Dunn: "These are unprecedented cuts."
County Council Member Pete Von Reichbauer: "Lifeboats aren't helpful unless we give them oars."
County Council Member Dow Constantine: "This is the worst budget in the history of King County."
County Council Member Larry Phillips: "We are certainly in bad times now."
I just got back from the King County Council's press conference, which started moments after the Council voted 9-0 in favor of adopting the 2009 budget. King County Executive Ron Sims' "lifeboat" for human services will sink on July 1, 2009, if the county doesn't come up with $8 million to keep it afloat. The county has pledged to go to the state legislature for new funding sources, but any exact details about those funding sources remain elusive. The county, meanwhile, continues to grouse about "unfunded mandates" from the state—perhaps not the best strategy when asking the Legislature for a favor.
Phillips says the county's quest for new funding "is not just a King County story. When we tell the story, it will resonate across the state. We are joining up with other Washington counties."
County officials point to the 1% annual cap on property tax increases taxes as a major cause for what Phillips calls its "horrendous problem"; however, Phillips says, he doesn't think that "we'll be demanding any particular solution."
However, those of you looking forward to wrapping your deep-fried Snickers bar in a deep-fried elephant ear while paying five dollars to puke your guts out on a whirling death trap need not fear: The King County Fair will be fully funded. The county fair was threatened with closure until very recently in the budget process.
Phillips says "the fair is one of those connections between city and rural life. We came very close to losing that over the last several decades due to sprawl." It will be funded this year using a one-time appropriation from the county's parks department. Phillips also volunteers the absolutely mind-blowing statistic that there are about 26,000 horses in King County, and the largest equestrian community in the state. With Metro cutting 5% of its total budget, we might need those horses to pull our buses around.
The Agricultural Program, which includes the county fair, will be fully funded through the year, despite earlier fears that it would be cut or placed in Sims' lifeboat. Council Member Kathy Lambert says that the agricultural programs are "in and in to stay."
In the meantime, the Domestic Violence Unit of the King County Sheriff's department has been cut in half. All domestic violence cases will now be directed to a general case file and given the same priority as other investigations. The Vice Unit and Fraud Unit have been eliminated. The King County Prosecutor's Office has cut 27 positions. King County, as Council Member Bob Ferguson put it today, is "down to the bone."
News Nobody Likes Sean Hannity
Posted by Grant Brissey on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 5:16 PM
Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity is losing his liberal half.
Alan Colmes of the network's "Hannity & Colmes" said on his Web site Monday that he'll be leaving the prime-time show after 12 years. He said he approached a network executive earlier this year about doing something else.
Colmes will continue as a liberal commentator on Fox programs, keep doing his own radio show and is developing a weekend show at Fox News.
There was no immediate word about whether he will be replaced on the popular prime-time program. Hannity has been the bigger star in media circles and recently signed a contract extension. Hannity also does his own solo weekend show at News Corp.-owned Fox.
Can you blame him?
Via Forbes
City Bike Lanes Proposed On Fauntleroy: Will Hell Break Loose?
Posted by Erica C. Barnett on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 5:05 PM
As part of the city's Bike Master Plan, the Seattle department of transportation (SDOT) is proposing to narrow Fauntleroy Way SW from four car lanes to three, and to add striping for bike lanes (on uphill portions of the road) and sharrows (shared lane markings on downhill segments) from Southwest Alaska Street to California Avenue Southwest, a segment of about 11 blocks. Downsizing Fauntleroy (or, depending on your perspective, expanding it for the many cyclists who use it to commute) has been, predictably, controversial; over at the West Seattle Blog, the commenters are already apoplectic—screaming, for example, that adding bike lanes unfairly inconveniences the people that use the roads the most, and that cyclists should just commute to work by sidewalk anyway.
SDOT is holding an open house to hear those and other perspectives on Monday, December 1. Ironically, the agency decided to hold its meeting at what may be the toughest spot to reach by bike in all of Seattle—High Point Community Center, 6920 34th Ave. SW, from 5:30 to 8 p.m.
TV Today's Steven Seagal-gasm!
Posted by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:43 PM
Or would that be "Steven Seagasm"? Whatever. In news that made me slip out of my chair and painfully crack my chin on my desk, '90s action hero/demigod STEVEN SEAGAL is getting his own reality show! In which he's a real cop! In real Louisiana! REALLY!
Apparently Seagal has been working on and off as a deputized officer in Louisiana's Jefferson Parish County Sheriff's department for the last 20 years (?!?), and starting in 2009 will star in a reality show documenting his exploits on A&E, fantastically entitled Steven Seagal: Lawman. From Variety...
"I decided to work with A&E on this series now because I believe it's important to show the nation all the positive work being accomplished here in Louisiana," Seagal said of the new venture.Seagal "helps fight crime because he cares about the community," said Robert Sharenow, A&E's senior veep of nonfiction and alternative programming.
NO SHIT, SHERLOCK! (Sidenote: "No Shit, Sherlock!" would be a great name for a detective show.) I think Steven Seagal has pretty much proven that he "cares for the community" and "fights crime" in such cinematic feats of awesomosity as Hard to Kill, Fire Down Below and Under Siege, so don't fucking insult me, Robert. Plus, I believe it was the Portland Motherfucking Mercury who devoted an ENTIRE ISSUE to Steven Seagal, so in the future it may be a good idea not to fucking treat us like we're children. Or else maybe I need to do this to you...
Chow / At Large / Retail "Stopped. Cold turkey."
Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:26 PM
Slog tipper Adam writes apropos of this story of the intersection of a frozen turkey and a carjacking: "There's a reason that Thanksgiving is a favorite time of year of mine."
Photo of (apparently) a turkey by Dalmatica from The Stranger's flickr pool.
Film Last Night in the End of the World
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:23 PM
Last night I saw The Quantum of Solace at the Cinerama. I agree with Jen Graves' review of it, although I think I liked it a little bit better than she did. (The action scenes were really fucking choppy, though! Why the hell can't directors make an action scene that makes sense anymore?) Anyway. That's not the point. The point is that before the movie, this teaser trailer came on:
So it's for an awful-looking movie called 2012 based on that hooey about how the world is prophesied to end in 2012. In the middle of some (admittedly impressive) SFX shots of the ocean pouring into the Himalayas and destroying a temple, these words appear on the screen, in title cards:
How would the world’s leaders
(pause)
prepare six billion people
(pause)
for the end of the world?
And there's a huge dramatic movie trailer pause and then the answer comes up:
They wouldn’t
The theater was very, very quiet, but a few rows ahead of me, in a very quiet, earnest voice, a young man said aloud:
"Obama would."
And everybody laughed, probably because most of us were thinking some variation of that thought. Right now, before Obama takes office, it's like we're in a post-apocalyptic-thought world. He'll save us from anything. I hope we'll remember what this feels like a year and a half from now. It's a pretty amazing thing.
At Large State Lines
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:21 PM
Flying into St. Louis earlier this afternoon—as the sun was setting—I did something I don't normally do. I opened my window shade and looked... down.
That's the Mississippi, if I'm not mistaken, and seeing it from this vantage point kind of freaked me out—I mean, how often do you look down from an airplane and recognize something on the landscape because it resembles a squiggly line you've been looking at on maps all your life?
I'm in St. Louis to speak at Washington University tonight about abstinence education (doesn't work), safe sex (does work), and Prop 8 (won't stand). Usually when I speak at a university I ask the organizers to pass out 3" x 5" cards before the talk starts so students can write down questions they might be too embarrassed to ask aloud. Tonight we're passing out postcards and asking everyone to write notes to Barack Obama reminding him to keep the promises he made to gay and lesbians during the campaign—repeal DOMA, scrap DADT, use the bully pulpit to advocate for gay rights, etc. I'm going to collect the postcards after I speak, put the postage on 'em, and mail 'em in myself.
Have you sent a postcard to the president-elect yet?
Books Utilitarian, but Sexy!
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:19 PM
This (horribly coded) blog has some reimagined classic sci-fi book jackets. These aren't actually going to be published—they're from all kinds of different publishers, and so the unified trade dress idea wouldn't really take off—but they're pretty gorgeous. Here are a few:
It'd be nice to have a collection of sci-fi books you weren't ashamed to be seen reading on the bus, wouldn't it?
Chow Tara Parker-Pope Gets It Wrong
Posted by Erica C. Barnett on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:15 PM
On the NYTimes' Well blog, health writer Tara Parker-Pope asks whether it makes sense to pay extra for an organic Thanksgiving. The shocking conclusion? "It may cost you ... as much as $100 extra." The "organic premium"—actually more than $125, for a meal serving eight—came from an analysis by SmartMoney magazine, which went to three Manhattan supermarkets in search of organic and non-organic items for a hypothetical Thanksgiving meal.
Let's assume for the moment that the magazine's numbers are right—that buying organic is going to cost you substantially more than a conventional Thanksgiving. With budgets tightening, there any argument for sticking with organics? Parker-Pope concludes that the answer is, basically, no. Avoid the worst pesticide offenders, she suggests—among them apples, milk, and celery—and you're fine buying the ordinary grocery-store versions of everything else.
She's wrong. First of all, there's a basic problem with SmartMoney's pricing. Anyone who buys organics on a regular basis will find the prices the magazine cited suspiciously high. For example, their 20-pound turkey cost $4.99 a pound, compared to a dollar-a-pound conventional Butterball. I ordered my own organic turkey from the local PCC, and it cost just $3.49 a pound—a difference of $30. Even a heritage turkey was cheaper. Wine prices, similarly, seemed arbitrary—$24 a bottle for organic, vs. $17 for non-organic. Even at the Manhattan Whole Foods—where they shopped for many of the organic items—I'm betting you can find plenty of good organic wines for less than $24.
But leaving aside the question of price itself, Parker-Pope's whole premise—that if you can avoid pesticides, you might as well buy conventional—assumes that the only benefits of buying organic are individual health benefits. This ignores many other benefits of buying organic—only some of them selfish.
First, Butterball turkeys (a breed known as Broad-Breasted White that makes up 99 percent of turkeys consumed in the United States) are seriously disgusting. Plumped up with hormones and made top-heavy by genetic engineering, they're raised in filthy, crowded cages where they suffer for the duration of their artificially short lives. They're too front-loaded to have sex, so they have to be inseminated by hand; if they lived longer than a year, they would be unable to forage, walk, or fly. Mass production has made most turkeys we consume essentially tasteless; hence the advent of the "self-basting" turkey—an injection of salt water that mimics the juiciness of naturally raised, free-range turkey meat. So there's a selfish reason to buy organic and heritage turkey—it tastes better! Same goes for local, organic produce—there's a reason subscriptions to Community Supported Agriculture programs have been skyrocketing in recent years (despite some naysayers who don't like the quantities or selection of their local CSAs), and it isn't just altruism or nostalgia for family farms. Celery from a local, organic farm just tastes more like celery than anything you've ever imagined could be possible (or tomatoes, or winter squash, or whatever).
Beyond your individual dining experience, though, there's the fact that supporting organic farms actually helps the whole food system—and, in time, will make organic produce less expensive. Buying organic produce from community farms helps preserve farmland from sprawl and sustains local businesses. Buying organics from big corporations is more controversial (because it arguably opens the door for more-lax standards and Big Ag driving out family farms), but even that argument may be beside the point—after announcing plans to double its organic food selection in 2006, Wal-Mart retreated from its big organic push just one year later, citing the failure of a larger strategy to lure in "high-end" consumers.
Media / Sex So Is KOMO's Marlee Ginter [a Damn Fine Journalist]? Or Isn't She [a Damn Fine Journalist]?
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:12 PM
Alert Slog readers noticed that my numerous posts about Marlee Ginter's inaccurate, sloppy, lying, sexphobic hit piece on the Center for Sex Positive Culture have been... amended. References to a certain breed of ruminant that shall remain nameless are out, replaced by a bracketed reference to Ginter's professed profession.
So, like, why?
I said that we wanted Ginter to retract and apologize—to the Center, to author Brian Alexander, to the viewers she and Dan Lewis lied to. The piece is already off KOMO's website, but Ginter and Lewis and KOMO haven't, so far as I'm aware, retracted the piece or apologized.
Now here's what happened behind the scenes: their lawyer called our lawyer in the middle of last week and asked us to stop being so darn mean. There was no threat of litigation because there wasn't any grounds for litigation—there were no copyright problems, no defamation issues, no liability on our part whatsoever, and the over the top stuff—some of the posts, the videos, references to ruminants—was clearly parody. So... that's where the lawyer-to-lawyer interactions ended. Then on Friday KOMO's general manager called and appealed to... well, you're never going to believe this. He appealed to our humanity. That's right, our humanity. Ginter was very, very, very, very upset and wouldn't we pretty please take her feelings into consideration and stop suggesting that she might be [a damn fine journalist]? Please?
And that's why Slog has been goat free since Sunday night. I know this answer won't satisfy some, and that it seems wildly out of character, but we're actually being... considerate. More considerate of Ginter's feelings than she's been of anyone else's. Now we don't have to be nice, and, after the hatchet job they did on Center, Ginter and KOMO have no right to expect gentle treatment.
I reserve the right to restore the posts to their original state—so the handful of Ginterphiles lurking in comments screaming and yelling about how we're gonna get our pants sued off might want to 1. talk to a lawyer and 2. refrain from pushing it. Ginter wants this [damn fine journalist] stuff to go away, after all, so you're not doing her any favors if you provoke me into putting all those [damn fine journalist] references back up.
City "Who Busted Quinn's Front Window?"
Posted by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:04 PM
From the comments at Captothehill:
We saw the whole thing go down. There was definitely less leaning and more falling. This was then followed by dudebro booking it across the street, running into the corner of the building and then directly into a tree. A bunch of the Quinns guys ran after him, but I have no idea if they caught up with him.
Mystery solved.
Film American Sex
Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 2:24 PM
This porn star...
...will be the star of Soderbergh's new film.
Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh is giving a porn star her big Hollywood break after casting her in the starring role in his next movie.Sasha Grey - whose previous movie credits include Anal Acrobats 3 and Blow Me Sandwich 11 - will play the protagonist in Girlfriend Experience, about a high class call girl whose life unravels.
Again, French cinema finds itself several steps ahead of the cinema of America.
Religion All You Need Is Love
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 2:01 PM
The Vatican has finally forgiven John Lennon for joking about how The Beatles were 'bigger than Jesus' 42 years ago.
Hey, since we're talking about old sins, remember how the Pope was a member of Hitler Youth? And how the current church is against birth control? Yeah, it's great they finally forgave this dead Anglican/Episcopalian for making an obvious joke over four decades ago. It's good to know Catholicism has its priorities in order.
News Unknown Liquid
Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 1:54 PM
Dana Vander Houwen, a spokeswoman for the Seattle Fire Department, said the unknown liquid was discovered on the first floor of the 911 call center at Ninth Avenue and Virginia Street.
Six to eight operators experienced some minor symptoms, including watery eyes, she said. Firefighters evacuated them as a precaution and are investigating the liquid.
Virginia is closed between Eighth and Ninth avenues, and Eighth is closed between Virginia and Stewart streets. And Ninth is closed between Virginia and Lenora.
Life The Quick and the Dead
Posted by Brendan Kiley on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 1:45 PM
Santa Coloma de Gramanet, a town near Barcelona, has installed solar panels on its mausoleums:
Officials say the scheme was initially greeted with derision, but families who use the cemetery eventually supported the idea following a public campaign.The installation cost 720,000 euros (£608,000) but will keep about 62 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere every year, said Esteve Serret, a director of Conste-Live Energy, the company that runs the cemetery and also works in renewable energy.
"The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors, whatever your religion may be, is to generate clean energy for new generations," he said.
Which reminds me of a local entrepreneur who also wants to make cemeteries useful to the living—Greg Lundgren, owner of the Hideout and maker of cast-glass headstones.
From a profile of Lundgren and the death-care industry from five months ago:
"You want ice cream?" Lundgren asks. "You got 150 kinds. You want cereal? You've got three shelves 50 feet long in the grocery store. But when it comes to death, you have to choose either A or B." Cemeteries, he says, are some of our last urban green spaces—why should they look as dour as they do? It wouldn't take much to turn them into sculpture parks."Can you imagine having a Jeff Koons sculpture for your monument?" Lundgren says. "And why not? Very, very few artists, designers, architects, and sculptors are making monuments anymore. We need to revolutionize the death-care industry."
His polemic is, in part, a businessman's complaint. Lundgren's cast-glass monuments adorn cemeteries in five countries and 20 states, but he's had to fight, cemetery by cemetery, to get them in.
"You know what I want when I die? I want my ashes dumped inside a bronze sculpture of Marcel Duchamp playing chess alone. There'll be an empty chair where people can sit and look across the table at Duchamp, who's just starting the game." And he wants other people in there with him—a community of art lovers, each of whom would pitch in, say, $3,000 to commission the sculpture and add their remains. How many more people, Lundgren asks, would get together to commission a sculpture by popular Japanese artist Takashi Murakami—maybe one of his voluptuous anime girls or smiling cartoon clouds?"There's a potential half of a million dollars of real estate inside a public art sculpture," he says, and he's off, reinventing the American cemetery, as well as public art, arts funding, and philanthropy.
The flat, staid American cemetery is a relatively new invention, pioneered by a Prussian landscape architect (Adolph Strauch) and an American businessman (Hubert Eaton), who once wrote:
I believe in a happy eternal life... I shall endeavor to build Forest Lawn [Cemetery] as different, as unlike other cemeteries as sunshine is unlike darkness. It is to be filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, singing birds, beautiful statuary, cheerful flowers, in contrast to traditional cemeteries containing misshapen monuments and other customary signs of earthly death.
Eaton and Strauch, banished death from his graveyard (but for different reasons—Strauch had an Enlightenment-era obsession with orderly landscapes; Eaton just thought cemeteries were a bummer). But, by making their cemeteries sterile, they also banished life.
Perhaps Serret and Lundgren will be the European-American partnership that undoes what Strauch and Eaton have wrought.
Poke around Lundgren funerary gallery—with urns, headstones, action figures, and human bone china made from cremated remains, all by local artists—here.
City Seattle School Could Be Renamed After Barack Obama
Posted by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 1:44 PM
A North Seattle alternative school is considering renaming itself after President-elect Barack Obama as a way to draw in new students and avoid possible closure.
The school district is apparently planning to cut programs and shut schools across the city and parents at Alternative School #1 are worried the 200 student program could be on the chopping block, which has prompted talk of the name change.
“Were getting bad vibes throughout the community and enrollment centers and all over the place saying [AS#1’s] not a good school or…it’s going to be closed,” says AS#1 parent Lara Grauer. “The district has [also] been pointing to us because our enrollment is down, it feels like we need…a clean slate.”
The day after the election, Grauer says a student suggested changing the school's name to Barack Obama K-8, which has received a great deal of support from kids and parents. “When Barack Obama won the election kids were running around so excited doing the high-fives," Grauer says. "The school as a whole was excited about that."
AS#1’s students have received ballots and, next week, parents will tally votes and decide on four final choices. While not everyone is in agreement on the Obama name change—some parents want to leave the school's name intact while other have objected on the grounds that Obama, y'know, hasn't served a term yet—Grauer believes there's a chance it could have an effect on the district's closure plans. "It would not be easy to close a Barack Obama school,” she says. “The name isn’t going to save anybody but it couldn’t hurt.”
Seattle School District spokesman David Tucker says AS#1’s plan isn’t unprecedented “We’ve had schools renamed before,” Tucker says. “As long as they follow the school board’s policy that’s the community prerogative.”
The school board will meet later this week to discuss preliminary plans for school closures.
Politics Joe Biden's Unimpressive Replacement...
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 1:25 PM
...as the newest Senator from Delaware is longtime Joe Biden aide Edward "Ted" Kaufman. People speculated that it would be Joe Biden's son, "Banana Fana" Beau Biden, but Beau previously announced he would not take the seat if it was offered to him, on account of as he wanted to fulfill his tour of duty in Iraq as a member of the National Guard.
I wonder if all this moving on up is going to cause a Democratic Party Brain Drain on the state levels.
UPDATE: And before anyone says it, I know Kaufman is warming the seat for Beau to ride triumphantly in in 2010 and claim it for the family, but I don't know if Beau Biden is going to be the future of the Democratic Party, either.
Money Citigroup Deserves to Die
Posted by Jonathan Golob on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 1:21 PM
Federal regulators announced late Sunday night that the government had approved a radical plan to stabilize Citigroup in an arrangement in which the government could soak up billions of dollars in losses at the struggling bank. President Bush said on Monday that more such rescues could be arranged if they became necessary.
....
The complex rescue plan calls for the government to back about $306 billion in loans and securities and directly invest about $20 billion in Citigroup. The plan, emerging after a harrowing week in the financial markets, is the government’s third effort in three months to contain the deepening economic crisis and may presage other multibillion-dollar financial rescues.
Nominally, in my posts this would be the time where I make a nicely reasoned discussion of the negatives and positives of the latest action. I can't. I'm apoplectic—consumed with rage beyond rational thought.
Citigroup is eponymous for the sort of financial bullshit that sank all of us—the entire fucking global economy—into what is increasingly likely to be a decade- (or decades-) long period of abject misery. I. Cannot. Even. Start.
In 1998, the formation of Citigroup unilaterally ended the Depression-era Glass-Steagall act. That's right, this fucking financial monstrosity simply decided a cornerstone of American financial regulation shouldn't exist, and acted accordingly.
At a dinner in Washington in February 1998, Sandy Weill of Travelers invites Citicorp's John Reed to his hotel room at the Park Hyatt and proposes a merger. In March, Weill and Reed meet again, and at the end of two days of talks, Reed tells Weill, "Let's do it, partner!"On April 6, 1998, Weill and Reed announce a $70 billion stock swap merging Travelers (which owned the investment house Salomon Smith Barney) and Citicorp (the parent of Citibank), to create Citigroup Inc., the world's largest financial services company, in what was the biggest corporate merger in history.
The transaction would have to work around regulations in the Glass-Steagall and Bank Holding Company acts governing the industry, which were implemented precisely to prevent this type of company: a combination of insurance underwriting, securities underwriting, and commecial banking. The merger effectively gives regulators and lawmakers three options: end these restrictions, scuttle the deal, or force the merged company to cut back on its consumer offerings by divesting any business that fails to comply with the law.
The lawmakers—led by professional Republican asshole Phil Gramm, triangularization expert Rubin and President Clinton—moved out the way.
It took a decade for the repeal of these protections to crater the economy.
And now they want a bailout. The same fucking management team, the same collection of self-important idiots.
Let me tell you something. I could pick 20 random people off the street, hand them a billion dollars each, and I'd be confident they'd create a better bank than these shitheads. And if these random men and women fucked up, I'm absolutely certain their collective mistakes would total less than $300 billion. Starting a bank, particularly an inept and greedy bank isn't that fucking hard.
In comparison, the shitty management teams running other U.S. companies—the airlines, the auto companies, the energy companies—are pure amateurs at colossal fiascoes. Even the guys who green-lit the AMC Gremlin? Better at their fucking jobs.
Citigroup attempted to cover up their losses—their own epic fuckups—through the government financed purchase of Wachovia. Only Wells Fargo's last minute bid revealed their latest deceptive depravity. The morons at Citigroup couldn't even build a headquarters successfully.
I'm heading home to Detroit in a few days for Thanksgiving, where I will witness firsthand the agonal struggles of your countrymen to feed, clothe, and house themselves—people who have done nothing but work hard, design well, and vote to care for one another. They're, we're, failing—with no bailout in sight.
Citigroup just got theirs.
Apoplectic
Updated:
Nobel Laureate Krugman agrees with me.
And here is what Robert Reich, a former Secretary of Labor, has to say:
If you had any doubt at all about the primacy of Wall Street over Main Street; the utter lack of transparency behind the biggest government giveaway in history to financial executives, and their shareholders, directors, and creditors; and the intimate connections the lie between Administrations — both Republican and Democratic — and the heavyweights on Wall Street, your doubts should be laid to rest.
...
This is not a particularly good deal for American taxpayers, but it is a marvelous deal for Citi.
....
Meanwhile, more than a million workers in the automobile industry, along with six million homeowners in danger of losing their homes, and a millions of Americans who depend on small businesses and retailers for paychecks, are getting nothing at all.
Motherfuckers!
Hetero Every Child Deserves a Mother and a Father
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 1:15 PM
A former New York City corrections officer has been sentenced to life in prison for killing his two children—one of them a toddler who was in her high chair when she was shot.... Prosecutor Maxine Rosenthal said George killed his 1-year-old daughter and her 12-year-old brother on Nov. 24, 2004, to punish their mother for seeing another man.
Books Slog Commenter Book Report: Renee Picks Up Ms. Hempel Chronicles
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 1:10 PM
As you know by now, I bring a batch of advance reader copies to Slog Happy for everyone to enjoy, with the caveat that the person who reads (or tries to read) the book has to review it for all of us here on Slog.
Today’s reviewer is Renee. Renee is reviewing Ms. Hempel Chronicles, by Sarah Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, a novel about an elementary school teacher. I passionately loved this book. Let's see what Renee thinks. Anything you don’t like about this review no doubt is due to the editing process and not at all Renee’s fault and you should blame the editor. I am the editor.
This short novel is a story of sparse, elegant detail that will almost certainly charm those who read it.It snagged my attention immediately when, “she…clapped her hands rapturously against her thighs, as though her shorts had caught fire.” I’m always a sucker for the neat turn of phrase, particularly one that can include humor and a unique viewpoint. From this first page, I had immediate high hopes. Luckily I was not disappointed nor do I think you will be. I dog-eared my copy no less than 26 times.
The book also shares some resonant life commentary. One such illustration is the premise that, “when you are in school, your talents are without number, and your promise is boundless…and you are everything at once: actor, astronomer, gymnast, star. But at a certain point, you begin to feel your talents dropping away, like feathers from a molting bird.” I hadn’t directly thought about it before I read this book, but I realize it’s an idea that’s lurked in my subconscious for quite some time.
The narrative skips in and out of Ms. Hempel’s life at various significant intervals. We aren't omniscient as readers, but not knowing all of the details of her life leave us knowing her more like we would a friend in real life. It’s an organic relationship that shares its trials and tribulations and skates on awkward and improper secretive thoughts. We are drawn in and pushed out at the same time. Additionally, this upheaval seems a reflection on Ms. Hempel’s thought and emotional processes. It’s genius, really.
There is only one disjointed portion of the book and it’s the first transition in which we realize this is not a thorough or simple linear narrative. Once you’ve realized that and move past you wait for the next puzzle pieces to drop in or mysteriously vanish with anticipation.
I’m fairly confident the majority of you will like or love this book; it’s small, it’s charming and it’s a thought provoking read. The only people I don’t whole-heartedly recommend this book to are those who have to know all the details. Then I say, read it anyway, at worst you’ll have spent two or three hours of your life that you probably wouldn’t have done anything productive with anyway.
Many thanks to Renee. To those of you who have taken books at past Slogs Happy, please make sure to write a report and send it along to me at pconstant@thestranger.com.
Chow Baby... Your Meat is Fallin' Off the BONE
Posted by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 12:30 PM
Revived meme alert! Though you may have seen the original commercial for Mr. Spriggs BBQ running around the inter-tubes, the kind people at this sexy-fied Oklahoma eatery have given us even more of what we want... an extendo version of their dripping hot commercial that's making me damn hon-gray (and HON-AY) for some 'que. Mmmm, rib.... your meat is fallin' off the BONE.
News Fatal Shooting at Vito's
Posted by Unpaid Intern on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 12:24 PM
Posted by News Intern Aaron Pickus
A fatal shooting occurred at Vito's Madison Grill on the 900 block of Madison last Saturday night. Details come from SPD's blotter. Officers responded to a call of shots fired inside the nightclub. After arriving on scene, officers found one male victim with a fatal gunshot wound. Homicide, Gang and CSI Detectives all responded to the scene for an investigation. The suspect remains at large.
Daniel Carr, a bartender working at Vito's Saturday night, says that he recognized neither the victim or the suspect. However, he says that "they are on camera and their faces are pretty clear."
SPD spokesman Mark Jamieson would not comment on whether or not the homicide is being investigated as gang-related.
The intersection of 9th and Madison was also the scene of a drive-by shooting in June.
Politics Thank You, Sarah Palin! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!
Posted by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 12:20 PM
Have you thanked Sarah Palin today? Well, the members of the conservative "Our Country Deserves Better" PAC have, with this awesomely awkward new ad that thanks Sarah Palin for... well, just being Sarah Palin. (Look. If the gay black guy in the cowboy hat can thank Sarah Palin — then you can too!! Jerk!!)
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