perfidy

In his most recent bleat, Lileks tosses this out:

When I hear a speech like Blair's, I have to check the calendar. And the calendar is usually wrong. It may say 2/23, or 7/16, or 4/30. But I know what the date is, and the date is 9/12. It's going to be 9/12 for a long time to come.

While I'm on the subject of Lileks, I should mention that we shamelessly stole the name of our blog from one of his bleats. In a bleat shortly after the beginning of the war, but before American troops reached Baghdad, Lileks had this to say:

These pictures are fascinating - it's a capital in wartime, and it looks like it's had a few bad gas main leaks, nothing more. The giant black plumes of fire come from oil trenches set alight by the Iraqis, and looking at them from above you realize they make excellent visual markers for incoming bombers. (If they needed such a thing, which they don't.) The first picture shows a Presidential Palace - two words that ought not cohabitate, really - and it's had the crap blown out of it. Across the street is a gigantic assembly building of some kind, perhaps the National House of Enthusiastic Rubber Stamping. It's untouched. I'd wager a five-spot that they left it for whatever legislative body comes next. There's no sign of bombing anywhere else, except for a small building down at the bottom of the picture; perhaps that was the Ministry of Minor Perfidy, or the State Bureau for Interrogative Dentistry. Something naughty happened there, in any case. I'd thought that the first phase of the air war would see the atomization of all the palaces, but perhaps that's not so; good. Turn them into bed & breakfasts. Give every Iraqi citizen a coupon good for one free night in a room in the palace. Thin Mints on the pillow, courtesy the US Military.

The phrase just caught us, and we ran with it. If you're going to steal, steal from the best.

From Creative Loafing in Atlanta comes this heart-warmer. Sure, it's not the end of the world, but it is a depressing little story.

"The FBI is here," Mom tells me over the phone. Immediately I can see my mom with her back to a couple of Matrix-like figures in black suits and opaque sunglasses, her hand covering the mouthpiece like Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder. This must be a joke, I think. But it's not, because Mom isn't that funny. . . . Trippi's partner speaks up: "Any reading material? Papers?" I don't think so. Then Trippi decides to level with me: "I'll tell you what, Marc. Someone in the shop that day saw you reading something, and thought it looked suspicious enough to call us about. So that's why we're here, just checking it out. Like I said, there's no problem. We'd just like to get to the bottom of this. Now if we can't, then you may have a problem. And you don't want that."

Yeesh. Now, I understand that the FBI need to follow up diligently on leads-- and in fact they probably could be about 150% better at that basic task-- but c'mon!

Reason has a good piece up on how old people are determined to loot the store before they die.

"We have been hearing for years about economic fallout that will surely result from the coming social security binge, but few could have anticipated the real threat baby boomers represent. Not content to suck resources from a dying system, the Me Generation has formed a massive voting bloc willing to grant itself one-size-fits all benefits. Last month, in an orgy of self-love, the 108th congress (average age: 55) helped itself to the one resource younger generations will always be good for: future earnings. Every great legislative push needs its welfare queen, and this time around the subject is a hypothetical elderly widow, forced to decide between food and pharmaceuticals. She exists, surely; the small segment of the population too wealthy for Medicaid yet too poor to make ends meet is more than a trick of rhetoric. Unfortunately, she is being used to extort benefits for everyone over 65, the vast majority of whom don't need them, many of whom are active voters. The elderly are easily the wealthiest segment of society, with a poverty rate little more than half that of the under 18-set who will help foot the bill."

This is deeply troubling, and totally outrageous. I'm beginning to think that the greatest legacy of the 'boomer generation was not social revolution, not civil rights, not orchestral Album Oriented Rock, but rather an overweening, nasty, vicious, grasping, deeply rooted sense of entitlement. 

The Baby Boom generation is the last generation of American citizens who can reliably claim that they have it better than their parents. They were raised in a time of unprecendented growth and plenty, and feel themselves to be both the heirs of greatness and the architects of the good aspects of today's America. 

Partly this circumstance can be attributed to the boomers' placement at the natural endings of a great number of intiatives, social changes, and economic successes. The greatness they think they chose was rather handed to them on a silver platter. That is beyond their control. What is not beyond their control, however, is the conscious choice to be generous, to leave a crumb for future generations. To, in short, live up to the rhetoric they invented. 

The exact same crowd that forty years ago wasn't trusting anyone over 30, who planned breakfast in bed for 400,000, and who wished to bring an Aquarian age of equality and love, are now a mass of bitter greedy Croesuses determined to have everything regardless of the consequences. They were the last generation to grow up in the true boom years, and they can't seem to let go of the idea that there will always be more, more, more. 

Has the hippie ethos-- always a minority view, though vocal-- permeated the 'boomers so thoroughly that they no longer care about consequences? It sure must feel good to have the power to pass laws! It sure must feel good to vote your way to comfort! 

The party ended thirty years ago, the money has run out, yet they don't seem to have noticed. Or maybe they just don't give a crap.

Now this is a worthwhile waste of time, if such a thing can be said to exist! Meet the Oracle of Baseball, companion to the more well known Oracle of Bacon. It's like Six Degrees of Babe Ruth.

I'm feeling pretty clever, because I found seven-step relationship between Texas 3B Hank Blalock, and dead ball era OF Dummy Hoy (incidentially, the only deaf-mute to play professional ball). For well-known players, I've apparently done pretty well. Go me! 

• Hank Blalock played with Rob Bell for the 2002 Texas Rangers
• Rob Bell played with Jose Rijo for the 2001 Cincinnati Reds
• Jose Rijo played with Tommy John for the 1985 Oakland Athletics
• Tommy John played with Early Wynn for the 1963 Cleveland Indians
• Early Wynn played with Cecil Travis for the 1947 Washington Senators
• Cecil Travis played with Nick Altrock for the 1933 Washington Senators
• Nick Altrock played with Dummy Hoy for the 1898 Louisville Colonels

From last year, I think:

"Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the east wall: "Andre creep ... Andre creep ... Andre creep."

I see that Johno has gotten off to a quick start. Meanwhile, I have been laboring laboriously behind the scenes, whipping the hamsters that power this site, and replacing fuses in the server so that you may behold its glory. 

Well, most of that is done now - the only thing we need now is a photoshopped version of a government seal or logo - something like the obverse of the great seal (the pyramid thingie) or from Adm. Buster Poindexter's naughty, naughty (and defunded, yes!) Total Information Awareness Initiative. It needs to have our name, and some sort of latinish slogan. <beg> So if anyone wants to save Johno and I a lot of work, because we can't really use photoshop, feel free to jump in.</beg> (that is so 2002. -ed) 

Now, I can rip off this mask, and become... 

Oh well, it's still me. 
 

The National Bureau of Economic Research have declared that our once-and-current national recession actually ended back in November 2001 (Coverage in the Boston Globe here).

Ohhh, that's why unemployment is up and everyone from AOL to the state of Massachusetts is broke.

Interestingly, the NBER had a hard time with this decision, and according to the piece acted now mainly to set the 2001 downturn apart from any future downturns. "The main reason that the committee's decision in this episode was particularly difficult was the divergent behavior of employment,'' the NBER said. ''The committee felt that it was important to wait until real GDP was substantially above its pre-recession peak before determining that a trough had occurred.''

The NBER also qualified its claim, saying "In determining that a trough occurred in November 2001, the committee did not conclude that economic conditions since that month have been favorable or that the economy has returned to operating at normal capacity. Rather, the committee determined only that the recession ended and a recovery began in that month. A recession is a period of falling economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. The trough marks the end of the declining phase and the start of the rising phase of the business cycle. Economic activity is typically below normal in the early stages of an expansion, and it sometimes remains so well into the expansion"

Possible Translation 1: "The bleeding has stopped, sir, but may I suggest you not try boxing a tiger again for a while?"

Possible Translation 2: "We are as baffled as the rest of you. Can I borrow a fiver?"

Over at Reason, writing about Christopher Hitchens, Michael Young hits the nail squarely on the head.

"It is to Hitchens' credit that he broke with the left before engaging in the verbal gymnastics of his former comrades. His story, however, is a microcosm of a greater problem faced by Western radical intellectuals: An inability to define what radicalism truly means today and to confuse it all too often with anti-Americanism."

Exactly. Read the whole thing. Not incidentally, the obverse is also true: Many Conservatives fail to include spirited, healty skepticism in their definition of patriotism, confusing it all too often with anti-Americanism.
 

The winners of the 2003 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced. ("Huh?", you say with slackened jaw? The history of the contest is here, you clod!)

This year's winner:

They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white . . . Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently. Ms. Mariann Simms Wetumpka, AL

Mmmm... outrageous fiction....

Johnny Two-Cents is now experiencing what marketroids call rebranding.

From this point on, you can read the same penetrating analysis, effervescent wit, and banal restating of the obvious at a new home, The Ministry of Minor Perfidy. We thank blogger for providing a (free) home for our observations and bloviating, with (free) customer service and excellent (free) archiving.

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