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A break more ordinary.

This is spring break in our neck of the woods. As usual, we didn’t go any­where. I thought just this one year we’d have com­pany, but it seems the need to escape a Michi­gan win­ter trumps reces­sion­ary income down­turns. Also, every­one in Michi­gan has a rel­a­tive in a warmer state, so even if you can’t afford a cruise, you can visit the sib­lings or par­ents in Clear­wa­ter for a few days. So Kate is stuck mop­ing around the house. Yesterday’s weather made it worse — a chill all-day rain with tem­per­a­tures in the 40s. At midafter­noon I cracked, and we went to the mall.

I needed a new printer, any­way, a scan/fax model for those times when I need to do one or the other. Kinko’s charges $3 a page, any­thing out of the area code is con­sid­ered long dis­tance, and yes, you must have a cover sheet, although they cut you a break on that — it’s only a buck. Free­lancers have to fax a lot of tax forms. And of course, on the next rainy day when everyone’s out of town, I can send the kid to the print­ing sta­tion to scan her butt and face.

Went to the Apple store — let’s pay top dol­lar! The geniuses had but three mod­els in stock, none on the floor, and gave me that Genius Bar smile that sug­gests print­ing is so last cen­tury, it’s kind of cute that I asked for it. We left with­out one, and as a con­so­la­tion prize, I bought Kate a pair of red Chuck Tay­lor high-tops, on sale. Chucks are very big with her crowd. I tried on a pair and mar­veled that men once played bas­ket­ball at a pro­fes­sional level in these things. No won­der the dunk is a fairly recent inno­va­tion in the game.

And today? More shop­ping! Today we’re going for the full Monty, an hour’s drive to the world’s biggest out­let mall, or some­thing. All I know is, they have an Aero­postale store, which will take care of the bulk of Kate’s list (brand loy­alty, thou art a 12-year-old girl) and Under Armour, which will take care of mine. The rest of the time we will wan­der and drink Star­bucks. Female bonding.

I won­der if we’ll see any teabag­gers along the way. If so, I’ll take pic­tures and notes.

We have some amus­ing blog­gage today:

San­dra Tsing Loh takes a sec­ond look at Paul Fussell’s “Class.”

Couldn’t the Oba­mas have found a dog that was some­what less adorable? I’m start­ing to think they’re not play­ing fair; can’t they con­jure some asym­me­try or imper­fec­tion to make the rest of us feel less bewitched? Mean­while, my “awwww” at Bo’s appear­ance on my TV last night prompted Alan and Kate, one floor up, to say, “It must be video of the new puppy.” Those mis­matched white socks! That fluffy coat! I am entranced. (Oh, and sorry, but I’m not buy­ing the allergy-free line, either. I’d tell the pedi­a­tri­cian: “It’s a big house” and leave it at that.)

Jeff TMMO just posted this in the pre­vi­ous thread, so let me post it here, another ele­gant Dan Barry dis­patch from, whad­daya know, Jeff TMMO’s home­town. It’s about the dif­fi­culty of nur­tur­ing art and an artis­tic tem­pera­ment in a place like Newark, Ohio. I was struck by this passage:

Here in Newark, half the stu­dents are poor enough to receive lunch free or at a dis­count. The sys­tem also has one of the high­est dropout rates in Ohio; nearly a third of the high school stu­dents do not grad­u­ate. That ele­vated per­cent­age seems out of place given the Mid­dle Amer­ica set­ting, but offi­cials have a theory:

Back in the day, you could drop out and still get a good job at one of the many man­u­fac­tur­ing plants in town. You could pay the mort­gage, buy a car new, take hol­i­day trips — all with­out a high school diploma.

“Now those jobs have gone away,” says Keith Richards, the city’s schools super­in­ten­dent. “But the mind­set has not.”

It echoes some­thing I heard on the radio yes­ter­day: In the lat­est sur­vey of Michi­gan par­ents, half — HALF — thought their kids would be able to earn a middle-class liv­ing with only a high-school edu­ca­tion. Half. Ear­lier in the show, the host referred to the auto indus­try as “eco­nomic crack.” A lot of peo­ple have yet to detox, apparently.

Me, I’m off to spend a por­tion of my tax refund.

Posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 10:04 am
in Current events, Same ol' same ol'.

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43 responses to
“A break more ordinary.”

  1. mitchalbomfan said on April 15th, 2009 at 10:13 am

    2005: “Dis­sent is the high­est form of patriotism!”

    2009: “Teabagger.”

    Check the out­let store for deals on asbestos furniture.

  2. Randy said on April 15th, 2009 at 10:21 am

    Under Armour is pretty awe­some, I must say. I did my first bike com­mute this morn­ing, and my long-sleeve shirt com­bined with a vented rain jacket kept me nice and cozy in weather a few degrees above freezing.

  3. mark said on April 15th, 2009 at 10:32 am

    I read and com­mented on Jeff’s link under yesterday’s blog entry. Not sur­pris­ingly, we had a lit­tle dif­fer­ent take on things. For the amuse­ment of the cor­rect thinkers here, my com­ment was as follows:

    Thanks for the link, Jeff.

    I’ll let my con­ser­v­a­tive and other bias run loose and get straight to the point. I don’t buy the “Tiffany’s afraid to leave the small town, it’s all she knows” stuff. Tiffany is look­ing for love and approval from a dead­beat young man who has no inter­est in her poten­tial or her success.

    There are a hun­dred good uni­ver­si­ties that would pay to have a tal­ent and suc­cess like Tiffany on their cam­pus. But Trevor the unem­ployed drop-out is con­duct­ing this performance.

  4. Connie said on April 15th, 2009 at 10:42 am

    You could change Newark to Elkhart in that quote and it would all still be true.

    I learned in my Ohio year that the city’s name is Nurk.

    Rep for Boys and Girls Club is pick­ing up our donated pickup truck today. I have a clar­inet that we are plan­ning to donate to the instru­ment drive a local music store con­ducts every year to pro­vide instru­ments for low income kids in the local schools.

    I will add — as I have before — that it is rather strange to have the mobs of national media in town as we have here these days. MSNBC has a team here for sev­eral months for their “Elkhart Project”. Wash Post has some­one here for a long term project. ProP­ub­lica has some­one here on a project for ?NPR?. It is also strange to see peo­ple you know on the msnb news page. But, hey, please, feel free to come and spend your money here.

  5. Jolene said on April 15th, 2009 at 10:55 am

    Heart­break­ing story, Jeff. It would be nice to think that see­ing her­self in print would give Tiffany the courage to find her way into col­lege, but that may be too much to hope for. A very brave, tal­ented girl. Amaz­ing to think what she is doing just by sur­viv­ing on her own at such an early age … and to think how many oth­ers like her – or in worse cir­cum­stances – there must be.

  6. LAMary said on April 15th, 2009 at 11:07 am

    Keith Richards is the super­in­ten­dent of schools?

  7. nancy said on April 15th, 2009 at 11:09 am

    I, too, hope Tiffany gets the sort of coun­sel­ing and direc­tion she needs. She’s cer­tainly not two-year col­lege mate­r­ial. In the mean­time, jeez, Mark, a lit­tle less social Dar­win­ism, please? The girl’s try­ing as hard as she can, with less sup­port than the Oba­mas’ dog will get learn­ing not to pid­dle on the car­pet. Let’s give her some credit.

  8. Jenine said on April 15th, 2009 at 11:36 am

    I tried to read the San­dra Tsing Loh arti­cle and found it didn’t com­pute for me. I got to the bolo ties and real­ized that my south­west rel­a­tives didn’t fit in the class analy­sis very well. Maybe if you’re a coast-er…

  9. Jolene said on April 15th, 2009 at 12:04 pm

    Have you folks seen this week’s feel-good YouTube video? If not, have a lis­ten to Susan Boyle. It’s worth the whole seven minutes.

  10. Dexter said on April 15th, 2009 at 12:17 pm

    Just fin­ished send­ing my taxes. We have a rel­a­tively new “School Dis­trict Tax” that is a killer…gotta mail off a check for hun­dreds, but then I’ll be done with it for another year.
    My Indi­ana brother was brag­ging how he pays six times less prop­erty tax than I pay, pays no city income tax, and never heard of a stand-alone school dis­trict tax. Good for him, sheesh.….

  11. brian stouder said on April 15th, 2009 at 12:30 pm

    For all y’all who don’t know bet­ter, THIS is the really BIG news of the day

    http://​news​.bbc​.co​.uk/​s​p​o​r​t​2​/​h​i​/​m​o​t​o​r​s​p​o​r​t​/​f​o​r​m​u​l​a​_​o​n​e​/​7​9​9​6​6​98.stm

    Huz­zah!

    I’ll be quiet now, unless some­one talks about KERS, which will prompt a 100 word attack!

  12. jeff borden said on April 15th, 2009 at 12:39 pm

    One thing that is quite strik­ing after a few years of teach­ing at the col­lege level is the over­whelm­ing pre­pon­der­ance of women stu­dents. Fig­ures I’ve seen cited sug­gest that among col­lege stu­dents, women now account for a full 60% of enroll­ment. At the Catholic lib­eral arts uni­ver­sity where I teach part-time, the stu­dents in my classes esti­mate the ratio of women to men is more like 70% to 30%.

    While I think this presages an inter­est­ing future as these bright women move into the real world and take the good jobs it’s also more than a lit­tle puz­zling about why fewer men are pur­su­ing degrees. Is this some kind of weird demo­graphic bub­ble, a gen­er­a­tion where there are far more females? Are more guys opt­ing for mil­i­tary ser­vice first to help pay for college?

  13. Andrew Jarosh said on April 15th, 2009 at 12:49 pm

    I don’t care how much higher my prop­erty taxes and cost of liv­ing here is in Fort Myers. I don’t have to file state taxes; Florida is sans income tax, so it’s only a fed­eral form for me. The lack of a sec­ond batch of income tax forms and sched­ules and copies of wage state­ments is price­less.
    AJ

  14. Jim said on April 15th, 2009 at 1:18 pm

    Newark could eas­ily be Elkhart, or Fort Wayne, or War­saw or plenty of other places in the Mid­west that have thrived for decades on the auto­mo­tive indus­try. I grew up in Fort Wayne with kids whose life plans stopped after “go to work with Dad at the Har­vester.” I’ve been sad­dened to see peo­ple in my extended fam­ily marry right out of high school, at age 18. When I ask what they plan to do with their life? “I don’t know. Go get a job at XYZ fac­tory, I guess.” That lack of ambi­tion drove me crazy when times were good, let alone now. There are plenty of guys in Indi­ana who are now in their 40s and feel­ing like, “Huh? What hap­pened?” I’m afraid of lot of those guys are pin­ning their hopes on the auto­mo­tive indus­try return­ing to what it was. It won’t. Tom Friedman’s “The World is Flat” should be required read­ing for every high school student.

  15. Julie Robinson said on April 15th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

    Dex­ter, ask your brother why he has to write in his school dis­trict on his Indi­ana tax form. They don’t stand alone, but we cer­tainly do have school taxes. And prop­erty taxes can be deducted on your fed­eral form if you item­ize. Ours went so low this year that we couldn’t item­ize, so our income tax was higher. Plus our sales tax went up, as well as that of the des­per­ately poor. But the teabag­gers in Carmel are happy about their prop­erty taxes. As long as we take care of the rich, who cares about the mid­dle class and the have-nots?

  16. Jean S said on April 15th, 2009 at 1:30 pm

    I agree that Tiffany is an amaz­ing kid. But the odds of mak­ing a liv­ing in clas­si­cal music…not so good, even for incred­i­bly tal­ented peo­ple. I know so many peo­ple who opted out, even after high-level con­ser­va­tory train­ing. Most went into finan­cial fields.

  17. paddyo' said on April 15th, 2009 at 1:38 pm

    Note to Mark:

    The most telling line in the whole Tiffany piece is not the “afraid of imag­in­ing life beyond Cen­tral Ohio” part (which is a bit less defin­i­tive than the way you stated it)…
    It comes, rather, a para­graph earlier:

    “She is a com­pli­cated young woman, says that teacher …”

    Gee, you think?
    That calls for a lit­tle more under­stand­ing and a lit­tle less judg­ment — par­tic­u­larly a rush to judg­ment. You don’t have to sym­pa­thize to empathize. Absent and/or not-very-good par­ents evi­dently aren’t help­ing Tiffany deal with daily life or imag­ine a brighter life beyond. Yeah, maybe the boyfriend’s a dead­beat, but nowhere does the piece say or imply that he’s THE rea­son. “Com­pli­cated” lives hinge on many things … and at age 18, how many of our own lives were far less complicated.

  18. basset said on April 15th, 2009 at 1:43 pm

    Brian, I’d go to an ARCA race before F1… at least it’s on the same continent.

    what really struck me about the Tiffany arti­cle was… Mark’s right, Trevor is run­ning the show… and the obvi­ous under­cur­rent of con­de­scen­sion. I mean, some of these kids have never even been to New York, how good could they be?

  19. Dexter said on April 15th, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    JulieR­obin­son: Touche. I remem­ber read­ing the response a man had as he read how a lotto jack­pot win­ner was scream­ing “This is the Amer­i­can dream!”

    This man’s response was regard­ing what a shame it is…it’s true…the Amer­i­can dream of a house and home, two cars and a garage , a cou­ple kids and a debt-free life has van­ished for the aver­age joe. And hell yes I did indeed just buy a lotto ticket for tonight.

  20. moe99 said on April 15th, 2009 at 2:58 pm

    wrt the tax protests today, I feel like I did when Bill Clinton’s dal­liance forced us par­ents of small chil­dren to pro­vide sex edu­ca­tion a bit early. I had no idea that ‘tea bag­ging’ was some­thing else entirely.

  21. jeff borden said on April 15th, 2009 at 3:30 pm

    Moe,
    Some of the folks on the right fringe of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment are so averse to pop cul­ture that they have no idea when they have wan­dered into double-entendre ter­ri­tory. Teabag­ging is a recent exam­ple, but another is the looney group led by Mag­gie Gal­lagher to oppose gay mar­riage. They have launched an effort to recruit 2 mil­lion peo­ple to sign peti­tions in sup­port of tra­di­tional mar­riage, but decided it would be much catch­ier to label their move­ment 2M4M rather than two mil­lion for mar­riage. Appar­ently, these dolts have never scanned a per­son­als page or they’d real­ize they were adver­tis­ing for a gay threesome.

  22. MichaelG said on April 15th, 2009 at 3:31 pm

    I love San­dra Tsing Loh. She’s mak­ing a joke. She doesn’t really hate bolo wear­ing 80 year old geezers. The exam­ple is a device to illus­trate her point. I’m going to throw out all my bolos when I get home tonight.

    I kind of agree with Mark about the poor girl in Ohio. The part about the dead beat boyfriend. Why should she be sup­port­ing that par­a­site? All he’s doing is drag­ging her down and since he’s not going to suc­ceed at any­thing, he’s going to do every­thing he can (craftily, of course) to ensure that she doesn’t suc­ceed. Next thing she’s going to turn up preg­nant and it’ll truly be over for her. At this point it looks like she still has some con­trol over her future  —  if she dumps Mr.

    My daughter’s best girl friend is mar­ried to a job­less loser. He calls him­self a stay at home dad in an effort to cloak him­self in some shred of respectabil­ity. For­tu­nately my daughter’s friend makes enough money to afford to carry this bum (she’s a den­tist) but she still has to come home every night and cook din­ner, take care of the kids, clean house, do the laun­dry, etc. etc. while Mr. watches sports on TV. And my daughter’s all “but Dad, he’s not really a bad guy”. And my tongue is now sore and bleed­ing from my bit­ing it.

    I agree, Brian, KERS is a curse. Bernie E’stone makes Don King look like Mother Teresa.

  23. brian stouder said on April 15th, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    KERS is a curse

    It WAS funny to see Kimmi Raikko­nen have smoke pour­ing out of the dash­board of his Fer­rari, as he gamely drove into the pits and then exited the car. In a KERS car, one must jump clear out — so that one’s feet hit the ground at once, and NOT while any other part of the dri­ver is touch­ing the car…or else, one risks elec­tro­cu­tion and death!!

    »note to the unini­ti­ated: KERS is the Kinetic Energy Recov­ery Sys­tem, wherein a mas­sive, high volt­age and high amper­age bat­tery is charged when­ever the dri­ver jumps onto the brakes, thence dis­charged when the dri­ver hits a but­ton on his steer­ing wheel for a burst of extra horse power (“push to pass”)…but the upshot is, if the car is, say, involved in a crash, then the course work­ers have to work NOT to pro­vide a path to ground for a highly ener­gized and pos­si­bly dam­aged elec­tri­cal hazard.…and on top of that, the thing works best when it’s very hot (ie — at the point of failure) — so that it looks like a stu­pid idea all around!

    Bas­set is right; I should for­get For­mula One and take up Fig­ure 8 racing!

  24. jcburns said on April 15th, 2009 at 4:12 pm

    Nance, I always just send my W-9s and 1099s and so on as email PDF attach­ments (fire up Pages and fill them out…have a PDF or JPEG of your sig­na­ture handy, and you’re set.). If some mind­less admin­is­tra­tive type says “you have to fax it,” I say “I haven’t faxed any­thing in this cen­tury.” Has worked great for me so far. So, fax machine…seriously?

  25. Jolene said on April 15th, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    Also, you can scan them and send the file con­tain­ing the scan.

  26. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 15th, 2009 at 5:18 pm

    It is fun hav­ing Keith Richards as our schools super­in­ten­dent, but trust me, all the good jokes were done years ago.

    And col­lege offers have piled in thru the day to NHS, and the “Call to Col­lege” office is work­ing briskly to make sure every offer that’s made gets used by an NHS kid whether they’re named Tiffany or not.

    I em-ceed a tossed together con­cert last Decem­ber for our area food pantry as local unem­ploy­ment marched boldly up to the two digit precipice, and Tiffany was part of a string quar­tet that anchored the after­noon from the Sin­fo­nia — they were play­ing gigs all over with the pay­ment going to the New York trip. I got not one but two columns out of my con­ver­sa­tions with the four, who rep­re­sented the side of Newark High School’s story that needed some extra telling (oh, and it’s “Nerk” as in “Nerk, Ahia” — we are so in Appalachia, with much of the county some decades back trav­el­ing down through Athens to the “home­place” every week­end and then back late Sun­day night).

    The fact that Trevor is dri­ving the bus, and that even thought­ful, dynamic young women can­not imag­ine a life that doesn’t include a guy slouched in front of the tube at home, is the source of great fury in my mas­cu­line soul. I don’t get it, but i work with it every day.

    The num­ber and sin­cer­ity and inten­sity of response thru the day to this story has given me more than a lit­tle boost, and banked my anger into what i hope is a use­ful cor­ner of my heart. And Dan Barry wrote a mar­velous lit­tle essay of an arti­cle here, and many, many thanks to him for a fair and hon­est por­trayal of our lit­tle cor­ner of heaven among the foothills of Appalachia.

  27. LAMary said on April 15th, 2009 at 5:55 pm

    Jeff tmmo,
    Point­ing out Keith Richards’ name was sort of like when Jamie on Myth­busters walks over to some engine that’s on fire and says, “Well, there’s your prob­lem right there.”

  28. caliban said on April 15th, 2009 at 6:08 pm

    It’s entirely pos­si­ble that some sort of return to respected trade skills would pro­duce a soci­ety in which peo­ple with high school read­ing and ‘rith­metic skills could earn a liv­ing wage. In the rush to call dot​.com crim­i­nals and finan­cial crooks the best and the bright­est to be rewarded with mil­lions for fail­ing utterly, everybody’s lost sight of indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions to soci­ety. And, yeah, I sup­pose con­sid­er­ing everybody’s con­tri­bu­tion equal in value is social­ism, but try­ing to deny the idea is rad­i­cally, in the sense of radix, roots, is deny­ing the tenets of Christianity.

    Did slave-owning Plan­ta­tion own­ers den­i­grate the brawn and the brains and the crop man­age­ment exper­tise of their min­ions? Well, yeah, they did. Is there a Big-Farm Agribusi­ness that didn’t take the best of the fam­ily farms they sub­sumed and wipe any sense of intel­li­gent land man­age­ment from cor­po­rate con­scious­ness? Did the Lord ever have any exper­tise at grow­ing crops? Can the Don­ald fix his May­bach when it craps out?

    The gross imbal­ance imposed on mod­ern eco­nom­ics by con­cen­tra­tion of wealth and bogus claims about how wealth was gen­er­ated led directly to the greed and elit­ism char­ac­ter­ized by Newt Gin­grich and Dick Armey.

    Mean­time, no mat­ter, and to the great cha­grin of these Teabag­gers, it’s the anniver­sary of Jackie in the Big Leagues.

    http://​www​.base​ball​hallof​fame​.org/​n​e​w​s​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​j​s​p​?​y​m​d​=​2​0​0​9​0​4​1​5​&​a​m​p​;​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​_​i​d​=​1​1​8​4​3​&​a​m​p​;​v​k​e​y​=​h​o​f​_​n​e​w​s​&​a​m​p​;​p​a​r​t​n​e​r​I​d​=​h​o​f​_​e​n​e​w​s​_​041509

    I never real­ized this hap­pened on his birth­day. And please tell him I said Happy Birth­day, although I imag­ine he’s being cur­mud­geonly about the entire idea.

    Kinda makes these Teabag­gers seem like they’ve got no nuts in there unless they’re shred­ded. How much did Armey and Newt and their cor­po­rate over­lords spend on this mind­less excer­cise in futil­ity? How does the Stim­u­lus rise to an affront to any­body but mil­lion­aires about rais­ing the upper mar­ginal rate to 3% less than what they were pay­ing under Ray­gun? And of course, all those fools are still think­ing they’re part of the Repub­li­can Big Tent. Says a lot about gulli­bil­ity and enfran­chise­ment, and is this stu­pid or is it delusional?

    Jackie Robin­son became a Repub­li­can, I’d imag­ine because of Eisen­hower, but what do these amoral ide­alogue Repub­li­cans and their mind­less flock have to do with the guy that left pub­lic life with a pre­scient and explicit warn­ing against the neo­cons and Blackwater?

    His base­ball sta­tis­tics were ridicu­lously good:

    http://​www​.base​ball​-almanac​.com/​p​l​a​y​e​r​s​/​p​l​a​y​e​r​.​p​h​p​?​p​=​r​o​b​inja02

    And he stole home 19 times, which is astound­ing. And he even did it in the World Series. His mil­i­tary career was fascinating:

    Robin­son was com­mis­sioned a sec­ond lieu­tenant and re-assigned to Fort Hood, Texas. There he joined the 761st “Black Pan­thers” Tank Battalion.

    Jackie was drafted to the United States Army and was assigned to Fort Riley, Kansas. White men with Robinson’s level of edu­ca­tion were allowed to go to Offi­cer Can­di­date School, whereas blacks were not allowed. Robin­son asked Heavy­weight Champ Joe Louis, whom he met dur­ing basic train­ing, for help to be allowed to train to become an offi­cer. After Louis talked with a friend in Wash­ing­ton D.C. the army allowed Jackie and sev­eral other black men to train to become offi­cers. Robin­son was com­mis­sioned a sec­ond lieu­tenant and re-assigned to Fort Hood, Texas. There he joined the 761st “Black Pan­thers” Tank Battalion.

    Robin­son was charged with insub­or­di­na­tion, dis­turb­ing the peace, drunk­en­ness, con­duct unbe­com­ing an offi­cer, insult­ing a civil­ian woman, and refus­ing to obey the law­ful orders of a supe­rior offi­cer, for an inci­dent that occurred aboard an Army bus. The dri­ver ordered Robin­son to the back of the bus and he refused. When the bus reached the end of the line the dri­ver sum­moned the Mil­i­tary Police, who took Robin­son into cus­tody. Robin­son con­fronted the offi­cers on scene and the offi­cers rec­om­mended he be court-martialed. The charges were reduced to only include Robinson’s alleged insub­or­di­na­tion. He was acquit­ted by an all white panel of nine officers.

    So, is base­ball a skill, a tal­ent, an intel­lec­tual pur­suit? What’s the value to soci­ety. I’d say, you just don’t know. White peo­ple insisted on think­ing they were supe­rior? In the cas of ath­let­ics, it seems clear they knew that was bushwa and tried to put off the inevitable. Every race has it’s cham­pion, and I’d pre­fer to think of the com­pe­ti­tion in terms of me and my brother play­ing whif­fle ball games, bat­ting righty and lefty, pitch­ing righty and lefty, keep­ing score with actual box scores from the ‘963 Dodgers and Yanks.

    This elit­ist tax erup­tion today? The Obama stim­u­lus raises the .01 tax rate to 3%less than what Rea­gan wasted on Star Wars. That’s a fact. This is utter bull­shit, and the peo­ple stand­ing out there in tri­corn hats are tools. And they don’t deserve it when nobody but Dick Armey’s clients stand to gain any­thing. The puppet=masters here are dis­grace­ful. And FOX, well they should have their FCC licenses pulled.Shameless pro­mo­tion of ‘grass roots’ Armey and Gin­grich and the mil­i­tary indus­trial com­plex. For cash, I’m sure.

  29. Cosmo Panzini said on April 15th, 2009 at 6:46 pm

    As usual, B Stouder cuts through all the b-s and gives us what really mat­ters – For­mula One. Thank you, sir. As for the t-baggers, I get the sense that they’re really pissed off, but they don’t know what exactly they’re mad about. Lis­ten when any of them are inter­viewed – they sound like men­tal patients off their meds. If they have a point, they cer­tainly are hav­ing lots of trou­ble express­ing it in their native tongue. Pos­si­bly as a result of that, Fox is con­fin­ing their cov­er­age mostly to their own talk­ing heads, who don’t have much intel­li­gent to say either, but they sound better.

  30. nancy said on April 15th, 2009 at 6:55 pm

    It’s funny — one of the things that always embar­rassed me about “my” team is their ten­dency to try to mash every­thing they dis­like into one big meat-eating, gay-bashing, earth-polluting patri­archy. This is a joke in places like San Fran­cisco, where a scan of the signs at any given protest, even one specif­i­cally focused on, say, the war, becomes a mashup of lib­eral complaints.

    Well. Lis­ten­ing to the t-bag cov­er­age on the way home, it sounds like the crowd in Lans­ing was about the same. One guy inter­viewed is pissed about gov­ern­ment spend­ing in gen­eral, and admits he’s get­ting a tax cut. Another guy says bring back the gold stan­dard. (Yes. Really.) A third one thinks Obama’s a fas­cist. And so on. It’s exactly as Cosmo describes: They’re just gen­er­ally mad and are look­ing for a crowd to join and wave signs with.

    Oh, and the fea­tured speaker? Joe the Plumber. Get the hook!

  31. caliban said on April 15th, 2009 at 7:45 pm

    Nancy, the objec­tion to the teabag baloney is claims that it’s grass­roots. That’s idi­otic. Peo­ple that haven’t much are being taken advan­tage of by rich bas­tards. Oth­er­wise, it goan mean shit. It doesn’t take Phil Gramm’s nor Dick Armey’s degrees to under­stand that almost every­body get’s a break from the stim­u­lus. These bas­tards are lying their asses off to align their vic­tims with their unholy selves. This is sim­ple arithmetic.

    The Bush mis­ad­min­is­tra­tion exclude the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the bud­get. Obama’s made the hon­est con­clu­sion that that’s money spent that has to be accounted for. Emer­gency spend­ing? Ass­holes planned for this when they sent the first PNAC let­ter try­ing to bam­boo­zle Clin­ton into ille­gal inva­sion of Iraq. These trai­tors need to shut the hell up.

    Gramm and Armey devised the assault on the bank­ing sys­tem. Hell, they cre­ated a bank­ing sys­tem that isn’t any­thing of the sort. How dthe hell is Goldman-Sachs a bank? There’s no way any of this had to do with actual banks except they were coopted by gigunda finan­cial firms that peo­ple like Gramm and Armey allowed to call them­selves banks.

    Eco­nom­ics is fas­ci­nat­ing. Macro, that is. When extremely greedy Republocrats can fuck with the eco­nomic sys­tem, it’s pretty much like they turn it all into a pud­dle of goo and blame it on any­body else that’s not melt­ing. You’ve got to be an idiot if you don’t see how Newt and Armey and Phil Gramm haven’t reaped bil­lions for their dogass apolo­gias now.

  32. caliban said on April 15th, 2009 at 8:08 pm

    I wouldn’t guess I’m on your team. I wouldn’t say I ever mashed any­thing together. Maybe I’ve been pointil­lis­tic in some fashion.

    It’s a weird day for me. My dad’s birth­day. Tax day. The anniver­sary of Jackie, and aside from that, his innate impor­tance, which he must have hated, dut that was one of the best base­ball play­ers that ever lived. Stole home 19 times.

    I’m 57 years old. I don’t remem­ber being intro­duced to a black per­son, because it never entered my parent’s realm of real­ity that it made a dif­fer­ence. My folks were shodowed by the FBI because they had friends that were African Americans.

    These tor­tures that have been run­ning the coun­try, take it with a grain of salt when they crit­i­cize their suc­ces­sors that are try­ing to do things right.

  33. coozledad said on April 15th, 2009 at 8:12 pm

    The rev­o­lu­tion­ary war drag is the tell. I remem­ber dur­ing the six­ties and sev­en­ties tele­vi­sion shows would always have some guy in a Napoleon cos­tume to erase any doubt that a scene was tak­ing place in the bug­house. When, as Roy says, the pigs come down on them, man, will it be with can­is­ters of Tho­razine? or will we have to wait until they start wear­ing Cat­woman cos­tumes.
    This makes me a whole lot less embar­rassed about the giant pup­pet thing. Well, a lit­tle less.

  34. alex said on April 15th, 2009 at 9:36 pm

    So the gov­er­nor of Texas is pan­der­ing to seces­sion­ist cra­zies says the Huff­post: http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​4​/​1​5​/​g​o​v​-​r​i​c​k​-​p​e​r​r​y​-​t​e​x​a​s​-​c​o​u​l​_​n​_​1​8​7​4​9​0.html

    They really are like a for­eign nation, them Tex­ans. They require their women to cover their heads with fake blonde hair and their faces with clown makeup, an affront to human dig­nity every bit as bad as the manda­tory burqas in some Islamic nations. At least women are allowed to run for gov­er­nor, as Sen­a­tor Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son is said to be doing. She’s evi­dently pretty tepid about all this tea-partying, unlike her incum­bent rival.

  35. brian stouder said on April 15th, 2009 at 10:08 pm

    See, as ridicu­lous and irra­tional as For­mula One pol­i­tics are, today’s ‘grass-roots’ protest is even less intelligible.

    Alex — I saw Rachel Mad­dow do a riff on the Texas gov­er­nor, and she played the video of him talk­ing about seces­sion*, and then demol­ished that strut­ting peacock’s pre­ten­sions by point­ing out that just five days ago this same fel­low was request­ing (and receiv­ing) Fed­eral help with wild fire fight­ing efforts, and not so long ago ask­ing for (and receiv­ing) Fed­eral troops for bor­der con­trol duty, and not long before that request­ing (and receiv­ing) Fed­eral aid for hurricane-related emer­gency response and rebuilding.…so that he’ll coyly flirt with seces­sion, even as he begs for and receives Fed­eral aid of all sorts.

    Before Rachel’s show, Olber­mann took a look at the essen­tially inco­her­ent ide­o­log­i­cal veer­ing about by Uncle Rush Limbaugh…“incoherent” that is, unless you reduce it to sim­ply being ardently opposed to any­thing Pres­i­dent Obama does.

    That, to me, sums up the tea-bag thing; it is sim­ply a some­what limp (so to speak) pep rally for the down-in-the-mouth (so to speak) losers of the 2008 elec­tion (cue Joe the Plumber).

    This evening I called our local radio lip flap­per, who is a pleas­ant enough fel­low. One can usu­ally get through, and if you have a calm point to make, he lets you pro­ceed. This evening he had gone on a riff about some gov­ern­ment worker in New York who worked near enough to the mas­sive slaugh­ter at the immi­gra­tion class to have been in a day-long lock-down.

    This worker, it was empha­sized, was a UNION man, don­cha know, and what is the one thing this guy is work­ing on now? Get­ting paid for the hour’s lunch he missed out on, dur­ing the lock­down! This made me laugh, but our local host was (appar­ently) try­ing to make a real point of the fact that this UNION man could only think about get­ting remu­ner­ated for his missed lunch-hour.…the gov­ern­ment worker had become his sym­bol for ALL that’s WRONG with UNIONS in Amer­ica, don­cha know?

    I thought ‘OK — that’s it’ and called in, and boom — got right onto the airwaves…where I good naturedly pointed out that it was about as fair to point to this one lit­tle fel­low as the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of ALL that’s WRONG with labor unions in Amer­ica, as it would be to point to radio lip-flappers such as him­self, and ascribe all this hor­ri­ble gun vio­lence onto them.…and I got the great­est com­pli­ment pos­si­ble, which was a seam­less seguay into a commercial!

    *ignorant-ass talk about “seces­sion” on the very anniver­sary of the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Lin­coln is some­what obscene, espe­cially com­ing from the uppity gov­er­nor of a state that was indeed trea­so­nous and dis­loyal back when the chips were really down

    Back to For­mula One, baby! It’s Shang­hai this week­end — and oughta be sublime!

  36. basset said on April 15th, 2009 at 11:29 pm

    »Bas­set is right; I should for­get For­mula One and take up Fig­ure 8 racing!

    well, any other kind of motor­sport is obvi­ously far less refined than F1, being a lit­tle short on poi­son dwarves and Nazi-bondage-philes… but there’s a Pak­istani run­ning in ARCA this year, does that count for anything?

    (no, there really is: http://​www​.alimo​tor​sports​.com)

  37. Gasman said on April 16th, 2009 at 1:19 am

    alex,
    Rick “Good Hair” Perry is a prick. He is sim­ply pos­tur­ing and bid­ing his time until he runs for Prez. Given that his pre­de­ces­sor made it to the White House, he thinks that he has more than a snowball’s chance in hell. Silly prick. But, he does come from that mag­i­cal land of Texas.

    Texas is weird — I did 14 years there — but I think that Good Hair over­played his anti-guvmint thing by quite a bit. As strange as Tex­ans are, I think that they are smart enough to see through Perry’s assholi­ness. I think that he will prob­a­bly have his ass handed to him by Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son. KBH is no real prize, but she is about as sane and cred­i­ble as any­thing the Repubs got right now.

    It will be inter­est­ing to see how Perry, Palin, San­ford, and Jin­dal make out in their respec­tive re-election cam­paigns given their high stakes gam­bits of refus­ing, or at least appear­ing to refuse, the fed­eral stim­u­lus money. My bet is that the move will back­fire for all of them.

  38. Gasman said on April 16th, 2009 at 1:28 am

    alex,
    Rick “Good Hair” Perry is a prick. He is sim­ply pos­tur­ing and bid­ing his time until he runs for Prez. Given that his pre­de­ces­sor made it to the White House, he thinks that he has more than a snowball’s chance in hell. Silly prick. But, he does come from that mag­i­cal land of Texas.

    Texas is weird — I did 14 years there — but I think that Good Hair over­played his anti-guvmint thing by quite a bit. I think that he will prob­a­bly have his ass handed to him by Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son. KBH is no real prize, but she is about as sane a cred­i­ble as any­thing the Repubs got right now.

    It will be inter­est­ing to see how Perry, Palin, San­ford, and Jin­dal make out in their respec­tive re-election cam­paigns given their high stakes gam­bits of refus­ing, or at least appear­ing to refuse, the fed­eral stim­u­lus money. My bet is that the move will back­fire for all of them.

    Also, the Teabag­gers are all morons. What non­sense. Couldn’t the folks at FauxNews come up with any­thing more lame?

  39. Gasman said on April 16th, 2009 at 2:22 am

    Ah, I hear that Dick Armey is behind the “Dick Army” that con­sti­tutes the Teabag­ging bull­shit non­sense. With other intel­lec­tual lumi­nar­ies such as Newt Gin­grich, Sen. David Vit­ter, and the intel­lec­tual pyg­mies at FauxNews, the tur­d­blos­soms Glen Beck, Sean Han­nity, and Neil Cavuto, we should not be sur­prised that the whole deba­cle is utter ludimocrosity.

    Dick Armey was my con­gress­man when I lived in Texas, so I main­tain a spe­cial well of con­tempt just for him. We affec­tion­ately referred to him as “Our Dick in Wash­ing­ton,” and we meant it. He was a moron. He is a moron. He is also a sanc­ti­mo­nious prick.

    Don’t these twits real­ize that the “sky­rock­et­ing tax rates” that they are osten­si­bly protest­ing are the very same rates that George Bush and the Repub­li­can House and Sen­ate gave us? These are Bush taxes, not Obama taxes. Obama has not changed them at all. What douchebags.

    Just a few more rea­sons to not vote Republican.

  40. mark said on April 16th, 2009 at 8:13 am

    jeff tmmo–

    Sorry if my assump­tions about Trevor and Tiffany are close to accu­rate. I’m glad that the arti­cle has been a boost for you and the school.

    And I’ll bet that trevor is shak­ing in his bought-by-somebody-else boots. Tiffany is going to have hun­dreds of peo­ple, with more brains and bet­ter inten­tions than him, tak­ing an inter­est in her. He’s not going to like that at all, but it may pro­vide the sup­port or the impe­tus for her to set her sights a lit­tle more in line with her tal­ents, dis­ci­pline and char­ac­ter. It’s worth a prayer, anyway.

    Keep up the good fight!

  41. mark said on April 16th, 2009 at 8:21 am

    jeff tmmo–

    I just read the com­ments to Barry’s article.

    Be afraid, trevor. Be very afraid.

  42. Jim said on April 16th, 2009 at 8:31 am

    If the peo­ple of Texas think their taxes will go down if they secede, they are crazy. Wait ’til they have to start pay­ing for their own army, navy, air force, high­ways, bridges, schools, etc.

    And I don’t under­stand the whole tea-party thing. Was there some dras­tic, rad­i­cal increase in fed­eral taxes since Jan. 20 that I haven’t heard about? Are fed­eral taxes higher now than they were a year ago — or eight years ago, for that mat­ter? Or do I under­stand the whole tea-party thing too well after all?

  43. Ricardo said on April 19th, 2009 at 5:19 pm

    Car­toon­ists are pissed. Those Por­tuguese Water Dogs are really HARD to draw.

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