65 responses to
“Sails at sunset.”

1. Dexter said on August 11th, 2009 at 2:55 am

   Yeah, the Tate-LaBianca mur­ders really set the coun­try against the counter-culture move­ment, and the fol­low­ing link takes you to another set of mur­ders that hap­pened in 1969 that sort of ral­lied the peo­ple who hated the Black Pan­ther Party move­ment for what­ever rea­son. It took seven years before most peo­ple real­ized and admit­ted that the deaths of Fred Hamp­ton and Mark Clark were mur­ders by the US gov­ern­ment. http://​www​.spar​ta​cus​.school​net​.co​.uk/​U​S​A​h​a​m​p​t​o​nF.htm

2. beb said on August 11th, 2009 at 7:44 am

   I love see­ing flocks of sail­boats on the lake*. Haven’t seen many this year — come to think of it, haven’t been dri­ving along the river much this year, either. While 10 megapix­els and a 3x tele­photo lens would have pro­vided greater detail, for a web photo your iPod takes good enough pic­tures. And it really caught some nice color.

   * From time to time I’m out on Belle Island for work-related, uh, work, and out on the river there will be some kind of beginner’s sail­ing class, strings of small sail boats in a row prac­tiz­ing some maneu­ver. That’s fun to look at, too.

3. Deggjr said on August 11th, 2009 at 8:27 am

   Ben Stein, heh. “It is just that in this case, I didn’t do any­thing wrong.” Ben, most peo­ple who are let go didn’t do any­thing wrong. It’s called cap­i­tal­ism and you believe in it and defend it.

   His arti­cle on Gold­man Sachs was very good.

4. coozledad said on August 11th, 2009 at 9:01 am

   I had no idea Man­son was a Sci­en­tol­o­gist. Did he sell Herbal­ife, too?.

5. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 11th, 2009 at 9:05 am

   Nope, Amway.

   Friend of mine in col­lege got ahold of one of their cas­sette tape train­ing pro­grams for being a “top sell­ing, high achiev­ing Amway fran­chiser” and used it in a piece of instal­la­tion art, cut­ting back and forth with “Tri­umph of the Will” sound­track clips. Can­didly, it wasn’t as much of a stretch as you might think. I feel ner­vous when i see even just a bot­tle of Amway prod­uct in someone’s house — have they eaten the pod?

6. Jim said on August 11th, 2009 at 10:09 am

   I had some fam­ily mem­bers deep into Amway a num­ber of years ago. They stuck with it for years, always believ­ing that fan­tas­tic wealth was just around the cor­ner. Amway pro­motes a lifestyle of money, vaca­tions, dia­monds, houses … if you just keep believ­ing in the dream. You can make it! You just need to buy the $200 set of teach­ing tapes! Make in invest­ment in your future! Even­tu­ally, and sadly, after who-knows-how-many thou­sands of dol­lars on tapes, books and con­ven­tions, they fig­ured out they were buy­ers, not sellers.

7. Connie said on August 11th, 2009 at 10:36 am

   I agree with Jim. Our best friends did the Amway thing for about ten years, and it was obvi­ous to me that the peo­ple who actu­ally got rich were the ones who put on the sem­i­nars and sold the tapes. All of which you had to do or you weren’t giv­ing it your all.

8. del said on August 11th, 2009 at 10:52 am

   There’s a con­nec­tion between Amway and Ben Stein’s pol­i­tics of cap­i­tal­ism — both require belief in the hoped-for.

   Here in Michi­gan one of the Amway co-founder’s sons, Dick DeVos, ran as a repub­li­can for gov­er­nor last time. His wife chaired the State GOP. Gotta be some sym­me­try at the ral­lies, though, look­ing out over the sea of believ­ers in hotel lobbies.

9. LAMary said on August 11th, 2009 at 11:06 am

   Amway was started by some Dutch Reformed guys in Michi­gan, yes? This explains a lot. If you are a good per­son and Godly, you will be suc­cess­ful. If you are suc­cess­ful, you are Godly. Keep try­ing harder. The guy who sold you the tapes and the garage full of crap is doing well so what’s your problem?

   I knew too many sleazy self right­eous Dutch Reform yahoos grow­ing up to find any­thing aston­ish­ing about either Amway or Blackwater/Xe. It’s like the non-political inter­pre­ta­tion of Nixon’s “if the the Pres­i­dent does it, it isn’t ille­gal” the­ory. “If I make a lot of money doing it, God is telling me it’s right.“
   I sus­pect Con­nie has run into this behav­ior in her part of the world.

10. nancy said on August 11th, 2009 at 11:07 am

    The elec­tion where Dick DeVos ran was my first as a Michi­gan res­i­dent. I watched a debate where the can­di­dates took ques­tions from the audi­ence. A woman stood up and talked about how her fam­ily busi­ness (plumb­ing sup­ply) was fal­ter­ing in the poor econ­omy. DeVos made crinkly eyes and said, “I grew up in a fam­ily busi­ness, too.” My head exploded.

11. ROgirl said on August 11th, 2009 at 11:14 am

    Dick Devos tried to buy that elec­tion. He spent around $40 mil­lion of his own money and lost by 14 points.

    Amway sell­ers, keep on dream­ing! You too can make the big bucks, but only if you don’t give up.

12. MichaelG said on August 11th, 2009 at 11:21 am

    Everybody’s had those pesti­len­tial Amway peo­ple pluck­ing at their sleeve. The whole point of their pyra­mid is to sell the mem­ber­ships. The prod­ucts are just the come on.

13. Jim said on August 11th, 2009 at 11:50 am

    The prod­ucts were rarely, if ever, men­tioned. The only peo­ple I’ve known who actu­ally used the prod­ucts were those who were try­ing to sell it.

14. 4dbirds said on August 11th, 2009 at 12:17 pm

    I have never seen an AMWAY prod­uct. Its soap right?

15. Jim said on August 11th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    House­hold prod­ucts, mostly.

16. Jeff Borden said on August 11th, 2009 at 12:37 pm

    Poor Ben Stein. I guess he’ll have to make do with his fat pay­checks from Com­cast, Visine and all the other stuff he hawks on radio and TV. Plus, he still has his gig on CBS Sun­day Morn­ing, which is always the prompt for me to go get another cup of cof­fee. I can­not abide his nasally, flat voice and his over­whelm­ing smugness.

    It’s inter­est­ing to see some of the con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tors –not includ­ing Ben Stein in this– who lec­ture the rest of us on the glo­ries of com­pet­ing in a cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety while they rest com­fort­ably in a job secured by the dona­tions of the Scaife, Olins, Coors, etc. I mean, what right does some idiot at the National Review or Weekly Spec­ta­tor have to weigh in on eco­nomic issues when nei­ther pub­li­ca­tion can make it in the mar­ket­place with­out either a reg­u­lar beg-a-thon from their read­ers or a fat check from their right wing bene­fac­tors? What the #%&+ does William Kris­tol know about capitalism????

17. moe99 said on August 11th, 2009 at 12:49 pm

    Does no one remem­ber the “Dare to be Great” pro­gram founded by a guy with a hare­lip? When he would say it, it would come out very oddly, but he man­aged to become very wealthy before the SEC took him down.

18. Danny said on August 11th, 2009 at 12:51 pm

    Jeff B., doesn’t most of print media fall into the cat­e­gory you describe? Prob­a­bly the best mag­a­zine in the world in terms of stand­ing on it’s own merit is Mad.

19. LAMary said on August 11th, 2009 at 12:56 pm

    I think it’s funny that Ben Stein assumes any­one saw his movie and would use it as an excuse to can him.

20. Jolene said on August 11th, 2009 at 12:59 pm

    Amway, as an orga­ni­za­tion, is all you say it is, I’m sure, but I’ve used a cou­ple of the prod­ucts over the years when vis­it­ing my mother, who, for­tu­nately, never had any inter­est­ing in becom­ing a seller. Their aerosol pre-wash would, I think, take the spots off a leop­ard. It could prob­a­bly be used to clean up Super­fund sites.

21. Danny said on August 11th, 2009 at 1:02 pm

    Mary, what makes you think that any of his crit­ics needed to see his movie any more than the crit­ics (or pro­po­nents) of the health care pro­posal have any need to read any ver­sion of the bill?

22. Peter said on August 11th, 2009 at 1:19 pm

    Oh Amway, that brings back the mem­o­ries. One of my friends wanted me to get in on it, but another friend said it best “If you found a way to make a lot of money, would you tell some­one? No, unless THAT’S the way you make money”.

23. LAMary said on August 11th, 2009 at 1:39 pm

    Big dif­fer­ence Danny. One’s a movie and the other is a com­plex piece of leg­is­la­tion that could would dra­mat­i­cally change the qual­ity of life for mil­lions of peo­ple.
    Ben’s ego is a lit­tle inflated, I think. Maybe he just lost his job like lots of other peo­ple. Luck­ily, he can keep doing com­mer­cials and make more than most journalists.

24. brian stouder said on August 11th, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    So we went from a lovely pic­ture of ‘sails at sun­set’ on a qui­es­cent lake, to sweaty, arm-twisting ‘sales incul­ca­tion’ mass meet­ings (at sun­set?) …now THAT’S range!

    And then there’s this

    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​3​2​3​7​4​9​3​9​/​n​s​/​t​r​a​v​e​l​-news/

    Man con­victed of grop­ing Min­nie Mouse

    although I think the lead sen­tence was poorly worded

    ORLANDO, Florida — A 60-year-old man has been con­victed of grop­ing a woman in a Min­nie Mouse cos­tume at Walt Dis­ney World.

25. Jeff Borden said on August 11th, 2009 at 3:52 pm

    Danny,

    No, most print prod­ucts are not sub­si­dized. That’s why so many news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines are slash­ing staff, cut­ting space and oth­er­wise look­ing for ways to save money. With rare excep­tions –I think the St. Peters­burg, Fla. paper may be owned and oper­ated by a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion– they are busi­nesses that must con­tend with the same issues as any other cap­i­tal­is­tic enterprise.

    I will lis­ten to Rupert Mur­doch, a very well-known con­ser­v­a­tive who built an inter­na­tional media empire that makes good money. (The New York Post bleeds red ink every year, but Rupe likes hav­ing a pres­ence in NYC and he can afford to oper­ate it at a loss.) He knows what he is talk­ing about even if I dis­agree vehe­mently with his pol­i­tics. I won’t lis­ten to a smarmy piece of work like Bill Kris­tol, whose golden life was assured through an acci­dent of birth to con­ser­v­a­tive roy­alty and, to my knowl­edge, has never had to bust his ass to com­pete in a cap­i­tal­ist envi­ron­ment like the vast major­ity of us.

26. Connie said on August 11th, 2009 at 4:07 pm

    At the age of 14 I myself was groped by Don­ald Duck at Dis­ney­land. I was wear­ing a very short skirt… There is a famous fam­ily photo of 3 kids with Don­ald and that girl has a very odd look on her face.

27. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 11th, 2009 at 4:40 pm

    It was not me — i’m home, have been since Sat­ur­day. Just wanted to clear that up. And i’m not 60.

    Minnie’s house was pretty durn cute, tho’. She was out. In the horde that passed through while me and mine were mean­der­ing was a lady in a full burka. Head to toe, eyes only show­ing, Orlando, 94 degrees out. Now that’s commitment.

28. Joe Kobiela said on August 11th, 2009 at 4:50 pm

    I heard that Min­nie Mouse was in the insane asy­lum.
    She’s fuck­ing Goofy.
    I crack myself up.
    Pilot Joe

29. LAMary said on August 11th, 2009 at 4:51 pm

    Across the street from my office is the Dis­ney ani­ma­tion com­plex. The wrought iron fence sur­round­ing the prop­erty has the out­line of Mickey Mouse’s head, ren­dered in wrought iron, every six feet or so. One of my co-workers said she wanted a fence with those mice on it. I told her that in my neigh­bor­hood we have real rodents run­ning along on our fences. We don’t need no stinkin’ Disney.

30. mark said on August 11th, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    Ben Stein, Amway, DeVos, the Dutch reformed, con­ser­v­a­tives who work for non-profit sup­ported con­cerns,… I couldn’t be a progressive/liberal because I don’t have the energy to work up a good loathing or con­tempt on a daily basis.

    I’m pre­dict­ing the Obama peo­ple sealed the cof­fin on health care reform with the reported deci­sion to refer to it as “health insur­ance reform” and focus on the evils of the health insur­ers. Not what peo­ple want to hear, in my esti­ma­tion. The broad mid­dle is com­pas­sion­ate enough to do some­thing to extend health cov­er­age to a lot of those that don’t have it. I don’t think they are envi­ous of or angry with those darn insur­ance com­pa­nies to a degree where they want to turn things over to the gov­ern­ment. Time will tell.

    On a lighter note:

    Two Mid­dle East moth­ers are sit­ting in a cafe chat­ting over a plate of tabouli and a pint of goat’s milk.

    The older of the two pulls a bag out of her purse and starts flip­ping through pho­tos. They start reminiscing.

    ‘This is my old­est son Mohammed. He would have been 24 years old now.‘
    ’Yes, I remem­ber him as a baby’ says the other mother cheer­fully.
    He’s a mar­tyr now though’ mum con­fides.
    ’Oh, so sad dear’ says the other.

    And this is my sec­ond son Kalid. He would have been 21.‘
    ’Oh, I remem­ber him,’ says the other hap­pily, ‘he had such curly hair
    when he was born’.
    ’He’s a mar­tyr too’ says mum qui­etly.
    ’Oh, gra­cious me .…’ Says the other.

    ‘And this is my third son. My baby. My beau­ti­ful Ahmed.
    He would have been 18, she whis­pers
    ’Yes’ says the friend enthu­si­as­ti­cally, ‘I remem­ber when he first
    started school’

    ‘He’s a mar­tyr also,’ says mum, with tears in her eyes.

    After a pause and a deep sigh, the sec­ond mother looks
    wist­fully at the pho­tographs and says…

    ‘They blow up so fast, don’t they…’

31. Danny said on August 11th, 2009 at 4:59 pm

    Okay, between Joe and mark, cut it out. I tell the jokes here! (kidding)

    Jeff B., when I wrote that I was think­ing that the idea of a gov­ern­ment bailout of the news­pa­per indus­try was still being talked about. I guess that is not the case any­more. Who knows, it might come up again.

32. moe99 said on August 11th, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    some­how that joke does not tell very well. Per­haps you had to have been there or something.

33. Danny said on August 11th, 2009 at 5:10 pm

    Or not been there… or here…

34. brian stouder said on August 11th, 2009 at 5:22 pm

    I loved meet­ing Min­nie at WDW, back in her air-conditioned house (skipped Tig­ger; Shelby was put off that I also very much enjoyed gab­bing with the Evil Queen from Snow White); she gave me a kiss on the cheek, and when I joked with her that Mickey would throw me out of the park (a remark they must get 43 times per day) she IMMEDIATELY pointed to her ring-less finger!!

    All in all, a fun time.…but I wouldn’t want to be one of their “cast mem­bers”. Orlando is the ulti­mate “Com­pany Town”, and last time we were there, the daily parade at Magic King­dom was slightly delayed; they had ‘run over the dog’, killing the guy who was in the Pluto costume.…but you’ll have that

35. del said on August 11th, 2009 at 5:24 pm

    Mark, your punch­line comes from Sponge­bob Squarepants Bub­ble Buddy episode that ends, “they blow up so fast.” Now that episode was funny.

    On a heav­ier note, here in Michi­gan an HMO will never find itself in court defend­ing its deci­sions to a jury because the com­pas­sion­ate broad mid­dle has deigned fit to let our leg­is­la­ture pass the Patient’s Inde­pen­dent Right to Review Act — a law that keeps HMO’s out of jury tri­als and affords aggrieved par­ties 30 whole days (I think) to review HMO deci­sions in a par­al­lel legal dimension.

36. brian stouder said on August 11th, 2009 at 5:24 pm

    I don’t have the energy to work up a good loathing or con­tempt on a daily basis.

    Gee, mark, your lit­tle joke there at the end sorta stepped on that message

37. Scout said on August 11th, 2009 at 5:29 pm

    mark sez, “I’m pre­dict­ing the Obama peo­ple sealed the cof­fin on health care reform with the reported deci­sion to refer to it as “health insur­ance reform” and focus on the evils of the health insur­ers. Not what peo­ple want to hear, in my estimation.”

    Really? You actu­ally know peo­ple who think of the insur­ance indus­try as some­thing other than a syn­di­cated pro­tec­tion racket? Huh. Inter­est­ing. The peo­ple I talk to do want to hear that. I must asso­ciate in dif­fer­ent cir­cles, because every­one I talk to is fed up to the teeth with ever increas­ing pre­mi­ums, big co-pays and deductibles, so-called pre-existing con­di­tions they can­not be cov­ered for and then the ulti­mate slap in the face of denied claims. Let’s talk about “death pan­els!” Some dude in a suit with­out a med­ical degree decid­ing what is and isn’t necessary.

    But maybe you’re right — going after the Health Insur­ance Syn­di­cate has unleashed their wrath and plenty of money to fash­ion non­sense like grand­par­ent euthena­sia out of whole cloth. Maybe they’re the peo­ple you were refer­ring to.

38. Danny said on August 11th, 2009 at 5:43 pm

    Okay, big news. Mad Men will start the new sea­son in mid-1963. Here is some dia­logue reported in the news:

    “I’m engaged,” says the air­line stew­ardess seduc­ing Don Draper on a busi­ness trip. “On the other hand, you might be my last chance.”

    “I’ve been mar­ried a long time,” replies Draper. “You get plenty of chances.”

39. Danny said on August 11th, 2009 at 5:55 pm

    Maybe the health care reform will end up work­ing like hav­ing USPS, FedEx and UPS to choose from.

    USPS = Cheap, pretty good and cov­ers most peo­ples’ needs, but you may wait in line and you may not want to entrust your most valu­able, high­est pri­or­ity ship­ping with them.

    FedEx and UPS = Not so cheap, but very good. Caters to spe­cialty ship­ping needs.

    EDIT: I know this could all be moot if pri­vate health care is done away with or crum­bles under it’s own weight. And this isn’t strictly anal­o­gous because the three big ship­pers all have their own resources, whereas in the case of med­ical care, they’d all be (pre­sum­ably) draw­ing from the same pool of doc­tors and nurses.

40. jeff borden said on August 11th, 2009 at 6:20 pm

    I think the health care debate has degen­er­ated into Fellini ter­ri­tory when you see elderly peo­ple on Medicare scream­ing at their Con­gress crit­ters that they don’t want the gov­ern­ment involved in their med­ical care. Or when you have allegedly intel­li­gent pols like Newt Gin­grich sum­mon­ing up images of euthana­sia, when the AARP is buy­ing adver­tise­ments sup­port­ing health care reform. You can’t make this shit up.

    And rationing? We already have it. There was a heart-breaking post on another web­site about what hap­pens when a hos­pi­tal patient is almost out of money. Fam­ily mem­bers face the choice of going wildly into debt and mort­gag­ing their own finan­cial secu­rity, or that of their chil­dren by keep­ing their loved on in the hos­pi­tal. Or they can bring the patient home in the knowl­edge that they will not last long with­out pro­fes­sional care.

    I’m no expert and don’t pre­tend to be, but sheesh, why can’t we face up to the fact that our health care sys­tem is in need of repair? Why must mil­lions of Amer­i­cans face the prospect of los­ing every­thing they own if they are unlucky enough to have an acci­dent or con­tract a seri­ous ill­ness with­out insur­ance? And, while we’re at it, if our health care sys­tem is actu­ally the envy of the world, which I have heard some of the Obama crit­ics say, why are our infant mor­tal­ity rates so much higher than most indus­tri­al­ized nations?

41. coozledad said on August 11th, 2009 at 6:44 pm

    The Fellini anal­ogy is a good one, because the mes­sage machine that’s guid­ing the oppo­si­tion to health­care is com­pletely skirt­ing the nuts and bolts argu­ments that might facil­i­tate the devel­op­ment of a more or less bul­let­proof sys­tem, in favor of a kind of semi­psy­chotic jour­ney into nation­al­ist mem­ory. Never mind that the mem­ory is false. It’s a loosely poetic approach to shap­ing pol­icy that requires a bizarre admix­ture of the ven­er­a­tion of insur­ance com­pa­nies and hos­til­ity to elected offi­cials. Once the mes­sage exceeds the brevity of Haiku, how­ever, the base reflex­ively switches the remote from Arma­cord to Red Dawn.

42. jeff borden said on August 11th, 2009 at 6:53 pm

    We lib­er­als have not mobi­lized like the rightwingers have and that’s a frick­ing shame, because a major­ity of Amer­i­cans are in favor of health care reform. Time for us to quit whin­ing and start show­ing up at these meet­ings armed with facts and not the dog whis­tles issued by Messrs. Lim­baugh, Han­nity, O’Reilly, Beck and Dodd. These crowds are being com­pletely Astro­turfed by monied inter­ests who rep­re­sent those who ben­e­fit most from the sta­tus quo, but the pup­peteers are clever enough to wrap them up in a nice lit­tle pop­ulist package.

43. jeff borden said on August 11th, 2009 at 6:53 pm

    Oh, and Coo­zledad? WOLVERINES!!

44. Danny said on August 11th, 2009 at 7:05 pm

    WOLVERINES!!! (I heard a remake is in the works)

    and sec­ondly…

    WARRIORS!!!

45. jeff borden said on August 11th, 2009 at 7:12 pm

    Danny,

    What a con­cept. The Wolver­ines vs. The War­riors. Yow!

    I’m a total urban lib­eral, but I love watch­ing “Red Dawn.” John Mil­ius did such a great job of cre­at­ing a screen­play out of all the Cold War fears extant in that time period with the Cubans and Nicar­guans help­ing the Soviet Rus­sians crush the Amer­i­can­skis. Plus, I dug Lea Thomp­son and Jen­nifer Grey at the time and Pow­ers Boothe is always a treat to watch in a film. I imag­ine the update will have the hordes of Com­mies pour­ing over the Rio Grande from Texas?

    A War­riors remake would be even weirder. With all the auto­matic weaponry the gang­bangers have today, there’s a quaint, “West Side Story” feel to that old film, where the gang mem­bers mostly use their fists and what­ever props hap­pen to be lying around when they brawl. Today, wouldn’t the Base­ball Furies be using Mac-10s instead of Louisville Slug­gers? Again, the genius of The War­riors was its dark and fore­bod­ing view of NYC and, by exten­sion, urban Amer­ica. Some­how, direc­tor Wal­ter Hill made that dark and dan­ger­ous world a place I really wanted to visit.

46. alex said on August 11th, 2009 at 7:43 pm

    And this isn’t strictly anal o gous because the three big ship pers all have their own resources, whereas in the case of med ical care, they’d all be (pre sum ably) draw ing from the same pool of doc tors and nurses.

    Danny, that anal­ogy actu­ally makes sense. I’m proud of you.

    Not sure where you’re com­ing from with the doc­tors and nurses issue, though. If we the peo­ple are the cus­tomers, and the insur­ance car­ri­ers receive our dol­lars to deliver ser­vice, then the doc­tors and nurses are sim­ply part of the ser­vice, as are Big Pharma, the clin­ics, hos­pi­tals, lab­o­ra­to­ries, etc., etc. They’re the over­head in health care the way jet fuel, gaso­line, tires, vehi­cles, etc. are over­head to FedEx and UPS and the Postal Service.

47. LAMary said on August 11th, 2009 at 7:54 pm

    mark, I come by my con­tempt for Dutch Reform hyp­ocrites hon­estly. I grew up among them.

48. coozledad said on August 11th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

    I’ve devel­oped a new the­ory about Man­son. He was out to get Terry Melcher for the sub­par pro­duc­tion of his scary music. If the Beach Boys can’t make your stuff sound like some­thing other than para­noid dri­vel, your avenues to fame are reduced to the axe and a bevy of young pros­ti­tutes.
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​8​I​0​v​2​bVX8j4

49. coozledad said on August 11th, 2009 at 8:44 pm

    And another all-American trea­sure I ded­i­cate to my friends across the aisle.
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​r​g​8​S​O​24gygU

50. beb said on August 11th, 2009 at 8:59 pm

    speak­ing of women in burkas, as Jeff was at 27, this past
    sun­day the lit­tle woman and were at Metro Beach where the temps was in the 90s and humid­ity was nearly as right. We saw a Mus­lim girl there try­ing to be deco­rous. She was wear­ing long pants, a long sleeve shirt, a scarf over her hair, but tied OVER her shirt was a bikini top.
    What’s up with that we wondered.

    It’s weird how the con­ver­sa­tion swung around to Amway, clearly a Ponzi by any other name. LAMary’s com­ment @9 that Amway dealer’s must think that if they’re mak­ing money god is telling they’re doing right. There a lot of store­front preach­ers push­ing that line as well.

51. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 11th, 2009 at 9:06 pm

    Fellini made “Red Dawn”? I had no idea.

52. moe99 said on August 11th, 2009 at 9:07 pm

    Mak­ing money = doing right is seri­ous Mor­mon the­ol­ogy as well. I spent a lot of time in Salt Lake City inves­ti­gat­ing numer­ous affin­ity frauds infor­mally asso­ci­ated with the Mor­mon church when I was with the SEC in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.

53. coozledad said on August 11th, 2009 at 9:37 pm

    Moe: Now that the Rea­gan trash is swim­ming in the back­flow of its grift, shouldn’t we offer a state man­dated pro­gram to edu­cate peo­ple about fraud?

54. coozledad said on August 11th, 2009 at 10:00 pm

    The theme song of the Repub­li­can party:
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​-​8​k​L​r​rZKnNU

55. coozledad said on August 11th, 2009 at 10:28 pm

    I’m on a Beach Boys kick. Sorry:
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​D​c​F​D​a​DZbc3Y
    At this point, Brian Wil­son was chan­nel­ing Bach.

56. crazycatlady said on August 12th, 2009 at 12:09 am

    My cousin worked in Amway’s ware­house for 35 years and retired from there. Fam­ily mem­bers were sucked into it when I was grow­ing up, and none of them seemed any richer than my dad who sim­ply worked hard at his work-a-day job. It’s just a Ponzi. Sell­ing greed and push­ing over­priced house­hold goods.

57. Danny said on August 12th, 2009 at 12:37 am

    Any of you read Camille Paglia? She has some­thing inter­est­ing on the health care issue here.

58. Dexter said on August 12th, 2009 at 2:32 am

    coo­zledad, thought you might enjoy…
    http://​www​.detroit​blog​.org/​?p=941

59. alex said on August 12th, 2009 at 6:59 am

    Danny—

    Inter­est­ing? I’ll say.

    Camille Paglia is Ann Coul­ter with a big­ger vocab­u­lary, and an even greater tal­ent for pulling fac­toids out of her ass that no one can chal­lenge because no one, no mat­ter how well edu­cated, knows what the fuck she’s talk­ing about.

    She’s done some clever writ­ing and I’ve enjoyed it on occa­sion, but I think she’s tap-dancing her way through her career as a pub­lic intellectual.

60. Connie said on August 12th, 2009 at 7:07 am

    Ditto to what LAMary said about grow­ing up among the Dutch reformed. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough and never went back. I will note for those who wouldn’t know the details that the Amway fam­i­lies AND Eric Prince of Black­wa­ter were actu­ally Dutch Chris­t­ian Reformed, the most con­ser­v­a­tive of the Dutch church options. (yes I know Prince con­verted to Catholicism.)

    My Dad and Eric Prince’s Dad were room­mates my Dad’s first year of grad school at Michi­gan, in a sort of fra­ter­nity called Dutch House, founded in the 30s to make sure there was a good safe Chris­t­ian home for Dutch boys to live in the dan­ger­ous town of Ann Arbor. Some years ago my Dad ran into to Father Prince at a restau­rant in down­town Hol­land and was delighted to be intro­duced to his com­pan­ion, James Dobson.

61. basset said on August 12th, 2009 at 8:04 am

    Mean­while… today’s Vel­vet Under­ground reference:

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​T​Y​H​I​q​MmtS-0

62. coozledad said on August 12th, 2009 at 9:52 am

    bas­set: Heard any of Cale’s stuff with Eno?

63. del said on August 12th, 2009 at 9:55 am

    Inter­est­ing, Connie.

64. LAMary said on August 12th, 2009 at 12:06 pm

    It was the Dutch Reformed Boers who brough Apartheid to the world.

65. basset said on August 12th, 2009 at 11:44 pm

    Not famil­iar with that, Cooz, but just today I was fight­ing traf­fic on I-40 with Eno with Phil Man­zan­era, Simon Phillips, and the rest of 801 cranked up loud… “Tomor­row Never Knows,” the best Bea­t­les cover ever.

    And this might be of interest:

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​q​R​w​_​r​vrXQiQ