Happy Blah, Blah, Blah

So, let me get this straight? A British-born Roman slave becomes a Christian, spends 30+ years driving paganism out of Ireland—ushering in 16 centuries of Roman Catholicism—and we're supposed to celebrate the guy?

No thanks.

I will raise a pint to the Irish, though, who throughout the centuries have shown unbelievable grit and, despite their trials, managed to create an astonishingly rich artistic culture. And who after 1,600 years are finally throwing off the yoke of their cross dressing oppressors.

Fundamentalists Are Cowards

A sad day for Pakistan.

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse 2010

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Drip, Drip, Drip...

Bit by bit, sanity is popping up across the country.

Albany Reaches Deal to Repeal ’70s Drug Laws

By JEREMY W. PETERS
ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson and New York legislative leaders have reached an agreement to dismantle much of what remains of the state’s strict 1970s-era drug laws, once among the toughest in the nation.

The deal would repeal many of the mandatory minimum prison sentences now in place for lower-level drug felons, giving judges the authority to send first-time nonviolent offenders to treatment instead of prison.

The plan would also expand drug treatment programs and widen the reach of drug courts at a cost of at least $50 million.

Midwestern Medicine

The ground continues to shift.

The Lessons of Herbert (And George)

Herbert Hoover and his dismal reign are more instructive than ever nowadays. Conde Nast's Portfolio.com has an interesting review of a new Hoover bio, which is worth a few minutes of your time. After acknowledging the clear parallels between W. and Hoover, the author takes us through Hoover's earlier life, where we learn that he was once a competent if dour figure.

Fascinating tidbit:

Hoover’s middle career is one of the great little-known sagas of American history. Based in London at the outbreak of World War I, he set up relief efforts for starving Belgians and displayed a genius for organization. Celebrated for his achievements, he became the U.S.’s wartime “food czar,” prodding the citizenry to economize and dictating flour rations to bakers. He similarly helped war-stricken Austrians, Armenians, and sundry other European tribes—and later, even Bolshevik Russians.

By 1920, Hoover, 46, was an international hero, famed as “the great humanitarian.”

…

For most of the 1920s, Hoover served as commerce secretary, a backwater that he transformed into a pivotal federal bureau. Governing by fiat, he imposed his will on virtually every nook of American industry. He forced builders to adopt standard-size boards, and airports to install lights on landing strips. Without clear legal authority, he commanded firms to reduce their varieties of products from bedsprings to milk bottles. In 1927, when the Mississippi overran its banks and dislodged thousands of families, Hoover directed the rescue. The next year, he was elected president by a landslide.

Who knew?

Of course, the thrust of the article—and presumably the book—is the lesson to be drawn from both W and Hoover:

But the Hoover story does suggest a contemporary moral. Consistency in Washington is praiseworthy only when it yields a positive result; otherwise it devolves into rigidity and dogma. The tragedy of Hoover was not that he was wrong but that he refused to see it.

Welcome To The Depression

Time to start a new series, this one chronicling the nascent depression.

Here is the link and video I've already posted on Facebook:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And a cheerful post from The Moderate Voice.

Choice cut:

Longtime readers know that I have long thought a depression was inevitable for the US and the world in general because of the enormity of our debt.
…
Meanwhile, the country is seeing record home vacancies. “More than 14 million housing units are vacant. That number does not include an estimated 4.8 million seasonal or vacation homes, most of which are occupied part of the year.” This is completely insane.

And the financial system? It’s still as close to complete collapse as ever for the United States, and in worse shape in developing countries and Europe. I would be very surprised if we didn’t see sovereign bankruptcies (even Ireland and Spain are increasingly at risk) of rather important countries in the next year, bankruptcies that could potentially lock up the European and hence global financial system to the extent it was for a few days last fall — but this time for much longer. I have a feeling the tent cities are going to get a lot larger.

A little something from The UK's Daily Mail:

With America's economy in freefall and its housing market in crisis, California's state capital has become home to a tented city for the dispossessed.

Those who have lost their jobs and homes and have nowhere else to go are constructing makeshift shelters on the site, which covers several acres.
As many as 50 people a week are turning up and the authorities estimate that the tent city is now home to more than 1,200 people.
…
Foreclosure rates last year rocketed by 327 per cent, with up to 500 people a day losing their home.

And a slideshow from MSNBC.

Strap yourselves in, folks, it's going to be a bumpy-ass ride.

Wet Dream, XI

Well, this is quickly becoming a regular feature. The way things look now, I'll be posting so many Wet Dreams that it may finally dawn on me that it's not a dream at all and that I'm actually having sex. (And, right there for all to see, is the moment when a metaphor gets stretched to its breaking point and twangs in the writer's face.)

Anyway...here's a very good analysis of the rise of the modern conservative era post-WWII and its concomitant 21st-century demise. It's a good, long read. Grab your cuppa and enjoy.

Choice cut: 

Conservatism Is Dead
An intellectual autopsy of the movement.
In the tumultuous history of postwar American conservatism, defeats have often contained the seeds of future victory. In 1954, the movement's first national tribune, Senator Joseph McCarthy, was checkmated by the Eisenhower administration and then "condemned" by his Senate colleagues. But the episode, and the passions it aroused, led to the founding of National Review, the movement's first serious political journal. Ten years later, the right's next leader, Barry Goldwater, suffered one of the most lopsided losses in election history. Yet the "draft Goldwater" campaign secured control of the GOP for movement conservatives. In 1976, the insurgent challenge by Goldwater's heir, Ronald Reagan, to incumbent president Gerald Ford was thwarted. But Reagan's crusade positioned him to win the presidency four years later and initiate the conservative "revolution" that remade our politics over the next quarter-century. In each instance, crushing defeat gave the movement new strength and pushed it further along the route to ultimate victory.

Today, the situation is much bleaker. After George W. Bush's two terms, conservatives must reckon with the consequences of a presidency that failed, in large part, because of its fervent commitment to movement ideology: the aggressively unilateralist foreign policy; the blind faith in a deregulated, Wall Street-centric market; the harshly punitive "culture war" waged against liberal "elites." That these precepts should have found their final, hapless defender in John McCain, who had resisted them for most of his long career, only confirms that movement doctrine retains an inflexible and suffocating grip on the GOP.

InauguPorn IX

InauguPorn VIII

InauguPorn VII

InauguPorn VI

InauguPorn V

InauguPorn IV

InauguPorn III

InauguPorn II

A satellite pic of the inauguration. Those swarms of ants are people gathered around jumbotrons. Click here for full size and better res.

InauguPorn I

A collection of front pages from around the world. 

President Obama

He's in!

12 Hours And Counting…

Imminent Front

"The American Revolution did not end when British guns fell silent. It remains an ongoing struggle in the minds and hearts of the American people, to live up to our creed." —President-Elect Barack Obama