The Long Road Out

OK, the Occupy Wall Street folks have all been arrested.   And the Republican candidates are all doing everything they can to mimic the stupidity of George Bush--poster child number 1 for the fact that you can't get elected president from the Republican side of our little political system here in the States if you can correctly use a sentence with punctuation somewhere in the middle.  (Perry can't count to three?   Have you all forgotten W???) All of which is enough to make any one with radical or progressive tendencies start to discuss the need to elect Obama.   Blah blah blah.   It makes me glad to live in New York where he'll likely win, so I can actually vote for some one with a vision and capability.   So, to all my friends who are going to start wearing Obama buttons again soon, let me remind you: He's bailed out Goldman Sachs to the tune of over a billion a month, and has done such a bad job of economic leadership that it...

Riots in London again...it seems like the imbalances have gone beyond the point where people will put up with them any more. How long can it be before the decades of neglect turn violent on our streets? On this pathetic trajectory, it seems to be only a matter of time before we're back to NYC in '78. As Sunday's editorial says "this isn't about pensions for firefighters." It's about mass disparity in wealth that's increasing and increasing. Many of us probably thought it was "cute" when Mubarak was threatened from the streets, but we all had to at least realize that we were watching our own future as we read the blog posts and watched the news. I'm scared too--and again to quote the New York Times OpEd, rather than confronting the course that Bush II accelerated, Obama has "averted his gaze." Obama: you¹ve been a pathetic leader at a moment when opportunity was, and is, ripe.

I think this Murdoch thing is similar to the situation that allows Abu Ghraib. In both, a morally debased person at the top established an environment where felonies were supported--and it's only a legal defense to claim that Rupert didn't send out a memo saying "hey, let's wiretap the Queen!"   So, no surprise, that maybe moves him a few notches up there with the other slobs, though at least there’s the benefit that the criminal damage was to a relative intangible asset like "privacy."  (Only a few small notches, I should clarify--any one who's read a Murdoch paper or watched his media already knows that privacy wasn't a big concern, so whether breaking the telecommunications laws is any different from busting in to homes and hotel rooms is a nuance on an already bad story.)   So I guess that puts Rupert Murdoch a tad above, say, the leaders at ConAgra who are culpable as major agents in diabetes and health cost increases.   Or Monsanto.  ...

Hey, how cool is that?   Now you can use your iPad to NOT buy books.   I'm really glad that bottom-feeding Apple has stuck with its policy of not allowing external-facing links in apps, and has stayed firm on the whole idea of taking a 30% cut for access to their platform. Hey you losers at Apple--the main reason I bought your stupid iPad was as an upgraded Kindle.   Now what I have is a downgraded Kindle.  You go!   Keep it up!   Love ya!  (OK, I know I can link via Safari and get to the Kindle store and then sync--but if you're an Apple employee and you're reading this, can't you see how stupid it sounds?)

Note:   I wrote this July 25, 2011.   Am I cool or what.   Jeff Smizek is still the ugliest CEO ever.   And now he's even out of a job!   And United is just...horrid.   So, maybe it's just that I've watched Jeff Smizek on that stupid "welcome" video too often.   Without getting too graphic, he's smarmy and gross.   You can decode every sentence he completes.  Plus it's fun to comment to the person next to you "isn't he a complete turnoff?  Makes my skin crawl!" But ignoring the strong sense of physical repulsion I feel every time I settle into my painful business class seat--I love the ad campaign that's starting to show up for these two poorly run organizations.   Hey, we're doing you a favor, they claim! They aren't.   The Continental Airlines/United Airlines merger creates a monopoly.   In the NY market, prices have gone up more than 60% since they merger was announced, and the same is true elsewhere. My current...