for those of you who think more government is the answer

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i present for your delectation the following:

in their tireless quest to make life better for their state and thus the world, the california air resources board has announced that it is considering a proposal--the "cool paints initiative," they call it--to ban black and other dark colors for new cars sold here.

see, they figure that, since dark colors soak up more heat, it requires more of our precious natural resources to cool 'em down, and the future of the planet requires their swift action to rectify the situation.

think i'm kidding? no, they're dead serious--you can read about it here.

in the course of my time here on earth, i've come to recognize that there are certain personality types who are compelled by their obsessive nature to meddle, micro-manage and control the details of other peoples' lives--they really can't help it; it's in their dna. you know what i'm talkin about--every family has at least one, and they tend to make everybody's lives miserable.

and if they're ambitious, these people are just the types who tend to go into public service so they can really meddle on a grand scale--you know, protect the public from itself, because god knows somebody has to do it. the conservative ones generally want to regulate your morality, which, annoying as that is, often pales in comparison to what the earnest do-gooder liberal ones set out to achieve.

having lived in california for almost 20 years now, i've had a ringside seat to insanity of this sort for so long that i've almost become numb to it--it takes a humdinger like this one to even move my needle anymore.

scary thing is? this mentality is no longer confined to california--get ready, america.

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update: in response to the uproar this story stirred up, the board quickly backed off its position, claiming its intentions were misconstrued or some such bullshit.

now, if only the public would get as worked up about the important stuff.

why i'm suddenly a matt taibbi fan--and why you should be, too

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frankly, i'd never heard of the guy--i mean, i knew his father from dateline nbc, but i had no idea mike had a son, much less a son who was a well-known journalist [what can i say? i'm behind the curve on lots of shit, living deep in my reactionary cave as i do].

anyway, the other night i was forcing myself with gritted teeth to watch rachel maddow for the second time (you know, because i'd been told i should) when all of a sudden, with the introduction of her first guest, her show became interesting to me for the first time.

seems our boy matt had just written an article for rolling stone on the how and why of the aig collapse, and, shortly after sitting down in the guest chair, made one of the smartest, most concise and to-the-point assessments of the whole mess i'd ever heard.

what he said was this:

If these companies are too big to fail, then they're too big to exist. In a capitalist society, we can't have a situation where all you have to do to stay in business forever is to get so big that when you screw up, the government has no choice but to come in and bail you out.

i've watched the hearings, i've read the articles, i've seen all the posturing and finger-pointing from d.c. to wall street--and nowhere, from no one in any position of power, have i heard it put like that.

and, you know why? because almost no one in our government has even the slightest interest in really fixing things--they just want to paper it over, maintain the status quo and kick it down the road for the next guy.

well, needless to say, i headed off to find matt's article, and it's great--he lays it out better than anyone i've read so far, and in a way that even a non-financial genius can understand.

the money quote:

To fix [the] problem, the government should have slowly liquidated these monster, too-big-to-fail firms and broken them down to smaller, more manageable companies. Instead, federal regulators closed ranks and used an almost completely secret bailout process to double down on the same faulty, merger-happy thinking that got us here in the first place, creating a constellation of megafirms under government control that are even bigger, more unwieldy and more crammed to the gills with systemic risk.

and then he wraps it up and puts a bow on it:

By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future.

because that's the essence of the thing, folks--they want to keep it complicated and opaque; it's easier to rob, steal and fund campaigns with impunity that way.

every american should read this article--and then grab their tar and feathers.

but, of course, they won't.

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since i'm feeling all warm, generous and giving--and just to belabor the point, because when i drink that's what i do--before i head off to bed i'm gonna leave you with one more quote:

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

not matt taibbi this time--that one was henry ford, just shy of 100 years ago.

why i hate politicians

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[yet another in a never-ending series]



ok, so lemme make sure i have this right: today, our glorious secretary of state hillary clinton lays back and spreads her legs for mexico by agreeing with its government's contention that the out-of-control drug violence spewing from their country across our border is at least half the fault of the united states, due to (1) our "insatiable" demand for illegal drugs, and--this one i especially love--(2) our inability to stop weapons from being smuggled into mexico.

yeah.

you may or may not recall (but i certainly do) that the last time we heard from hillary on the issue of mexico was back in 2006 when, as senator, she not only fought the border-fence bill but actively pushed for "comprehensive immigration reform" (i.e., open borders) in an attempt to appease those self-same mexican government officials who were screaming back then that all of our bothersome law-enforcement at the border was impinging upon their citizens' god-given rights to enter and leave our country whenever and wherever the fuck they saw fit.

so i guess what hillary and mexico are now telling us is that the bad, bad united states must find a way to stop all the guns and drugs from indiscriminately going back and forth, while allowing the human traffic to continue unmolested. neat trick, huh?

and this story was, naturally, reported upon by the mainstream press without the slightest trace of irony, let alone scrutiny.

you know, i expect this kind of having-it-both-ways bullshit from corrupt, third-world countries that are circling the drain, but surely not from a high-level representative of the united sta--

oh, wait--for a second, i forgot.