pity the poor poohbahs

did you know that 500K is not very much money to make in a year?

not according to this asshole, anyway... James F. Reda, founder of a compensation consulting firm, who was quoted in a New York Times story about obama’s restrictions on executive pay. he said it would be difficult to staff companies forced to accept the limits. awww.... poor poohbahs!!!

excuse me, mister reda and mister limp-ball and all the other poohbahs squawking about this... aren't you all the ones who fucked it all up? and five hundred thousand dollars sounds like QUITE a lot of money to ME - and i live very comfortably on no where NEAR that amount. even obama only makes 250,000$. why should the guy who gets paid to dig us all out have to make a pittance besides the people who created the mountain of shit in the first place?

personally, i think the poor poohbahs should consider that maybe there're other rewards besides money for doing what you do and if there aren't... should you really bother to do it? people who really love what they do - do it whether they get paid or not. ask any artist, any writer, any musician. my husband frequently says he'd do what he does for free...and pretty soon, the way the economy's going, he just may be doing that.

because what the lords of wall street and the titans of industry seem to have forgotten, is that it's not about the money, stupid. it's about the love - or it should be. call me crazy, but i think we should consider doing the very same thing in every over-the-top salaried industry.

like sports. we'll cap all the players salaries at say.. oh, a million dollars, and then maybe tickets to see games can be back where they used to be. maybe sodas wouldn't have to cost ten dollars and a hot dog fifteen. maybe t-shirts could be twenty dollars instead of fifty. that way, the people who only want to play for the money or the fame will leave, and the guys who WANT to play ball - who WILL play ball for as long as there are balls to play with... CAN. i'm not saying don't give them a reasonable amount of money - like 500,000 or even a million if you want to be really crazy. but seriously, shouldn't you play a sport because you're so good at it and you love it so much they couldn't keep you off the field? and does anyone reading this seriously believe derek jeter is going to have trouble finding something to do with his time to earn a few dollars when he can't play for the yankees any more?

i think it all comes down to the fact that anything that requires that much money to make a person feel adequately compensated for doing it isn't worth getting done. i can hear my daddy saying, oh honey, these guys really EARN what they get.

yeah, daddy, with all due respect, if that's the case... then i submit there's something seriously fucked up with the world. we've made money the measure of success, and degraded and devalued everything else that makes you really successful. people who love what they do do it anyway. people who only do things for the money shouldn't bother.

people who have a lot of money aren't any happier, as far as i can tell, than people who don't. money is a culturally-created tool that we need to get clearer about it's true value and how it best serves us. because otherwise, as we are dimly coming realize, it makes a terrible master.

i saw a headline...

...that woke up the Cranky Crone in me. (have you all noticed im not terribly cranky these days?) anyways... the headline was:

Bush's farewell address - why didn't Obama watch it?

Because he's up over his eyeballs dealing with the fucking muck Shrub made of things, that's why.

Is the obvious really news?

one more rant

my daughter meg sent me an article posted at the wall street journal's web site. it's about a russian academic named igor who's been predicting that the US has a fifty percent chance of collapsing by 2010. what upsets me isn't that this guy thinks that - it's a free world, he can think what he want, after all, and of course he says stuff like that; im sure it's bought him a very nice life in an otherwise not so nice place - and it isn't the idea of the US collapsing by 2010.

what upsets me is not that the wall street journal has published this information - though i have to ask myself why - but that my daughter thought i'd be interested in the first place.

why'd she send it to me? well... i have a feeling its because the article scared her. and when you are afraid, a young mammal instinctively turns to its parent. this is real fear, too, the real fear that was unleashed by the fudd/barbie campaign. now it's got no platform and it's howling like a wolf in our streets.

i was told just last night by an otherwise intelligent (at least i think she's intelligent) person that we are "in pre world-war-two conditions" and she's gone out and bought herself a gun. this is not someone who lives in an even remote an area as i do. this is someone who lives in a neighborhood - on a street - presumably one full of kids and traffic and ordinary people living their lives. and she's terrified.

well, i'm not. maybe there's a fifty-fifty chance the world could end tomorrow - but i doubt it. maybe there's a fifty chance the us could collapse and there'll be rioting and martial law and fire in the streets... but i doubt it. let's say the absolute worst happens and the world goes dark.

are we such weenies we can't see the potential?

ive been doing a lot of thinking about king arthur lately. my new story is set against the backdrop of an arthurian archaeological dig, and to figure out what they might've found (no more silver cauls for me, thanks!) i've been rereading a lot of my old arthur stuff.

it's interesting to read the history set against the backdrop of THESE dark times, because it does, let's face it, feel like the barbarians might be at the gates. old things ARE collapsing - look at bernie madoff. people are talking about the institutions and the people affected by his fraud, but what about the systemic poison that he and his cronies pumped, all unknowingly into the financial system? don't you think his fraudelent practices, widespread and insidious as they obviously were - had an affect on all of us?

so if we're talking about systems collapsing and walls tumbling down, i'd say there's a few systems that need such serious overhauling i don't see why it would hurt to start over all again with something else. i think there're plenty walls that could stand to come down. every time an empire falls we're given another chance to put something better in its place. maybe instead of cowering on our couches behind our guns and bags of chips, we might think of what that Better Thing might look like.

but the Powers-That-Be - including those who run the wall street journal - have no interest in creating a mindset that encourages people to think of alternate realities in which the Powers-That-Be might not maintain control. instead, people like igor the russian, are paid to say things that are pretty much guaranteed to scare people, and other people get paid to make sure that as many of us as possible know what he thinks.

people gripped by fear are the easiest to control.

so what does king arthur have to do with all this? when the western empire began to collapse in the late fourth, early fifth century CE, britain alone among all the provinces organized itself into an independent state, and held back the barbarian onslaught for nearly a 100 years. this is the real legacy of arthur, why his story shines like gold through the ages, as encrusted with petty aduluteries and incestuous children and fantastical events as it may be.


it's not REALLY about a king and a bunch of knights and round table and a funny old guy with a long white beard who makes magic. it's not even about how personal flaws bring down great leaders though one can certainly relate to them in this way as well.

it's about how when the lights really WERE going off and the barbarians really WERE at the gates, a group of people banded together to preserve all that they could of what they loved about their way of life. it was britain that stood as civilization's last stand in europe, and the irish monks, where the light of antiquity burned beneath their frantic fingers.

and so, i have no doubt that should the worst really happen and should the us really fall - though i REALLY don't believe it will happen: the Powers-that-be dont REALLY want that to happen (they just want us to believe it COULD happen) - out of the chaos will come those of sound mind, strong body and great heart, in whom the spirit of arthur and all he has come to stand for, continues to burn. and maybe something even better, something radically different from anything that's gone before - will be born. maybe we've reached the place at last in our evolution where we can do that. old ways MUST die, in order for new ways to take their place. we must ask ourselves what is it that we cling to from the past, and how well does it serve?

the darkness is coming, you say? i say, all the sooner comes the Light.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

and now one courtesy of my brother john

i'm copying this one my brother john passed along to me....i think this is what we should do if mccain gets elected...

Dear Red States...

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and
we're taking the other Blue States with us.

In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon , Washington ,
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We
believe this split will be beneficial to the

nation, and especially to
the people of the new country of New California .

To sum up briefly:

You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.
We get stem cell research and the best beaches.
We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.
We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You
get Alabama .
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states
pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the
Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a
bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war,
and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If
you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids
they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and
they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's
casketscoming home. We do wish you success in Iraq , and hope that the WMDs
turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's
Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent
of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple
and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of
America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state
dinners), 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech
industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods,
sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Cal,
Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88
percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care
costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the
tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern
Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh,
Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite , thank you. Additionally, 38 percent
of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a
whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the
death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a
theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent
of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then
we lefties.

By the way, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt
weed they grow in Mexico.

Peace out,

Blue States

this is how facism comes... wise words from a wise man

and now, another essay from tim wise:

This is How Fascism Comes:
Reflections on the Cost of Silence
By Tim Wise
October 12, 2008

For those who have seen the ugliness and heard the vitriol emanating from the mouths of persons attending McCain/Palin rallies this past week--what with their demands to kill Barack Obama, slurs that he is a terrorist and a traitor, and paranoid delusions about his crypto-Muslim designs on America--please know this: This is how fascism comes to an ostensible democracy.

If it comes--and if those whose poisonous, unhinged verbiage has been so ubiquitous this week have any say over it, it surely will--this is how it will happen: not with tanks and jackbooted storm troopers, but carried in the hearts of men and women dressed in comfortable shoes, with baseball caps, and What Would Jesus Do? wristbands. It will be heralded by up-dos, designer glasses, you-betcha folksiness and a disdain for big words or hard consonants.

If fascism comes, it will spring from the soil of middle America, from people known as values voters but whose values are toxic, from simple folk whose simplicity, far from being admirable, is better labeled ignorance, from "all-American" types whose patriotism is a dagger pointed at the very heart of the national interest, for it so forsakes all the best principles upon which the republic was founded, choosing instead to elevate and ratify the narrow-mindedness, the bigotry, and the intolerance that also marked our country's origins.

If fascism comes, it will be ushered in by tailgaters at the big football game, by Joe Six Pack, who, upon finishing his sixth beer and belching forth the stench of a mediocre life lived, will gladly announce its arrival, so long as it comes with a steady supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon and hot dogs on the grill, and giant foam hands with a "We're Number 1" finger, some Mardi Gras beads and a good titty bar.

If fascism comes it will dress like a hockey mom, or a NASCAR dad. It will believe Toby Keith to be an artist, Larry the Cable Guy to be a comic, and that the world was made in six literal days less than 6000 years ago.

If fascism comes it will come from the small towns; the ones Sarah Palin, quoting a famous racist and Jew-hater, said "grow good people," and which occasionally do, but which, just as often grow provincial, isolated, fearful and superstitious ones.

If fascism comes it will come from faux populism, from anti-immigrant hysteria, from persons who have more guns in their homes than books, or whose books, when they have them, are principally volumes of the Left Behind series, several different copies of the Bible, and a plethora of romance novels.

If fascism comes it will be welcomed, lock stock and barrel by persons who pray at every meal to a God they visualize as white, whose son they also think was white, and who they believe is going to rapture them all into the sky upon the blowing of some heavenly trumpet, after which point all those who don't think as they think will be burned in an eternal lake of fire. Their vision and version of God is itself fascistic--to love a God who would do such a thing is to love an abusive, sadistic and evil deity after all--so it should come as little surprise that their conception of the state would be equally authoritarian or worse.

If fascism comes it will be at the behest of those who hold a contempt for what they call "book learnin," who prefer Presidents who mispronounce basic words because they make them feel smarter, and who are looking for nothing so much as a commander-in-chief with whom they would enjoy having a beer, or two, or twelve at some backyard barbecue.

If fascism comes it will be interviewed, lovingly, on talk radio, by hosts whose cerebral inadequacies are more than made up for by their bellicosity, their bombast, their willingness to shout down those with whom they cannot argue, for argument requires knowledge, and this is a commodity with which they have not even a passing familiarity.

If fascism comes it will come wrapped in red,white and blue, carrying a crucifix and a shotgun, projecting its own sexual confusion and insecurity onto others, substituting volume for veracity and rage for reason, and landing on the New York Times best-seller list as a result.

If fascism comes it will have a pajama party at Ann Coulter's house, pop pills with Rush Limbaugh, and go gay-bashing with Michael Savage, all in the same weekend. And it will refuse to learn another language or get a passport, because doing either of those would make one cosmopolitan--which is just another word for "faggot."

If fascism comes it will come because a lot of people who aren't like the folks I'm talking about here, won't stand up to the ones who are. Because we're too busy, don't want to make waves, don't want to lose friends, or alienate family. It will come, in other words, because those who know better are cowards, more concerned with getting along, making nice, and being liked than with telling the truth, calling out evil and saving their country.

If fascism comes it will come because of the silence, and thus, collaboration of those who think themselves good, and certainly superior to the knuckle-draggers they can see on YouTube at the McCain rallies, but who in the end are no better and in some ways worse than they: after all, at least fascists stand up for what they believe in. They are telling us, in no uncertain terms what kind of United States they want and are willing to fight for, and maybe even to kill for. But many "progressives," many liberals, many of the so-called enlightened are doing nothing at all.

If fascism comes it will come because those liberals thought voting for Barack Obama was all they needed to do; it will come because they allowed themselves to believe that politics is what a person does every four years, but not at work, and not in the neighborhood, and not at the dinner table. Meanwhile, know-nothings filled with hate, nurtured on racial and religious bigotry and who have overdosed on the kind of hypernationalism that has always proved fatal to those places foolish or craven enough to allow it a foothold, talk of their visions for America at every opportunity. They raise their kids on that sickness, they build churches whose very foundation is rooted in that cancerous rot, and they will think nothing of steamrolling those who get in their way.

So when, exactly, do we fight back? When do we say enough? When do we stand up to our relative or friend who sends us the e-mail about Obama being a Manchurian Candidate or al-Qaeda sympathizer, or the one about the decency of Midwestern flood victims as opposed to those stranded after Katrina, or about how God was punishing New Orleans because of its tolerance of homosexuality, and tell them what we think: namely, that they are a bunch of racist, heterosexist loons, whose friendship or familial connection we neither want nor intend to pursue unless they get help. When do we decide that we love our country and humanity too much to allow these people one more day of decent sleep, one more day of self-assured confidence in their craziness and the willingness of the rest of us to just take it? When do we decide that every irrational, Jeezoid, racist thing that comes from their mouths will be attacked, will be rebutted, until they can no longer take for granted the ability to say any of it in mixed company without being called out?

Why, in the face of the fascism they would surely introduce if given the chance, are we intent on being so nice? Why are we not more offended? Offended not merely at what such persons say about others--like Obama, or Latino immigrants, or whatever--but even about we who look like them? After all, their open exhortations of racism presuppose that they are speaking for us, and that this kind of brain-dead ventilation is something to which all white folks should aspire as though it were virtually the essence of enlightenment.

If fascism comes it will come because we did not see in their actions a sufficient threat, or because we allowed ourselves to believe that it couldn't come, that our institutions were too strong, our people too good, for that to happen. If it comes it will come because we allowed ourselves to believe the rosy and optimistic version of America spun by Obama, without tempering that optimism with a clear-headed appraisal of the way that (sadly) a still huge number of Americans actually think: because we allowed the vehicle of our hopes to outrun the headlights of truth; because we convinced ourselves that we actually lived in the country of our aspirations, rather than the nation we have at present.

And if fascism doesn't come--if, rather, democracy does--it will come because good people said no. It will come because we saw in this moment the opportunity to demand the full measure of our humanity and to pour it forth upon the national soil. It will be because we understood that democracy isn't what you have, it's what you do. But if we are to issue that demand, if we are to stand straight and fulfill the potential we possess to do justice, we had best exercise the option quickly, for the opponents of justice are on the move. They are preparing to enter on the winds of our silence and indifference, and complacency. Let them find no quarter here.

barbie on testosterone

the scariest observation i've heard of sarah palin's interviews is that she sounds smarter than mccain did during the debate.

she's no stupider than anyone else, Beloved opined. sure, she's shallow and vague and doesn't address the issues, but no more so than the rest of them. and she's cute.

i think im sure Beloved was kidding.

the fact that there're people who will vote for a person who thinks its fun to shoot animals from airplanes, because that person is cute is as terrifying to me as the fact that there are people who will vote for a guy who looks and sounds like elmer fudd because they can't bring themselves to vote for a person who happens to have african ancestry. (considering the human animal evolved on the plains of africa, don't we all have african ancestry?)

shoot me now.

it occured to me i better stop saying that.

if elmer and barbie-on-testosterone get elected, i might get my wish.

the wages of Greed

it seems to me there is a simple solution to the current fiscal crisis - a solution so simple i don't understand why someone hasn't mentioned it somewhere else before.

since the current economic disgrace owes much not simply to the Current Administration, but also to the people who made the decisions that got us into this mess - ie the corporate boards and their minions - it seems to me that the people who should foot the bill are ones who caused it.

so how about we simply require that everyone who got a salary and bonus compensation package of over a million dollars in every fiscal year between now and whenever the mess started - oh, say, around six, seven years ago - from any of those corporations or public entities who are now in need of taxpayer dollars, and who obviously thought that these policies and decisions would be Good Ideas - to give the money back. just return it, with interest of course, and i'd even say they could keep whatever ill-gotten gain they've managed to make of it, since presumably they had to pay taxes on it.

i have a sneaking suspicion that if that amount wouldn't net 700 billion dollars, i bet it would come damn close.

it seems to me that this would only be fair. let the people who made the bad choices and the bad decisions that turned out to be So Wrong the world is on the brink of financial collapse pay the bill for being Wrong. they were the people who profited.

and after all, isn't taking responsiblity for Bad Ideas and Wrong Decisions supposed to be part of the American Way?