mjh's blog

Some people should not have dogs

I was walking Luke in the neighborhood this afternoon. I heard a couple of whistles and saw a small but muscular brindle pit-bull roaming up ahead, a man following, a second man farther behind. The pit-bull sees us and comes over slowly, head down, licking lips. "Is it friendly?," I ask. As the two dogs circle and sniff, the first man replies, "I don’t know. She’s not mine. I think she belongs to the people across the street." I watch, warily, trying to stay cool. "I don’t want to scare her or she might do something weird," he adds. Weird? Like attack my dog or me? Stay calm. The second man arrives, "I’m sorry, guys, my dumb-ass brother just picks up dogs off the street." He sports the finest prison-style, long baggy shorts falling off, revealing 8 inches of boxer shorts; white tank top; tats and beard that say don’t fuck with me. Just breathe. The thug grabs the dog hard by the collar. "She seems sweet," says the guy who needs new neighbors. "She’s not. She’s already tried to kill two of my dogs. I’m surprised she didn’t attack that dog." WTF?!!! He slaps her flank hard, holding her front legs off the ground by her collar. "That’s not gonna help," says the unbelievably nice guy who needs bars on his windows and doors, "that will just make her try to get away again." I think, speak, say something, confront the ignorant brute, confront the abuser. "She’s going to the pound as soon as possible. I can’t keep her in the yard. She’s already tried to kill two of my dogs.," he repeats. Meth’ll do that to you. Say, "she’ll be better off the sooner she gets away from you." No – we will. Shut up. Stay calm. Let the danger pass you by. Luke just grins and walks on. My hero.

“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress” of being nauseatingly rich. Yeah, it sucks to be in the .001% (HT @edbott)

Don’t elect a rich guy to fix this system.

Bonus Drop Means Trading Aspen for Coupons – Bloomberg

Most people can only dream of Wall Street’s shrinking paychecks. Median household income in 2010 was $49,445, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, lower than the previous year and less than 1 percent of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein’s $7 million restricted-stock bonus for 2011. The percentage of Americans living in poverty climbed to 15.1 percent, the highest in almost two decades. ….

The smaller bonus checks that hit accounts across the financial-services industry this month are making it difficult to maintain the lifestyles that Wall Street workers expect, according to interviews with bankers and their accountants, therapists, advisers and headhunters.

“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”

Bonus Drop Means Trading Aspen for Coupons – Bloomberg

“Coronary Capitalism” – best phrase of the day – you pay for the things that make you sick

Capitalism is a conspiracy: a big stupid clumsy stumbling conspiracy that banks on ignorance quite successfully.

Processed food and coronary capitalism – Opinion – Al Jazeera English [hat tip to dangerousmeta]

Highly processed corn-based food products, with lots of chemical additives, are well known to be a major driver of weight gain, but, from a conventional growth-accounting perspective, they are great stuff. Big agriculture gets paid for growing the corn (often subsidised by the government), and the food processors get paid for adding tonnes of chemicals to create a habit-forming – and thus irresistible – product. Along the way, scientists get paid for finding just the right mix of salt, sugar and chemicals to make the latest instant food maximally addictive; advertisers get paid for peddling it; and, in the end, the healthcare industry makes a fortune treating the disease that inevitably results.

Coronary capitalism is fantastic for the stock market, which includes companies in all of these industries. Highly processed food is also good for jobs, including high-end employment in research, advertising and healthcare.

So, who could complain? Certainly not politicians, who get re-elected when jobs are plentiful and stock prices are up – and get donations from all of the industries that participate in the production of processed food. Indeed, in the US, politicians who dared to talk about the health, environmental, or sustainability implications of processed food would in many cases find themselves starved of campaign funds.

Processed food and coronary capitalism – Opinion – Al Jazeera English

“Anticrepuscular Rays”? I’m still struggling with crepuscular rays.

But I really want to title a poem or blog post “The paradox of lenticular clouds with crepuscular rays.”

APOD: 2012 February 21 – Anticrepuscular Rays Over Wyoming

Pictured above are anticrepuscular rays.

APOD: 2012 February 21 – Anticrepuscular Rays Over Wyoming

Ignore Paul Gessing. He’s a paid curmudgeon.

Several times a month, Paul Gessing earns a paycheck by complaining about some public service or public benefit. He never disappoints his masters (the Koch brothers?).

Most recently, Gessing complained that the money spent on the only bridge over the Rio Grande built to serve pedestrians and bicycle riders should have been pissed away on the federal debt. Normally, Gessing has no need to conduct research, content to cut and paste from his masters’ playbook. In this case, Gessing sent employees to monitor the bridge for a few minutes out of a year. (How many employees does the un-think tank have?) Their conclusion, in part, is that they didn’t see anyone dressed for work, therefore, no commuters. Does Gessing really believe people wear coats and ties on bikes (or to most jobs in Albuquerque, for that matter). Most bike commuters dress for comfort and safety, which eliminates neck ties, monocles, and shoes with little tassels, like those favored by the “Rio Grande Foundation.” No one rides a bike with a briefcase dangling from the handlebars. After a cold commute, they dress at work, and then get sneered at by fat coworkers quoting Gessing. The luckiest can shower at work, as I did 30 years ago, as a bicycle commuter.

Not everyone who commutes by bike does so every day; some ride once a week. Let’s see Gessing station observers on the bridge seven days a week for one full month, 5am to 9pm, everyday. Then, his data will be more than just the crap he has now.

But it doesn’t matter to Gessing that he can’t recognize a bicycle commuter. It doesn’t actually matter to him how many people use the bridge. He doesn’t give a damn about quality of life, the health of the community, or the reputation Albuquerque enjoys as a nice place to live and work. All that matters is he earned another paycheck shooting down the public good and the community on behalf of his wealthy benefactors.

Enough! Save the Middle Class.

ABQJournal Online » How Dare These Rich People Be, Well, Rich?

…We didn’t need to “level the playing field.” It was already level for everyone.

Some people got rich, some didn’t. Fair and square.

But now, in this new age of entitlement, the rich are being blamed for everything. How dare they be rich when we’re not? Well, go out and invent Windows if you’re so unhappy.

Of course that would mean actually doing something instead of complaining about it. But why not give the protesters what they want? Let’s have all the rich people take their riches and close up shop.

Yes, the head of General Motors should take his millions, Standard Oil should cash in, the owner of the Journal should close its doors ,as should all their evil rich cronies and retire on their millions to live the life of Riley.

Then Corporate America would dissolve. Unemployment would flourish. And when the protesters sit back smugly saying they’ve “won,” we can all ask the protesters for a job.

Until the liberal left-wingers get it into their thick skulls that it’s the rich people, not the poor people, that sign our paychecks, we are destined for doom.

SHERRY WENZ
Albuquerque

ABQJournal Online » How Dare These Rich People Be, Well, Rich?

Sigh. Such ignorance and anger. Let’s pretend the playing field once was level. It hasn’t been for a long time. Since the Bush Error, only the Rich have prospered and that was directly due to massive tax cuts plus tax-subsidized bailouts: Welfare for the Rich. Hardly “fair and square.”

Now, many people are fed up and have had enough and they are, in fact, doing something: yelling “Enough!” Our society may survive the deep divisions in political viewpoints, but it cannot survive the economic disparity between the Rich and everyone else, especially as the vital Middle Class gets crushed.

In response to Warren Buffett’s suggestion to raise taxes on the Rich, people like Wenz sneer that the Rich can donate whatever money they choose. I’ll borrow that sneer to say the Rich are free to “close up shop and live the life of Riley.” Like the Rich in other nations without a Middle Class and with outrageous disparity between the few Rich and the many poor, they will hire better security and stick to enclaves that exclude “those people.” I wonder which side of that fence Wenz ends up on.

The protestors do not want wreck the economy further. To say otherwise is either very stupid or self-serving. Apparently, Sherry Wenz belongs to whoever signs her paycheck.

“Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates.”

Republicans Against Science – NYTimes.com

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 28, 2011

According to Public Policy Polling, only 21 percent of Republican voters in Iowa believe in global warming (and only 35 percent believe in evolution). Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates, one that Mr. Romney is determined to pass at all costs.

So it’s now highly likely that the presidential candidate of one of our two major political parties will either be a man who believes what he wants to believe, even in the teeth of scientific evidence, or a man who pretends to believe whatever he thinks the party’s base wants him to believe.

And the deepening anti-intellectualism of the political right, both within and beyond the G.O.P., extends far beyond the issue of climate change. …

Now, we don’t know who will win next year’s presidential election. But the odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect.

Republicans Against Science – NYTimes.com