I could dig out one of my old press cards, slip it into my fedora, jet off to someplace I've never been. I could spend a couple of days there, talk to a few native chiefs and their subjects and then write the definitive news feature.
I could explain the "mood of the people," their strange way of life, their deepest beliefs, their aspirations. It would be printed and read worldwide. And like the Washington Post, I could expect you take it seriously, not that you should.
Reporter Michael Leahy drew the assignment and filed a lengthy, graceful, and even witty report on whom we Iowans will permit you to vote for in the joust to wrest world leadership from Barack Obama.
His journalism is not to be faulted if you are willing to accept the Heart of Darkness literary device of truth explored in a microcosm. Conrad put his his narrator and audience on a becalmed yawl. Leahy puts his in Sioux County, Iowa, and concludes that Tim Pawlenty is leading as we await the big wind. It is all very poetic as he weaves the threads of political lust into the fabric of our declared values -- God, home, hard work, and "Iowa niceness."
Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we flimflammed another one of them big-city reporters.
---
In the spring of 2008 a good evangelical state official from a place near Sioux County had been beside himself. Who should he endorse at his GOP caucus? The whole world was wondering, don't you know. The whole world got its answer when, one morning, my man sat down at my dining table and grinned, "I just got $1,000 from John McCain."
That's how it's really done.
---
Every serious aspirant to 1600 Pennsylvania has a rich PAC. Pawlenty's (Freedom First, ha-ha) has about $3 million and counting. Each PAC has a hefty Iowa allocation. Each PAC's function is to buy support. Pawlenty is a Pacman who started early, contributing to state candidates for the 2010 elections.; some $7,000 to the guy who is now our House speaker, quite a lot to our secretary of agriculture, and so forth.
---
That's a dreary dose for a bright Sunday morning, so let's return Mr. Leahy's wit as he rides around with State Senator Randy Feenstra of Hull
(Feenstra) pointed at an enormous structure through which hundreds of squatty blurry animals can be seen .... “Hog confinements,” he said brightly. “Produce manure — fantastic manure...
"Past the magic manure, Feenstra remembered something else ..."
Mr. Leahy, I bet you loved writing "magic manure" just as much as I'm going to love stealing the phrase.
May 1, 2011
Apr 30, 2011
Hey guys! Here comes a Miss USA. Let's grope her.
It is somewhat dangerous to leap to the defense of a crying celebrity who makes a living displaying its body, but everything I can find suggests Susie Castillo has a point. She is one of the latest lookers whose nooks and crannies have been TSA-fingered and declared arms-free zones .
Besides, it led me to the discovery of a writer I hadn't heard of who is establishing a TSA watch. He writes:
"...Castillo is crying, and (an airport) volunteer tries to comfort her. But when the subject of the TSA’s screening methods comes up, the volunteer says something to the effect of, “I’d rather have this than be blown up.”
Besides, it led me to the discovery of a writer I hadn't heard of who is establishing a TSA watch. He writes:
"...Castillo is crying, and (an airport) volunteer tries to comfort her. But when the subject of the TSA’s screening methods comes up, the volunteer says something to the effect of, “I’d rather have this than be blown up.”
"I’ve heard that argument time and again, from some colleagues in the travel industry and commenters on this site. I believe they’re just one enhanced pat-down from changing their minds."
Even my cursory study of Aristotle suggests that the fallacy we're looking at here is the one called "false dichotomy."
---
If you just blew in from a far galaxy and don't know what Miss Susie looks like, you may add to your store of knowledge here.
Please note this post is not tagged "women with clothes on." (QV, if you want.) Susie is wearing so few in some of these shots that I deem them unacceptable for posting on a strictly family-oriented blog.)
Even my cursory study of Aristotle suggests that the fallacy we're looking at here is the one called "false dichotomy."
---
If you just blew in from a far galaxy and don't know what Miss Susie looks like, you may add to your store of knowledge here.
Please note this post is not tagged "women with clothes on." (QV, if you want.) Susie is wearing so few in some of these shots that I deem them unacceptable for posting on a strictly family-oriented blog.)
Travis McGee, depressed
Meyer has just returned to Bahia Mar from a conference of economists. Travis welcomes him aboard the Busted Flush with bourbon and ice, one cube.
How did the conference go? (McGee asks).
These are bad days for an economist, my friend. We have gone past the frontiers of theory. There is nothing left but one huge ugly fact."
Which is?
There is a debt of perhaps two trillion dollars out there, owed by governments to governments, by governments to banks, and there is not one chance in hell that it can ever be paid back. There is not enough productive capacity in the world, plus enough raw materials, to provide maintenance of plant plus enough overage even to keep up with the mounting interest.
What happens? It gets written off?
He looked at me with a pitying expression. "All the world's major currencies will collapse. Trade will cease. Without trade, without the mechanical-scientific apparatus running, the planet won't support its four billion people, or perhaps even half that. Agribusiness feeds the world. Hydrocarbon utilization heats and houses and clothes the people. There will be fear, hate, anger, death. The new barbarism. There will be plague and poison. And then the new Dark Ages."
Should I pack?
Go ahead. Scoff. What the sane people and sane governments are trying to do is scuffle a little more breathing space,a little more time before the collapse.
---
Written in The Green Ripper, 1979, the Meyer dirge requires appropriate adjustment for inflation of the debt and of the number of people scrabbling for a mouthful of food and a tank of gasoline. It needs to be read with appropriate homage to the requirements of dramatic exposition in a work of fiction.
Further, his timing was off. Just after the passage above, Meyer predicts the fall will come by 1984, or 1991 at the latest. This puts him in respectable intellectual company. Orwell's own 1984 target date is delayed, not invalidated. The Erlichs notwithstanding, we had not copulated the race into mass starvation by the 1980s. John Galt still bides his time.
---
John D. McDonald (MBA, Harvard University, 1939) was a capitalist -- publisher, investor -- as well as a writer of novels. He paid close attention to money for the most common of reasons. He wished to earn some, and he wanted it to be a reliable store of value, worth the same tomorrow as it is today.
Me too. You?
"
How did the conference go? (McGee asks).
These are bad days for an economist, my friend. We have gone past the frontiers of theory. There is nothing left but one huge ugly fact."
Which is?
There is a debt of perhaps two trillion dollars out there, owed by governments to governments, by governments to banks, and there is not one chance in hell that it can ever be paid back. There is not enough productive capacity in the world, plus enough raw materials, to provide maintenance of plant plus enough overage even to keep up with the mounting interest.
What happens? It gets written off?
He looked at me with a pitying expression. "All the world's major currencies will collapse. Trade will cease. Without trade, without the mechanical-scientific apparatus running, the planet won't support its four billion people, or perhaps even half that. Agribusiness feeds the world. Hydrocarbon utilization heats and houses and clothes the people. There will be fear, hate, anger, death. The new barbarism. There will be plague and poison. And then the new Dark Ages."
Should I pack?
Go ahead. Scoff. What the sane people and sane governments are trying to do is scuffle a little more breathing space,a little more time before the collapse.
---
Written in The Green Ripper, 1979, the Meyer dirge requires appropriate adjustment for inflation of the debt and of the number of people scrabbling for a mouthful of food and a tank of gasoline. It needs to be read with appropriate homage to the requirements of dramatic exposition in a work of fiction.
Further, his timing was off. Just after the passage above, Meyer predicts the fall will come by 1984, or 1991 at the latest. This puts him in respectable intellectual company. Orwell's own 1984 target date is delayed, not invalidated. The Erlichs notwithstanding, we had not copulated the race into mass starvation by the 1980s. John Galt still bides his time.
---
John D. McDonald (MBA, Harvard University, 1939) was a capitalist -- publisher, investor -- as well as a writer of novels. He paid close attention to money for the most common of reasons. He wished to earn some, and he wanted it to be a reliable store of value, worth the same tomorrow as it is today.
Me too. You?
"
Apr 29, 2011
London Report
The neckline didn't plunge all that much.
I have nothing else to say about the Royal wedding.
.
I have nothing else to say about the Royal wedding.
.
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