Obama won the election by throwing cheese curls at the nation.
I never thought I would thirst for the ice water of Hillary Clinton, or hunger for the raw steak of John McCain.
Can the nation live on cheese curls? How long?
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67 comments:
They're pretty tasty! What will the developing nations live on? Soy crisps? Are you sad that the market is increasingly up and that Obama's plan may actually be working?
--Tom
Tom, explain this to me. I've been out of the loop. I don't really care who makes the country functional. My understanding is that the country is falling apart, but I only ever listen to Fox News.
What is Ms NBC saying?
I looked up cheese curls after I posted the comment today and it turns out they're loaded with calories. Light one up and it will burn quite hot. One survivalist actually argued that if you had to pack a light food for a long hike that would keep you going for like ever to pack cheese curls.
The stock market's been rallying the past week.
Who knows how long it will last.
Hopefully for a long time.
I just wish I'd shifted my money to gold in October or so...
Then shifted my money back to mutual funds now.
But say la vee.
La Vee!
And I really hope you are joking about the only listening to Fox News gag.
That would be like only listening to MSNBC.
That'd be real dumb.
well:
the dollar is about worthless...
so
The Feds will just print more
and dumb it further down
just watch Inflation t- a k e offfff...
for every $7 I spend to buy a Toxic Asset... The Feds will cover $97!!!
I think I'll buy 1,000 shares
of MY JUNK BOND FUND from AIG
what crook thought this one up?
Y'all,
it's called a bear rally. They tend not to last.
None of the insolvency problems have been solved -- neither has China's reluctance to finance our debt -- add to that we just created another 1.5 trillion dollars -- that's 1,500,000 million, btw -- and there's no justification for a rally -- other than speculation and the relative lack of bad news over the past week.
Can we live on cheese curls?
YES WE CAN!
I read the Wall St. Journal when I have the time, and I do visit MSNBC, and also some of the other news channels. The local cable package is somewhat skimpy on news programs. I get MsNBC, Fox, and the BBC. Of these, I tend to listen to Fox the most, but the guy I used to like -- Alan Colmes, has had an amicable divorce from Sean Hannity.
I especially liked it when those two would argue together, especially if they had guests representing opposite opinions.
Now they can't stand to be in the same room with one another, like the rest of the country.
MsNBC has only Madcow and Doberman, with exclusively far-left viewpoints.
I can't find anything in the middle any longer, or any talking across the spectrum programs.
The local channels tend to focus on road delays, weather, and sports incidents in particular areas.
That leaves the local paper, which has tiny stories about national programs, usually sent out from AP, and the viewpoint is hard to ascertain, but the coverage is so skimpy that you don't get actual analysis. Wall St. Journal I sometimes pick up, but the editorials are generally slanted to the conservative business community. If they let in a leftist, it would be for the fun of it, like letting some has-been actress write an editorial in favor of the PETA principle.
BBC is good but tends to look at America from a bewildered viewpoint, and with British accents. They are often just breaking down viewpoints and feeding them to the European community in tiny segments.
And of course now across the board there is the fear of being called racist in saying anything at all against this president. I watch Obama himself speak but he speaks in vague generalities (this is what I'm referring to when I use the term "cheese curls") because he is basically a politician, and he's gotten where he is by never taking a firm stand on any specific issue, but raising hopes for all voters, without ever getting down to specifics.
There are all kinds of specifics in the trillions being spent, but they are never enunciated clearly.
The whole thing is being done under the cover of vagueness and euphemisms. I don't think anybody at all is in control of the country right now, and no one really has any sense at all of what's happening.
The only thing I know about this week for certain is that the Obama's planted a vegetable garden on the White House lawn this week.
Exactly what they planted, and who's responsible for what was planted, are from clear to me. I don't even know if a janitor or an aid will be responsible for making sure that the vegetables are watered, and harvested.
Throiugh the glass screen, I can only see that I'm being fed the equivalent of cheese curls.
With Bush, who was so awkward, his real intentions would come through. I always knew where he stood.
With Obama, who is so slick, I have no way of understanding what he really means by anything, and I think he wants to keep it that way, but it's not a leadership style that I'm very comfortable with. It's a front, and he's going to do his real business behind everyone's back, and no one will dare to report on the real business, for fear of losing their job, or just because they can't get close enough to this government to really know anything about it. But if they did know something, they wouldn't communicate it.
I don't know for sure what Obama thinks about gay marriage (it's not clear), what he really thinks about either of our two wars (it's just a mess that he's inherited, but he seems to have no other stand on them, except not to embarrass himself in the way he deals with them, but rather to embarrass his predecessor).
I know he has a problem with bowling, and bowlers, (which tells me that he is an elitist who doesn't like the lower middle class), and I know he planted a vegetable garden. What's in the vegetable garden? Probably a lot of arugula.
Actually, the rally began with Citibank surprising posting a strong profit margin in the last fiscal quarter. The gains yesterday reflected market optimism regarding Obama's announcement that both the federal government and private investors will absorbed up to one trillion dollars of toxic debt. This should ease credit insolvency to a high degree.
So GM, you cannot say "None of the insolvency problems have been solved" as you do not know if this is true. The downside is that we simply printed quite a bit of currency which deflated the value of the dollar, irritating the Chinese. This also caused some ripple effects such as rising the price of oil, which is traded on the greenback.
This is classic Keynesian economics. The Milton Friedman hysteria has taken a back seat. The important item will be the forthcoming regulatory legislation which can make capitalism palatable.
I still haven't had a chance to make may through the Shaviro posts. His posts tend to be dense!
Did Jacques really refer to Michael Hardt as a has-been?
--Tom
Other sources of news: gossip in the corridors, and people who send me thins in my email (a couple of right-wingers from church, in particular), and church circulars.
A journal I really liked is Neuhaus' First Things. I don't have the ability to buy a subscription (way over my budget), but I pick up a copy from time to time in the Barnes and Nobles.
I also get Newsweeks and stuff like that when I go to an eye doctor or a dentist and read through them.
I picked up an issue of Foreign Affairs a few weeks ago and read through it. I thought it was a pretty good centrist publication. I will read it a few more times, and if I like it, I might actually subscribe.
What I find with most news is that the viewpoint determines what gets said, and the viewpoint is not open to any other viewpoint except as something to be viciously sarcastic about.
Foreign Affairs actually has some intelligent centrists writing for it. I can't quite place the slant in the article on Cambodia today, for instance. There is certainly a tone of regret.
I wish that in academia I could find a group that was more or less like me. Wha tI find instead are very crazy Marxists to the left (they don't want borders, they think everything should be shared, they don't want laws, they hate Bush, and that's about it). Then to the far right there are weirdly saccharine Calvinists in a few schools who think we have to institute a militaristic form of Calvinism.
English studies is particularly lame-brained. I'm astonished if when reading a book of lit-crit that there is a single sentence that shows independent thinking on the part of the author.
It's mostly just dreck, and usually violently misinformed, tendentious as heck, and worthless.
I don't like ANYONE writing in English literature studies today. Or at least no one that I know about.
It just feels like rabid dogs around the world foaming at the mouth, with some inkling that Bush is bad at the bottom of it.
Law field isn't too bad. I read Althouse's blog, and get lots of input from that (the comments section are filled with scatological nonsense, but I don't care because I don't read them, it's always the same contributors with nothing to say).
I read Silliman's blog, and now Faville's blog. Faville's blog is shaping up, and has relatively coherent commenters.
There are almost no comments on Silliman's blog now -- one or two per post, and they are usually just people saying hello, or shooting the breeze.
No one actually asks anything, or if they do, perhaps they are getting moderated. But Silliman's lists are fun to look at, as he generally makes at least one link that I follow out.
What other sources of information do other people find valuable, that isn't just cheese curls?
I probably ought to try to find a French publication to read.
Finnish publications are very hard for me to read. I browse through them from time to time, but the big newspapers there don't take hard stands. They generally recirculate or regurgitate positions easily found in the American press. Plus, my Finnish is really not very good, so I only get the translated pieces, and I can read headlines in their major papers, and get the gist of a thing, but not the nuances.
Kirby writes:
The whole thing is being done under the cover of vagueness and euphemisms. I don't think anybody at all is in control of the country right now, and no one really has any sense at all of what's happening.
This was especially true of the TARP money. Much of the plans that Obama has put forth have really not been executed yet. I know there are some 400 pages of regulations governing the expenditure of the money going to states for local projects. Obama is trying hard to curtail the influence of lobbyists and pledged to post every lobbyist request to his office on his website.
Where was your anger about the tens of billions that disappeared into the hands of KB and Root, Halliburton and Bechtel? These funds are unaccounted for concerning the "reconstruction" of Iraq. You seem to withhold these criticisms of Bush.
--Tom
Kirby writes:
"English studies is particularly lame-brained. I'm astonished if when reading a book of lit-crit that there is a single sentence that shows independent thinking on the part of the author."
I love that you write that! I think "professional literary studies" is one of the biggest shams going. Countless inane articles appearing in irrelevant literary journals that are written for no other reason than to get ahead. Prof's should ask the question, does this really need to be written, or am I just posturing to get ahead. Maybe it's not their fault? Maybe it is the entire structure that demands they fill the next issue of Chaucer Studies with further banal articles? There are few good critics writing today. I do like James Wood though! He does not reflect the attitudes of the "critical theory" crowd.
Did you read Robert Kaplan's article in the latest foreign affairs? I would recommend his books to you, they are great! I don't always agree with him, like Kagan, but he always has something interesting to write; moreover, I find his enthusiasm contagious! I think of Bernard Henri-Levy in this light.
--Tom
I was never sure that the allegations against Cheney weren't motivated by the left. He was never actually charged with anything, was he? At least that is to say it never went to trial, did it?
It's hard to know what this flap was about. I think that what happened is that a company with which Cheney was affiliated got funding to supply the troops in Iraq. Some of this money was unaccounted for, and it's assumed that Cheney made off with it, with Bush's blessing.
I've never seen this documented in a neutral source, or in a source like the WSJ. I confess I'm very very busy, so I may have missed it. I'm not worried about ten billion.
A trillion starts to get my eyebrow to raise.
I should look up Bernhard Henry-Levy. I've seen his name. I hope he's not too general. I could read him in the original.
What did Robert Kaplan write about in the last Foreign Affairs?I've read about half the journal and was surprised at how sentient everything in it was.
Evrything else just seems like jello on a plate compared to that journal. It's just all a lot of shimmy.
I want to read the article about China and India's competition over the Indian ocean, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
In terms of politics, it's hard to find a good source of information.
Aesthetics is even worse. Poetics is impossible. It's all junk right now.
I like reading the Lutheran Forum. The writers are not always great writers, but I like shifting through the viewpoints. There is a lot about aesthetics in that journal right now due to the new editress, but she's not a practicing poet, to my knowledge, so the ideas are more or less historically based (whether Durer should have been able to paint himself as Christ, for instance, or whether that's blasphemy).
I'm also starting Ann Rice's new novel about Jesus (told in the first person!) The Road to Cana.
Tom,
If you believe the citibank numbers, I have a several bridges in Jacksonville for you to choose from. . .
Also, Keyensian economics is voodoo.
Kirby,
I've never read that Cheney ran off with the money at all; one of the main issues here is the fact that he still have tens of thousands of option in Halliburton stock. The no-bid contracts made their stock soar. How there was no investigation of this as a conflict of interest is beyond me. We are early on in Obama's administration so we will see about any inquiries.
Henri-Levy is pretty good! I would recommend "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?" which is great journalism executed by a philosphical intellect. Have you checked out The Kindly Ones yet? It's amazing Kirby!
GM- wow I guess you are privy to some deep financial info at Citibank. I guess I will defer to your compelling argument that Keynes is a voodoo queen. Your intellect and informed opinions continue to stun me! Good job!
--Tom
Breaking news: there is a blog that is about Lutheran Bloggers. There are about a hundred blogs on their list. We just received their highest rating (8.5) with this post about cheese curls, and it's already brought in about 200 extra readers for today.
Tom -- is who killed Daniel Pearl a book, or an article? I'll look for it.
Tom: Sorry about the unintentional inclusion of Michael Hardt in my remark about communist intellectual has-beens. I actually don't know his work (only the bit from Shaviro's summary of his talk at the Communism Conference). I'll gladly replace him with a has-been, or better, never-was like Terry Eagleton, who, inexplicably, was awarded a chair at Oxford (further regrets they gave him a job too!)some years back.
I'll also agree with your and Kirby's remarks about "professional literary studies" and their journals. The PMLA journal of the Modern Language Association can stand for a host of literary journals whose single potential virtue is that they can be pulped and recycled into serviceable toilet paper (perhaps the stuff could be marketed under an elegant French brand name, say "Torchecul").
But I did actually read an interesting and useful book on Shakespeare's language recently by David Crystal--"Think on my Words."
Kirby:
I finally took a look at Shaviro's two postings on the Communism Conference dedicated to "The idea of communism." Shaviro's report on the conference was clear and a little pathetic. Communism for Shaviro represents "emancipation" of people today who are "oppressed, repressed, and denied the opportunity to flourish." He enthusiastically approves of Zizek's absolution of what I'd call the "Platonic" version of Marxism the intellectuals at the conference seemed to be peddling from any guilt over the untold hecatombs achieved by Marx's minions. Shaviro did criticize the predominance of "whites" and Europeans among the twelve disciples giving testimonial papers there among whom, he also notes, there was only one of the female gender. On the class composition of the speakers and audiences he was less forthcoming, neglecting to mention the numbers of factory workers, janitors, farmers, peasants, day-care workers, carpenters, swineherds, etc. who eagerly attended. He does dutifully denounce himself as a petit bourgeois communist (though AKA Deroy Professor of English at Wayne State University). He seems like philosopher manque who strives to shine when dropping heavy philosophical shoes before audiences not of actual philosophers so much as lit-crit types, but that's only a guess. For as Pietro (Peter) Aretino said of Jesus: "Sorry, I don't know the man." And, on a melancholy note, Shaviro was sorry he couldn't sing the "Internationale" (apparently many others couldn't as well) because he hadn't learned the words (repetitio mater memoriae, SS; or perhaps next year there'll be a large-screen "bouncing ball" text to the rescue) Of course there was much more of a substantive nature to Shaviro's summary of the conference--I've only touched on a few of the ephemera. He ends his posting on Hardt with the call for more theorizing--yup, just what the world needs right now.
Yes, interesting, funny, pathetic.
It's a book Kirby. Also, War, Evil and the End of History was fascinating. I think Left in Dark Times would resonate with you as its focus lies in many of your arguments: how the left has come to embrace fascist groups like Hamas; ot at least antithetical to your interests in continuing your life.
I agree on Eagleton; I tried to read his book "Literary Theory" (I think that is what it's called) and it was awful.
--Tom
Eagleton is so strangely awful. Just awful beyond anything I can imagine.
I did read a very good book by a literary star at Stanford. It's called in Praise of Athletic Beauty, by Hans Ulrich gumbrecht. Harvard UP 2006.
It's simple and clear, for one thing. I think in many ways the simpler the prose the closer it is to life. He writes about sumo and soccer stars, and it's wonderful, and even lyrical at times. That's in itself a very simple take, but one of the problems of the Marxist lit-stars is that in most cases almost no one can read them. And so they turn themselves on, but no one else.
It reminds me of the moment in Indiana Jones (I think) when a swordsman comes out waving his sword in sixty three ways, and Jones just shoots him and drops him to the ground.
Only in these cases it's more like they trick themselves, and end up shooting themselves in the foot.
It's all very sad.
I do think that sadly enough Obama does have something in common with that crowd. He's mainly air.
Jacques, it was nice to have you chip in again.
And Tom, I think I may have a go at the book you suggest. One of the things I like about the author you suggest is that he's deeply Jewish. He stands for SOMETHING therefore.
I think the communist intellectuals stand for nothing, or just anything, and that it amounts to being fashionable, and mouthing platitudes about how we should all get along.
Hardt is one of the worst writers (as writers) ever to set words on a page. He's just laughable. But he has the right ideology, which is all that counts just now.
None of those people, Zizek included, could write a poem to save their lives. How they managed to so successfully take over English studies is beyond me.
But I think (also sadly) that it's only going to get worse. Shaviro's generation were at least intellectuals who actually read, as were Eagleton's. Hardt has millions of ideas up his sleeve even if they are incoherent and unworkable. But now they are just going to get a generation of activists who carry out their sorry ideas, and get cheese curls elected.
B-b-b-b-b-baby, you ain't seen nothin yet. (BTO ca. 1975)
I switched from cheese twits and Bud-wiser (now a foreign beer so I will NEVER drink it)
to
tortilla chips and Corona
(which has become a domestic-kated brew)
then I called my dope-dealing prostitute
who smuggles heroin into the country by filling a condom with the "hootch"
and then swallowing it
(safe sex)
to later retrieve it in the toilette
"Kate" is very careful to "protect" herself.... and as she calls them her 'students'
she is in grad school working (!) on her pee ache dee in Gov't and Politics
her thesis: what happened to The Gold Standard ?
the only Gold in them-thar-hills is the grass she sells
hey
this method of swallowing the dope in a rubber (I've heard) IS a favorite way for getting it across the boarder one person at a time...
I tried lighting up a cheese twirl but was afraid to inhale
so, here ZI am
dusting off my 10,000
legal books
Gret poste!
Kirby -- if you were a medievalist, I'd say you should check out Al Shoaf (my old prof).
But he's about the only living lit-crit person I know who isn't a rabid marxist -- and his work is on old stuff anyway. . .
Obama and air. . . speaking of, I really wanted someone to call him out tonight on his continued conflation of debt and deficit. Sure he's going to cut the deficit in half. I could cut a 2 trillion dollar deficit down to 1 trillion no problem. But the debt is still going to go up. He's not going to cut the national debt in half.
Oh well. People are stupid.
Glad to hear the blog is getting extra business. I always worry when you begin to despair.
And Tom, jeez, get a brain -- 'taint just me says Maynard was a witch doctor, neither does it take a seekrut muslin to see that Citibank ain't outta da woods jist yet.
But ju gwain keep insultin my brainpan, boyo. Makes you rite smart in comparisun-like.
GM: I'll check out your old teacher Al Shoaf; I used to teach Middle-English Chaucer and do some translating from the Latin.
Yup, GM, after listening to part of the Big O's um-um-ah speechifying tonight, this country may rightly be rechristened as "New Zimbabwe."
GM writes:
"Oh well. People are stupid." Am I to infer that you are a person?
--Tom
JA --
Awesome! Search Amazon (or whichever) for R. Allen Shoaf.
We should trade translations sometime. . .
M
I read Kaplan's piece on the Indian Ocean last night. It was quite excellent, and as you say, Tom, enthusiastic. It's heartening to read people who actually have a background in politics, and in economics, writing about these topics. English is mostly fraught with people who don't know anything about these topics, haven't really studied them, but are armchair enthusiasts without any real sense of what's going on. Thank goodness someone does.
I suppose it would be like reading political scientists talking about contemporary poetry. I just don't know why English writers have abandoned their area of competence for a field in which they are clearly know-nothings. I suppose at best it could be considered Carrollian to have a generation do this. At worst it's just a waste of everybody's time and money.
By the way, Hannity did call out Obama on exactly his promise to cut the deficit in half in precisely the way that you did, GM. A senator from New Hampshire agreed with Hannity on every nuance.
More cheese curls for the nation, thrown at the screen last night. But at least some of us aren't having any of it.
For decades the watchword was to "historicize, historicize, historicize," when dealing with poetry. But Aristotle argued that poetry rises above history. Perhaps the move right now is to "dehistoricize, dehistoricize, dehistoricize," when dealing with poetry, and to instead think again through the poetics, not the history, or whether a given poem budges your rugby scrum closer to its mindless political goals.
I got this idea from reading a recent post on Thomas Basboll's blog, but I don't know if this is what he meant.
Think of the beauty, purely, rising above and beyond history, like the statues of feminine ideals lighting the flames of liberty and war, above and beyond, on many of our Civil War and other egalitarian monuments. The eternal rises above history, and poetry touches the eternal, and is about moments of eternity penetrating into and giving value to the timeline.
I'm glad you liked it Kirby! His books are great as well. I would suggest Balkan Ghosts and Eastward to Tartary, both contain great sections on Romania.
The New Zimbabwe? Don't tease me!
--Tom
Every so often I turn on Rush, just to see what the other half is thinking.
Since Obama came to office, rant radio has gotten a little desperate.
It's harder to be critical than it is to praise. Now they've got four years of squirming, just as the rest of us had eight years of misery under Smirk the Jerk.
American media is dying by degrees.
What will be left of it in 10 years?
We're ripe for an authoritarian take-over.
"It Can't Happen Here."
Don't be too sure.
Likewise, Curtis, every so often I tune in to Ed Schultz or AirAmerica just to see what the other half is drinking. Left-rant radio is a barn-owl hoot!
Can't shed any crocodile tears for the plight of the lock-step big-city lib media papers that are tanking. The smaller-fry Ann Arbor News here will discontinue its paper publication in July (isn't that a dandy "green" contribution to saving forests?).
And if we can just get the New York Times and Washington Post to follow suit, we might just set back the authoritarian menace you speak of, in that they won't perhaps be leaking as much sensitive intelligence information and thereby compromising our country's security as often.
But we'll have to see what President Teleprompter will do about the authoritarian menace. The Zimbabwe finance minister recently had high praise for the Big O for seeming to do things in the ol' Zimbabwe way--pumping out inflationary money, calling out his legions of devotees to roam house-to-house to "convince" skeptics, warning us that his civilian security force (with power equal to that of our military) is on the way, declaring that private companies are subject to government seizure, redistributing wealth to followers--welcome to New Zimbabwe!
My life would be a lot more interesting if I lived in the New Zimbabwe! I would have great material for a novel! Perhaps I would be put in a camp which is always a gold-mine for novels! I tell you those Eastern Europeans had it easy, one police interrogation and bam a novel! Obama is evil incarnate! He reads off teleprompters! What president has ever done this? Although, I'm not sure if Reagan or Bush could read. Did Reagan go to college? I'm not being an a-hole by asking; I really don't know! Actually, I just looked it up. Who knew he went to Eureka College? That sounds a very esteemed institution. If we could just get rid of the press and the federal government everything would be great! Maybe we could just cut taxes for the rich? That would bail us out of this mess. Perhaps we could not tax the AIG bonuses? Do you think Bush would have said anything about those bonuses? Tallk radio is just lame: left or right.
--Tom
Okay, anonymous, why not just eliminate taxes for everyone making over a quarter million a year. That way the people who suck off the melon the most would be expected to pay their own way!
What did rich people ever do that they should support the rest of society, after all?
What I especially like is all the charitable good works and job creation and philanthropy they indulge in. And they do this out of the goodness of their hearts! Who ever asked them?
I say, "off their backs!" Welfare for the rich. It's about time America recognized who the real heroes are here!
These bums skidding along the pavement sleeping under bridges? Fuck no!
These tear-jerking social welfare crybabies? Not on your life!
I'm hoping that this will be one of the places where the two sides can still meet and appreciate each other.
Curtis Faville is a poet in San Francisco, retired from a career as a bookseller (is that right?), who I first met through Ron silliman's blog.
Jacques Albert is a former graduate student at the U of Washington, where my indoctrination likewise didn't take, though we both got our doctorates there.
He's a medievalist, living in upstate Michigan (is that right?).
Tom -- whose last name I can't remember unless it's Black, was a student int he best class I ever had the privilege to teach -- a critical theory course at the U of W for seniors in which I attacked Marxism shamelessly under various guises throughout the semester, supposedly as an introduction to the theory of comedy.
He lives in San Francisco where he's been doing a variety of jobs among which are working in art galleries (is all that right?).
At any rate, I value all viewpoints, especially so long as they do not seek to eclipse all other viewpoints (as silly Max did).
Other interesting details -- Curtis is against foreign intervention in almost all cases.
Tom has travelled extensively through Asia.
Jacques is a Vietnam Vet.
By percentage, would this be a demographic perhaps least likely to hold a Ph.D. in English, and therefore, that should be among those with protected status?
Kirby,
Yep work for an art gallery. I've never been to Asia, though I did spend 3 months in the Balkans. I was only a sophmore in that class... You did attack Marxism quite vehemently and converted me for a time. Now I am a pragmatist, preferring analysis over ideology and rhetoric: even though I just ranted like a maniac in my last post. Remember I am the liberal who supports national defense and thinks there should be mandatory service for all youths as they do in Israel etc... This way the general IQ of the armed forces would skyrocket. Oh and I support the New Zimbabwe. I've already phoned Pelosi and begged her to change California to the New Zimbabwe, imagining it to be similar a new Jerusalem? Perhaps slightly different but still...
--Tom
Tom, I just wanted to give students a fighting chance to break free of Marxism, so that at least there was one alternative. LS exists, too, for that sole reason.
Would Rhodesia be better than Zimbabwe if we could put it back?
they say that Burma was the richest country in southeastern Asia until the socialist takeover and the ruination of Myanmar.
Had we won in Vietnam, South Vietnam would be much like South Korea. There would be universities, and poets, and sports teams, and better sandwiches.
I liked the exchanges we've had all round lately, mostly for their humor; I'm sure we'll be at it (Tom and Curtis included) from time to time, but no need for cage matches over everything. Thanks for the bio updates, Kirby--everything about me is correct except that Emmy and I live in downstate Michigan (Ann Arbor). We may move in a year or so to New Hampshire. I've lived in ten states, a Canadian province, and had several half-year or so stays in Europe--you know, gambling debts, angry husbands . . .
Sorry; meant to include Tom and Curtis after "humor"
Gah! Why is there no edit button?
Zimbabwe would be better as Rhodesia had we left it that way.
It can only be turned back now with lots and lots of guns.
I recommend moving.
It's good to know CF & I agree on non-intervention.
It's interesting to know that Tom and I agree on essentially nothing (he's a militant/pro-slavery-conscription progressive, I'm a pacifist/anti-imperialist/anti-slavery-conscription restorationist).
Are there no poets in South Vietnam?
I know there are Burmese poets who escaped from the blood and violence. Tinfish press has a couple lovely books by such writers.
So I'd venture to say we all like poetry -- but of what sort?
I'm an epic/narrative sort of guy.
y'all?
Poetry is perhaps a common thread of interest again with the exception of Tom, who I don't think has much of an interest in it (though he does like good prose literature). Tom was a critical theory student of fifteen years ago at the U. of Washington. I think he's the only person from that class who's remained in touch. About half of that class were among the best students I've ever had.
Curtis Faville is profoundly aware of and interested in contemporary avant-garde writers from Zukofsky up through language school, but has surprising somewhat School of Quietude interests. He knew Donald Justice, for instance, and writes very well about him.
Jacques Albert is interested in 18th century satire, and in medieval writers, and has a very good command of languages, especially Latin.
GM has an MFA from a southern school, but is interested in writing epic poems, and has produced one about the Indian wars of New York state. He lives in Florida and belongs to what sounds like a somewhat Mennonite Anabaptist church. He is Republican, and yet violently anti-wr, if I can make the oxymoronic statement. For some reason he feels drawn to writing epic war poems. So he writes about war in order to write against it, but when I'm reading his poems, I for some reason see them as celebrations of the martial spirit.
Some other figures that flit through from time to time:
WW is very busy right now. She often appears as Skittles, a cat. She is a libertarian from the west coast and is currently in San Diego. She has aesthetic interests, but her actual experience has been working with the Navy, and in business.
Another poet who shows up from time to time is Helen Losse, also from the south (North Carolina). She is pro-Obama, against war in general, and used to be a Christian rightie, but has changed sides. She publishes chapbooks of poems, one of which was about ML King. She is very concerned about race issues, and stands up now and then for blacks imprisoned and on death row, especially if they happen to be poets. She's white.
George Grady has recently come to us from Ann Althouse's blog, where I occasionally post comments. He's a math professor somewhere, in his late 30s. He is also a Lutheran, and rather devout, and very knowledgeable in that area. George Grady is not, I think, his real name. I think that he leans right, but is reasonable.
I'll try to introduce other people as they appear.
Brett Swanson is a young man still in his 20s, I think, who lives in colorado and makes his living at children's camps where he is a counsellor. He plays guitar, and seems like he enjoys his life. He's been to India recently. He's very far to the left, but he also wants peace, and tries hard to be reasonable. I think I met him through Silliman's blog.
Stephen Baraban, who is a lurker who generally only raises his voice when someone really pisses him off (usually me), is a 50ish peace activist, poet, living on Long Island. He's Jewish, at least in terms of background, so you can sometimes appeal to the case of Israel, in which a more moderate and even centrist self starts to emerge.
Last but not least Ed Baker lives in Maryland, where he's been publishing in the marginal small press poetry world for decades. He might be in his 70s. He was publishing in journals like Athanor in the 60s. His writing has an experimental, open-field quality. He has lots of small books and chapbooks out.
Meg, who occasionally shows up usually to hurl a bomb, is a Muslim who used to live in or near Tyre, a city to the south of Lebanon. When Israel invaded Lebanon a few years ago she was taken on a Navy ship to America. She is in something of the position of an Ezra Pound during WWII, in that she prefers the Islamic side of things in the Christian-Islamic clash of cultures we're currently experiencing. She lives now in Arizona, in a town called Bisbee, I think. It's an old mining town. Alice Notley was born there.
If I got any of this wrong, feel free to correct me, or to add supplemental information.
I think Mennonite-like might be more accurate -- two branches off the same tree, as it were.
So do you read section V (the deaths of Parker & Boyd) of 1779 as being pro-war?
I read the whole poem as being pro-war.
You're right GM, I came out of the closet as a "pro-slavery" advocate 2 years ago. My family and I got together and we constructed an elaborate re-birthing therapy session where I crawled though a long tube slathed in vasoline and came out the other end a tepid sharecropper. Now I whole-heartedly support slavery as a great tool for economic recovery. I emailed Obama about this economic recovery tool, but he didn't really warm to the idea. I think the reason is that this is the "New Zimbabwe." We print currency instead.
--Tom
Kirby,
You more or less have me pegged. I am also married (to a Catholic) and have three young sons. I enjoy reading the discussions about poetry here, but don't have much to contribute there myself. My taste in poetry runs toward stuff like Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Donne. I don't have enough patience with Marxist nonsense to discuss it, so I stay out of that.
Kirby,
Here is some info on wasted money in Iraq I was mentioning earlier:
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2544653120090325
--Tom
Kirby: Your short bios and interest comments remind me to try to get my friend and former colleague at a college in Virginia to join us from time to time. He's a math PhD from Kansas State and a former marine gentle giant who swears by Michael Savage's. He might make a suitable blogging comrade for George. Fear of saying something downright foolish about math issues has kept me (with my ages-old "Cs" in first-year calculus) from even posing or posting questions about your math topics, though I am interested.
Remember I am the liberal who supports national defense and thinks there should be mandatory service for all youths as they do in Israel etc...
"mandatory service"
sounds like slavery to me.
GM: By the way, I haven't forgotten your posting yesterday. I think it's deliciously reactionary of you to prefer the epic form in an age of sound-bite epigrams and short lyrics. I'll check out your site tomorrow for samples. I searched in a few places for info on your former teacher R. Allen Shoaf and read a short review of his "Chaucer's Body" (not "Bawdy," though his book doubtlessly touches on such "queyte" topics).
Perhaps then you're a connoisseur of the epic genre. I've read of course (and taught) some of the major Western ones in translation (Homer, Vergil, Dante, Milton et al--and I haven't read the "Odyssey" in Greek and I fear that my attenuated Greek won't permit me to manage it now), though I haven't yet taken up that curious Renaissance undersea epic (whose author I can't recall), or more than a few long passages of Bailey's hapless 1839 "Festus" or of Hardy's "The Dynasts." One of my favorites is Ariosto's comic epic "Orlando Furioso."
I'm actually a Beowulf-to-Virginia-Woolf generalist who took over teaching Chaucer (and tutoring a few students in Old English according to my abilities) when our regular medievalist moved on. I've done a few translations, including the translation of a
17th century Latin (with a bit of Greek on the side, though as I said I'm no Hellenist for sure) translation treatise. What do you translate?
I did a few modern translations of Mary de Rachewiltz (Pound's daugther) from the original Italian. Some of those have been published (w00t!)
I've played around with a few of the OE riddle poems. I think I'd like to tackle Beowulf and the Pearl Poet once I've got enough publications under my belt to convince someone to advance me for them ;)
I've done two passages from the Odyssey. You can see two of my Italian translations and my Siren's passage from the Odyessey here. Oddly, they chose my siren piece and not my fav -- Penelope's speech about dreams.
That's another one I'd like to do one day -- Fagles' is the best right now, but it can be done better. My proudest moment as a young poet (about 10 years ago, when I did those Homer translations) was having Allen Mandlebaum call me at my frigging house to tell me he liked my tranlsations. Still reeling from that one.
I love TDC, but don't think we really need another translation -- the Freccero facing page is pretty damn awesome. Were I to do any more Italian translating, it'd be Cavalcante.
My epic is based sonically/metrically on a hybrid of Beowulf and blues lyrics and, as Kirby said, set in the Indian campaigns of the Revolutionary war. I send it to you, if'n you like.
M
Jacques, get your friend ot pop in.
I'm a neophyte in things mathematical, but I like to essay the waters now and then just the same. I've been all tied up this week with classes, and elementary school talent shows, and soccer sign-ups, and a job search for the new Spanish professor, but I think things will open up in the next two weeks at least to the point that I will inch forward in my Middle School algebra text. Next up is greater than and lesser than, which is a lot harder than equations, since there's a lot more slippage.
This morning was chewed up by sitting in county Tire waiting for the rattle in the car's underbelly to be diagnosed. The car is ten years old, and is failing in every way, but we can't afford a new one for another two years. The price this morning was ridiculously low: 31 dollars for a some kind of bracket that connects the chassis to the car body. There's a piece of rubber or something that needed to be replaced so that the grinding noise would stop.
P.S. I think Obama should give me a bailout and buy me a brand new Toyota Sienna.
What other minivan is considered excellent?
Does anybody have any ideas?
I'd recommend getting an early to mid-90s volvo -- either a 940 or 850.
The wagons are available with a 3rd row seat, so you can transport up to 7 people.
And you can pick one up for about $3000.
Other than that, Odyssey.
Kirby: I'll try to reach my math friend this weekend, though Emmy and I are bringing home from hospital tomorrow and then caring for me mum after her heart surgery.
GM: I'm impressed by your translations just as I'm impressed by Mandelbaum's praise for your "Odyssey" piece. I regret not having any of my books at hand where we're staying, but when I get home I'll compare the passage with the Greek text to see what you've done more carefully. My translation treatise author tends to view poetry-to-poetry translations as imitations rather than translations proper. Another French translator of the 17th century, Gilles Menage, says that literary translations can be beautiful but not true, or true and not beautiful. We wish they could be both, but . . .
One of my favorites from the age of Cavalcante and Dante is Cecco Angiolieri--I'd like to have another go at translating him someday.
With where things have been the last few years I have recently started reading about the history of the Great Depression. One book in particular, "The Forgotten Man" has shed some great light on what happened. Contrary to what I was taught all throughout high school and most of my college experince so far FDR was always painted as the great wonderful man who got our nation through one of its worst times. However after reading several economic histories regarding the depression I can only come to the conclusion that FDR's polices and attitude only worsened the depression. The things that FDR did that made the situtation worse are the same things President Obama(I refer to him as president out of respect to office he holds not because I'm an Obamanite)is currently engaged in. If our we fail to learn the mistakes of past generations we are doomed to walk down that same road again. I hope that someone wakes up and helps us to move down a better path. But I can hope in one hand and crap in the other and see which get filled first.
That's a grotesque metaphor at the end of your post, Lucky, but the analysis seems spot on. Most of the readers here are poets so you don't have to hit us too hard with toilet metaphors. We're capable of understanding and appreciating more finely tuned comparisons. But you're right (I think) about the overall message in your post. Can you quote a paragraph or two from the book you cite to make your case more clear against FDR?
The markets have to correct themselves, it seems, and then people have trust in them again. Otherwise, they don't, as long as some outside source is meddling with them. I saw the author of the The Forgotten Man on Fox about three months ago, so I have a sense of the gist of what she's saying (if I have the right book in mind).
The downturn began as soon as Obama was elected, I think out of fear of what he would do to market capitalism, and will continue to spiral out of control as long as he meddles with things, and threatens to take over banks, and take over industries, and throws money every which way.
Pelosi's salt marsh harvest mouse might eke out a better living in the next four years, but somehow I think even throwing too much money at a mouse might kill it, especially when the mouse only weighs as much as a dime, and they're planning to dump thirty million dollars on the varmint.
Volvos are expensive to fix, I understand.
Honda Odyssey seems to be the consensus.
After that, Toyota Siena.
Problem is that those cars don't depreciate. I'd like to find a secret mini-van that is durable as heck, and yet no one knows about it yet.
Our Dodge Caravan made it through 11 years of Catskill Winters, but the side doors are now almost rusted through for the bottom eight inches. The car still runs.
Should we just drive it another year, and not worry about the embarrassment? I personally don't care about what the car looks like so long as it runs.
As long as it's still safe, and that it moves forward relatively smoothly, and we don't have any money payments.
(We paid it off over a year ago.)
but we've had to put 1500 dollars into fixing it up over the last six months. The muffler rusted through. The struts went. The shock absorbers are no longer quite so absorbent. It's not yet like riding a wagon train across potholes at 60 mph, but it's moving in that direction.
Apparently if Obama simply spread out his trillion every one in America could have a new car and a new house.
Wouldn't that be more stimulating than throwing millions at coked-up AIG execs?
Kirby would you like to comment on Bush's 750 Billion giveaway? The downturn did not begin when Obama was elected. Where do you get these ideas? The markey cannot correct itself without many banks going under. They are trying to prevent a run on banks by removing toxic debt. Bush was trying to do the same thing. The same danger exists in giving the money back to the people as to giving it to the banks: people horde it and don't spend nor do banks lend. Without the ability to secure loans and credit, many industries go under. If all creditors call their debt, many cannot honor this debt and they default. The balance sheets of banks falter. It is necessary to assist at the moment while ushering in solid regulatory legislation, esp about slicing and dicing debt and selling it in Byzantine packages of which the origin is elusive. FDR and Obama are not the same people. Yes WW2 pulled us out of the depression. Would you like WW3 to assist? If so, I'm sure McCain would have obliged.
--Tom
Dear Lutheran Surrealist,
Thanks for the short bio. I would like to add one thing: I'm a Recovering Lutheran. Currently I'm a Vegan Presbyterian.
Also, I'm not sure what you refer to as "aesthetic interests," but I do like poetry. I seem to recall liking yours.
I wish I had time now to comment on the political spectrum. There is so much I disagree with, and so much factual evidence to refute Obama's assertions....your cheese curl analogy was excellent. I had been thinking Nerf balls, but cheese curls are a much more accurate symbol.
WW
Did WW2 get us out of the depression?
And if so, then how?
I don't know the timing of the Bush giveaway. I do think there are responsible companies who don't overextend their credit. When the big guys go belly up, the responsible companies should be able to recoup the losses, and get bigger, until they themselves become decadent, and hire clodhoppers, who break all the regulatory legislation, and start making bad loans, etc.
I thought bush's 750 billion was largely to cover Fannie Mae, a government loan outfit that was infiltrated by Obama's outfit ACORN, and forced to give out horrific loans to multiculturals, who could never honor the repayment, and yet were legally entitled to the loans, for reasons that McCain stood up against, but was slapped down, again for reasons I don't understand (admittedly most of this information came via Fox News documentaries, and wasn't ever backed up by any other news organization, at least none that I could find, who never seemed to touch upon the ACORN story, or Obama's deep involvement with that outfit).
The whole thing is murky. I see Obama's election campaign, as it became inevitable that he would win, since the whole media seemed on his side, and out to get McCain, as the source of the economic malaise.
But McCain was a bit on the truculent side, and may indeed have escalated the two troubles in the mid-east into a world war.
Which it may become any way. Who knows?
As far as FDR goes here is what Amity Shales says in conclusion to her book, "The Forgotten Man."
"At least it made jobs. Thats the thing we say to ourselves about the New Deal- even as we wonder wether we can replicate such a feat. In fact, these days public sector jobs of the New Deal are looking better and better. We think about those jobs when we hear about market crashes or when political canidates talk about another new deal for our nation's rusting infasrtucture. The levies that failed in New Orleans during 2005's Katrina, the collapse of a bridge in Minnesota- all such problems add a sense of urgency to the general debate about government and owrk. As a nation we are developing what might be called a Edifice Complex, and we are basing it on New Deal edifices...
"The New Deal Government indeed spent a lot. Nowdays, Congress considers a 1 percent increase in budget tabtanimont to treason, or nivana or both. President Roosevelt had no time for paltry 1 percent changes. He nearly doubled the federal budget in his first term."
"Along the way the New Deal created a lot of jobs- millions. Those jobs did indeed cause significant business activity. Industrial production- factory activity, basically came back to 1929 levels around the time of Roosevelt's reelection in 1936. All of these outcomes are taken as evidence of the success of spending."
"But what really stands out when you step back fromthe 1930's picture is not how much the New Deal public works acheived. It is how little. Notwithstanding the largest peacetime appropriation in the history of the world, the New Deal recovery remained incomplete right through the 1930s. From 1934 on - the period when the spending ramped up- monetarty troubles remained. But they could not take all the blame for the Depression. The story of the mid 1930s is the story of a heroic economy struggling to recuperate but failing to do so because of perverse federal policy. The wrost factor was Roosevelt's war on bussiness.. ."
"People became accustomed to a sort of calculus of frustration. The closer the country got to the properity of 1929, the more impossible reaching such prosperity seemed. The 1930s came to be known as the always recovering but never recovered decade. The Dow itself confirmed this pessimistic assessment by stubbornly remaining below the 1929levels through World War II and into the 1950s."
The biggest thing for me was comparing both what President Bush did and what Obama is doing to what FDR did. If it didn't work then what will make it work now?
Wow, Kirb, you really pull'em in!
63 comments!!!
Dear Curtis Faville,
You obviously missed the posts that pulled in over 100 comments.
WW
Yeah, that was back when Jacques was a bit more contentious. He's calmed down lately, which I think is a good thing, but sometimes I miss the ol' linguistic fisticuffs.
I tried for a while to line up at least three far-left and far-right wingers, and then throw a query more or less into the middle on a huge topic like gay marriage where there are no clear consensus opinions that have formed, but where people feel violently one way or another, but don't yet have any clear means of persuading others except raw violence.
I want people to find something more clear than raw violence. There are many issues that people settle simply because they want it one way or another.
Jacques and Emma were more or less far-right, as is GM. And on the far left were Max, and Tom, and some others. Brett was center left, and I was center right, and there were about fifteen other people who came and went.
Curtis is far-left in some areas, and in some areas takes a more conservative stance. Now I see that many of us are like that.
I wanht people to stand up for what they believe and be heard here. Although I think Cathlic societies can't hold a candle to Protestant societies, I like to hear from Catholics who disagree. The legacy of Spanish anti-Reformation inquisition is such that it has left the entire former Spanish empire in an undeniably disgraceful position vis a vis our contemporary world. I think that's undeniable. And yet many Catholic countries (France, for instance) had enough Protestants so that they managed to stay up to date, and never launched into any furious inquisitions, as Spain and to a lesser extent Portugal did.
But I'm totally overwhelmed right now with work, and find it hard to foment problems. It requires a kind of diabolical humor, and throwing a query out that zigzags across opinion, stirring up all kinds of mental distress and need for clarification. I feel this need for clarification all the time on many issues.
Also, I've made some anti-Catholic comments of late, and that used to bring John Hanson rising from the ocean floor with incredible velocity.
But he's giving up the internet until April 11th, when Lent is over.
I'm teaching an extra class right now, and am also on an extra committee (Spanish language professor search committee), so there's a lot going on for about six more weeks.
It's hard to think straight.
But Curtis your blog is doing very well for a beginning blog. My first several months I rarely got more than ten visitors a day.
After about two years I had about 40,000 visitors overall.
Then my wife changed the look of the blog, and I lost the tracking mechanism. From two years ago I have just about hit 100,000 visitors again.
But many of those visitors are going directly to archived posts on Monopoly and on Neuroscience, and one about equality and Lincoln.
The ones who come to the daily post are actually fewer than those going to archived posts which have been receiving viewers directed from other websites who've linked to mine.
Those ARE among my best posts. But they require that I think deeply about something and say something substantial in a few words. I can only graze the surface right now.
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