Bonana-fana-fo-Fataki

Fee fy mo Mataki

Starbucks Nailed Simplicity

While Fox & Co. paraded their disdain for the Starbucks cup, too reductionist for their sensibilities, the business media, honest to god, talked about it in business terms. It's like having your panties in a bunch and going commando at the same time. No mere mortal could possess that much compartmentilization.

There was too much class in the design to suit those who lead with their agenda. The Trotskyites probably railed at the Bolsheviks about the symbolism of re-used, chipped china. A green logo on a Christmasy red cup. Must all your cleverness come with a bludgeon?

Anyway, here in New Mexico we make the perfect use of red and green.

"Eat It"

Tonight, the 25th, we're having a casserole style enchilada with NM red sauce at one end and green at the other. Black beans and leftover latkes.

"Domini, domini, domini..." as The Firesign Theatre once put it.

Good Americans

"Obama bin Lyin'" Herp Derp

Lately, political correctness (PC) has been receiving the same kinds of denunciation as secularism once did. I don't have a problem with either which makes me suspicious of all that agitation.

It also generates enough blow from the reactionary right for the rest of us to question if yet another term has been coopted out of the lexicon (it would help if) everybody uses. PC is as healthy a blend of The Golden Rule, free speech, good manners and statesmanship (where applicable) as one might expect from a country with a Constitution such as ours. I get that it may seem tedious to those who poke and prod for a living.

It's intended to short circuit the manner of getting one's points across, when hateful, disrespectful, ignorant or worse, but not attempting thought control. Perhaps that should have been placed into past tense. As many in the press are well aware, it's being branded as a cudgel to prevent that greater depth of understanding about the events of the day and the participants. Also the locations, times and reasons for it all. (Recalling a free press can make a person feel as old as a party-line windup telephone in quantums of quaintness™. "Hello, Gertie?")

No-Credit-Check Politics

If only we had that 20/20 hindsight beforehand

The science behind advertising and campaigning is taught in our universities. Even in poorer ones. People can and do earn a living off the fruits of its research.

Some favor the dark side. There is no shortage of predation where the trusting meet the unscrupulous.

You see those ads on the independent channels in los boonies for a dealership with national name recognition and a goofy avatar which wants to put you in a 2002 Tercel without running your non-existent credit past a non-existent, ergo: cost-effective credit checking service.

Its business model assumes the repossession of your Tercel and its hasty return to the inventory, rinse, repeat.

Or, should you faithfully make every last payment, you will have paid someone unmercifully to obtain a 2002 Tercel.

For one of the parties, that's a win/win. For you, it's a lesson in the costs of not saving.

Message on Container Police

I Have a 3 Extra Squirts of Caramel in the Foam on Top Mocha Latte for "Merry Christmas"

House Un-American Clinton Committee Adjourns

Tail Gunner Trey

Campaign, American Style

Hackery

I'm no longer a Catholic because of, among other things, Sky King, airing Sunday mornings on NBC right around the scheduled children's mass at St. Anastasia's.

I had yelled at the top of my lungs so often "that's just stupid" that I was encouraged (by special dispensation) to worship at the parish of St. Magnavox along with Sky, Penny, Clipper, Sheriff Mitch and an assortment of villains straight out of the clear blue of the western sky. Not exactly Bertrand Russell, but formative nonetheless.

Religion and politics are just about inseparable; the two things carrying the most warnings of fruitless discussion make up the bulk of everyday civics. The unengaged are blissfully preoccupied with whatever the popular culture is dispensing while the engaged are hard pressed to find what they need to know in any other form.

Time was, capsule summaries of events, references to people by resumé, recollections of scholarly history and so forth were the meat and potatoes of the news business.

In a word: objectivity.

Poor Jason Chaffetz

He can't help it - he was born with a silver speculum in his mouth

"[F]our congressional committees have launched investigations into our conduct - and none are investigating the person behind this fraud - and we are also facing votes to defund our entire organization even though 99 percent of our health centers do not participate in tissue donations." From Cecile Richards's opening statement [pdf] before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on September 29, 2015.

Negative Externalities

Shortcuts are not in and of themselves a bad thing. We rightly trust sources of information because who has the time or resources to latch onto all that our informed consent requires? It's the usurpation of those kinds of shortcuts against which we must guard.

Saying "both sides do it" has become, all too often, a provider of cover. Although there is a sliver of a grain of a morsel of truth to that notion, borrowing from Orwell: some sides do it more than others. And limiting the infinihedron of political positions to merely two sides is surely a "tell" in that regard, regardless of its prevalence. It provides disproportionate cover to the darkest forces within our constitutionally secured self-government.

Small wonder George Washington was the last president not under the umbrella of one political party or another. Though not actually in The Constitution, political parties have achieved the status of national tradition nonetheless.

The lesson of 2000, beyond the electoral shenanigans of Jeb!'s Florida, is that limiting ourselves to two major parties provides the greatest opportunity for triumph to both. We are not coalition builders; we are winners, taking all. Sure if you add the Nader vote to the Gore vote you get something way better than a Bush administration, but you need to file that one away with Boehner's candies and nuts.