Wood That Won’t Float

Thirty years after the fact, the Los Angels Sheriff’s Department is reopening its investigation of Oscar nominee Natalie Wood’s death.  After the Black Dahlia murder, her enigmatic drowning off Catalina Island endures as the Southland’s most renowned mystery.   House Republicans, too, remain fixated both on 1981 and dead actors in their sisyphean struggle to recreate the Reagan era.   One can easily overlook, they would aver, the Gipper’s alchemizing our great nation from the world’s largest creditor into her largest debtor by recalling his Ag Secretary John Block’s historic effort to re-categorize ketchup as a vegetable.  As if to channel the Alzheimer-in-Chief, Hill Tea Partiers recently introduced legislation to count pizza and Tater Tots as vegetables in school lunches.  According to an appropriations committee spokesperson, the new rules would not only “prevent overly burdensome and costly regulations [but also] provide greater flexibility for local school districts to repay the $5.6 million that Conagra and other frozen food makers spent lobbying us.”

 

When Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt famously quipped about a sub-committee comprising “a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple,” it failed only by a fraction to eclipse Nixon and Ford Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz’s infamous apothegm: “The only thing the coloreds are looking for in life are tight pussy, loose shoes, and a warm place to shit.”  Since then, society’s attitudes about race and gender (everyone still hates Jews) have thankfully shifted, albeit unequally.  While we no longer a priori rule out a gynic presidency (recall: Hillary’s run), revelation that Sarah Palin porked black basketball player Glen Rice killed her political viability more abruptly than a second-trimester abortion.  Yet for those who condemn Herman Cain for his sexual predations, the fact that both his accusers are white has become distinctly irrelevant.   Now that’s what I call progress.

Rebuttal Redux

While watching the Republicans turn on each other makes for great theater (imagine watching the school bully feverishly claw at his eczema), one can only conclude that we are inexorably doomed.  True, the British Empire (what’s left of it) has remained extant if not vibrant in the wake of the greatest hegemonic ablation in human history; nonetheless, I wouldn’t bet on lightning striking twice.  And I’m not sure if the impending collapse of property values in China (some estimates put the value of toxic real estate loans at 10% of GDP) will accrue to our benefit or demise. The same can be said of the European debt crisis.  It is only a matter of months, now, until the imposition of shari’a law — notably the vitiation of all interest-bearing instruments — will be proffered as the Continent’s only viable path to fiscal recovery.

I don’t feel, therefore, I could do any more damage to the commonweal by offering to revise the churlish and scripted dialog emanating from the recent debates.  When Mitt Romney was chastised by Gov. Perry for employing illegal immigrants to mow his lawn, he fumbled and bumbled a lame retort.  What he should have said is: “Look, Rick, 7% of Texans are here illegally.  Nearly 70% of those are on welfare.  Texas subsidizes higher education for illegals by lowering fees and doling out millions in financial aid.  All this is a magnet, a magnet pulling thousands and thousands of Mexicans across our border.  What the fuck, Rick, you might as well drive a bus down to Juarez and bring them over yourself.”

Panic on the Streets of London…

…Panic on the Streets of Birmingham; I wonder to myself, could life ever be sane again? Neither The Smiths nor British authorities, at least those not yet felled by the Murdoch wiretapping scandal, managed to hang the DJ, though investigations into the Tweets, Facebook Postings and Blackberry Messages which fomented and directed three nights of civil unrest are assuredly under way. It is without dispute that rioting escalated after the shooting death of a crack dealer by police; it’s no longer a mystery, then, that crackheads get a bit tetchy when their supply gets kinked.  The coppers, moreover, claimed they were initially fired upon by the victim, though forensics, predictably, have since shown the gun in question was never discharged.  Nonetheless, it is social media taking the preponderance of blame for the depth and scope of the insurrection. Personally, I remain ambivalent about the locus of culpability; it was (presumably) sentient beings that burned double decker buses and looted jewelry stores. On the other hand, my neighbor , according to foursquare, has just replaced me as mayor of my wife’s vagina.

Not Guilty

Over the last few decades, a posterori DNA evidence has paved the way for hundreds of the falsely convicted to be released from prison.  More chilling is the notion that in three-quarters of these cases, a guilty verdict was obtained, in large part, via mistaken eyewitness identification.  Add to that the myriad convicts who were coerced to confess or who were incarcerated on flimsy circumstantial evidence and you cannot help but be sickened by Casey Anthony’s acquittal.  Justice may well be blind, but she is also stupid.

A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling prohibiting Jared Lee Loughner from being forcibly medicated.  A diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia means, in the eyes of the law, that Rep. Giffords’ assailant hasn’t the mental acuity to defend himself against the state, yet the same system deems him compos mentis when it comes to managing his neuropharmacology.  (That he could legally purchase a handgun is fodder for another missive altogether.) Assistant U.S. attorney Wallace Kleindienst is, as one would expect, counting on these meds to render Mr. Loughner competent enough to stand trial, but, for the nonce, is mired in a legal Catch 22.

What’s Up With Stanley Fish?

Blogging for the New York Times, Stanley Fish slants recent events to support his contention that “You can insult any ethnic group and get away with it, except for the Jews.”  Fish goes so far as to ascribe French support for Dominique Strauss-Kahn to his religion, rather than his nationality or his politics (Socialist).  True, editors at Le Monde painted DSK as a victim, publishing his accuser’s name and breast size in the process, but not because they’re Hymiephillic.  Given that France is one of the most actively anti-semitic countries in the developed world, Fish’ assertion is beyond insidious; it’s a frontal assault.  And patently false.  Recall that Juan Williams (Afro-Hispanic) was fired from NPR after disclosing his fear of muslims, while UCLA student Alexandra Wallace (Blonde, Blue) was force to leave school after her anti-Asian “Ching-Chong” video went viral.  There are numerous other examples (e.g. Brave’s coach Roger McDowell, broadcaster Don Imus) which Fish ignores, but then again, why let facts cloud the argument?

AIG Strikes Again

It is events like this that prompted me to include a section entitled I Told You So in the Askewedview.com website.  To wit: only yesterday did I predict that a sizable Goldman Sachs IPO would end its first day at a loss.  Today the Treasury sold 200 million shares (15% of its holdings) of insurer AIG at $29 only to see the stock lose a buck by day’s end.

Goldman’s involvement as an underwriter comes as no surprise given that board member Stephen Freidman, then also serving as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, negotiated the government’s unprecedented 100-cents-on-the-billion dollar bailout of AIG during the financial crisis of 2008.  Freidman knew much of that money would wind up in Goldman’s coffers, as they were a counter party to many of AIG’s soured bets.  At the same time, the Fed swiftly approved Goldman’s conversion to a bank holding company, doling out a $10 billion capital infusion in the process.  That Freidman contemporaneously bought 50,000 shares of Goldman stock remains one of the most brazen if unpunished acts of financial self-dealing since Joseph Kennedy.

Rapturous

What is to be done with followers of Family Radio preacher Harold Camping?  Having shed all their earthly possessions in anticipation of Saturday’s Rapture, they now stand around with blank expressions.

Frankly, I’m very disappointed.  The Heaven’s Gate disciples, for example, didn’t merely shrug when the alien spaceship failed to appear; they took matters into their own hands. But here we are, more than a year until the Mayan Doomsday, with thousands of hungry and smelly missionaries and nowhere to put them.  Perhaps Habitat for Humanity could cobble together a shanty town out of all those superfluous billboards.

Linkedout

In an IPO led by Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan, Linkedin sold 7.48 million shares (8% of the company) at $45 apiece.  Not bad for a company that earned a paltry $3.4 million last year.  Nonetheless, by the end of the day, the shares had doubled; $350 million in investor profits should have instead accrued to the company.  Next time look for Linkedin CEO Jeff Weiner, despite avowing, “I’m not even thinking twice about [it],”  to hire Goldman Sachs, and for those lucky souls allocated shares in the secondary offering to be smartly under water by the end of trading.