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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.