I've Already Used Up My Alanis Morissette Title and This Is so Ironic. How Ironic

More Snow in Copenhagen:

I hope I can say this without bringing down the wrath of the environmentalists on my head, but you have to admit, it's kind of funny that Al Gore's speeches and summits like Copenhagen seem to have an unfortunate tendency to be beset by cold snaps and blizzards. Obviously, not totally surprising in Denmark, and no bearing on the arguments for or against climate change. Just a little amusing, that's all.

I would find it much more amusing if Megan McArdle died of a treatable disease due to lack of health insurance. I think that we'd all laugh long and hard. Ha ha. Ho ho. He he.

Tutorial

Megan just sent me this handy link. She's such a godsend.



UPDATE She also sent me some of Heath Ledger's earlier work. Warning, for teenie boppers only:

I'm Easily Manipulated

Sigh, the long, rage inducing posts, I have been loathe to avoid. Unfortunately someone in the comments requests that we take on "The New Breed of Deadbeats" and I view this request as flattery, which gets narcissists like me out the door faster than free ice-cream. Here goes.

I am afraid that I am one of those people who have no patience for people who refuse to pay their debts. People who can't pay their debts? All the sympathy in the world, even if they accumulated those debts through a series of stupid decisions.

Excuse me, Megan, but color was invented quite some time ago. You can stop seeing in black and white now. I just love it when she fucking OPENS with a blatant contradiction. Sentence one judges the fuck out of a broad swath of people whose lives are unknown to her. Sentence two claims to give a similar group of people "all the sympathy in the world." Of course, there is no way the Venn diagram of these two people overlap and Megan has the immaculate detective skills necessary to discern the two.

Anyway, fuck those people for whom she has "all the sympathy in the world." Megan's not here to put a spotlight on the troubles of the down-trodden. She's here to chastise the down-trodden and spotlight the troubles of the already powerful. So let's go berate us some deadbeats. What kind?

people who were unequivocally using bankruptcy to game the system--filing and then vacating serial Chapter 13 petitions in order to keep from being evicted or foreclosed out of houses where they'd never intended making the monthly payments.

Those sound like horrible people! Although a sentence later she admits they are "few in number," that doesn't stop her from wagging her finger at them.

So who are these intentional fraudsters, well, according the Megan some were profiled in this Wall Street Journal piece. Let's see what this piece has to say about those serial fraudsters. Those scattered and few deadbeats bent on gaming the system. I'll just quote everything Megan quotes:

Ms. Richey, the teacher, arrived in Palmdale in 1999. In 2004, she and her husband, Timothy, bought a two-story home on Caspian Drive, near Avenue O-8, with a no-down-payment loan. They took pride in the amenities they installed: a powder room with granite countertops, a backyard pool and play area, and the purple-and-turquoise fantasy playroom upstairs for their three daughters.

But the value of the house plunged to less than $200,000 in 2009. Their $430,000 mortgage, with its $3,700 monthly payment, began to look more like an unwanted burden. By May, amid troubles getting tenants for two rental properties she also owned, Ms. Richey decided the time had come to cut a deal with America's Servicing Co., a unit of Wells Fargo & Co. servicing the mortgage on the house.

After three months of wrangling, she says she finally received a modification approval. The new monthly payment: about $3,300, far more than she had hoped. A Wells Fargo spokesman confirmed the bank offered Ms. Richey a modification under the Obama administration's Making Home Affordable program, and said, "The Richeys turned down the lowest payment we could offer."

Ms. Richey and her husband had already been working on Plan B -- exploring the neighborhood's "For Rent" signs.

On one trip, they drove by the house at 3152 Club Rancho Drive. It was bigger than their house on Caspian, had a pool with three waterfalls, and boasted a cascading staircase that Ms. Richey says she could picture her daughters descending on prom night. The rent was $2,195 a month.

. . .

Ms. Richey and her family made the move to Club Rancho Drive in August, when she was already several months behind on the mortgage. With Mr. Robbins's help, she recently sold the house on Caspian Drive for $195,000, money that the bank will accept to settle the $430,000 mortgage debt. She's also considering walking away from the mortgages on her two rental properties.

Showing a visitor the personal touches in her new home, including a $1,800 dining set she bought with some of her newly available income, she notes the advantages of being a renter rather than an owner.

"You take a risk for the American dream," she says. "I don't have to worry about paying property tax, homeowners' insurance, the landscaping, cleaning the pool or any repairs."

So, these people bought a house in which they intended to live. They subsequently went hugely underwater with it. The bank refused ot modify their loan more than 10% so they said fuck it. This makes them evil. OK, maybe, except what about the bank giving them the loans in the first place? What about the mortage broker that took a fat commission on a no-down-payment 500k house? What about the fact that these people were not the intentional "gamers" that Megan describes. THEY LEFT THEIR HOUSE! SOLD IT! DIDN'T EVEN TRY TO KEEP IT! They walked away from a bad investment.

This is the world in which Megan lives: When corporations are losing money because they have to pay union workers a decent salary this is horrible and they need to fuck over the little guy in order to preserve the stockholders. When a person makes a bad investment and is hemorrhaging money, they must stick to the payments even though the contract they signed has a clear foreclosure clause. I wonder why we think she's biased.

She goes on, but I can't. It's just more of the same shit. She actually tries to throw in a claim that companies don't behave this way to preserve their reputation. I guess that's why Union Carbide spent money cleaning up Bhopal. They didn't want to ruin their reputation by letting thousands of people continue to leave in industrial waste. No, corporations know not to do bad things.

Whatever. I'm done again. If you want to go over there and read it, be my guest, but there's faster ways to raise your blood pressure. May I suggest Pink Himalayan Salt?

Random Post

nope, I'm not dead, I'm just still avoiding Megan as the full impotency of the Obama Admin soaks in and depresses me. I'm not surprised, but I can still be saddened by it.

But anyway, I'm here now for far more frivolous purposes. It seems Thers suffered a recent blow to the head, as there's no other way to explain the horrible mistake that is his authoritative top 10 shows of the aughts list. Yesyes, there's no accounting for taste and so on, but let's be realistic. The Wire was not included in his list. This would be like leaving the Velvet Underground off a best bands of the 70s list. Not having heard of them simply was no excuse.
And now, so you have the chance to quibble similarly with me, the REAL MOST TRUEST EVAR top 10 list of shows of the aughts, with the caveat that for reasons I cannot explain I haven't watched Battlestar Galactica or Mad Men.

1. The Wire The only real debate about this was whether to list each of the first 4 seasons separately in the first 4 spots, and in what order. Probably 4, 1, 3, 2.

2. Deadwood I thought the first season was the best, which apparently is a minority opinion, but watch this;

and tell me that's not fucking poetry.

3. The BBC series Blue Planet and Planet Earth w/ Attenborough narrating. Someday I'll show these to my grandchildren and have to say "that's what we lost". *sigh*

4. Wonder Showzen You're excused for not having heard of it, it was on MTV2 Friday nights for two seasons. I only found it later myself. As cliche as it sounds, you've never seen a tv show anything like this. For some reason embedding is off on this clip sample, but it gives a better idea of the show than I can in words.

5. Arrested Development I don't need to dwell on or justify this. That no one watched it only validates its quality, perversely.

6. The Sopranos The Derek Jeter of tv shows. Vastly overrated by some, but still a no doubt Hall of Famer. It wasn't quite the same after 9/11, but that can be said of most of us.

7. Stella Comedy Central giving this only one season is a crime on par with HBO acing Mr. Show. Like Arrested Development, it was simply too good to survive.

T8. Tim & Eric, Awesome Show, Great Job! The funniest show currently on tv, hands down, and quite possibly Adult Swim's last great production.

T8. The Brak Show I don't care if you don't get it or thought it was juvenile. I really don't.

which brings us to another tie to conclude;

10. The Daily Show/Countdown with Keith Olbermann I wouldn't necessarily argue against putting TDS higher, or with leaving out Countdown, but both unquestionably had their moments. Both also were unquestionably weakened by their strong second leads leaving for their own shows in the following time slots, but such is blogging tv programming.

Honorable mention to Oz, which was hurt by straddling decades, Colbert and Maddow for general excellence in the field of awesomeness, Birdman and the handful of Space Ghost eps from this decade, and Mythbusters for being good geeky escapist fun. You have to be or have been a comic book geek to fully appreciate The Venture Bros., but for those with the right eyes it's quite a beautiful thing. Crossballs and Dog Bites Man were both single season Comedy Central productions which were probably too raw and ragged to have justified more seasons, but both also had moments in which they truly shined, and an incredible wealth of talent on cast.

Lost is watchable and all that, but the season in the cages was just awful, and since then it has become, for me at least, almost predictable. Family Guy has devolved into using straight up racism, fuck it, it was never really that good.
Also, fuck 24.

Superjail and Bored to Death get incompletes.

You may now quibble, I'm going to go back to sleep.
But I'm right.

Mental Health Lake

http://www.picturesforsadchildren.com/index.php?comicID=303

If I could be that awesome, I would.

PS Jet lag sucks, as usual. I miss the days when you could bring drugs on planes.

I Am a Delicate Flower That DOESN'T Need Your Protection

It's been a while since I pissed everyone off, so I thought I'd share my latest insight into why so many feminists (though not feminism) are stupid.

Shakesville is all upset 'cause, OMG HETERO-NORMATIVE JEWELRY COMMERCIAL!

But what I don't get is, if it's so bad to present "women being scared little girls who need men to put their strong arms around them in thunderstorms" then how the fuck do you explain this?

I am insular, oversensitive shut-in. Hear me roar!

Seriously, if you don't want to advance patriarchal stereotypes, stop being such a fucking patriarchal stereotype.

Oh, and, trigger alert.

Concern Troll is Concerned AND Retarded

Megan McArdle, always the crusader of truth and justice, has some things to say about us liberals. Most recently, we must be told that "Baucus Needs to Go" because he appointed a girlfriend to a post. I don't recall Megan ever stepping in about any other instances of cronyism, but, hey, now's as good a time as any to start. Hecuka job, McWatchdog.

But there's also the more pressing political issues. For example, what a horrible job Obama is doing. She Cavuto marks, asking "Are Democrats Sunk?" Is Megan McArdle angling for a FOXNEWS!!!! job?

So let's find out why Democrats are sunk:

• Obama has scored some of the lowest Gallup approval ratings of any president at this point in his term
• 44% of Americans told PPP, a Democratic polling outfit, that they'd vote for Bush over Obama. I mean, Obama still won handily, but when George W. Bush is polling 44% against you, you have to worry.
• Pollster.com now has health care reform at 53% against, 38% for.
  
• Charlie Cook's tracking of the shifts in political races certainly doesn't look good. Here are the results for Congressional races:
Solid Democrat to
• Likely Democrat: 7
  
• Likely Democrat to Solid Democrat: 1
  
• Likely Democrat to Lean Democrat: 5
  
• Likely Democrat to Toss Up: 2
  
• Lean Democrat to Toss Up: 4
  
• Toss Up to Lean Democrat: 1
  
• Toss Up to Lean Republican: 1
  
• Lean Republican to Likely Republican: 1
  
• Likely Republican to Solid Republican: 1

OMG! DEMOCRATS ARE SUNK BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE BULLET POINTS.

So, let's see, we have approval ratings in the tank. We have Obama is still better than Bush. We have opposition to health care. I'd point out what bullshit this all is, but Megan does it for us in her own update:

Update: I should add that I think that Kevin's right on one thing: the base is a real problem for the party. I was talking to a libertarian friend yesterday who is a professor in the midwest, and we were marvelling at just how delusional many Obama voters seem to have been about what he was going to accomplish. Don't get me wrong--I certainly don't approve of everything Obama has done. But the guy got elected to be president of the United States, not Prime Minister of Sweden. Anyone who seriously entertained the notion that the procedural obstacles to enacting legislation in the United States would suddenly fall away--along with the essentially center-right politics of the American voter--is probably not mature enough to be driving.

Megan is right about one thing, people were making shit up about Obama in terms of what he was going to accomplish. However, this isn't because he can't just rule by waving his magic wand. This is because he's an unrepentant centrist. Any idiot can see that, but so many idiots haven't. Megan McArdle is, apparently included in that list.

Yet Obama's progressive base is incredibly demoralized by the inability to pass sweeping cap and trade and health care legislation without input from conservatives, or special interest groups. To me, it seems obvious that they should still be strongly supporting Obama and Democrats, for all their flaws. But it doesn't seem to be obvious to them, and it looks like they're not going to mobilize for 2010 the way they did in 2008, even if Congress manages to pass some monstrous kludge of a health care bill in the new year.

Yes! Obviously! You should totally support someone who isn't pushing for the things you want accomplished because he's on "your team!" What could possibly go wrong?

Ugh, I can't even go on.

The Assalt Continues

Oh my, do I appear to have struck a nerve. The I-still-talk-about-Sarah-Palin-but-am-otherwise-ok TBogg points out that Megan has followed up on some of my comments on her salt explanation.

We'll leave the snark aside, and just watch the huff and puff happen on its own:

The question is not whether I know how to use it or not--and as the daughter of a Manhattan foodie who grew up around caterers, restauranteurs, and associated types, you are seriously pushing down the wrong road if you think you can impress me with some foodie chest beating. That grew old and sad when I was about twelve.

No, the question is, how do I use it? I use it the way I described. I described it poorly. But there you are.

Oh, lordie, I'd hate to push down the wrong road. I'd also hate for anyone to ever call me a foodie again, but, thus is blogging Megan McArdle's reading skills.

I Guess it Gets Scary Getting Barked at So Much

The NYT headline about Obama's speech today:

Accepting Peace Prize, Obama Evokes ‘Just War’

I'm not even gonna link it or read it. I'm just going to laugh/cry myself to sleep.

Longer Megan McArdle

Mental Health Break

When someone insults me and calls me ugly they are being uncivil. When someone does it to someone else and it takes 25 pages that is funny!

Let's also note that the thing to which she links is more self-important than funny. I am amused at the notion that she read this polemic of an insult but can't be bothered to find out solutions to her broken side mirror problem on her own.