Legion

[Preliminary note: A portion of this post appeared in a comment I posted in response to one of Tom's posts. To those who saw the comment, I apologize for the double dose. It was originally written as part of the draft for this post, and it makes more sense here than it did in the comment.]

I finally saw Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. What follows isn't so much a movie review as my personal thoughts about and reactions to the story it tells.

I highly recommend the film. Even if you aren't interested in business or accounting, it's a gripping tale, and it's an eye-opening portrait of the soulless, amoral financial predators who run our country and control our lives. It will show you what kind of cog you are and in what kind of machine. That applies to people who work for large corporations, but it also applies to anyone who owns stock in such corporations. To a lesser extent, it applies to all of us, who, with our day-to-day lives, (perforce) patronize American big business and help to feed the evil weasels.

And they are evil. Make no mistake about it. They wouldn't be where they are if they weren't evil. To be a corporate executive is to be comfortable with (if not motivated by) the process of generating wealth by ruining other people's lives—even if that means nothing more than acquiring other companies and dismissing the people who have spent their careers working for those companies. (Yeah, I know … "that's capitalism." Forgive me, but where capitalism is not tempered with humanity, I have a problem with it—just as I would with any other system not so tempered.) More often than not, it probably means something more sinister than that. One of the points made in the film was that Enron was surely not an isolated case. Given the paradigm of big business today, a company probably couldn't survive if it weren't pulling some sort of shenanigans. They’ve all got a man behind the curtain who will advise us to pay no attention to him. They may not all be up to things as outrageous and dishonest as Enron was, but they're up to something … and some may be up to worse. Corporate America—"competition in the free market"—has become a giant contest to see who can get away with the most evil. The ones who get away with it lead successful corporations; the ones who get caught (or who aren't sufficiently evil) are failures.

The movie discusses Ken Lay's Bush-family/Dubya connection, but not in as much detail as I would have liked. I'd like to learn more about that. (I haven't yet read the book; I'm guessing it has more information.) For now, suffice it to say that the first President Bush, Grinning W. Monkey (then Governor of Texas), and Ken Lay all used each other to promote the deregulation of the natural gas market, which was the beginning of Enron's journey into fiscal fantasyland. It astounds me that anyone (other than the weasels, themselves, of course) could still advocate an unregulated market. How could anyone be that naïve at this point? All it takes is one scoundrel—a single human being—to bring a laissez-faire system crashing down around us. (For that matter, they manage to do some pretty severe damage even with regulations in place, as we Marylanders know all too painfully: check out the demise, in the 1980s, of Maryland's state-chartered savings and loan system and the subsequent sell-out of our state banks—all of which was caused, essentially, by one dishonest, filthily greedy man.) All it takes is one … and we all know that there are more than one of them out there. The world is full of such scoundrels, alas. As someone once said, call them Legion, for they are many … and they're attracted to the free market as maggots to road-kill. To deregulate is to say, "Let the scoundrels come forth and do their damnedest." And they will. Every time. Guaranteed.

And they did, in the case of Enron, they being (principally) Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow. (There was also a lesser-known player named Lou Pai, who walked away from the whole thing early on and escaped—with millions upon millions of dollars.) There were others involved, including Enron's traders, and including other whole companies, but these were the principal players. (As a demonstration of how scoundrels will always rise to the top in business like scum to the top of a pond, Enron experienced its first "little" scandal before Skilling even joined the company. This was the so-called "Valhalla" oil scandal, perpetrated by two executive officers of the company: Louis Borget, who was then President/CEO of Enron Oil, and Thomas Mastroeni, Enron Oil's Treasurer. They stole millions of dollars from the company. Borget went to prison as a result, and that was when Ken Lay hired Jeff Skilling.)

The film shows how Skilling, et al, borrowed a quaint concept from futures trading known as "mark-to-market" accounting and used it, very simply, to lie. What did they lie about? Enron's profits, which did not exist. While quarter after quarter, year after year, every Enron financial report showed soaring profits, the company was actually losing money hand-over-fist. Lay and Skilling and Fastow (and others) knew it, and they lied about it. To whom did they lie? Everyone. They lied to their employees, they lied to the auditors, they lied to the banks, they lied to the stockholders. The entire time, these bastards were being hailed by business pundits everywhere as "brilliant" and "innovative." They were nothing but lyin' sacks o' crap.

One gets the impression that Lay wasn't as proactively evil as the others, but, even as early as the Valhalla scandal, he saw them for who they were, and he saw what they were doing, and he allowed them—nay, encouraged them—to continue doing it. Some believe Lay's claims that he didn't know what was going on. That would make him the most negligent and irresponsible CEO who ever lived; that level of negligence is evil. Some defend the whole bunch on the grounds that they "believed their own lies," that they honestly believed that their business model would work, and that if they kept up the charade long enough, the reality would catch up with the fantasy. Personally, I doubt that they believed that. (They were "brilliant," after all.) Even if they did, to gamble away the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people in such a cavalier way was evil, in itself. They were either racketeers or reckless fools; in either case, they were evil, and they had no business running a corporation.

Some of the most palpable evil at Enron emanated from the traders. (Again, while the film doesn't soft-pedal this, it doesn't present as much of the available material as it might have.) There are audio tapes of the traders talking to each other via their headsets, and they were openly mocking the fact that they were getting rich by hurting people. They laughed about the energy debacle in California and the damage it did; they made jokes about how they were stealing from "Grandma Millie" and "all those poor grandmothers in California" by inflating the price of energy. They deliberately manipulated plant shutdowns and blackouts to artificially boost the cost of electricity. They didn't merely disregard the devastation they were wreaking on the common welfare; they loved it; they reveled in it; they wished for it; they consciously engineered it, because they knew it was making them rich. And they saw nothing wrong with that. They were proud of themselves. This wasn't a gang of hackers or criminals operating out of some secret hideout; these were the paid employees of one of the largest corporations in the world doing their everyday jobs.

This confederacy of schemers was not an aberration. They represent the current model of American business. As Tom said about the Republicans, American business is ideologically corrupt. Post-World-War-II prosperity combined with good ol' Amurrican philistinism to create a generation of Americans who literally had no grasp of the idea that there are things in life to be valued more highly than money. That idea did not compute for them. They didn't get it. To them, the meaning of life was to make a lot of money, period. The genesis of that mindset may not have been as evil as it was shallow. (Philistinism helps to breed avarice: when one has dismissed human thought and human passion—self-expression, creativity, art, intellect, beauty, affections, philosophy—as having no value, then athletics and material possessions are all that are left to which to dedicate oneself.) Then came their offspring, the demon-spawn of the 1980s known as the yuppies. They sailed the nation's ideological ship further into the sewer with some ancillary tenets: the meaning of life was to make a lot of money, and as quickly as possible, and by any means possible, and with no regard for the impact that process has on the rest of the human race. If you have to stomp on other people to get ahead, stomp away. That was Enron. That's America today. That's the Bush administration. That's much else in the establishment that we don't know about yet.

There are now millions of people who openly admit that this is how they view life and the world. They see nothing wrong with it. Jeff Skilling was one of those people. Bethany McLean (one of the co-authors of the book on which the film was based, who is interviewed extensively in the film) said that Skilling was known to have proclaimed that money was the only thing that motivated people. Imagine being that shallow, that empty, that stupid. That brings me to a quirky personal sensibility: I have a real problem with calling guys like Skilling "brilliant." Even people who recognized the Enron culprits as villains referred to them as "brilliant" or as "geniuses." I'm sorry, but I don't think so. I don't care how clever they were at being evil … that just made them extra evil, not "brilliant." To me, the term "evil genius" is, somewhat, an oxymoron. Failing to grasp the fundamental aspects of humanity—kindness, compassion, community, charity, mercy—and failing to see why these are vital in a civilized world—is a form of ignorance, a form of stupidity. If you're brilliant at being evil, then you're just, well, very evil … but not brilliant. Yes, I understand the semantic flaw in this argument, but I can't help expressing it this way. When it came to living on the Earth, these guys weren't the smartest guys in the room, they were the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet.

Enron didn't manufacture these people like Frankenstein monsters; it merely hired them. They already existed. They're already in the world. They walk among us. Their name is Legion, for they are many. They are running lots of other companies that haven't gone bankrupt: companies that we patronize, companies in which we perhaps own stock, companies that perhaps employ us. (*Ahem.* ) They define our culture's business mentality. At the risk of repeating myself, they run our country and control our lives. This sociopathic brain was transplanted into America's skull in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan and his followers; they were the Doctors Frankenstein of our time. Their monster now lumbers forward with no sense of ethics or morals, and it threatens the entire world.

The devil, himself, might have been aghast at what was going on at Enron. Lucifer, at least, started out as an angel. Enron was born bad. From the film:

When Enron declared bankruptcy …

20,000 employees lost their jobs and medical insurance.
The average severance pay was $4500.
Top executives were paid bonuses totaling $55 million.
Employees lost $1.2 billion in retirement funds.
Retirees lost $2 billion in pension funds.
Enron's top executives cashed in $116 million in stock.

When it comes to American business, Enron's ad-man was the smartest guy in the room: "Ask why."

WHY … WHY … why … why … why …

East Coast Photo-Bloggin'

No great works of art, here, folks, just some snaps of the fall foliage around my little corner of the local reservoir. (Hey … it's a well-earned break from politics, right?) As always, the pictures look better if you click on 'em and visit the Flickr site.


Loch Raven Reservoir, near Warren Road

More below the fold.










Call me a ninny, but was I touched to see this vibrant young tree side-by-side with the old, fallen one:



[That's all, folks]

Molly Sez: Get Out and Vote!

From Molly Ivins's latest column:

May I remind you what this election is about? Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, unprecedented presidential powers, unmatched incompetence, unparalleled corruption, unwarranted eavesdropping, Katrina, Enron, Halliburton, global warming, Cheney's secret energy task force, record oil company profits, $3 gasoline, FEMA, the Supreme Court, Diebold, Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004, Terri Schiavo, stem cell research, golden parachutes, shrunken pensions, unavailable and expensive health care, habeas corpus, no weapons of mass destruction, sacrificed soldiers and Iraqi civilians, wasted billions, Taliban resurgence, expiration of the assault weapons ban, North Korea, Iran, intelligent design, swift boat hit squads, and on and on.

Read the whole thing; the reaffirmation feels good.

[That's all, folks]

Random Flickr-Bloggin' (NiP): 0336

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Originally uploaded by bobandeuni.

No jokes, here ... I just found this picture so charming that I couldn't resist choosing it. Have a nice week, everybody!

Frivolous Distractions: A Movie Quotes Quiz (Game Over)

All of the quotes have been identified! Melville wins.

The quiz is below the fold, with the names of the people who identified each quote. The answers are summarized in the final comment.

Thanks for playing!

*1. Go on home to your kids, Herb!
Identified! By SAP

*2. [Nurse, to patient, addressing the patient in first person plural, as in, "How are we today?"]: It's time we were in bed!
[Patient]: We?? What a nauseating prospect!
Identified! by Melville

*3. [Man, to musician] What do you fellows get an hour?
[Musician] For playing, we get ten dollars an hour.
[Man] I see. What you get for not playing?
[Musician] Twelve dollars an hour.
Identified! by SAP and Melville.

*4. [Man, to a woman who has just apologized for having cried while serving in a professional role] But you're a lover, [character's name omitted], you are a lover of things and of people, so you took up work where you could get at as many of them as possible … and it just turned out that that are too many of them, and too much that moves you. But damn it, be glad it turned out you’re not reasonable and sensible. Have all the gratitude you can that you're capable of embarrassment and joy and are a marathon crier!
Identified! by George.

Three more quotes from same movie --

*4a.[Man who walked off his job five months earlier and has been unemployed ever since]: Five months ago, I was on the subway, on my way to work … I was sitting on the express, same as any morning, looking out the window, watching the local stops go by in the dark, with an empty head and my arms folded … not feeling great, not feeling rotten … just … not feeling. And for a minute, I … I couldn't remember … I didn't know, unless I really concentrated, whether it was a Tuesday, or a Thursday, or … for a moment, it could have been any day. I gotta know what day it is! I gotta know what's the name of the game, and what the rules are, without anyone else telling me! You gotta own your own days, and name 'em! Each one of 'em! Every one of 'em! Or else, the years go right by, and none of them belong to you.

*4b. [A man and a boy are in a discussion with another man (named Leo) about what makes things funny.]
[Boy]: I can imitate the voice of Alexander Hamilton. I do Alexander Hamilton, and [man's name omitted] does a terrific Thomas Jefferson. We got the voices just right.
[The man and the boy continue speaking in their normal voices]
[Man]: Hi, Alex, how're you doing?
[Boy]: Fine. Say, Tom, you should have been in Congress today.
[Leo]: This is ridiculous! You can't do an imitation of Alexander Hamilton, nobody knows what he sounds like!
[Boy]: That's the funny part.
[Man]: You missed the funny part, Leo.

*4c. [Woman named Sandra(the same woman referenced in the first quote)]: I don't have the vaguest idea who I am.
[Man]: It's just that there are all these Sandras running around whom you've never met before, and it's confusing, at first, fantastic! But damn it, isn't it great to find out how many Sandras there are? It's like those little cars in the circus, you know? This tiny red car comes out, hardly big enough for a midget, and it putters around, and suddenly, its doors open, and out come a thousand clowns, whooping and hollering and raising hell!

(Last, desperate hint: One of the four quotes contains the title of the movie.)


*5. Anyway, I was at the hospital this morning, and coming home through the field behind our neighborhood, there behind Vista, I, uh … I found an ear.
Identified! by Melville

*6. Yeah, go ahead … slap me.
Identified! by Melville

*7. When a man takes an oath, he's holding his own self in his own hands, like water, and if he opens his fingers then, he needn't hope to find himself again.
Identified! by Melville

*8. My daddy always said there's only one time a man should be in a hurry: when the cops are coming up the stairs.
Identified! By SAP

*9. Listen, no matter what she says to you, don't answer her back. There's a Confederate pistol in her lap, under her shawl, and she'll kill you quick as look at you.
Identified! by Melville

*10. Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent, and when that happens, it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento, because the painter repented, changed his mind.
Identified! by Melville

* = Identified, answer in comments.

[That's all, folks]

Foreign Terrorists in the U.S.: Like Dinosaurs on Venus?

Carl Sagan was a staunch proponent of scientific method. His arguments in support of that model often included anecdotes about both scientists and laymen jumping the empirical gun and proffering theories that were based on little more than fancy. In one of his Cosmos programs, he discussed how the planet Venus is shrouded by its own thick, opaque atmosphere. That blanket blocks our view of Venus's surface. Telescopes can't see the surface at all. Historically, Sagan said, the murky atmosphere led to all sorts of ideas about what Venus must be like, among them, that the atmosphere consisted of thick clouds; clouds are made of water; therefore, there must be a lot of water on Venus; therefore, the landscape on Venus must comprise vast swamps; those swamps would support tropical and primeval life-forms, such as ferns and dinosaurs. Sagan humorously finalized his point:

Observation? You couldn't see a thing. Conclusion? Dinosaurs!

There's an article by John Mueller in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, in which he advances some skepticism about the presence of foreign terrorists in the United States. (Continued below the fold) Says Mueller:

On the first page of its founding manifesto, the massively funded Department of Homeland Security intones, "Today's terrorists can strike at any place, at any time, and with virtually any weapon."

But if it is so easy to pull off an attack and if terrorists are so demonically competent, why have they not done it?

[…]

One reasonable explanation is that almost no terrorists exist in the United States and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad. But this explanation is rarely offered.

Instead, Americans are told -- often by the same people who had once predicted imminent attacks -- that the absence of international terrorist strikes in the United States is owed to the protective measures so hastily and expensively put in place after 9/11.

Mueller supports this notion by citing the lack of terrorist activity in the U. S. since 9/11, and also before 9/11, when, as he points out, "the United States was doing much less to protect itself." He also counters the many popular explanations for why there hasn't been another terrorist attack at home. Read the whole thing; whether you agree with him or not, it's an interesting read.

What caught my attention in (John) Mueller's article were two passages in which he quotes FBI Director Robert Mueller:

The FBI embraces a spooky I-think-therefore-they-are line of reasoning when assessing the purported terrorist menace. In 2003, its director, Robert Mueller, proclaimed, "The greatest threat is from al Qaeda cells in the U.S. that we have not yet identified."

Think about that for a moment. The greatest threat is from something that may not exist. Then, an encore:

… [Robert] Mueller repeated his alarmist mantra in 2005: "I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing."

The wisdom of Carl Sagan intervenes, here:

Observation? We can't see a thing. Conclusion? al Qaeda cells!

For me, the point of all this isn't so much the debate about whether terrorists are here. For all I know, the FBI could be right. I don't pretend to know enough about it to say one way or the other. For me, there's a point to John Mueller's article beyond asserting that there are no terrorists in the U.S. The other point addresses how we should deal with the possibility. Maybe we should apply a little more scientific method to it. As long as something remains hypothetical, we should treat it as such. Let's not go changing (and breaking) laws and rescinding basic freedoms based on something that only might be true … and for which there is yet no evidence. Continue investigating (within the law), to be sure, but don’t fold, spindle, and mutilate the Constitution over conjecture.

The steps taken by the Bush administration "to protect America" would be objectionable even if the threat of further terrorism in the U. S. were manifest. Those steps become all the more heinous when one considers that they were taken in reaction to a threat that is largely hypothetical. Many would argue that we should lock the barn before the horse is stolen, but that becomes an argument over safety versus freedom. We shouldn't put the safety cart before the horse of freedom. (Here’s how Benjamin Franklin weighed in on that discussion: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.") To those who would say that freedom isn't free, I would say that freedom isn't safe, either. We shouldn't be sacrificing our rights and freedoms (or too many of our tax dollars) to protect ourselves from Venusian dinosaurs -- without even having seen a footprint.

[That's all, folks]

As the Twig is Bent ...

(or, "The Sideways Tree")

[The pictures are all up on Flickr, so you can click on 'em to see much better renditions.]




This is one of my favorite trees in the whole world. I first discovered it about thirty-five years ago, in an off-trail area in one of the sections of the Gunpowder Falls State Park. Back then, the tree was somewhat smaller, enough so that I could climb up the trunk and sit on the section that's parallel to the ground. (My being thirty-five years older is likely another factor in my inability to do that today. )

(Continued below the fold)


I can't imagine how something like this happens to a tree. All I can tell you is that the tree is an oak and is very much alive. Its vertical branches (which became its extended trunk) stand tall with the surrounding trees. The outermost branch—the one to the right in the first two pictures—is dead, but still attached. The other one forks into two "branch-trunks" and soars into the canopy, where its leaves mingle with those of neighboring trees.



The tree is a longstanding landmark for me. I discovered it during an off-trail exploration when I was in my early twenties. I shared it with a lady I loved in the seventies, and we started calling it "the sideways tree." It became our point of rendezvous in the forest. ("Meet me at the sideways tree.") Every few years, I stop by to see how it's doing. I went last week, and for the first time ever, I took a camera. I'm sure others must have seen the tree and must know about it, but I've never seen evidence of anyone else having been there. It feels like a personal secret. And, of course, it reminds me of all those corny old lessons about overcoming the odds, and about succeeding in spite of one's shortcomings, and that to be different, even strange, is to be fascinating and beautiful in one's own right.



[That's all, folks]

Front-row seat, only $5,000

With all the rich dumb guys in the world, I figure I've got a pretty good chance of scalping this baby:




Make your own tickets here; make lots of fun things here.

Hat tip to Tom, and ultimately, Karen.

[That's all, folks]

East Coast Photo Bloggin'

Woodland ferns, Baldwin, Maryland

[That's all, folks]

"I'm still dead!" cried Irony

"We have every right as citizens to expect people who hold high office [to] behave responsibly in that office."
--George W. Bush, October 3, 2006, Stockton, California.

[That's all, folks]

Is There an Echo in Here?

Hey, rock-n'-rollers, it's time once again to hear the number one song and dance on the GOP hit parade! Racing to the top spot this week with his very own cover version of "I Apologize for Letting My Family and Constituents Down" is none other than that kooky Congressman from Florida, moxie Mark Foley! Let's hear how he riffs on this old Republican favorite ...

[That's all, folks]

You Do the Math

"We don't believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans."
—George W. Bush, Scranton, Pa., Sept. 6, 2000


"I'm the decider, and I decide what is best."
—George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 18, 2006


Oops ... my apologies; I forgot to post the source: Jacob Weisberg's formidable compilation of Bushisms on Slate.com.

[That's all, folks]

All Rudeness Aside ...

The Rude One gets serious. Check it out.

[That's all, folks]

Random Flickr-Bloggin' (NiP): 4360

[I went a little crazy this week, folks. Sorry.]



Originally uploaded by supersko

Hey! Watch me do my Teddy Roosevelt imitation! "Mmph ... Bully! Bully, yes, bully! Harumph!"

More silliness below the fold ...



Originally uploaded by The Whistling Monkey

This aging rock-star from the sixties had wanted to promote his old group by putting its name on his hat. Sadly, due to a combination of old-age and long-term drug use, he can't remember for which group he performed.

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Originally uploaded by Another Sunrise

Young Draculotta listened carefully as her father tried to explain what it means to be a vampire.

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Originally uploaded by Mgmax

The extraterrestrial creature known as "The Tangle"—on Earth to avenge the death of its cousin, "The Blob"—disguised itself as a plate of food, and then, when Fred turned his back … "AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!"

---

Fred's career as a photographer was short but colorful. Due to a series of mistakes and misunderstandings, he tended to move quickly from one employer to another.

First, there was the incident when the Meteorologists Association told him to get a good picture of a lightning bolt, and he mistakenly read it as "lightening" bolt:


Originally uploaded by udannlin


Then, the League of European Folklore Enthusiasts told him to try to create an artist's conception of a group of sprites:


Originally uploaded by wonkapete


Then, some social workers told him to do a candid, undercover photo-study of single mothers seeking relief:


Originally uploaded by clif_and_sarah


But his last mistake was trying to take candid portraits at the Annual Hit-man's Picnic:


Originally uploaded by sgfwarnaars

[That's all, folks]

Dubyoogling

[Please, gang, please do not respond to this post by telling me that I have too much free time on my hands. I actually have very little free time, and the interlude I'm about to describe took less than fifteen minutes.]

I wanted to Google the name of our President yesterday (I've forgotten why). Here's what happens when you get old: as I was typing "George W. … ," I was simultaneously thinking, "What a moron!" At the exact moment that I clicked the GOOGLE SEARCH button, I realized that I had unwittingly typed, "George W. Moron" into the text box. I felt stupid for a moment—until Google returned with over two thousand links to websites containing the text "George W. Moron."

Imagine my surprise and delight! (Well, I guess I wasn't all that surprised … but imagine my delight!) You can guess what happened next. I tried searching for a few more epithets that came to mind. Following are the results of my brief session of Dubyoogling.

(Continued below the fold)

(Note: The counts shown are the approximate total links found for each search, as calculated by Google. When Google finds duplicate text on multiple websites, it often omits the duplicates. To see the entire list for a given search, go to the bottom of the last page of results and click on the link that says, "repeat the search with the omitted results included.")

(WARNING: Some of the Google results appear to contain links to porn sites and other non-work-safe stuff. So, once you're on a results page,be careful where you click!)

George W. Moron	2,340 links
George W. Idiot	1,068 links
George W. Ass	1,050 links
George W. Fool	1,010 links
George W. Monkey	918 links
George W. Evil	845 links
George W. Bitch	542 links
George W. Chimp	325 links
George W. Satan	220 links
George W. Ape	175 links
George W. Dumbass	126 links
George W. Stupid	122 links
George W. Liar	89 links
George W. Shit	83 links
George W. Jackass	73 links
George W. Tush	67 links
George W. Asshole	49 links
George W. Clown	46 links
George W. Chimpanzee	39 links
George W. Dickhead	28 links
George W. Bastard	23 links
George W. Fuckup	22 links
George W. Redneck	22 links
George W. Fuckhead	22 links
George W. Prick	17 links
George W. Bonehead	16 links
George W. Butthead	15 links
George W. Shithead	8 links
George W. Imbecile	6 links
George W. Jerk	3 links
George W. Turd	1 link

Qualifications and disclaimers:

The counts are subject to change, of course, as things are added to or removed from the Internet. (For example, in the amount of time I've spent composing this post, the count for "George W. Idiot" has increased from 1068 to 1070.)

Some names had to be disqualified, because they turned out to be the names of actual people (e.g., George W. Dick, George W. Jester).

The numbers should be adjusted downward by one or two percent, due to

(1) links to porn sites

(2) the context of the text. Google doesn't discriminate based on syntax or punctuation. For example, the text "George W. Asshole" could appear in the list where a Bush supporter was addressing a Bush critic, as in, "I voted for George W., asshole!!" Google also includes possessives in the lists; for example, "George W. Ass" is not distinct from "George W.'s ass," as in, "Tony Blair has his head up George W.'s ass."

Feel free to post your own Dubyoogling results in comments.

[That's all, folks]

Molly's Eulogy for Ann Richards

Worth a read.

[That's all, folks]

Random Flickr-Bloggin' (NiP): 1272

[I'm doing this in a big hurry, this week, folks, so please accept my apologies for the lower than usual degree of excellence. That was a joke.]



Originally uploaded by siuyee.com

When there was much curiosity, but no buyers, Frank realized that snake sangria was the latest in a chain of bad marketing ideas.

More below the fold ...




Originally uploaded by day4coffee

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. This Flickr-Blogging mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it."



Originally uploaded by wildcatfin

Among Italy's many tourist attractions are the Leaning People of Pisa.

[That's all, folks]

Five Years Ago Today ...

… I was sitting in a hotel room in Atlanta, Georgia, talking on the phone long-distance to Mexico, trying desperately to convince my Canadian lady-friend of the enormity of what had happened that morning in the United States.

She was a little slow to come around. That’s perfectly understandable, however. She hadn’t heard anything about it, and I must have sounded absolutely crazy while I was describing it—not to mention that the events I was describing were, in fact, crazy. I had experienced her point of view, myself, a few hours earlier, on the plane.

My friend and I had planned a (potentially romantic) adventure together in Mexico to celebrate her fiftieth birthday and our fifteen-year reunion. She’d gone down to Mexico from Ontario the day before; I’d been supposed to meet her there. My plane took off from Baltimore, right on time, bright and early on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. It's creepy … my plane's departure time was 8:58 A.M., right in between the times when the planes hit the two towers in New York. My fellow passengers and I knew nothing about it, of course. We flew south, over Washington, and passed just to the west of the Pentagon. I could see it from my window seat. I even turned to the guy sitting next to me and said, "Look … there's the Pentagon!" Forty-five minutes later, terrorists crashed a 757 into it.

Forty-five minutes after that, our pilot came on the intercom and told us that we were being forced to land in Atlanta. He spoke in that cool, slick, happy-as-a-clam pilot's voice. "There's apparently some kind of terrorist activity in New York," he crooned, as if he were giving the weather report, "And the Federal government has grounded all planes in the United States." We landed in Atlanta. (While we were landing, the pilot actually said, "We'd like to welcome you to the Atlanta area … thank you for flying Continental Airlines!" It was all I could do to keep from shouting, "To hell with that!! I wanna go to Mexico!!")

As soon as the plane was parked at the gate, the stewardess got on the intercom and became hysterical. "They've attacked the Pentagon!" she screamed, "And both of the World Trade Center buildings have fallen down—down to the ground!!" She sounded crazy—I didn't believe it for a moment. I thought she was out of her mind. I remember thinking, "How unprofessional of her to say those things on the P.A. system!" Then, inside the terminal, every TV screen in every waiting area was showing the video-clips of the towers collapsing. It was the most shocking thing I'd ever seen.

The Atlanta airport is gigantic, and thousands of airline passengers had been grounded there. I tried calling home, but the long-distance phone lines were grid-locked. I called an operator and asked to place a call to Mexico, and she laughed at me. Local calls worked, and it was a good thing. With the help of the Yellow Pages, I found a nearby hotel with a vacancy. I was lucky to find it—the airport's information desk was telling everyone that all the hotels in the city were booked. I made a reservation and then went and stood in the line of people waiting for taxi cabs. It ran the entire length of our terminal at Hartsfield airport and wrapped around its far corner.

The first several hours in my hotel room were spent desperately trying to call my friend in Mexico. The whole time, pictures of the devastation in New York played over and over on the television. One of the most terrifying images was of people running down the street trying to escape from the huge cloud of dust that billowed up when the first tower fell. I eventually managed to get through to Mexico and get my friend on the phone. When she answered, I said flatly, "I'm in Atlanta." I figured she must know all about the catastrophe.

She hadn't heard a word about it. "What are you doing in Atlanta??" she asked. "You're supposed to be here in half an hour!"

I couldn't believe that she hadn't heard about what was going on in the States. It's not as if she were in Bora-Bora … Puerto Vallarta is (these days) a big, modern tourist city. "Well …" I sputtered, "It's because of the terrorists!!"

"What are you talking about?"

"The terrorists! In New York! Every airliner in the United States was grounded! There's not a single plane in the air! All the airports are closed! The World Trade Center has been destroyed! Both towers! They also attacked the Pentagon!" It occurred to me that I must have sounded crazy … just like the stewardess on the airplane.

My friend must have thought so, too, because there was dead silence on the other end of the phone. After a few seconds, she said, "Look, if you don't want to come, why don't you just say so?"

As awful as the events of 9/11 were, I laugh out loud every time I remember her saying that. I wasn't laughing at that moment, however. I finally convinced her to turn her television on. She was instantly bombarded with images of the terrorist attack, and then she believed me. I’ve never blamed her for not believing me … after all, I hadn’t believed the stewardess, either.

I was stuck in Atlanta for the rest of the week. For five days, I tried valiantly to get to Mexico. Every day, I would call the airlines and book the flight, and every day, the flights were cancelled. I spent hours and hours each day sitting in that hotel room and talking to my friend on the telephone. She wound up spending the entire week in Mexico by herself. She was alone in a foreign country on her fiftieth birthday. It was Saturday when I was finally able to book a flight back to Baltimore. I had used up all that remained of my paid time off. The hotel bill was $950—$400 for the room, and $550 for the phone calls to Mexico. My friend flew back to Ontario on Sunday. So much for our romantic adventure.

Oh, well … as my friends keep telling me, at least I wasn't killed by terrorists.

The news channels are spending the day today broadcasting memorial events and showing video clips of that terrible day. I can't watch them … they make me too uncomfortable. 9/11 still feels too recent, and I have too much residual confusion and anger over it. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not talking about my spoiled vacation. (I got over that a long time ago.) I'm talking about the attack, itself, and all of its implications. There's anger and sadness on behalf of the thousands of innocent victims, and there's sympathy and pride over all of the heroics of the day. There's anger and disgust at the role that religious superstition and intolerance played. There's even dismay over the loss of that icon of the New York skyline.

But I'm also deeply troubled about the problems with our own nation and our own culture, problems that seem to make it difficult for us to coexist with other cultures—that is, without assimilating them into our own. Many would argue that in general, the United States is a peaceful and generous nation. It is—but mostly to those who submit to being Westernized and becoming a part of the machine that serves Western material greed. America is "the Borg" of cultures. Too often, our "generosity" translates to You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. Despite its benefits and advantages, some people don't want to be assimilated by the Western capitalist Borg. No, I'm not blaming the United States for 9/11. I'm not excusing the terrorists, either. I'm simply saying that with all the anger, resentment, and hatred being directed at us by much of the rest of the world, maybe it’s time we considered the reasons.

Anyway, with all of those thoughts and feelings bouncing around in my head, I'm disinclined to watch the 9/11 retrospectives on TV. They don't seem to address the events in a way that helps me to deal with them. Maybe someday, I’ll get over those discomforts, as well. Meanwhile, let us hope and pray that the world continues to be a place in which anyone who describes such events sounds crazy … and a place in which anyone who hears such descriptions doesn’t believe them.

[Where were you? Feel free to post your own 9/11 stories in comments.]

[That's all, folks]

East Coast Photo Bloggin'

Woodland backwater, Baldwin, Maryland.

(BTW, I now have a Flickr account, so you can click on the picture to see the full-size rendition.)

[That's all, folks]

Random Flickr-Bloggin' (NiP): 6074

Originally uploaded by rogneda

During the store managers' three-martini lunch, it had seemed like a good idea, but in the sober light of the following day, Fred realized that his idea to combine the bath linen department with the fresh meat department had been a bad one.

[That's all, folks]