The Rich

The "rich" are never people like the Clintons, who acquired their wealth by the sweat of their brows, toiling in the harsh icy policy-mines of Davos. They're not the guys who make a bundle off some clever bit of tech, sell the company, then pledge to spend a fraction of their fortune on outfitting polar bears with inflatable vests to help them survive their imminent inundation in the boiling waters of the Arctic. They're not people like John Kerry, who married his way into a pile of money derived from a ubiquitous condiment; they're not people like Apple CEO Tim Cook, because c'mon, he's gay. They're not the Kennedys, because the Kennedys could strike oil on their Hyannis Port compound, pay African orphans a dollar a day to work the pumps by hand, build a pipeline that ran through a protected Monarch-butterfly preserve, and the media would still hang halos over their heads because JFK was martyred in Dallas by a free-floating toxic cloud of right-wing hatred that inhabited the brain of a well-meaning Marxist.

These are rich people, but they're good rich people, because you can imagine any one of them writing a check to Planned Parenthood with the words "keep up the excellent mammograms" in the memo line.

-- James Lileks

Eulogy for a good dog.

If this does not make you cry ...

It’s been such a long slow decline; normal gets redefined every month or so. But two weeks ago his bladder mastery began to escape him. I worked at home so I could hear the clank of his dog tags when he decided to get up and head for the door, as the old instincts rose up and required the civilized response. Didn’t always make it in time. Lots of swabbing the deck. Sponge baths. Spraying the carpet, washing his bed. But you don’t think “this is annoying. Let’s put him down.” If anything you just make sure he gets outside.

Last Thursday: a day and a week before the appointed time, he went out at 12:45 AM as is his wont, miserable wind whipping the temps down to minus 10. Snout to the wind to check the news. He decides to walk into the yard to do what needed to be done - I watched from the door, expecting him to get stuck. Last year there were dog prints in the snow all around the gazebo, but close; the year before, the orbit was further out. This year it’s back and forth by the stairs, like an old man who shuttles between desk and bed.

He headed to the back gate, a new objective in recent weeks. Last week he found an open gate and traversed the long march from back gate to front, alone in the snow. This week he stops and turns back. He heads into the snow, heads north, and I realize this means going downstairs for the boots because he’s going to get hopelessly becalmed in the drifts. Bring him inside. Hug. I know, I know. Think: one week. Too soon. Think: overdue. Guilt. Make the usual excuses as I carried him back in. That must be cold. Let’s get you warm. I listen for a grunt of discomfort when I pick him up, a soft whine if I’ve pressed a tender spot. Nothing. I lay him back on the bed and when I check a while later, he looks up with the same expression of patience and forbearance.

Whatever you have asked him to bear, he bears it.

You’re surprised to realize that’s what you’ve done. You’ve been waiting for a signal. He’s been waiting for permission.

Please read the whole thing.

‘Question Authority’? Dude, That’s sooo 2008

James Lileks is a great writer.  I hope he finds a permanent home at Pajamas Media.  A sample:

If anyone wanted to make some money, they’d come up with a new bumper sticker for people who have QUESTION AUTHORITY plastered on their car. It would read HOW DARE YOU, and would go right in front of the old one.


The left’s amnesia over eight years of anti-Bush rhetoric is one thing; their willful contortion of tea party ideas is quite another. ... Politicians get up and say things designed to cause mass facepalming among the faithful, like when someone says the president should go back to Africa. But Sarah Palin ought to be able to use strong metaphors without someone accusing her of wanting to lead a militia into Congress. It’s called a “figure of speech.” Unless you believe that Martin Luther King was sleepwalking when he said “I have a dream.” Present tense! Words mean things!

James Lileks: Bizarro World

In Bizarro World, illegal foreign combatants are granted constitutional rights; in Bizarro World, people react to high gas prices and energy shortfalls by refusing to boost domestic capacity.

You have John McCain nixing ANWAR drilling and lending his sonorous monotone to cap-and-trade; you have Obama noting that gas prices rose too quickly, which presumably means he would have favored a gradual rise to ninety-buck-a-tank fill-ups; you have Speaker Pelosi vamping on the popular memes:

1. We have oil men in the White House. Perhaps she meant to imply that they’re more concerned with their old industry connections than the consumer, the rate of inflation, the impact on the economy, their legacy, and the health and status of the United States. Goes without saying, I guess. It is a hardy perennial. Remember, there are three men in Texas who have a lever that controls the price of oil, and they should be brought in for a stern grilling before Congress. On an unrelated note: Hugo Chavez is a puckish figure whose appeal to the downtrodden is understandable, given American meddling in the region; Iranian state oil production is irrelevant to everything, Saudi Arabia can only be discussed in context to its ties to the Bush family, and Mexico's oil industry is off-limits as well, lest it somehow bolster the arguments of xenophobic racists who oppose unlimited immigration. Pay no attention to the oligarchs behind the curtain. Look at the cartoon figure with the ten-gallon hat and the steer-horns on his stretch Cadillac. Boo! Hiss! Goldstein!

2. We have 2 percent of the reserves and use 25 percent of the reserves. Perhaps she meant to imply that the oil should be distributed across the globe by population, and the most dynamic, elastic, productive economies should be starved to satisfy some happy hand-holding UN-approved kumbaya concept of transnational fairness, and YOU should be putting gas into a bottle and sending it to Zimbabwe. As I’ve said before: it’s as if a world government was formed 20 years ago, and the United States has not only failed to live up to its moral obligations, it has actively thwarted and disregarded the law. We’ve seceded. Internationally speaking, we’re Dixie.

3. We cannot drill our way out of this. We cannot, in other words, deal with shortages by increasing the supply. Presumably because it wouldn’t have an immediate effect? Well, then, there’s no point doing anything about global warming today or tomorrow, is there. Because it won’t forestall the inevitable day when we run out. Granted. So why eat today? You’ll be dead eventually. Because it won’t be enough in the end to depress prices enough. Yes, three-buck-a-gallon gas, five-buck-a-gallon: six of one, nine dozen of the other, especially if you’re being limo’d everywhere. Because we have oilmen in the White House boo hiss. Well: let’s look at who’s making out bandit-wise. According to this page, the profit in California on a gallon of gas is 51 cents – which includes, for some bizarre reason, “refinery costs.” Only government can make a chart that lumps costs into profits into the same wad. Total California taxes and fees: 52 cents. Add the Federal tax, and it’s 60 cents.

Let’s go back to that “refinery costs and profits” part: the site defines it thus:

The costs associated with refining and terminal operations, crude oil processing, oxygenate additives, product shipment and storage, oil spill fees, depreciation, purchases of gasoline to cover refinery shortages, brand advertising, and profits.

If you’re lumping profit in with the costs associated with government mandates, like oxygenate additives, well – it’s almost as if they’re trying to separate profits from costs to make the former look bigger.

And there’s another category:

Distribution Costs, Marketing Costs, and Profits: The costs associated with the distribution from terminals to stations and retailing of gasoline, including but not limited to: franchise fees, and/or rents, wages, utilities, supplies, equipment maintenance, environmental fees, licenses, permitting fees, credit card fees, insurance, depreciation, advertising, and profit.

So I’m guessing the profit isn’t 51 cents. But whatever it is, it’s too much! I’ve heard some people yearn for a windfall profits tax that would reinvest the money in alternative energy, or rebate it back to the consumer. Fine. Apply that to your business. Here’s the acceptable profit level. You don’t get to make any more than that. If you do, the state will confiscate the property and divide it among your competitors, or give it back to your customers. Have a nice day. But oil is different. It’s necessary! So is food. Farmers are doing well. Let us therefore set the acceptable level for corn farmers, take away the excess profits, invest it new forms of sweeteners or biofuels farmers cannot yet produce, and give people rebates for Splenda to compensate for the price of high fructose corn syrup.

It’s not that we cannot produce any more oil; you suspect that some are motivated by the belief, perverse as it sounds, that we should not. We should not drill 50 miles off shore on the chance someone in Malibu takes a hot-air balloon up 1000 feet and uses a telephoto lens to scan the horizon for oil platforms. Also, there are ecological concerns. (The ocean is a wee place, easily disturbed.) There’s something else that may well be my imagination, but I can’t quite shake the feeling: high gas prices and shortages of oil make some people feel good. This is the way it has to be. Oil is bad. Cars are bad. Cars make suburbs possible. Suburbs are the antithesis of the way we should live, which is stacked upon one another in dense blocks tied together by happy whirring trains. So some guy who drives to work alone has to spend more money for the privilege of being alone in his car listening to hate radio?

Love of country must always be qualified these days

What's wrong with America? James Lileks explains (read the whole thing)

ANYWAY. Bottom line: we will never be a great nation until we all realize how much we suck, and then we will also realize it is wrong to be a great nation. For that matter, nationhood are overrated. (The only nation that gets to be a nation is France.)
Nations are bad enough, but we’re something else:the only nation that has ever fought a war, acted in self-interest, had a good opinion of itself, permitted slavery, elected leaders who lacked a certain Olympian quality, had a popular culture that included simple catchy melodies and bright pictures, harbored racist attitudes, had a strong religious element, and contained a sizable amount of stupid people.

James Lileks on the French Revolution

At least I’m not easily depressed. (Link goes to opinion piece about the author's disinclination to celebrate the fourth because of that whole "independence" thing, and desire for Darth Vader to speak truth to power at an Anti-Cheney rally that will use the power of Paris Hilton and rap stars to bring the nation together again. The author also wishes we would storm some sort of Bastille next week. I’ve noticed that most people who romanticize the French Revolution are a little unclear on the details, particularly how it turned out. They seem to think it resulted in two strokes of the guillotine – the king, who obviously deserved it, and Marie Antoinette, who kinda-sorta deserved it because she was disconnected from the people and said they should eat cake, tee hee. Bitch! (Unless you're holding her up as a victim of 18th century social norms imposed by the oligarchical phallocracy, in which case: Martyr!) The fact that it all dissolved into the worst sort of Utopian drivel, sectarian quarrles, nasty radical egalitarianism and the rise of ideologically-inspired state terror – well, yes, but they meant well. So did Vader, depending on your viewpoint. My favorite line:

Maybe we need Bono and Brad and Angelina there, to focus on the crisis in America and not the crisis in Africa, at least for a few months.

It's like a neutron star of inanity, that line; like a neutron star, it collapses into a dot so dense that the editor's pen is forever stuck on the event horizon, unable to move forward and cross it out.