Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Today, it's all about Joe Biden, who is not only awful but really, really stupid:

"U.S. Sen. Joe Biden yesterday said Iraq should be subdivided into a loosely federated republic, with each of the country's warring factions given its own area to control.

Biden said the republic would not be a democracy, but it would not be a threat to its neighbors or a haven for terrorists."

Translation: Israel might generously deign to accept this "solution," and allow us to withdraw some of our troops. But it gets better:

"[Biden] played up his hawkish credentials yesterday, saying he convinced former President Bill Clinton to go to war in the Balkans and said he would put 2,000 U.S. troops in Darfur under NATO command if he were president.

Were the United States to pull out of Iraq with the situation unresolved, the result would be chaos, a regional war and oil at $120 a barrel, he said.

'If we leave Iraq, and if we trade a dictator for chaos, we will pay the price for generations,' Biden said....

'The only mistake I made,' Biden said, 'was underestimating how ridiculously incompetent these guys [i.e. Bush & co. -- Ed.] would be.'"

Biden is not content with redrawing the map of the Middle East, and claiming credit for Clinton's Balkan Guernica; he has some ideas for the home front too:

"We are a nation at war," Biden said. "That makes it all the more incomprehensible that, five years after 9/11, [Bush] has failed to mobilize the American public for the struggle. There is no national energy policy, no national service, no real sacrifice except from our soldiers ... and their families."

At home, [Biden] said he would tighten security at ports and chemical plants and on public transit, hire 1,000 new FBI agents and 50,000 new police officers....

He also pledged to repeal most of Bush's upper-income tax cuts and said he would put those revenues into a fund -- which he estimated would come to $10 billion a year -- for homeland security measures.

Kind of a novel revision of the Robin Hoood schtick -- take from the rich and give to the Sheriff of Nottingham.

John Mack, Morgan Stan ley’s chief executive, is to invite senior staff to a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on Monday, in a pointed endorsement of the Democratic presidential hopeful from an important backer of President George W. Bush in 2004.

Mrs Clinton, a New York senator, is scheduled to appear at the fundraiser on the 41st floor of Morgan Stanley’s headquarters in Times Square.

The minimum donation for the event is $1,000 (€726, £492) per person but Mr Mack urged those attending to give $4,600, the maximum for the 2008 presidential campaign.

Mr Mack surprised many on Wall Street in the spring when he said he and his wife, Christy, would support Mrs Clinton’s 2008 bid. The announcement was made after heavy courting by Mrs Clinton, who raised $27m in the second quarter.

FT article

MJS has observed that success in foisting a Democratic president on the country is bad for liberals' moral character. They become cretins; indistinguishable from Republicans. It's now clear that successful foisting is also bad for their health.

There’s long been an argument out there that if you equipped people with “smart meters” that report their energy use in detail, they’d be surprised by what they learn and do a lot to conservative. Instead, Matthew Wald reports for the New York Times that the new meters, where installed, are leading to a lot of public anger and “Some consumers argue that the meters are logging far more kilowatt hours than they believe they are using.”

This is framed in the piece as undermining the hopes of the smart meter crowd, but I think it largely underscores the point. People can only respond rationally to the incentives that exist to conserve energy if they know how much energy they’re actually using and where and when. And it’s clear the reaction to smart meters that people actually have no idea what’s going on. Making them aware leaves an impressive.

Matt Yglesias

Via la Rana, who notes that Yglesias appears to have had a minor stroke. Aphasia can of course be caused by other things. Severe drinking problems, concussions and drug abuse will do it. Up to a point, past which there's too much damage, the drunkard and the druggie can recover a great deal of cognitive function. Good health care can help with that, as well with the cognitive dysfunctions of stroke victims and the multiply concussed. One hopes that Yglesias has such care available to him. It would be dreadful to go through life as a brain damaged wingnut. We may disagree with him on most, if not all issues, and be appalled by the way in which he's chosen to destroy his health and moral character. But that does not extend to gloating over his misfortune.

I assume the senior managers at his think tank will look after him in his attempt at recovery. Those of who wish him well may experience dismay at the thought. They are far from ideal, but there's a possibility that they can experience humane impulses towards someone they consider a real person.

For occupying part of Georgia, for Russia's failure to abide by this and that and for building "enduring" military bases. There may be more. I don't know.

BP Plc plans to name Robert Dudley to succeed Tony Hayward as chief executive officer as the board looks to recover the company’s position in the U.S., two people with knowledge of the matter said.

Dudley, the director of BP’s oil spill response unit, is ready to be announced as the company’s first American chief and to take the helm Oct. 1, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because a final decision hasn’t yet been made. The decision was reached in discussions with board members about how best to take BP forward and rebuild its U.S. position, the person said.

“The fact he is American should help to keep things a little more straightforward in his dealings with the U.S. administration,” said Ted Harper, who helps manage $6.8 billion at Frost Investment Advisors in Houston. He doesn’t hold BP stock. “Dudley’s most important task will continue to be making sure that the well is capped.”

Bloomberg

Stumbletongue Tony makes way for the only organization man less qualified to handle the catastrophe he created. Taken at face value, Dudley's task was immediate and thorough remediation of the disaster. He's consistently made things worse instead. So of course he's a candidate for CEO. Where else could he go? It's too soon for him to run for the Senate.

I take a jaded view of the Peter Principle. Competence comes with assumptions that have little bearing on the struggle to climb up the corporate ladder. It's crude political maneuvering; petty, sneak thief and vindictive, in which aptitude for the notional organizational purpose gets punished and sidelined long before the strivers get near real decision making power. Ultimately, they're elevated by accidents and missteps on the part of their competitors. Their backers in the frenzy are driven by fatuously post modern concerns (the hollow proprieties of perceived status) and utterly dependent on state support to preserve their positions. The state compradors who toady to them are, themselves, inept hacks who blunder their way to the top through appeals to the most callow impulses of their identity product consumers.

Fox News media personality Juan Williams was fired from his NPR gig for brand defamation. The maintenance of NPR's brand is a vital corporate interest. Transparent bigotry hurts it. No public relations agency can tolerate spokesmen who step out of line.

Moving forward, NPR should insist on explicit "exclusivity" clauses and message discipline in its contracts. That would prevent similar debacles.

SMBIVA has no party line position regarding Christmas or other religious holidays—with two small exceptions. One is the usual ecumenical damnation of Satan's little helpers, the Democratic Party, may they choke on the coal left in their stockings. Better yet, may their stockings choke them and the coal remain in the ground.

The other concerns work. It should be a day of rest, with pay. The reasons for both are self-evident and require no supporting argument.

Outside the modest party line, there's an issue that probably won't benefit from being addressed, but should be, in the same spirit with which the money lenders were flogged. The issue is the radical escalation of victimhood clutched and suckled by people who suffer contortions of their psychic bowels when someone wishes them "happy holidays". I think Jesus would agree when I say, tough shit.

The imperial state and corporate hegemony over daily life require the blandest possible "political correctness". There's no room for meaningful individuation or significant cultural differences. There are a lot of people to abuse. The scale of it precludes little niceties, such as principles or any religious beliefs that might lead to an understanding of common humanity. Homogeneity becomes more important than tolerance or acceptance, and blandness serves homogeneity best.

The people of the contorted bowels have found a refuge from homogeneity in victimhood. Whatever their other differences, whatever may be left of those differences after tending to imperial and corporate meat-grinding, they can all agree that the demands of empire and corporate hegemony are someone, anyone, else's fault. For them, Christmas is a time of special resentment; to be celebrated with an extra layer of angry, spite-hardened bricks for their bunker mentalities.

Happy holidays, assholes. You have no one to blame but yourselves.

Always ready to lend a looting hand.