My brother and I were talking last night about the sub prime loan whirlwind and the housing market drop. He’s a home improvement contractor and business where he lives is actually still very good for him (he has a good name in the market where he does business). But he’s been renting now for ages and he’d like to buy if home prices would just come down a little. Unlike a lot of folks, he wasn’t the type to be suckered in by any of the creative financing schemes that are currently causing people to loose their homes, and CEOs to loose their jobs.
Anyway…I just thought he (and you) would appreciate this little blurb today from Atrios…
Deep Thought of the Day
Nobody could have predicted that it might not be such a good thing if the issuers of loans have little incentive to issue good loans.
-Atrios 09:27
There’s a big part of the problem right there. The other big part, is that the anti-government republicans are in charge, and they could be reliably counted on to look the other way while Wall Street went crazy with other people’s money.
I was scanning my server logs last night and saw someone had hit this post of mine with the Google search string "can’t pull out key mercedes". I hope their problem was as absent minded as mine was, or more charitably, that I’d forgotten how you park a car with an automatic transmission. (Hint: you put it in ‘Park’). But as I was scanning the Google hits on that string (my post was forth in the list), I got to thinking about the anti-theft technology in it the key itself.
I posted this shot of my new car’s key the night I made a deal with Valley Motors to buy it. I’m wondering how many others reading it had the same first impression I did when I first laid eyes on a Mercedes-Benz key… That’s a car key??? It’s more of a dongle then an actual key, which makes sense given where automobile anti-theft technology is going. The Honda had something in its key too, that the on board computer authenticated it with. But it was also an actual key, in that it had a ridged steel shank like most keys that moved tumblers of some sort in a lock you turned to actually start the car. Mercedes just took the next logical step and did away with the steel shank and tumbler lock part altogether.
I’ve wanted one of these cars ever since I was a teenager. But when I actually took mine home, I found myself stressing out every night about it getting stolen while I was asleep. I’d wake up at random moments and trudge over to a window and verify the car was still there. A small, but non-trivial reason why I’m not leaving the car at home and walking to work every morning like I normally do, is because I’m still a bit afraid to leave it alone. The neighborhood I live in has enough retirees in it that there are always a set of eyes somewhere keeping watch over things. But I still stress about it. A few months ago a small SUV was stolen from a guy just a few houses down from me. But he’d left his doors unlocked, and an expensive tool kit set in plain view. Still…I read about car thefts and attempted car thefts in the local police blotters for my district. Lately, I’ve actually started mapping them out to see where the car thieves are most active.
Mine isn’t the only expensive car in the neighborhood…there’s others scattered here and there, and if you count some of the the big SUVs and pickup trucks there are actually quite a few vehicles within a few blocks of mine costing at least as much if not more then Traveler did me. But a Mercedes sticks out. I didn’t buy it for that…I really wish it didn’t, but last Halloween I had several dads walking their kids around complement me on the car, and ask me if they could check it out inside. Of course I happily let them…I know the feeling, I had it myself for decades. I gave them the whole tour of the car. But afterwards it worried me that the car sticks out like that. It’s bound to attract the attention of car thieves.
I’ve found that the best cure for the worries is to learn as much as you can about what’s worrying you. So that Google hit prompted me to do something I’ve been meaning to do, to ease my worries a tad about someone making off with my new car in the middle of the night. I started looking around for information about the anti-theft technology Mercedes is using now. In the process, I got a bit of an education about modern automobile smart, or "VATS" keys.
The GM system, for example, uses a set of fifteen different precision resistance chips that can be embedded in a key. The onboard computer knows which resistive value is supposed to work on its car and if you put a key with the wrong resistance chip in it in the ignition lock, the car cuts off fuel to the engine and starts a four minute clock that prevents the car from starting even if you insert a key with the right chip in it. Ford on the other hand, uses a small transponder embedded in the key that transmits a code to the on board computer. Some Japanese automakers use set of passcodes between the key and the car that rotate each time the car is started.
I was gratified to learn that Mercedes-Benz has a key so complicated it requires its own set of instructions. Sometimes complexity is a good thing. The moment you insert the key in the ignition a dialogue takes place between it and the on board computer, and the key’s digital passcode is verified and a new randomly generated passcode is assigned to it by the computer.
At that point, the steering wheel and ignition systems are unlocked and the car is made ready to start when you turn the key. I can hear the steering wheel being unlocked the moment I insert the key in the switch, as well as other very faint, gentle whirring sounds coming from somewhere inside the dash that I’m assuming have something to do with the climate control system powering up. So even before I turn the ignition on and proceed to start the car, it already knows that a valid key is in the switch and its unlocking things and starting up other things. It also grabs hold of the key slightly…not so much that you can’t pull it right back out again, but enough to make that something you have to deliberately do. And the moment you pull the key back out the steering wheel re-locks and the faint whirring sounds stop. So the car is, in a sense, unlocked and switched on the moment you insert what it determines is a valid key for that car.
My car came with two keys…I’m not sure if there is an upper limit on the number of keys you can assign to an individual car…but the on board computer keeps track of the keys that belong to that car, and which passcodes it has randomly assigned to what keys. There’s a set of button batteries in each key that are user replaceable. Not sure what happens to the passcode a key has when its battery dies, but hopefully its kept in some sort of flash memory.
Other luxury car makers such as BMW also use this system, but Mercedes is unique apparently in that it did away with the steel shank portion of the key altogether. Given the technology being used here, the shank part is now a tad redundant. You can probably expect to see steel shanked keys slowly disappear from cars altogether as the on board computer takes on more and more responsibility for preventing theft.
Hence, the current popularity of car jacking. If car thieves have to have the key in order to steal the car, then obviously they’re gonna try and get the key. Usually that means getting it away from you. So now I can rest a tad easier about the chances of my car getting stolen when I go to bed at night, or when I’m away from it. On the other hand, now I have to worry more about dealing with a car thief face to face. Ah well. This was why I was bullied so badly in junior high school…so I could grow eyes in the back of my head for thugs…
Thoughts that crossed my mind as I was doing lawn work this morning….
Even if your property consists merely of 1 tenth of 1 percent of 1quarter of 1 acre, nine-tenths of your work around the house will consist of biomass control.
Ivy must come from some other planet. It grows even in a drought. The rest of your lawn could be dead, it could be turning to dust, and the ivy will still be growing. And it always grows in the direction you don’t want it growing toward, and will reliably ignore the territory you are willing to let it have.
Adjusting the anti-squirrel defenses on your bird feeders only raises the intelligence level of the neighborhood squirrels. You are not keeping them away from your feeders, you are training them to solve complex problems.
[Update…]
Bird spit is amazing stuff. That’s Spit, not Shit. Bird SPIT. Ever wonder how those tiny little nests made of nothing but small sticks and twigs manage to stay intact during a thunder storm? It’s the damn spit they use to hold everything together. The barn swallow nests in the parking garage at the Institute are amazing things…tacked literally on the concrete walls by nothing more then dirt and swallow spit. Never mind bird droppings, try cleaning a bunch of old seeds all stuck together by bird spit off the bottom of your bird feeders. It’s Work! If humans could spit glue like birds, we’d probably never have invented nails.
A traveling collection of liturgical stoles will grow by one during its stop in the Toledo area this weekend.
Each of the 1,100 stoles represents a person in one of 26 Christian denominations who was either banned from ministry for their sexual orientation or who feels too threatened to publicly acknowledge that they are gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
The exhibit, called the Shower of Stoles Project, started in 1995 as a "witness of faith" by the Rev. Martha Juillerat, a Presbyterian minister in rural Missouri whose career ended after openly acknowledging she was a lesbian.
The local addition to the stole project is from the Rev. Michelle Stecker, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the only cleric in the local presbytery, or regional body, to openly acknowledge she is a lesbian. A second minister was to donate a stole but changed her mind at the last minute.
Although Ms. Stecker remains ordained and in good standing with the denomination, she said she cannot get an assignment because churches are wary of defying the denomination’s ban on gay clerics.
"Since coming out in the media in 2004, there’s no way that a Presbyterian church would call me right now," Ms. Stecker said from Chicago, where she is working for a nonprofit organization. "I know God called me to be a minister, but when I finally realized I had to speak out on social justice issues, I knew it was the end.
"It’s been very sad for me," she said. "I’ve lost my livelihood. I mourn that loss and continue to mourn that loss. I’ve had to retrain for a new profession and I’m starting all over again."
The Shower of Stoles Project will be on display from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. today [This article ran on Saturday November 3rd in the Toledo Blade. -Bruce] in the Wintergarden of the Main Branch of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, with members of the local clergy on hand to answer any questions.
"We wanted to have it in a public place where people might just stumble across it, not just those who were planning to see it," said the Rev. Cheri Holdridge, pastor of Central United Methodist Church.
After the library display, the collection will be divided up and stoles will be displayed in 16 churches in northwest Ohio, including those belonging to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Methodist, United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalist, Unity, Episcopal, and Presbyterian Church (USA) denominations.
Ms. Holdridge said the number of churches participating this year is encouraging to people who support the ordination of gays and lesbians. The last time the exhibit came to town, in 2001, only three churches were willing to display the stoles.
"At least we’re making progress," she said. "Central [United Methodist] is on the far edge of being totally accepting. A gay couple can walk in and breathe a sigh of relief and know they can be themselves, but there are more churches at least trying to be welcoming."
Trying. Trying. Trying. Amazing isn’t it, how the simplest most innocuous of words can have such a bitter aftertaste in the mouth…
I’m still trying to figure out what the separate little compartment just ahead of the armrest compartment is for. It’s about the size of a pack of cards, but a tad thicker It’s a bit too short for my iPod or iPhone, and I doubt most other cell phones would fit in it either. But it’s just right I think, to hold a pack of cigarettes. The car has a real ash tray and cigarette lighter in it…a thing that most other car makers are phasing out now it looks like. Are Germans that obsessive smokers that they put compartments in their automobiles specifically to hold their cigarette packs?
Someone calling themselves Mrs du Toit responds to my post yesterday on the Nazification Of The Western Male. I’ve no way of establishing the authenticity of the commenter, but I reply back in the comments.
So I’m out of the break-in period, and taking the car a little more and more into its upper ranges. Bear in mind that for years, decades, I’ve been a stick driver and absolutely hated automatics. Also, that I’ve never owned a car with anything under the hood that could even remotely be called a high performance engine.
I’ve finally encountered the issue people are complaining about out there, with the new seven speed automatic down shifting too aggressively. But I’ve been taking Traveler slowly up and down the speedometer and tach and learning how it behaves and I think I know what the problem is. Most American drivers, especially drivers of my generation, learned on automatics that made you stomp down on the accelerator in order to down shift. You do that in this car and it will behave like it thinks you’re doing some kind of emergency maneuver and race down the gears when that’s not what you want. In this car, in normal driving, when you just want to rapidly pass someone or accelerate out of a situation, you don’t stomp down on the gas pedal. You have to back off your old habits a tad, learn to just firmly press the accelerator forward. The car will figure out what you want and down shift in a more normal manner. And then…trust me…that speedometer needle will climb like you won’t believe. The car won’t slam you back in your seat…it’s a luxury sedan not a Lamborghini…but the effect of the smooth urgency with which it takes you into loose-your-license territory is…amazing. At least to me. I guess that’s what high compression, plus variable valve timing does. Which is why it only drinks expensive premium gas. I’ve driven big V-8s that had less authority then this six. But they were 1970s V-8s. I can’t imagine what the engines Mercedes puts in its S class cars nowadays must feel like. Anyway…the transmission will behave itself, but you need a calm foot on the pedal. You don’t stomp the pedal down. Just ask it politely. It’ll deliver.
I’ve never owned a car before, that was actually and seriously designed to be driven at speeds above 100 miles per hour, and taking Traveler up the speedometer makes me feel like I’m suddenly in a completely different world now. The car is way too comfortable for my own good at speeds well in excess of anything you’re legally allowed to drive on any highway in the lower 48. You know you’re going fast, it just doesn’t feel like you’re driving beyond the limits of the car, or even close. Road noise is minimal, the car doesn’t feel squirrelly, but tight on the road and perfectly, happily content. If anything, it feels like it’s waiting for me to ask it for more. That’s scary. I feel like I really need to take a course in high speed driving. There are places that offer it. Not that you’re supposed to be doing that on the highways, or that I plan on doing that. Even if it were legal, American driving habits would make an Autobahn here much, much too dangerous. But like Stan Lee said, with great power comes great responsibility. The tires may be rated for those speeds, but the driver isn’t. That’s a whole different kind of driving. I need to learn it.
I’m getting a tad over 25 miles per gallon average. It’s not awful, but not great either. I’m used to getting in the low thirties, and that’s on regular. Now I have to buy premium and while my bill hasn’t skyrocketed, it’s something I have to pay attention to more now. Figure my total gasoline expenses have about doubled. But as work is just a mile down the road, even if I drove it all the time, which I don’t, my gas bill was never all that much to start with. Right now my usage is high because I’m still in new car love and I’m busy driving Traveler here and there after work just about every day, just for the shear pleasure of driving it as well as the practical matter of getting to know it. At some point that’ll taper off and then the big cost will be when I take it on road trips. This year my drive to Memphis, Topeka, Portland and Oceano and back cost me about $725 in gas. Double that isn’t an easy figure to swallow all in one go. So I have to make a point to save up for it. I put a hundred bucks or so every month into a road trip kitty and I can still do them. But I just can’t petty cash my gasoline anymore like I used to be able to. Now I have to pay attention to it. I have three savings accounts scattered here and there that I’ve just been putting random spare cash into. I’ll make one of these my road trip kitty and then just use it for road trip gas and miscellaneous expenses.
First, understand that there is no social security crisis. That’s a right wing scarecrow of the same substance as Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. There is no crisis.
Which is not to say it couldn’t be shored up a tad. Fine. But Joshua Marshall has it exactly right about even opening up a discussion on that at the moment…
When it comes to the policy and number-crunching nitty-gritty of Social Security I’m definitely an amateur. But I think I’ve got a decent sense of the political-economy of the question. We need to remember that now and for at least a decade into the future Social Security is actually subsidizing the rest of the federal budget. The program brings in much more than it pays out. As we all remember from the voluble debates two years ago, the surplus is being used to buy US government bonds which go into the Trust Fund. And that socked away money will keep the program solvent through the middle of this century as the baby boomers retire, and revenues in no longer cover promised payments out.
We’ve been doing that for about a quarter of a century.
The problem on the political side of the equation is that the enemies of Social Security have spent a couple decades arguing that the Trust Fund doesn’t exist or that it is simply a bookkeeping device with no true financial meaning. If that’s true, it means that American workers have spent the last twenty-five years using their payroll taxes to subsidize general revenues and make it easier to float big tax cuts for upper-income earners without getting anything in return.
If we start pumping a lot more money into Social Security coffers now it will by definition go into more government bonds, which is another way of saying that it will go toward funding our current deficit spending. In fact it will enable more deficit spending and probably more upper-income tax cuts because it will make the consequences of both easier to hide.
If we want to push the buffer of the Trust Fund further out onto the horizon, then fiddle with payroll taxes when Social Security would need to start dipping into Trust Fund. In other words, in a decade or so. I see no reason why this approach doesn’t work just as nicely then as it would now.
As Paul Krugman noted in the interview I did with him a few weeks ago, the window of time we had to seriously pare down the national debt to prepare for the retirement of the baby-boomers is close to over. Still, though, our best way of ensuring the future health of Social Security is to stop running up the national debt now. So I’m very reluctant to put more payroll taxes in the pot while we’re still running big deficits because of the Bush tax cuts. The money will just go to subsidizing that irresponsible fiscal policy.
If there is any sense in which the ‘Trust Fund’ is not ‘real’ it is that it must be paid back from general revenues. And that will only be harder the more other debt we’re running up. So rather than solving the problem, I think we’re actually enabling it.
You gotta love the republicans. They’ve maneuvered the nation into a place now where any honest, good faith attempt to tweak improvements into the system can only make matters worse. Until they’re out of power, the best course is to not only do nothing, but to not even discuss doing anything.
Atrios points to this post on Lawyers, Guns and Money with the comment, Tiny Penis Syndrome…sadly, it does explain a lot. Yes, but not everything…
I just finished teaching an upper-division US history course in which my students read — and I swear I’m not making this up — Kim Du Toit’s repellant 2003 essay on "The Pussification of the Western Male". The class had just finished Gail Bederman’s Manliness and Civilization (1995), a marvelous examination of the cultural transformations of gender between the 1880s and World War I. We used du Toit as a companion piece to the chapters on Teddy Roosevelt and the psychologist G. Stanley Hall — each of whom were, in their own ways, as anxious as du Toit about what they perceived to be the devaluation of masculinity.
…
Hall, for his part, was preoccupied not with adult masculinity but rather with the incipient manhood of youth. Believing that developing children rehearsed the cultural evolution of the human race, he insisted that young boys should not be deterred from expressing "the instinct of the savage."
Boys are naturally robbers; they are bandits and fighters by nature. A scientific study has been made of boys’ societies . . . . In every instance these societies have been predatory. All of the members thirsted for blood, and all of their plans were for thievery and murder
Allow the young boy to beat the shit out of his companions, Hall suggested, and his mental and physical development will proceed in a smooth and healthy fashion. Divert him from his natural course Hall warned, and you will produce "a milk-sop, a lady-boy, or a sneak." Such a child "lacks virility, [and] his masculinity does not ring true." Perhaps he will — as Hall himself did — grow up to be a chronic masturbator, a helpless slave to "the lonely vice."
That passage of Hall’s rang familiar in my ear. Not so much for the words, as the sensibility that male youth is by its nature savage and brutal and that cultivating that savage, brutal nature is the task of every great civilization. I’d heard all that somewhere before. So I did a little digging and it wasn’t long before I found it…
"My teaching is hard. Weakness has to be knocked out of them. In my [elite schools] a youth will grow up before which the world will shrink back. A violently active dominating, intrepid, brutal youth – that is what I am after". Youth must be all those things. It must be indifferent to pain. There must be no weakness or tenderness in it.I want to see once more in its eyes the gleam of pride and independence of the beast of prey. Strong and handsome must my young men be. I will have them fully trained in all physical exercises. I intend to have an athletic youth – that is the first and the chief thing. In this way I shall eradicate the thousands of years of human domestication. Then I shall have in front of me the pure and noble natural material. With that I can create the new order.
"I will have no intellectual training. Knowledge is ruin to my young men. I would have them learn only what takes their fancy. But one thing they must learn – self-command! They shall learn to overcome the fear of death, under the severest tests. That is the intrepid and heroic stage of youth. Out of it comes the stage of the free man, the man who is the substance and essence of the world, the creative man, the god-man. In my [elite schools] there will stand as a statue for worship the figure of the magnificent, self-ordaining god-man; it will prepare the young men for their coming period of ripe manhood."
Emphasis mine. I’d heard these words of Hitler’s first in my own youth, sitting in a junior high school history class watching a documentary produced in 1956 titled, The Twisted Cross. I was a bookish little kid even back then, and when the scenes of Nazi mobs burning books came on screen I was completely horrified. When the scenes of the concentraton camps came on screen later I felt that, yes, the one led right to the other. Where books are burned, people are soon after. But the scenes of Htiler and Himmler inspecting the ranks of young soldiers, while the narrator intoned those words from Hitler Speaks, chilled me to the bone. My junior high school years were when I experienced the worst bullying of my life, and I didn’t have to think hard about what living in Hitler’s Third Reich was like when I heard that. Great if you were part of the ruling thug caste…not so much if you were everyone else. I remembered that documentary so vividly that decades later when I saw a videotape of the if for sale and took it home to watch, I was amazed at how detailed my memory of it actually was after all those years.
Maybe it really is all about penis envy. But I don’t recall any of my childhood bullies feeling their threatened manhood by me. What I saw in their faces was contempt. Contempt for anyone they could beat the crap out of, whether by themselves or with the help of their gang. When you have no brains to speak of, when even a cinderblock could add 2 plus 2 more accurately then you, all you have left is brute force to live by, and for some that is the only standard of value they know for taking their measure, and everyone else’s too. The contempt for effete intellectuals is no envy. It really is contempt. So what if you can grow food. So what if you can turn dirt into steel. So what if you can cure disease. If I can beat the crap out of you, then I’m the better man. Because then I can simply take everything you have. That really is the thinking going on there.
And never mind that no amount of force, no advantage in weapons, no military superiority ever gave a single penny’s worth of value to a dollar. The criminal mindset, unable to distinguish between creating wealth and stealing it, regards all creation as theft, all theft as creation. All that matters in the end, is can you take it away from someone else. If you can, then it’s rightfully yours. If the other guy can’t hold onto it, then it was never his to begin with. Might makes right. Any other standard of morality is literally incomprehensible to them. When you’re too stupid to know how modern civilization really works, you’re also too stupid to know it.
That is the essential fascist mindset. When you hear some moron babbling on and on about…
The feminization of males
Effete Intellectualism
Military glory
…all rolled together in one tightly packed little ball of bitterness, you can be pretty sure of what you’re dealing with. What dimwits like Du Toit and all the other right wing kultar kampfers think they’re selling America is this…
…but what what you always get is this:
There’s what not deterring young men from expressing "the instinct of the savage" gets you, right there. Look at it. There’s your savage manly man’s promise land.
Peterson Toscano is worried I won’t come out of my new car. Not to worry Peterson. Someday. Someday.
My sideview mirrors are heated. Something in the pods is generating enough heat on them that they’re clear of fog before I’ve even finished wiping the windows off in the mornings. Not sure yet if they’re heated by a stream of air from the car’s climate control system or there’s a small electric heater in the pods. The reason I’m wondering if it’s a stream of air is because…
…I discovered last night that my glove compartment has a little vent in it I can open to let air from the climate control system in. I’m assuming that’s to keep things like the iPod at reasonable temperatures while they’re in there. I was plugging the iPod in for a drive when I decided to find out what that odd little knob at the top of the glove compartment did. So I twisted it and lo and behold a stream of air started coming out. Then I noticed the markings on the knob were similar to the ones that open and close the dashboard and rear seat air vents. How obsessive do you have to be to put a variable air vent in the glove compartment? I should check to see if the armrest compartment has one of these too.
I’m not as well-to-do as the price of this car might suggest. My sales paperwork says Traveler cost me 45 grand. That’s after taxes and tags. The actual price of the car itself was about 39 grand, and with 14 grand trade-in for my Accord, I’m not financing that much more then the amount I financed on the Accord (which I bought with all the bells and whistles), back in 2005. But let me tell you…driving a forty-five thousand dollar automobile down the road, does make you a more careful driver. It could be amusing to connect me to an EKG and watch my heart trying to leap out of my throat whenever someone cuts me off or pulls out right in front of me. And I am a way less aggressive driver now then I was a couple months ago. It had never occurred to me that this might be why luxury sedan owners all dive like wusses.
There seem to be a lot of reasons for me to drive Traveler somewhere lately. Oh…I’m short on bread. Gotta drive to the SuperFresh. Oh…looks like I’m out of stamps. Better go to the post office. I wonder how much color the trees have in them now around Rockville? Better go look…
BALTIMORE – A grieving father won a nearly $11 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals out of a belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.
Albert Snyder of York, Pa., sued the Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified damages after members demonstrated at the March 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.
The jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress.
Snyder’s attorney, Craig Trebilcock, had urged jurors to determine an amount "that says don’t do this in Maryland again. Do not bring your circus of hate to Maryland again."
…
The church and three of its leaders — the Rev. Fred Phelps and his two daughters, Shirley Phelps-Roper and Rebecca Phelps-Davis, 46 — were found liable for invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress.
Even the size of the award for compensating damages "far exceeds the net worth of the defendants," according to financial statements filed with the court, U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett noted.
Yes, but those financial statements are almost certainly bullshit. I’ve seen Fred’s compound…he and his family own an entire neighborhood block’s worth of property. And their forays around the country to picket everything from Funerals to high school plays are being paid for with something.
Their attorneys maintained in closing arguments Tuesday that the burial was a public event and that even abhorrent points of view are protected by the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and religion.
And Fred is still free to spread his message of hate. Just not at funerals. The first amendment doesn’t give you the right to come into my house and scream in my face. Goodness knows telephone solicitors, door to door salesmen and politicians every election year would be in heaven if it did. There are public and private spaces and if a funeral isn’t a private space I don’t know what is.
Fred’s known all these years what he’s doing isn’t about anything more righteous then how much he hates the world he lives in and how badly he wants to make it suffer for making him hate it. It’s not that God Hates Fags, but that Fred does. It’s not that God Hates Fag Enablers, but that Fred does. It’s not that God Hates America, but that Fred does. And nothing gets a hater’s goat more then knowing that the objects of their contempt also happen to be a lot smarter then they are. Fred could out hate anyone, but he couldn’t out think a brick, and he knew it and it must have turned the worm inside of him all the more knowing it. You need brainpower, you need audacity and nerve, to really destroy your enemies. But Fred knew the most he could ever manage was pissing people off and he settled for doing that because at least making people angry gave him a small measure of power over them. It’s the chickenshit’s revenge, as befitting the chickenshit pulpit thumper of a congenital congregation. When the only people you see in your pews are your own family, that’s a message straight from God Almighty Himself that it’s time to close your book of sermons, walk out the door and go look for some honest work. But Fred didn’t have it in him to wield a mighty sword against his enemies, let alone raise a mighty voice to God from his pulpit. So he settled for mooning the world he hated, and everyone in it possessing that half a brain he himself had never been blessed with, just out of range. Well, today he got his ass kicked…
Snyder sobbed when he heard the verdict, while members of the church greeted the news with tightlipped smiles.
That’s how people who are perpetually constipated look. Fred isn’t a prophet, he’s Kaopectate for the soul.
Some years ago I was kicked back on the sofa, idly watching a chase on one of those police video car chase programs. Some thief had stolen a big, hugely expensive four door luxury sedan, and the cops were chasing it all over, I think it was southern California, trying to get it to stop. But this wasn’t just any old rich man’s status tank they were pursuing, it was a Mercedes S class, and I watched with a little guilty pleasure as that thing consistently out ran, out cornered and generally out maneuvered all the souped up Ford police cars trying to catch it. And the cops knew what it was they were chasing that night, and that they were going to have a hard time with it. You heard it on the police radio chatter as the pursuit went on.
It was guilty fun sitting there watching a big stogy luxury sedan blast down the freeway, just walking away from the cop car behind it at speeds well in excess of a hundred, then suddenly seem to just turn on a dime, at speed, and blast off in a completely different direction while its pursuers were skidding around trying to change course. In my defense, I’ll say I was also angry for the owner of the car. It was an outrage that such a fine vehicle was being recklessly manhandled by someone who couldn’t have cared less about its engineering qualities, so much as the money he thought he was going to get for stealing it. I think the cops eventually had to use spikes to get it to stop.
I probably was driving Aya, my 1993 Geo Prism, back then. I was happy with that car. But when that TV chase ended I know my heart probably sighed a little. There’s why I want a Mercedes…
Back when I was a teenager, and first fell in Mercedes love, the company had an advertising slogan that went, Engineered Like No Other Car In The World. Okay, take that apart. Like any ad slogan it seems to say a lot, while actually saying very little. Of course you nitwit it’s engineered like no other car in the world…Every car maker does the engineering their own way. The goddamned Trabant can say it’s engineered like no other car in the world too, and count your blessings for it!
But what you were meant to get from that slogan, was that Mercedes put engineering excellence foremost…that in addition to fine materials and workmanship, you were also buying a work of high automobile engineering art. Here’s a typical Mercedes ad from 1971, around the time I was starting to get Mercedes love bad.
Now most cars these days should be able to perform on the test track pretty much like that Mercedes sedan in that ad did back then. But back in 1971, back when most cars sold in America still had solid rear axles and rear leaf springs, it would have been remarkable to see Any car doing that, let alone a large four door luxury sedan. Put a 1971 Lincoln Continental on that test track and see what you get.
The image of the Mercedes-Benz was that it was a stodgy, boxy looking German luxury car that was way over engineered, over powered, and could out maneuver any American sports car on the road, let alone American full sized sedans. And Mercedes pioneered passenger safety engineering in a day when the U.S. automakers were still dragging their heels on shoulder harnesses and five mile an hour bumpers. You knew the Mercedes would protect you in an accident better then any other car. But you also knew that even the biggest and most luxurious Mercedes were powerful and nimble enough to help you avoid the accident in the first place
That was 1971. It’s a measure of how much trust in their engineering Mercedes lost during the 1990s, that their new slogan is Because We Promised You A Mercedes Benz.
I actually could have bought a Mercedes a couple years ago, when Aya, after driving it more then two hundred thousand miles, began telling me that it was time to get a new car. That was February 2005. And I did look at the C class then, and I didn’t like it, and I wasn’t ready yet to start trusting Mercedes again, especially after they’d decided to merge with Chrysler. I wouldn’t trust a Chrysler motor any further then I could throw it. But then they got rid of Jürgen Schrempp, divorced from Chrysler, and came out with an entirely new from the ground up C class that I thought was drop dead beautiful the moment I laid eyes on one. And when I sat in one, I thought, This is Me.
I’m looking under the hood of my new Mercedes the other day, still drinking it all in, still in new car love, and I’m gawking at these big ass steel struts I see jutting forward along each side of the engine toward the radiators. I’ve seen front end frame members before but nothing like these. They look more like they belong on a small truck then a compact four door sedan. And I’m remembering how Mercedes engineers, who seem to be back in control now, had been rethinking, fine tuning, their crash crumple zone technology. Mercedes invented the crumple zone, where parts of the car are designed to give way in a crash and absorb the forces of impact. They were doing that back in the 1950s. But now with supercomputer modeling technology, they’re managing the forces of impact a tad more precisely now, and a few strategic parts of the car are being beefed up to Not crumple, but withstand impact, and transmit the force elsewhere, more effectively around the passenger compartment and away from the passengers.
And I’m standing there gawking at these honking big steel frame members and my eyes wander around the engine, in its own compartment within a compartment, with gaskets that seal to the hood and keep the engine heat and fumes away from the other under the hood systems, which also have their own little sub compartments, and all the stuff that connects everything together which is more robust then it needs to be, and almost arrogantly precise. And I feel the smile coming back to my face again. This is what I wanted a Mercedes for. I didn’t spend all this money for an empty status symbol.
On average, the angriest e-mails I get are from former Mercedes-Benz owners on the occasion of my saying something nice about the company’s products…
Allow me to gloss: "I can’t believe you raved about the [insert gaudy hunk of German schteel here]. I bought a Mercedes a few years ago and it was a total piece of [insert colorful metaphor here]. I took it back to the dealer [exponential figure times] and finally got sick of them looking at me like I was speaking a foreign language [English?]. So, when did you go on the company payroll, you toadying, Hun-loving shill?"
What energizes these missives is a sense of betrayal, and in a perverse way – and wholly unwelcome, I’m sure – the galled, bug-eyed fury of disappointed buyers is a tribute to the expectations attached to the Mercedes-Benz brand…
Just so. And Neil’s initial impression of this new Mercedes is the same as mine…
So, is the new C-class – in the deathless prose of the ad – a Mercedes-Benz? Well, it feels like one. The moment you touch the door handle, you register the lubricated heft, the mantle-of-the-Earth solidity of Mercedes’ biggest and best products. Fall into the stiff, low-bolster seats and the familiar comes at you in waves: The optional COMAND nav/audio/vehicle controller interface is the same as in the S-class, only the central rotary knob is a smaller, knurled aluminum wheel. Much of the switchgear is identical to that of the higher-end vehicles. I was fairly unexcited about the C-class interior until I saw it in person; the grade of materials is richer and more appealing than it looks in photos. This is an organized, serious interior with lots of evident deliberation behind it. Sightlines are excellent, and it’s especially nice to be able to see the hood stretching out with small audacity like the S-class.
I’ve heard complaints about the amount of plastic in the new C class interior. I invite the critics to compare with the Lexus, Acura, and Infinity. A couple years ago I flew into Memphis and rented an Infinity G35 four door and while it was nice, it was more loaded with plastic then the new C, and it also felt cheap to the touch. I could close my eyes and think I was touching the dash of a Chevy. Not so in my C300. The stuff Mercedes is using is a thicker gage and feels on the one hand much more solid and substantial to the touch, and yet on the other soft and supple when you run your fingers across its surface. It’s interesting stuff. I used to work in a custom plastic fabrication shop, and I’m a little familiar with the various kinds of plastics and how their formed and worked. This stuff Mercedes is using isn’t cheap. Just less expensive then all leather sewn upholstery. You want that, go buy an S class. You want more wood and less plastic, buy the E class.
We C class owners are probably mostly folks who can just barely afford the C, let alone the E or S. We’re not rich, we’re middle class Mercedes aficionados and we aren’t spending this kind of money all for nice leather and wood trim. You buy a Mercedes for its engineering as much as anything else. And I think Mercedes is really back on track here with this new C. Again, from Neil…
You can call it lines of force, graviton waves or celestial harmonics, but there is something deeply Benz-like about the C-class’ interior ambiance. It’s not simply the deeply muffled interior and wind noise levels, but the timbre of those sounds. The thing sounds like it should have European air woofling through the air ducts.
The solidness of a thing’s build makes itself felt everywhere. Whether its a house or a car. Some folks just notice that sort of thing more then the surface trimmings. It’s not that all the little details of trim and finish aren’t important, but they’re no substitute for quality engineering. A house should be solidly built because it needs to be a house first, and only then a showpiece. A state of the art kitchen can’t make a house without a good foundation and a roof that won’t last any better then a trailer. You buy a car like a Mercedes-Benz, because first you want the best Car, then you want all the nice trimmings to go with it.
In the C class, because of its price point, some compromises have to be made between trim and engineering. I think I speak for a lot of Mercedes C class owners when I say that I’d rather the engineering came first because that’s what I’m mostly buying. Yes, I adore the 450 watt Harmon-Kardon stereo system. Yes…I really really like the fact that the wood trim in the passenger compartment is Real burled walnut. No..I really don’t mind that there isn’t as much of it in there as in the E class passenger compartment. So long as my C class drives with that same, solid, deeply Benz-like ambiance. So long as it’s really engineered like no other car in the world.
I’m out of the break-in period now, and gradually letting the car go a little faster, corner a little tighter, to see what’s in there. The other day I had it out a stretch of freeway with no other traffic and a good long line of sight. A good place I figured, to give it a little nudge forward and see what happens. Well what happened was the car happily jumped up to a hundred in no time and felt like it was doing about seventy. I quickly backed off. Damn! It was smooth, it was quiet, and unlike a lot of cars I’ve driven way too fast for my own good, it didn’t make my knuckles go white with the sensation I was right on the razor’s edge. In fact the only scary thing about it was it felt like there was a lot more in the car where that came from. I’m not sure I’m brave enough to find where this car runs out of steam.
That’s what buying a car made for the Autobahn gets you.
SPOKANE — State Representative Richard Curtis says he’s not gay, but police reports and court records indicate the Republican lawmaker from southwestern Washington dressed up in women’s lingerie and met a Medical Lake man in a local erotic video store which led to consensual sex at a downtown hotel and a threat to expose Curtis’ activities publicly.
A search warrant unsealed Tuesday morning disclosed that State Representative Richard Curtis (R – La Center) had sex in his room at the Davenport Tower with a man identified as Cody Castagna, 26, of Medical Lake, who he met at the Hollywood Erotic Boutique on October 26th.
Curtis, according to a search warrant unsealed Tuesday, went to the Hollywood Erotic Boutique on East Sprague on October 26th at approximately 12:45 a.m. The store clerk, who had talked with Curtis, referred to him as "The Cross-Dresser" and said that during their conversations he confirmed he was gay and was married with children at home.
During his visit to the video store Curtis was observed wearing women’s lingerie while receiving oral sex from an unidentified man in one of the movie viewing booths inside the store.
Afterward he met Cody Castagna, and they talked about getting together at Curtis’ hotel room to have sex. Curtis left Castagna his cellphone number and went to Northern Quest Casino and receiving a call from him around 3 a.m., and planned to get together at the hotel a short while later.
The two met at the Davenport Tower around 3:34 a.m. and police reports confirm Curtis and Castagna had anal intercourse after which Curtis fell asleep. Castagna, according to court records, then allegedly took Curtis’ wallet out of his jacket pocket and left the room.
Around 7 a.m. he called Curtis and told him he knew he was a member of the Washington State House of Representatives and was married, that he had taken pictures of Curtis with a camera on his cellphone and he offered to return the wallet in exchange for $1,000. In police reports it is claimed that Curtis offered Castagna that sum of money in exchange for having unprotected anal intercourse.
Richard Curtis, a GOP state rep in Washington, voted this year against domestic partnerships for gay couples. He also opposed a bill that bans nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. So knowing what we know about this generation’s crop of Republican lawmakers, this should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone…
Check out the Giant Closet in the new Republican National Committee HQ. And…get this…from Dan Savage over at SLOG…
UPDATE 2: Anti-gay Washington state representative Richard Curtis is a lying cocksucker.
Detective Mark Burbridge of the Spokane Police Department, in a signed affidavit, concluded that Curtis and Castagna engaged in mutual sexual activities, after which Curtis fell asleep. Burbridge’s affadavit is based on interviews with both men.
The affidavit alleges Castagna left the hotel room with Curtis’ wallet. He later called the state lawmaker and offered to return it in exchange for money, Burbridge said in his affidavit….
Burbridge’s court filing offers a far different account from the brief interview that Curtis gave to Columbian Editor Lou Brancaccio Monday afternoon. During that phone interview, Curtis emphatically said he is not gay and has not had sex with a man. He said he was only “trying to help someone out.”
“Richard Curtis was adamant he never agreed to give Cody Castagna any money for sex, especially $1,000,” the court filing says.
I would never pay for sex…especially not at the prices I was quoted… The escort says he was only trying to get payment for services rendered. The republican says it was blackmail. So who’s the more trustworthy, a prostitute with a rap sheet for assault, theft and burglary…or a republican? Mmmmm….thinking…thinking…thinking… Here’s Savages’ take:
Closeted gay GOP elected official with an anti-gay voting record and—and I’m putting this charitably—a deeply troubled gay kid with a rap sheet—these two were made for each other.
As cartoonist Ruben Bolling says…the new gay stereotype is a middle aged, married, conservative, "family values" man.
At least Fox doesn’t own nearly all the TV stations in most places. But in many parts of the country, a Clear Channel radio station in one format or another is all you get.
When the republicans set out to abolish FCC media monopoly rules, many people warned that it would lead to a stifling of variety on the airwaves. Sure enough, only those of us who can afford now to have a satellite radio in the car can get something approximating the breadth that was once there to be found on the radio dial. Clear Channel has single handedly killed radio for most of us. But it would be a mistake to think that it’s just about peddling junk music to the lowest common denominator for profit. Oh, no. Consider the new Bruce Springsteen album, Magic, which has been a hit just about everywhere…except on radio for some strange reason. Fox News attempts to spin it thusly…
Bruce: Magic Refused Radio Play
Bruce Springsteen should be very happy. He has the No. 1 album, a possible Grammy for Best Album of the Year for "Magic," an album full of singles and a sold-out concert tour.
Alas, there’s a hitch: Radio will not play "Magic." In fact, sources tell me that Clear Channel has sent an edict to its classic rock stations not to play tracks from "Magic." But it’s OK to play old Springsteen tracks such as "Dancing in the Dark," "Born to Run" and "Born in the USA."
Just no new songs by Springsteen, even though it’s likely many radio listeners already own the album and would like to hear it mixed in with the junk offered on radio.
Why? One theory, says a longtime rock insider, "is that the audience knows those songs. Of course, they’ll never know these songs if no one plays them."
"Magic," by the way, has sold more than 500,000 copies since its release on Oct. 2 and likely will hit the million mark. That’s not a small achievement these days, and one that should be embraced by Clear Channel.
But what a situation: The No. 1 album is not being played on any radio stations, according to Radio & Records, which monitors such things. Nothing. The rock songs aren’t on rock radio, and the two standout "mellow" tracks — "Magic" and "Devil’s Arcade" — aren’t even on "lite" stations.
The singles-kinda hits, "Radio Nowhere" and "Living in the Future" — which would have been hits no questions asked in the ’70s, ’80s and maybe even the ’90s, also are absent from Top 40.
No shit sherlock. Here’s the opening lyrics to Radio Nowhere…
I was tryin’ to find my way home
But all I heard was a drone
Bouncing off a satellite
Crushin’ the last lone American night
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
I was spinnin’ ’round a dead dial
Just another lost number in a file
Dancin’ down a dark hole
Just searchin’ for a world with some soul
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
Is there anybody alive out there?
Sound like the sort of thing your friendly neighborhood republican media monopoly wants played on Their Radio Stations??? Here’s Living In The Future…
Woke up Election Day, skies gunpowder and shades of gray
Beneath a dirty sun, I whistled my time away
Then just about sundown
You come walkin’ through town
Your boot heels clickin’
Like the barrel of a pistol spinnin’ ’round
Don’t worry Darlin’, now baby don’t you fret
We’re livin’ in the future and none of this has happened yet
Don’t worry Darlin’, now baby don’t you fret
We’re livin’ in the future and none of this has happened yet
The earth it gave away, the sea rose toward the sun
I opened up my heart to you it got all damaged and undone
My ship Liberty sailed away on a bloody red horizon
The groundskeeper opened the gates and let the wild dogs run
I’m rollin’ through town, a lost cowboy at sundown
Got my monkey on a leash, got my ear tuned to the ground
My faith’s been torn asunder, tell me is that rollin’ thunder
Or just the sinkin’ sound of somethin’ righteous goin’ under?
Clear Channel will play this kind of thing when hell freezes over, or President Nice Job Brownie grows a conscience, whichever comes first. This sort of thing doesn’t fit very well into their format. For Bruce to get any airplay on Clear Channel, he needs to be more positive. Give the audience something like this…
The phrase "brought to you by Clear Channel" is partly cut off there, but this is what Clear Channel was splashing all over the nation’s highways after president Junior launched his excellent adventure in Iraq. Says it all, doesn’t it?
What to do? Columbia Records is said to be readying a remixed version of "The Girls in their Summer Clothes," a poppy Beach Boys-type track that has such a catchy hook fans were singing along to it at live shows before they had the album. Bruce insiders are hopeful that with a push from Sony, "Girls" will triumph.
I’m not so sure.
Clear Channel seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that at age 58, Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It’s certainly what’s helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius.
It’s not just Springsteen. There is no sign at major radio stations of new albums by John Fogerty or Annie Lennox, either. The same stations that should be playing Santana’s new singles with Chad Kroeger or Tina Turner are avoiding them, too.
Like Springsteen, these "older" artists have been relegated to something called Triple A format stations — i.e. either college radio or small artsy stations such as WFUV in the Bronx, N.Y., which are immune from the Clear Channel virus of pre-programming and where the number of plays per song is a fraction of what it is on commercial radio.
Republican radio network Clear Channel, a monopoly in many cities and a dominant player in most of the rest, isn’t interested. Is it because Springsteen has been an outspoken campaigner for Democrats and progressives? Clear Channel has taken a political stand with its programming in the past. Just think back to their boycott of the Dixie Chicks. Oh, no… not way back, just back to when they released their most recent album. Despite being one of the top 10 best-selling American albums of the year– across all genres and demographics– radio studiously ignored it. There were maybe half a dozen country stations that even played it at all. What Clear Channel did to the Dixie Chicks is a watertight case for the need to break the media companies up into a thousand pieces. (John Sununu disagrees; he’s pro-censorship.) I spoke with an old friend who heads a record company and preferred to speak off the record.
"When you have artists like the Dixie Chicks and Bruce Springsteen who have overtly spoken out against this Administration, they are taken to task in spite the clear and undeniable indications from the marketplace that people want to hear their music. What seems to be happening– if sales are any kind of a barometer of what the marketplace is– is that these politically-connected radio networks like Clear Channel are not looking to succeed as radio stations as much as pushing forward some political agenda.
Another friend of mine distinctly recalls the Senate hearings on radio consolidation in light of the Dixie Chicks boycott where Barbara Boxer and John McCain heard testimony including an internal Clear Channel memo threatening "Just wait and see what happens if Springsteen tries this." I guess we’re seeing that right now.
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