Things I Learned in Mexico

1) No matter what part of the world you go to, if there is a beach, there will be middle-aged European men in Speedos.


Oh, yeah. She likes what she sees!

2) A Mexican Bus Driver Joke:
A priest dies and appears at the Pearly Gates. As St Peter begins to welcome him, he suddenly says, "stand aside, father, this man goes first, for he was a Mexican bus driver."
The priest says, "why does he go ahead of me? I was a priest. I said the mass every Sunday of my life!"
And St Peter replies "Ah, yes, but while you said the Mass, no one was praying, they all slept. But when he drove his bus, no one slept, they were all praying!"

(That joke was told by a tour guide on the way to the Mayan ruins of Chichen-Itza. His name was Ivan and he was really cool.)

3) The origin of the name "Yucatan"
According to tour guide Ivan, the name comes from the first Spaniards to land on what is now called the Yucatan Peninsula. The story goes that the Spanish asked the locals "What do you call this place?" The locals, of course, spoke not a word of Spanish and answered in Mayan "I don't understand you." Which sounds something like "Yoo Ka Ton" in Mayan. This story is probably not true, it was apparently started by Cortez and may have been an effort at ridiculing his rival Velasquez, but I like to think that it's true anyway.

Viva Mexicats!

This will be my last post for about a week, as the Chaos Compound will be relocating to Mexico until next Sunday. (laying low until the heat dies down)




Meanwhile, please enjoy Los Gatos en Sombreros!

Adios para aqui y hasta la vista!

Maybe the Dumbest Argument Ever

I thought that the Thomas Sowell column of a couple days ago might have contained the dumbest argument ever when he posited the claim that if healthcare were made affordable, people would go to the doctor at the drop of a hat:

Back when the "single payer" was the patient, people were more selective in what they spent their own money on. You went to a doctor when you had a broken leg but not necessarily every time you had the sniffles or a skin rash. But, when someone else is paying, that is when medical care gets over-used. . . Both waiting lines and waiting lists grow longer when people with sniffles and minor skin rashes take up the time of doctors, while people with cancer are waiting.

Because, sure, once people have decent insurance, they will just take every opportunity to take time off of work, drive to the doctor's office, fill out paperwork, sit for 45 minutes reading year-old Golf Digests, then wait another 30 minutes half-naked in an examining room to be poked and prodded by nurses and technicians before the doctor finally comes in an tells you take Tylenol and get plenty of rest. People just LOVE going to the doctor. I know I can't wait to turn my head and cough!

But, no. This, I think is even dumber.
From the New York Daily News.com:

Cupp">

Can the Smoker in Chief really lead America in health care reform?

S.E. Cupp

Wednesday, March 10th 2010, 4:00 AM

With President Obama making his final push for health care reform, I ask you to consider the following "If, Then" theorem: If our health is the President's business, then the President's health should be our business.

Okay, couple things. First, the President is not claiming that our health is his business. He's just trying to find a way to make it possible for more people to be able to see adoctor when they need one. (so far, not doing a great job, but. . .)

Second, even if your premise were true, that doesn't mean that the inverse would be. That's like saying, since the president is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, shouldn't the Armed Forces be commander in chief of the president?

(I don't know why everything is getting underlined, and I don't know how to make it stop)

The recent revelation that Obama still sneaks a cigarette now and then, contributing to an industry that costs us more than $167 billion a year in lost productivity and health care, and gambling with a substance that kills more Americans every year than anything else, means that the issue deserves a healthy debate (pun intended).

Yeah, sure. The president's personal habits are so super totally relevant to the debate over healthcare. And I can tell that the pun was intended because of your earlier attempt at humor, which I was just going to ignore, but, now...

Alas, I chose to commune with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of the art history department instead - Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael.

There's an outside chance that that joke might have come off as slightly clever if it wasn't common knowledge that the turle characters were named after Rennaissance artists.
But even then, it's pretty weak.

So let's consider the following arguments:

* The President's push for health care is disingenuous.

In June 2009, he called the sweeping tobacco legislation that he passed "a victory for health care reform" and "a step that will save lives and dollars." Whether Obama's main interest in passing health care reform in America is to save lives or save dollars - and it has been both over the past year - one could argue that a President who smokes isn't really doing much of either.

Really? Let's say that he actually outlawed tobacco. But he kept his own private stash of cigarettes for extra-stressful days. Now Joe Smoker can't get cigarettes and has to quit, so he ends up avoiding lung cancer. And so do a bunch of other Joe and Jane smokers. Would the president's occasional smoke break diminish that? Would you really say, lung cancer is down 90% in the US, but since the president still has a puff now and then, it doesn't count? Well, you probably would, but would a sane person?

* But the President has rights, too, and smoking isn't illegal.

Libertarians and some conservatives will argue that the President should be able to do what he wants in private, as long as he doesn't break any laws. Whether he refuses to buckle up in the back of his limo, throws back his body weight in bourbon every night or wolfs down three Big Macs a day, how he treats his body is arguably his business.

Arguably? Would you really have to be a crazy libertarian to think that the president can eat whatever he fucking wants? He's an adult for God's sake. What he puts in his body is no one's business but his.

* Well, sure. But his body isn't just any body.

Even far-right Republicans like me are still patriots, and want the President to live a long, healthy life, especially while serving our country. His continued health, therefore, is important, and maintaining it should be one of Obama's priorities. In fact, he owes it to us to take care of himself. He isn't a private citizen anymore.

Oh, my God, your concern is so touching. Yeah, let's pretend that far-right Republicans haven't been upfront about praying for Obama to die. (really) (no, really) (seriously) Even if you're not one of those extreme assholes, do you really expect anyone to believe that you give a flying ratfuck about Obama's health?

* Obama's habit makes the health care bill hypocritical.

"The time for talk is over," as he said, all jacketless and fiery, at a speech this week. He wants an up-or-down vote on the Democrats' bill, which promises to change your life, whether you like it or not. From potential violations of privacy to ethical concerns over abortion funding and constitutional questions about penalizing Americans who don't buy insurance, the President is inviting the government into your private life in unprecedented ways. So maybe we should invite ourselves into his.

Change your life!!! By maybe making it somewhat easier to afford medical insurance? Oh, the heavy yoke of tyranny! And what potential violations of privacy are you talking about? Can you back up that claim at all? Give one example? No? Anything? Yeah, I didn't think so. But even if you could, what the fuck would that have to do with the President smoking?

The debate doesn't bring much in the way of closure. I for one see compelling threads of truth in every point. The only thing I know for sure is that we need health care reform, but this isn't the answer.

So this whole column was just to fill up space until you got the requisite number of words and then end with the current agreed-upon talking point for anti-healthcare folks wasn't it? You people have given up on the whole "we have the best system in the world, don't change a thing" theme, right? And now you're all conceding that, "well, we do need some sort of change, but not this particular one, because, um, Look Out! Nazis!"
Pathetic!

What the Hell is Wrong With This Psycho?

This is inexcusable:

Miss Him Yet?

This picture of a billboard in Minnesota has been making the rounds lately:



And I thought, yeah I sure do!
You know the new guy has been in office for over a year and has yet to invade a single country? He still hasn't declared any of our Constitutional rights optional. He hasn't, as far as I know, authorized any new forms of torture, or any warrantless wiretaps. He still hasn't claimed the ability to declare US citizens "enemy combatants," or any other made-up term and decide that habeus corpus will just not apply to them. I mean, what the hell? What has he been doing all this time? He certainly hasn't been clearing brush or reading My Pet Goat, the book so important that national crises will just have to wait until you're finished.

But anyway, I figured that this billboard just represented the viewpoint of one nutty Minnesotan, and no respectable person would share this opinion.
Apparently, the New York Times does not consider respectability to be a prerequisite for appearing on its op-ed pages, cuz look:

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Do You Miss Him Yet?

By STANLEY FISH

I know you’re not supposed to, but I just love to say I told you so.

What I told you back on Sept. 28, 2008, was that within a year of the day he left office George W. Bush would come to be regarded with affection and a little nostalgia.

Yeah, if you had said that he would be regarded with affection and nostalgia by some nut in Minnesota, then you'd be within your rights to gloat, but most people have the same low opinion of Bushie as they did when he left office.

Well it’s a bit more than a year now and signs of Bush’s rehabilitation are beginning to pop up. One is literally a sign, a billboard that appeared recently on I-35 in Minnesota. Occupying the right side (from the viewer’s viewpoint) is a picture of Bush smiling genially and waving his hand in a friendly gesture. Occupying the left side is a simple and direct question: “Miss me yet?”

Like a said, some nut in Minnesota. Do you have any polling data that says that people in general are feeling more forgiving of Dubya?

The image is all over the Internet, hundreds of millions of hits, and unscientific Web-based polls indicate that more do miss him than don’t.

Oh, well if the polls are unscientific AND Internet-based, they're bound to be relevant!

Oh, and you know who else has millions of hits? Charlie.

I know you said"hundreds of millions" of hits, but I don't believe you.

A perhaps more substantial sign incorporates a sign famous (or infamous) in the Bush presidency. The March 8 cover of Newsweek reproduces the famous 2003 photograph of Bush on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Lincoln. The president is in the left of the picture, striding away from the famous banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished.”

Wow, the cover of Newsweek. He can now join the exalted ranks of those who have graced the cover of Newsweek, like:

Johnny Depp,

The I-Pod,

Facebook,

and a guy with autism.

It is a story that intersects with another, the story of the precipitous decline in Barack Obama’s support and of a growing suspicion, found on the left as well as on the right, where it is much more than a suspicion, that the politics of change may have been a slogan with less promise in its future than “Mission Accomplished.” (The imminent passage of a health care bill keeps being predicted, but so far no “victory at last.”)
Meanwhile, Bush’s policies came to seem less obviously reprehensible as the Obama administration drifted into embracing watered-down versions of many of them.

No, they still seem just as reprehensible, that's partly why Obama's approval ratings are down.
Are you really arguing that people are starting to miss Bush because Obama is doing a lot of the same things as Bush? And also, that people are disillusioned with Obama because he's too Bush-like?

How do you come up with this ridiculous argument? People are mad at Obama for being like Bush, whom they hate, and Obama's similarities to Bush make people miss Bush. If people miss Bush, wouldn't Obama's popularity increase in proportion to his similarity to Bush?

And now, right on schedule, Bush has resurfaced (just as I imagined him doing a year ago last September ) to join Bill Clinton in a humanitarian relief effort. He is officially a member in good standing of the ex-presidents club

So was Nixon.

and the longer he lives the more his reputation will be burnished. To be sure, his post-presidency resume is still thin, but we can expect it to be beefed up by good deeds, ceremonial appearances and the activities that will surround the building and opening of his library at Southern Methodist University.

Good deeds? Where the hell would you get that idea? When has Dubya ever done anything for anyone but Dubya or his cronies? What would you consider a "good deed?" Taking a few minutes between collecting 6-figure speaking fees from wingnut organizations to ask people to contribute to Haiti? You wanna see an ex-president doing good deeds? Watch Jimmy Carter build houses for Habitiat. Making nice for the TV cameras after a tragedy doesn't really compare. That's not a good deed, that's PR.

We’ll see Bush the tour guide and Bush the patron of historical scholarship and, perhaps, even Bush the seminar leader.

Tour guide? What the hell? Where would he be giving guided tours? You think if you go to his presidential library, he's gonna be showing folks around?
And patron of historical scholarship? That would be the death-knell of history in America. Seriously, no one, even the most ardent Bushie has ever used the words "Bush" and "scholarship" in the same sentence.

And the judgment of history? He will not go to the top of the list, but neither will he be the figure of fun and derision he seemed destined to be only a year ago.

Oh, hey, don't sell the man short! Let's start clearing some space on ount Fucking Rushmore! Squeeze over, Lincoln!
Of course he will still be the figure of derision he is now. What, is he going to get any less stupid or corrupt in the near future?

You heard it here.

Which is why I will never come here again.

At this point, I'd say I miss Corey Haim more than George W. Bush