HOW YOU GET A BP. What I and perhaps many of you have been grumbling under our breaths for years, Nancy Nall eloquently lays out in complete sentences, in the course of a lengthy gripe about her shitty bank:

Oh, why bother with this? You all have your own tales of pain and woe, if not with banks, then with health insur­ance com­pa­nies, mort­gage hold­ers or whomever. Here’s what amuses me most about them — how, in our allegedly per­fect market-based sys­tem, our cus­tomer expe­ri­ence should be improv­ing year to year. In some ways, it has, although I credit tech­nol­ogy (the ATM) more than man­age­ment. But mostly, bank­ing — and many other allegedly service-based busi­nesses — has only become more Soviet with time, more mono­lithic, less sen­si­tive to cus­tomer com­plaint, more frus­trat­ing to deal with. Yes, I enjoy check­ing my bal­ance online or over the phone. No, I don’t like being nickel-and-dimed — or ten-dollared and thirty-dollared — to death over every lit­tle thing.

I still hope to get past the muttering stage on this important topic someday, but Nance has it good and broken down already.

I will add this: Any of us, if we think about it for more than a few minutes, can see that our largest and most powerful institutions are increasing treating us, their customers, like sub-humans.

They do it in Washington, with monstrosities like the nightmarish 2005 Bankruptcy Bill, and they do it in the day-to-day, by socking us with every hidden fee, added surcharge, delayed payment, automatic renewal, and designed-to-discourage phone tree they can dream up to separate us from more of our money.

I don't suggest there was ever a golden age when businesses didn't try to get more of our money, but I've been walking around this civilization for quite a healthy span of years, and I've never spent as much time as I do now fighting with corporations to keep or get back my money. I don't recall, in the allegedly less enlightened past, a bank insisting that I still had a credit card with them years after I paid off the balance and told them repeatedly to close my account. I don't recall being told that it didn't matter when I sent in my payment, it only mattered when the bank decided to accept it, and if it wound up being late they could raise my rate and fuck up my credit. (BTW thank the Democrats for fixing at least some of this shit.)

It's true that in the old days, I didn't have internet, and I often had to physically approach a service desk to get satisfaction. But those desks were clearly marked and manned. If they were run like the byzantine "support" features at many company websites now, they would be available only by rope ladder at the bottom a 30-foot shaft, and their agents would fend me off with pikestaffs.

Yet as plain as this is to us normal people, conservatives and libertarians (but I repeat myself) are insensible to the situation. They generally tell you, hey look, you got iPods and diet pet food, you never had it so good. And if you're suffering, it's your own damn fault for being a littlebrain. If you go through, say, a typical Megan McArdle post about bank shenanigans, you'll find the comments filled with the counsel of Randian supermen who have never had any troubles getting loans themselves, and don't understand how any decent person would ("When it comes down to it, if a person lives responsibly, chances are they won't have to worry").

And there's always someone like Cassy Fiano to blubber that the banks are the ones getting screwed by their customers and how dare they etc.

Which brings us to the depraved indifference shown by those BP ratfucks toward actually cleaning up (as opposed to covering up) their disastrous pollution of the Gulf of Mexico. For a while I was actually in sympathy with them -- when you fuck up that bad, you might be forgiven for using a psychological strategy to distance yourself from the enormity of your guilt, if only just so you can function. But after watching them at work awhile, I have decided that they are incorrigible. To put it politely.

And why shouldn't they be? See it their way: In this country, in this time, if you want the big money you don't give the suckers an even break. You brass it out. Fuck the regulators, fuck the press, and fuck the paupers who think they have some say in what washes up on their beaches -- we got people, we got money. And most of all, we got the right of way. Because for decades now, wherever some herkimer-jerkimer objected that our business was coming on a little too strong for their precious "community," we had the answer that never failed: Step aside, buddy, you're standing in the way of the Free Market.

It never failed before. Why should it fail them now?

IT WON'T FLOAT. As an old-fashioned Democrat who would really like to support the Israeli government, I remain open to any good justification for boarding an aid flotilla (even an embargoed one of suspicious political provenance) in international waters [!] and killing and kidnapping several of its passengers. So far I haven't heard any -- only shrill blood-libel crap like Jennifer Rubin's.

Anytime you find yourself writing something like this --

When the Israeli commandos were set upon as they were lowered from a helicopter, they acted to defend themselves.

-- and it isn't meant as satire, you should know that you aren't making your case, and in fact are strongly giving the impression that you don't have one.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the rightblogger reviews of Sex and The City 2, and how they've changed their minds about the franchise since they found the new film talks smack about Arabs. It also contains what may be my favorite Rod Dreher quote of all time.

A NEW LOW. Big Hollywood is your one-stop shopping place for the conservatism of petty personal grievances, with its constant surveillance of movies, TV shows, and Some Silly Liberal Who Was Mean to Me for evidence of wrongthink. They're so good at it that I long ago stopped trying to think of ways to top them. After they attacked Sesame Street for failing to make up affectionate nicknames for Fox News reporters, I knew no one could embarrass them better than they regularly embarrassed themselves.

And here's proof: In a million years, could you have come up with a parody Big Hollywood headline to rival this one?

Elayne Boosler ‘Unfriended’ Me on Facebook for Being Conservative.

Yes, the guy's actually complaining about this, though he adds, "You want to be narrow minded and intellectually lazy so you don’t have to defend your opinions, that is your right as an American." Generous of him! Next he'll grudgingly defend your right to shoo him off your porch when he shows up singing "The Ballad of the Green Berets."

Eventually he cites Some Silly Liberal Who Was Mean to Him, and then gets to the inevitable veiled accusations of Hollywood McCarthyism. "I look at folks like Dennis Miller, a guy who I have admired for years, and Drew Carey," he says, "and wonder what their brash conservatism has cost them." Gee, I don't know -- maybe the lead in Cast Away?

A few months back I suspected one of the BH guys of being a ringer. Now I'm starting to think they're all putting it on.

UPDATE. Typo fixed, thanks Nance. Any others? My MBP is at the shop and I'm using Mary's PC, which makes me clunky on the keys.

A CRAZE, IN A SENSE. That Go Galt thing lives on -- in rightwing campfire stories! Today's is from Dan Kennedy at Townhall:

During a conference at which I just spoke, the owner of several companies showed me a pair of cufflinks he’d just had custom-made, engraved with the words “Who Is John Galt?”

Not just a president, mind you, but the president of several companies! He probably owns a mansion and a yacht.

This business owner said the cuff-links were the last item other than absolute necessities that he would buy until Obama was an ex-president. He said he was sending out a letter to the restaurants and shops he patronized, his dry cleaners, the service companies that tended his lawns at his homes – over 200 different business owners – letting them know that President Obama had determined he was making too much money and was too rich for reason. Therefore, he was going to cut sales and production at his companies by half, himself work but one day a week, cut business spending to the bone and personally buy nothing – other than vacations out of the country – until the president exits.

Apparently Elmer J. Fudd also rules a feudal community, where the dry-cleaning vassals rely upon his custom to feed their children.

Each man to his own kinky fantasy, I say, but I wonder what the thrill is here. Do they imagine the underlings will say, "Wow, that rich guy means business -- I better vote Republican but pronto"? Or -- as the old "No tipping, we're Galt" routine suggests -- do they just like the idea of stiffing service employees and blaming it on politics?

Or maybe they're trying to sell the punters these. Only $50, yet just like what the Lord of Several Companies wears! Now there's capitalism I can understand -- the sort that never gives a sucker an even break.

GENIUS, I TELL YOU. Kaus has this thing sewn up. My only question: Is that Ann Althouse in the front row?

(From the Stephen Kaus Weblog; h/t Farley at Lawyers Guns & Money)

SPIN-OFF. I don't know if you've noticed but I have a link on the sidebar for my tumblr page.

I took it up last year, didn't know what to do with it, and let it lay. But a couple of weeks ago I started using it for the sort of cultural stuff with which I used to irregularly seed alicublog. Fond as I am of themed tumblr pages, I haven't come up with a Big Idea for one of my own yet. But it seems a nice format for quick shots on neat stuff.

I think I'll keep that going a while, so stop by if that sort of thing interests you.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS. Regular readers may already know about Dave Weigel's problems with Palin fans who are enraged by his perfectly sane observations on the former Alaska governor's latest public complaints.

The sad thing is, in a different context we might be able to rationally discuss Joe McGinniss' decision to get a home near that of a former politician/current TV celebrity on whom he is writing a book. Is it more invasive and less ethical than the near-constant presence of reporters outside the less bucolic homes of other public figures?

But Palin is reliably full of shit and a professional victim, so as with the idiotic David Letterman fuss she stirred up last year -- claiming against common sense that Letterman was intentionally attacking her underage daughter -- Palin has ended all chance of rational debate by accusing McGinniss of looking at her tits and suggesting that he might want to ogle her 9-year-old.

Weigel squawked, and here's a sampler of what ensued:



But what else can we expect? Rush Limbaugh's black fill-in Walter Williams is advocating secession from the perspective of the Confederacy. I like to think I'm pretty creative, but I don't think I could have made that one up, though maybe Sam Fuller already did:



This country has already gone nuts. Now it's all about waiting to see what entertaining means the patient will use to do harm to herself.

MAYBE I'M GETTING OLD. but the whole time I was watching this video preview (warning: incredibly NSFW), two questions kept crossing my mind: 1.) Who is Kendra Wilkinson? and 2.) Please, God, can you make Kathryn J. Lopez and Maggie Gallagher write about it?

UPDATE. In comments Leonard Pierce explains: "Kendra Wilkinson is one of Hugh Hefner's exes, which makes her appearance in a porn video about as shocking a headline as 'GOLDBERG DICKS AROUND IN OFFICE, POSTPONES WORK.'"

SHORTER WEASEL ZIPPERS: Sputter sputter, I hate fags.

SHORTER TIGERHAWK: Remember, if you do anything to punish BP, their employees will suffer. Think of them as moral hostages of the Free Market!

JONAH GOLDBERG, HARD ON THE JOB, LATEST IN A SERIES*. "The reason I have not commented on the series finales of Lost and 24 is that I have not been able to watch either yet. I will not read or respond to email on these subjects either until I've had a chance to catch-up. I know this reflects a shameful lapse on my part."

Christ Jesus, Goldberg is now too lazy to watch TV.

Also: "What's David Brooks Trying To Say?" in which Goldberg suggests Brooks is making a couple of connections not supported by the actual Brooks column (including one to himself), then concludes, "I have to assume that's the case, but Brooks just doesn't make it clear." One of the non-legacy-pledges at NR picks up his slack.

Goldberg also prints a bunch of reader letters, and has enough energy left over to link to BP propaganda.

* Compiled by Instaputz and Tbogg, among others.

SARAH PALIN ACCUSES AUTHOR OF LOOKING AT HER TITS. As R. Crumb once drew himself thinking in a comic jam about the apocalypse, I always hoped I wouldn't be alive for this.

THE BITTEREST PILL (THEY EVER HAD TO SWALLOW). A week ago at National Review, in honor of the 50th Anniversary of The Pill, Kathryn Jean Lopez came waving a celebrity news hook:

If you need a quick primer on the birds and the bees, on how a culture has been misled, and on why Carrie and her friends from yet another Sex and the City movie have had miserable, not-so-pretty lives...

(Yeah, that "conservative cause celebre" thing is really gonna happen.)

...the woman once declared “Most Desired Woman” by Playboy can help you out.

Surprise, it's Raquel Welch! Bless her, Rocky has a book out and says she's seen how contraception "has altered American society for better or worse" -- while it "made it easier for a woman to choose to delay having children until after she established herself in a career," it also made people less likely to get married, presumably by obviating the time-honored tradition of the shotgun wedding.

Though Welch is four times married and obviously didn't let child-rearing slow down her own career, K-Lo swooned. "What she writes knocks the glimmer off the rose of so-called 'sexual freedom,'" wrote Lopez. Also, "Raquel Welch echoes another pope when she talks about sexual explicitness in the culture." The crime of the Pill, in K-Lo's view, was that it turned women away from something they really wanted: "Motherhood is at the heart of what it means to be a woman, and, for decades now, the pill has been trying to deny that reality."

Later Lopez claimed her column "seemed to strike a nerve." But she only cited in evidence a couple of Catholic blogs, and there is no sign that in the wide world women started burning their Ortho Tri-Cyclen in response.

So Maggie Gallagher dropped by to both raise the stakes and change the subject: The Pill wasn't bad because it worked, but because it sometimes didn't:

If we had truly separated sex from reproduction, why would we need abortion?

It was the failure of the Pill to reliably separate sex and reproduction that led quickly to Roe v. Wade.

"The problem is not the Pill," Gallagher added later. "The problem is the idea, which promoters of the pill introduced and promoted with great fanfare, that we have separated sex from reproduction." Because we haven't -- "If you spend ten years being unmarried and sexually active, the odds you will get pregnant, or get someone pregnant, are quite substantial."

Apparently Lopez had been too idealistic: The kids weren't going to stop using birth control because it was morally wrong -- they could only be scared out of it. Pregnancy was not to be used to lure them to virtue, but to terrorize them out of having sex.

K-Lo agreed as much as pride would allow: "That pill alone was not the poison that made a mess between men and women, but it sure was a contributing factor."

And so it goes: Tactical debates among cultural warriors whose cause is long, long lost. They might as well be arguing about why the invention of washing machines turned the innocent women of their great-grandmothers' time into flappers, and what can be done about it today.

But keep pitching guys! Maybe the environmental angle will "strike a nerve" somewhere.

UPDATE: In comments, good point, PGE: "Wait a minute... It doesn't work, plus women don't REALLY want it. How has it survived the miracle of the free market?"

THE FILM'S NOT OUT, BUT THE PROJECTORS ARE ALREADY RUNNING. The Hollywood Reporter reviews that Sex and the City sequel and imagines that its jokes about Arab sexism are "politically incorrect," which makes it "proudly feminist and blatantly anti-Muslim, which means that it might confound liberal viewers."

This notion that liberals approve of Arab sexism is so dumb only rightwing law professors would buy it:

Oh! Poor liberals! Beset on all sides. Even "Sex and the City" has turned on them.

"The exit question I never thought I’d ask," says Allahpundit,"Is 'Sex and the City' about to become a conservative cause celebre?" Well, the first SATC film sure was -- and the conservative consensus then was that it was liberal evil because it made women want to have sex.

If Cassy Fiano's meltdown last week ("Sexual empowerment is a myth. Slutting around like Samantha on Sex and the City does not bring you love or happiness or freedom") is any indication, we can expect the same thing all over again. And when they get to the bit where the Arab ladies step out of burqas, under which they are dressed up all glam, it may reignite their hate-on toward Muslim-American Miss USA Rima Fakih. How can they be sure the Muslim tootsies aren't actually sleepover cells?

UPDATE. FilmDrunk caught up with this half-assed meme:

I hear in a scene after that, Samantha twists the top on a Bud Light bottle and like magic, all the burka ladies are magically transformed into bikini models and Bon Jovi starts playing, and an old snake charmer in a turban turns into Tyson Beckford with his shirt off and his huge wiener hanging out. I think it might’ve been product placement.

In other words, these guys have failed with smart-alecky 14-year-olds, and when you've lost them, the conservative movement is finished.

SHORTER ALLAHPUNDIT. Why didn't Obama misuse the power of the Federal Gummint like the fascist we know he is to stop the oil leak?

JONAH GOLDBERG, HARD ON THE JOB, LATEST IN A SERIES*. "Maybe one of my fellow Cornerites can explain to me why, exactly, it's a scandal (or would be) if it's proven that the White House offered Joe Sestak a job to abandon his race against Specter.

"Update: Ah, well, these are the perils of blogging after a long day. I meant to save this post and finish it later, not publish it publicly..."

* Compiled by Instaputz and Tbogg, among others.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about that whole Rand Paul thing. (If that link doesn't work, try this one.) In trying to keep it a reasonable length, I had to peel off some of the humdingers. For instance, BitsBlog, who was mad that Michael Steele had the temerity to speak against Paul's Civil Rights Act reservations:

As to the success or failure of such government-based attitudes about minorities, Steel should perhaps look at the long-term implication of our government only wanting to help the American Indian.

Yeah, think if we'd tried to integrate them; what a disaster that would have been! Then there's Jacob G. Hornberger, who thinks liberals are hypocrites because they allow racism in private residences but not in businesses. Could there be a Constitutional reason for this? Ha:

I suspect that the answer lies in the long-time, deep antipathy that liberals have to the free market — to free enterprise -- to capitalism -- to profit.

But my favorite is this scary-looking dude who explains that his Randism stems from the night he and a buddy accidentally went to a black-people bar. They were treated civilly -- which for some reason convinces him that the proprietor should have the right to throw them out for being white, which in turn proves that white people should be able to throw someone else out for being black. The bottom line: "the elements of peoples' heart & mind character in which matters like racism abide are not available to your steel-patchouli do-goodery." This is as unanswerable as one of Mr. T's Commandments, though not as much fun.

SOMETIMES I THINK THE INTERNET IS NOTHING BUT A RIGHTWING RETARD FARM. Sonora in northern Mexico is, according to Wikipedia, a big tourist destination for Arizonans:

Sonora is a premier tourist destination, especially for visitors from neighboring Arizona.

Recently, Sonora has experienced a boom in tourism, especially in the city of Puerto Peñasco, due to its being the nearest beach to many population centers in Arizona.

So the Sonoran Tourist Bureau recently made an ad that said, "In Sonora we are looking for people from Arizona..." showing a guy in camo with binoculars. But surprise! It's a teaser, followed by (I learn from, of all people, a commenter at Free Republic) a follow-up that says, "...who want to have a great time."

The obvious message is that Mexico may be seen as a fun destination rather than a threat, as the Arizona anti-immigrant laws seem to suggest.

The rightwing reaction (ginned up by the madman Joe Arpaio) is that the Sonoran tourism board is threatening Americans. No, really:

Mexico Running Threatening Ads in Arizona Newspaper…

Threatening Ad from Mexican Tourism in Arizona News Paper... Newsflash, to get people to come and visit … maybe you do not want to threaten them!

Threatening American tourists. There’s a brilliant idea, Mexico. But, then again, I’m sure the Democrats will give you a standing ovation for this, too.

You'll find more of this all over the rightwing blogs today. Will they relent when someone tells them what's actually going on? Doubtful; when Repubx saw the follow-up, he interpreted it thus:

The Sonoro Tourism board has amended their advert, by putting a more friendly face on it (?) Perhaps the outcome of backlash stemming from complaints. To little to late. IMO What is done, is done.

And when you think about it:

So much better! Now you just have a sniper eying innocent people on the beach…LOL

The creme de la crackpots is supplied by Ironic Surrealism 3.0:

Personally I find it to be threatening. Very much so. Intentional or not.

These people probably shit their pants when George Lopez comes on the TV.

UPDATE. Duke Stern called the Sonoran tourism and they explained that a printing error kept the follow-up from being seen in at least one edition of the Arizona Republic. But Stern isn't so sure:

Maybe it was an error. The AZ Republic, which opposes the new Arizona immigration law wouldn’t purposely jeopardize the ad revenue of a client simply to cause a stir. Or would the rag actually do that?

The simpler and more logical explanation would be that it was a mistake, but alas, simple and logical explanations seem to have gone out of fashion.

UPDATE 2. Wingnuts, I got another one for you! From "Anytime you vacation, you’ll find friends in Sonora," a tourism pitch from a local writer appearing at Inside Tucson Business:

The chances of your having a bad experience in Sonora are no different than what we Mexicans have by crossing the border into Arizona.

Skree! He's defaming the Homeland, comparing it to his own stinky country! It's the Maine all over again! Do your duty and spread the outrage!

SHORTER MATT WELCH: Talk smack about libertarianism, will you? It just so happens we've been proved right about civil rights     deregulating banks     deregulating Wall Street     food safety     environmental protection     airline prices.